# Failing Islamic States - 2011



## 57Chevy

Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and his family's 'Mafia rule'

As Tunisia's President Ben Ali is granted leave to remain in Saudi Arabia, the lavish lifestyle enjoyed by the president and his family is coming into the spotlight.

Their preferred title was "Tunisia's First Family". To the people they ruled over, though, president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and his clan were known as "The Mafia" - a ruling clique whose greed and nepotism ultimately caused their downfall. 

Following in the footsteps of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin and numerous other deposed dictators, Mr Ben Ali was granted refuge in Saudi Arabia on Saturday, starting what will likely be a comfortable, if less than dignified, political retirement. 

But as millions of Tunisians celebrated the end of his 23-year-long authoritarian rule, it was not just the 74-year-old president they were glad to see the back of. 

Far more reviled, it seems, was his second wife Laila, a feisty brunette more than 20 years his junior, who was dubbed "The Regent of Carthage" for her power behind the throne. 

A former hairdresser from a humble background, she stands accused of using her marriage to Mr Ben Ali to turn her family, the Trabelsis, into the desert nation's most powerful business clique. 

As of Saturday night, the former first couple were keeping a low profile. Mr Ben Ali was reported to have flown into the Saudi Arabian port city of Jeddah, where Idi Amin spent his final years. 

Meanwhile rumours circulated that his wife, who is thought to have fled the country separately and beforehand, had headed for Dubai - a destination with which she is said to be well acquainted through shopping trips. 

"All President Ben Ali's power and wealth became concentrated in the family, and especially that of his wife," said Saad Djebbar, an Arab political analyst. "He was so arrogant that he undermined his own power base, alienating supporters in the party and the business community." 

In public, the country's First Lady had styled herself as one of the Arab world's most progressive female politicians, heading charitable foundations and espousing feminism and women's rights. But critics say that behind the scenes, she pursued an acquisitive agenda that saw her widely-likened to Imelda Marcos of the Philippines. 

Few such criticisms ever emerged in Tunisia's tame and highly-censored media - much of which is owned by members of the ruling family. But the government could not prevent Tunisians getting access on the internet to last year's Wikileaks reports, in which former US ambassador Robert F. Godec penned several vivid snapshots of the elite's pampered lifestyle. 

In one, he described the astonishing opulence of a lunch date at the house of Mohamed Sakher El Materi, a billionaire businessman who is the president's son-in-law and - until last week anyway - his rumoured heir apparent. 

Sitting in a beachfront compound decorated with Roman artifacts, Mr Godec noted that ice cream and frozen yogurt had been flown from St Tropez, and that his host kept a pet tiger in a cage - a habit also shared by Saddam Hussein's late son, Uday. 

When many ordinary Tunisians struggled to even find jobs, he later noted, it was hardly surprising that such bling lifestyles did not endear the ruling family to their subjects. 

"President Ben Ali's extended family is often cited as the nexus of Tunisian corruption," Mr Godec wrote in a cable to Washington. "Ben Ali's wife, Leila Ben Ali, and her extended family - the Trabelsis - provoke the greatest ire from Tunisians. Along with the numerous allegations of Trabelsi corruption are often barbs about their lack of education, low social status, and conspicuous consumption. 

"While some of the complaints about the Trabelsi clan seem to emanate from a disdain for their nouveau riche inclinations, Tunisians also argue that the Trabelsis' strong arm tactics and flagrant abuse of the system make them easy to hate." 

Last week, demonstrators in the town of Hammamet, an up-market resort on Tunisia's Mediterranean coast, attacked luxury villas identified as belonging to members of the president's extended clan. 

At one mansion, looters filmed themselves on mobile phones as they gleefully set fire to top-of-the-range sports utility vehicles and did wheelies on motorbikes across pristine lawns. According to some reports, local security forces had even suggested they loot the Trabelsi mansions rather than attack the police station. 

Since then, rioters have turned their attentions to the Trabelsi's business empire, looting shops and supermarkets identified as belonging to them. 

There are, it seems, no shortage of potential targets. Leila's brother Belhassen alone is said to own an airline, several hotels, two of Tunisia's private radio stations, and a car assembly plant. 

As Ambassador Godec noted, many foreign investors found it hard to operate in the country without giving a cut of their business to member of the ruling family. The McDonalds burger chain - not often hailed as the champion of ethical business practice - lost the chance of a franchise in Tunisia because of its refusal to grant it to someone with "family connections". 

Just how much of their empire the Trabelsi family will be able to hold on to now that their chief patron has gone remains to be seen. 

The president himself is said to have a personal fortune of around £3.5 billion, although last night, Tunisia's old colonial ruler, France, said it had taken steps to ensure "suspicious financial movements" through its financial system would be blocked. 

Meanwhile, Ben Ali's son-in-law, Mr Materi, was said to have holed up in a £300-a-night VIP suite at hotel at Disneyland Paris, along with his wife Nesrine, 24, and other hangers-on. Four Tunisian bodyguards were said to be camped in the hotel lobby. 

"The Tunisian Embassy in Paris was the first place they stayed, but when expat Tunisians started demonstrating outside they decided to move out to Disneyland," said a source at the theme park. 

"The problem is that the entourage is so large that people started to notice them immediately. The women are dressed in designer clothes and look like princesses, covered in expensive jewellery, and Mercedes limousines are coming and going all the time." 

In any case, they may not be able to stay much longer. on Saturday night a French government spokesman said members of the former ruling family were not welcome on French soil "and should leave". 
                 ___________________________________________________________________
Related Articles:
(copy and paste in search engin)

Tunisia riots: presidential election to be held within 60 days16 Jan 2011
Tunisia riots: more protests threatened as President Ben Ali flees to Saudi Arabia16 Jan 2011
Tunisia closes airspace, state of emergency declared16 Jan 2011
Tunisia Army arrests security chief in coup plot as struggle for control intensifies16 Jan 2011
Tunisia riots: Fears mount over violent power struggle16 Jan 2011
Tunisia president quits as prime minister takes over16 Jan 2011
              
                              (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)


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## 57Chevy

It is becoming ever so easy to understand the turmoil in that little 'family' country. : 

Wife of ousted Tunisian leader took $59 million in central bank gold

Tunisians were enraged to discover on Monday that the former president's wife, Leila Trabelsi, took 1.5 tons of gold from the central bank when she and her family fled to Dubai.

Intelligence officials in Paris told Le Monde, the French newspaper, that Mrs Trabelsi visited the bank last month, when protests were gathering momentum, and instructed the governor to hand over gold ingots totalling $59 million.

Although he initially refused to comply, the personal intervention of the former president ensured that the gold was handed over.

The disclosure of Mrs Trabelsi's final act of avarice angered Tunisians, but did not surprise them. The first lady's love of opulence and her reputation for grasping corruption made her and her equally unpopular nephews the country's principle hate figures.

Three days after they ousted their president, Tunisian protesters returned to the streets of Tunis on Monday to demand the complete purge of former regime loyalists from government positions.

article continues at link.....
                              (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)

now where is that hand clapping emoticon when I could use one. ;D


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## 57Chevy

More about X president, Zine El Abidine Ben AliFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Photo:
2nd President of Tunisia
In office
7 November 1987 – 14 January 2011

and his second wife, or first lady of Tunisia since 1992,
Leila Ben Ali/born Leila Trabelsi also From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Photo:
Leila Ben Ali chaired a meeting of the Arab Women Organisation
in November 2010 
                              (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)


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## 57Chevy

Tunisia Unrest Stirs Passions Across North African Region
TUNIS — Passions unleashed by the revolution in Tunisia continued to resonate across the region on Tuesday as a man in Cairo was reported to have set himself ablaze, the latest apparent imitation of the self-immolation that set off the uprising here a month ago. 
On Monday, an Egyptian and a Mauritanian became the fifth and sixth North Africans to burn themselves. On Tuesday, The Associated Press reported from Cairo, security officials said an Egyptian man, apparently inspired by events in Tunisia, set himself on fire outside the prime minister’s office in the center of the Egyptian capital. The man’s medical condition, identity and motives were not immediately clear. A day earlier, Abdo Abdel Moneim, a 50-year-old Egyptian restaurant owner, poured a gallon of gasoline over his head and set himself ablaze outside the Parliament building on Monday morning in downtown Cairo. Around the same time in Mauritania, Yacoub Ould Dahoud was setting fire to himself in his parked car near Parliament in Nouakchott. 

And on Sunday, Senouci Touat of Mostaganem, Algeria, 34 and unemployed, set himself on fire in his hometown, the fourth attempted self-immolation in his country since the Tunisian street revolt exploded in furious demonstrations in recent days. And while there were no immediate signs that their actions inspired widespread protests, as the victims all apparently intended, the immolations stood as gruesome testimony to the power of the Tunisian example. 

Article continues...
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## Retired AF Guy

57Chevy said:
			
		

> It is becoming ever so easy to understand the turmoil in that little 'family' country. :
> 
> Wife of ousted Tunisian leader took $59 million in central bank gold
> 
> Tunisians were enraged to discover on Monday that the former president's wife, Leila Trabelsi, took 1.5 tons of gold from the central bank when she and her family fled to Dubai.



1.5 tons of gold?  Equivalent to a cube .427 meters in size if anyone is interested. Not exactly something that you could stick in your purse and walk out the door with.


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## 57Chevy

Threat to fortune of Tunisia's dictator

Tunisian officials promised Wednesday to investigate the vast fortune of the former president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and his relations as Switzerland froze the exiled dictator's assets there.

Members of The Family dominated the Tunisian economy, owning banks, businesses, factories, resorts and vast land holdings.

By conservative estimates, Mr Ben Ali's immediate family had a $7.96 billion fortune, while brothers and sisters of his hated wife, Leila Trabelsi, accumulated even more.

The hasty departure of 30 or more family members has brought the Tunisian economy to its knees - 43 banks, 66 shops and 11 industrial plants have been destroyed by protesters.

The official TAP news agency said that a judge had accepted a petition by prosecutors to investigate bank accounts, property and other assets. Demonstrators have demanded swift action to seize Ben Ali assets inside the country and cash abroad. Few believe the interim government led by Mr Ben Ali's former acolytes has the stomach for the task.

As the UN put the number killed in the uprising at 100 and Tunisia freed all political prisoners, Michele Calmy-Rey, the Swiss foreign minister, said the assets of known associates of Mr Ben Ali would be frozen for three years.

Tunisia's central bank took over a bank controlled by Sakher El-Materi, one of Mr Ben Ali's sons-in-law in the first such move against the family's assets. Since the 74-year-old president sought refuge in Saudi Arabia on Friday, Tunisians have looted the properties of notorious figures, including the president's four wealthy sons-in-law and Mrs Ben Ali's brother Belhassan.

In a French expose, Mrs Ben-Ali herself was dubbed the Queen of Carthage for her imperious and greedy behaviour. Moncef Cheikhrouhou, who was forced to sell his shares in a family press group to a relative of the president, said he hoped a commission created by the Justice Ministry would reverse acquisitions resulting from corruption. "They behaved like a mafia that reaped money from all sectors of the economy," he said.

The French government is under pressure to seize property held by the Tunisian first family including apartments in Paris, and villas on the Riviera.

Meanwhile, Foued Mebazaa, Tunisia's interim president promised a "total break" with the past and hailed the "martyrs of dignity and liberty".

                                 (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)


Clapping emoticon


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## 57Chevy

Ben Ali's family 'not welcome in Canada'

MONTREAL, Jan 22, 2011 (AFP) - Relatives of Tunisia’s ousted president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali have arrived in Canada, a government official in Ottawa told AFP on Saturday.

One of Ben Ali’s many brothers-in-law arrived in Montreal Friday morning aboard a private jet accompanied by his wife, their children and a governess, the official said, confirming a report by the website of Le Journal de Quebec.

Ben Ali’s wife Leila Trabelsi has several brothers, and neither source specified which one had arrived in Canada.

The family had reportedly checked into a hotel in Montreal.

An official at Citizenship and Immigration Canada said Ottawa was not offering asylum to Ben Ali’s family.

“Mr. Ben Ali, deposed members of the former Tunisian regime and their immediate families are not welcome in Canada,” said spokesman Douglas Kellam, who declined to comment on any specific cases for privacy reasons.

article continues at link....

                          (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)

Updated Photo:
A picture taken on December 13, 2010 shows Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali at Tunis-Carthage airport.
Photograph by: FETHI BELAID, AFP/Getty Images


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## 57Chevy

???  not welcome one day, welcome the next 
_____________________________________________

Tunisian dictator’s relatives came to Canada as permanent residents: Kenney

The relatives of ousted Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali who arrived in Canada are permanent residents and not asylum-seekers, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said Sunday.

Kenney, attending a Conservative party meeting in Ottawa, said some members of Ben Ali’s family “are permanent residents” and “have the right to be in Canada.”

He spoke days after one of Ben Ali’s many brothers-in-law arrived in Montreal aboard a private jet accompanied by his wife, their children and a governess, according to news reports confirmed by a government official.

Ben Ali’s wife Leila Trabelsi has several brothers, and the official declined to say which one had arrived in Canada. The family reportedly checked into a hotel in Montreal.

A spokesman for a Montreal-based group formed to support Tunisians who have risen up against Ben Ali’s government told The Montreal Gazette he was dismayed to hear that Canada had allowed the ex-president’s relatives into the country.

“We’re very disappointed that Canada has accepted these people who are directly related to the dictatorship and to the family that has been ruling Tunisia for the past 23 years,” said Haroun Bouazzi, of the Collectif de solidarite au Canada avec les luttes sociales en Tunisie.

Bouazzi, who was born and raised in Tunisia but has lived in Canada for the past 11 years, said the Canadian government should have refused entry to Ben Ali’s family even if they were carrying the proper documentation.

“When Ben Ali left Tunisia, he was still president, and countries like Malta and France didn’t accept him even then,” he said. “Countries always have a choice to be on the side of the Tunisian people.”

An official at Citizenship and Immigration Canada said Saturday that Ottawa was not offering asylum to Ben Ali’s family.

Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia this month after weeks of violent protests against his iron-fisted rule.

                                 (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)


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## 57Chevy

January 21, 2011 
Authorities have said they arrested 33 members of Ben Ali's family for crimes against the state. On Friday, Interior Minister Ahmed Friia named one of those held as Imed Trabelsi, a nephew of Ben Ali's wife Leila.

"Regarding our ability to track down those relatives of the ex-president and his wife who ran away, fleeing from Tunisia will not help them," he told a televised news conference. "Tunisia has treaties with countries all over the world."

full article:
Tunisia to pay abuse victims, hunt Ben Ali clan


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## Rifleman62

As soon as anyone touches Canadian soil, no matter who they are, with documents or not, they have all the Charter rights and freedoms as someone born here.


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## George Wallace

Rifleman62 said:
			
		

> As soon as anyone touches Canadian soil, no matter who they are, with documents or not, they have all the Charter rights and freedoms as someone born here.



I would even say, more rights than a native born Canadian.   :-\


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## The Bread Guy

Rifleman62 said:
			
		

> As soon as anyone touches Canadian soil, no matter who they are, with documents or not, they have all the Charter rights and freedoms as someone born here.


True dat, but not EVERYONE touches down here as (what sounds like) already-processed Permanent Residents (old term:  Landed Immigrants).  If this quote is correct ....


> .... Kenney, attending a Conservative party meeting in Ottawa, said *some members of Ben Ali’s family “are permanent residents”* ....


.... this suggests to me (and I stand to be corrected) that some on the late-night plane from Tunis, at some point, were all of the following, according to Citizenship and Immigration Canada:


> .... To be eligible for a PR Card, you must:
> 
> * be a permanent resident of Canada
> * be physically present in Canada
> * not be under an effective removal order
> * not be a Canadian citizen or a registered Indian under the Indian Act and
> * not be convicted of an offense related to the misuse of a PR card


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## 57Chevy

The Department of Foreign Affairs said in an email to CBC News that individuals are allowed in the country as long they have the proper papers and are not wanted by a foreign government
-
-
At least five family members, including Ben Ali's brother-in-law, arrived in Montreal by private jet on Thursday morning, and most were carrying permanent resident cards, government sources told CBC News.

The Canadian government, fearing that more are trying to come to this country, is monitoring airlines to try to prevent that, the same sources said.

full article:
Updated article: Monday, January 24, 2011 | 6:14 AM ET

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## Rifleman62

Tony, I was not questioning "already-processed Permanent Residents" status. That info was in a post above which I have a habit to read before posting my .02 cents. 
A fact was stated as I understand our Supreme Court ruling.


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## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.


> * More Interest in Business than Human Rights
> *
> 
> *Tunisian Revolution Forces a Rethink in Europe
> *
> 01/25/2011
> By Katharina Peters
> SPIEGEL ONLINE
> LINK
> 
> 
> *The fall of the regime in Tunis took the European Union by surprise and exposed France's contradictory policy. The tumult is now threatening to spread to other North African countries, with further protests. The Europeans are now forced to rethink their position: Should they be pushing for democracy or stability?*
> 
> This is clearly not one of his favorite issues to discuss. Nicolas Sarkozy lowered his head and stared at the paper in front of him on the lectern. "Behind the emancipation of women, the drive for education and training, the economic dynamism, the emergence of a middle class -- there was despair, a suffering, a sense of suffocation," he said. "We have to recognize that we underestimated this." There had been unbearable corruption in Tunisia, he added.
> 
> At a press conference on Monday, the French president went into damage-control mode. For years, France and the European Union have courted former Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali -- and damaged their reputations in the process. They pursued economic and security interests, but ignored human rights.
> 
> As Tunisians took to the streets by the thousands in protest, they couldn't count on any support from Europe. Only days before he fled, French Foreign Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie said she wanted to lend the "knowhow" of French police to help Ben Ali maintain order, even after police had fired on protesters. Her colleague, Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterand, said the country was not an "unequivocal dictatorship," and suggested that describing Ben Ali as a dictator was "completely exaggerated."
> 
> "The Europeans did what the French wanted. They thought that Ben Ali would be a bulwark against terrorism and that's why they had to accept his dictatorship," said Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the head of the Green Party in the European Parliament. Even as the pressure continued to mount on Ben Ali, the best the EU member states could come up with was an agreement to continue to follow the developments more closely. Within hours, Ben Ali had fled. The EU's role never went beyond monitoring the situation from afar.
> 
> *The EU's Hard as Nails Pursuit of Own Interests*
> 
> Now critical voices are growing within the EU, with demands for a shift in policy. In hindsight, it had been a mistake to back authoritarian regimes, said Rainer Stinner, a foreign policy expert with the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP) in the German parliament. He said EU countries had placed too great an emphasis on stability while giving human rights short shrift. Ruprecht Polenz, the foreign policy spokesman in parliment for Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union, also conceded that fears of Islamists had led to the wrong policies for the North Africa region. Speaking to the Rheinische Post newspaper, he said: "We need a strategy that promotes freedom and rule of law."
> 
> But what would this policy entail? The European Union is based on values like democracy, the rule of law, human rights, basic freedoms that are all anchored in the Lisbon Treaty, and the EU's strategy with the North African nations has also been based those principles. The problem is that the EU hasn't pushed them very hard. "The EU is considered a force of good, but what it actually engages in is hard as nails pursuit of its own interests," says Annegret Bendiek, an EU foreign policy expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin. "The EU has to ask itself whether it wants to work together with countries where human rights are trampled on." Bendiek said it was important for the EU to be more determined in its approach. "Muddling through as they have done up until now will not lead to more effective policies," she said.
> 
> Scandinavian countries, in particular, are interested in clear words from the EU and will be pushing for a greater observance of human rights. And the Maghreb issue is likely to be on the agenda at the next meeting of the EU foreign ministers on Jan. 31.
> 
> *How Much Sway Does EU Have in North Africa?*
> 
> The European Union could soon face the next test. Trouble is also brewing in Tunisia's neighboring country. On Sunday, a man died in Algeria after setting himself on fire. A similar act of self-immolation sparked the Tunisian insurgency in December. Opposition groups in Algeria have already been protesting for weeks, pushing for democracy and the lifting of a national state of emergency that has been in effect ever since it was imposed in 1992. On Sunday, police used force to break up a protest leaving dozens of people injured.
> 
> There were protests in Yemen as well over the weekend. Thousands demonstrated in the capital Sana'a demanding the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has ruled the country for the past 32 years. On Friday, demonstrators were out in several Jordanian cities too, pushing for an end to the government there.
> 
> Still, it is unclear whether the European Union has the political clout to apply pressure in many countries in the region. When it came to Tunisia, the lever was clear: 73 percent of Tunisian exports end up in the EU while 72 percent of the country's imports come from the bloc. Brussels, however, showed little interest in promoting democracy and human rights in the country.
> 
> With countries like Libya, Algeria and Jordan, however, EU economic ties are not strong enough to exert much pressure. Plus, the EU relies on oil and gas deliveries from many countries in the region.
> 
> *Human Rights Activists Critical of EU Negotiations with Libya *
> 
> Plus, when it comes to Libya, the EU hasn't proven overly concerned with human rights issues. President Moammar Gadhafi, an international pariah just a few years ago, is seen in Brussels as a vital ally in the attempt to reduce illegal immigration across the Mediterranean from Africa. Indeed, human rights activists have recently been highly critical of EU negotiations with Tripoli aimed at an agreement whereby Libya would take back refugees apprehended in the Mediterranean. But conditions in refugee camps in Libya, say activists, are atrocious: Would-be emigrants are thrown into overpopulated prisons and often abused. Recently, the European Parliament managed to put a halt to further talks between the EU and Libya.
> 
> It comes down to a conflict between values and realpolitik. It is unlikely that the EU will radically change its approach to the Middle East. Still, European Commissioner Stefan Füle, who is responsible for the EU Neighborhood Policy, which maintains diplomatic and economic programs with 16 neighboring states, regards respect for human rights as extremely important, Bendiek points out.
> 
> Cohn-Bendit, for his part, is more skeptical. "Mr. Füle has good intentions, but he doesn't have much freedom to act." More important, Cohn-Bendit says, would be a clear pledge to support human rights. "It is difficult to take a clear position," he says. "But it is unavoidable."



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## The Bread Guy

Rifleman62 said:
			
		

> Tony, I was not questioning "already-processed Permanent Residents" status. That info was in a post above which I have a habit to read before posting my .02 cents. A fact was stated as I understand our Supreme Court ruling.


(Belated) seen


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## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> * Televising the Revolution
> *
> 
> *Tunisia's Sudden Press Freedom
> *
> 01/21/2011
> By Ulrike Putz in Tunis
> SPIEGEL ONLINE
> 
> LINK
> 
> 
> *Tunisian media have witnessed an abrupt and jarring change: After years of oppressive censorship, all restrictions have vanished. Newspapers report freely, journalists work through the night -- and it seems as if every Tunisian wants to talk politics.*
> 
> "Castles in France, Bank Accounts in Switzerland, Real Estate in Argentina!" screams a headline on the front page of a Tunisian newspaper. "We've begun the hunt for Ben Ali's riches," reads the subtitle on Wednesday's edition of Al Chourouk, which means "dawn."
> 
> A competing paper wants to attract readers, too. It shows a photo of a person going up in flames. The story tells about the jobless young academic who set himself on fire and sparked a month of street demonstrations that brought down the Tunisian government last week -- only to inspire similar self-immolations across the Arab world. The foreign suicides are meant to start more revolutions, according to the newspaper As Sarih, which roughly means "unvarnished" or "the raw truth."
> 
> Both of Tunisia's largest papers have undergone a radical change since last Friday. A portrait of the country's former leader, Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali, used to adorn their front pages. Today they've turned on him with a vengeance.
> 
> *'All the Dams Have Broken' *
> 
> Ben Ali's escape from the country last weekend was zero hour for Tunisia's freedom of the press. The next important step was taken by the interim government. "The Information Ministry will not be re-staffed," declared Tunisia's new interior minister, Ahmed Fria. "The press is free." Tunisia leaped from the bottom of annual rankings of media freedom in the Arab world to the very top. Lebanon -- until now -- was traditionally the best place for journalists to work in the region.
> 
> "All the dams have broken," says a bleary-looking Shekir Bisbes. Since the regime collapsed the radio reporter for Tunisia's most popular private broadcaster, Mosaique FM, has hardly been home. The station has switched from reporting three or four news bulletins per day to round-the-clock live coverage. Political analysis and reports from the street alternate with call-in shows: The hunger of listeners for information is as keen as their eagerness to chat. After 23 years of enforced silence, Tunisians like nothing more than talking politics.
> 
> Many staffers at Mosaique FM don't go home even to sleep. "Our technicians have moved here," says Bisbes, showing a conference room full of mattresses.
> 
> *A Happy Man *
> 
> In spite the lack of sleep, Bisbes is a happy man these days. At last he can ply his trade. "When I started reporting live from the demonstrations, I felt like a real journalist for the first time," he says. But he wants to keep a cool head. "We're being careful to report in a balanced way, so we don't throw in with just one side," he says. But in a debate over the legitimacy of the interim government, there was only one worthwhile position. "We were on the people's side," he says.
> 
> Bisbes enjoys his new role but warns against exaggerating the power of Tunisia's newly liberated journalists. For decades the people were used to learning about the real situation on the ground without the help of a trustworthy media. "Now everyone is talking about how this was an 'Al-Jazeera' revolution," Bisbes complains. "But that's unbelievably exaggerated. Facebook, Twitter and Al-Jazeera all just amplified an impulse that came from the people themselves." Shortly after the unrest started, Al-Jazeera, the TV news channel based in the gulf state of Qatar, began intensive coverage.
> 
> Nuredine Butar, the editor-in-chief at Mosaique FM, spent years under intense pressure from the government -- raids, threatening nighttime phone calls, a constant fear of going to jail. "We tried to produce as much good journalism as possible within the limits set for us," he says. Sometimes it didn't work. To give an example, he roots out an old fax.
> 
> It's dated October 2010, when a kidnapping scandal broke. The nephew of President Ben Ali was locking horns with a competitor over an export license. When the competitor wouldn't back down, the nephew arranged for the man's young son to be kidnapped. The news was passed on from person to person and then the radio station jumped on the story. The next morning a fax arrived: A judge had forbidden Mosaique FM to follow the story any further.
> 
> *Yes, It Was State Propaganda *
> 
> Just a week ago, the main news program of the Tunisian state TV broadcaster was a potent cure for insomnia. Every evening it started with long reports about Ben Ali's day: The president met with his ministers; the first lady dines with embassy wives. Five years ago Walid Abdallah took a job at channel TV7 anyway. "Since then, my family has always accused me of selling my soul," the TV reporter says.
> 
> For this reason last Saturday was extremely special for him. When he came home from work after the fall of Ben Ali, his mother was overjoyed. "Suddenly she's full of pride," says the 34-year-old. Hours earlier, the broadcaster had switched its political stance. Union members on staff went before the cameras to admit they had produced nothing but state propaganda for years. They were done with that now, they said. They would also change the broadcaster's name: Instead of TV7 -- which referred to Ben Ali's seizure of power on Nov. 7, 1987 -- the channel would be called National Tunisian TV.
> 
> The name change went against the will of the company's directors. "They wanted to keep everything the way it had been," says Abdallah. Like the bosses, many top staff also had close ties to the regime. "Friends and relatives of party bigwigs all got cushy jobs with us," Abdallah claims. Those who were loyal to the government have now, suddenly, become the disadvantaged. "They used to set the tone around here, but now they seem kind of meek," he says. He doubts they'll last long. "The government loyalists still have jobs here," he says. "For now."



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## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> * Intoxicated by Freedom
> *
> 
> *Reinventing Tunisia at Record Speed
> *
> 01/24/2011
> By Mathieu von Rohr and Volkhard Windfuhr in Tunis
> SPIEGEL ONLINE
> 
> LINK
> 
> 
> *Tunisians are intoxicated by their newfound freedom. The media is publishing long-suppressed sentiments, while activists form new parties and young people hold heated debates on street corners. But the country is facing huge challenges in its bid to become a modern democracy, and it will hardly be possible to stick to the deadline for new elections.*
> 
> The 18 men and women have formed a circle, with some sitting and others standing. They are holding one of the first editorial meetings ever convened at La Presse, a daily newspaper in the Tunisian capital Tunis. They discuss the tremendous things happening in their county and what should appear in tomorrow's paper.
> 
> They are intoxicated with newfound energy. Now they want to do all the things they have never done before. They want to tell the stories that will stir the country, stories about the little bookshop around the corner displaying formerly banned books, about how stores are gradually reopening their doors but food shortages continue, and about how people on the street are criticizing the new government. All of that is supposed to appear in the next day's edition.
> 
> They also want to write articles about the social networking Internet platform Facebook, which has become an alternative source of news for the country's youth. They are even considering downloading and printing images circulating online of police violence and destruction from all over the country.
> 
> Still, they are not completely sure how far they should allow themselves to go. They debate and argue over whether they should criticize individual ministers who are particularly incompetent and whether they should identify all the authors of opinion pieces by name.
> 
> *Euphoria and Apprehension *
> 
> Faouzia Mezzi is leading the meeting. While the autocratic former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali still ruled the country, there were times when she was banned from writing articles. Today, she is having a hard time restraining those staff members who would prefer to change everything immediately. "We first need to see if we can even publish a newspaper at all," she says. "Be patient."
> 
> At the time, it had only been five days since Ben Ali, Tunisia's dictator for 23 years, fled the country, and only the fifth day that the country had enjoyed freedom of the press. No one gave it to these journalists; they simply took it. While the country was rising up against the regime, they launched their own revolution.
> 
> But there appear to be limits to the new freedom. The interim government shut down the country's most popular private television station, Hannibal TV, on Sunday night. The New York Times, quoting Tunisia's state news agency, reported that the government had arrested the station's owner, which it accused of treason for broadcasting "false information likely to create a constitutional vacuum and destabilize the country." A spokesman for the station, which had criticized Ben Ali's government in the past, said that it had been shut down without warning and called the move a violation of freedom of the press.
> 
> By Monday morning, however, the station had resumed broadcasting, apparently after an opposition member of the interim government intervened. Observers in Tunisia told the New York Times that the network's shutdown damaged the interim government's credibility and said that the fate of the station would be seen as a test of the state's commitment to press freedom.
> 
> *Practicing Self-Censorship*
> 
> La Presse, which appears in both French and Arabic versions, is one of the country's oldest newspapers. Like almost all media sources in Tunisia, it is government-owned, meaning the state appoints its senior editors. During the dictatorship, those editors would dictate the issues to be covered, as well as censor anything that could upset the regime. Naturally, the journalists also practiced self-censorship. Indeed, until the revolution, La Presse was little more than a bland mouthpiece for government statements.
> 
> On Friday, January 14, 2011, even before Ben Ali and his family had been chased out of the country, the paper's staff allowed itself to be infected by the same lust for freedom that had gripped the entire country. They stripped the editor in chief of power and designated a group of 10 people to be in charge of managing the paper.
> 
> The former editor in chief still has his office with its leather chair and he can be spotted skulking along the corridor, but he no longer has any say. The journalists formerly under his charge have been busy discovering what it means to live in a free society -- just like people throughout Tunisia these days.
> 
> Back at the meeting, Olfa Belhassine from the paper's culture section proposes an editorial entitled "Who's Afraid of Press Freedom?" She adds that, in her 20 years of working in the media, she has always dreamed of writing just such an article. The next day, it appears in the paper.
> 
> *An Orderly Revolution *
> 
> In the newspaper's offices on the Rue Ali Bach Hamba in Tunis, you can sense all of the emotions the Tunisians have experienced since driving their dictator out of the country. There is the euphoria that has broken out as people look forward to a new era. But there is also the fear that it could all soon be over. With each passing day, the fear dissipates a little.
> 
> In the week since Ben Ali was toppled, Tunisians have experienced a social transformation of terrifying speed. Each day, those in power make new concessions to the protesters on the streets. On Tuesday, January 18, Mohamed Ghannouchi, the prime minister who had briefly served as acting president, left the old ruling RCD party. On Thursday, he was followed by the rest of the ministers. Then, the party's central committee was dissolved, and a minister from the old regime stepped down. In its first meeting, the new cabinet resolved to grant amnesty to all political prisoners and to give legal standing to all political parties, including those of the Islamists.
> 
> It is an orderly revolution. The streets are still swept, and the streetcars still keep to their schedules while winding their way through the crowds. The capital's main railway station made it through the protests with only a bit of fire damage. A ticket inspector there is proud that not a single long-distance train was cancelled.
> 
> *Saved by the Military *
> 
> At least in the minds of many Tunisians, the military saved the country. In just a few days' time, they succeeded in subduing the murderous forces loyal to the departed dictator and putting the police in their place. Last week, when it looked like the transitional government might suddenly collapse again, many were even hoping that the army would intervene. But it remained in the background.
> 
> Toward the end of last week, the situation appeared to have stabilized, although there were still tanks on the streets, and soldiers were stationed along the major promenades and in front of government buildings.
> 
> But the situation in the capital Tunis remains tense. On Monday, police used tear gas on protesters who had defied an overnight curfew to gather in front of the prime minister's office, where they shouted anti-government slogans. The demonstrators are unhappy that many of Ben Ali's cronies are still in power. Schools were due to reopen after being closed during the unrest, but teachers reportedly went on strike in a protest against the interim government. Some students apparently joined protests instead of going to school.
> 
> *'Revenge Is Only a Minor Matter'*
> 
> In the waiting room outside the office of Ahmed Ibrahim, the newly appointed minister for higher education and scientific research, there is still a nail on the wall where the portrait of Ben Ali hung until just a few days ago. His satisfied-looking face, which used to be seen all over the city, has now vanished.
> 
> Ibrahim, an imposing 64-year-old with a round head, had been jailed by Ben Ali a number of times. But now he is a member of the government. During the most recent presidential elections, in 2009, he was allowed to run for office; Ben Ali's regime wanted to use him to give a veneer of legitimacy to the proceedings. Officially, he received 1.57 percent of the vote.
> 
> "Revenge is now only a minor matter," Ibrahim says in his poorly lit office in the Ministry of Higher Education. He doesn't want to see what happened in Iraq happen here; he doesn't want there to be a witch hunt against former members of the RCD. Around one-tenth of Tunisia's population of 10 million belonged to the former ruling party, but most of them did so as a matter of convenience rather than because they were die-hard supporters.
> 
> In Ibrahim's opinion, only the real criminals should be prosecuted. What's much more important, he says, is to focus on preparing for free elections. The country's constitution stipulates that they need to be held within 60 days, but Tunisia currently has few organized political parties. The country needs more time, Ibrahim says. He thinks it will take six or seven months.
> 
> *Street Democracy*
> 
> On the streets, at least, democracy has already arrived. Avenue Habib Bourguiba, a large boulevard in downtown Tunis, has developed into a political forum where people can hold impassioned debates. All of them hate the old elite. But, when it comes to the future, they have very different ideas.
> 
> On Thursday afternoon, there are dozens of young men with short beards and sunglasses standing on the boulevard. "God has done all of this," one says, before going on to advocate a religious government. Another one is arguing with a young woman wearing makeup. She says she is afraid of these people, that she's anxious about the possibility of the Islamists becoming a major political force. At the moment, nowhere else in the Arab world do women enjoy as many rights as they do in Tunisia; nowhere else can you see so many women without headscarves.
> 
> For the time being, the Islamists are only a scattered minority, and experts interviewed by SPIEGEL believe they could at best only secure 20 percent of the vote. But, over the course of the week, they made their presence felt more and more on the streets in their efforts to whip up sentiments against "imported ideas."
> 
> More than anything, most of the demonstrators want to see an end to corruption. And the protesters are by no means only educated young people who organize themselves on Facebook. Their ranks also include people like Khaled Gasmi, a gaunt 57-year-old man with a moustache, who played for Tunisia's national team during the 1978 football World Cup. Gasmi says that Fouad Mebazaa, the interim president, is part of the old regime and just as corrupt as Ben Ali.
> 
> *Dawning of a New Era*
> 
> Just a few steps away, a man walks down the street wearing a green fez. His name is Maatoug Mohsen, and he's on his way to a meeting to found a new Green Party for Tunisia. For years, Mohsen worked as a tour guide, and now he wants to devote himself to the two issues that concern him the most: the battle for sustainable development and the fight against pesticides in agriculture.
> 
> These are the times for founding new parties and entering into serious debates. Tunisia is living through its first days on the way to becoming a democracy.
> 
> The symbols of the new era are the destroyed palaces of the presidential clan, which bore the brunt of the population's rage. That anger was directed primarily at the villas of the Trabelsis, the family of the president's second wife, who were notorious for their shameless self-enrichment. The houses of this family's members, located in the rich suburbs of Tunis, now lie in ruins after having been looted. Thousands of people make pilgrimages to them -- including many families with all their children in tow -- curious to see the ruins of the dictatorship with their own eyes.
> 
> One particularly tasteless and gaudy building was the palace of Belhassen Trabelsi, the brother-in-law of Ben Ali. These days, the only thing left of the formerly two-story property, which has its own park, is the bare brickwork. The interior has been burnt to a crisp and gutted; even the window frames have disappeared. The floors are strewn with garbage, such as a package of hair dye, a receipt from a Dolce & Gabbana store in Paris and a piece of paper from a school civics course with "Constitution: The Foundation of the State" written in a child's hand.
> 
> When they witness the damage, many of the visitors become upset. As they see it, the houses should be preserved and handed over to the people. Even so, they all share in the widespread hatred toward the expelled family. "They were thieves," says Dorra Kallel Chtourou, a young women in business attire who came here on her lunch break with one of her coworkers. She works for LG Electronics, the South Korean electronics giant. She explains how Belhassen used to smuggle stereo systems and washing machines into the country and have his people sell them on street corners for half the going price.
> 
> This is just one of the many stories being told about the clan whose proximity to the state's supreme ruler allowed it to ruthlessly enrich itself. The clan's members even had their own type of license plates so that the police would leave them in peace.
> 
> *Molding the New Tunisia*
> 
> The man charged with coming up with a vision for the new Tunisia is Yadh Ben Achour. He enters his private library wearing a black running suit and sits down under a portrait of his grandfather, who was an important religious scholar.
> 
> Hardly any place seems as far removed from the demonstrations and wrangling of last week as this room, located on the top floor of a massive villa in La Marsa, a wealthy coastal town near Tunis. Thousand-year-old examples of Islamic calligraphy hang on the wall, while display cabinets hold pocket watches from the Ottoman era.
> 
> Ben Achour is a writer and lawyer. A worldly man as well as a Koran scholar, he belongs to an old aristocratic Tunisian family and is widely respected. He is an intellectual who wears thin, black metal glasses and speaks French with a perfect Parisian accent. In May 1968, when he was studying law in Paris, the police beat him on the head with truncheons.
> 
> Ben Achour says that it wasn't economic necessity that drove the country's youth to revolt. Instead, it was the climate of oppression within the system, of which having a distinct set of license plates was merely one example.
> 
> He has been given the job of heading the commission for political reform. In this role, he will have a hand in inventing and significantly shaping the new Tunisia. Even if he won't be making decisions alone, he says it's clear what he personally wants Tunisia to become: a country with a democratically elected parliament, guided by a government and a prime minister. He also concedes that the country needs a president, but he say the position should only be granted a limited amount of power.
> 
> "That's the essence of democracy," Ben Achour says. "Whoever wins cannot completely savor his victory. That's what it's all about."
> 
> At the moment, he doesn't know how he will arrive at that goal. The remaining members of the commission haven't even been named yet. In any case, he believes that the country needs much longer than just two months before it can hold elections.
> 
> But Ben Achour also says that if India, with its many languages and enormous population, can become a democracy, Tunisia, with its well-educated population, can also manage to become the most progressive and modern country in the Arab world.
> 
> Translated from the German by Josh Ward



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## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> * A Tunisian Islamist Heads Home
> *
> 
> *'The Rest of the Old Guard Must Go'
> *
> 01/24/2011
> SPIEGEL ONLINE
> 
> LINK
> 
> 
> *With the new Tunisian government in flux, exiled Islamist leader Rachid Ghannouchi is returning home. He spoke with SPIEGEL about why the new government isn't much better than the toppled regime and how Europe's silence prolonged the dictatorship.*




Conversation on LINK 

===============================================================




> * Mohamed ElBaradei on Democracy in Egypt
> *
> 
> *'There Is No Turning Back Now'
> *
> 01/25/2011
> SPIEGEL ONLINE
> 
> LINK
> 
> 
> *After the revolution in Tunisia, observers are wondering if governments in other North African states could also fall. In a SPIEGEL interview, Egyptian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohamed ElBaradei talks about the consequences for the regime in Cairo and his hope that Egyptians can copy the Tunisians' example.*




Conversation on LINK


----------



## George Wallace

All of North Africa may be following suit:


Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> * Shouts of 'Tunis' and 'down with Mubarak' at Egypt protests.*
> 
> *Egypt protests and the demonstration effect of Tunisia
> *
> By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / January 25, 2011
> The Christian Science Monitor
> 
> LINK
> 
> 
> *Egyptian democracy activists gathered to protest in Cairo and at least 3 other Egyptian cities today, taking inspiration from the popular uprising that toppled the Ben Ali in Tunisia.*
> 
> The protests on "Police Day," in which the government had hoped to rally public support for the continuing rule of President Hosni Mubarak and his National Democratic Party -- which exerts the same iron grip over formal politics in Egypt as President Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali's Constitutional Democratic Rally did in Tunisia until just a few weeks ago -- appear to be some of the largest in Egypt for years, at least.
> 
> Egyptian activists have been inspired by the swift, almost formless popular uprising that toppled one of the most ruthless police states in the Arab world (Correspondent Kristen Chick wrote a strong piece on the genesis of the Tunisian uprising).  They've been organizing online for the past week, with commitments from almost 100,000 people on a Facebook page to join the protests today.
> 
> From the looks of the protests so far, turnout is probably short of 100,000. The English-language website of Al Ahram has been posting running updates on the day's events.  By 3 pm in Cairo, Al Ahram had reported "thousands" of protesters chanting "Tunis" had spilled out onto the corniche along the Nile in Central Cairo, hundreds of protesters in the industrial Nile Delta town of Mansoura, hundreds of protesters in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria and small protests in Aswan and Assuit.
> 
> Back in Cairo, the Arab worlds largest city and with more residents than Tunisia and Lebanon combined, activists reported that average citizens were joining a protest shouting "down with Mubarak" in the sprawling and very poor neighborhood of Shubra, which is home to millions.
> 
> The Egyptian security forces, too, have had time to prepare AFP is reporting that over 20,000 police have been deployed in central Cairo alone. Egyptian human rights groups are reporting dozens of activists arrested in Cairo, Assuit and Tanta. In Cairo in the late afternoon, riot police were massing near the Interior Ministry -- a hated and feared symbol of government repression in most Arab states -- to prevent protesters from getting near the building.
> 
> Still, the day looks like at least an organizational victory for Egypt's democracy movement, which had appeared to run out of steam in recent years with protests generally attended by the same small circle of commited activists and a government crackdown on independent journalists and bloggers. One element that was missing today was the organized support of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest and best-organized opposition group.
> 
> The Islamist movement, which saw hundreds of its activists arrested in the run up to Egypt's November parliamentary election, sat this one out. That election, the most fraud-marred in Egypt in decades, saw the Brotherhood's representation in Parliament reduced to a postage stamp, and some senior members received lengthy prison terms for their political organizing.
> 
> Though the Brotherhood could mobilize large numbers on the streets, and some of the secular activists who helped organize today's protests reached out to the group, the movement’s calculation appears to be that it has more to lose than to gain by a confrontation now.
> 
> Protests in Egypt are nothing new. In March 2003, about 10,000 Egyptians took to the streets of Cairo to protest the US invasion of Iraq in a demonstration that quickly evolved into a protest against the heavy-handed autocracy of President Mubarak, who is closely tied to the US in the eyes of the Egyptian public.
> 
> In 2005, after mass demonstrations in Lebanon helped drive Syria out of Lebanese politics (at least for a time), a group of pro-Palestinian and democracy activists coalesced around the slogan Kifaya -- "Enough" -- and managed a series of mid-sized protests against Mubarak before petering out in the face of heavy-handed police tactics and rigged elections.



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## 57Chevy

I agree with the slogan no matter the language

Kifaya-----Kifaya-----Kifaya

Elected Government by the people for the people
Corrupt individuals may flee but they cannot hide 
themselves under a rock.

quote:
"Bisbes is a happy man these days. At last he can ply his trade. "When I started reporting live from the demonstrations, I felt like a real journalist for the first time," he says."  

if it was flowers and bricks.......this one gets the brick
quote:
"Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterand, said the country was not an "unequivocal dictatorship," and suggested that 
describing Ben Ali as a dictator was "completely exaggerated." 

Yeah Right :


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> * Tunisia's Worrying Precedent
> *
> 
> *Arab Rulers Fear Spread of Democracy Fever
> *
> 01/25/2011
> By Clemens Höges, Bernhard Zand and Helene Zuber
> SPIEGEL ONLINE
> 
> LINK
> 
> 
> *In the wake of Tunisia's mostly peaceful revolution, Arab leaders are worried that their young, frustrated populations might follow suit. While the West sits back and watches, regimes stress stability over genuine democracy and hope to calm simmering discontent with cash.*
> 
> Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and Israeli Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom don't have all that much in common, but they do share one thing: Neither thinks much of the revolution in Tunisia.
> 
> "I fear that we now stand before a new and very critical phase in the Arab world," Shalom, who was himself born in Tunisia in 1958, said in an interview aired on Israeli radio on Jan. 14. Israel and the majority of its Arab neighbors now agree on the importance of fighting Islamic fundamentalism, Shalom said. His concern lies with what might happen if Arab states start becoming democratic. He fears Tunisia might "set a precedent that could be repeated in other countries, possibly affecting directly the stability of our system." If democratic governments take over Israel's neighboring states, the vice prime minister said, the days of the Arab-Israeli security alliance will be over.
> 
> Gadhafi also complained that he was "very pained" to see his friend Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's regime collapse and Tunisia descend into fear and insecurity. "What is this for?" he asked. "To change Zine El Abidine? Hasn't he told you he would step down after three years? Be patient for three years and your son stays alive."
> 
> *Prioritizing Stability*
> 
> The revolution in the Maghreb presents a difficult dilemma not only to Tunisia's neighbors, but also to Europe, the United States and Israel. Indeed, the dilemma embodies the central question of Middle Eastern politics in general: Which is more important -- democracy or stability?
> 
> Last Wednesday, when Arab leaders gathered in Egyptian Red Sea resort city Sharm el-Sheikh, for the Arab economic summit, it was the first time Tunisian dictator Ben Ali was missing from their ranks. The summit's hosts tried in vain to steer the conversation away from the unprecedented events in Tunisia. "The Tunisian revolution is not far from us," Arab League leader Amr Moussa said in his opening remarks for the conference. "The Arab citizen entered an unprecedented state of anger and frustration," he added, noting that "the Arab soul is broken by poverty, unemployment and general recession."
> 
> Speaking after Moussa, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak didn't even mention Tunisia, preferring instead to address the importance of economic cooperation, which he called a "requirement for national security." It was a bold denial of the reality that Moussa had just clearly described. After all, the conditions in Tunisia also apply to most of the other 21 Arab states and the Palestinian territories -- and sometimes even much more so.
> 
> *Young Masses Led by Old Men*
> 
> The populations of these countries are young and unhappy. Indeed, 53.4 percent -- or roughly 190 million out of a current population of 352 million Arabs -- are younger than 24 years old, and nearly three-quarters of them are unemployed. In many cases, the education these young people receive doesn't do them any good because there are no jobs in the fields they trained for. Many are 35 or even 40 before they can afford to marry. In essence, this is a violation of a basic human right perpetrated against millions in countries such as Egypt, where life expectancy is nine years less than it is in Germany, or in Yemen, where the figure is almost 15 years lower.
> 
> Governments in these countries, on the other hand, are corrupt and outdated. Indeed, before Ben Ali's ouster, the leaders of North Africa's five countries had enjoyed a combined total of 115 years in office. The countries' youth ministers are generally old men.
> 
> In countries such as Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, demographics, governments run by old men and widespread malaise are forming a dangerous mix. Although it is aware of the situation, the West continues to support the old rulers.
> 
> *A Problem throughout North Africa*
> 
> Take the example of Algeria. In recent weeks, Tunisia's western neighbor has seen riots like those in Tunisia. According to a 2008 report from the US Embassy in Algiers that was leaked to the Wikileaks website, the US State Department considers the Algerian government "fragile" and riddled with "unprecedented levels of corruption." Likewise, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the country's 73-year-old president, is "isolated" and has lost touch with reality. According to the document, Bouteflika is trying to groom his brother Said, around 20 years his junior, to be his successor. The country, one source cited in the document said, is "sitting on a volcano" and its young men feel "grim" and only left with a choice "between death at sea and a slow, gradual death at home."
> 
> Another embassy cable is entitled "The Harraga: Give Me Dignity or Give Me Death" after the name for would-be illegal emigrants trying to escape across the Mediterranean. It reports that refugee boats set off from the port city of Annaba each week "filled with a cross-section of frustrated young Algerians -- doctors, lawyers, dropouts, the unemployed." Even members of the country's elite are fleeing. "The grandson of former president Chadli Bendjedid, 29-year-old Mourad Bendjedid, left on Feb. 8, 2007 along with six other young men and has not been heard from since."
> 
> American diplomats sent similar reports from Morocco. There, dozens of college graduates camped out in the hopes of being hired as civil servants, people who'd given up hope began setting themselves on fire three years ago, and "corrupt practices" have "become much more institutionalized" under King Mohammed VI.
> 
> Meanwhile, their colleagues in Libya reported that the regime there had things much less under control than it appeared and that Gadhafi found himself in "a downward spiral" after being disgraced by his sons' excesses.
> 
> At the same time, American diplomats acknowledge what these and other Arab governments have accomplished in terms of averting terrorist attacks, thwarting Islamists and establishing dynasties that offer stability even if they do not provide democracy that meets Western standards.
> 
> *Will Revolution Spread?*
> 
> Given such conditions, the question arises whether Tunisia is just the beginning of the end of Arab autocracies as well as just how long the populations in countries from Mauritania to Yemen and from Sudan to Syria will continue to put up with the daily humiliations they face at home.
> 
> Events of recent days might hint at the answer to these questions. In Mauretania, Algeria and Egypt, 10 men followed the example of Mohammed Bouazizi, the 26-year-old Tunisian fruit vendor whose act of self-immolation after having been humiliated and shooed from the street like a dog triggered his country's revolution.
> 
> Thousands have taken to the streets in Jordan and Yemen as well, demanding that their rulers step down. In the wealthy oil emirate Kuwait, which has systematically discriminated against its Bedouin population for decades, the government sent every citizen $3,500 (€2,600) to nip any possible protests in the bud.
> 
> There are two aspects of Tunisia's example that give Arab reformers hope. First, it was the Tunisians themselves who got rid of their despot, not a Western army sweeping in with its own "freedom agenda," as the United States did in liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein in 2003. And, second, it was a grassroots movement that brought about the change of government in Tunisia rather than a highly organized one or an opposition movement co-opted by one charismatic leader, as was the case with the Iranian revolution in 1979. This last point, in particular, has long been viewed by political scientists as a prerequisite for successfully overthrowing a despot in the Middle East.
> 
> *Nervous Responses*
> 
> Nevertheless, most Middle East experts are still hesitant to proclaim the dawning of a new era in the Arab world. As they see it, social, economic and political conditions vary too widely for Tunisia's example to be an indication that a revolutionary spark could affect the entire region.
> 
> As much as the West may disapprove of them, these conditions are just as real as the region's demographic imbalance, youth unemployment and official corruption. People in the oil states of Libya and Algeria, for example, are gazing toward Europe just as longingly as people in Tunisia, but their governments enjoy resources they can employ when their systems come under serious threat. Algiers quickly stemmed riots over rising bread prices by simply reducing food prices. And in Egypt, which is much poorer than Tunisia, the circle of people who benefit from the existing system is far larger than that of the Ben Ali clan, with its shamelessly opulent lifestyle.
> 
> This holds even more true for Saudi Arabia, which has just as many unemployed, frustrated young people as Tunisia does. The country's deeply conservative monarchy doesn't even pretend to have democratic structures in place. But it still distributes its oil wealth more equitably than the Arab republics that proudly display their elections, parliaments and parties.
> 
> Since the Tunisian revolution, poorer Arab princes -- who rely more on large security apparatuses than energy resources -- no longer feel truly secure, and their wealthier counterparts have little faith that this tenuous peace will hold. As a result, meeting last Wednesday in Sharm el-Sheikh, the Gulf's oil monarchs decided to send a signal by pledging a total of $2 billion to governments throughout the Arab world for creating jobs and promoting new businesses.
> 
> They care a lot about stability and very little about democracy. And, so far, no one in the West has told them to act any differently.
> 
> Translated from the German by Ella Ornstein




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## The Bread Guy

Canada probing ex-Tunisian president's residency status
Graeme Hamilton, National Post · Monday, Jan. 24, 2011
Article link
<blockquote>Canadian immigration authorities are investigating whether the relatives of Tunisia’s deposed president who arrived in Montreal last week are entitled to remain in the country, a department spokeswoman said Monday.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney told CBC Sunday that some family members of former dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali have permanent residency status in Canada, allowing them to enter the country freely. His department is now examining whether they have forfeited that status through a prolonged absence from Canada or for any other reason, spokeswoman Mélanie Carkner confirmed.

Under Canadian law, permanent residents must live in Canada for at least two years within a five-year period. They lose their status and can be removed from the country if they fail to meet the residency requirement or if they are convicted of a serious crime ....</blockquote>More on link


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## larry Strong

milnews.ca said:
			
		

> Canada probing ex-Tunisian president's residency status
> Graeme Hamilton, National Post · Monday, Jan. 24, 2011
> Article link
> <blockquote>Canadian immigration authorities are investigating whether the relatives of Tunisia’s deposed president who arrived in Montreal last week are entitled to remain in the country, a department spokeswoman said Monday.
> 
> Immigration Minister Jason Kenney told CBC Sunday that some family members of former dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali have permanent residency status in Canada, allowing them to enter the country freely. His department is now examining whether they have forfeited that status through a prolonged absence from Canada or for any other reason, spokeswoman Mélanie Carkner confirmed.
> 
> Under Canadian law, permanent residents must live in Canada for at least two years within a five-year period. They lose their status and can be removed from the country if they fail to meet the residency requirement or if they are convicted of a serious crime ....</blockquote>More on link



Well I truly hope so, as I am tired of these "Canadian's when convenient"


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## The Bread Guy

*Ben Ali: Tunisia issues arrest warrant for ex-leader*
BBC News, 26 January 2011 Last updated at 06:36 ET 
Article link<blockquote>Tunisia has issued an international arrest warrant for ousted President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali <b>and his family</b>, the nation's justice minister has said.  Lazhar Karoui Chebbi said Tunisia had asked Interpol to detain Mr Ben Ali, who fled to Saudi Arabia earlier this month amid mass street protests.  Mr Chebbi said Mr Ben Ali should be tried for property theft and transferring foreign currency ....</blockquote>

Report: International arrest warrant issued against Ben Ali
Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Jan 26, 2011, 11:43 GMT 
Article link
<blockquote>An international arrest warrant has been issued against former Tunisian president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali <b>and his wife Leila</b>, French media reported Wednesday.  BFM television quoted the Tunisian justice ministry as saying the warrant had been issued. France Info public radio also reported a warrant had been issued for Ben Ali 'and his relatives.' .... </blockquote>

Tunisia issues intl arrest warrant for ousted President Ben Ali, accuses him of taking money
Associated Press, 7:15am EST
Article link
<blockquote>Tunisia's justice minister says the country has issued an international arrest warrant for ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.  The minister, Lazhar Karoui Chebbi, says charges against Ben Ali include taking money out of the country illegally.  The minister also said Wednesday that more than 11,000 prisoners escaped from the North African nation's prisons during the unrest that overthrew Ben Ali. That is about a third of the country's prison population. About 1,500 prisoners have returned behind bars .... </blockquote>
(A bit) more on links


----------



## 57Chevy

Canada waits for cue to freeze Ben Ali's assets

MONTREAL — Canadian authorities say they're prepared to freeze assets belonging to members of the ousted regime in Tunisia, but are awaiting an order to proceed from the country's new government. 
---
---
Any eventual asset freeze would likely target members of Ben Ali's large extended family, some of whom reportedly own property in Montreal and lay claim to permanent residency status. 

Among the most prominent property owners is Ben Ali's son-in-law, Mohamed Sakher El Materi, who continues to be listed as the owner of a $2.5-million mansion in Montreal's wealthy Westmount neighbourhood. 
---
---
Montreal lawyer Kamel Balti is requesting that Citizenship and Immigration Canada release the names of those who arrived last week in order to begin legal proceedings that would see their immigration status revoked. 

An official with the department declined to comment on the matter, citing privacy concerns. 

Balti said he's working to have Tunisian legal documents -- which outline allegations of corruption, torture and kidnapping against the Ben Ali regime -- forwarded to the Canadian government. 

"We suspect these people committed war crimes, crimes against humanity and criminal activity -- full stop," he said. 

"Canada has to send a message that it will not host such asylum-seekers." 

Ottawa declared Tuesday that it opposed having the country become a safe haven for members of the old Tunisian government. 

"Our government is troubled by reports that Mr. Ben Ali and members of the former Tunisian regime may be considering Canada as a destination," said Melissa Lantsman, director of communications for Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon. 

full article at link...
Photo:
A mansion in the upscale Westmount neighbourhood of Montreal believed to be owned by the son-in-law of deposed Tunisian president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali is pictured Tuesday, Jan.18, 2011. (Ryan Remiorz / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

                                 (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)


----------



## The Bread Guy

Tunisia seeks ousted President and family via INTERPOL
Interpol web page, 26 Jan 11
News release link
<blockquote>INTERPOL can confirm that its National Central Bureau (NCB) in Tunis has issued a global alert via INTERPOL's international network to seek the location and arrest of former Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and six of his relatives.

As stated by Tunisian authorities in media reports today, Mr Ben Ali and some of his family members are wanted in Tunisia on charges of alleged property theft and the illegal transfer of foreign currency.

The alert, known as an INTERPOL diffusion, contains the names and other data of wanted individuals. It was sent directly by NCB Tunis via INTERPOL's I-24/7 secure police communications network to all other 187 member countries. Unlike INTERPOL's Red Notices for internationally-wanted persons, which are issued at the request of member countries by INTERPOL’s General Secretariat headquarters in Lyon, a diffusion is sent directly by an INTERPOL NCB without the involvement of the General Secretariat.

In its diffusion, NCB Tunis requests INTERPOL member countries to search, locate and provisionally arrest Mr Ali and his relatives with a view to their extradition to Tunis. If and when the individuals are located, Tunisian authorities will forward any formal request for extradition via diplomatic channels .... </blockquote>
More on link


----------



## 57Chevy

Canadian Tunisians are planning a demonstration on Parliament Hill on Feb. 2.



			
				57Chevy said:
			
		

> believed to be owned by the son-in-law of deposed Tunisian president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali



A woman at the house has said she and her husband purchased the home from al-Materi eight months ago, but official records have not been updated because of contractual issues revolving around outstanding roof repairs. She and her lawyer have not shown any proof of ownership, however, despite repeated requests over the last week.

Full article link
                                                  ___________________
From wikipedia:
Sakher El Materi

Sakher El Materi is a Tunisian businessman and politician. He is the son-in-law of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the former president of Tunisia.

As of May 2010, his company Princesse El-Materi Holdings - El Materi runs businesses in six industry sectors: News and Media, Banking and Financial Services, Automotive, Shipping and Cruises, Real Estate and Agriculture.

A former member of the ruling Constitutional Democratic Rally, he was elected as a Member of the Chamber of Deputies of Tunisia for the constituency of Tunis on 25 October 2009 and stricked off by the party after the Tunisian Revolution.
---
---
The Canadian Press described him as "one of the most powerful members of Tunisia's ruling class".
.......... it was reported that Sakher was going to a house he owned in Montreal, Canada
more at link...
                       (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)


----------



## 57Chevy

Harper declares members of former Tunisian regime not welcome in Canada
---
---
He made it clear that his government applauds the recent revolt in Tunisia that led to the exile of its former dictator, president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. 

"Canada supports the transition in Tunisia," Harper told a news conference. 

"We support the democratic development that is taking place there and obviously want to see that proceed positively." 

Moreover, he did not shy away from saying — in the wake of reports that Belhassen Trabelsi, the billionaire brother-in-law of the deposed dictator, is now in Montreal — that the government frowns on this development. The Tunisian is reportedly in Montreal with his wife, four children, and a nanny. 

"Canada will use all tools at its disposal to co-operate with the international community in dealing with members of the former regime," said Harper. "They are not welcome, let me be very clear, we do not welcome them in our country." 

full aryicle at link...         (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)


----------



## 57Chevy

The Canadian government has reportedly revoked the permanent-resident status of the billionaire brother-in-law of a Tunisian dictator. 

Belhassen Trabelsi, who arrived in Canada with his family last week, had his status revoked Thursday, Radio-Canada’s all-news channel reported. 

full article

                              (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)


----------



## larry Strong

Now that is excellent news :nod:


----------



## krustyrl

But will he leave or go into hiding.?


----------



## Edward Campbell

I think we need to take great care in saying that "democracy" is ascending in North Africa and the Middle East.

In my opinion it is dissatisfaction that is ascending; they are a long, long way from democracy.

Democracy is a whole lot more than elections, more, even, than regular free and fair elections; it requires some _cultural_ attributes including, _inter alia_, a respect for the rule of law and a sense that laws apply, equally and fairly, to all - governed and governors alike. If When those cultural attributes are present in a country then it _may_ evolve into a functioning democracy. I cannot see those attributes in any but a tiny handful of Muslim countries - none of which are in the Arab League, _per se_.

My suspicion is that many (most?) Muslims in North Africa, the Middle East and West Asia, given a free, democratic choice, would elect to be governed by an Islamist theocracy - something that is about as far from "democracy" as we can get.


----------



## 57Chevy

Indeed E.R.....great care. Democracy is especially a slow process in countries locked up by dictators.
The worldwide use of the internet is allowing the otherwise oppressed peoples of the world to see
the true possibilities of an elected Government.
The actions of our own Government toward the Tunisian problem is an example of that.
                                         _________________________

Montreal Tunisians hailed news Thursday that Belhassen Trabelsi, the billionaire brother-in-law of deposed dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, faced questioning by immigration officials after Tunisia officially requested his arrest.
---
---
full article:Trabelsi questioned by border agent, leaves Chateau Vaudreuil: report
---
---
PQ international affairs critic Louise Beaudoin charged Quebec’s Liberal government is dragging its feet when it comes to making members of ousted Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali feel unwelcome here.

Beaudoin said it’s time Quebec stopped acting “like a small province” and made it clear what it thinks about the presence of the family here.

                      (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)

Let 'em have it Mdm Beaudoin  :clubinhand:


----------



## tomahawk6

Democracy ? More like Iranian style "democracy". Wait until the dust settles and see who ends up on top. My guess is that we wont like what we see. Why does the Tunisian revolutionary government want with the deposed dictator and his family ? If all they wanted was their ill gotten gains that can easily do that. Cant hang them though if they have asylum abroad.


----------



## 57Chevy

AMMAN - Thousands of Jordanians held peaceful demonstrations in Amman and other cities on Friday to press for reform and the government's resignation, taking their cue from Tunisia and Egypt.

"Egypt, the Arab nation salutes you. We urge your men to get rid of (President Hosni) Mubarak," an estimated 3,000 people chanted as they marched through central Amman holding national flags after Muslim weekly prayers.

"The Arab people's message: you are corrupt, beware our anger. (Ousted Tunisian president Zine El Abidine) Ben Ali is waiting for you," they said, referring to his ouster in a popular uprising.
Full article....
Thousands of Jordanians march to press for reform

                          (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)


----------



## 57Chevy

Opinion: Egypt — Mubarak family flees as chaos engulfs region

Things are getting hotter Egypt, one of the North African countries known collectively as the Maghreb, nestling slightly above the scorching Sahara desert. Before this week, Egypt was famous for its apparent stability. Not anymore. 

Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak never expected this crisis. He never expected to sing any swan song in the year 2011, after 30 years of imaginary "peace", solidified by an undisturbed dictatorship reminiscent of Roman emperors.

But on Tuesday this week, after watching neighbouring Tunisia collapse under the fury of its people and the hasty departure of his friend Ben Ali, Hosni, who became president of Egypt in 1981, is about to be toppled by mostly young, hungry and unemployed Egyptians copying the tactics of their Tunisian brothers and sisters. 

article continues at link above...

Hosni Mubarak (wikipedia)
Mubarak and corruption
While in office, political corruption in the Mubarak administration's Ministry of Interior has risen dramatically, due to the increased power over the institutional system that is necessary to secure the prolonged presidency. Such corruption has led to the imprisonment of political figures and young activists without trials, illegal undocumented hidden detention facilities, and rejecting universities, mosques, newspapers staff members based on political inclination. On a personnel level, each individual officer can and will violate citizens' privacy in his area using unconditioned arrests due to the emergency law.
more information at link...
                                (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)


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## OldSolduer

This is intriguing. I am no predictor of the future.....but maybe ER can shed some light on this?


----------



## larry Strong

Now they are seeking asylum. Would the fact that there is an Interpol warrant out for them weigh against recieving refugee status?

Posted in accordance with.......

*Ex-Tunisian leader's relative seeks asylum*

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2011/01/30/trabelsi-tunisia-refugee.html



> The brother-in-law of Tunisia's deposed dictator Zine el Abidine Ben Ali has claimed refugee status in Canada, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon says.
> 
> Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon says Belhassen Trabelsi, the brother-in-law of Tunisia's former dictator, has a legal right to apply for refugee status, but is not welcome in Canada. (CBC)In an interview on Saturday with CBC News, Cannon said he had been told that Belhassen Trabelsi had made a formal refugee claim. The process could take several years to complete.
> 
> The Canadian government has said Trabelsi is not welcome. But Cannon said Trabelsi has a right to seek refugee status under the law.
> 
> To be granted asylum, Trabelsi would have to prove he needs to stay in the country in order to avoid persecution in Tunisia.
> 
> Trabelsi had permanent residency status in Canada, which he had obtained in the mid-1990s. Under Canadian law, permanent residency can be lost if it is not used. For example, if a person is not in the country for a certain period of time.
> 
> Tunisia's ambassador to Canada, Mouldi Sakri, said he had been instructed to ask that Canada issue an arrest warrant for Trabelsi.
> 
> Trabelsi and his family arrived in Montreal last week on a private jet.
> Tunisian-Canadians in Montreal have been outraged by Trabelsi's presence because he has been accused of stealing large amounts of money from Tunisia. They want his Canadian assets frozen by the government, and to see his extradition to Tunisia.
> 
> Ben Ali is now believed to be in Saudi Arabia and is the subject of an international arrest warrant


----------



## Edward Campbell

See the exchange of posts between Journeyman and Old Sweat that follows this. That discussion is the "light" I am using to try and make some sense of all this. I think JM and OS have made about the best possible "educated guesses" - guesses like those which, I also think are all that are being used for "light" in Washington, Beijing, Ottawa, Riyadh, London, Tehran, Canberra and Jerusalem.


----------



## Old Sweat

Re possible courses of action open to the military, the following article from the CNN web site is reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.

Editor's note: Jon Alterman is director and senior fellow of the Middle East Program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. He formerly served as a member of the policy planning staff at the U.S. Department of State and as a special assistant to the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs. He is the author or co-author of four books on the Middle East and the editor of two others. 

Washington (CNN) -- Egypt's government is not just Hosni Mubarak's government, it is a military government. Generals and former generals control much of the government, and many are influential in business.

Since the military overthrew Egypt's monarchy in 1952, senior military officers have constituted Egypt's new aristocracy, holding on to positions of privilege from the socialist 1950s and 1960s to the capitalist present.

Mubarak is, of course, a former air force chief of staff who led Egypt's air campaign in the country's 1973 war against Israel -- a war that Egyptians remember as their country's greatest military triumph. He has a military bearing, a military distrust of disorder, and a military attachment to hierarchy.

His new vice president, Omar Suleiman, is a product of the country's internal security service, and he shares the president's bearing and his attitudes. Two-thirds of the country's governors are former generals, as are many of the country's Cabinet members -- especially those in noneconomic positions. They are still generals, but they are generals in suits.

When things have needed to be done in Egypt, from alleviating a bread shortage in 2008 to providing relief supplies to Upper Egypt after floods in 1994, Mubarak has turned to the military. He trusts the military, he understands the military, and the military delivers for him.

The relationship has been mutually advantageous. When Egypt began privatizing its public sector businesses in the 1990s, former generals were able to swoop in and get bargains, often financing their purchases with loans from state-owned banks at attractive rates.

As censorship in Egypt has dwindled in recent years, the military has remained beyond scrutiny. While journalists criticize the government, the president's family and even the president himself -- something unthinkable 20 years ago -- the military has remained sacrosanct, a curious void in an increasingly lively press.

Egyptians see the military as the national bulwark, an object of veneration and an outlet for their patriotism.

Journalists report on a wide range of government operations, but they are silent on a huge range of issues, from the size of the military budget to the activities of the army-owned factories that produce everything from munitions to food and clothing.

And yet, the military remains a respected institution in Egypt. Egyptians see the military as the national bulwark, an object of veneration and an outlet for their patriotism. There is deep respect for the sacrifices the military has made and gratitude for the wars it has fought.

The Egyptian public's attitudes toward the military are not recent; in fact, they date to the 19th century. It was desperation with where Egypt was going in the early 1950s that led to popular support for the military takeover in 1952; it may yet be desperation with the chaos unfolding on Cairo's streets that leads to support for continued military control in the coming days.

As we think forward to how events in Egypt might play out, it is worth remembering the stake that the Egyptian military has in preserving at least some of the status quo. Not only might officers and former officers stand to lose a great deal economically, but the collapse of the government might deal a severe blow to the military as an institution as well.

Egypt's military officers, then, face a difficult choice. If they must choose, are they to be loyal to their commander or to their institution? If it is clear to everyone but Hosni Mubarak that the time has come when he must stand aside, or at least begin a process that will end with his departure from office, what is their role in securing that transition?

Right now, the military is the only government institution that still enjoys broad legitimacy. It is at a time of maximum peril. The choices it makes in the coming days will not only help determine the military's future, but the fate of the country as well.


----------



## 57Chevy

Other countries have already followed the Tunisian lead to overthrow the many corrupt dictatorships
that exist. Other than Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Jordan, Yemen, Albania, and Lebanon are experiencing
similar uprisings.
Article with full details:
North Africa & Middle East: Region in upheaval
____________________________
Because it is believed that Egypt is appoaching the boiling over point. 
Ottawa warns Canadians to leave Egypt as revolt rages
OTTAWA - The federal government is reportedly planning to send charter flights to Egypt to help Canadian travellers flee the chaos that has swept the country.

Media reports Sunday said that Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon will announce the flights later Sunday. 

The reported move would follow similar actions by countries including the U.S. and Iraq, which have told their citizens to evacuate and offered flights to take them home to safety.

Earlier on Sunday, as violent protests swept through the streets of the North African country for a sixth day Sunday, the federal government issued a travel advisory warning Canadians to leave Egypt.

The Department of Foreign Affairs upgraded its online warning, advising Canadians already in Egypt to "consider leaving if their presence is not necessary."

"They may wish to ask family or friends outside of Egypt to help with online travel arrangements, such as securing plane tickets, as local travel service providers may be limited in their capability to do so," the department's travel advisory read.

The Egyptian government shut down Internet access following the start of the riots.

There are believed to be about 5,500 Canadians in Egypt. During the riots, the death toll has climbed to more than 100 people as Egyptians continue to call for the ouster of embattled President Hosni Mubarak.

                                (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)


----------



## Edward Campbell

If not _instructive_, it is, at least, interesting to watch he somewhat different "takes" on the the Egyptian situation on *CNN International* and *CCTV News*, the Chinese 'official' English language news channel. The Chinese, also, have interests in the region  especially in Sudan, Egypt's Southern neighbour which is, at this very moment, in the midst of ts own secession crisis. The Chinese have, traditionally, had prettyvgood relations with the Afro-Arab states but the Chinese mistrust radical, fundamentalist Islam - it is probably better to say that the modern, 21st century Chinese 'Communists' distrust all ideologies, including communism and capitalism, preferring, instead, to rely upon variants of traditional Chinese 'mandated' authoritarianism. For the Chinese leaders radical Islam's _promise_ of a complete way of life, a 'system' to _regulate_ everything - personal, political, social, economic and political, is anathema. The prospect of major political changes to the status quo in the Afro-Arabian region frightens the Chinese who, like the Israelis, have learned to live with Mubarak _et al_ and all that their sort of corrupt authoritarianism means.

The Chinese appear to agree with me about the extraordinarily slim prospects of anything like "democracy" arising from the ashes in North Africa and the Middle East.


----------



## daftandbarmy

Dictators ride to and fro on tigers from which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.

Winston Churchill

http://www.iwise.com/DSRP8


----------



## 57Chevy

Quote:
"To be granted asylum,
Trabelsi would have to prove he needs to stay in the country in order to avoid persecution in Tunisia."

He would have no problem proving that, The whole country wants his head.
IMO if someone from another country is "wanted" in that country.....then he has no bussiness
coming here wimpering.
Send him back to face the policies he himself forced onto his own countrymen.


----------



## George Wallace

57Chevy said:
			
		

> Quote:
> "To be granted asylum,
> Trabelsi would have to prove he needs to stay in the country in order to avoid persecution in Tunisia."
> 
> He would have no problem proving that, The whole country wants his head.
> IMO if someone from another country is "wanted" in that country.....then he has no bussiness
> coming here wimpering.
> Send him back to face the policies he himself forced onto his own countrymen.



Claiming "Refugee" status is fine, but Dictators, War Criminals, or just criminals do not qualify.  Their home countries can simply file extradition claims and have them escorted back for trial.


----------



## CougarKing

link



> ..WASHINGTON (Reuters) - *The highest-ranking U.S. military officer praised the "professionalism" of Egypt's armed forces in a phone call with a top Egyptian commander on Sunday, as Egyptian troops refrained from a crackdown on protesters.*
> 
> *Egypt receives about $1.3 billion a year in U.S. military aid, assistance that could be jeopardized if the army joined last week's harsh police crackdown*. Police used rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons against protesters calling for President Hosni Mubarak to step down.
> 
> The unrest has killed more than 100 people.
> 
> The Pentagon urged restraint from Egypt's military last week in face-to-face talks in Washington with one of its top officers -- Lieutenant General Sami Enan, chief of staff of the armed forces.
> 
> Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke on Sunday with Enan, who provided him an update, a spokesman said.
> 
> "The Chairman expressed his appreciation for the continued professionalism of the Egyptian military," said Capt. John Kirby. "Both men reaffirmed their desire to see the partnership between our two militaries continue, and they pledged to stay in touch."
> 
> *The top U.S. diplomat, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, on Sunday also commended Egyptian military restraint, saying it was "working to try to differentiate between peaceful protesters -- who we all support -- and potential looters and other criminal elements who are obviously a danger to the Egyptian people."
> 
> It remains to be seen if the Egyptian armed forces, considered the most powerful institution in the country, will seek to keep Mubarak in power in the face of mass protests, or decide he is a liability.*
> Egypt's military -- the world's 10th largest with more than 468,000 members -- have been a central force in politics since army officers staged an overthrow of the monarchy in 1952.
> 
> All four Egyptian presidents since then have come from the military, now led by Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, whom Defense Secretary Robert Gates also spoke to over the weekend.
> 
> The Pentagon declined to provide details on Gates' conversation with Tantawi.
> 
> *The Egyptian military has deep ties with the U.S. armed forces, staging large-scale joint exercises. There are some 625 U.S. military personnel stationed in Egypt.
> 
> The U.S. has also provided F-16 jet fighters, tanks, armored personnel carriers, Apache helicopters, anti-aircraft missile batteries and other equipment to the Egyptian military -- equipment it does not want to see used against peaceful protesters.*
> 
> "We have sent a very clear message that we want to see restraint, we do not want to see violence by any security forces. And we continue to convey that message," Clinton told ABC television.
> 
> (Editing by Todd Eastham)
> ...


----------



## 57Chevy

IMO I think it will be determined that Mr Mubarak is the liability



			
				Old Sweat said:
			
		

> Egypt's government is not just Hosni Mubarak's government, it is a military government



Quote:
"We have sent a very clear message that we want to see restraint, we do not want to see violence by any security forces. And we continue to convey that message," Clinton told ABC television."
_______________

Oh......and we are telling our american citizens to get out of there ASAP  :



			
				57Chevy said:
			
		

> The reported move would follow similar actions by countries including the U.S. and Iraq, which have told their citizens to evacuate and offered flights to take them home to safety.


----------



## Journeyman

57Chevy said:
			
		

> "We have sent a very clear message that we want to see restraint, we do not want to see violence by any security forces. And we continue to convey that message," Clinton told ABC television."


Is the Secretary of State saying "violence by protesters is fine"? There are several groups involved whose actions should be measured.


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> * Egypt's Opposition
> *
> 
> *Revolutionaries United in Anger
> *
> 01/31/2011
> By Yassin Musharbash in Cairo
> 
> SPIEGEL ONLINE
> 
> LINK
> 
> 
> *Twitter and Facebook may have been blocked, but that hasn't thwarted the protestors. Egypt's opposition, made up of students, trade unionists, workers, poets and politicians, has many strands but is united in one goal: to rid the country of its eternal ruler, President Hosni Mubarak. *
> 
> Bilal can only speak in a whisper. At first he was just hoarse, then his voice turned into a croak and now he can barely speak at all. But that doesn't stop him from mouthing the chant of the demonstrators: "The people want the end of the system," over and over again. "The people want the end of the system."
> 
> And with each passing day Bilal spends on the street, the goal seems to come a little closer.
> 
> Bilal has been on the streets of Cairo for much of the last six days, even spending several days on Liberation Square wrapped in a wollen blanket in the glow of a camp fire. Demonstrators conquered the square in the city center last Friday after a battle with police -- and they haven't budged from it since.
> 
> It has become the beating heart of a revolution bent on toppling the seemingly eternal president, Hosni Mubarak.
> 
> *'We'll Block the Regime' *
> 
> And Bilal has become a passionate participant in that revolution. His family thinks he is at work, but Bilal's boss doesn't mind that his employee has taken to the streets almost fulltime. Bilal, after all, a 23-year-old native of Cairo, is a veteran of the Egyptian protest movement against Mubarak's regime.
> 
> In April 2008, the police arrested activists who had called for a general strike. A few days later, the prime minister at the time, Ahmed Nazif, held a speech at Bilal's university. Bilal embarrassed him by publicly calling on him to release the prisoners. Soon, Bilal became a regular guest on political talkshows in Egypt -- but he paid a price for his insubordination. His university only allowed him to graduate with a significant delay.
> 
> Bilal is close to several opposition parties and movements but has so far avoided committing to any one of them. He has his own Facebook page in which he joined the call for the latest demonstrations -- until the government switched off the Internet. The regime can block Facebook and Twitter, says Bilal. "But we'll block the regime."
> 
> The country has been brought to a standstill for almost a week. More than 100 people have died, most of them as a result of police violence, the army is out on the streets and the opposition is grasping for power -- only President Mubarak isn't budging. Rumors abound every night that he has already fled, that he will order the army to fire on demonstrators, that the army is preparing a coup.
> 
> Bilal, for his part, is sure the regime is about to fall and he has continued to do his best to mobilize people to protest. With the Internet unplugged, he has resorted to face-to-face encouragement.
> 
> *Internet Helped Mobilize Demonstrators *
> 
> The role Facebook and other social networking sites played in triggering the revolt should not be underestimated. There is a Facebook page in memory of the blogger Khalid Said, who was killed by police and it has hundreds of thousands of supporters. When the call for the first mass protest on January 25 was put on the page, 70,000 of them said they would take part. That was important, says Bilal. Unlike in April 2008, protestors could be pretty sure that they wouldn't be alone. Only numbers could offer a measure of protection from police brutality. At least 30,000 people turned up.
> 
> "Now we're in a different phase," says Bilal. "People are turning up without being called on, everyone knows we'll continue until Mubarak falls."
> 
> Liberation Square has turned into a hive of protest. A woman of about 35, veiled in a red robe is sitting on a wall and ruffles her son's hair as he lies in her lap and rests. Some activists are clearing away rubbish from last night. "We are civilized," they say. A man with a bandage on his face wants to tell his story. Another tells how people were killed when police opened fire with live rounds in front of the Interior Ministry. Here and there in the square, small groups form, agree on a battle cry and then march around chanting. As evening approaches, the crowd grows and by sunset there are tens of thousands here, just like on previous nights.
> 
> Bilal waves and greets people. He has made many new friends in the last few days. There are knots of protesters who have thrown their support behind Mohammed ElBaradei, Mubarak's challenger. Elsewhere are followers of the April 6 opposition movement. Bilal laughs. "It's a bit like Facebook -- but analog."
> 
> *Multi-Faceted Movement*
> 
> The Facebook generation is central to the uprising, but the movement is being fed by many other streams -- one of them originated a few kilometers away from Liberation Square, in the fifth floor of an old, slightly run-down office building, in the wood-panelled office of an intellectual and opposition leader Abd al-Rahman Yusuf.
> 
> Yusuf, 40, is a handsome man. He's wearing a smart black pullover and is sucking yellow throat lozenges. He too is hoarse. He has a massive desk with an imitation crocodile leather top.
> 
> Yusuf's business card says he is a poet, and YouTube has videos showing him reading his work. He doesn't mince words when it comes to Mubarak. Until December he was a kind of spokesman of ElBaradei's movement, now he's an ordinary, if high-profile, member. He spoke on Liberation Square before ElBaradei arrived from Vienna last Thursday.
> 
> Yusuf is part of a slightly different strand of the revolutionary movement than Bilal, one could call him a representative of the civil society. It is heterogeneous but a little more organized than the Facebookers, it includes political parties and trade unions. Yusuf's spectrum is less spontaneous, a little older, less Internet-based. That isn't to say that Yusuf doesn't use the Internet. He too mainly works online. His emails reach tens of thousands of people. His latest email started: "To the Egyptian people, I call on you to take part in the demonstrations. The hour of truth has come." But now he too is offline, like the whole country.
> 
> The hour of truth -- Yusuf too believes that the revolution is close to reaching its goal. "Mubarak," he says, "has days left, weeks at the most."
> 
> *ElBaradei Emerges as Central Figure *
> 
> Yusuf says he is driven by his belief that the people must determine the fate of the country, that they can't be pushed aside, like Mubarak is doing. "Power without control brings out the worst in people," he says.
> 
> A friend brings in herbal tea, Yusuf sips it. He knows very well that not every Egyptian is on the streets helping to topple Mubarak, and that the majority of the demonstrators are under 35. And he knows that not all protestors want the same thing. "But that is natural. There are right-wingers and left-wingers, what is important is that we have thrown off the shackles of fear and are making our rules ourselves."
> 
> On Sunday evening, ElBaradei made his first public bid for power. He said he wanted to form a government of national unity, with the Muslim Brothers, and after talks with the army. Yusuf stood next to him on Liberation Square. Shortly afterwards, the first "ElBaradei" chants could be heard. But not everyone found the Nobel Peace Prize-winner's speech inspiring.
> 
> Nevertheless, ElBaradei is now the central figure in the opposition and activists like Bilal wouldn't be opposed to him leading negotiations -- provided it doesn't lead to a feeble compromise. But it is completely open whether such talks will happen. Mubarak would have to leave voluntarily, or be forced out.
> 
> *Activists Remaining Careful*
> 
> The demonstrators are in high spirits. It is true that they have shaken off their fear. In effect, they have already enforced total freedom of assembly in Mubarak's dictatorship.
> 
> But the worry remains that the pendulum could swing back. Some activists want to stick to their clandestine organizations as a result. "We have a small office in Cairo," says one female activist. Only a few people know its location, she says. The office is used to keep in touch with activists in other Egyptian cities where the situation is tenser. They are organized in groups of six whose leaders maintain contact with other groups.
> 
> Now the entire opposition is calling for a new mass rally on Tuesday and hope to bring one million people onto the streets. Abd al-Rahman Yusuf, Bilal Diab and the unnamed activist will be there. And will be hoping that the power of the people will finally bring Mubarak down.


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> * The Spirit of Cairo
> *
> 
> *Obama Has Failed to Fulfill His Mideast Promise
> *
> 01/31/2011
> A Commentary by David J. Kramer
> 
> SPIEGEL ONLINE
> 
> LINK
> 
> 
> *In recent months, the Obama administration has shifted its focus away from the Middle East. This approach might be justified if the situation were getting better there, but things are getting worse. Of the people living in the region, 88 percent live in countries that lack honest elections, a free press and rule of law.*
> 
> A few months into his presidency, Barack Obama delivered what still ranks as the most ambitious foreign policy address of his administration. Presented at Cairo University, the speech set forth the outlines of a "new beginning" between the United States and the Muslim world.
> 
> While many of the president's words focused on contentious issues like Iraq and Iran's nuclear program, he also spoke eloquently about the centrality of democracy to the Muslim world's future. He said the United States would support "elected, peaceful governments" and endorsed democratic values like free expression, honest government and "freedom to live as you choose." He spoke of a "single standard for all who would hold power."
> 
> By his words, the president demonstrated that he, like President George W. Bush before him, understood that the Middle East's "democracy deficit" contributes in important ways to the strategic problems that feed regional instability and pose threats to the rest of the world. Put another way, governments responsive to the popular will would not serve as incubators for jihadis.
> 
> *Obama Fails to Fulfill Vision *
> 
> Unfortunately, President Obama's subsequent actions have failed to fulfill the promise of his Cairo vision, especially when it comes to confronting concerns over repression when committed by autocracies of the Middle East, to say nothing of China or Russia.
> 
> This pattern was established during the protests over the 2009 Iranian elections when the administration mustered little more than a pro forma objection to the suppression of the opposition movement. It continued with the administration's non-response to last November's sham elections in Egypt, in which the ruling party orchestrated results comparable to those in such obvious dictatorships as Syria and, until recently, Tunisia. And we witnessed it in the initial reactions to the latest developments in Tunisia and Egypt in which senior US officials came across as supportive of unpopular authoritarian regimes out of a false sense that those governments were best for stability and security in the region or because they mattered for energy interests or the Middle East Peace Process.
> 
> The risk to such a pattern, of course, is that we become associated, fairly or not, with propping up repressive leaders who could, before we know it, be on their way out.
> 
> An American president can certainly employ other tactics to nourish the spirit of freedom in authoritarian societies. There is quiet diplomacy through which the American government tries to persuade autocrats to loosen political control and release political prisoners. In this regard, the WikiLeaks documents suggest that US diplomats in authoritarian countries were shrewd, concerned about growing repression, and often sympathetic toward the political opposition. The United States also helps promote freedom by supporting local activists working for women's equality, press freedom and minority rights. But nothing substitutes for clear public statements from the Oval Office affirming support for freedoms of expression and association and condemning those regimes that violate fundamental human rights.
> 
> *A Dismaying Record *
> 
> If freedom was gaining headway in the Middle East, the Obama Administration's shift in emphasis away from the region and its less active approach might be justified. In fact, things are getting worse. According to Freedom House's latest report on global freedom, fully 88 percent of the people in the region lived in countries where honest elections, a free press, and the rule of law are unknown, a grim record that is actually worse than five years ago. The Middle East ranks at the bottom on each of the indicators that measure a country's level of freedom. Of the 20 countries ruled by "leaders for life," five are from the Middle East (the number was six until Ben Ali fled Tunisia).
> 
> This is a dismaying record, but we should remember that societies with equally dismaying environments have overcome tyranny and attained stable democracy. The Middle East, however, has no regional model to look to; indeed, the Assads and Mubaraks understand that freedom in one country is a danger to all the rest and will act accordingly.
> 
> Those who are on the streets in Tunis and Cairo understand that large segments of their own elites regard their actions with hostility. They have put aside the grievances of the recent past because they regard America as their principal ally whose solidarity is critical to the success of their democratic revolutions. Many of their placards are in English, and in interviews they direct their appeals to the United States. It is crucial that their voices are heard, their cause embraced, and that the Obama administration take the steps necessary to fulfill the spirit of Cairo.
> 
> _David J. Kramer, 46, served under George W. Bush as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor. Today he is executive director of Freedom House in Washington. The organization's research director, Arch Puddington, also contributed to this article._



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## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> * The World from Berlin
> *
> 
> *'The Pharaoh in the Führerbunker'
> *
> 01/31/2011
> SPIEGEL ONLINE
> 
> LINK
> 
> 
> *The absence of police from Egypt's streets and the consequent looting and anarchy could be an unscrupulous ploy by President Hosni Mubarak to stay in power, say German commentators. But even though the army is in wait-and-see mode, his days are clearly numbered.*
> 
> Six days of unrest, more than 100 people dead and an embattled president clings on to power. Egypt has reached something of a stalemate with protestors demanding that President Hosni Mubarak be swept from power, while the man who has ruled the country for 30 years refuses to go. And it could be the powerful army that ultimately decides Egypt's fate.
> 
> On Monday morning, thousands of protestors were still camped out in Cairo's Tahir Square, defying a curfew. The night before, this had been the site of a rally addressed by Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Peace Laureate and former head of the UN's nuclear watchdog, who arrived back in Egypt on Thursday. "Change is coming. What we have begun, cannot go back," the 67-year-old told the crowd on Sunday. "We have one main demand -- the end of the regime and the beginning of a new stage, a new Egypt." Most of those gathered were unfazed by the low-flying jets that swept above the square.
> 
> The demonstrators have dismissed Mubarak's appointment of a new cabinet and prime minister. His promises of economic reform to address rising prices and unemployment appear to be too little too late. Protestors have called for a general strike on Monday and a "protest of the millions" on Tuesday, to press for their demands for democracy and an end to 30 years of Mubarak rule.
> 
> *Fear of Anarchy and Chaos *
> 
> The hope for change has been coupled with fear of anarchy and chaos. The population was largely left to protect itself over the weekend as the police force, which had been involved in clashes with protestors during the week, disappeared. Neighborhood vigilante groups formed over the weekend, setting up checkpoints and patrolling the streets to defend their homes as thugs roamed the streets. Gangs have looted supermarkets and stores as well as homes, and there were breakouts from at least four prisons in Cairo in recent days, adding to safety concerns.
> 
> However, there are now reports that a semblance of security has been restored with extra troops being sent into the cities to help calm panicked residents, and the police are once again out on the streets. The unrest is having an impact on the economy, however, with shops and businesses closing and tourists fleeing the country in droves. Tourism is vital to the Egyptian economy, accounting for up to 6 percent of GDP.
> 
> The United States has also poured billions of dollars into Egypt since Mubarak came to power, seeing him as a key ally in the region, first against the Soviets and then radical Islam. US military aid alone is $1.3 billion a year. Washington has now stopped short of calling for his ouster, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking of an "orderly transition."
> 
> The role of the army may be crucial in the coming days. "The army has to choose between Egypt and Mubarak," one banner on Tahrir Square proclaimed. And soldiers sat in tanks overseeing the protests without intervening. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, praised the "professionalism" of the armed forces in refraining from cracking down on the protestors.
> 
> "In the next few days security and stability will return," Brigadier Atef Said told Reuters, speaking from Suez. "We will allow protests in the coming days. Everyone has the right to voice their opinion. We're listening and trying to help and satisfy all parties. We're not here to stop anyone. These are our people."
> 
> The German press on Monday looks at the ongoing unrest and some papers question whether Mubarak deliberately fuelled the chaos this weekend.
> 
> *Center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung  writes:*
> 
> "Everything hinges on one decision: the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak. The country will only return to calm when the Egyptian leader, already deserted and ousted by his people, actually leaves. But the long-time ruler is clinging to power and even selling that as a sense of responsibility: 'I will not allow chaos.'"
> 
> "The contrary is the case: he has long since lost his power, and is seeking an escalation. His own police and thugs started the looting, doubtless acting on his orders. That is a mark of his unscrupulousness. If the Egyptians have to fear anarchy more than they love their uncompleted revolution, they might wish for the return of the president and his police state. That is Mubarak's ploy. The man who had such a tight grip on Egypt for three decades would love to present himself once more as the strong father of the nation protecting his citizens from the confusion and chaos. The man who restored law and order in the face of the rise of an unpredictable opposition."
> 
> "If the army ends up restoring calm by force, Mubarak and his followers could remain in power for a while."
> 
> "And if not? Then the aged president won't care any more. The pharaoh in the Führerbunker: If he has to go down, he'll take his country and his people down with him. In his downfall he can discredit the uprising that has cost him his power: he can stain the image of a revolt that started out peacefully: as an uprising by the youth and the middle class."
> 
> "Now that law and order have evaporated, the mob is dominating the picture of Egypt. The poorest of the poor are coming out of their slums. They are stealing what they could only gaze at in the glitzy shop windows for years, what they could never have afforded to buy."
> 
> "If the army (…) takes political power, the officers will have to ask themselves what is more important: to fly their old comrade out or take him where he should have been put long ago: in the dock."
> 
> *The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung  writes:*
> 
> "It is possible that the regime wants to show the urban population and the middle class what happens when the poor from the slums, criminals and the violent mob aren't kept down by force."
> 
> "Hosni Mubarak himself is in a precarious situation. The political demonstrations are calling for his resignation and the people want to shake off his corrupt regime. It is uncertain whether the army leadership stands fully behind him. The generals know that the 82-year-old, sick president is nearing the end of his term in any case. They will know their American ally won't want the brutal maintenance of a defunct system. An 'Iranian solution' in Cairo would disqualify Egypt as a partner in the West. So the army will watch whether the opposition produces a leader acceptable to both the people and the army."
> 
> *Conservative Die Welt  writes:*
> 
> "Chaos and anarchy are mounting because the army hasn't chosen a side yet. There are signs that the chaos wasn't just caused by gangs of criminals and plunderers from the slums, but also by parts of the security forces. That happened in Tunisia too. That is what the regime is banking on: the worse the situation becomes, the more people will wish for the return of the strong arm of the law."
> 
> "It is unclear how long this interim phase will last. The regime is waiting for the demonstrations to lose momentum and for the situation to calm down. But the more damage is done in the cities, the less the military will be able to remain passive."
> 
> *The left-wing Die Tageszeitung  writes:*
> 
> "The long-term ally Hosni Mubarak now has his back against the wall. And Washington lacks what Mubarak's repressive policy has been fighting for years: a direct link to a democratic opposition -- to people who could emerge from the democracy movement as an alternative to the dictator."
> 
> "In this atmosphere, which is marked by fears of a deja-vu of the Iranian revolution of 1979 and concern about the future neighbourhood of Israel, there's a fierce dispute going on in Washington between the advocates of stability and those who are banking on democratic reform."
> 
> "The outcome of this internal conflict in Washington is open. But it's clear that the days of the Mubarak regime are numbered. And that the other authoritarian rulers and kings face turbulent days. The domino that fell in Tunisia has long since touched all the others."
> 
> *Mass-circulation Bild writes:*
> 
> "We have reason to be worried. Hundreds of thousands of Egyptians or more want a different kind of freedom from the freedom we mean. They want to be free to turn their country into a fundamentalist theocracy. They want the freedom to declare Israel as an enemy again after decades of peace. They want the freedom to tear down the solid bridges to America."
> 
> "That cannot be in our interest. We need Egypt as an ally in this chronically warlike corner of the world."
> 
> "We can only hope that the people in Egypt will take the right decisions in the coming weeks. For themselves and for peace in the region."
> 
> -- Siobhán Dowling and David Crossland



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----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> * The Arab Revolution
> *
> 
> *Nile Insurgency Creates Uncertain Future for Egypt
> *
> 01/31/2011
> SPIEGEL ONLINE
> 
> LINK
> 
> 
> *In the wake of the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia, the Egyptians are now revolting against the regime of President Hosni Mubarak. The country feels as if it were waking up from a bad dream, but the West stands to lose a reliable partner -- and Israel one of its few Arab friends. By SPIEGEL Staff *
> 
> The Pharaoh was silent. He was sitting, as he often does now in his old age, in his vacation home in Sharm al-Sheikh on the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula, gazing out at Tiran Island in the eternally glistening Red Sea. This is where the Egyptian president receives world leaders, where he has sat stiffly next to Israeli prime ministers, and where he has introduced alternating US presidents to alternating Arab rulers. Hosni Mubarak, 82, feels at home in the majestic calm of Sharm el-Sheikh, but not in noisy, dirty, crowded Cairo. Sharm el-Sheikh is where the Egyptian ruler holds court and where, for now at least, he was remaining silent.
> 
> He was allowing others to speak instead: His prime minister, who promised that the government would tolerate freedom of expression, as long as it was exercised "with legitimate means," and the head of the governing party, who denied that the party elites were leaving the country. Mubarak was not even denying the rumors about his son Gamal, who he had been preparing to succeed him for years, and who is now said to have left the country, or about his wife Suzanne, the daughter of an Egyptian and a British woman, who had reportedly flown to London.
> 
> Mubarak was not commenting on any of this. In fact, from his perspective, nothing could be more dangerous than to dignify the rumors with so much as a word, or to descend into the depths of his police state. That was what former Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali had done two weeks earlier, and he was forced to flee the country. This explains why not a word had emerged from Sharm el-Sheikh all week.
> 
> *A Rival Event to the 1977 Bread Riots *
> 
> And then it was Friday. As if all the frustration that had accumulated during the 30 years of the Mubarak regime were suddenly erupting from the Egyptians, Friday would become a day of reckoning, a day of violence and retaliatory violence so excessive as to rival the 1977 bread riots. At the time, Mubarak's predecessor, Anwar al-Sadat, had ordered his soldiers to shoot at angry protestors, killing 80 Egyptians.
> 
> Thirty-four years ago, dockworkers and students in Alexandria were the first to take their anger to the streets. This time, the news of the first casualty came from Suez, where the police had reportedly shot and killed a protestor. But this did not deter the rest of the protestors, nor did the curfew that the government had imposed. Until early evening, that is, when Mubarak brought in the military to regain control of the city on the Suez Canal, a key petroleum processing center.
> 
> Clouds of smoke billowed across Alexandria, the port city on the Mediterranean. A protest movement had already emerged in Alexandria in the summer after a plainclothes policeman had beaten to death the 28-year-old blogger Khalid Said.
> 
> But no other place in the entire country was as hotly contested as Tahrir (Freedom) Square in the capital Cairo. A symbol of national power, the square is home to the headquarters of the Arab League, the Egyptian Museum, the American University and the headquarters of the Mubarak regime's National Democratic Party.
> 
> The first protestors began arriving before noon prayers, and the crowds in the capital swelled to tens of thousands.
> 
> Despite a heavy police presence, the protestors on Tahrir Square courageously broke through the crowd control barriers, allowing others to surge through in their wake. Doggedly defying the teargas employed by the police, they dragged metal panels and plastic barricades along the streets as protection. By early evening, they had pushed the security forces back far enough that they could no longer control the situation. The protestors, beating drums, chanted: "The people want to topple the regime." For the first time, the protesters had managed to drown out the shots coming from the security forces.
> 
> *Police Universally Despised in Egypt *
> 
> The police had abandoned Tahrir Square, at least temporarily. Nevertheless, they continued to fire teargas canisters and, apparently, rubber bullets into the crowd, even though the protestors included women and children. The police are so universally despised in Egypt that many protesters called for the military to step in, chanting: "Come and see what the police are doing to us! We want the army!" A bizarre scene unfolded in front of the state broadcasting building, where cheering protesters greeted military tanks.
> 
> Police vehicles were burning on the bridges across the Nile, where the driver of one police van attempted to push protestors in the river. Smoke from a massive and threatening fire hung in the air over the city after protesters had set fire to the headquarters of Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party. The capital was descending into chaos.
> 
> And still the Pharaoh said nothing.
> 
> Early on Saturday morning, at 12:15 a.m., Mubarak finally broke his silence. It was an eerie speech. A few hours earlier, a handful of the country's top business leaders had left the country in their private jets. But Mubarak remained grimly determined, saying that although he respected the legitimate concerns of the people, he would not tolerate chaos in the streets. He, who had devoted his life "to the point of exhaustion" to his country, would "defend freedom and stability." He promised more democracy, more stability and more jobs, saying that he was willing to engage in a "national dialogue."
> 
> *Then he fired his cabinet.*
> 
> But even if the Egyptian president refused to believe it, after that Friday, Jan. 28, 2011, the world was no longer the same
> 
> *Part 1:* Nile Insurgency Creates Uncertain Future for Egypt (Back to top)
> *Part 2:* A Difficult Conundrum for Europe and the United States
> *Part 3:* Forty Percent of Population Live on Less than Two Dollars a Day
> *Part 4:* Three Scenarios for Egypt's Future



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## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.


SPIEGEL ONLINE  Links:

Anger Grows in Egypt: Mubarak Fails to Quell Unrest   (01/29/2011)

Protests in Egypt: ElBaradei Under House Arrest as Demonstrations Rock Cairo   (01/28/2011)

Concerns about the Muslim Brotherhood: Israel Fears Regime Change in Egypt   (01/28/2011)

The World from Berlin: 'The Era of Paralysis in Egypt Has Ended'   (01/27/2011)

Mohamed ElBaradei on Democracy in Egypt: 'There Is No Turning Back Now'   (01/25/2011)

Interview with Mohamed ElBaradei: 'This Is a Historical Moment for Egypt'  (07/12/2010)


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## OldSolduer

In my limited experience WRT international affairs,  I do not think the state of Egypt will be anymore demcratic than that of North Korea once the current government is ousted.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and I'd be dollars to donuts that the next government will be far more restrictive that the government of Mubarak. Or am I right out to lunch?


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> * Terrorism & Security
> *
> 
> *Islamist leader Rachid Ghannouchi returns to Tunisia. What's his next move?
> *
> By Arthur Bright, Correspondent / January 30, 2011
> The Christian Science Monitor
> 
> LINK
> 
> 
> *Moderate Islamist leader Rachid Ghannouchi returned to Tunisia from exile Sunday, insisting that he's a democratic Islamist leader and that he will not run for office.*
> 
> Rachid Ghannouchi says that he will not run for office, though his movement will enter democratic politics.
> 
> In the aftermath of the protests that toppled Tunisian President Zine al-Abdine Ben Ali and sparked upheaval across the Arab world, Tunisia's foremost Islamist leader returned to his homeland on Sunday after 22 years of exile.
> 
> Reuters reports that Rachid Ghannouchi, leader of the the Islamist movement Ennahda, flew from London to Tunisia Sunday, setting foot in his homeland for the first time since 1989, when Mr. Ben Ali exiled him. Mr. Ghannouchi said he and Ennahda plan to help build Tunisia's new democracy.
> 
> "Our role will be to participate in realising the goals of this peaceful revolution: to anchor a democratic system, social justice and to put a limit to discrimination against banned groups," Ghannouchi told Reuters a day before his return.
> 
> "The dictator has fallen and I want to be in the country," he said.
> 
> Ghannouchi was exiled by Ben Ali in 1989, two years after Ben Ali seized power. Ennahda, which experts call a moderate Islamist group, was the strongest opposition group at the time of Ghannouchi's exile, but did not play a significant role in the protests this month that led to Ben Ali's ouster.
> 
> *Women leaders protest Ghannouchi's return *
> 
> Concern about Ghannouchi's then-pending return sparked protests by Tunisian women Saturday, reports Agence France-Presse. Hundreds of women, including "actresses, university lecturers, and human rights campaigners," took to the streets in Tunis to show their resolve to maintain the well-established rights of women in the country.
> 
> "We want to send an important message to the Islamists, especially those from the Ennahdha movement -- that we are not ready to pull back on or abandon our rights," said Sabah Mahmoudi, a university lecturer, told AFP.
> 
> *Cabinet reshuffle *
> 
> But Ghannouchi returns as the upheaval in Tunisia continues to wind down. Al Jazeera reported Thursday that Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi (no relation to Rachid Ghannouchi) reshuffled his cabinet for the second time since Ben Ali's ouster, removing several ministers whom protesters opposed as being a continuation of Ben Ali's government. Prime Minister Ghannouchi said that the new cabinet was "a temporary government with a clear mission - to allow a transition to democracy," and its members had been determined in consultaion with all political groups involved.
> 
> Although Rachid Ghannouchi has said that he plans to make Ennahda into an active Tunisian political party, he says he has no plans to run for office himself. In an interview with the Financial Times earlier this month, he said that "I have no political aspirations myself, neither for standing as a minister, for parliament or president. Some are presenting me as a Khomeini who will return to Tunisia – I am no Khomeini."
> 
> *A pro-democracy Islamist? *
> 
> He also told the Times that he believes democracy and Islam are compatible, noting that he himself came under criticism from Islamists for his pro-democracy stance.
> 
> 
> [When I first came to the UK], I gave a lecture Manchester University in which I said democracy should not exclude communists. At the time, this was rejected strongly by Islamists who saw it as accepting atheism. I said that it is not ethical for us to call on a secular government to accept us, while once we get to power we will eradicate them. We should treat people like-for-like. As the Prophet Muhammad said, one should wish for his brother what he wishes for oneself. And Kant said you should use your behavior as your base for treating the rest of humanity.
> 
> At the time this was alien to political thought [among UK-exiled Arab Islamists] and I was described as a secularist and part of a secularist movement because I called for democracy that does not exclude anyone.
> 
> In the interview, Ghannouchi likened Ennahda to Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party, another party with both an Islamist tradition and democratic leanings.



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## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> * Terrorism & Security
> *
> 
> *Sudan sees Egypt-inspired protests in the North, jubilation on referendum in the South
> *
> By Taylor Barnes, Correspondent / January 31, 2011
> The Christian Science Monitor
> 
> LINK
> 
> 
> *Antigovernment protests in North Sudan led to the death of a university student Sunday while South Sudanese celebrated an overwhelming vote for independence.*
> 
> Protesters in northern Sudan gained their first “martyr” late Sunday night when a student died in the hospital from injuries sustained in a police confrontation. The protests, which were inspired by neighboring Egypt and Tunisia, started Sunday. They came as South Sudan announced the near-unanimous results of its referendum vote on secession from the north.
> 
> Hundreds of young people in the country’s north were beaten by police with batons in the sporadic antigovernment protests. Armed police surrounded at least six universities today to prevent students from leaving the campuses, according to Reuters. Students in Khartoum University were tear gassed in their dormitories late Sunday, leaving at least five injured.
> 
> The news wire adds that students in north Sudan began clashing with police over rising food and petrol prices earlier this month, but protests have grown after demonstrations in Tunisia and Egypt gained attention. Demonstrators have begun to call for regime change and widened their list of complaints to include corruption and the country’s practice of sentencing women to be lashed.
> 
> The police were not immediately able to comment on the death, and the morgue holding the demonstrator’s body declined to comment to Reuters. The BBC identifies the activist as Mohammed Abdulrahman, a student at Ahaliya University in Omdurman. It also reports that one human rights activist said Mr. Abdulrahman had been shot.
> 
> The Sudan Tribune notes that north Sudan already faces an economic crisis and stands to lose billions in oil revenue as the oil-rich south secedes. Opposition forces blame the government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for the worsening economy and the secession of the south, the Tribune adds.
> 
> The north’s clashes contrast with the scenes of cheer in South Sudan capital Juba yesterday, where spontaneous dancing broke out as the first official announcement on the referendum showed that more than 99 percent of voters favored independence. The Christian Science Monitor reported that many South Sudanese chose to leave their jobs and lives in the north as the referendum approached, and the United Nations expects another 100,000 to migrate south in the next month. (See a map of north-south divisions here.)
> 
> Speaking at the opening ceremony of the African Union summit in Ethiopia’s Addis Ababa on Sunday, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon praised the peaceful announcement of the referendum results. He warned, however, that border demarcation and the status of Abyei, a disputed region along the north-south border, could become issues as the south approaches its July 2011 independence, according to the Sudan Tribune.
> 
> Longtime Sudan observer Peter Moszynski, a documentary maker in the country’s south, adds a note of caution to the south’s jubilation, recounting the nation’s difficulty spurring development and need to properly harness its oil revenues. He writes in the Guardian:
> 
> The discovery of oil was also a major factor in the return to conflict. (Demonstrations in Khartoum over the weekend show people in the north are already uneasy about the region's economic problems. Some protesters called for president Omar al-Bashir to step down). It remains to be seen whether oil revenue can be successfully shared and harnessed to help drive agricultural development, as southern Sudan's transitional government says it plans to do, or if border tensions mean these revenues will continue to be squandered on military expenditure – currently 40 percent of its budget.
> 
> Southern Sudan's previous experience of failed post-war reconstruction efforts surely demonstrate the need to focus any potential peace dividend on development initiatives that bring positive benefits to its citizens and reverses the previous decades of decline.



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## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> * Terrorism & Security
> *
> 
> *Yemeni protesters fill streets, calling for president's ouster
> *
> By Taylor Barnes, Correspondent / January 27, 2011
> The Christian Science Monitor
> 
> LINK
> 
> 
> *The thousands of Yemenis who turned out to protest President Ali Abdullah Saleh's rule were met with counterprotests by government supporters.*
> 
> Thousands of Yemenis protested in the streets of Sanaa today, on the heels of popular movements in Tunisia and Egypt. The protesters are calling for the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a US ally who has been in power for 32 years.
> 
> "The people want a change in president," protesters chanted, according to Reuters, which estimated that 10,000 had shown up at Sanaa University and about 7,000 elsewhere in the city. "Look at Tunis and what it did. Yemen's people are stronger."
> 
> Mr. Saleh was reelected in 2006 for a seven-year term, but parliament’s attempts to ease rules on presidential term limits has Yemenis worried that he will appoint himself for life, the BBC notes.
> 
> Saleh is also accused of trying to bequeath power to his son in the impoverished Middle Eastern nation that has come under increased US attention as it deals with instability on multiple fronts – a resurgent Al Qaeda movement, secessionists in its south, and a rebellion in its north.
> 
> There have not yet been clashes between police and protesters, Reuters adds. Government supporters held counterprotests, with thousands using the slogan, “No to toppling democracy and the Constitution,” Al Jazeera reports.
> 
> Protesters also addressed mounting social problems in the Arab world’s poorest nation, where nearly half the population is illiterate and a third is unemployed, the BBC notes. One banner at a popular protest read: "Enough playing around, enough corruption, look at the gap between poverty and wealth."
> 
> While today’s protests are the largest mobilization, smaller ones began last week, with prominent female activist Towakil Karman arrested Sunday on charges of organizing unlicensed rallies, undermining public social peace, and inciting to commit acts of rioting. Under apparent pressure from protesters,she was released on Monday along with nearly three dozen other jailed activists, The Christian Science Monitor reported.
> 
> “We the Yemeni people have been patient for years," Mahfoutha Hassan, an older woman, told Monitor correspondent Laura Kasinof at a Monday protest. "So when the government of Tunis fell, it stirred us up.”
> 
> Yemen is the latest in the region to be taken by popular protests since Tunisia toppled its president after a month of rallies. On Tuesday, Egyptians began protesting President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule, facing a heavy-handed government response which sent out security forces to violently break up protests and shut down Twitter, the Monitor reported. Activists in Jordan and Algeria similarly launched antigovernment rallies over the weekend, the Los Angeles Times noted.
> 
> On whether the movements predict broad regime change in the region, Nadim Shehadi, from the London-based think tank Chatham House, told the LA Times that Tunisia’s revolt is an effect of regional shifts rather than being the main catalyst for later protests.
> 
> "If you look at the history of the last 100 years or so, you find that when the mood changes in the region it changes throughout," he said.
> 
> "After the fall of the Ottoman Empire when you had sort of liberal, pro-Western elites trying to create democratic institutions, you saw the same phenomenon in Cairo, Baghdad, Algiers, even Kabul," he explained. "When you started having the military take over after 1948, it started with a couple of coup d'etats in Syria and then 10 years later the whole region is [run by] colonels, from Algeria all the way to Indonesia."
> 
> Shehadi believes a similar period of change could be happening, but recent history is also full of false starts. The opposition "green movement" that engulfed Iran in the wake of the contested 2009 presidential elections did not spark revolutions around the region, as some had hoped.



LINK


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> * Security
> *
> 
> *Egypt's Hosni Mubarak: following missteps of ousted Tunisian leader?
> *
> By Kristen Chick, Correspondent / January 31, 2011
> The Christian Science Monitor
> 
> LINK
> 
> 
> *Egypt's Hosni Mubarak at first ignored protesters, and then responded with force. 'I don’t think Mubarak learned anything from the Tunisian case,' says one observer.*
> 
> Cairo
> Tunisia’s deposed President Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali seemingly provided the Arab world a textbook in what not to do to avoid being ousted.
> 
> Yet instead of avoiding Mr. Ben Ali's missteps, observers say, Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak appears to be taking pages from his playbook.
> 
> “I don’t think Mubarak learned anything from the Tunisian case,” says Mustapha Kamel El Sayyid, political science professor at the American University in Cairo.
> 
> In both countries, uncontrollable protests only worsened when police tried to forcefully restrain them; police pulled back and an ensuing security vacuum prompted neighborhood residents to patrol their streets to protect their property; and people gave a joyous welcome to the Army when it stepped in to secure streets.
> 
> IN PICTURES: Egyptian protests
> 
> The similarities in the responses may not bode well for the Egyptian leader, or for the United States. While Tunisia’s revolution was a wakeup call to the Arab world and the West, the toppling of Mubarak, America’s most stalwart ally in the Middle East and leader of the most populous Arab country, would have far wider consequences for the region.
> 
> *Similar roots of unrest, anger at police*
> 
> The revolution in Tunisia was sparked by widespread anger not only over rising unemployment and increasingly difficult living circumstances, but the ruling family’s flagrant corruption and the government’s crushing repression. In Egypt, protesters as well have combined economic grievances with a stronger call for freedom and an end to the 30-year-rule of their autocrat.
> 
> The Egyptian protests are moving somewhat faster than in Tunisia, perhaps thanks to the example of the nation whose population is a little over half the size of Egypt’s capital, Cairo. While in Tunisia the demonstrations began as a protest against the government and did not, until the end, coalesce into clear calls for Ben Ali to leave, signs saying “Down with Mubarak” and “Mubarak out” have been a fixture at Egyptian demonstrations since the first one on Jan. 25.
> 
> As the demonstrations got bigger, police in both nations used force to try to put them down, in what Sayyid says was a key factor in pushing demonstrators over the edge.
> 
> *Protesters fought police, welcomed Army*
> 
> Tunisia’s Army did not step in to restore order on the streets until after Ben Ali’s departure. Egypt’s military began patrolling the capital after protesters overwhelmed police on Friday. But in both cases, the people welcomed the military with cheers, hugs, and flowers. The internal security apparatuses of both nations have earned the hatred of the populations after decades of being used to suppress them. Torture at the hands of police is common in Tunisia and Egypt.
> 
> The militaries of both nations, on the other hand, have not been used in domestic repression and are seen as professional. The scenes of Egyptians taking photos of their children with Egyptian Army officers in front of their tanks are almost exact replicas of the scenes that played out over and over again in Tunisia the week before last.
> 
> And when police retreated in both countries, unleashing chaos in the form of looting and violence, residents formed informal neighborhood watch committees to protect their property and families. Even the predominant weapons they used were the same: makeshift sticks and clubs.
> 
> *Mubarak's speech echoes Ben Ali*
> 
> Mubarak at first ignored the protests, not making a formal statement until Friday evening, though the massive uprising began Tuesday. To be sure, that was much swifter than the 11 days it took Ben Ali to make a televised response to the unrest sweeping his nation. But when he did, he both tried to reduce the distance between himself and the people, while at the same time criticizing the protesters. Neither attempt went over well with Egyptians.
> 
> "I understand these legitimate demands of the people and I truly understand the depth of their worries and burdens,” he said, in an attempt to wash away the stereotype among Egyptians that he’s out of touch with their problems. "I'll always be on the side of the poor."
> 
> It was reminiscent of Ben Ali’s final speech, when he dropped the formal Arabic normally used for public addresses and instead pleaded in the Tunisian dialect, “I have understood you.” Both attempts at closing the gap between leader and people were dismissed by the masses.
> 
> *Failed attempts to offer reforms*
> 
> But Mubarak also criticized the protesters for unleashing chaos in Egypt, and said the road to reform was through dialogue, not violence. Like Ben Ali’s first speech, in which he called the protesters terrorists and enraged the nation, Mubarak’s words infuriated the protesters who had taken to the streets peacefully, only to have the police use tear gas, batons, and bullets against them.
> 
> Both leaders attempted to pacify protesters with concessions that were rejected: Ben Ali fired his interior minister and promised more freedoms, but protests only grew stronger. Mubarak last week dissolved his government and appointed a vice president for the first time, yet Egyptians are not satisfied by these moves.
> 
> “With Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt, the concessions were not satisfactory to the people, and they wanted no less than the complete change of the regime,” says Sayyid.
> 
> Many Egyptians hope that Mubarak will take one more cue from Ben Ali, and flee to Saudi Arabia. As read one sign that a woman held on Friday: “Oh Mubarak, Saudi Arabia and Ben Ali are waiting for you."



More on LINK


----------



## vonGarvin

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm hoping that Mubarek quells this little temper tantrum.  I'm hoping that some pundits are correct: once chaos restricts the average Egyptian's ability to eat, sleep and simply live in peace, Mubarek will be able to offer stability and security.

I would much prefer a stable Egypt, such as it is was a couple of weeks ago, to one in which someone will fill that power vacuum.  

As I've said elsewhere, I fear that this isn't so much a case of "vox populi" as it is "vox volumi".


----------



## Redeye

I have the same sentiment (and share Technoviking's).

I'm actually eavesdropping on a coversation right now between an Egyptian expat and a colleague, very interesting.  He sounds concerned about what the implications of removing Mubarak, and what could happen.  He just said, "Obama is being stupid" siding with the protestors. However, he then went on to suggest that it's his public moves that are stupid, but that he's not a stupid man and is likely working behind the scenes to try to stabilize things.

The problem as I see it - and as this gentleman (who, it turns out, is here on vacation and now looking to apply to immigrate - is that democracy as we know it is a foreign concept to most of the world, and isn't something that can be exported.  You can't just expect it to spontaneously appear somewhere it hasn't evovled over the years.  While Mubarak may be a corrupt autocrat, he's provided a measure of stability and constancy, and kept the influence of Islamists at bay.  That said, the Muslim Brotherhood are not fundamentalists in the Al Qaeda or Iranian-style theocracy sense of the term, they're much more moderate, but still, the potential for them being the strong ones emerging from the crisis is there, it's real, and it's not really in anyone's interest.

What the gentleman really stressed was that Egypt's problems are rooted mainly in economics, and a young, often well educated population that hasn't got jobs or good future prospects.  If some way, he suggested, could be worked out for Mubarak to stay (or at least a new leader to emerge that's reasonably similar, with some decent reforms), then the focus must be on the economy and that might turn things around.  It sounds like quite a challenge.  I hope that Western leaders are quietly working at this.  I understand why they would want to appear low-key though, for fear of a situation like the hatred of the Western-installed Shah Reza Pahlavi of Iran.

It's going to be an interesting situation to watch unfold.



			
				Jim Seggie said:
			
		

> In my limited experience WRT international affairs,  I do not think the state of Egypt will be anymore demcratic than that of North Korea once the current government is ousted.
> Nature abhors a vacuum, and I'd be dollars to donuts that the next government will be far more restrictive that the government of Mubarak. Or am I right out to lunch?


----------



## vonGarvin

I'm also concerned that what we are seeing isn't the "whole truth", as it were.  We all know that journalists are in a private venture, with a view to not only inform, but to make money.  "If it bleeds, it leads", and Egypt, at least parts of it, are bleeding.  

Interestingly enough, tonight on my drive home, the CBC news not only talked about the demonstrations, etc, but also about other parts of Cairo.  The journalist mentioned that it was like any other day in that city: traffic jams, people going to and fro, etc.  And one shop keeper who was interviewed mused that "Mubarek is our president, and will remain our president".

As with reporting that we see from Afghanistan, for example, we who have been there know that there is a ground truth over there, and the reported truth.  Same with anyone who happened to be in Toronto last summer.  A foreign observer may have thought that the whole city was ready to explode, when it wasn't, when in fact most Torontonians were just going about their business.  Is that the case in Cairo?  I don't know.

I just felt a chill when some of our politicians here, from afar, were arrogant enough to tell Mubarek what to do.  I think the best to do is to STFU, maybe proclaim such niceties as "be peaceful, let's all get along, etc", but we who profess democracy know better than to listen to the loudest.



Oh, wait, I said that last part with a straight face.....


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> * Airport Fees*
> 
> *First Canadian flight leaves Egypt after airport 'fee'
> *
> 31/01/2011 3:23:44 PM
> CTV.ca News Staff
> 
> LINK
> 
> 
> *About 200 Canadians are in the first group to have escaped the chaos in Egypt in a plane chartered by the Canadian government. But before they could board in Cairo, they were asked to pay the airport a "fee," CTV News has learned.*
> 
> CTV's National Affairs correspondent Lisa LaFlamme, who travelled into Cairo with the first Air Canada Boeing 777, says the scene when they arrived was chaotic. Passengers were processed slowly through security, then held and told they could not go through the glass doors to board the bus that would take them across the tarmac to the plane.
> 
> "Finally, an Egyptian airport person walked around, literally with a hat, asking for American dollars, saying it would be really beneficial for them to thank the people who worked so hard to help them leave the country," LaFlamme told CTV News Channel Monday afternoon.
> 
> The passengers put as much U.S. cash as they had into the hat.
> 
> "It was not enough money, we are told. So someone got on a loudspeaker and said, ‘We need to raise US$2,000 in order to open the glass doors and let you on that bus'," LaFlamme reported.
> 
> "People were stunned, as you can imagine."
> 
> LaFlamme says one person came forward and put in the lion's share of the $2,000. The passengers were then allowed on the plane.
> 
> "For the people here, having been through the city, there have been other experiences of bribes; it's not that unusual, they call it baksheesh. But certainly under the guise of an airlift out of the country, it was a very unusual experience," LaFlamme said.
> 
> Canadian officials have contacted the Egyptian ambassador in Ottawa to raise concerns about the fee.
> 
> The plane, carrying 206 passengers, took off Monday for Frankfurt, Germany, where passengers will have to find their own way back to Canada on their own.
> 
> Another plane that will airlift out more Canadians is expected to arrive in Egypt later Monday.
> 
> The second plane will be chartered through SkyLink Travel, and is scheduled to arrive in Cairo from Amman, Jordan, at 5 p.m. on Jan. 31. It will then take off at 7 p.m., destined for Frankfurt, via Amman.
> 
> Further flights in coming days would be headed to London and Paris, in addition to Frankfurt, Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon told reporters.
> 
> More than 6,000 Canadians are believed to be in Egypt, which is in the midst of massive street protests against autocratic President Hosni Mubarak.
> 
> Cannon said priority for the evacuation flights will be given to people holding a Canadian passport and their immediate family members, defined as a spouse and children.
> 
> Canadians will be required to sign a contract committing to pay their share of the flight cost from Egypt to Europe before they are allowed to board. Passengers will also be required to purchase their own tickets to leave Europe.
> 
> In a statement Monday morning, Cannon said the Canadian government is looking into options for evacuating citizens from cities other than Cairo. In the meantime, for safety reasons, those outside of Cairo should stay where they are, Cannon said.
> 
> Canadians in Egypt hoping to reserve a spot on one of the flights should call the embassy in Cairo at 20 (2) 2791-8700, or call the Foreign Affairs emergency response centre in Ottawa collect at 613-996-8885, or send an email to SOS@international.gc.ca.
> 
> On Sunday, Cannon said to date no Canadians are known to have been injured or killed, but Ottawa is recommending that Canadians leave the country.




Just a little bit of graft.   :-\


----------



## 57Chevy

Even though Egypt is not an oil producer, the Egyptian uprising will have an impact on global energy prices. 

Markets fear higher oil prices
Brent crude topped $101 (U.S.) a barrel today as the uprising in Egypt gathered force, sparking fears of shipping disruptions in the crucial Suez Canal
 In Egypt, a popular uprising. For oil, an unpopular price

The canal, and an adjacent pipeline, continued to operate normally, but speculation mounted nonetheless, also pushing up the price of West Texas Intermediate oil, the U.S. benchmark. 

"The political tension in the Middle East is far from over, and as such the market for oil will be particularly sensitive and subject to upside surges," said Scotia Capital currency strategist Sacha Tihanyi. 

The Suez Canal runs for almost 200 kilometres, and is estimated to have brought Egypt almost $5-billion in revenue last year, according to Reuters. A shutdown of the canal would mean about an extra 10 days for Mideast oil to get to the United States, and 18 days to northern Europe, The Wall Street Journal says. 

Millions of barrels of crude a day pass through the canal, representing an estimated 3 per cent of global output. 

article continues at link... 
                                     (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)


----------



## Jed

George Wallace said:
			
		

> Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.
> 
> 
> Just a little bit of graft.   :-\



This happened to me when I went through the Cairo Airport on the way to Damascus in July 2001. They drove me around on a bus then demanded some Bacsheesh to drop me off at the plane. When I got to the plane some different dudes asked for more to load my bags on the aircraft. I told them to take a hike the second time. I didn't think I would see my luggage again but it did eventually get through.


----------



## FoverF

I wonder how big of a cut Air Canada got from that money?

After all, they probably didn't get their booking fee, their handling charge, their check-in fees, etc   >


----------



## Nfld Sapper

FoverF said:
			
		

> I wonder how big of a cut Air Canada got from that money?
> 
> After all, they probably didn't get their booking fee, their handling charge, their check-in fees, etc   >



I would guess zero as they don't normally fly to Egypt.....


----------



## George Wallace

A rather interesting media report.  A question of TRUST that I don't even think the citizens of Canada have.  We shall see where this one goes:
*Faith in the Armed Forces*


Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.




> *Egypt's army says it won't fire on protesters
> 
> *
> 31/01/2011 6:56:23 PM
> CTV.ca News Staff
> 
> LINK
> 
> 
> *The Egyptian army announced on Monday it would not fire on the tens of thousands of protesters calling for President Hosni Mubarak to step down. *
> 
> An army spokesperson made the announcement on state TV saying, "freedom of expression through peaceful means is guaranteed to everybody."
> 
> Egypt's government is dominated by former military officers, but the opposition parties are not considering the military's announcement a victory.
> 
> Egypt's new vice president, Omar Suleiman, also said that he had been authorized to talk to the opposition about political reform but did not offer details.
> 
> Protests continued as Mubarak brought in a new government Monday, as a determined coalition of opposition groups planned a million-person march to ratchet up the pressure on his regime.
> 
> Mubarak announced the change in government on state television on Monday afternoon.
> 
> The 82-year-old Egyptian leader dumped several prominent businessmen from his cabinet, as well as interior minister Habib el-Adly, who was widely despised for the brutal tactics used by the security forces under his control. Culture Minister Farouq Hosni was also let go.
> 
> Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit and the country's defence minister, Hussein Tantawi, kept their posts in the hastily announced shakeup. Zahi Hawass, a well-known Egyptian archaeologist was given the new posting of state minister for antiquities.
> 
> The announcement of a new government came on the seventh day of protests in Egypt, where Mubarak is blamed for widespread poverty, inflation and various abuses during his 30 years in power.
> 
> Dozens of people have died during the protests and thousands have been injured.
> 
> A coalition of opposition groups is currently organizing a massive march from Tahrir Square, a plaza in downtown Cairo that has become the focal point of the anti-government protests. The goal is to have one million Egyptians take part in the march that is scheduled for Tuesday.
> 
> Opposition groups say they are also in the midst of discussions to determine their strategy for pushing Mubarak from office. Their desire is for Mubarak to step down by Friday.
> 
> Mohamed ElBaradei -- the former head of the UN nuclear watchdog and a Nobel Peace laureate -- may become the lead spokesperson for the many thousands of protesters in Cairo.
> 
> CNN correspondent Fred Pleitgen told CTV News Channel there were thousands of protesters in Tahrir Square on Monday, as they continued their protests against the Mubarak regime.
> 
> Inside Cairo, banks, schools and the stock market remain closed Monday, as are government offices and most private businesses. Garbage collectors and police could be seen on the streets and Cairo subway stations reopened are being closed overnight.
> 
> CTV's Middle East Bureau Chief Martin Seemungal said the Egyptian army was directing traffic in Cairo throughout the morning, and was trying to keep the peace in Tahrir Square.
> 
> There have been rumours that Egyptian police could return to the streets at any time, but Seemungal said they have made few appearances in Cairo on Monday.
> 
> "We are seeing traffic police who have come back in … and so far the interface between the people, the public and the police seems to be good," Seemungal reported to CTV's Canada AM from Cairo on Monday.
> 
> "But again, we know that on Friday there was tremendous friction between the riot police and the people, so we're still waiting to see if they are deployed."
> 
> At the international airport in Cairo, thousands of foreigners tried to book flights out of Egypt. Canada was among the many governments working to get planes into Cairo so that their citizens could fly out.
> 
> With files from The Associated Press



LINK


----------



## 57Chevy

From wikipedia:
Egypt's new vice president: Omar Suleiman

Political role and accession to the vice presidencySuleiman is seen as a very close and trusted ally of President Mubarak, sharing many of his views on key issues such as Iran, Egyptian relations with Israel and the United States, and treatment of the Muslim Brotherhood. Although he was a military man who by law is not a member of Mubarak's National Democratic Party, he preferred suits to military uniforms and is seen as a major link between Egyptian political and military elites. Due to his role in the regional political scene and the lack of an alternative candidate acceptable to Hosni Mubarak, some have speculated that Suleiman will succeed Mubarak as President. In particular, he is seen as the choice of the Egyptian military establishment. On January 29, 2011, he was named Vice President of Egypt during the civil unrest, ending a vacancy in the position that lasted almost 30 years.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
Foreign Ministerretained) Ahmed Aboul Gheit
started his career as Third Secretary in the Embassy of Cyprus, and moved into being the First Secretary for Egypt's Ambassador in the United Nation, Political Consultant in the Egyptian Embassy in Russia in 1984, and moved into being the Ambassador of Egypt in Rome, Macedonia and San Marino, and by 1999 he was the head of Egypt's permanent delegation in the United Nations.

Regarding the Pope Benedict XVI Islam controversy, he said "this was a very unfortunate statement and it is a statement that shows that there is a lack of understanding of real Islam. And because of this we are hopeful that such statements and such positions would not be stated in order to not allow tension and distrust and recriminations to brew between the Muslim as well as the west."

Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit opened Sunday, December 26, 2010, the first Egyptian consulate outside Baghdad in the northern city of Irbil in a one-day visit to Iraq, where he also held talks with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

In a statement to the Qatari newspaper Al-Sharq, Abul-Gheit pointed out that Egypt is the second biggest African economic power with the most powerful army in Africa and is also the most effective diplomatic player in the continent. Consequently, no African country could isolate Egypt from the continent.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
Defence ministerretained) Hussein Tantawi
is a Field Marshal and the outgoing Egyptian minister of defense and military production and commander-in-chief of the Egyptian Armed Forces.

Tantawi received his commission on 1 April 1956 serving in the infantry, and he has participated in the wars of 1956, 1967, and 1973. He has held various commands and been assigned as military attaché to Pakistan. Tantawi became minister of defense and military production and commander-in-chief of the Egyptian Armed Forces in 1991 following the dismissal of Lt. General Yousef Sabry Abo Taleb, becoming the first Egyptian since 1989 with the rank of Field Marshal. In that period, he also participated in the First Gulf War on the coalition side.
Tantawi is being seen as a possible contender for the Egyptian presidency.
Among the commands Tantawi has had, are Commander of the Presidential Guard and Chief of the Operations Authority of the Armed Forces.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
The new posting of State Minister for Antiquities: Zahi Hawass
Hawass has appeared on television specials on channels such as the National Geographic Channel, The History Channel and Discovery Channel.

Return of artifacts to Egypt 
 In July 2003, the Egyptians requested the return of the Rosetta Stone from the British Museum. Hawass, as secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Cairo, told the press, "If the British want to be remembered, if they want to restore their reputation, they should volunteer to return the Rosetta Stone because it is the icon of our Egyptian identity." Referring to antiquities at the British Museum, Hawass said “These are Egyptian monuments. I will make life miserable for anyone who keeps them.” Britain has refused to return them.

Statements about Jews
Hawass has been a long-standing opponent of normalized relations between Israel and Egypt.

In January 2009, Hawass wrote in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat that "The concept of killing women, children and elderly people... seems to run in the blood of the Jews of Palestine" and that "the only thing that the Jews have learned from history is methods of tyranny and torment - so much so that they have become artists in this field." He explained that he was not referring to the Jews' "[original] faith" but rather "the faith that they forged and contaminated with their poison, which is aimed against all of mankind."
In an interview on Egyptian television in April 2009, Hawass stated that "although Jews are few in number, they control the entire world" and commented on the "control they have" of the American economy and the media. He later clarified that he was using rhetoric to explain political fragmentation among the Arabs and that he does not believe in a "Jewish conspiracy to control the world".
Criticism[/color]
Hawass has been widely accused of domineering behaviour, forbidding archaeologists to announce their own findings, and courting the media for his own gain after they were denied access to archaeological sites because, according to Hawass, they were too amateurish. Others however, including several Egyptologists, have said in interviews that most of what Hawass has done for the field was long overdue. Hawass has typically ignored or dismissed his critics, and when asked about it, he indicated that what he does is for the sake of Egypt and the preservation of its antiquities. Hawass has instituted a systematic program for the preservation and restoration of historical monuments, while training Egyptians to improve their expertise on methods of excavation, retrieval and preservation.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
                                     (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)

edited for color troubles  ;D


----------



## George Wallace

I know you took all that from Wikipedia, but it is fairly much unintelligible.  For instance, what the frack is this:



> Return of artifacts to Egypt
> Zahi Hawass displays a Ptolemaic statue discovered at Taposiris Magna on 8 May 2010 Hawass is currently spearheading a movement to return many prominent unique and/or irregularly taken Ancient Egyptian artifacts, such as the Rosetta Stone, the bust of Nefertiti, the Dendera zodiac ceiling painting from the Dendera Temple, the bust of Ankhhaf (the architect of the Khafra Pyramid), the faces of Amenhotep III's tomb at the Louvre Museum, the Luxor Temple's obelisk at the Place de la Concorde and the statue of Hemiunu, nephew of the Pharaoh Khufu, builder of the largest pyramid, to Egypt from collections in various other countries.....



That is just horrid use of the English language.


----------



## 57Chevy

I think the picture from the wiki site got slipped in there  ;D sorry about that.


----------



## George Wallace

57Chevy said:
			
		

> I think the picture from the wiki site got slipped in there  ;D sorry about that.



No.  It is just the way that their topics are formated and the way they show up on this site when copied over.......hard on the eyes and not really that easy to read.


----------



## 57Chevy

from article:
Canadian citizens in Egypt wishing to book a flight out of the country are now asked to contact the Canadian Embassy in Cairo at 20 (2) 2791-8700 or the Foreign Affairs Emergency Operations Centre at 613-996-8885 or 613-943-1055. The government has also increased the number of staff at the call centres.
                                                              ____________________

Canada should take tougher stand on Egypt unrest: Opposition
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper is under pressure to take a stronger stand against his Egyptian counterpart in the wake of massive anti-government protests in the streets of Cairo that have left about 125 people dead and prompted several countries, including Canada, to airlift their citizens out of harm’s way. 

The first legislative session of the year kicked off Monday with questions about Canada’s approach to the crisis in Egypt, with Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff demanding to know whether the Conservatives are “speaking up” for democratic values, freedom of assembly and freedom of speech.

NDP leader Jack Layton later described Canada’s approach to the situation in Egypt as “tepid.” 

“We’d like to see the government of Canada be more active in assisting in a peaceful transition to democracy there, make sure that elections are conducted properly and fairly,” he said. “We’ve been disappointed in the lack of enthusiasm in the government’s response to date.”

article continues....
                                     (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)



			
				George Wallace said:
			
		

> No.  It is just the way that their topics are formated and the way they show up on this site when copied over.......hard on the eyes and not really that easy to read.


Yes you are quite right. 
I have noticed that sometimes when copying an article it will carry over an advertisement 
or some other unwanted doodad and end up in the middle of it all.


----------



## Old Sweat

This article from the Global Security Org newsletter is reproduced under the Fair Dealing Provisions of the Copyright act.

Muslim Brotherhood: Radical Islamists Or Reluctant Democrats?
January 31, 2011

By Robert Tait

For more than 30 years, the specter of the Iranian Revolution, with the overthrow of a strategically vital and friendly government by fundamentalist Islamists, has stalked Western policymakers on the Middle East.

Now, the dark fear of a calamitous repetition has been brought resoundingly to life by the turmoil gripping Egypt.

In place of the pro-Khomeini forces that ushered in the rule of the theocratic mullahs in 1979 Iran, in today's Egypt we have the Muslim Brotherhood -- at least in the world view expressed by some Western leaders.

Even The Name Strikes Fear

The very name -- redolent in liberal minds of an intolerant, unbending brand of religious authoritarianism -- seems to strike dread in their hearts.

Amid temporizing calls for an "orderly transition" from the autocratic -- and pro-Western -- regime of President Hosni Mubarak, U.S. officials have indicated that President Barack Obama harbors misgivings that any new government might be dominated by the Brotherhood or other Islamist forces.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague voiced that concern bluntly on January 30 when he said: "Certainly we would not want to see a government based on the Islamic Brotherhood."

Even actor Omar Sharif, Egypt's most famous international celebrity and co-star of David Lean's epic 1962 film "Laurence Of Arabia," displayed disquiet over the future while calling on Mubarak to resign. "I don't want the Muslim Brotherhood. They were trapped and now are starting to come out," Sharif told Reuters. "They have 20 percent of the population," he added, alluding to the Brotherhood's most recent electoral showing, "and it's frightening for me."

Fears have been further fueled by reports that hundreds of jailed Brotherhood members were among thousands of prisoners who escaped during a mass breakout from four Egyptian prisons over the weekend. They included 34 of the organization's leading figures, arrested in a crackdown by the Mubarak regime as it tried to quell last week’s mass protests.

Founded In The 1920s

It is quite a bogeyman status for what is Egypt's oldest and biggest Islamist organization. Founded in the 1920s by Hassan al-Banna initially to spread Islamic morals and good works, the group later became embroiled in the fight to end British colonial control and drive Western influence out of Egypt. Defined by its slogan, "Islam Is The Solution," its expressed aim is to create a state based on Shari'a law.

Yet, said Fawaz Gerges, the director of the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics, the Brotherhood's radical history should not blind Western policymakers to the fact that it has evolved into a pragmatic modern force. He said he believes the group's main objective is to expel Mubarak -- who has exploited international and domestic fears of its goals to brutally suppress membership.

"The Muslim Brotherhood wants to get rid of Mubarak. Also, the Brotherhood wants to play a key role in the political process, no doubt about it,” Gerges said. “But the Muslim Brotherhood has made it very clear; they are not equipped; they are not ready to govern Egypt, so the question is not whether [the] Muslim Brotherhood wants to seize power.”

Accepting El-Baradei ...

As evidence of the Brotherhood's new realism, commentators point to its acceptance of the Nobel laureate and former International Atomic Energy Agency chief, Muhammad El-Baradei, a conspicuously secular individual, as an opposition figurehead to lead negotiations for Mubarak's removal. The Brotherhood’s leaders have adopted a deliberately low profile and avoided playing a leadership role in the upheaval, analysts say.

Maha Azzam, an associate fellow of the Middle East and North Africa program at the London-based Chatham House think tank, said the organization has taken a moderate reformist line both before and during the current protests:

"The stance of the Muslim Brotherhood has been and is at the moment one of a call for political reform and an inclusive political order that includes all political parties,” Azzam said. “You need to remember also that when El-Baradei was calling for signatures for his Facebook [page] calling for reforms, the Muslim Brotherhood helped him collect those signatures. So there are common interests and I think at this stage, they are willing to work together to bring down the regime."

That tone of reason and compromise is stressed by Mohammed Habib, a former deputy leader of the Brotherhood, who rejected suggestions that the Brotherhood’s aim is to create an Islamic theocracy based on Iran.

"No, of course [not],” Habib said. “We want a democratic government based on genuine political plurality and peaceful circulation of power -- a government which considers the people as the source of power and authority. We believe in separation between, judicial, legislative, and administrative institutions in [the] state."

Relations with the U.S., he said, should remain friendly as long as they are "based on mutual respect and equality, which results in the welfare, peace, and security of both nations."

... But Not Yet As The Face Of New Egypt

Yet, just as principles can be open to compromise, so too does pragmatism have its limits. While the Brotherhood is happy to recognize the liberal El-Baradei as a de facto opposition leader, it is much less certain about him as the long-term face of the new Egypt.

Asked by RFE/RL if the group was supporting El-Baradei as Egypt's next president, Habib pointedly stopped short:

"No. We are of course against the personalization of the issue that way,” he said. “There must be a transition government, a government of salvation. There is no observation against El-Baradei being a member of that government. But as the demonstrators demand, before establishing such a government, the president should resign."

Other Brotherhood figures have dismissed Western fears of an Islamic state. Kamel el-Helbawy, another of the group's senior figures, told Reuters that Egypt was entering a "new era of freedom and democracy." "That's more important than declaring that a 'new Islamist era is dawning,' because I know Islamists would not be able to rule Egypt alone," he said. "We should and would cooperate -- Muslims, leftists, communists, socialists, secularists."

Whither Camp David?

The elephant in the room for Western leaders is the Brotherhood's stance on the 1979 Camp David peace accords with Israel, the issue that cost Mubarak's predecessor, Anwar Sadat, his life to an Islamist assassin. The movement has said it would put the matter to a referendum if it took power.

Habib, perhaps reflecting the Brotherhood's acceptance that it is unlikely to be governing alone, suggested the matter should be decided by a freely elected parliament:

"This is an issue in which any government should return to the legislative institutions that elected by people in free, fair, and transparent elections," he said.

So far, so democratic. Yet inexact as the parallels between Egypt today and Iran of the 1970s may be, Western politicians will be mindful that the Iranian Islamic republic was heralded by democratic means -- in the form of a popular referendum vote. Moderate words alone are unlikely to exorcize the ghosts haunting the West.

Radio Free Afghanistan's Sultan Sarwar contributed to this report 



Source: http://origin.rferl.org/content/muslim_brotherhood_feature/2293237.html

Copyright (c) 2011. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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## George Wallace

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> * The Spirit of Cairo
> *
> 
> *Tunisia protests against Ben Ali left 200 dead, says UN*
> 1 February 2011 Last updated at 07:31 ET
> BBC
> 
> LINK
> 
> 
> *At least 219 people died during the protests that toppled Tunisia's President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali last month, a UN team has said.*
> 
> Team leader Bacre Waly Ndiaye said this figure included 72 people who died during prison riots.
> 
> The government previously said that 78 people had died, although the opposition said the figure was higher.
> 
> Mr Ndiaye was speaking at the end of a week-long human rights team investigation into the unrest.
> 
> He added that the figure was not final and the UN would continue its investigations.
> 
> After a month of protests, Mr Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia.
> 
> A unity government has been sworn in but some protests continue, by demonstrators who want anyone linked to the former regime to leave power.
> 
> Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi has promised elections within six months.
> 
> The toppling of Mr Ben Ali after 23 years in power helped inspire the current anti-government protests in Egypt.
> 
> On Monday, the European Union announced it had frozen the assets of the former leader and his wife.



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## George Wallace

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> *Huge protests fan Egypt unrest*
> 1 February 2011 Last updated at 09:17 ET
> BBC
> 
> LINK
> 
> The BBC's John Simpson describes the scene at Tahrir Square
> 
> 
> *Egyptian protesters are holding huge rallies in Cairo and other cities as they step up their efforts to force President Hosni Mubarak from power.*
> 
> Organisers say they hope one million will come on to the streets of the capital in what is expected to be the biggest demonstration yet.
> 
> The atmosphere has been festive, with protesters singing and chanting.
> 
> Protest leaders, including Mohamed ElBaradei, have called on Mr Mubarak to step down by Friday at the latest.
> 
> "They hope that this will end today or Friday at the latest, and they called the coming Friday 'the Friday of departure', but I hope that President Mubarak will take heed before then and leave the country after 30 years of rule and give the people a chance, and I don't expect that he wants to see more blood," Mr ElBaradei told al-Arabiya TV.
> 
> *Festive atmosphere*
> 
> BBC correspondents in Cairo's Tahrir Square say the crowds there are already much bigger than on the previous seven days of protests.
> 
> Journalists at the scene estimated that hundreds of thousands of people - men, women and children from a cross-section of Egyptian society - have gathered, although in the absence of official estimates, there is no way of finding out the exact numbers.
> 
> Egypt's powerful army has vowed it will not use force against the protesters.
> 
> Many carried placards and banners daubed with anti-Mubarak slogans. Earlier, crowds cheered as an effigy of the president was hung from a set of traffic lights in the square.
> 
> Meanwhile, new Vice-President Omar Suleiman said he would hold cross-party talks on constitutional reform.
> 
> Mr Mubarak reshuffled his cabinet on Monday to try to head off the protests, replacing the widely despised Interior Minister Habib al-Adly.
> 
> But analysts say the army's statement has been a major blow for President Mubarak, and appears to have encouraged protesters, who are flocking to central Cairo in their thousands.
> 
> The feeling that change is coming in Egypt is getting stronger, says the BBC's Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen in Cairo. Too much has happened too quickly to go back to the way things were before, he says.
> 
> The UN human rights chief, Navi Pillay, says 300 people may been killed across the country since the protests began a week ago. They followed an internet campaign and were partly inspired by the ousting of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia last month.
> 
> Egypt has since cut off the internet in the country and text messaging services have been disrupted.
> 
> Google announced late on Monday that it was operating a special service to allow people in Egypt to send Twitter messages by dialling a phone number and leaving a voicemail.
> 
> Meanwhile as tensions mounted, the US state department announced it had ordered all non-emergency US embassy and government personnel to leave Egypt.
> 
> *'We're not leaving'*
> 
> In Egypt's second biggest city, Alexandria, thousands of people have gathered to call for the president to step down.
> 
> Thousands more were out in the streets in Suez, and the Associated Press news agency reported protests in Mansoura, north of Cairo, and the southern cities of Assiut and Luxor.
> 
> With limited bus, train and internal flight services, access to the capital has been restricted.
> 
> Unnamed security officials were reported as saying all roads and public transportation to Cairo had been shut down.
> 
> Some protesters camped out in Tahrir Square on Monday night, saying they would stay there until Mr Mubarak's 30-year rule ended.
> 
> One demonstrator, Tarek Shalabi, told the BBC that groups were camped out in tents or sleeping out in the square, and described the atmosphere as "overwhelming".
> 
> "We're here because we want to make a statement. We're not going until Mubarak steps down," he said.
> 
> He said a stage had been set up where people could go up and make speeches, read out poetry or sing or chant political slogans.
> 
> Meanwhile, crowds of pro-Mubarak demonstrators held counter-protests elsewhere in the capital, raising fears of possible confrontations between the different groups.
> 
> *'Legitimate'*
> 
> On Monday, the Egyptian army said it respected the "legitimate rights of the people".
> 
> Mubarak supporters have been holding counter-demonstrations in the Egyptian capital
> In its statement, carried on Egyptian media, the military said: "To the great people of Egypt, your armed forces, acknowledging the legitimate rights of the people... have not and will not use force against the Egyptian people."
> 
> Correspondents say the announcement is absolutely critical because it takes away a huge measure of uncertainty from the mind of any potential demonstrator.
> 
> A coalition of political opposition groups - incorporating the Muslim Brotherhood, political parties such as that led by Mr ElBaradei, and other prominent figures - has reportedly met, and told the Egyptian government that it will begin talks on its demands only after Mr Mubarak has stood down.
> 
> Meanwhile, the US has despatched a special envoy to Cairo, former ambassador to Egypt Frank Wisner.
> 
> Concerns have also grown about the economy, as global oil prices on Monday topped $100 (£62) a barrel amid fears over the ongoing unrest.
> 
> 
> *At the scene*
> Wyre Davies
> BBC News, Alexandria
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> The great strength of this popular uprising is that it is happening across Egypt.
> 
> Hundreds of thousands of people, young and old, men and women of all faiths are taking to the streets.
> 
> In the northern city of Alexandria the main focus was the famous Ibrahim Mosque in the centre of this historical coastal city.
> 
> Tens of thousands descended on the square. They climbed on roofs and the tops of cars and in trees to get a vantage point, all calling for the removal of Hosni Mubarak.
> 
> I saw one effigy of the president being hanged and another man threw shoes at it. Other people carried aloft a coffin representing the end of the Mubarak regime.
> 
> These are scenes that would have been unthinkable only days ago in such an authoritarian country.



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## The Bread Guy

Shared in accordance with the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the _Copyright  Act_.

*Egypt*

Egypt's Islamists say no talks till Mubarak goes
Reuters,Tue Feb 1, 2011 6:48am EST
Article link


> A coalition of opposition groups have told the Egyptian government that they will only begin talks on a transition to democracy once beleaguered President Hosni Mubarak stands down, the Muslim Brotherhood said on Tuesday.
> 
> "Our first demand is that Mubarak goes. Only after that can dialogue start with the military establishment on the details of a peaceful transition of power," said Mohammed al-Beltagi, a former member of parliament from the Brotherhood.
> 
> Beltagi said the opposition was operating under an umbrella group, the National Committee for Following up the People's Demands, which includes the Brotherhood, the National Association for Change headed by Mohamed ElBaradei, political parties and prominent figures including Coptic Christians.
> 
> Beltagi's comments were echoed by ElBaradei and another opposition official.



Political Vacuum Seen As Egypt's Regime Pressured
Jennifer Ludden, NPR, 31 Jan 11
Article link


> After three decades of systematic and brutal repression in Egypt, there is no obvious successor to President Hosni Mubarak, a challenge that analysts consider cause for both concern and hope.
> 
> "You can't talk about the 'secular opposition' because it doesn't exist," says Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations.
> 
> Mubarak has ruled under a 30-year state of emergency, barring opposition parties from running against him. Credible opponents have been quashed or co-opted, with some small parties allowed to exist to provide an illusion of political plurality.
> 
> But there is no charismatic figure in exile, no single jailed dissident who carries the nation's hopes. As analysts try to assess who might emerge to fill a possible political vacuum, the overriding assessment is that it's anyone's guess.
> 
> Still, here's a list of some key players to watch:
> 
> *Grass-Roots Opposition Groups*
> 
> The protests were originally organized by Internet-based opposition groups, tens of thousands of members strong, who have been laying out their grievances online for several years.
> 
> Their calls for strikes and protests had largely fizzled, until the example of Tunisia's uprising lit a fire among Egyptians. Cook, of the Council on Foreign Relations, was in Cairo last week and calls the street protests a "flash mob uprising." There was no leader — they simply happened. Cook says that poses a problem.
> 
> He believes the Mubarak regime is "counting on a strategy to sow uncertainty among the population," to instill fear of chaos since there is no other obvious leader.
> 
> Nader Hashemi, of the University of Denver, agrees that this is adding to the current confusion, but he also sees a potential long-term benefit. The protests, he says, are "non-ideological. They speak to widespread discontent that exists across social and political classes."
> 
> Hashemi says this could prevent one group from consolidating power in the way that Islamists did during Iran's revolution in 1979.
> 
> *Muslim Brotherhood*
> 
> Though officially banned, this fundamentalist group is Egypt's largest opposition movement — and once held a sizable number of seats in parliament.
> 
> For years, the U.S., Israel and others have worried that in Mubarak's absence, the Brotherhood would convert Egypt into an Islamic regime, reminiscent of Iran's revolution. The group is certainly the most organized opposition movement, able to coordinate through the country's mosques.
> 
> The Brotherhood is believed to have the hard-core support of perhaps 20 percent of Egyptians, and some think it could garner 30 percent or 35 percent of the vote in open elections. But Hashemi says this depends on the alternative.
> 
> "If you open up the political spectrum," he says, "you'll see support for the Muslim Brotherhood diminish."
> 
> Hashemi also believes the Brotherhood today looks less to Iran as a model than to Turkey, where a moderate government has presided over a vibrant democracy and strong economy. The Brotherhood claims among its ranks academics and others who support a secular government.
> 
> The Brotherhood was cautious in its initial approach to the current demonstrations, though its members have been increasingly evident at the protests in recent days. The group has joined others coalescing behind Nobel laureate and opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei. But Cook says that could change.
> 
> "Historically, they've only sought to cooperate with others when they felt it necessary for their own survival," he says. "In the event the state collapses, maybe they won't feel that need to be in a coalition."
> 
> *Mohammed ElBaradei*
> 
> The Nobel laureate and former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog group, began frequent trips back to Egypt from his longtime home in Vienna last year with an aim to foment opposition to the Mubarak regime. A coalition of opposition groups has coalesced around him, calling themselves the National Coalition for Change.
> 
> "What ElBaradei has succeeded at is articulating an agenda that a lot of Egyptians could support," says Michele Dunne, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a co-chair of the Working Group on Egypt.
> 
> Hashemi, of the University of Denver, says ElBaradei is seen as a neutral compromise figure, and could play an important role in any political transition. Still, ElBaradei hasn't explicitly said he would stand in elections if they were held, and it's not clear how much support he would garner.
> 
> "He's more well-known outside Egypt than inside," Hashemi says.
> 
> *Omar Suleiman*
> 
> Suleiman's recent appointment as vice president was the first sign that President Mubarak may intend to concede power, but few believe this key Mubarak ally can play anything but a transitional role, if that. He is close to the army, and could prove pivotal as the dance between soldiers and protesters plays out in the streets.
> 
> But as a longtime former director of intelligence, "Frankly he's associated with human rights abuses, with widespread torture," Dunne says.
> 
> For him to survive as a transitional leader, she says, would depend on what promises he might make: a constitutional change to allow opposition? Free elections by a specified date?
> 
> On the other hand, Cook says he can imagine Suleiman declaring a continued state of emergency and trying to put off elections now scheduled for September.
> 
> *Ayman Nour*
> 
> In 2005, Nour was the first true opposition figure allowed to contest elections, a move seen as a bow to pressure from the Bush administration. The official results gave him 12 percent of the vote, though the vote was not considered free and fair.
> 
> Shortly after, Nour was tried on trumped-up charges and sentenced to five years in prison. He was released in 2009.
> 
> The Mubarak regime "worked hard and somewhat successfully at besmirching his reputation," Dunne says. "But I do think he gets a certain amount of begrudging admiration from people in Egypt for the fact that he was targeted by the regime over many years and never abandoned his principles."
> 
> Still, whether Nour can reorganize his political party, El Ghad, and foster a broad base of support remains to be seen.


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## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *JORDAN *
> 
> *Jordan's king sacks PM amid protests
> *
> Last Updated: Tuesday, February 1, 2011 | 10:07 AM ET
> The Associated Press
> CBC
> 
> 
> LINK
> 
> 
> Jordan's King Abdullah II fired his government Tuesday in the wake of street protests and asked an ex-prime minister to form a new cabinet, ordering him to launch immediate political reforms.
> 
> The dismissal follows several large protests across Jordan — inspired by similar demonstrations in Tunisia and Egypt — calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Samir Rifai, who is blamed for a rise in fuel and food prices and slowed political reforms.
> 
> A Royal Palace statement said Abdullah accepted Rifai's resignation tendered earlier Tuesday.
> 
> The king named Marouf al-Bakhit as his prime minister-designate, instructing him to "undertake quick and tangible steps for real political reforms, which reflect our vision for comprehensive modernization and development in Jordan," the palace statement said.
> 
> Al-Bakhit previously served as Jordan's premier from 2005-07.
> 
> The king also stressed that economic reform was a "necessity to provide a better life for our people, but we won't be able to attain that without real political reforms, which must increase popular participation in the decision-making."
> 
> *Correct mistakes of past, king instructs*
> 
> He asked al-Bakhit for a "comprehensive assessment … to correct the mistakes of the past." He did not elaborate. The statement said Abdullah also demanded an "immediate revision" of laws governing politics and public freedoms.
> 
> When he ascended to the throne in 1999, Abdullah vowed to press ahead with political reforms initiated by his late father, King Hussein. Those reforms paved the way for the first parliamentary election in 1989 after a 22-year gap, the revival of a multiparty system and the suspension of martial law in effect since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
> 
> But little has been done since. Although laws were enacted to ensure greater press freedom, journalists are still prosecuted for expressing their opinion or for comments considered slanderous of the king and the royal family.
> 
> Some gains been made in women's rights, but many say they have not gone far enough. Abdullah has pressed for stiffer penalties for perpetrators of so-called "honour killings," but courts often hand down lenient sentences.
> 
> Still, Jordan's human rights record is generally considered a notch above that of Tunisia and Egypt. Although some critics of the king are prosecuted, they frequently are pardoned and some are even rewarded with government posts.
> 
> It was not immediately clear when al-Bakhit will name his cabinet.
> 
> Al-Bakhit is a moderate politician, who served as Jordan's ambassador to Israel earlier this decade.
> 
> He holds similar views to Abdullah in keeping close ties with Israel under a peace treaty signed in 1994 and strong relations with the United States, Jordan's largest aid donor and longtime ally.



Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2011/02/01/jordan-king-abdullah-government.html#ixzz1CirNxZX6


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## The Bread Guy

Is Syria next? Facebook and Twitter campaigns call for protests in Damascus in a 'day of rage'
Elizabeth A. Kennedy, Canadian Press, 1 Feb 11
Article link


> Syrians are organizing campaigns on Facebook and Twitter that call for a "day of rage" in Damascus this week, taking inspiration from Egypt and Tunisia in using social networking sites to rally their followers for sweeping political reforms.
> 
> Like Egypt and Tunisia, Syria suffers from corruption, poverty and unemployment. All three nations have seen subsidy cuts on staples like bread and oil. Syria's authoritarian president has resisted calls for political freedoms and jailed critics of his regime.
> 
> The main Syrian protest page on Facebook is urging people to protest in Damascus on Feb. 4 and 5 for "a day of rage." It says the goal is to "end the state of emergency in Syria and end corruption."
> 
> The number of people who have joined Facebook and Twitter pages calling for protests on Friday and Saturday is still relatively small, and some are believed to live outside the country.
> 
> Social networking sites were integral to rallying protesters in Tunisia and Egypt.
> 
> Facebook is banned in Syria, which makes organizing more difficult — even though many Syrians manage to access the social networking site anyway. More than 2,500 people have joined the page calling for protests on Feb. 4-5, with another 850 joining a page in favour of President Bashar Assad ....


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## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *Unrest in the Arab World
> *
> 
> *Europe's Double Dealing with Despots
> *
> 02/01/2011
> Spiegel ONLINE
> 
> LINK
> 
> *The European Union sanctioned Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko on Tuesday. But when it comes to autocrats in the Arab world, Brussels still hasn't taken off its kid gloves. The EU needs to be more decisive in its support of human rights. *
> 
> The European Union is capable of bearing down. When it wants to. On Tuesday, EU foreign ministers gathered in Brussels agreed to harsh sanctions against Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko as a result of his crackdown against the opposition in December. The president and 150 members of his regime are no longer allowed to travel to the EU.
> 
> But when it comes to the regime of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Europe's leading diplomats are not nearly as decisive. Despite a week of protests which have seen hundreds of thousands of Egyptians take to the streets to demand an end to Mubarak's reign, EU foreign ministers have stopped short of adopting a firm position. Instead, the group preferred to call for "free and fair elections."
> 
> "We don't yet know how the situation in Egypt will develop," one foreign minister described the dilemma. "We can't support one side over the other."
> 
> *Worried about Chaos *
> 
> The EU's indecision when it comes to Egypt was on full display at the meeting. Of those present it was German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle who had most recently visited the Middle East: He arrived directly from Israel where he had met with his counterpart Avigdor Lieberman. Westerwelle told his EU colleagues that the Israeli government is worried about the chaos in Egypt, which borders Israel to the south. Egypt, after all, was the first Arab state to sign a peace treaty with Israel and Hosni Mubarak's regime is the Jewish state's most important ally in the region. According to Westerwelle, Israel is especially afraid that radical Islamists could seize power in Cairo.
> 
> Jean Asselborn, foreign minister of Luxembourg, was quick to counter. Israel's concerns, he said, are certainly understandable, but the country could have contributed to the stabilization of the Middle East had it not been so stubborn when it came to negotiating peace with the Palestinians.
> 
> The EU, Asselborn said, has paid too little attention to the needs of its people and noted that Brussels had supported Mubarak's moderate regime in order to hinder radicals. The Luxembourg minister did not, however, go so far as to call this a mistake. "We wanted stability because stability means peace," he said.
> 
> These days, however, one can no longer speak of stability in the region. The Tunisians have driven out their long-time dictator and the Egyptians are defying Mubarak -- and the EU finds itself confronted with the question of whether it does too little for human rights across the globe.
> 
> Indeed, despite the EU's commitment to human rights at home, things look murkier in practice abroad. Egypt, where elections are neither free nor fair and where regime opponents are regularly tortured, received €150 million from Brussels. The European Commission wants to send refugees back to Libya, even though their security under dictator Muammar Gadhafi is far from guaranteed.
> 
> *Robust Dialogue*
> 
> And last week, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso received Uzbekistan dictator Islam Karimov, primarily a function of the EU's interest in Uzbek natural gas reserves. There wasn't even a press conference following the meeting -- Karimov threatened to cancel his visit should he be required to speak to reporters. After the meeting, Barroso said he prefers "robust direct dialogue" and said he had demanded in private that Karimov uphold human rights.
> 
> Foreign policy officials from the Commission point out that so-called "human rights dialogues" have been ongoing with many of these countries for years. They argue that extensive exchanges with Europe had, in part, helped whet Tunisians' appetite for freedom and democracy. "If we were to make human rights the be-all and end-all we would have to sever our diplomatic relationships with half the world," said one high-ranking EU diplomat.
> 
> That may well be true when it comes to the period prior to the recent uprisings. But since then, the EU has shown no signs of shedding its hesitancy. It took Brussels until last Monday to freeze the assets of Ben Ali and his wife -- more than two weeks after Ben Ali turned his back on Tunisia. Hardly a sign of newfound decisiveness.



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## George Wallace

An Interactive map of the Region:

http://www.spiegel.de/flash/flash-25185.html


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## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *Looking Ahead for German-Egyptian Relations
> *
> 
> *Berlin Plans for Post-Mubarak Era
> *
> 02/01/2011
> By Severin Weiland in Berlin
> SPIEGEL ONLINE
> 
> LINK
> 
> *After years of turning a blind eye, politicians in Germany are admitting that Berlin did too little to pressure Egypt's authoritarian regime to undertake democratic reforms. President Hosni Mubarak had long been considered a guarantor of peace in the Middle East. Now the German political establishment is considering what the next Egyptian government might bring.*
> 
> Hosni Mubarak admires Germany. The 82-year-old Egyptian president has made a number of official visits, meeting with the German president, the chancellor and the foreign minister. Notably, he has also come here twice for operations in German hospitals. In March, he had his gall bladder operated on in Heidelberg, just one day after meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel.
> 
> It was an expression of the trust he has -- in German medicine and in the country itself.
> 
> For many years, German-Egyptian relations appeared to have few problems. Above all, they were stable. Because of its strategic situation in the Middle East, Egypt has long been a focal point of German development policy.
> 
> Mubarak may have ruled his country in an authoritarian manner, but many politicians in Germany considered that to be a lesser evil. They talked about the issue of human rights violations, as was the case during Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle's first meeting with Mubarak last year in Cairo. But to most Western diplomats, the Mubarak system was considered a bulwark against fundamentalist Islam. And Egypt is the only Arab state that has signed a peace treaty with Israel. In a powder keg region, it has been one of the most reliable and calculable powers.
> 
> *West Faces Shift in Policy *
> 
> Now, though, the man has ruled the country for 30 years is at risk of getting deposed. Nor can one rule out the possibility any longer that he may soon be forced into exile as recently happened to Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. And that leaves Germany -- and the entire West -- facing a significant shift in its foreign policy. The mass protests, which are set to grow with calls for a million strong march on Tuesday, have forced Western leaders to strike a new note. Over the weekend, Chancellor Merkel, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron called on Mubarak to embark on a process of transformation "which should be reflected in a broad-based government and in free and fair elections."
> 
> German politicians are trying to find a balance between dealing with a Mubarak government that is still in power and an opposition that is becoming more open and self-confident.
> 
> "We are not standing on a domestic policy side, but rather on the side of values, human rights, democracy, civil rights, freedom of assembly, freedom of opinion and freedom of the press," said Westerwelle, who is currently visiting Israel. The foreign minister is there for long-planned German-Israeli government consultations.
> 
> The situation in the region, which could have serious implications for Israel's security if Mubarak falls, has been a major topic in talks between Westerwelle, Merkel and their Israeli colleagues. Both Netanyahu and Merkel expressed their concern about the developments after a meeting on Monday.
> 
> "In a state of chaos, an organized Islamic group can take over a country. It has happened. It happened in Iran," Netanyahu said. "A takeover of oppressive regimes of extreme Islam violates human rights, grinds them to dust … and in parallel also poses a terrible danger to peace and stability."
> 
> Merkel urged Mubarak to show restraint. "The same applies here as we would say to any other country: Freedom of speech is necessary. Peaceful treatment of demonstrators is necessary. We must demand that and we will continue to demand that," she said.
> 
> *Perceived Stability on the Nile *
> 
> Foreign policy experts in Germany's main political parties in Berlin are taking a very self-critical view this week of past relations with Egypt.
> 
> "German politicians also supported authoritarian regimes like Mubarak's because of a perceived stability -- out of fear of a possible accession to power by Islamic forces," said Kerstin Müller, a former deputy minister in the German Foreign Ministry with the Green Party. "As part of that, they turned a blind eye when the regime committed serious human rights violations."
> 
> Ruprecht Polenz, the head of the foreign affairs committee in the German federal parliament with Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, told SPIEGEL ONLINE: "Mentions of reforms and contempt for human rights always played a role in Germany-Egyptian talks -- even if, unfortunately, there were no obvious improvements in the reality."
> 
> So what will happen now? "No matter what, the European governments and the European Union must agree to new policies," said Rolf Mützenich, the foreign policy spokesman in parliament for the center-left Social Democratic Party. But he also added that conclusions shouldn't be drawn too quickly. "We still don't know what consequences the popular uprisings in the individual countries will have," he said.
> 
> But there's a bigger fear lurking in the back of politicians' minds: What will happen if the Islamist movement capitalizes on the protests? Or if it becomes part of the next government? If the West calls for democratic elections, then it must also be prepared to accept the results, insofar as they are free and fair, said Mützenich.
> 
> "The attitude during the last election in the Palestinian territories did serious damage to our image in the Arab nations," the Social Democrat said, referring to the electoral victory by the radical Islamist Hamas in the Gaza Strip in 2006, which most governments in the West refused to accept. "That's why we should not discriminate against this popular uprising by suggesting it is Islamically motivated," he advised.
> 
> *'The Maladministration Cannot Be Eliminated Overnight'*
> 
> But many German politicians are already considering a worst-case scenario in which Islamic forces will come to power after Mubarak. "A government in Egypt that could possibly include the Muslim Brotherhood must accept the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty and use it as its working basis," the Green Party's Müller said.
> 
> Christian Democrat Polenz said he would like to see the West reiterate to Egypt that the country must urgently undertake democratic reforms and adopt the rule of law.
> 
> The West should also offer support, he added: "Under three conditions: a peaceful transition, free and fair elections and press -- and freedom of speech." In that sense, he said, the West should actively encourage Islamist parties to participate in the political process in Egypt, with the precondition that they are willing to abide by the law and agree to eschew violence and allow themselves to be voted out of office if that is the will of voters.
> 
> "Why is that so important?" Polenz said. "Because it is the only way that Islamist parties, who have rightfully criticized the authoritarian regime, can be integrated into the process."
> 
> If the Islamist parties were closed out of the process, he believes, then their criticism in the future would be directed at the democratic system. "Ultimately," the CDU politician says, looking ahead to the post-Mubarak era, "the maladministration cannot be eliminated overnight."




More on LINK


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## OldSolduer

Motivation:


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *A Million-Strong Festival for Freedom
> *
> 
> *Masses Celebrate Mubarak's Waning Power
> *
> 02/01/2011
> By Matthias Gebauer in Cairo
> SPIEGEL ONLINE
> 
> LINK
> 
> *Tuesday saw the largest protests yet in Cairo as tens of thousands took to the streets demanding that President Hosni Mubarak step down. As demonstrators partied in the city center, the opposition vowed not to talk to the regime before Mubarak leaves the country.*
> 
> Was it hundreds of thousands? A half-million? Or even more? On Tuesday, no one in the Egyptian capital really cared to guess how many people had turned out; estimates put the figure as high as 2 million.
> 
> The vast number of people had already begun gathering by mid-day with their giant placards on central Cairo's Tahrir (Liberation) Square. The crowd grew by the hour, with ever more protesters arriving at the scene. They came in groups, many holding posters or signs, going straight to the heart of their revolution. This has to do with everything, they said, and they had one goal: to depose President Hosni Mubarak.
> 
> "We can sense the smell of freedom, and no more compromises are possible with Mubarak," said furniture-shop owner Mustafa Amer. "And we will stay as long as it takes for Mubarak to finally leave the country." Amer said it didn't matter to him if a million people had been there or 500,000.
> 
> The "march of millions," served as a powerful indicator of just how strong opposition to the president has grown and how weak Mubarak himself has become. In a matter of only days, a full popular movement has grown out of protests that commenced last week with tens of thousands of mostly young male students. On Tuesday, old men, supported by younger ones, struggled to make their way to a square overflowing with people. Women with children also joined in. Entire families came to protest against Egypt's man in power. One day after the army announced it would not use force against the protesters, the president, after 30 years in power, finds himself in a weaker position and more isolated than ever before.
> 
> The protesters' dream, at least their first one, appeared to have been fulfilled on Tuesday. The eroding state machinery was unable to stop them -- and that despite tremendous effort. The government again cut access to the Internet in Egypt, it stopped trains traveling to Cairo and it blocked roadways leading into the capital city. In the end, though, the protesters succeeded in sending an impressive signal out with the mass event -- both to their own country and to the world.
> 
> Now the protesters are hoping that Mubarak will come to fear the opposition and that the balance of power has shifted in their favor. "Now it is just a matter of time," said Safwan Kehr. The university professor had come to Tahrir Square together with his daughter Nadean and a friend. "The sooner he goes, the faster we will be able to finally transform this country," he said.
> 
> *A Kind of Freedom Festival *
> 
> It is important to the demonstrators that their voices are heard abroad. Again and again, they approach foreign reporters asking them for support. "Please tell the truth about how many of us there are here," one young man beseeches. He had just seen the official version of events on state television. Instead of showing video of the masses gathered on Tahrir Square, the channel preferred to broadcast images from pro-Mubarak rallies throughout much of the day. In the afternoon, state TV did finally mention that there had been protests in Cairo, but said only 5,000 people had participated. While such reporting isn't likely to weaken the demonstrations, it does show to what degree Mubarak's regime is still willing to ignore reality.
> 
> Those on Liberation Square, for their part, are already celebrating as though Mubarak was gone. The bloody conflicts of earlier in the week have given way to a kind of freedom festival. There are men distributing sesame breads and dates, others deliver package after package of bottled water. Volunteers collect the waste. "Give a donation for the president," says one of the men, carrying a plastic garbage bag. "We'll soon be giving him all the garbage as a going-away present." Just a few days ago, such a joke would have been cause for arrest and abuse. On Tuesday, laughter was the only response.
> 
> The remnants of state power spent the day circling low over the square, in the form of a helicopter. The demonstrators below shook their fists and shouted "Go away! Go away!" whenever the pilot passed over. The chant has become something of a slogan for the protest movement, and most often it is reserved for Mubarak. The military, which has parked tanks on the square, has essentially become part of the revolt. The soldiers on duty are primarily focused on crowd control and on searching the arriving protesters for weapons.
> 
> *'Mubarak No Longer Has a Future'*
> 
> While the people of Cairo chant in the city streets, opposition leaders have indicated that they will not enter into a compromise deal with Mubarak. Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who is seen as a likely leader of a transitional government, said on Tuesday that there would be no talks with the current regime before Mubarak leaves the country. The crowds on Liberation Square cheered his remarks. Not long later, the head of the influential opposition group Muslim Brotherhood took to the airwaves. He too said that Mubarak's departure is the precondition for dialogue with the regime.
> 
> The resistance leaders' hardline stance mean that Mubarak's stratagem -- perhaps his last -- has conclusively failed. Just hours before the beginning of the giant demo, Mubarak had his newly appointed vice president, Omar Suleiman, address the country on state TV. Suleiman said late on Monday evening that Mubarak had authorized him to hold talks with all political groups. He even announced far-reaching changes to the Egyptian constitution. But his announcement, which would have caused a sensation had it been made before the revolution in Tunisia, came much too late.
> 
> Probably the most important message from Tuesday's protests was that the popular uprising is now unstoppable. "A few days ago, I might have agreed to a compromise," one demonstrator told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "But when I saw the crowds this morning, I understood that Mubarak no longer has a future."
> 
> The president himself is keeping a very low profile. Even his appearance on state television offers no proof that he is still in Cairo. Some observers believe that the once omnipotent ruler is already in Sharm el-Sheikh on the Red Sea. From there, it would only be a short boat ride to Saudi Arabia, where he could claim asylum.
> 
> *A Swift Exit? *
> 
> But nobody can predict exactly what Mubarak's demise might look like. The news that the president has left the country could be broadcast at any minute. After Tuesday's events, the US can no longer ignore the massive protests, even if up until now it was still clearly hoping to arrange a dignified exit for its close ally Mubarak, possibly through swift new elections without his participation. One of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's top diplomats is currently negotiating behind the scenes, after being hastily flown in. But the US State Department can hardly recommend any other course of action for Mubarak than a swift departure.
> 
> The demonstrators, for their part, plan to continue. Admittedly, the planned march to the presidential palace did not take place on Tuesday, at least not before sundown. Nevertheless, Tahrir Square will remain in the hands of the opposition. By Friday at the latest, the protesters want to show their power by marching to Mubarak's stronghold -- assuming the despot hasn't thrown in the towel by then



More on LINK


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## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *Middle East *
> 
> *Egypt’s Economy Is Near Paralysis
> *
> By NICHOLAS KULISH
> Published: January 31, 2011
> The New York Times
> 
> LINK
> 
> *ALEXANDRIA, Egypt — Egypt’s economy approached paralysis on Monday as foreign commerce, tourism and banking all but halted, placing acute pressure on President Hosni Mubarak to find a way out of the weeklong chaos. *
> 
> International companies closed plants and sent workers home or out of the country; food staples went undelivered to stores; and banks remained closed during a week when many Egyptians, who are routinely paid monthly, would receive their paychecks.
> 
> A major ratings agency cut the country’s bond rating, while shortages led to rising prices. And poorer Egyptians told of cutting back to just two meals a day to cope.
> 
> The protests’ crippling effects could give Mr. Mubarak and his new cabinet perhaps only a few weeks to re-establish order before shortages, rising unemployment and a deep crisis set in, economists said.
> 
> “It might give impetus to more demonstrations and more riots in the streets,” said Ahmed Galal of the Economic Research Forum in Cairo. “I think the challenge is going to be in the next couple of weeks, and it is going to mount in a week or two.”
> 
> Average citizens seemed to agree.
> 
> “We can take this for one more week,” said Samih Hammam, 38, a teacher with a wife and three children who should have been paid on Jan. 25 and is still waiting. “After this, it’s going to create more chaos and problems, more violent reactions.”
> 
> Entrenched corruption, the depredations of police forces and demands for free elections have all helped drive the protest movement, but for many Egyptians, rising prices and unemployment were the strongest motivations to stand up to the government. Now even many of those with jobs are not being paid, adding an edge of desperation to the rage.
> 
> “I’m going to try to eat the cheapest foods, ful and falafel,” said Azza Aladin, 47. Ful is a simple dish of beans. A single mother with six children, Ms. Aladin said she had been forced to cut out a meal a day.
> 
> Many Egyptians are paid on the last or the first day of the month, and their wages often come in cash-filled envelopes. With A.T.M.’s empty and banks closed, many bosses just cannot pay.
> 
> Muhammad Soudan, 54, had a banner on his car at Monday’s protest in Alexandria that read “I would rather live hungry than die in fear.” It is not an abstract notion here.
> 
> Mr. Soudan runs a construction company that employs 35 people. To make payroll with the banks closed, he borrowed money from friends. But his business has larger problems. He is unable to get building materials he needs from abroad, and he expects many of the larger companies he relies on for business to cut back. “If it goes on like this, my company is going to die,” Mr. Soudan said.
> 
> The American giants Coca-Cola and General Motors are pulling back or pulling out, as are German companies like Volkswagen and the retailer Metro, as well as the Danish shipping and oil company A. P. Moller-Maersk.
> 
> “Tourists are flying away; the capital is going to fly away as well,” said Gehan Saleh, an economist at the Arab Academy for Science and Technology here. With the stock market down roughly 17 percent since Jan. 24, people will move their savings into safe havens, turning nest eggs into dollars or euros, Ms. Saleh said.
> 
> Ms. Saleh, a 39-year-old mother of four children, was herself facing an increasingly common problem for Egyptians: getting cash. With the grocery store refusing to take credit cards, she tried the four A.T.M.’s in her neighborhood and found them all empty, leaving her with no money in hand.
> 
> Alaa Ezz, secretary general of the Confederation of Egyptian European Business Associations here, said: “It’s not like in Europe; we walk around here with wads of cash in our pockets. Very few people use credit cards or A.T.M. cards. We’re a cash society.”
> 
> Large retailers, meanwhile, are worrying about where to go with their huge stockpiles of cash from the panic buying that has cleared the shelves, with no banks to take these small fortunes at a moment when there are no police on the streets.
> 
> The bank closings were also affecting international business, Mr. Ezz said, with importers unable to get letters of credit. He said, however, that the subsidized food supply would be ensured by strategic stockpiles and that the government was moving to get curfew exemptions for deliveries of many necessities.
> 
> The Suez Canal, a vital transit route for oil to Europe, remained open on Monday. And although international oil companies are closing local offices, evacuating nonessential workers and family dependents and telling their Egyptian employees to stay home, there has been little impact so far on exploration and production activities centered in the Gulf of Suez, the Western Desert and the Nile Delta.
> 
> One exception is Statoil, a Norwegian company, which has halted offshore drilling in the El Dabaa area west of the Nile Delta.
> 
> Fuel deliveries were not arriving at many gas stations in Alexandria. Lines of cars at those that still had fuel, long on Sunday, were growing even longer on Monday; four lines stretched out of one station and snarled traffic on the coastal road.
> 
> Between curfews, checkpoints of armed civilians and fears of looting, transportation has emerged as a major problem. Ahmed Hassan, whose distribution company serves major consumer-goods companies like Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola, said he was not letting any of his 350 trucks nationwide onto the roads.
> 
> “We cannot let our people jeopardize their lives,” Mr. Hassan said. Instead his workers were taking shifts to ensure that all facilities and vehicles were guarded 24 hours a day against looters and thieves.
> 
> According to Mr. Hassan, Coca-Cola had inquired about delivering water for its Dasani brand, while Procter & Gamble was concerned about the need for Pampers diapers, but he said it could not be done. “There are misunderstandings, people are getting excited, some of them have guns,” he said. “My first responsibility is to my workers.”
> 
> The disruptions have made life harder for Egyptians already struggling to get by. Ahmad Ismail, 25, a real estate agent, supports his parents. He said safety concerns and disruptions to phone and Internet services meant he had not worked since Friday, and like others had not received his paycheck.
> 
> “Things are tough, but I’m more concerned about getting this government out of power,” he said. “We can get by on less.”
> 
> 
> David D. Kirkpatrick contributed reporting from Cairo, and Clifford Krauss from Houston.



More on LINK


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *Europe & the World
> *
> *Markets *
> 
> 
> *Egyptian crisis strikes Central Europe
> *
> presseurop
> 
> LINK
> 
> 
> “Chaos in Egypt: markets fall as oil rises,” reports Hospodářské noviny. The daily explains that markets in Central and Eastern Europe, which investors view as still in the process of development and thus more vulnerable, have been hard-hit by the Egyptian crisis. As a result, “the Czech crown and Hungarian forint have begun to slide.” Investors  are panicking because the chaos in Egypt could shut down the Suez Canal, which is the conduit for 2.6% of the world’s oil production. That may not seem like a lot, notes Hospodářské noviny, but the canal remains very important to Europe. At more than 100 dollars a barrel, oil prices have reached a two-year high. A global increase in the cost of food and textiles has also been forecast, because Egypt is the world’s main wheat importer and one of its principle exporters of cotton.



More on LINK


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *Asia Pacific *
> 
> *Why a nervous China aims to shield citizens from Egypt news
> *
> By Peter Ford, Staff writer / February 1, 2011
> The Christian Science Monitor
> 
> LINK
> 
> *China has limited coverage of the Egypt protest to its Xinhua news service and warned last week that websites that did not censor comments about Egypt would be 'shut down by force.'*
> 
> *Beijing *
> 
> Like governments around the world, China’s rulers are watching the unrest in Egypt with bated breath – nervous about the outcome, but powerless to affect it.
> 
> “China is worried about chaos, because that is bad for Egypt and for other countries,” says Yin Gang, a Middle East expert at the China Academy of Social Sciences. “China’s concern is the same as America’s … but China has very little influence in the Middle East.”
> 
> Beijing has been studiously neutral in the face of mass demonstrations in Cairo and other Egyptian cities calling for President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation.
> 
> Asked on Tuesday for China’s views on the new Egyptian government that has promised economic and political reforms, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei would say only that “we hope that Egypt will return to stability and normal order as soon as possible.”
> 
> The Chinese authorities are even more concerned about preserving stability and normal order at home. Apparently fearing that Chinese citizens be inspired by Egyptian protesters, the government has issued strict orders limiting press coverage of the unrest.
> 
> “All media nationwide must use Xinhua’s reporting on the Egyptian riots,” read a directive issued last Friday, referring to the state run Xinhua news agency. “It is strictly forbidden to translate foreign media coverage,” the order said, warning that websites that did not censor comments about Egypt would be “shut down by force.”
> 
> “One major reason for the censorship is that Chinese officials do not know the direction of the protests,” says Russell Leigh Moses, a political analyst in Beijing. “Reporting depends almost entirely on direction from the leadership and uncertainty never produces consensus in Beijing.”
> 
> “You can see from the media that China is keeping a very low-key tone on this issue, and not giving it a lot of coverage,” says Prof. Yin. “That shows the government’s intentions.”
> 
> “They are nervous,” says Xiao Qiang, who monitors the Chinese Internet at the University of California at Berkeley. “They are more than usually tight, to ensure that only the Xinhua version is there.”
> 
> One Twitter-like microblog site did not return results for a search of “Egypt” on Tuesday, but otherwise the government order appeared to be only erratically imposed. The Hong Kong based Phoenix TV network, for example, which can be seen on the mainland but which is not subject to Beijing’s censorship, has been broadcasting live from Cairo without interference.
> 
> Almost all of the news reports on Internet news portals is coming from Xinhua, which provides straightforward and neutral news stories, often focusing on the plight of hundreds of Chinese citizens trapped at Cairo airport. But reader comments on those stories were not being deleted.
> 
> Many of those comments seemed directed as much at the political situation in China as at events in Egypt. “Don’t look down at ordinary people: history is written by them,” read one comment on the popular Netease portal. “Even though a struggle does some damage for a while, it can make the government cleaner and more transparent in the long run and push democratization,” suggested another.
> 
> Though China does not consider that it has any strategic interests in the Middle East to match US concerns, it does depend on the region for nearly half of its imported oil and is thus anxious that the political upheaval in Tunisia and Egypt should not spread to oil producing nations.
> 
> At the same time, China’s trade with Egypt has increased threefold over the past five years to reach $6.96 billion in 2010, making Egypt China’s second-largest trading partner in Africa and the Middle East, excluding its oil suppliers.



More on LINK


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## The Bread Guy

Yemen parliament to convene ahead of mass protest
AFP, 1 Feb 11
Article link 


> SANAA — Yemen's president, facing protests demanding his resignation, has called a meeting of the country's parliament and consultative council for Wednesday, an official said.
> 
> President Ali Abdullah Saleh is expected to address the special meeting ahead of a "day of rage" that civil society organisations have called for Thursday.
> 
> The official gave no details on the expected substance of Saleh's remarks.
> 
> Facing protests that have multiplied since the mid-January ouster of Tunisia's president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali following a wave of demonstrations there, Saleh has taken measures aimed at soothing popular discontent.
> 
> On Monday, *he ordered the creation of a fund to employ university graduates and extend social security coverage*, the official Saba news agency reported.
> 
> The fund aims to help 25 percent of university graduates facing unemployment this year and the remainder in the future. But the agency did not specify the budget allocated to the fund or how graduates would be employed.
> 
> Unemployment was a key issue in the protests that toppled Ben Ali.
> 
> *Saleh also decided to exempt university students from the rest of their tuition fees for this academic year, and charged the high council of universities to reduce the cost of a degree*, Saba said.
> 
> And he directed that "social security services be extended to 500,000 more people from needy families," Saba said ....



More on link, in Yemen News Agency statement here and via _Wall Street Journal_ here.


----------



## Redeye

CNN is now reporting a speech from Mubarak should be aired soon - announcing he will not run for office again.  I don't think that'll help - but it's a start.


----------



## OldSolduer

The danger is the radical lot who may try to hijack any election and impose their version of Sharia law. Maybe the demographics and relative sophistication of the Egyptian people can prevent this.

But I wouldn't bet on it.


----------



## The Bread Guy

Initial reports of Mubarak's speech:


> President Hosni Mubarak announced Tuesday that he will step down in September when a new Egyptian president is elected.
> 
> His announcement was made as protesters in Cairo's main Tahrir Square sat by the thousands on the ground in front of a giant TV hung up between lampposts, waiting for Mr. Mubarak's late-night address. “Oh God, Oh God, let tonight be his night,” many chanted. The throngs who have been protesting day after day say they will accept nothing short of Mubarak's immediate departure.
> 
> The next presidential election is scheduled for September. Until now, officials had indicated Mr. Mubarak, 82, would likely run for a sixth six-year term of office ....





> Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak said on Tuesday he would not run for the presidency again and would work in the last months of his term to allow the transfer of power.
> 
> He said the main priority was the stability of the nation to allow the transfer of power. A presidential election is due in September.





> Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has just indicated in a televised speech that he will not seek reelection, after eight days of protests over his 30-year rule.
> 
> "I have spent enough time serving Egypt," Mubarak said in his second public address since the protests erupted. He said that over the next few months, "the remaining of my current reign, I will work very hard to carry out all the necessary measures to transfer power."
> 
> He added, "I have initated the formation of a new government with new priorities and initiatives which will respond to our young people's demands and their anxieties." ....



Some posting to Twitter while listening to the speech say he said something to the effect of, "I'll die on the soil of Egypt."  If he did say that, he'd better be careful what he wishes for.


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *Middle East *
> 
> *Egyptian president says he won't seek re-election
> *
> 01/02/2011 4:43:20 PM
> CTV.ca News Staff
> 
> LINK
> 
> *Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak says he will not seek re-election. *
> 
> Mubarak made the announcement Tuesday evening on state television after eight days of protest culminated with 250,000 people in the streets today demanding his resignation.
> 
> However, the 82-year-old stated his intention to finish the remainder of his presidential term, which ends in September.
> 
> "My priority now is for a peaceful transfer of power to whoever the people choose in the election," he said. "In all sincerity, regardless of the current circumstances, I never intended to be a candidate for another term."
> 
> A special envoy dispatched from Washington by President Barack Obama told Mubarak that the U.S. sees his presidency at an end and urged him to prepare for a transition to democratic elections.
> 
> A quarter of a million people jammed into a public square in central Cairo Tuesday, the biggest protest yet, and many broke out in celebration after the announcement.
> 
> But CTV's National Affairs correspondent Lisa LaFlamme said the overall reaction from the crowd was mixed, as many wanted Mubarak to step down immediately.
> 
> "People are having mixed reactions. There are those obviously who wanted him to step down right now," she said from Cairo. "And there are those who are actually more measured, saying ‘We can wait. We waited 30 years for change. We've walked these streets for eight days, we can wait a few months longer.'"
> 
> LaFlamme said that the crowd did not dissipate after Mubarak's speech and in fact, appeared to be growing.
> 
> The sprawling crowd in Tahrir Square includes teachers, students, professionals and Egypt's urban poor, all of whom are united in their desire to see the end of the three-decades long Mubarak regime.
> 
> "This is the end for him. It's time," said Musab Galal, a 23-year-old university graduate who travelled to Cairo from the Nile Delta city of Menoufiya.
> 
> The protesters on the streets of Cairo said they wanted Mubarak to step down on account of the poverty, corruption and lack of freedoms that have plagued the Egyptian people during his 30-year rule.
> 
> A coalition of opposition groups had demanded the Egyptian leader resign by Friday, and the groups are said to be in negotiations to reach joint demands for his regime.
> 
> In Tahrir Square, protesters chanted for their desire "to bring down" Mubarak's regime.
> 
> Two dummies representing Mubarak were hung from traffic lights in the square. On their chests was a message: "We want to put the murderous president on trial."
> 
> The dummies were also covered with the Star of David, an apparent allusion to the accusation of many protesters that Mubarak is too closely tied to Israel.
> 
> Shadi Hamid, the director of research at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar, said other Arab countries are watching what is happening in Egypt closely -- especially after a similar bout of protests ousted the leader of Tunisia last month.
> 
> "What we're seeing here is really a region-wide protest movement and as for who is next, all bets are off," Hamid told CTV News Channel from Qatar on Tuesday.
> 
> "The important thing here is that Arabs have discovered that they have the power to take matters into their own hands and that if enough of them go onto the streets, they can topple their own regimes."
> 
> In nearby Jordan, King Abdullah II fired his own government Tuesday in the wake of protests across his country demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Samir Rifai.
> 
> *Dialogue with Mubarak regime *
> 
> Newly appointed Vice President Omar Suleiman went on television Tuesday to state an offer to have a dialogue with the "political forces" urging change in Egypt.
> 
> Abu'l-Ela Madi, a spokesperson for one of the participating opposition groups, al-Wasat, said there was also discussion Tuesday about whether Mohamed ElBaradei -- the former head of the UN nuclear watchdog and pro-democracy advocate -- should act as opposition spokesperson.
> 
> Ashraf Hegazy, the executive director of the Dubai Initiative at Harvard University, said that ElBaradei remains a bit of an "unknown quantity" in Egyptian politics, as he has spent much of his adult life outside of his birth country.
> 
> But Hegazy said that ElBaradei is likely the best person to help build bridges between opposition groups who need to unite in their push for change.
> 
> "There are so many factions with a lot of different ideologies and all of them have some level of support in the country," Hegazy told CTV's Canada AM during a Tuesday morning interview from Newton, Mass.
> 
> "So for them to build a coalition to lead the country, they really need someone who is somewhat of an outsider that they can agree on."
> 
> *Army won't harm protesters*
> 
> Eight days into a period of daily protests, the people pushing for change have won the support of the national army, which has said it will not fire on protesters.
> 
> Military spokesman Ismail Etman said Tuesday that "the freedom of expression is guaranteed" for everyone taking part in the protests.
> 
> Seemungal said the army is trying to ensure that the Tahrir Square protests remain safe and non-violent.
> 
> "They are forcing people through choke-points, so it takes a long time to get into the square, but what they are trying to do is make sure that people aren't coming in with weapons and that they can guarantee it's a peaceful demonstration," Seemungal told CTV's Canada AM from Cairo on Tuesday.
> 
> The protesters also appear to be committed to keeping violence out of their demonstrations.
> 
> Volunteers with shirts reading "Security of the People" said they were on the lookout for government infiltrators who could attempt to instigate violence.
> 
> "We will throw out anyone who tries to create trouble," one of the volunteers said over a loudspeaker.
> 
> Outside of Tahrir Square, schools, banks and the stock market remained closed for the third straight day.
> 
> There is no bus service between cities, leaving protesters with the challenges of finding private transportation into Cairo.
> 
> Abdel Rahman Fathi, 25, said his friends were using private cars to make their way to the mass of protesters in Tahrir Square.
> 
> "The goal is to oust the regime," he said. "Every day we try to increase the number."
> 
> With files from The Associated Press



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## The Bread Guy

..... attached.


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## The Bread Guy

.... on Egypt:


> “Following President Mubarak’s announcement today that he will not seek re-election, Canada reiterates its support for the Egyptian people as they transition to new leadership and a promising future.
> 
> “Canada supports universal values – including freedom, democracy and justice – and the right to the freedom of assembly, speech and information. As Egypt moves towards new leadership, we encourage all parties to work together to ensure an orderly transition toward a free and vibrant society in which all Egyptians are able to enjoy these rights and freedoms – not a transition that leads to violence, instability and extremism.
> 
> “We commend the many groups, such as the Egyptian military, who have worked hard to support freedom of assembly and to minimize violence during recent demonstrations. We stand by the people of Egypt, young Egyptians in particular, for their steadfast support for the fundamental values that Canadians profoundly share with them.
> 
> “We also extend our condolences to the families and friends of those who were killed or injured during recent events.
> 
> “We urge all parties in Egypt to renounce violence and allow peaceful and meaningful dialogue between the people and government to address political, economic and social concerns. This dialogue should lead to free and fair elections and a government that supports universal values.”


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> * World / Middle East *
> 
> *Unmoved by Mubarak's speech, Egyptian protesters insist: 'He must leave.'
> *
> By Kristen Chick, Correspondent / February 1, 2011
> The Christian Science Monitor
> 
> LINK
> 
> 
> *Responding to Egyptian President Mubarak's offer to not run for reelection in September, one protester in Cairo's Tahrir Square said: 'Thirty years of injustice is enough. We don’t need eight more months.'*
> 
> Cairo
> 
> Egyptians wholeheartedly rejected President Hosni Mubarak’s announcement Tuesday evening that he will not run for reelection in September, continuing to demand that he step down immediately.
> 
> A roar of anger went up from the thousands of people in central Cairo’s Tahrir Square even before the president had finished his address, offering an immediate answer to an unprecedented offer from an autocrat who has ruled for almost 30 years with few concession to the people. They shook their shoes at a large screen where the president's image was broadcast, screaming “Get out! Get out!”
> 
> “I was angry, but now I am enraged,” said Abdullah Rawaq, shouting to be heard amid a crowd chanting: “He must go! We will not go!”
> 
> “Only one thing will make the anger go away: His immediate withdrawal. He must leave. That is the only thing that will make these people go back to their homes," said Mr. Rawaq, a middle-aged man.
> 
> The president’s move appeared a desperate attempt to stop the week of growing protests that have brought the nation’s capital and its economy to a standstill. Inspired by Tunisia’s popular revolution in January, Egyptians began protesting last week, demanding freedom, democracy, and Mubarak's resignation. The gatherings swelled to hundreds of thousands of people today, and the president is clearly feeling the pressure.
> 
> *Mubarak: 'I will die on Egyptian soil'*
> 
> His decision not to run for reelection echoes the same move by Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia’s now-deposed president. Mr. Ben Ali announced Jan. 13 that he would not seek reelection, but Tunisians spurned his offer and he fled to Saudi Arabia the following day.
> 
> Mubarak, however, gave a clear signal that he does not intend to follow Ben Ali into political exile.
> 
> “The Hosni Mubarak who speaks to you today is proud of his achievements over the years in serving Egypt and its people,” he said in an address broadcast on state television. “This is my country. This is where I lived, I fought and defended its land, sovereignty, and interests, and I will die on its soil.”
> 
> But Egyptians are pledging a similar fate for their president as they plan more massive protests for Friday.
> 
> “The age of Mubarak will end on Friday. It will be his last day,” said Ibrahim Toma, a protester in his 20s. “The poor don’t want him. The rich don’t want him. The Christians don’t want him. The Muslims don’t want him. What is he waiting for?”
> 
> He said Mubarak is afraid to leave for fear of prosecution. Tunisia recently issued an arrest warrant for Ben Ali, and the European Union has frozen his bank assets.
> 
> “Mubarak is afraid to go because of everything he stole from the people, because of all the people he killed here in Tahrir Square and in Suez," said Mr. Toma. During clashes with police over the past week, more than a dozen protesters were reportedly killed in Suez and upwards of 80 people have died in Cairo.
> 
> *Protester: 'Thirty years of injustice is enough.'*
> 
> Indeed, many in Tahrir Square on Tuesday night said they not only want Mubarak out but they want him judged for what they say are crimes against the nation. They also rejected the vice president recently appointed by Mubarak and any leaders from his ruling National Democratic Party.
> 
> Egyptians are demanding an entirely new slate and a chance to choose their own leaders. Their movement has now gone too far to turn back, they say.
> 
> “You think after all this, after everything that happened, we’re just going to leave when he says this?” asked Negla Sayyed, who came with her son to protest today. “I don’t think so. Eighty million people don’t want him. Thirty years of injustice is enough. We don’t need eight more months.”
> 
> Mubarak’s address was projected into Tahrir Square on a sheet hung from a building. Many who watched were planning to spend the chilly night in the square, where thousands have slept since Friday following a fierce battle with police. Some set up tents in the middle of the square. Others simply lay in the street.
> 
> *ElBaradei: It's 'a trick'*
> 
> Mubarak’s statement was immediately rejected by Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the UN nuclear watchdog agency, who has become a leading opposition figure in Egypt. Calling Mubarak’s statement "a trick” to stay in power, he reportedly reiterated that Mubarak must step down before opposition groups will negotiate.
> 
> Mr. El Baradei today had a phone conversation with the US ambassador to Egypt, as Washington appears to be reaching out to key figures who may play a role in Egypt’s future. Meanwhile, a former US ambassador to Egypt, Frank Wisner, traveled to Cairo to speak with Mubarak and help facilitate an “orderly transition.”
> 
> How that transition comes about, and who plays a role in it, remains to be seen. President Barack Obama, in an message following Mubarak’s speech Tuesday, said political transition "must begin now" and voiced support for the protesters who continue to call for Mubarak’s immediate resignation. “To the young people of Egypt, we hear your voices,” he said.
> 
> Those voices include Sayed El Sisi, an unemployed college graduate who blames the Mubarak government for creating the conditions in which many Egyptians find it difficult to earn a living.
> 
> “This is not enough for us, and we will not give up,” says Mr. El Sisi. “I want to see a new president in my country who will change every eight years whether he is good or bad, like in the US. We want change, and we want it now.”




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## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> * World / Middle East *
> 
> *Yemen's Saleh agrees not to run again. Is that good enough for protesters?
> *
> By Laura Kasinof, Correspondent / February 2, 2011
> The Christian Science Monitor
> 
> LINK
> 
> 
> *Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh declared Wednesday that he would not seek reelection in 2013, but protesters plan to keep on demonstrating.*
> 
> Sanaa, Yemen
> 
> Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh announced today in an emergency parliamentary meeting that he would not run again in Yemen’s upcoming presidential election in 2013. The move is being seen as a major concession to Yemen’s political opposition after Tunisia-inspired protests have broken out across the country over the past two weeks.
> 
> “President Ali Abdullah Saleh announced that he would freeze the draft constitutional amendments that are before Parliament denying allegations that there is an intention for hereditary rule in Yemen,” reads a statement from the official Saba news agency in reference to proposed legislation that would abolish presidential term limits and speculation that the Mr. Saleh is going to hand the presidency over to his son Ahmed Saleh.
> 
> He added that he will not seek another presidential term in 2013.
> 
> Saleh's announcement comes one day before the largest day of demonstrations calling for an end to the corruption of his regime are planned to take place in Yemen’s capital, Sana. The constitutional amendments that Saleh referred to in his speech are part of key contention points between the opposition and the ruling party.
> 
> Indeed, the mood remains tense on Sanaa’s streets, crawling with soldiers this morning as the city waits to see what will happen on Thursday in what has been dubbed Yemen’s "day of wrath," using the name Egyptian protesters gave to one of their demonstrations last week.
> 
> “[Saleh’s concession] is a reaction to the internal developments in Yemen nationwide, and the developments in the entire region, after what happened in Tunisia and what we are seeing happen in Egypt,” says Hafez Albukari, president of a local, independent nongovernmental organization called the Yemen Polling Center. “He wants to send a clear message to the Yemeni people that he will do some reforms and he will not run again, but I think we should wait for actual implementation of these promises.”
> 
> *Too little, too late?*
> 
> And while Saleh's declaration appears to be one step in the direction of prodemocracy reforms, Yemen's opposition says that the president's announcement is too little, too late. They claimed that despite the attempt to quell discontent, Thursday's protests are scheduled to go on as planned
> 
> Saleh will present his resignation in a way that is not serious, said Parliament member Ali Ashal who belongs to the leading Al Islah opposition party in a statement to the Monitor on Tuesday.
> 
> It will be “theatrics” like the “play of 2006,” when Saleh had announced that he would not run again for the presidency, but then withdrew because of so-called public pressure, Mr. Ashal continued.
> 
> And just as Egyptians are not content with the extent of President Hosni Mubarak’s conciliatory gestures, Ashal said that if Yemen’s president really wanted to revive Yemen’s political system, he would announce plans to neutralize Yemen’s military state and decentralize the power system in Yemen, which now is largely viewed to reside solely in the hands of the president.
> 
> Yemen Expert at Princeton University Gregory Johnsen agrees that whatever Saleh’s concessions are to the opposition, they are going to need to be big in order to initiate any real change.
> 
> “Certainly the opposition could use the events of the past few weeks to its advantage, but at the moment few trust the current government,” Mr. Johnsen wrote in an e-mail to the Monitor. “So the problem becomes: What can the government say or do to the appease those who believe it will break its pledge just as it has in the past,”
> 
> All sides are keen to avoid the sort of mass chaos that has struck Egypt during recent weeks. In Yemen — where small arms proliferation is rampant — chaos could become violent very quickly.
> 
> Furthermore, Washington remains concerned about the instability in Yemen due to the presence of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the branch of the international terrorist group responsible for two major attack attempts against the US in a little over a year.
> 
> Saleh’s move isn’t the only attempt by an Arab leader to avoid mass similar to what has befallen Tunisia and Egypt. Yesterday, Jordanian King Abdullah announced that he would dissolve his cabinet after antigovernment protests broke out in his country as well.



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## George Wallace

The situation in Yeman could become explosive.

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *The Plight of Northern Yemen
> *
> 
> *A Life of Conflict, Dust and Ruins
> *
> 02/02/2011
> By Alexander Smoltczyk in Saada
> SPIEGEL ONLINE
> 
> LINK
> 
> *The remote region of northern Yemen has been devastated by six wars and is cut off from regular aid supplies. A delegation of the UN relief agency and the EU recently visited the area for the first time -- and found child warriors, desperate refugees and cities of dust. *
> 
> The wars came like the seasons, and people became accustomed to them, counting them like years of their lives: the first war, the second, the third…
> 
> The sixth war in northern Yemen was the worst. It ravaged a country that was already on its knees. Each new round of hostilities was more complex and ruthless than the last, and fought with more expensive weapons. The conflict grew like a cancerous tumor, fed by suffering and increasingly multi-layered interests.
> 
> "What do you need," Kristalina Georgieva, the European commissioner for international cooperation, asks a haggard, toothless man on a recent trip to the war-torn country. "Help," he replies.
> 
> Humanitarian missions here are simple. Everything is scarce, water, flour, medicine, schools and clothing. Fuel, transport, beds, shade and justice. Everything is welcome. It's that simple.
> 
> And there's enough money to provide help. The EU will provide €19.5 million ($27 million) this year, and the refugee agency of the UN, the UNHCR, will provide almost $10 million.
> 
> All that needs to be done is to get the supplies to where they are most urgently needed. But that's the problem. "We need access, access, access," says Georgieva. "We know best where the need is greatest," the governor of Saada replies. The aid, he says, should be handed over to him.
> 
> *A Fragile Non-War *
> 
> Georgieva was in the country with Antonio Guterres, the head of the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR. It was an unusual mission -- such joint trips aren't customary on the international aid circuit. But the situation in northern Yemen is so serious that customs don't matter, they say.
> 
> The delegation walks through the ruins of the center of Saada. The sight of the devastation is made marginally more bearable because all the buildings are made of clay, and because children are clambering over the ruins everywhere. For some reason, clay ruins are less disturbing than mangled concrete.
> 
> The electricity comes from generators and the water has to be transported into the city in canisters. But many are happy to be able to live here. Outside the city, the situation is even worse. "Malnutrition among children under five is worse than in Darfur at the start of the conflict there," says a leading aid official. Some areas have been cut off from any healthcare for the last five years.
> 
> There has been a ceasefire in the northern provinces of Yemen since August 2010, but it is a fragile state of non-war that could end at any time. The six waves of war flushed too many weapons into the country, and too many people have their own interests in the conflict. "We must show now that peace yields development, otherwise it will start again," says Georgieva.
> 
> The government is trying to play down the conflict. "The Houthis are basically just a family" says one Yemeni diplomat accompanying the delegation. No government likes to admit that it doesn't have any power in large parts of its country. Checkpoints mark a circle of around seven kilometers around the city. Beyond that line is a barely accessible region that could end up determining the future of Yemen.
> 
> *A 'War on Terror'? *
> 
> The Houthi are a tribe of Hashemites, which makes them descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. Their religion, Zaidism, is a branch of Shia Islam, but their rituals are very similar to those of Sunni Muslims. Houthis and Sunnis pray in the same mosques.
> 
> But their issue isn't a religious one. "The Houthis feel neglected by the central government. They mainly want development," says Georgieva.
> 
> The conflict has been fanned by Yemen's mighty neighbor Saudi Arabia, which suspects the Houthis of being close to Iran and which has tried to spread its own strict interpretation of Islam, Wahhabism, in the region.
> 
> And the government in the Yemeni capital of Sana'a has portrayed the rebellious Houthis as supporters of al-Qaida in order to justify its campaign against them as a "war on terror." The justification has also led to the use of US weapons, supplied for the fight against al-Qaida, in the war against the Houthis.
> 
> The war in northern Yemen "has violated two fundamental pillars of Yemen's stability: a political formula premised on power-sharing and the gradual convergence of the two principal sectarian identities," the International Crisis Group, an NGO, wrote in a recent analysis.
> 
> Guterres, the former prime minister of Portugal, and Georgieva, an ex-World Bank official, get along well. Colleagues say they are a stroke of luck for international disaster relief because they simply focus on getting the job done. They sit on the floor in huts and ask what supplies are lacking and how they can help to improve things.
> 
> *Child Soldiers *
> 
> A meeting with Houthi representatives is only allowed after lengthy negotiations -- at their own risk, as the governor makes clear. Beyond the checkpoints, he can no longer guarantee their safety.
> 
> Guterres and Georgieva are met by a man called Sheikh Abu Aliu. The warriors in the room are chewing khat and have put their Kalashnikovs in their laps. The fighters, though, "were very young. One of them was still a child, perhaps 12 or 13," says Georgieva. Until now, it wasn't known that there are child soldiers in Yemen.
> 
> "The Houthis assured us that aid workers and convoys would be safe. They said they would not influence the distribution of aid supplies," says Georgieva. Both she and Guterres hope that the government in Sana'a will now open their checkpoints to aid convoys and aid workers.
> 
> "Our main problem is the militia," says Raul Rosende, the head of the UN office in Sana'a for the coordination of humanitarian aid. Convoys are frequently hijacked and Western staff kidnapped as a convenient means of extortion and pressure. "We're one thing above all: a resource," says Swedish engineer Lennart Hansson of the UNHCR. The intelligence agencies had told him his ranking on al-Qaida's list of kidnapping targets: "pretty high up."
> 
> *Yemen Can't Afford Its Hospitality *
> 
> Yemen is the only Arab country to have signed the 1951 UN convention on refugees. "The poorest are the most hospitable," Georgieva says. Yemen, the poorest of all Arab countries, grants asylum to all civil war refugees. There are many of them in this part of the world.
> 
> Every week, Somali refugees land on the coast of the Gulf of Aden. Ethiopians are smuggled into the country, with women and children often being sold to Saudi Arabia by human traffickers. The UNHCR estimates that there are 350,000 Somalis in Yemen.
> 
> The country can't afford its hospitality. It doesn't have enough water, hospitals, schools and work for its own population. And the Yemeni arm of al-Qaida recruits new members among the poorest of the poor. Yemen's revenues from oil and gas production will have dried up in a few years. Its attractiveness as a holiday destination has waned since the al-Qaida attacks.
> 
> The refugee camp in al-Kharaz is at the other end of the country, at the southernmost tip of Yemen, just aross the Gulf of Aden from the Horn of Africa. It is a city of dust and plastic bags, of faded UNHCR tents, cardboard walls and armed security guards. It is surrounded by a stony desert that stretches to the sea.
> 
> Recently, electricity was brought to this tent city. Before that, the refugees had to squat in front of their tents in complete darkness at night. The number of rapes rose sharply in that period, the UNHCR said.
> 
> The delegation inspects a communal room where they are told how how refugees walk 90 kilometers to Aden to earn a bit of money. And that many of them sell items donated by aid organizations in order to earn some cash.
> 
> A boy pulls along his toy car on a string -- a milk carton with bottletops attached for wheels.
> 
> A group of people has gathered at the edge of the camp and is holding up hand-painted banners. They are members of the Oromo ethnic group from Ethiopia, and they are demanding more rights, more aid and a stronger legal status.
> 
> They complain about bribery and discrimination. A child died, they say. They have drafted a letter. "To all human rights agencies." They are self-confident and well organized. They know how to get people to listen to them.
> 
> That's the good news.




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## The Bread Guy

For some background (although 7 months old, methinks it'll get updated pretty soon) on Yemen, this from the Congressional Research Service:


> With limited natural resources, a crippling illiteracy rate, and high population growth, Yemen faces an array of daunting development challenges that some observers believe make it at risk for becoming a failed state. In 2009, Yemen ranked 140 out of 182 countries on the United Nations Development Program's Human Development Index, a score comparable to the poorest sub-Saharan African countries. Over 43% of the population of nearly 24 million people lives below the poverty line, and per capita GDP is estimated to be between $650 and $800. Yemen is largely dependent on external aid from Persian Gulf countries, Western donors, and international financial institutions, though its per capita share of assistance is below the global average. As the country's population rapidly rises, resources dwindle, terrorist groups take root in the outlying provinces, and a southern secessionist movement grows, the Obama Administration and the 111th Congress are left to grapple with the consequences of Yemeni instability. Traditionally, U.S.-Yemeni relations have been tepid, as the lack of strong military-to-military partnership, trade relations, and cross cultural exchanges has hindered the development of close bilateral ties. During the early years of the Bush Administration, relations improved under the rubric of the war against Al Qaeda, though Yemen's lax policy toward wanted terrorists and U.S. concerns about governance and corruption have stalled large-scale U.S. support ....


Also, check here to see if/when a more up-to-date version is available.


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *Middle East *
> 
> *A Diplomatic Scramble as an Ally Is Pushed to the Exit
> *
> 02/02/2011
> By MARK LANDLER, HELENE COOPER and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
> Published: February 1, 2011
> The New York Times
> 
> LINK
> 
> *WASHINGTON* — Last Sunday at 2 p.m., a blue-and-white Air Force jet left Andrews Air Force Base bound for Cairo. On board was Frank G. Wisner, an adroit ex-diplomat whom President Obama had asked hours before to undertake a supremely delicate mission: nudging President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt out of power.
> 
> What exactly Mr. Wisner would say was still in flux as he flew to Egypt, administration officials said Tuesday; he talked with senior officials in Washington several times during the nearly 14-hour flight. By the time Mr. Wisner met with the Egyptian leader on Tuesday, the diplomat knew what message he would deliver. And Mr. Mubarak had already lost the backing of his other crucial pillar of support: the Egyptian military, which declared it would not open fire on the demonstrators who were demanding his ouster.
> 
> The story of how Mr. Mubarak, an Arab autocrat who only last month was the mainstay of America’s policy in a turbulent region, suddenly found himself pushed toward the exit is first and foremost a tale of the Arab street.
> 
> But it is also one of political calculations, in Cairo and Washington, which were upset repeatedly as the crowds swelled. And it is the story of a furious scramble by the Obama White House — right up until Mr. Obama’s call Tuesday night for change to begin “now” — to catch up with a democracy movement unfolding so rapidly that Washington came close to being left behind.
> 
> “Every time the administration uttered something, its words were immediately overtaken by events on the ground,” said Robert Malley, Middle East and North Africa program director for the International Crisis Group. “And in a matter of days, every assumption about the United States relationship with Egypt was upended.”
> 
> In Cairo, the protests prompted Mr. Mubarak to surround himself even more closely with current and former military leaders, including his new, hastily named vice president, prime minister and deputy prime minister.
> 
> But instead of protecting him, there is increasing evidence that over the last three days the military establishment — one of the most respected institutions in Egyptian society, and the crucial factor in deciding control of the streets — may have been moving toward pushing Mr. Mubarak out.
> 
> The first sign of the military’s deteriorating support came Saturday when rank-and-file troops ordered to buttress the retreating police instead began to cheer on the protesters. Then on Monday night, the military leadership appeared to break away, announcing that the military respected the people’s legitimate demands and that it would not use force against peaceful demonstrators.
> 
> A short time later, Mr. Mubarak’s closest aide, Omar Suleiman, the chief of Egyptian intelligence and the newly named vice president, invited opposition groups to negotiate over constitutional reforms.
> 
> Back in Washington, the administration was struggling to balance its ties to Mr. Mubarak, its most stalwart ally in the Arab world, with its fear of ending up on the wrong side of history.
> 
> But days of watching the protests mushroom on the streets of Egyptian cities convinced administration officials — some facing their first national security crisis in these roles — that Mr. Mubarak probably would not weather the political storm.
> 
> Former President George Bush, whose ties to Mr. Mubarak were cemented by the Egyptian leader’s commitment to supply Arab troops during the Persian Gulf war in 1991, called Mr. Mubarak, on his own initiative, to discuss the crisis, officials said. It was not clear what Mr. Bush told Mr. Mubarak.
> 
> At a two-hour meeting at the White House last Saturday, Thomas E. Donilon, the national security adviser; William M. Daley, the White House chief of staff, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon E. Panetta; and other officials coalesced around a strategy to start trying to ease Mr. Mubarak out, an official said.
> 
> Mrs. Clinton, officials said, suggested that the administration send Mr. Wisner, a former ambassador to Egypt who knows Mr. Mubarak well, to deliver a message directly from Mr. Obama to the Egyptian leader. Officials said Mr. Wisner urged Mr. Mubarak to declare publicly that he would not run for re-election. But Mr. Wisner has extended his stay in Cairo, officials said, and may have a follow-up meeting with Mr. Mubarak if events seem to demand a quicker exit.
> 
> At the Saturday meeting, the officials also agreed that Mrs. Clinton would start calling for “an orderly transition” when she taped a round of interviews for the Sunday talk programs. Administration officials were already smarting from not coming out more fully in support of the protesters earlier. In particular, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had been criticized for an interview with “NewsHour” on PBS on Thursday, in which he answered “no” when the host, Jim Lehrer, asked if the time had come for Mr. Mubarak to go.
> 
> “They took a little while to catch up, but by Sunday morning they understood that it was over, and since then, they’ve understood how to make it happen,” said Martin S. Indyk, the director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution.
> 
> Still, administration officials were grappling with their public message versus their private message. Senior officials say that as Mr. Wisner traveled to Egypt, Obama officials in Washington were working on his message to Mr. Mubarak: to announce that he would not run for re-election (he did that), and to promise that his son would not run for election (he did not do that).
> 
> “No one wanted it to seem as if we were pushing him out,” one administration official said. “That would not serve American interests. It was important for President Mubarak to make the decision.”
> 
> Two hours after Mr. Wisner’s plane left Andrews Air Force Base, White House officials sent an e-mail to more than a dozen foreign policy experts in Washington, asking them to come in for a meeting on Monday morning. “Apologies for the short notice in light of a very fluid situation,” the e-mail said.
> 
> The Roosevelt Room meeting, led by Benjamin Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, and two other National Security Council officials, Daniel Shapiro and Samantha Power, examined unrest in the region, and the potential for the protests to spread, according to several attendees.
> 
> Significantly, during the meeting, White House staff members “made clear that they did not rule out engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood as part of an orderly process,” according to one attendee, who like others interviewed for this article spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to talk publicly about the meeting. The Muslim group had been suppressed by Mr. Mubarak, and Bush administration officials believed it was involved in terrorist activities. It renounced violence years ago.
> 
> Several times, two other attendees said, White House staff members said that Mr. Obama believed that Egyptian politics needed to encompass “nonsecular” parties: diplomatic-speak for the Muslim Brotherhood.
> 
> Adding to the pressure against Mr. Mubarak, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, called on the president to bow out gracefully and “make way for a new political structure,” in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times. Mr. Kerry did not coordinate his message with the administration, an official said, but the White House welcomed his initiative.
> 
> On Tuesday morning, Mr. Donilon was hunkered over a sprawling spreadsheet on his desk, crossing out names of more than 100 leaders and other officials in the Middle East and the United States. The spreadsheet — “matrix,” one White House aide called it — was full of Mr. Donilon’s notations and asides, as he went through which person at the State Department, the Pentagon, and White House was to call which foreign counterpart.
> 
> Mr. Obama himself spoke to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, among other leaders.
> 
> American officials had also been in close contact with Vice President Suleiman, who may be playing a particularly pivotal role in managing the transition of power. American and Egyptian officials who know him well describe him as both a cunning operator and Mr. Mubarak’s closest aide. He is also considered the figure with the largest base of support in Egypt’s security forces because his work as intelligence chief built him deep ties with the internal security police and the military.
> 
> The momentous events in Cairo leave many questions. Will the protesters tolerate Mr. Mubarak’s staying on, even in a lame-duck capacity? Early indications were negative. How will Egypt prepare for credible elections, after nearly 30 years in which the political opposition was ruthlessly suppressed?
> 
> As Stephen P. Cohen, a Middle East expert, put it, “How can you have a transitional government that is acceptable to both the military and the people in the streets, and that is not a coronation for the Muslim Brotherhood?”
> 
> Also, how will an extended period of turmoil in a country at the heart of the Arab world affect stability across a region already being rocked by unrest from Yemen to Jordan? And for the United States, can an Egypt without Mr. Mubarak serve American interests in the Middle East?
> 
> On Tuesday night, that too remained unanswered. But Mr. Obama, addressing the nation from the White House after a 30-minute phone call with Mr. Mubarak, said, “What is clear, and what I indicated tonight to President Mubarak, is my belief that an orderly transition must be meaningful, it must be peaceful, and it must begin now.”
> 
> _Mark Landler and Helene Cooper reported from Washington, and David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo. _



More on LINK


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## The Bread Guy

"Protesters, Mubarak supporters fight in Cairo square":  _"Opponents and supporters of President Hosni Mubarak fought with fists, stones and clubs in Cairo on Wednesday as the Egyptian government rejected international calls for the leader to end his 30-year-rule now.  Anti-Mubarak protesters said some of the attackers were members of the hated police force in plain clothes. In chaotic scenes in central Tahrir Square, some rode into the crowd on horses and camels and in carriages, wielding whips and sticks.  Opposition figurehead Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace laureate, called on the army intervene to stop the violence, the worst in the nine-day uprising against Mubarak since protesters fought street battles last Friday. But troops stood by and watched  ...."_

"EU urges Mubarak to act 'as quickly as possible' ":  _"European Union foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton on Wednesday urged Egypt's embattled President Hosni Mubarak to "do things as quickly as possible" on the transition to elections.  "We need to see movement," Ashton told journalists.  "We call for him to do things as quickly as possible" she added, after being asked whether the EU believed his offer to step down in September was too late.  She spoke flanked by Tunisia's new Foreign Minister Ahmed Abderraouf Ounais, making his maiden visit overseas after the popular uprising that swept out Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's regime ...."_

(UK) "PM calls for rapid Egypt transition":  _"Prime Minister David Cameron has called on Egypt's beleaguered President Hosni Mubarak to begin a "rapid and credible" process of transition.  He told the Commons the process "needs to start now" as he offered support for those demanding freedom and democracy.  At Prime Minister's question time Mr Cameron said 1,000 UK citizens had returned home from Egypt in the last 48 hours.  Mr Cameron said: "Transition needs to be rapid and credible and it needs to start now. "We should be clear: we stand with those, in this country, who want freedom, who want democracy and rights the world over ...."_

"Shippers Concerned Over Possible Suez Canal Disruptions":  _"Western oil and gas companies have halted most drilling in Egypt, but as violence has broken out in some cities the biggest immediate threat to world energy supplies could emerge from a possible blockage of the Suez Canal   or nearby pipelines.  So far shipping and oil and gas flows through Egypt have not been interrupted and the army has stepped up security around the canal and pipelines.  But rising tensions in the port of Suez have led several shipping companies to order their ships not to change crews in Egypt. Meanwhile disruptions in government port services have slowed the discharge of some crude oil cargo at the Red Sea port of Ain Sukhna at the southern entrance to the Suez Canal.  “Potentially we see attacks on employees of shipping companies and attempted attacks on vessels docked in ports if you see more violent demonstrations around the ports,” said Helima L. Croft, a director and geopolitical strategist at Barclays Capital. “It could be very problematic.” ...."
_

"Egypt demonstrations worry shipping industry":  _"The demonstrations in Egypt have started to concern the shipping industry. Egypt is a vital shipping route between Europe and Asia, with around 8% of the world's trade passing through it.  The Suez canal remains open but ships wishing to dock and refuel before leaving Egypt are finding ports such Alexandria, Damietta and Port Said unmanned or running on a skeleton crew.  Patrick Adamson, from the shipping consultants MTI Network, said alternative ports may need to be used."_

"U.S. sees Suez Canal closure as inconceivable":  _"The United States would respond "diplomatically, economically, militarily" to any closure of the Suez Canal although such an event seems inconceivable, the head of U.S. Central Command said on Tuesday.  Gen. James Mattis, who oversees U.S. military operations in an area stretching from Egypt to Pakistan, also said the United States had no plans to re-order its military forces in the region because of instability in North Africa.  "When you look at the fiscal impact of that (closing the Suez canal) on whoever is in a position of authority in Egypt, I just can't imagine the motive to shut that down," Mattis said at a London event hosted by the Policy Exxchange think tank.  He had been asked if the United States would be prepared to act if there were any disruptions to the key shipping channel because of mass protests in Egypt against the 30-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak.  "Were it to happen obviously we would have to deal with it diplomatically, economically, militarily, whatever, but that to me is hypothetical and I would defer to the political leaders," he said ...."_

"Freight Still Flowing Through Suez Canal And Egyptian Ports":  _"The country is winning plaudits from far and wide as the so far ‘quiet revolution’ continues and the people demand the removal from power of President Mubarak. Despite some deaths on the streets and much publicised fears of looting, plus the suspension of internet services it seems freight vessels and bulk tankers are passing freely through the Suez Canal.  Obviously the countrywide curfew between 1500 and 0800 hours is affecting business and communications and port activity is restricted, many people effectively off work until something develops with cargo in a state of suspension until the crisis passes.  The Canal however, according to eye witness reports we have received, is operating as normally as can be expected with restrictions preventing crew exchanges and the delivery of spare parts but most masters are just grateful to get through at all. Banks are closed so cash is a problem but established agents like GAC Egypt tell us they are able to provide funds for transiting the Canal using their telephone banking services ...."_

"Shipping companies forward vessels by-passing Egyptian ports":  _"One of the largest transport-forwarding companies, Maersk, temporally stopped all terminal operations in Egypt. Despite the current situation in the country, Maersk did not deny passage of vessels through the Suez Canal. But if the Canal becomes closed in the nearest future, many large transport-forwarding companies will have to replan own sea routes, which will led to the requirement in additional time.  At the same time, official representatives of the company hold back from any commentaries, and do not provide any official confirmations.  Several shipping companies decided to review sea routes of own vessels, and sent them by-passing the Horn of Africa, worrying for security of transported cargoes."_

"Crude oil prices climb":  _"Crude oil prices rose above $91 per barrel in New York Wednesday after a volatile week, with traders keeping an eye on developments in Egypt .... Traders are concerned unrest could prompt closure of the Suez Canal or spread to other countries.  March contract light, sweet crude oil added 71 cents to $91.48 per barrel. Home heating oil prices added 1.57 cents to 2.7727. Reformulated gas prices shed 1.99 cents to $2.4995 per gallon ...."_


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *Middle East *
> 
> *One dead, nearly 600 injured in Cairo clashes
> 
> *
> Wednesday, February 2, 2011 | 4:16 PM
> CTV.ca News Staff
> 
> LINK
> 
> *One person is dead and nearly 600 others injured as bloody battles broke out between supporters of embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and anti-government protesters Wednesday on the streets of Cairo, as the military stood by and watched.*
> 
> Egyptian Health Minister Ahmed Sameh Farid said a man was killed when he fell from a bridge, while 596 people have sustained injuries in the fighting.
> 
> Farid told The Associated Press that the deceased man is believed to have been a member of the country's security forces. However, he was dressed in civilian clothes at the time of his death. He said authorities are investigating the incident.
> 
> In one area of intense fighting near the Egyptian Museum, pro-Mubarak demonstrators lined rooftops and threw bricks and firebombs onto the protesters below. Throughout Tahrir Square, Mubarak supporters and their opponents threw bottles and chunks of concrete at one another, while others engaged in fistfights that left them bruised and bloodied.
> 
> Makeshift health clinics were set up by the anti-government protesters in nearby mosques and alleyways to treat the wounded. Pleas to soldiers stationed in Tahrir Square for protection went unanswered.
> 
> Some of the protesters accused the government of calling in supporters to attack them.
> 
> "After our revolution, they want to send people here to ruin it for us," said Ahmed Abdullah, a lawyer protesting in Tahrir Square. "Why do they want us to be at each other's throats, with the whole world watching us?"
> 
> Meanwhile, state television broadcast an order for all protesters to leave Cairo's Tahrir Square, where most of the protesters have congregated for more than a week, due to "provocative elements throwing firebombs." It was not immediately clear who issued the order, though earlier in the day the army called for an end to the disruptive demonstrations.
> 
> Wednesday's fighting marked the first　mass display of support for Mubarak, the aging Egyptian leader who is blamed by protesters for an array of economic and social problems that have afflicted his people during his 30 years in power.
> 
> His supporters on the street told reporters Wednesday that they believed their lives had improved under Mubarak's rule and that the continuing demonstrations were plunging the country into chaos.
> 
> "We have been a stable country since the days of the Pharaohs. These demonstrators want to turn us into Somalia: poor and at war with itself," said Samir Hamid, a 58-year-old war veteran who can remember when Mubarak first took power.
> 
> Others said they felt the president had been insulted by the protests that have raged for the past nine days.
> 
> "I feel humiliated," said Mohammed Hussein, a 31-year-old factory worker. "He is the symbol of our country. When he is insulted, I am insulted."
> 
> The president's supporters grew in number from the previous evening and CTV Middle Eastern Bureau Chief Martin Seemungal said many carried flags that appeared as though they had been freshly handed out.
> 
> Seemungal said there were no immediate problems when the pro-Mubarak supporters first entered Tahrir Square.
> 
> "For a while, there was sort of this tense standoff…and then they just suddenly started clashing," Seemungal told CTV's Canada AM from Cairo on Wednesday.
> 
> Early reports suggested that the two sides were involved in some small fistfights, but CTV's Lisa LaFlamme reported that the Tahrir square clashes eventually involved rocks, fires, petrol bombs and even some gunfire.
> 
> "This thing is out of control," LaFlamme told CTV News Channel, when describing the scene in Cairo.
> 
> On Twitter, LaFlamme described the clashes she saw on the street, including protesters on camels charging the crowd and pro-Mubarak protesters throwing clay pots at their opponents.
> 
> Ali Mikkawi, an Egyptian-Canadian who has been helping to organize protests in Cairo, said it was difficult to say who was behind the clashes on the pro-Mubarak side.
> 
> "It's just chaos," Mikkawi told CTV News Channel in a telephone interview from Cairo, who said anti-government protesters had discovered at least one pro-Mubarak supporter carrying police identification.
> 
> The Egyptian army's decision not to intervene in the clashes was indicative of the mostly "neutral stance" the army has taken since the widespread anti-Mubarak protests began late last month, Seemungal said.
> 
> Earlier Wednesday, the army asked the anti-government protesters to end their demonstrations against Mubarak, arguing that the protesters' message has been heard and that it is time to resume daily routines in Cairo.
> 
> Military spokesperson Ismail Etman went on television Wednesday to address the protesters, who have held continuous demonstrations in Cairo's Tahrir Square for nine straight days.
> 
> Etman asked the protesters to stand down "out of love for Egypt," so that the country can chart a path back to stability.
> 
> "You have started coming out to express your demands and you are the ones capable of returning normal life to Egypt," Etman said.
> 
> "Your message has arrived, your demands have become known."
> 
> The escalating violence also led to swift condemnation from the international community.
> 
> On Wednesday, White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs said the U.S. "deplores and condemns the violence that is taking place in Egypt."
> 
> In Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron said Egyptian authorities must move quickly to bring in political reforms, and said "if it turns out that the regime in any way has been sponsoring or tolerating this violence, that would be completely and utterly unacceptable." UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who was meeting Cameron in London Wednesday, also called the violence "unacceptable."
> 
> The 82-year-old Mubarak announced he will not run for office in upcoming elections this fall -- yet opposition groups involved in the demonstrations have indicated they want him to leave office as soon as possible.
> 
> Andre Pierre, a Middle East analyst at the United States Institute of Peace, said that while it is difficult to accurately project the level of public support for a new government, it is clear that opposition groups have the upper hand in the debate over how soon Mubarak should leave office.
> 
> "I suspect that the momentum towards Mubarak's departure is there and will continue and that in the next days, actually weeks, there is going to be a lot of negotiation aimed to speed up the process," Pierre told CTV's Canada AM from Washington on Wednesday morning.
> 
> Some Mubarak supporters said the protesters were asking for too much in demanding Mubarak leave office immediately.
> 
> "It's not like Mubarak can rub Aladdin's lamp and pull out a genie who will fix everything," said Fatima al-Shal, 41, when speaking to an Associated Press reporter in Egypt.
> 
> "We have to give them time to peacefully change power."
> 
> With files from The Associated Press



More on LINK


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## OldSolduer

Instead of watching a thread spiral, we can watch a whole region spiral.


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *Violence in Cairo
> *
> 
> *Mubarak Supporters Clash with Opposition Movement
> *
> 02/02/2011
> Spiegel ONLINE
> 
> LINK
> 
> *Streetfighting has broken out in Cairo between Mubarak supporters and opposition protesters. Hundreds of people are reported to have been injured, shots were heard and Molotov cocktails were thrown. The situation appeared to be completely out of control.*
> 
> The protests had largely been peaceful up until now. But on Wednesday, violent clashes broke out in central Cairo between opponents and supporters of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak as the situation in the capital appeared to be getting out of control.
> 
> 
> Thousands of Mubarak supporters descended on Tahrir Square on Wednesday, carrying Egyptian flags and portraits of the president. They rode into the crowd on horses and camels and attacked protesters with whips and sticks. Members of the opposition, who had earlier built barricades to try to keep the pro-Mubarak elements out of the square, defended themselves with stones and steel bars. Shots were fired into the air, apparently by soldiers or police. The Egyptian Defense Ministry later denied that the army had fired on demonstrators, according to the news agency Reuters.
> 
> There were reports that hundreds of people had been injured. The news agency AFP quoted medical sources as saying that at least 500 people had been hurt in Wednesday's violence.
> 
> The television network Al Jazeera reported that journalists had been targeted, and that a reporter working for the Al Arabiya station had been stabbed. CNN reporter Anderson Cooper was also attacked by a mob and punched in the head, according to a Twitter message sent out by CNN. A BBC reporter said via Twitter that a female camera operator had been brutally beaten up, while the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet said that two of its reporters had been attacked by an angry mob.
> 
> According to SPIEGEL ONLINE reporter Matthias Gebauer, anti-government protesters had attacked injured Mubarak supporters with clubs as they were being carried out of the crowd. Organizers of the protests tried to stop the attacks, without success.
> 
> *'We Can't Kill Each Other'*
> 
> Young women repeatedly ran into the crowds and urged protesters not to throw any more stones. "We are all Egyptians, we can't kill each other," one shouted. Among the protesters were large numbers of young men from Cairo's impoverished suburbs, who apparently wanted revenge for the years of oppression under Mubarak. Men broke up paving slabs to get projectiles to throw.
> 
> As night fell, there were reports of petrol bombs being thrown. AFP reported that two Molotov cocktails had landed in the grounds of the Egyptian Museum.
> 
> The fighting between rival groups continued on Tahrir Square on Wednesday evening, with more pro-Mubarak forces storming the square. The situation became increasingly confused, as it became more and more difficult to determine who belonged to which group.
> 
> Hard-line opposition protesters appeared determined to remain within Tahrir Square, with some demonstrators telling journalists they did not feel it was safe to leave.
> 
> SPIEGEL ONLINE's Matthias Gebauer reported on Wednesday evening that looters were exploiting the chaos in the center of Cairo to break into parked cars.
> 
> *Fears of a Bloodbath *
> 
> Soldiers stationed around the square did not intervene in the clashes. According to a BBC journalist on the scene, there were too few soldiers present to keep order.
> 
> Eyewitnesses told SPIEGEL ONLINE that the army had supported the protesters by checking aggressive Mubarak supporters as they arrived and that they had discovered that some of the supposed supporters were actually members of the security forces.
> 
> Members of the opposition also claimed that pro-Mubarak protesters had been paid to come to the square. According to the news agency Reuters, the Egyptian Interior Ministry denied reports that plainclothes police were involved in the clashes.
> 
> Mohamed ElBaradei, a prominent member of the opposition, told the BBC that he feared there would be a "bloodbath" on the square. He said the clashes were "yet another symptom … of a criminal regime using criminal acts."
> 
> There were also reports of clashes between rival groups in the city of Alexandria, although CNN reported that demonstrations there had been largely peaceful.
> 
> *Contact to the Muslim Brotherhood *
> 
> According to sources in Berlin, the German government has been in contact with moderate forces within the Muslim Brotherhood to talk about the ongoing unrest. The German government also called on the Egyptian authorities to allow a process of democratization in the country.
> 
> Earlier, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle had spoken to ElBaradei on the telephone, according to a statement by the German Foreign Ministry. "I call on the security forces in Egypt not to use force against the demonstrators," Westerwelle said in a statement after the telephone conversation. "Every additional escalation of the situation must be avoided."
> 
> United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned the violence on Wednesday. "Any attack against peaceful demonstrators is unacceptable and I strongly condemn it," he said. British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Wednesday afternoon that the day's violence shows that Egyptian authorities need to accelerate the pace of reform. In reference to reports that pro-government forces had fomented violence, he added that "if it turns out that the regime in any way has been sponsoring or tolerating this violence, that would be completely and utterly unacceptable."
> 
> 
> In a statement, the White House said that it "deplores and condemns" the violence and that it was "deeply concerned about attacks on the media and peaceful demonstrators."
> 
> *Urged to Go Home*
> 
> The violence appeared to be a move by the autocrat to clamp down on the anti-government protests, which are now in their ninth day. The army had earlier urged the demonstrators to go home. In a message on state television, an army spokesman told Egyptians that their message had been heard, in a reference to Mubarak's appearance on television on Tuesday evening, when the president announced that he would not run for reelection in September. Earlier on Tuesday, the opposition movement had held the largest rally in Egypt's history, with as many as 2 million people gathering in Tahrir Square, the center of the protest movement.
> 
> The United Nations estimates that around 300 people have been killed since the protests began last week. It is unclear whether Wednesday's violence will add to that toll.
> 
> With reporting by Matthias Gebauer and Daniel Steinvorth in Cairo
> 
> dgs - with wire reports



More on LINK


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## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *Ice-Cold Calculation
> *
> 
> *Mubarak's Effort to Discredit the Protest Movement
> *
> 02/03/2011
> By Matthias Gebauer in Cairo
> Spiegel ONLINE
> 
> LINK
> 
> *Protests in Cairo turned bloody and violent on Wednesday as forces backing Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak confronted demonstrators in the city center. An ugly scene of chaos and hatred erupted -- one which could ultimately help Mubarak stay in office for now.*
> 
> The young woman's voice is already hoarse, but that doesn't stop her from shouting. "We are all Egyptians. We should not be killing each other," she croaks. There are tears in her eyes. Maha has persevered for seven days and nights on Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo, protesting peacefully for the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak. Now groups of shouting men are walking past her. Many are bleeding from head wounds after being hit by rocks. Their faces are distorted with hatred, and they are carrying rocks in their hands. Maha spreads out her arms and tries to stop them. "Enough of this," she shouts. "Stop doing this." But the men ignore her and keep running as in a trance. Then they throw their rocks.
> 
> It is around 1 p.m. on Wednesday, one day after the biggest demonstrations to date, in which hundreds of thousands of people, possibly even millions, peacefully protested on Tuesday against President Mubarak. The Egyptian strongman, however, is still in office -- he refuses to relinquish power, saying that he intends to remain in office until September, when his current term as president ends. On Wednesday, tens of thousands of regime opponents were back on the square in downtown Cairo, the heart of their uprising against the government, which has ruled Egypt with an iron fist for the last 30 years, lining its pockets in the process.
> 
> It would be the day on which the dream of a peaceful revolution against Mubarak would finally collapse.
> 
> *Bloody Power Struggle *
> 
> At noon on this Wednesday, a bloody street battle began on Tahrir Square between opposition forces and the followers of the ruling elite. Thousands of Mubarak supporters suddenly appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, on all major access roads and began pushing their way toward the protest of the regime opponents. In the end, no one will know for sure who threw the first of the thousands of rocks, or who struck the first blow. By evening, only one thing was clear: According to official information, more than 600 people were wounded in the street fighting and three were killed, although the real numbers are likely much higher. Later in the evening, a doctor estimated that there were 1,500 wounded. The revolt against Mubarak has turned into a bloody power struggle.
> 
> On Thursday morning, the violence continued. Gunfire rang out on the square in the early morning hours, killing at least three. Sustained bursts of fire continued for several hours.
> 
> The aggressiveness of the Mubarak supporters, who his party had organized and brought into downtown Cairo, was palpable from the beginning. Shouting men jostled in front of the barricades around the square, striking Western reporters without warning and trying to force them to return to their hotels. "This is a matter between Egyptians," they chanted. "Let us handle it ourselves." It seemed as if such scenes were being staged by the regime -- as they had been on Tuesday. During the March of Millions, state television initially broadcast only absurd images of a small demonstration of Mubarak supporters in front of the royal palace. The regime simply ignored the mass protest on Tahrir Square.
> 
> *Clashes Continued in Earnest *
> 
> But then, on Wednesday, the rocks began to fly. Thousands of Mubarak supporters forced their way into the square, next to the Egyptian Museum, joined by others riding horses and camels, and carrying countless signs bearing the likeness of a youthful Mubarak. The storm had been unleashed. Within minutes, protesters on both sides were throwing volleys of rocks at each other. The military, which had remained neutral until now, was still separating the two groups. Dozens of men with gaping head wounds were pulled out of the crowd, while their friends pulled up new stones from the pavement and the street clashes continued in earnest.
> 
> With the violence seemingly uncontrollable, the soldiers withdrew for a time and partisans on both sides climbed onto the tanks and threw even more rocks. At first, the mostly younger regime opponents tried to stave off the intruders by forming human chains, but soon they too became increasingly violent. Instead of students, who had been at the forefront for much of the week, young people from the impoverished Cairo suburbs were suddenly on the front lines in the running battle against the Mubarak supporters. In a frenzy, they rushed forward while loudly shouting "God is great," hurled their rocks and ran back to collect new ammunition.
> 
> The regime opponents repeatedly dragged their wounded opponents across the square, shouting things like: "This is an undercover policeman." The suspicion alone was enough to prompt a small crowd of hate-filled people to gather around one wounded man, who was then brutally beaten. "He is like Mubarak. Now we will kill him," they shouted. In most cases, moderate protestors managed to prevent mob rule -- but it certainly seemed possible that some of the wounded may have been killed on side streets.
> 
> *Makeshift Bandages*
> 
> There seemed to be no end sight to the hatred and bloodthirsty clashes. The two fronts moved back and forth for hours. Security forces that had been called to the scene remained in position on a highway overpass behind the Egyptian Museum and on a Nile River bridge. A helicopter hovered constantly over the combat zone, where men, despite having lacerations covered with makeshift bandages, continued to rush at the opposing side, fueled by adrenalin. "We have suffered for 30 years, and now we're going to kill them," some on the side of the Mubarak opponents shouted. "They want to destroy what we have achieved with Mubarak," the president's supporters shouted back.
> 
> The regime opponents see the escalation of violence as a calculated move on the part of the president. They claim that with the organized mobilization of his supporters -- which, they say, include experienced provocateurs -- he was deliberately trying to provoke the murderous images of street fighting that were being broadcast around the world throughout the day. The clashes continued to flare up periodically at night amid the sounds of gunfire and exploding Molotov cocktails.
> 
> Still, opposition groups must also regain control over their movement. As much as Egyptians suffered under the regime, the images of sheer hatred among the ranks of Mubarak opponents were equally repulsive.
> 
> *Ice-Cold Calculations *
> 
> These images suit the president's purposes all too well. In his speech following the massive protest on Tuesday, he made it clear that he -- and only he, as the commander of the hard-hitting police force and the merciless intelligence service -- could organize an orderly transition to a new government. After a day of civil-war-like images coming from their capital, his words may have impressed many Egyptians. Instead of pinning their hopes on open confrontation with Mubarak, many could opt for a compromise that guarantees the president an honorable exit -- but one which would also be a transition into a system in which his supporters could at least have a say.
> 
> If the opposition calls for another major protest in Cairo on Friday, it could prove to be more difficult to mobilize supporters than before. Besides, its leaders must now fear that the next demonstration could end in a bloodbath. This could discredit the protest movement, and Mubarak's ice-cold calculations could add up.
> 
> It is now clear that the faltering president will stop at nothing to get what he wants. He is even willing to take the risk that the mob will go on a rampage and plunder Cairo in the coming days. There are few recipes for peaceful resistance against a president who is willing to be this ruthless to secure his position of power, even for such a short time.



More on LINK


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## a_majoor

How the Obama administration is responding. Like the Green Revolution in Iran, they are not extending any support to the pro democracy protesters, leaving the field to the most thuggish elements of the Regime and Islamic radicals (to pick the two most prominent poles):

http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2011/02/02/no-holes-barred/?singlepage=true



> *Egypt: No-Holes-Barred Diplomacy*
> February 2, 2011 - by Richard Fernandez
> 
> The question yesterday was whether Mubarak’s offer not to run in September would be enough to defuse the situation. The emerging answer is no, as supporters of Mubarak, some mounted on horses and camels, clashed with oppositionists in the street.  But the protesters aren’t done either, even if they may have to shift to lower gear. Egypt’s Internet is back up. This suggests the fight will go on until one side wins.  What’s a president to do in such a situation?
> 
> One immediate result of the return in connectivity is that the world will once again get to see the blood and guts.
> 
> With the restoration of access, Twitter lit up from the scene. Among those in tweeting from Tahrir Square are Pulitzer-prize-winning New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof), who just sent this series of messages via the web:
> 
> In my part of Tahrir, pro-#Mubarak mobs arrived in buses, armed with machetes, straight-razors and clubs, very menacing.
> 
> I saw some people who were motionless and seemed badly injured. Hard to know casualties, but they’re adding up.
> 
> Pro-#Mubarak thugs at #Tahrir v hostile to journalists. Several journalists attacked. I was threatened but am fine.
> 
> The spectacle will naturally arouse strong passions in the Arab world and calls for President Obama to “do something.” But what will the president do?  Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post quotes Egyptian human rights activists who say the Obama administration has been coming down on both sides of the fence for too long. Diehl believes the president must choose sides or risk being blamed by both. Diehl says dump Mubarak:
> 
> Hassan watched President Obama’s statement Tuesday night, and saw it as a good example of what U.S. policy has been the last two years: “fine words, but no action.” “I think that this administration in practice has supported not only the Mubarak regime but all the authoritarian regimes in the Arab region,” he said.
> 
> “The Cairo speech president Obama made two years ago sent a very good message to the Arab people. But in reality the administration engaged with the regimes at the expense of the people. It didn’t help the people of the region and it didn’t help U.S. long-term interests — and this is what we not see in the streets of Cairo.”
> 
> The problem is that Mubarak has a been a loyal supporter of the U.S. diplomatic game, as Tony Blair explained. Bucking the tide of journalistic opinion, Blair said Mubarak is “immensely courageous and a force for good”:
> 
> Speaking to Piers Morgan on CNN, Blair defended his backing for Mubarak.
> 
> “Where you stand on him depends on whether you’ve worked with him from the outside or on the inside. I’ve worked with him on the Middle East peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians so this is somebody I’m constantly in contact with and working with and on that issue, I have to say, he’s been immensely courageous and a force for good,” he said.
> 
> “Inside Egypt, and I have many Egyptian friends, it’s clear that there’s been a huge desire for change.”
> 
> Asked if the west had not been an obstacle to change, Blair defended the policies of his and other governments.
> 
> “I don’t think the west should be the slightest bit embarrassed about the fact that it’s been working with Mubarak over the peace process but at the same time it’s been urging change in Egypt,” he said.
> 
> Mubarak’s “courage,” as Blair described it, may now be working against Obama. The 82 year-old Egyptian is proving to be as stubborn as hell.  So far he has not folded before President Obama’s signaling offensive. President Obama has been running an information operation along the lines he knows; crafting  messages ever so artfully, a void here and a shade there, the coloring exactly right.  Jake Tapper noted that the president was avoiding the press, taking no questions on Egypt and even excluding reporters from the ceremonial signing of the START Treaty, to which only photographers were allowed. He has been keeping his core message away from the White House press corps.
> 
> In the meantime the biggest bandwidth to Egypt has been ascribed to the US military, which is using its informal connection to talk to their counterparts. “U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates spoke to Defense Minister Mohammed Hussein Tantawi yesterday, the second time in recent days. And Navy Admiral Mike Mullen, Obama’s top military adviser, has maintained contact with his counterpart, armed forces chief of staff Sami Hafez Enan.”
> 
> At the very top of the communication’s strategy is the Presidential Sphinx. The president has remained vague, calling for “a best-case outcome of free elections that reaffirm human dignity, all on a non-specific timeline.” AOL’s Lauren Frayer believes the vagueness is deliberate:
> 
> The United States also appears to be taking that cautious view, and President Barack Obama’s speech late Tuesday about Egypt seemed deliberately vague. Obama said he spoke with Mubarak by phone for 30 minutes and described what he told him.
> 
> “It is my belief that an orderly transition must be meaningful, it must be peaceful and it must begin now,” Obama said. But it’s unclear whether Obama’s demand that change begin now means Mubarak must leave office immediately, or whether it means he can stay on and implement major reforms in the lead-up to September elections.
> 
> A 30 minute phone call is not a lot of bandwidth, and if Obama’s conversation with Mubarak is as described, the clashes between pro- and anti- Mubarak protesters suggest that the Egyptian leader is interpreting Obama’s recommendations in an equally vague way.
> 
> It remains to be seen whether President Obama’s carefully contrived signaling will have any effect. His mix of public messages, intentional vagueness, internal news blackouts, and the use of back channels to convey specific information may have been altogether too much subtlety for a situation that may call for a clear black and white decision. Is he he going to throw Mubarak out and forcefully supplant him with a new man? Or will he get behind Mubarak’s enemies and make peace with whatever comes?
> 
> So far he has been trying to eat his cake and have it too. But perhaps the time is fast approaching when he will have to throw in behind one faction or the other in Egypt. Signaling doesn’t always stop a runaway train.
> 
> The president’s main professional experience is the campaign. Prior to becoming president of the United States, his only executive experience was running the Chicago Annenberg Foundation. Media operations are what he knows. Now in his first real foreign policy crisis, he’s trying to use the same tools. Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post catches the atmosphere of Obama-style crisis management. It is, as ever, approached as a PR problem.
> 
> Aaron David Miller, speaking to Politico’s Josh Gerstein, agrees this isn’t much of an improvement over what Obama has been saying for days: “The only new element was the word ‘now’ and that was finessed. This leaves the U.S. to some degree still at odds with and out of step with what the political opposition … is demanding on the street.”
> 
> Moreover, what does Obama’s statement mean? Mubarak himself can claim there is a transition afoot since he won’t be running again for president. Obama didn’t do much to shove Mubarak off the stage, saying only, “Throughout this process, the United States will continue to extend the hand of partnership and friendship to Egypt. And we stand ready to provide any assistance that is necessary to help the Egyptian people as they manage the aftermath of these protests.” Is the helping hand to Mubarak or to those insisting he depart immediately? …
> 
> I asked a former Middle East hand if there was something new here. He replied, “Nothing.” Why a nothing speech, then? He answered, “My interpretation is that this is an effort to claim credit. That’s why he went immediately after Mubarak. They [the Obama advisers] know they muffed it and missed it and blew it — so the empty remarks are an effort to establish a counter narrative.”
> 
> In any other administration, you’d think such an assessment harsh. But remember, this is an administration that views Egypt’s revolution as a PR problem.
> 
> The words of Gilbert and Sullivan come to mind, slightly altered:
> 
> I am the very model of a modern Media-General,
> I’ve talking points on any subject didactical or liberal,
> I know the hosts of talk shows, and claim mandates historical
> From Roe to Wade to I myself, in order categorical;
> I’m very well acquainted, too, with matters economical,
> I understand that printing money is rarely problematical,
> About Alaskan natives I’ve definite enlightened views
> With reasons why ladies shouldn’t shoot the wilder moose.
> And though my practical knowledge is both spottily and scantily,
> Enlivened but with anecdotes from the 8th or 19th century;
> But still, in matters rhetorical, polemical, political,
> I am the very model of a modern Media-General.


----------



## Journeyman

From today's CBC:
"Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae said the world is awaiting Canada's response to the crisis in Egypt"

:rofl:  
Even I'm not sufficiently egotistical to be believe that the world cares what Canada thinks, let alone waits.


----------



## The Bread Guy

_- edited to add link to Hansard -_

If you want to see what your MP may, or may not, have said during the emergency House of Commons debate on Egypt on 2 Feb 11, link here for the transcript of the debate.


*"Egyptian army starts rounding up journalists"*:  _"The Egyptian military started rounding up journalists, possibly for their own protection, on Thursday after they came under attack from supporters of President Hosni Mubarak who have been assaulting anti-government protesters.  The U.S. State Department condemned what it called a "concerted campaign to intimidate" foreign journalists in Egypt. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday that violence against journalists was part of a series of deliberate attacks and called on the Egyptian military to provide protection for reporters.  Foreign photographers reported a string of attacks on them by Mubarak supporters on Thursday near Tahrir Square, the scene of battles between supporters of Mubarak and protesters demanding he step down after nearly 30 years in power.  One Greek print journalist was stabbed in the leg with a screwdriver. A Greek freelance photographer was punched in the face by a group of men who stopped him on the street near Tahrir Square and smashed some of his equipment.  An Associated Press reporter saw eight foreign journalists detained by the military near the prime minister's office, not far from Tahrir Square ...."_

*"UN to evacuate staff from Egypt"*:  _"The United Nations moved Thursday to evacuate much of its staff in Egypt, while about 5,000 passengers besieged Cairo airport a day after the protests that have gripped the Egyptian capital degenerated into a bloody street brawl.  The U.N. was sending in two chartered aircraft to take 350 staff and their families to Cyprus, said Rolando Gomez, a spokesman for its peacekeeping mission on the Mediterranean island. Each aircraft was to make two roundtrips to Cyprus.  "The staff will be temporarily relocated due to the security situation in Egypt," Gomez told The Associated Press, adding that arrangements had been made to accommodate up to 600 staff and their families at hotels in Cyprus. It was unclear whether they would remain on the island or head to other destinations.  Gomez said some U.N. staff will remain in Egypt to carry out "essential functions." ...."_

*"Egypt unrest: Canal transits continue, some port ops affected"*:  _"Suez Canal transits are continuing without disruption or delays, despite continuing unrest in Egypt. At some of the country’s ports, however, the situation is starting to have an impact on operations.  Container terminals are working between 0900 and 1400 hours local time. Delays and congestion of stacking areas can be expected due to the fact that containers continue to be discharged while no cargoes are being released.  Break bulk operations are only permitted for non-direct delivery cargo, and discharge operations are very slow, due to a shortage of labour and diesel for shore equipment.  Meanwhile, however, silos for bulk cargo are working and all oil & gas terminals are fully operational.  Sidi Kerir and Ain Sukhna along the Suez Canal are also fully operational.  Due to the curfew between 1700 and 0700 hours local time, no services are offered for crew change, Cash to Master, spare parts or provisions until further notice ...."_

*"Food prices skyrocket in life under curfew"*:  _"After nine days of demonstrations across Egypt’s cities, towns and villages, the life of the residents has transformed, at least in the short term.  Prices of food items such as fresh vegetables, fruit, bread, fish and meat have skyrocketed. Fishermen cannot go out to the seas due to petrol shortage and the high price of meat means regular people can no longer afford it.  People rushed to stock up on food items despite the hike in prices in areas where the curfew hours stretch from 3pm till 9am.  Bakeries have been forced to change their timings and now function from 9am to 3pm instead of starting in the early morning hours. The delayed start combined with the shortened hours has led to thousands of people queuing up outside the bakeries waiting for their turn to buy bread ....."_

And if you don't think bread riots can be an issue.....


> "The ongoing anti-government protests on the streets of Cairo and other Egyptian cities represent the biggest public demonstration in the country since the famous ‘bread riots’ which occurred exactly 34 years ago. The current riots, while more dedicated to the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak, are also partially incited by rising food prices.  On January 18-19 of 1977, hundreds of thousands of most poor Egyptians went to the streets to protest the termination of state subsidies of basic food items, as mandated by terms of an agreement with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. At least 800 people were killed in the two days of turmoil, which came to an end only after the army was sent in to restore order and the state cancelled the policy ...."


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *The World from Berlin
> *
> 
> *'Mubarak's Henchmen Will Fiercely Defend the System'
> *
> 02/03/2011
> Spiegel ONLINE
> 
> LINK
> 
> *Things took a nasty turn on Wednesday when government loyalists attacked anti-Mubarak protesters in Cairo. As the violence continued early Thursday, the army moved in to create a buffer zone. In Thursday's newspapers, German commentators discuss the crucial role of the military and the dilemmas facing the West.
> *
> 
> The crisis in Egypt took a sharp turn for the worse Wednesday almost immediately after 82-year-old President Hosnai Mubarak rejected calls for him to give up power and leave the country. Violent clashes on Wednesday and Thursday between opponents and supporters of his rule have left at least five dead. Now all eyes are on the army to see if it will decide to back the regime or help hasten its demise.
> 
> Although the army has struggled to maintain a neutral stance since the protests began 10 days ago, most observers still believe it will ultimately decide the country's fate.
> 
> On Wednesday, soldiers stood back and watched as things turned very ugly with pro-regime supporters attacking anti-Mubarak demonstrators. While some threw rocks from rooftops, others charged the crowds on horses and camels.
> 
> The clashes continued into the early hours of Thursday, with automatic weapons fire pounding the anti-government protesters in the square. Egypt's health minister said on state-run Nile TV that the number of injuries at Tahrir Square had reached 836 -- including 200 within a single hour on Thursday morning.
> 
> Later Thursday, Al-Jazeera reported that army tanks had created a buffer zone between the two sides to protect the pro-democracy camp from the carloads of regime loyalists seen heading toward the square.
> 
> *'A Fatal Error'*
> 
> The opposition is claiming that the attackers were plainclothes policemen and thugs hired by the regime. The spike in violence came after the protestors refused to disperse following a speech by President Mubarak in which he promised to not seek re-election in September but refused to step down immediately. For those who have been challenging his 30-year rule over the past week that was apparently too little. Instead, they are demanding that he give up power immediately and that fresh elections be held as soon as possible.
> 
> The new government Mubarak installed last week has sought to distance itself from the recent violence. "This is a fatal error," Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq told the privately-owned al-Hayat television. "When investigations reveal who is behind this crime and who allowed it to happen, I promise they will be held accountable and will be punished for what they did."
> 
> "There is no excuse whatsoever to attack peaceful protesters, and that is why I am apologizing," he said, urging the protesters "to go home to help end this crisis."
> 
> Reacting to the clashes on Wednesday, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said: "If any of the violence is instigated by the government, it should stop immediately."
> 
> The anti-Mubarak movement has vowed to intensify protests in order to force Mubarak out and called for another big demonstration for Friday. While the army and the government are calling for the protestors to return home, leading opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Peace laureate and former head of the UN's nuclear watchdog, has demanded that the military "intervene immediately and decisively to stop this massacre."
> 
> The escalation in Egypt has drawn condemnation from British Prime Minister David Cameron. "If it turns out that the regime in any way has sponsored or tolerated this violence, that is completely unacceptable," he said Wednesday after meeting with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in London. Ban added: "Any attack against the peaceful demonstrators is unacceptable, and I strongly condemn it."
> 
> In Thursday's newspapers, German commentators criticized the escalating violence and examined how events in Egypt have left the West in a conundrum.
> 
> The center-left *Süddeutsche Zeitung* writes:
> 
> "Mubarak is inciting the political camps against each other and looks on as Egyptians attack Egyptians. The question of the autocrat's legitimacy will have been finally answered in the eyes of many citizens. In his speech to the people, the 82-year-old emphasized that he had devoted his life to the nation and that he wanted to step down in dignity. He has yet to answer the question of why he wants to ruin his country by staying in office for another six months. How are the Americans and Europeans supposed to continue working with their long-time partner in Cairo? And, in a country that lives from tourism, who is going to book a trip to the Red Sea or to see the pyramids after seeing these TV images from Wednesday?"
> 
> "Many people had placed their hopes in the army, which is now washing its hands of responsibility. Elite troops stood on the roof of the Egyptian Museum on Tahrir Square. They stood by and impassively watched the bloody riots just like the soldiers in the tanks scattered across the square. The officers' argue that they had warned the demonstrators to go home. But what they mean is that it's their own fault."
> 
> The center-right *Die Welt* writes:
> 
> "The fighting makes clear that the transition to a new era will be anything but smooth. And that the regime has not given up yet. What happened on Tahrir Square was not a popular uprising against a popular revolt. It was the latest phase of Hosnai Mubarak's fight for survival."
> 
> "Those on camels and horses who suddenly attacked the regime opponents were almost certainly not normal citizens who had spontaneously decided to launch a counter-demonstration. … It seems that many were members of the security forces. They were thugs mustered and paid by the regime to help foster the widespread impression that there is a civil war. Their aim is to discredit the regime's opponents -- and quite possibly also to persuade the hesitant army to take the regime's side."
> 
> "After Mubarak's offer not to contest the presidential elections in September, the military had made it clear that the demonstrations should end. The opposition doesn't want to accept that. They do not trust Mubarak to allow a transformation process. Someone who has lied to and cheated his people so often, and who recently so blatantly manipulated elections, has lost their trust for good."
> 
> "It remains to be seen if the violent clashes will slow down or speed up the end of the regime. It depends on what the military decides to do. It can opt for massive repression and install a military dictatorship. Or it can push Mubarak from power and become a guarantor of the transition."
> 
> The business daily *Handelsblatt* writes:
> 
> "The political powder keg of the Middle East is facing a very dangerous period of instability. Given these circumstances, it is all the more important to avoid chaos and anarchy. Nevertheless, that won't be so easy. The scenes of street fighting in Cairo show just how fiercely Mubarak's henchmen will defend the system."
> 
> "The West now has to energetically push for Mubarak to step down. The Europeans and Americans have done little in these days of fury to present themselves as partners in a time of need. They were not prepared for the transformation, backed the wrong forces and underestimated the rage of the people."
> 
> "Neither the US nor the EU has the power or means to have any far-reaching influence on the developments in these states. The transformation has to be carried out by the states themselves. However, the Europeans could back the democratic forces, help economic development through investment projects and enter into a closer political partnership with North Africa and the Middle East. In the process, Turkey could serve as a valuable mediator."
> 
> "The US has to work hard to prevent the peace process from being buried in the ruins of the old power structures, and active involvement on the part of Israel is essential. The Netanyahu government is stuck in a bunker mentality. It has obviously not understood that nothing will be as it was before in the Middle East."
> 
> "Neither peace nor democracy nor a civil society can be achieved overnight. But if the region is to be freed of dictators and not fall into the hands of anti-Western Islamists, the right signals have to be sent. The EU has an opportunity to do just that right now."
> 
> *The Financial Times Deutschland* writes:
> 
> "The lesson of the Iraq War shows that stability in the Middle East is something that should be highly valued. To endanger it frivolously could have terrible consequences."
> 
> "Western foreign policy is currently marked by conflicting goals. It is grappling with the issue of just much idealism and how much realism a responsible Middle East policy can bear. It's about democracy versus stability."
> 
> "To accuse the West of double standards in its dealings with Arab autocrats and to demand the guillotine for the despots and radical democracy for the people would be too short-sighted."
> 
> "At the moment, Washington, Jerusalem and Berlin are primarily concerned with the issue of Islamists, and correctly so. It's clear that Mubarak has to go. But, at the same time, the West must do everything it can to prevent the Muslim Brotherhood from taking a leadership role in the freedom movement and then later taking power through free elections."
> 
> "The bloody street fights by Mubarak supporters show that regime change is long overdue .... The threat of anarchy is dangerous for the entire region. Yet just as dangerous is the prospect of allowing Egypt to stagger uncontrolled toward freedom after three decades of autocracy. The most radical solution -- immediate free elections -- is not the best one. The transition to a functioning democracy has to be mediated in a measured way."
> 
> The center-right *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung* writes:
> 
> "(Egypt) has played and still plays a key role in the efforts to prevent a region that is becoming more radicalized, that is riddled with seemingly unsolvable conflicts and that the world depends on for its oil from descending into chaos and war. The fact that Israel has stuck with Mubarak speaks volumes. The only democratic state in the Middle East is a stable despotism, which at least guarantees a 'cold peace,' something that is preferable to a state based on the people's rule, with a fate that is still uncertain. This uncertainty explains America's hesitation to drop Mubarak."
> 
> "Egypt will probably not end up being a theocracy like Iran; the countries and the times are too different. However, the examples of Iraq, Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories do not exactly increase the hope that everything will turn out well once the old regime is set aside and the people are finally allowed to decide for themselves who will govern. Could that be the Muslim Brotherhood? The West will have next to no influence over this."
> 
> "No one can say with certainty what the Arab revolutions will achieve. There will certainly be few 'Westminster democracies.'"
> 
> 
> The left-leaning *Die Tageszeitung* writes:
> 
> "With his speech on Wednesday, Mubarak ruined his chance of having a dignified exit and a return to a normal life. The scenes in central Cairo were the consequence -- Mubarak had let loose his supporters. …. The images of the escalation on Wednesday will remain associated with the president. The overwhelming majority of the opposition continued to demand late on Tuesday night that the president step down and have stuck to their calls for another big demonstration on Friday."
> 
> "And now, after days of peaceful protests, all signs point to confrontation. Once again, the question arises about the stance of the army, which called on the demonstrators to go home yesterday morning. It is possible they did so because they feared further escalation similar to the clashes in Alexandria on Tuesday evening. However, it is also possible that, after Mubarak's speech, military leaders now think enough is enough and are now backing the president."
> 
> --Siobhán Dowling



More on LINK


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *Revolution Is Bad for Business
> *
> 
> *No Quick Fix for Arab Youth's Economic Woes
> *
> 02/03/2011
> By Ulrike Putz
> Spiegel ONLINE
> 
> LINK
> 
> *The unrest in the Arab world is being fueled by massive economic problems, as young populations, who are facing a grim future, vent their frustration on the streets. But economists argue that the region's opposition movements may not be acting in the best interests of the youth.*
> 
> The TV images were almost exactly the same: An old man in a tailored suit appears in front of the national flag and speaks words to the camera that are supposed to write history. In Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan and on Wednesday Yemen, Arab leaders are being forced to appear humble in public. The pressure of the population and the fury of the young people, who are propelled into action by unemployment and a lack of prospects, was simply too much.
> 
> In Tunisia, the ruler fled into exile. In Jordan, the government was dismissed. In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak has promised to hand over power to a successor, as has the Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who said he will stand down in 2013.
> 
> New leaders are supposed to bring freedom and prosperity -- that is what the people hope. But is there actually any prospect of an economic upswing in the region?
> 
> Experts are skeptical. "All the states in the Middle East have massive problems," says Ragui Assaad, an economist specializing in the region who teaches at the University of Minnesota. To overcome these problems will take decades, he says. "Every country has to make very painful decisions. It is doubtful if the opposition groups, who are now pushing for power, can do that." The intoxication of the revolution is bound to be followed by a period of sobriety.
> 
> *'You Cannot Eat Free Elections' *
> 
> Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, a professor of economics at Virginia Tech, predicts that the young people who are currently rebelling will inevitably be disappointed. "The protesters believe that the freedom of expression they are fighting for now will improve their chances on the job market," he says. That, he argues, is a fallacy. "I am deeply worried that young Arabs will turn away from democracy as soon as they realize that you cannot eat free elections."
> 
> One possible consequence could be that populists and religious fanatics get an enormous boost in support. That is particularly likely when it comes to Yemen. "For Yemen, all help is coming too late. The state is on the verge of collapse," Assaad says. This is mostly due to the country's desperate economic situation. Yemen is faced with twin problems, the economist explains: On the one hand it has no natural resources, and hardly any water or agricultural land. On the other hand, its population is extremely poorly educated. "Pretty hopeless," is Assaad's bleak conclusion.
> 
> On the United Nations' Human Development Index (HDI), Yemen is ranked 138 in a list of 179 states. "Yemen can hardly be saved," says Salehi-Isfahani. "Yemen is so backward that it first needs to build roads, bridges and schools. One can only start thinking about economic reforms much later." This backwardness makes Yemen the ideal breeding ground for extremism. "The youth there has no future anyway. They are open to nihilist ways of thinking."
> 
> Yemen is the poorest country in the Arab world, and the state has been on the brink of collapse for years. The formerly Socialist south is demanding secession, 20 years after unification. In the far north, Shiite militias are rebelling against the regime. Islamist fundamentalists have turned away from the government and are attacking the security forces. Marauding groups of al-Qaida fighters are a threat to stability.
> 
> *Three Reasons for the Crisis *
> 
> While Yemen's future is particularly bleak, the other countries in North Africa and the Middle East have at least a small chance of overcoming their crises. "The countries from Morocco to Iran have similar problems which can be tackled with similar methods," says Assaad. There are three main reasons for the economic crisis in the region:
> 
> *High birth rates*: Since the 1990s, the number of young people under 25 has grown disproportionately. Queen Rania of Jordan warned recently that the number of unemployed young people in the Middle East will rapidly increase from the current 15 million to 100 million by 2020. She called it a "ticking time bomb," saying it needs to be "defused" if unrest is to be prevented.
> 
> *Education*: The young people in the so-called middle-income countries are well educated, but not well enough. "Their qualifications are not good enough to compete on the international level," Salehi-Isfahani says.
> 
> *Over-reliance on the state*: In almost all of these countries, socialist-oriented regimes have for decades employed millions of people in the public sector. Young people now emerging from schools and universities had been led to believe that -- like their parents -- they would be taken care of by the state. However, countries like Syria, Egypt or Iraq can no longer afford this: Their planned economies have proved not to be profitable.
> 
> The young people in the Middle East are being doubly hit. On the one hand, they are shouldering the burdens of the wrong economic policies. On the other, they are also victims of a poor educational system. There has been a dumbing-down rather than the creation of elites. "The young people have done everything right, they have studied and tried hard. Nevertheless, they are far worse off than their parents. The disappointment is huge," says Salehi-Isfahani.
> 
> This is made worse by the "economically enforced celibacy" that men and women have to suffer. "Arab men without a permanent job have next to no chance of marrying and building a family," the economist says. That means that there is a lack of suitable grooms for women. As a result, young people see their hopes of personal fulfillment dashed.
> 
> What does all this mean for the West? Some experts are comparing the necessary dismantlement of the Arab economic structures with the new economic order in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In order to ensure that this transformation succeeds, the US will have to quickly alter its foreign policy, Salehi-Isfahani suggests. "Washington has to understand that in the Middle East there are far bigger dangers than Hamas and the Iranian nuclear program." It is only with massive economic help from the US and Europe that the region can be stabilized, he says.
> 
> *Opposition a Hindrance to Progress? *
> 
> Yet even then it is still far from certain if the Arab states can hold their ground on the global market. Admittedly, countries like Tunisia and Egypt produce clothes, furniture and electrical goods, and countries like Jordan and Lebanon are even getting into high-tech. The problem, however, is the superior competition, says Salehi-Isfahani. "The Arab youth has to understand that they are competing with billions of Asians in these areas. And they are all prepared to work harder and for less money."
> 
> The only thing that could save the Middle East is a big dose of the market economy, says Assaad. Countries like Syria, Egypt and Tunisia subsidize gasoline and offer university places for free. That is wrong, says Assaad. "It is the middle class who drive cars and send their children to university. By subsidizing these areas, the state is distributing money to people who already have it."
> 
> The paradox is that the greatest barrier to progress could be the very opposition groups that are now pushing for change. "Many of them are not market-economy-orientated. They are dependent on religious or left-wing ideologies," says Assaad. Yet, in order to improve the living standard of their populations, these countries have to make an effort to attract investors. "I don't know how the leaders of the opposition can sell that to their base," he says.
> 
> Salehi-Isfahani is, therefore, hoping that the protests end soon. "There must be a return to calm, so that the factories and the stock exchanges can go back to work." It may sound very conservative, but insurgencies are bad for the economic climate, he says. "It is only when businesses are doing well that the lives of these young people will be improved."



More on LINK


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *The End of Western Credibility
> *
> 
> *Will Democracy Become Islam's Best Friend?
> *
> 02/03/2011
> A Commentary by Jakob Augstein
> Spiegel ONLINE
> 
> LINK
> 
> *Millions of people in the Middle East want freedom, just as Eastern Europeans once did. Twenty years ago, the West was a role model, but it betrays its own values. In doing so, it is also strengthening its enemy: militant Islamism.*
> 
> "Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe -- because, in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty."
> 
> 
> George Bush the Younger said that. And one can see: The West wasn't lacking nice words or intelligent insights. What was missing, though, were the right policies -- and, much worse, a belief in our own values.
> 
> There aren't many places in the world where Western moral double standards are as glaring as in the Middle East. In the ears of the 1.5 million Palestinians enclosed in the Gaza Strip, Western words like freedom and democracy must sound about as credible as Brezhnev's praise of freedom and socialism to the ears of an occupied Poland.
> 
> Indeed, the West's closest allies are the jailors of the Palestinian people. No other countries have received as much foreign aid from the United States as Israel and Egypt. Most of the money benefits the military -- but the US defense industry profits handsomely as well. The Egyptian air force F16 fighter jets now thundering over the heads of protesters on Cairo's Tahrir Square originate from the USA, as do the M60 tanks used by the Israelis to patrol Gaza.
> 
> Whether it is helping to maintain Israel's security, providing free passage through the Suez Canal or ensuring the containment of radical Islam, the Mubarak regime has certainly provided the West with valuable services over the years. And those are, of course, all legitimate interests. The problem is that the West and Israel have used illegitimate means to pursue them. Support for a regime that will soon have ruled for 30 years under emergency laws, defrauding one election after another without even blinking, one that relied on a police force notorious for torture and persecution, was illegitimate.
> 
> As Bush correctly stated, "(I)n the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty."
> 
> Indeed, the era of peace which can be bought is over. In the developments in Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan and Yemen, we could in fact be seeing the awakening of a new era in the Arab world. Perhaps the Arab world is now casting off the yoke of Western-back autocracies just as Eastern Europe rid themselves of Soviet rule 20 years ago. This time, however, the West isn't on the side of the heralds of freedom -- instead they are the allies of the oppressors. It wasn't even a year ago that the German foreign minister praised Mubarak's regime for its "many years of political continuity" and called it an "anchor of stability in the region."
> 
> How will the West heal this wound of destroyed credibility? It is certainly not going to happen today. The winds of change turned into a storm some time ago, but not even that has been enough to drive the center of power in Washington to muster clear words on the situation. The US Secretary of State murmured something about an "orderly transition," but the man the world is looking to is keeping silent. US President Barack Obama, it would seem, can think of nothing to say about the urge for freedom of millions of young men in the Maghreb region who are being held hostage by history and the web of Western imperial interests.
> 
> A few weeks ago, youth in the Gaza Strip penned perhaps the most poignant rebuke of Western Middle East policies, regardless whether they are formulated in Washington, Paris, London or Berlin. "We want to be free. We want to be able to lead normal lives. We want peace. Are we asking for too much?"
> 
> 
> But these youth can't even turn to the West for an answer to their question. It has already shrugged off responsibility.
> 
> The risky consequences of this failure are obvious. Militant Islam's greatest ally has always been the West's hypocrisy. Again and again, the West has denied its own values in the Middle East, giving autocracy precedence over democracy. But sometimes people can be strongly influenced by the very things they are fighting against. Autocracy in the Arab regimes is meant to be a bulwark against Islamism?
> 
> Now democracy is threatening to become an ally of Islamism. After all, Hamas emerged triumphant in free elections in the Gaza Strip in 2006. The Muslim Brotherhood has now pledged to support a secular Egypt, but how long will that promise hold if the Islamist group comes to power?




More on LINK


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *Middle East *
> 
> *Can Tunisia or Egypt find role model in Turkey?
> *
> By Scott Peterson, Staff Writer / February 3, 2011
> The Christian Science Monitor
> 
> 
> LINK
> 
> *Istanbul, Turkey*
> 
> Turkey has raised its voice for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to step aside, as it tries to burnish its credentials as the region’s “model” democratic, modern, and Islam-leaning state.
> 
> After days of official silence as violence first began raging across Egypt – and a chorus of complaints in the Turkish media that the ruling party’s ambitions of regional leadership were proving shallow – Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pulled out the stops.
> 
> Mr. Mubarak’s promise not to seek another term in elections was not enough.
> 
> “People expect Mubarak to take a much different step,” Mr. Erdogan said on Wednesday, during a visit to Kyrgyzstan. “This is the expectation of the people…. The current administration [of Mubarak] fails to give confidence for beginning an atmosphere of democracy within a short period of time.”
> 
> Turkey has increasingly flexed its regional diplomatic muscle under the leadership of Erdogan’s Islam-leaning Justice and Development Party (AKP). Some have referred to Turkey’s robust foreign policy as “neo-Ottomanism.”
> 
> Though Turkey has witnessed four military coups since 1960 – the latest, in 1997, pushed from power the overtly Islamist Welfare Party, the precursor to the more moderate AKP – Turkey’s democratic development is seen as a worthy example by some activists from Tunis to Cairo.
> 
> As an economic powerhouse with a determined tradition of secular rule since the 1920s that has also found democratic space for a moderate Islamic leadership, Turkey has pushed its appeal on several levels.
> 
> “The transformation of Turkey’s political Islam is something which has set itself as a model for the Arab street,” says Cengiz Aktar, a professor at Bahcesehir University in Istanbul.
> 
> “The Arab street thinks that if it can happen in Turkey, it may also happen in their countries,” says Mr. Aktar. “This being said … comparing [Turkey’s transformation] – especially in Egypt – we should not be naive. That will take much more time, for the Muslim Brotherhood and other political movements in Arab countries to become another AKP. It’s a long process, but we are on the right track.”
> 
> The benefits of the Turkey model
> While tens of thousands of protesters in Egypt have rallied to topple Mubarak after 30 years of rule, Egyptian intellectuals have commented on the benefits of Turkey’s model.
> 
> The chain of events started in Tunisia, where President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali was overthrown by people power in mid-January after 23 years of leadership – the first Arab leader in the modern era to be forced from power in such a way.
> 
> Similar protests have erupted from Sudan and Jordan to Yemen, all calling for more accountable and democratic government. In Tunisia, which has a strong and educated middle class, Islamist leader Rachid Ghannouchi returned home after 22 years in exile earlier this week, comparing his banned Ennahda (Awakening) movement to the AKP, and rejecting unflattering comparisons to the leader of Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
> 
> *Poll: Turkey has strong blend of Islam and democracy*
> 
> On Wednesday, a poll of seven Arab nations and Iran published by the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV) think tank found that 66 percent of 2,267 respondents said Turkey represented a “successful blend of Islam and democracy.”
> 
> In the past three years Turkey has mediated – not always successfully – between Syria and Israel, with Brazil on Iran’s nuclear program, in the Balkans, and recently with Qatar on Lebanon’s political deadlock, to name a few regional initiatives.
> 
> The TESEV poll found that Turkey’s “Muslim background” was the most-cited reason for its “model” status, followed by its economy, its democratic government, and that it is seen to “stand up for Palestinians and Muslims."
> 
> “Until recently, prevailing opinion in Turkey was that Arabs did not like the Turks,” said the report, according to a description of the Turkish-language document in the Hurriyet Daily News. “However, this research challenges this belief; there is now growing sympathy for Turkey and Turks in the Arab world.”
> 
> Some 78 percent of respondents said that Turkey should play a bigger role in the region; positive regional opinion has risen from 75 percent to 85 percent about Turkey, which has taken a tough line against Israel over its raid last May on the Gaza-bound "Freedom Flotilla," which killed nine activists from Turkey, one a dual US citizen.
> 
> Erdogan set the tone on Egypt earlier this week. He said the AKP “came to power declaring: ‘Enough, the final say and decision belongs to the people.’” He said the AKP “always opposed … oppression,” and stated: “Governments, which close their eyes, their ears and their mind to the people, cannot survive long.”
> 
> Erdogan offered a “very sincere warning” for Mubarak, noting that “We are human, we are mortal.… We will all die and be called to account for what we left behind." The Turkish leader added: “In today’s world. Freedoms cannot be postponed or ignored.”
> 
> Before those remarks, the Turkish media criticized Erdogan for his silence.
> 
> “Ankara has always played for stability in the region and this has also meant supporting dictators,” wrote columnist Semih Idiz in the Hurriyet Daily News. “The dilemma for Foreign Minister [Ahmet] Davutoglu is that his vision of an influential Turkey in the Middle East is really contingent on the present status quo in the region.”
> 
> But that hasn’t prevented Turkish officials from stating their case, as the pro-democracy confrontation in Egypt enters its 10th day.
> 
> “This regional role of Turkey is very much self-attributed, it’s self-declared, [and] they are also learning about their role in the region,” says Aktar. “So I am not very surprised about the lack of enthusiasm [toward the Egyptian protests] in the beginning. [The AKP] have achieved something extremely important, politically speaking, but they are over-cautious sometimes. In a word: Better late than never.”



More on LINK


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## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *Middle East *
> 
> *What Egypt's unrest could mean for Hamas
> *
> By Joshua Mitnick, Correspondent / February 3, 2011
> The Christian Science Monitor
> 
> 
> LINK
> 
> *Both Israel and Palestinian Authority officials fear the empowerment of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt might prompt Cairo to ease access to Gaza, and help Hamas consolidate its rule there.*
> 
> *Ashkelon, Israel *
> 
> As Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's grip on power slipped this week, Israelis and Palestinians are sizing up what a change in government in Cairo may mean for the Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
> 
> Both Israel and the Palestinian Authority officials fear the empowerment of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt might prompt Cairo to ease access to Gaza, and help Hamas consolidate its rule there.
> 
> Egypt has the keys to Gaza's only border not controlled by Israel. That leaves President Mubarak's successor, whoever it may be, with the option to open up the stifled territory of 1.5 million to trade and civilian traffic, or to continue the restrictions that weigh on the economy and the Islamic militant government there.
> 
> “The current Egyptian regime has a strong interest in preventing the Hamas-controlled regime from moving into Egypt,” says Professor Steinberg. “There is an Israeli concern that a different government – an Islamic based government – would allow much more freedom of movement and terrorists across the border.”
> 
> To get around the restrictions, a network of Hamas-controlled subterranean tunnels has developed under the border to funnel weapons and fill demand for consumer goods and essentials such as fuel. Spokespeople already say that Gaza is feeling the pinch of a gas shortage, because supplies through the Sinai have been frozen.
> 
> A new Egyptian government would also have to decide on whether to continue enforcing policy battling the smugglers. In the first days of the Cairo protests, there were reports of stepped up smuggling at the border, reflecting Israel's concerns.
> 
> Hamas, trying to avoid looking as if they are exploiting the chaos, denied the reports. While Gaza has come to depend on commercial goods from the tunnels, recent smuggling has also helped Hamas rearm with rockets after fighting a three-and-a-half week war with Israel two years ago.
> 
> *Hamas wants commercial crossing*
> 
> Currently only pedestrians are permitted to cross the border, but Hamas says it hopes that Egypt will eventually agree to establish a commercial crossing.
> 
> “We are hoping to have a direct contact with the world through commerce with Egypt,'' says Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar. “Everybody is looking for that because their goods are so much cheaper.”
> 
> But Mr. Zahar might have to wait. In the past, Egypt has resisted calls from Israel to establish commercial trade links with Gaza for fear of becoming responsible for providing basic goods for the impoverished territory. Currently, the international community calls Israel to task for the humanitarian situation in Gaza
> 
> Over the weekend, Hamas deployed forces along the border, amid reports that Egyptian police stations in Sinai were being overrun by members of the Bedouin ethnic group. That has Egypt recalling a 2008 border crisis, when frustrated Palestinians breached the Egyptian border compound at Rafa.
> 
> The difference now is that Hamas wants to prove it is responsible enough to avoid stirring a border crisis.
> 
> “We want the border to be safe,” says Zahar.
> 
> But in the southern Israeli town of Ashkelon, there is already fear that a loosened situation at the border with Egypt will end up allowing in weapons to be targeted at Israel.
> 
> “Even though relations are pretty good,” says Osher Amar, a truck driver. “I think we should be a afraid.''



More on LINK 


Egypt protests: Five world leaders jump into the fray


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *Middle East *
> 
> *After Egypt's protests, Jordan's king faces more assertive public
> *
> By Nicholas Seeley, Correspondent / February 2, 2011
> The Christian Science Monitor
> 
> 
> LINK
> 
> *Despite skepticism in Jordan about King Abdullah's appointment Tuesday of a new prime minister, there were no major protests. But a small rally at a government building Wednesday spoke to a fresh willingness to push publicly for reforms.*
> 
> *Amman, Jordan*
> 
> One day after Jordan's King Abdullah dismissed his cabinet and appointed a new prime minister to oversee political and economic reform, a few dozen protesters at a traffic circle near Amman's prime ministry building chanted “no Bakhit, no Samir,” in reference to the outgoing as well as the incoming leaders. The red flags of the leftist Popular Unity Party flew side-by-side with green Muslim Brotherhood flags.
> 
> We came here to make a message to our government, to the decisionmakers in Jordan, that we don't need changes in faces; we need changes in policies,” said Ghaith al-Qudah, who was organizing for the Brotherhood's Youth Committee.
> 
> Despite public skepticism about the new government, there were no large, organized protests like those that have shaken the capital on the past three Fridays. But the small gathering spoke to the fresh willingness of Jordanians to go public with their discontent – and how the recent revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia have changed the game for a generation.
> 
> “I think that there is now a new understanding inside the political kitchen that we have a new public mood in the region,” says Mohammad Aburumman, a political columnist for the Jordanian daily Al Ghad. “We have a new Arabic street … they need justice, political reform, democracy, human rights. … Political reform became a necessity in Jordan.”
> 
> King Abdullah appointed Prime Minister Maarouf al-Bakhit on Tuesday, after accepting the resignation of the previous cabinet of ministers. The first response to the appointment was doubt that Mr. Bakhit, a conservative with a long history in the military and security services, was really put in place to implement reform. Some held out hope that Bakhit's conservative credentials might actually make him a capable figure to head a reform government. Others said the change in prime ministers was a purely cosmetic move, in a country where political appointees change frequently but policies seldom do.
> 
> People here are afraid that this [new government] is to contain the street, not to make a real change,” says Mr. Aburumman. He expects that by next week, Bakhit's ministerial appointments and his public statements will make clear how serious his government is about reform is. “We hope the new prime minister understands that he doesn't have a long time – he has a short time to give a very strong message towards democracy.”
> 
> The protesters outside the prime ministry were very critical of Bakhit, but no one interviewed actually called for his resignation.
> 
> “No, no, no: we are not asking names,” said engineer Khaled Ramadan. “We are asking [to change] the mode, how the prime minister [is] appointed. Not: we are with Maarouf or against Maarouf; we are asking [for] a new system.”
> 
> *Is the political will there?*
> 
> It's impossible to guess what kind of immediate reforms will be necessary to keep protest in check, and whether the new government will have the political will or ability to implement them.
> 
> One demand was clear: a new elections law that would create a more representative National Assembly. Jordan's current laws restrict the activity of political parties and aggressively gerrymander electoral districts, ensuring that the Assembly is dominated by east-bank Jordanians, who are typically elected based on tribal loyalties rather than policies. The resulting parliaments are widely seen as unrepresentative, ineffective, and corrupt.
> 
> Aburumman said he hoped not only for an elections law, but for a system in which the cabinet would be chosen by the largest bloc in the assembly, rather than by the king – though most agree the king is unlikely to give up that control.
> 
> *Muslim Brotherhood view*
> 
> Abdellatif Arabiat, head of the Shura Council of Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood, said his organization would probably be content if there were a more democratically elected National Assembly, and it were given more say in the running of the country, as opposed to the current system, where almost all decisions are made by the cabinet.
> 
> The protesters near the prime ministry made numerous other demands, including a review of the restrictive laws governing public gatherings, the creation of a “supply ministry” to control commodity prices, and more democratic management of public universities.
> 
> “We are planning to make these protests week after week, or month after month, until we believe the government can reach to a level to make change which we want,” said Mr. Qudah.
> 
> Popular anger is unpredictable, but it seems likely that the biggest player in determining whether protesters return to the streets will be the Brotherhood. So far, Aburumman said, the Brotherhood has participated in protests without taking a leading role.
> 
> “They still tried to open something there with the regime, trying to give a positive indicator that they don't want to change the regime, but they want to participate in improving the regime, in improving the political life,” he said. “That is the new strategy of the Brotherhood. But I think if they find doors closed, they will go to the street again and they will change their tools to be a more aggressive, strong opposition.”
> 
> Mr. Arabiat, however, says his group is taking its cue from Jordanians.
> 
> “It is up to the people,” he says. “If they approve the main [government] line for reform, I think [protests] will decrease, but if not, they will increase.”
> 
> Arabiat says the Brotherhood would push for a serious reform program, but that it was also committed to working with other opposition groups.
> 
> “We are reformists in an evolutionary process, not revolutionary; working according to the Constitution; working with the whole people. … We are working for a real democracy,” he says. “We are doing the will of the people. The people will be with us if we work with them and toward their own objectives.”



More on LINK


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## The Bread Guy

_- edited to add lead item -_

"*Egyptian army 'will fire on pro-Mubarak protesters'*":  _"The Egyptian Army has moved "decisively on the side of the [anti-government] protesters" according to a retired general in Cairo.  Correspondent Jon Leyne spoke to the retired general who is in close contact with the tank crews policing the protests in Tarhir Square.  He was told that the Egyptian army was now willing to open fire on violent pro-government protesters and predicted that President Mubarak would be out of power by tomorrow.  US Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns told John Humphrys that the "massive US aid programme" that supports the Egyptian military would be used as a tool to persuade President Mubarak to listen.  "The military is going to be the institution that defines this crisis," he said.  "I continue to believe that President Mubarak's days as leader are probably numbered". "_

*From an International Crisis Group** statement*:  _".... There is no greater priority than ending the violence and preventing a slide into greater chaos. On Wednesday 2 February, according to Crisis Group and other eye-witnesses, a significant number of regime loyalists took to the streets and in some cases engaged in organized attacks against what had been peaceful protests. They were spoiling for a fight and they provoked one. The military stood by. It is perhaps the last public institution with broad national legitimacy and is likely to play a crucial role in ensuring a stable transition. Neither it nor Egypt can afford the military’s legitimacy to be tarnished. Egypt’s leadership should issue orders to all security forces, including the military, to act in a manner consistent with their responsibility to safeguard public order while protecting citizens’ legitimate rights to peaceful protest ...."_

"*Mubarak wants to step down but fears chaos*":  _"Embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak says he wants to step down but fears chaos if he does.  "I am fed up. After 62 years in public service, I have had enough. I want to go," Mubarak said in a 20-minute interview with ABC's Christiane Amanpour Thursday at the presidential palace in Cairo.  In a phone conversation with U.S. President Barack Obama earlier this week, Mubarak said, "I told Obama, 'You don’t understand the Egyptian culture and what would happen if I step down now?'”  At the centre of deadly anti-government protests that are in their 10th day are demands that Mubarak resign immediately.  Mubarak had said on Monday night in a speech to the nation that he won't step down before elections in September.  Meanwhile, Monir Abdel Nour, secretary general of the Wafd opposition party in Egypt, is calling Mubarak a "dead man walking." ...."_

"*US presses Egypt on violence, warns on Friday protest*":  _"Egypt could see larger protests and serious confrontation on Friday, the State Department said as U.S. diplomats pressed Egypt's government to help stop a wave of violence against journalists.  "I don't think these are random events," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told a news briefing on Thursday after journalists reportedly came under attack as they sought to cover protests against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.  "It could well be this is in anticipation of events tomorrow ... we are bracing for a significant increase in the number of demonstrators on the streets and with that, given yesterday's events, the real prospects of a confrontation."  Crowley said the United States wanted to see the Egyptian government and opposition groups start serious negotiations immediately . Washington believes elements close to the government or Mubarak's ruling party were responsible for Wednesday's widespread violence against protesters, he said.  "I don't know that we have a sense of how far up the chain it went," Crowley said ...."_

"*Egyptian VP promises reform, blames protest on TV*":  _"On Thursday, Egyptian Vice-President Omar Suleiman laid out a detailed timetable to reform his country's constitution and hold presidential elections, even as he blamed the television channels "of certain foreign nations" for igniting the 10-day long protest.  The Egyptian military detained dozens of international journalists here Thursday. The military and security staff at hotels seized reporters' equipment. Supporters of embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak attacked foreign journalists and prevented them from either leaving their hotels or travelling through this city of 20 million people.  Two Canadian journalists from the Globe and Mail were among those detained by the army, but released after three hours.  Pro-Mubarak supporters blamed the international media, particularly Qatar-based broadcaster Al Jazeera, for presenting a biased view of the so-called "January 25th" protest.  Al Jazeera said three of its journalists had been one detained and, at 7 p.m., it did not know the whereabouts of another ...."_

** - International Crisis Group is "an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation committed to preventing and resolving deadly conflict."  Much of its funding comes from governments, including Canada's (CIDA and IDRC).


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *Sympatico  News *
> 
> *Foreign journalists attacked in Egypt
> *
> 03/02/2011 2:57:13 PM
> CBC News
> 
> 
> LINK
> 
> *Many foreign journalists covering the protests in Cairo were rounded up by the military and had their equipment confiscated Thursday - possibly for their own protection - after some were attacked in the clashes between anti- and pro-government protesters.*
> 
> Tensions were running high on the streets of the capital city on the 10th day of the political crisis.
> 
> Foreign journalists from several outlets reported a string of attacks on them near Tahrir Square, the scene of battles between supporters of embattled President Hosni Mubarak and protesters demanding he step down immediately after nearly 30 years in power.
> 
> CBC News has a team of reporters on the ground in Cairo. They include David Common, who described the situation via Skype on Thursday morning.
> 
> "One of the reasons that I am speaking to you by Skype is that it's simply not safe for us to go out above this square. People are pointing us out and this comes on a day when it appears foreign journalists are being targeted," Common said in an interview from his hotel room.
> 
> In the square, gunfire could still be heard and Molotov cocktails were thrown late into the night Wednesday and in the early morning Thursday, sparking huge fires, he said.
> 
> Violent confrontations between the two sets of protesters continue, he added.
> 
> "We saw people being pulled out of vehicles, punched relentlessly. We saw what may have been a man killed, saw someone who was hit by a Molotov cocktail and catch on fire."
> 
> Radio-Canada reporter Jean-François Lépine and cameraman Sylvain Castonguay were roughed up by pro-government supporters near Cairo's airport Wednesday. Castonguay was badly beaten, and the attack only ended after soldiers intervened.
> 
> Globe and Mail reporter Sonia Verma said she and her colleague Patrick Martin were "taken into some sort of custody" Thursday morning after their passports were seized at a military checkpoint.
> 
> They were freed three hours later, Verma said on Twitter.
> 
> *Reporters from across the globe attacked *
> 
> Several reporters and photographers from other news outlets also reported being roughed up.
> 
> Among them:
> 
> - *Al-Jazeera* said two correspondents had been attacked by "thugs."
> 
> - *ABC News* international correspondent Christiane Amanpour said that on Wednesday, her car was surrounded by men banging on the sides and windows, and a rock was thrown through the windshield, shattering glass on the occupants. They escaped without injury.
> 
> - *CNN's* Anderson Cooper said he, a producer and camera operator were set upon by people who began punching them and trying to break their camera. Another CNN reporter, Hala Gorani, said she was shoved against a fence when demonstrators rode in on horses and camels, and feared she was going to get trampled.
> 
> - There were reported assaults Wednesday on journalists for the *BBC*, *Danish TV2 News* and *Swiss television*. Two *Associated Press* correspondents were also roughed up.
> 
> - *CBS* newsman Mark Strassman said he and a camera operator were attacked as they attempted to get close to the rock-throwing and take pictures. The camera operator, whom he would not name, was punched repeatedly and hit in the face with Mace.
> 
> The attacks appeared to reflect a pro-government view that many media outlets are sympathetic to protesters who want Mubarak to quit now rather than complete his term.
> 
> "There is a concerted campaign to intimidate international journalists in Cairo and interfere with their reporting. We condemn such actions," PJ Crowley, spokesman for the U.S. State Department, said on Twitter.
> 
> White House spokesman Robert Gibbs offered a strong denunciation of reports of "systematic targeting" of journalists in Egypt, saying those actions are "totally unacceptable."
> 
> "Any journalist that has been detained should be released immediately," Gibbs said. "I think we need to be clear that the world is watching the actions that are taking place right now in Egypt."
> 
> In Ottawa, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said Thursday the government is gravely concerned about the intimidation of Canadian journalists in Cairo and he is calling in Egypt's ambassador to Canada to protest their treatment.
> 
> "I have [also] asked our ambassador in Cairo to follow up on my call to the foreign minister and ensure that Canadians, particularly Canadian journalists, are guaranteed safety."
> 
> The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday that violence against journalists was part of a series of deliberate attacks, and urged the Egyptian military to provide protection for reporters.
> 
> On Wednesday, Egyptian government spokesman Magdy Rady said the assertion of state involvement in street clashes and attacks on reporters was "fiction" and that the government welcomed objective coverage.
> 
> On Thursday, Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq acknowledged that the attack on anti-government protesters "seemed to have been organized." He promised an investigation into who was behind it.
> 
> With files from The Associated Press




Video on LINK


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *Sympatico  News *
> 
> *Canadian journalists rounded up in Cairo chaos
> 
> *
> Thursday, February 3, 2011 | 5:21 PM
> CTV News
> 
> 
> LINK
> 
> *Canadian reporters were among the foreign parties rounded up by the Egyptian army Thursday, amid deteriorating conditions on the streets of Cairo where anti-government protesters continue to clash violently with supporters of President Hosni Mubarak. *
> 
> Two reporters from Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper were taken into custody by security forces and released several hours later.
> 
> Sonia Verma and her colleague, Patrick Martin, were taken into custody after soldiers "commandeered" their car at a checkpoint.
> 
> "Our car was literally surrounded by about 10 or 12 men," she told CTV News Channel from Cairo. "They demanded our passports . . . and they got a little bit aggressive, so we passed them over . . . and they asked us point blank if we were journalists and we had to say ‘yes', and at that point a man got into the passenger's seat holding our passports and ordered our driver to drive."
> 
> Verma said she didn't know what else to do, so she began tweeting on her BlackBerry about the turn of events.
> 
> "I knew my husband and my editors would be reading this stream coming out and would know what was happening," she said.
> 
> Verma said they were taken to a cordoned-off section of a road, where they were ordered to sit on the curb with about 20 other foreigners, mostly journalists, while their bags were searched and their phones, confiscated.
> 
> Verma said the men that took them into custody included military, police and at least one official from the Ministry of the Interior.
> 
> Verma said they were not harmed and after three hours were given back their passports and phones.
> 
> "The guy actually shook my hand and said he was sorry," Verma said.
> 
> The move to pull reporters off the streets came after a string of attacks on foreign journalists on Thursday.
> 
> Among the reported attacks was an incident in which a Greek print journalist was stabbed in the leg with a screwdriver and another in which a photographer was punched in the face and had his camera smashed by a group of men. Al-Jazeera reported that two of its staff reporters had been attacked by "thugs." A Reuters television crew was also reportedly beaten up, and a reporter with Turkish state television was robbed and lost a tooth in a beating.
> 
> Human rights organizations also said their staff has been attacked and arrested in Cairo.
> 
> Oxfam said that two offices of organizations it supports were raided Thursday.
> 
> "We are extremely worried about the fate of these human rights defenders who have been providing critical legal aid and support to their people over the past days of protest," Catherine Essoyan, Oxfam Regional Manager for the Middle East, said in a statement.
> 
> Prof. Rachad Antonius of the University du Quebec a Montreal, worries the roundup of journalists and human right watchers could be the beginning of severe action by the government.
> 
> "The attempt to push out all the reporters and human rights activists, I interpret that as a way of making sure their will be no witnesses to what will happen," he told CTV News Channel.
> 
> *Canada defends journalists *
> 
> Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon strongly condemned the actions taken by Egyptian security forces against journalists.
> 
> "Canada continues to urge Egypt to improve respect for human rights, in particular freedom of expression and freedom of association, and this includes the rights of journalists," Cannon said in the foyer of the House of Commons Thursday.
> 
> "If the government was in any way involved in instigating attacks on peaceful demonstrators this would be unacceptable," he added.
> 
> The Washington Post reported that its Cairo bureau chief and a photographer had been detained by Egyptian authorities.
> 
> "We understand that they are safe but in custody and we have made urgent protests to Egyptian authorities in Cairo and Washington," Washington Post Foreign Editor Douglas Jehl said Thursday.
> 
> CTV's Lisa LaFlamme reported it appeared the Egyptian army was trying to keep the journalists safe amid the chaos.
> 
> LaFlamme said a Toronto Star reporter had been escorted back to her hotel by the military, which is recognizing that Western journalists are being targeted by rioters.
> 
> The situation has become so dangerous that staff in hotels surrounding Cairo's Tahrir Square have confiscated the cameras of journalists -- including the equipment used by LaFlamme and her crew -- to prevent their businesses from becoming targeted as well.
> 
> The U.S. State Department condemned the "concerted campaign to intimidate" foreign journalists in Egypt.
> 
> Reuters reported that White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs told reporters Thursday that journalists should not be targeted and any taken into custody should be freed.




Video on LINK


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *Europe*
> 
> *Europe ups pressure on Mubarak, calling for immediate transition in Egypt
> *
> By Andrés Cala, Correspondent / February 3, 2011
> The Christian Science Monitor
> 
> 
> LINK
> 
> *In their strongest language to date, European leaders today demanded that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak begin a democratic transition and ensure the protection of journalists and protesters.*
> 
> *Madrid*
> 
> The leaders of Europe’s big five – Germany, France, Britain, Italy, and Spain – demanded Thursday that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak begin a democratic transition “immediately” and condemned violence against media as “unacceptable.”
> 
> It was the strongest language used by Europe to date, though still insufficient by some standards.
> 
> “It’s not a question of gradually increasing pressure on him. He’s the obstacle," says José Ignacio Torreblanca, senior policy fellow in the European Council on Foreign Relations. "The source of instability is Mubarak. Millions of Europeans came to that conclusion in two hours watching the scenes of violence, but EU leaders haven't after weeks."
> 
> The statement comes several days after three of those nations – Britain, France, and Germany – issued an initial, less forceful statement saying they "recognize the moderating role President Mubarak has played" and urging "him to show the same moderation in addressing the current situation in Egypt.”
> 
> Today's statement went a step further, underscoring the growing pressure that European leaders are under to react more decisively against violence that has already targeted several European journalists. Yet it also revealed the continued absence of a united response from the entire European Union.
> 
> *Leaders calls for 'quick and orderly transition'*
> 
> “We are watching with utmost concern the deteriorating situation in Egypt,” said today's statement (read here), signed by Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Nicolas Sarkozy, Prime Minister David Cameron, President Silvio Berlusconi, and Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. “Only a quick and orderly transition to a broad-based Government will make it possible to overcome the challenges Egypt is now facing.”
> 
> Ms. Merkel and Mr. Zapatero went further in Madrid during a press conference, stopping just short of asking Mubarak to resign.
> 
> “I spoke with the Egyptian president and asked him to start this dialogue. Nobody can think that things will remain the same," Merkel said through a translator.
> 
> Zapatero added: “We want democracy in Egypt, and when that aspiration is demanded with severity by the majority of the population, it becomes urgent. Any further consideration could be interpreted as interfering,” he concluded
> 
> *Europe's backyard*
> 
> But that fear of interfering is precisely what many in Europe are criticizing.
> 
> “We have been interfering for 30 years by supporting someone,” says Mr. Torreblanca of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “It’s Mubarak who made the qualitative change and broke the contract by releasing his dogs that are now attacking European journalists.”
> 
> Demonstrations in support of democratic reforms in the Middle East have taken place throughout European capitals. Columnists and editorials are also increasingly asking their government for a stronger stance. Among the dozens of harassed journalists were several European nationals, including a Greek who was stabbed in the leg and at least three Spaniards who were attacked.
> 
> The United States and Europe share concern over broader regional instability that the protests in Egypt are triggering and the geopolitical realignment that could follow. But Europe has an additionally direct impact from instability in Northern African countries which supply gas to Europe, including Egypt.
> 
> Europe is also home to millions of North African and Middle Eastern immigrants and their descendents.
> 
> “What Mexico is to the US when things go bad, the Mediterranean is to Europe,” says Torreblanca. “For the EU the risks are more economic and societal.”




More on LINK


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## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *Middle East*
> 
> *Egypt's VP uses state TV to blame unrest on 'foreign agendas'
> *
> By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / February 3, 2011
> The Christian Science Monitor
> 
> 
> LINK
> 
> *Egypt's new Vice President Omar Suleiman took to state TV Thursday night to make a play for Mubarak to hang on until presidential elections in September. *
> 
> *Cairo*
> 
> Omar Suleiman, looking like a president in waiting, took to Egyptian state television tonight with dark hints of conspiracies behind the democracy protests, a dismissal of demands for immediate political reform, and words of loyalty and respect for President Hosni Mubarak.
> 
> Mr. Suleiman – Egypt’s long-standing foreign intelligence chief until this past week, when he was named Egypt’s first vice president since Mr. Mubarak took power in 1981 – made a play for Mubarak to hang on until presidential elections in September, which the 82-year-old leader has promised not to run in.
> 
> "Standing down is an alien philosophy for the Egyptian people... Egyptians aren’t the ones asking for this. We [Egyptians] respect Hosni Mubarak, our father," he said in an interview with government TV. “We can talk about complete constitutional reform when a new president comes on the scene. We have no time to discuss it now."
> 
> But Egypt’s current electoral laws and Constitution are rigged against outsiders and strongly favor the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP).
> 
> Suleiman himself is among the few Egyptians who fulfill the current candidacy criteria. (Among other things, a candidate must belong to a legal party that won at least 3 percent of parliamentary seats in the last election. The fraudulent parliamentary election last November gave the NDP about 95 percent of the seats and the Muslim Brotherhood – Egypt's most organized opposition movement – remains banned.)
> 
> Suleiman alluded to the chance that the requirements could be eased and some reforms could happen before an election, but stressed that Egypt “has to put restrictions on who can run for president.”
> 
> *Protesters reject Suleiman's comments*
> 
> Egypt’s democracy protesters, many defying a curfew in Tahrir Square in central Cairo tonight, immediately dismissed his comments, particularly his claim that their demands have been met and his call to “end your sit-in."
> 
> “When he said that a president stepping down is alien to us, people in Tahrir were almost fainting,” says Khaled Abol Naga, an Egyptian film star who’s spent most of the past few days with demonstrators at Tahrir calling for Mubarak’s downfall.
> 
> “People were enraged by these stupid claims in the year 2011. [The regime] thinks the people are a bunch of animals. These are a bunch of educated Egyptians, not the Muslim Brotherhood, not other parties. It’s people from all walks of life and they’re determined that Mubarak go,” he says.
> 
> *Blaming 'foreign agendas' for unrest*
> 
> Suleiman also sought to bolster a narrative that’s been spun out by new Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq and other officials in the past day: That unidentified “outsiders” created the violence that claimed at least 10 lives around Tahrir Square on Wednesday evening and early Thursday. Suleiman said that “many of the protesters in Tahrir Square have foreign agendas.”
> 
> That reference to “foreign agendas” appeared to be an attempt to label Egypt’s democracy protesters as working for US or Israel, a favorite dissent-stifling tactic of regimes from Tunisia to Syria. Mubarak has maintained good relations with Israel during his reign and the US has arguably been his most important international backer, at least until the events of the past two weeks.
> 
> Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an Egyptian democracy activist and academic, was hounded as a foreign agent and jailed for three years over a decade ago. His crime? “Daring to criticize the Mubarak family’s increasingly dynastic ambitions,” as Middle East historian Juan Cole put it this week.
> 
> Cairo’s protesters found themselves being painted with the same brush by Suleiman tonight.
> 
> “Actually, there is a plot if you read between the lines in Suleiman’s statements and on state TV,” says Mr. Naga, the film star. “They’re stating that there are infiltrators, foreigners involved, to confuse the people, so if the US does come out in support of us they can point and say: ‘See, it was a US plot, it was the CIA.’ ”
> 
> Naga says if that was Suleiman’s intent, then it didn’t work. “People don’t trust [the regime] anymore, and they know they will be brutally jailed and killed if they give up now before real change has happened.”
> 
> Tomorrow, protesters have vowed their biggest demonstrations yet.




More on LINK


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## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *The Monitor's View
> *
> 
> *America's best agents in Cairo: US-trained Egyptian officers
> *
> By the Monitor's Editorial Board / February 3, 2011
> The Christian Science Monitor
> 
> 
> LINK
> 
> *Pentagon training of foreign military officers in the US may be the best investment in democracy. Thousands of Egyptian officers have been exposed to US democratic values, Will those officers now stick with Mubarak?*
> 
> America’s best hope for democracy in Egypt and the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak may not be the protesters in the streets. It could be mid-level officers in Egypt’s Army.
> 
> Thousands of them have received official training and education in the United States, where they were exposed to the values of a democratic society, such as human rights and civilian rule over the military.
> 
> As events unfold in Cairo, the Army may yet turn the tide. Much depends on how the rank and file see their role. The Army has already stated it will not shoot the pro-democracy protesters. It even describes their demands as “legitimate.”
> 
> And yet soldiers stood by this week when pro-Mubarak groups attacked the demonstrators in Cairo.
> 
> Many eyes are on Lt. Gen. Sami Anan, the Egyptian Army’s chief of staff, to see if he now feels pressure from the officer ranks or common soldiers to turn against Mr. Mubarak.
> 
> While he received training in Russia and France, he has had regular contact with the Pentagon. Egypt and the US have had close military ties since the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty – but especially because the US provides $1.3 billion in military aid to Egypt, or about a third of its military budget. In addition, hundreds of Pentagon officials operate in the country.
> 
> But Egypt is one of many friendly but authoritarian-run countries that sends officers to the US for various types of education, usually at institutions such as the Army War College or the National Defense University. The officers come under a little-known program called International Military Education and Training (IMET).
> 
> Their informal contacts with Americans, it is hoped, will instill democratic values that might be useful later during a confrontation in their home country.
> 
> That was the case, for example, in the Philippines in 1986, when American-educated officers helped civilians oust a dictator there. Yet during pro-democracy uprisings in Burma, the US had few officers in that country’s military who had been trained in the US or who had the clout to push for democracy.
> 
> IMET’s record is quite mixed on its ability to spread democracy through foreign armies. In Egypt’s case, all that Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said of its Army in recent days is that it showed “professionalism.”
> 
> Little is known of the Pentagon’s efforts to reach US-trained Egyptian officers and advise them to show restraint in dealing with the protests. Mubarak, a former Air Force commander, may fear the Army. He reportedly has tried to hold down the number of officers trained in the US. And after the protests began last month, he quickly filled government posts with former military officers in hopes of retaining military loyalty.
> 
> The Egyptian armed forces has a strong desire to keep good relations with the US and Israel, and perhaps to prevent Islamic militants from gaining power. It seems committed to constitutional government, and probably opposed the apparent ambition of Mubarak to groom his son for succession.
> 
> In coming days, the Army may be forced into a difficult choice: Support Mubarak, or the hundreds of thousands of civilians defying him in the streets.
> 
> Let’s hope the officers who have seen how a real democracy can work will pick the right side.




More on LINK


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## 57Chevy

Tens of thousands stage rival rallies in Yemen

SANAA, Yemen — Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh and his supporters sought to upstage a "day of rage" against his rule Thursday by holding a large simultaneous counterdemonstration across town.

The two rallies drew tens of thousands and unfolded largely peacefully, but highlighted the political unrest sparked by the overthrow of longtime Tunisian ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali last month and the ongoing popular uprising against the 30-year reign of President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt.

The Tunisian and Egyptian upheavals have fueled people's demands for political change across the Arab world. There have been calls for anti-government protests Thursday in Sudan, Friday in Jordan and Saturday in Syria.

On Wednesday, Saleh vowed not to run for another term in 2013 and said he wasn't positioning his son as his successor. He also vowed to begin broad talks aimed at reform with the opposition, which has reacted skeptically.

The pro-government rally, which appeared to have been set up hastily the night before, received official logistical support. Soldiers guarding the demonstration route from Sanaa's old city to its Tahrir Square mingled amicably with the thousands holding portraits of Saleh. Huge tents and loudspeakers lined the way.

"With our souls, with our blood we will sacrifice for you, oh Ali," they chanted, in support of Saleh.

The opposition, led by a coalition of well-organized and vocal political parties and organizations, had originally hoped to stage a rally along the same route as the pro-government rally.

Instead, it held its rally in the university district in western part of the capital. A large cordon of anti-government activists formed a human chain to guard against possible pro-government infiltrators. They held banners urging Saleh to "Go! Go! Go!" They held portraits of Mohammed Bouazizi, the 26-year-old Tunisian produce vendor who set himself on fire Dec. 17 after being humiliated by authorities. That act of protest and desperation sparked the Tunisian revolution that toppled Ben Ali and captivated the Arab world.

Protesters in Sanaa described Saleh's promises of reform as "business as usual."

Yemen, the Arab world's poorest nation, faces an insurgency by rebels who call themselves Houthis in the north, a separatist movement in the south and an al-Qaida threat. Saleh is considered a close ally of the West in combating extremist Islam in the Arabian Peninsula and piracy in the adjacent Gulf of Aden. The Obama administration and the European Union have praised his pledges to reform.

But protesters blamed him for most of the country's troubles.

"All that happens in the south, all that happens with the Houthis in the north, the president is behind it," said Ali Hamdi, 22, a student who was among the anti-government protesters. "In order for these conflicts to stop, the president must go."

                                    (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)


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## George Wallace

Interesting development if true.

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *Mubarak's Hired Thugs
> *
> 
> *Rural Poor Paid to Attack Opposition Supporters
> *
> 02/04/2011
> By Volkhard Windfuhr and Daniel Steinvorth in Cairo
> SPIEGEL ONLINE
> 
> LINK
> 
> *In exchange for the equivalent of a few euros, poor seasonal workers have taken part in street fighting in Cairo on the side of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The thugs, who fight with iron bars, knives and clubs, have been recruited by privileged members of the regime, including party officials, security forces and rich business people with lucrative state contracts. *
> 
> The bloody clashes in Cairo show that not all of Egypt's 80 million people want to see President Hosni Mubarak overthrown or a new start heralded by fresh elections. Many are fiercely loyal to the ruling system and are ready to fight for it -- with brutality. On Thursday afternoon, there were even reports on the Al Jazeera news channel that Mubarak supporters were storming the hotels of Cairo and hunting down journalists.
> 
> The confrontation between the opponents and supporters of the Mubarak regime first escalated on Wednesday, as both sides engaged in hours-long battles on Cairo's central Tahrir Square and the adjoining side streets. Mubarak loyalists stormed the crowd, armed with knives, clubs and stones. Some, riding horses and camels, hit the demonstrators on the head with iron bars.
> 
> In Cairo's working-class district, they organized a big demonstration, including a motorcade of cars and motorbikes. They shouted slogans such as "Mubarak, we kneel before you," and "Yes to the president of peace." Taking part were members of trade unions and associations, as well as employees of state-run companies, who were obviously told by their bosses to attend.
> 
> In the background, the movement is being controlled by businessmen with lucrative state contracts, public servants, security officers and party officials, who are worried by the uncertainty of recent days. They are all determined to ensure that as little as possible changes, regardless of who follows Mubarak. They are the supporters and representatives of the ruling National Democratic Party, which has 3 million members, who fear that they could lose power in free elections. They are members of the nouveau riche, who have gained huge fortunes and influence, largely through corruption and criminality, and who currently enjoy immunity.
> 
> *The Poor Are Easy Prey *
> 
> They have everything to lose -- and are now depending on those who have nothing left to lose. The privileged members of the regime don't want to get their hands dirty. Instead, they recruit their helpers from the rural and semi-rural regions, particularly from two provinces north of Cairo: Bahtim and Qalyub. The poor, who make up the majority of the population here, are easy prey. Many are distrustful of the demonstrators' motives and fear that the movement is secretly pursuing other aims.
> 
> In every province, there are party offices. There, people, especially seasonal workers, are collected and offered a tiny sum of money to take part in the bloody battle to keep Mubarak in power. There is not much work on the land at this time of year. Terribly poor and illiterate, they set off to do their employers' bidding for a paltry sum equivalent to around €10-€15 ($14-$20). They are cheap, they are desperate and they don't ask questions. Thousands have taken part, though it is difficult to estimate the exact figure. According to eyewitnesses, around 4,000 people took part in the counter-demonstrations in Cairo and Alexandria on Wednesday.
> 
> Mubarak loyalists have resorted to perfidious measures to sabotage the protests by the opponents of the regime and to put on a show for international observers. Thousands of prisons, including detention centers in the desert, were opened in recent days. At total of 14,000 inmates, including murderers and other serious criminals, were suddenly set free. They were released on the understanding that they would cause as much chaos as possible -- effectively a license to plunder, murder and commit arson.
> 
> Between 4,000 and 5,000 of the inmates are thought to have now reached Cairo, while a few hundred have turned themselves in voluntarily. Many want to flee across Sinai to the Gaza Strip, in the hope that the radical Islamist group Hamas, which is in government there, will take them in. Hamas has so far not taken a position on the events in Egypt. However, it is assumed that they are not exactly sympathetic to Mubarak, because he has supported the Israeli-imposed blockade of the Gaza Strip. Hamas is also considered an ally of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group officially banned in Egypt.
> 
> The opposition wants to demonstrate once again against the elderly Egyptian president on Friday. The planned march will converge on Cairo. And the members of the pro-Mubarak camp will also presumably be out in force -- with bloody consequences.
> 
> Annett Meiritz contributed to this report.




More on LINK


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## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *The Middle East
> *
> 
> *Syria's Day of Anger? Most Syrians suspect few will take to the streets.
> *
> By Claire Duffett, Contributor / February 3, 2011
> The Christian Science Monitor
> 
> 
> LINK
> 
> *Using Facebook a group has tried to organize a street protest for Friday. The Syrian government appears confident, however, that it can survive the current tumult in the Middle East by clamping down on dissent.*
> 
> *Damascus, Syria*
> 
> A Facebook group named The Syrian Revolution – set up by expatriates – is calling for protests in various cities throughout the country and at a number of Syrian embassies overseas. More than 13,000 people are virtual members of the online forum.
> 
> But Syrians are skeptical that the “Day of Anger” planned for Friday will initiate large-scale, antigovernment opposition.
> 
> That skepticism underscores the government's apparent confidence that by muzzling opposition and maintaining a popular foreign policy, it will be one of the nondemocratic regimes in the region to survive the current tumult.
> 
> “The Syrian regime is very tough,” Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at Oklahoma University, wrote by e-mail from the US. “It will try to nip any demonstrations in the bud by arresting those who organize them or show up.”
> 
> If protests do transpire in Syria, each will be closely controlled and probably attract no more than a few hundred protesters, says Mazen Bilal, editor of Suria al-Ghad, a prominent Syrian news website. A few dozen people showed up for several "solidarity vigils" for Egypt in the capital this week, with police breaking up one gathering at the Egyptian embassy.
> 
> To some Syrians, the lack of assertiveness is disappointing.
> 
> “The Syrian people are chicken,” says Lochmann, a Kurdish architect who supports the opposition and asked for his last name to be withheld. Syrians understand the government’s swift and violent approach to suppressing dissent, he explains, from the razing of the Muslim Brotherhood-stronghold of Hama in 1982 by former President Hafez al-Assad to the crackdown by his son, current President Bashar al-Assad, on Kurdish protesters in eastern Syria in 2004 that killed at least 30 people and imprisoned hundreds.
> 
> The protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, and Yemen have not gone unnoticed in Syria. During a recent drive through Damascus, a chatty taxi driver named Ahmad talked excitedly about the uprisings. “Arab people are ready for change,” he said. But when asked if Syria was similarly prepared, he answered simply: “No.”
> 
> Indeed, citizens often responded nervously to questions about the impact of regional protests on Syria.
> 
> When asked about whether the army is training soldiers on crowd control, a young soldier named Muhammad said: “No, it’s the same as usual. We prepare to fight Israel.”
> 
> The threat of sudden, secretive detention is one useful deterrent against dissent. Some 10,000 political prisoners reside inside Syria’s jails.
> 
> Another is the lesson of Iraq. “The presence of almost 1 million Iraqi refugees has chastened them to the dangers of regime collapse in a religiously divided society,” Mr. Landis says.
> 
> Local sources say the antigovernment movement lacks widespread popular support in part because Syria’s young president and his anti-American, anti-Israel foreign policy has made him more popular than some of the older, pro-West leaders facing turmoil. Most who feel differently are either in jail or out of the country.
> 
> “In Tunisia and Egypt, the people have a list of what they want to see happen,” says a young journalist who asked to remain anonymous. “In Syria, the opposition is out of the country and hasn’t been active here for years. I don’t think people here know what they want or why they are protesting. They are just copying what they’re seeing on TV, but they don’t have any real demands.”
> 
> Nevertheless, the government is closely monitoring and disrupting possible dissent. Syria’s only two Internet carriers, MTN and SyriaTel, have begun cracking down on access to foreign proxies, which Syrians commonly use to access banned websites like Facebook and YouTube. In mid-January, officials began confiscating Internet routers from coffee shops offering free wireless to customers.
> 
> Leaders have also supported "spontaneous" progovernment protests – attended by paid civil servants carrying matching, government-issued posters of Assad and Syrian flags. In the Kurdish neighborhood of Rukn el-Din in Damascus, the presence on the street of mukhabarat – easily discernible, plainclothes Syrian secret police – doubled this week, Lochmann, the Kurdish architect, says.
> 
> The government is also offering some carrots, trying, for example, to minimize discontent over living standards. Syria doubled the heating oil allowance for about 2 million state employees and pensioners the same week that concerns about rising prices helped topple the regime in Tunisia. The move contradicted the government's stated plan to eliminate fuel subsidies by 2015 and was a “direct result” of events in Tunisia, Bilal says.
> 
> “Syria is getting a good lesson from its neighbors,” Lochmann says. “These protests will be small, but you know what they say: ‘A journey begins with a single step.’”




More on LINK 

Six countries in the Arab world where 'winds of change' are blowing


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *The Middle East
> *
> 
> *Could Syria see an uprising like Egypt's? Not likely.
> *
> By Nicholas Blanford, Correspondent / February 3, 2011
> The Christian Science Monitor
> 
> 
> LINK
> 
> *In Syria, opposition activists are organizing their own 'day of rage' – but longstanding intimidation tactics and repression make it unlikely significant numbers will be out on the streets. *
> 
> *Beirut, Lebanon*
> 
> Syrian opposition activists hope that the shockwave of Egypt and Tunisia's mass uprisings, which have shaken the Arab world, will begin to reverberate in Syria, with calls for a “day of rage” Friday throughout the country.
> 
> But analysts believe opponents of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad face a daunting struggle in replicating the street revolutions that so far have toppled one head of state in Tunisia and left another teetering on the edge in Egypt.
> 
> “We have been surprised before in this crisis, but my sense is that it’s unlikely we will see large, large, large groups of people coming together because the security services will be intimidating people, arresting people, keeping a very tight lid,” says Nadim Houry, Lebanon representative of Human Rights Watch (HRW), a New York-based watchdog.
> 
> The seismic upheavals in Tunisia and Egypt have triggered unrest elsewhere in the Arab world, particularly in Yemen and Jordan. Syria, ruled by the Baath Party since 1963 and the Assad family since 1970, also seems at first glance potentially vulnerable. It shares some passing similarities with Tunisia and Egypt, particularly economic hardship – rising prices, unemployment, poverty, and the cancellation of subsidies on basic commodities.
> 
> Yet there are also critical differences, which may lessen chances of a Tunisia-style revolution taking hold. Perhaps chief among them are the sectarian divisions within Syria. Such divisions, if unleashed by protests, could cause bloodshed and chaos similar to the experiences of Lebanon and Iraq in recent years.
> 
> “The cautionary tales of its neighbors to the east and west – Iraq and Lebanon – have only reinforced Syrian anxieties about the dangers of weakening the central government in a country with a mixed sectarian and ethnic population,” says Elias Muhanna, author of the influential Qifa Nabki blog.
> 
> Syria’s population is predominantly Sunni, but the backbone of the regime is drawn from the minority Alawite community, an offshoot of the Shiite sect. The marginalized Kurdish population is also a potent factor in the country’s sectarian and ethnic composition.
> 
> *Intimidation, repression discourages opposition*
> 
> Syrian activists have used Facebook and Twitter to spread the word in the past week, calling for protests and demonstrations on Friday and Saturday. Although Facebook has been blocked in Syria since November 2007, many Syrians use proxy servers to sidestep the ban. President Assad himself has a Facebook page.
> 
> “The storm against tyranny and monopoly must come to Syria,” says a statement released by the Popular Movement for Change in Syria. “Don’t be afraid and know the government does not have a choice but to listen to your voice when millions will demonstrate in the streets.”
> 
> The prediction of “millions” taking to the streets in the next two days seems overly optimistic judging from the small number of protestors who held a recent series of gatherings in Damascus in support of the Egyptian uprising.
> 
> Some 200 people turned up for a candlelit vigil outside the Egyptian embassy in Damascus on Sunday. According to Mr. Houry of Human Rights Watch, Syrian security officers also were present, taking photographs of the demonstrators and demanding to see the identification cards of some attendants. That security presence appears to have had a chilling effect on the demonstrators, as fewer numbers attended subsequent gatherings.
> 
> On Wednesday, the police stayed away, but some 20 men turned up to harass the protestors, questioning their motives, and accusing them of serving outside powers, says Houry, who is in regular contact with the activists. Another gathering was scheduled for Thursday afternoon to protest against Syria’s two cellular phone services, Syriatel and MTN Syria, which are regularly criticized for their high tariffs, the second highest in the Arab world. Rami Makhlouf, Assad’s cousin, is the majority shareholder of Syriatel, Syria’s largest private corporation, which fuels accusations of cronyism.
> 
> Anti-regime demonstrations in Syria are rare due to rigid state control and a fractured opposition. The strongest opposition to the the 48-year-rule of the Baath Party in Syria have been from the Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood and Syrian Kurds who live mainly in the northeast adjacent to Syria’s borders with Turkey and Iraq.
> 
> A rebellion by the Muslim Brotherhood in the late 1970s was ruthlessly crushed in 1982. The organization remains banned in Syria and its leaders live in exile. The Kurds have demonstrated for greater rights on several occasions. The most recent uprising, in 2004, was heavily suppressed and followed by a campaign of arrest and imprisonment of Kurdish activists.
> 
> “Authorities continued to broadly violate the civil and political rights of its citizens, arresting political and human rights activists, censoring websites, detaining bloggers, and imposing travel bans,” said a report on Syria’s human rights policy in 2010 released by Human Rights Watch last week.
> 
> *Why change is slow to come*
> 
> When Assad succeeded his father, Hafez, in 2000, many Syrians expected a process of political liberalization to follow. But changes have been slow, with the focus on gradual economic reforms rather than political freedoms.
> 
> The traumatic and bloody developments in the region over the past decade also have done little to hasten a speedier transition. Syria’s backing of anti-Israel resistance movements, such as Lebanon’s militant Shiite group Hezbollah and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, as well as its long-standing strategic relationship with Iran, placed it at odds with the US. The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the mass demonstrations in Beirut two years later, which led to Syria pulling its troops from Lebanon, further isolated Damascus and placed it on the defensive.
> 
> Still, unlike the leaders of Egypt and Tunisia, no one can accuse Assad of being a lackey of the West, which gives him a degree of credibility in the eyes of many Syrians and Arabs of other countries. Furthermore, his relative youth (he is 45 years old) stands in marked contrast to many of the ossified kings and presidents elsewhere in the Arab world.
> 
> “By successfully supporting Lebanese and Palestinian resistance movements and by opening Syria’s borders to over a million Iraqi refugees, Assad helped boost Syria’s sense of national pride,” says Camille Alexandre Otrakji, a Syrian blogger and author of www.creativesyria.com, a web forum for Syrian culture and politics. “Mubarak, the president of the largest Arab country, humiliated his proud people by consistently appearing to be nothing more than an American and Israeli puppet.”
> 
> Still, Andrew Tabler, a Syria specialist with the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that support for anti-Israel groups and standing up to the US, “doesn’t work well where the regime is weakest: skyrocketing corruption and lack of reforms.”




More on LINK 

US sends ambassador to Syria for the first time in six years 

In Syria, a kernel of democracy 

[url=http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2010/1118/Facebook-banned-in-Syria-is-widely-used-even-by-the-government]Facebook, banned in Syria, is widely used – even by the government


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## 57Chevy

George Wallace said:
			
		

> Interesting development if true.



It certainly is. When I first saw the camels I thought of border crossings and lots of money changing hands.
To see the Mubarak supporters paying the countrys poor for retaliation against the protesters is proof enough
of just how bad that country bathes in corruption.
Egypt, along with many countries experience major problems as a result of it.
For information on corruption from the UN standpoint;

United Nations Convention against Corruption
Link

                         UNODC's Action against Corruption and Economic Crime 
                          
Corruption is a complex social, political and economic phenomenon that affects all countries. Corruption undermines democratic institutions, slows economic development and contributes to governmental instability. Corruption attacks the foundation of democratic institutions by distorting electoral processes, perverting the rule of law and creating bureaucratic quagmires whose only reason for existing is the soliciting of bribes. Economic development is stunted because foreign direct investment is discouraged and small businesses within the country often find it impossible to overcome the "start-up costs" required because of corruption.
________________________
Strange enough as it may seem  UNODC and Egypt launch major anti-corruption drive on International Day 09 December 2010.
from article....
"Fighting corruption is a shared responsibility that requires strong leadership to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.  I commend Egypt for being one of the first States parties to the UN Convention against Corruption.  As a country that is vitally important regionally, economically and culturally, your gesture sends out a strong message of determination to strengthen the rule of law".
__________________________________
Also
"Thousands of prisons, including detention centers in the desert, were opened in recent days. At total of 14,000 inmates, including murderers and other serious criminals, were suddenly set free."

IMO....That has to be Mr. Mubaraks greatest blunder in that it will ensure Egyptian instability for years to come.

                       (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)


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## a_majoor

Are the waves of revolution across the Middle East symptomatic of a larger issue? 

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/the-arab-revolution-and-western-decline-1.340967



> *The Arab revolution and Western decline*
> By Ari Shavit
> 
> Two huge processes are happening right before our eyes. One is the Arab liberation revolution. After half a century during which tyrants have ruled the Arab world, their control is weakening. After 40 years of decaying stability, the rot is eating into the stability. The Arab masses will no longer accept what they used to accept. The Arab elites will no longer remain silent.
> 
> Processes that have been roiling beneath the surface for about a decade are suddenly bursting out in an intifada of freedom. Modernization, globalization, telecommunications and Islamization have created a critical mass that cannot be stopped. The example of democratic Iraq is awakening others, and Al Jazeera's subversive broadcasts are fanning the flames. And so the Tunisian bastille fell, the Cairo bastille is falling and other Arab bastilles will fall.
> 
> The scenes are similar to the Palestinian intifada of 1987, but the collapse recalls the Soviet collapse in Eastern Europe of 1989. No one knows where the intifada will lead. No one knows whether it will bring democracy, theocracy or a new kind of democracy. But things will never again be the same.
> 
> The old order in the Middle East is crumbling. Just as the officers' revolution in the 1950s brought down the Arab monarchism that had relied on the colonial powers, the 2011 revolution in the square is bringing down the Arab tyrants who were dependent on the United States.
> 
> The second process is the acceleration of the decline of the West. For some 60 years the West gave the world imperfect but stable order. It built a kind of post-imperial empire that promised relative quiet and maximum peace. The rise of China, India, Brazil and Russia, like the economic crisis in the United States, has made it clear that the empire is beginning to fade.
> 
> And yet, the West has maintained a sort of international hegemony. Just as no replacement has been found for the dollar, none has been found for North Atlantic leadership. But Western countries' poor handling of the Middle East proves they are no longer leaders. Right before our eyes the superpowers are turning into palaver powers.
> 
> There are no excuses for the contradictions. How can it be that Bush's America understood the problem of repression in the Arab world, but Obama's America ignored it until last week? How can it be that in May 2009, Hosni Mubarak was an esteemed president whom Barack Obama respected, and in January 2011, Mubarak is a dictator whom even Obama is casting aside? How can it be that in June 2009, Obama didn't support the masses who came out against the zealot Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, while now he stands by the masses who are coming out against the moderate Mubarak?
> 
> There is one answer: The West's position is not a moral one that reflects a real commitment to human rights. The West's position reflects the adoption of Jimmy Carter's worldview: kowtowing to benighted, strong tyrants while abandoning moderate, weak ones.
> 
> Carter's betrayal of the Shah brought us the ayatollahs, and will soon bring us ayatollahs with nuclear arms. The consequences of the West's betrayal of Mubarak will be no less severe. It's not only a betrayal of a leader who was loyal to the West, served stability and encouraged moderation. It's a betrayal of every ally of the West in the Middle East and the developing world. The message is sharp and clear: The West's word is no word at all; an alliance with the West is not an alliance. The West has lost it. The West has stopped being a leading and stabilizing force around the world.
> 
> The Arab liberation revolution will fundamentally change the Middle East. The acceleration of the West's decline will change the world. One outcome will be a surge toward China, Russia and regional powers like Brazil, Turkey and Iran. Another will be a series of international flare-ups stemming from the West's lost deterrence. But the overall outcome will be the collapse of North Atlantic political hegemony not in decades, but in years. When the United States and Europe bury Mubarak now, they are also burying the powers they once were. In Cairo's Tahrir Square, the age of Western hegemony is fading away.
> 
> This story is by:
> 
> Ari Shavit


----------



## 57Chevy

quote.....if I may
"The West's word is no word at all; an alliance with the West is not an alliance. The West has lost it. The West has stopped being a leading and stabilizing force around the world"

That is a lot of Hogwash. The West.....The West....The West....without a doubt, the many anti-west groups will point the finger in like manner. But that is not the truth of the matter is it now ? And you know very well that it is not.
You would like it to be and you even try to portray that message to the world.
But the real enemy is "corruption"
And you know it.
Go ask the oppressed peoples anywhere in the world for what reason they protest and you will find but one answer.
"Corruption" in some form or another is what you will hear.
And they are willing to give their lives to overcome it.
All the while you point the finger in vain in an attempt to bury their cause. 
How low will you stoop ?


----------



## MarkOttawa

Excerpts from a lengthy post at the Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute's _3Ds Blog_:

The World Needs More Canada?
http://www.cdfai.org/the3dsblog/?p=94



> Lorne Gunter, one of our best columnists, rains on the Liberals’ (and many others’, including academics and pundits who should know better) parade:
> 
> "*Libs believe the world waits for Canada’s Egypt stance*
> 
> A daydream, courtesy of Liberal Foreign Affairs critic Bob Rae..."
> 
> Then there’s this from another fine columnist, John Robson of the _Ottawa Citizen_:
> 
> "…The first step is for everybody to abandon the notion that striking a suitably righteous pose is anything but perilous pomposity in such matters...
> 
> What manner of drivel is this? Does anyone suppose the corrupt, brutal regime in Egypt perched precariously atop an Islamist volcano, the protesters trying to dislodge it, or the small middle class trembling that they might succeed, give a hoot what Canada says?.."
> 
> To put things in perspective, this piece in the _Vancouver Sun_ is worth a very serious read; it describes, very accurately I think, the hard realities of international perceptions of Canada–to the extent they exist:
> 
> '…Canada is, judging by The Economist’s year-end issue anyway, invisible. Unimportant. Virtually irrelevant. On par with Croatia...
> 
> While *other smaller or less developed economies are able to leverage their country’s identity to market products, Canada has none* [exactly! a key point]. Global consumers identify Ikea with Sweden, Corona with Mexico, Nokia with Finland and Lego with Denmark.
> 
> In the underground stations around London, huge billboards advertise BlackBerry hand-held devices. But does it register for a second on the minds of British commuters: “Those Canadians really do design great cell-phones.” Hardly…'
> 
> This lack of an international industrial image, especially one associated with high technology, is crucial.  It makes it that much harder for Canadian companies to get their foot in the door.  Mexico may have Corona (we have forests and Roots) but how easy do you think it would be trying to sell Mexican nuclear reactors?  It is significant and sad that companies such as RIM and Bombardier, in their international advertising, do their best to avoid any association with Canada.



Mark
Ottawa


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *The Middle East
> *
> 
> *Defying violence, Egyptian protesters find unity – and pride – at peaceful mass rally
> *
> By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / February 4, 2011
> The Christian Science Monitor
> 
> 
> LINK
> 
> *Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters flooded Egypt's Tahrir Square today to press for the departure of President Mubarak. 'I'm here for Egypt,' said one middle-aged man.*
> 
> *Cairo*
> 
> For the second Friday in a row, tens of thousands of Egyptian protesters calling for the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak and the establishment of democracy here gathered in Tahrir Square in a largely peaceful and joyous scene.
> 
> Today's event was branded as a "day of departure" for Mubarak by overoptimistic organizers. That wasn't forthcoming, but the effort, which appeared to be the largest antigovernment gathering so far, remains a stunning success nonetheless.
> 
> This past Tuesday, bowing to demonstrators, Mubarak promised not to run in a presidential election scheduled for September. The next day, pro-regime thugs were unleashed on demonstrators in Tahrir Square, leaving at least eight people dead and hundreds injured.
> 
> On Thursday, there was a coordinated crackdown on the foreign press – particularly against satellite TV stations like Al Jazeera, which has been streaming live footage of the protests into millions of Arab and Egyptian homes. Meanwhile, state television was broadcasting reports suggesting that protests were part of a foreign plot.
> 
> The increasingly presidential-looking Vice President Omar Suleiman, the former intelligence chief who stepped out of the shadows for the first time last night with a national address, complained that the democracy protesters appeared to be serving a "foreign agenda." He also urged protesters to immediately go home.
> 
> All of this appeared to point to another crackdown today, and protesters were prepared for the worst.
> 
> "We had 200 casualties coming through here every half-hour on Wednesday. I'm frightened that this afternoon [Friday] could dwarf that," says Mohamed Riad, a doctor volunteering at the makeshift hospital protesters have set up in an alley close to the American University in Cairo. "I think they're going to come down and try to crush this."
> 
> His dire prediction wasn't realized, but this morning there were fewer women and children among the protesters than on Wednesday, a testament to the fear sowed by this week's violence. As the afternoon wore on and violence did not materialize, thousands of new protesters poured in to the square, more women and children among them.
> 
> The international condemnation of the pro-regime violence this week and the intimidation of the press probably contributed to the peaceful protests today. In Tunisia, a violent crackdown against demonstrators spurred on the opposition, so regime figures may be hoping protests will eventually dwindle on their own before fundamental democratic change is made, particularly after the concessions of this week.
> 
> *What's next for Cairo?*
> 
> As night fell, protesters began heading home – some disappointed that Mubarak remains Egypt's leader, at least officially, others murmuring that perhaps they had accomplished enough and it's time for Egypt to return to normal.
> 
> The coming days will likely prove a test of wills between Mubarak and the protesters. Mubarak told ABC News last night that "chaos" would break out if he stepped down and vowed to die on Egyptian soil. It remains to be seen if the demonstrators can maintain momentum in what so far remains a largely leaderless revolution.
> 
> "I'm with the people – I'm not from any party," says one of the volunteer civilian guards helping to check protesters for weapons as they pour into Tahrir Square.
> 
> A burly middle-aged man inside the square says: "I'm here for Egypt. This is Egypt. I'm not from the Muslim Brotherhood, I'm not from Kifaya [a secular pro-democracy] group, I'm just from Egypt."
> 
> The lack of a single obvious figurehead or organization behind the protests has been a source of strength. No simple roundup of leaders is likely to decapitate this movement. But if the regime avoids violence and refuses to bow to unmet demands, what comes next? Nobel Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei didn't join the protesters today and hasn't shown signs of galvanizing the opposition.
> 
> To be sure, the demonstrators on the square are sharing pride in being Egyptian – the common thread that they insist will push them forward.
> 
> "I'm 22 years old and I've never been able to stand up for my rights before," says Gehad Salman, who works in a Cairo hotel. "They're trying to trick us, to exhaust us. But we won't stop until Mubarak goes."
> 
> *The Muslim Brotherhood's role*
> 
> Some abroad, particularly in the US, have pointed with alarm to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group that long ago eschewed violence, as the possible winner of Egypt's struggle for change. Leaders from the group, Egypt's best organized opposition movement, say they have no current designs on the presidency or senior government posts, and insist they are committed to democracy.
> 
> Mubarak sought to play up on fears of the Brotherhood in his interview with ABC News's Christiane Amanpour yesterday, saying they were behind the protests, and that they would take over and lead to "chaos" if he steps down.
> 
> The Brothers have certainly been present at the demonstrations, but they've largely taken a backseat to a broad spectrum of Egyptian society, as was clear today.
> 
> The Brothers were there, or at least seemed to be (men with longish beards and trimmed mustaches, women with veils covering their faces). But so were girls with stylish sunglasses and flowing hair, looking like they'd just stepped out of a Cairo nightclub, not into the midst of a popular revolution. Ranks of Coptic Christians linked arms to provide symbolic protection to Muslims while they prayed at noon.
> 
> Little boys were there, carried on their fathers' shoulders. There were laborers from factories in the delta, waiters from the five-star hotels along the Nile, small business owners, career dissidents, and men so poor they looked one step from living on the street. There were capitalists, socialists, and people who boiled down their political philosophy to wanting "freedom."
> 
> Amr Moussa, a popular former Egyptian foreign minister seeking to muscle his way into the succession conversation, was there, too. He's currently head of the Arab League, and has said in recent days that he's willing to act as a leader if the people demand it.




More on LINK 


Egypt's VP uses state TV to blame unrest on 'foreign agendas' 

Egypt protests: An endgame seems to be approaching, but whose?

Opinion: Why won't Obama read the writing on the wall? Mubarak must go.


----------



## a_majoor

To 57 Chevy

While I agree that internal corruption is probably the single greatest factor in triggering the various uprisings in the Arab world, the intent of the author was not to point the finger at the Arab world but rather the inconsistant stance of the United States and her allies. The West has made alliances of conveinience throughout the ME based mostly on the ability to control the "allied" state through bribery and coercion, and chosen mostly to either gain access to something or deny access to rival Powers (and this game has been played since WWI).

Since there seems to be no real consistency or logic to who is the favoured State actor or who gets tossed under the bus, rulers in the Middle East (and by extension everywhere) are left to wonder if they will be supported or left hanging in the wind should something happen. Since hanging in the wind is not considered a viable option, the rulers and ruling elites will probably begin moving towards States that will act in a consistent manner (China, Russia and other regional powers), further weakening the West (in particular our ability to organize and manage global trade, which is our real advantage over "the rest"). This sort of thing is one of the reasons that I am for an "Anglosphere" group, since those nations are connected by common values and there should be clear reason for them to maintain mutual support.

It is very true that anti western groups will take up the cry with great enthusiasm, but then again, they don't really need much encouragement to do so.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Corruption is a symptom, not a really serious problem in and of itself. Corruption is indicative of the "habit of mind" I discussed elsewhere when I explained why I think democracy is far, far away from North Africa, the Middle East and West and South-West Asia.

Corruption is too easy when too many people expect too little from their governments. As soon as public expectations rise corruption is amongst the first symptoms to fall away. But those public expectations are rooted in attitudes and institutions that reinforce one another and strengthen that "habit of mind" that is all important.

Building both the attitudes and institutions takes time. We often like to point out that "we' brought "democracy" to Japan in just a few years. Not really true - what "we" did was graft some of our institutions onto a strong cultural base of high expectations in governments and then allow them to grow on their own, in their own, Japanese, way. Ditto Germany.


----------



## MarkOttawa

Plus Japan and Germany had considerable experience with parliamentary democracy before WW II.

Mark
Ottawa


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *The Middle East
> *
> 
> *Leadership of Egypt's ruling party resigns
> *
> Saturday, February 5, 2011 | 4:21 PM
> CTV
> 
> LINK
> 
> *Six top members of Egypt's ruling party have resigned, according to Egyptian state TV, in what appears to be the latest concession by the country's government to quell mass protests against President Hosni Mubarak. *
> 
> All six members of the Steering Committee of the General Secretariat -- the National Democratic Party's top decision-making body -- resigned and were replaced. They included the president's son Gamal Mubarak, as well as party secretary-general Safwat el-Sharif.
> 
> The younger Mubarak was thought to be in line to eventually succeed his father as president. But newly appointed Vice President Omar Suleiman had pledged that Gamal would not run for that post when elections are held in September.
> 
> There were mixed reports as to whether Hosni Mubarak had resigned as head of the National Democratic Party. But it appears he will continue in that role, which is separate from his post as president.
> 
> The outgoing members were considered among the party's most powerful leaders in the regime, and were unpopular among many Egyptians.
> 
> Despite the resignations, tens of thousands of anti-government protesters descended on Cairo's Tahrir Square on Saturday, for the 12th-straight day of mass demonstrations. They say they plan to continue holding anti-government rallies until Mubarak leaves office.
> 
> A new committee composed of various factions from the ranks of the protesters, including former presidential candidate Ayman Nour, has been formed to conduct negotiations on the protesters' behalf. But it says it will not enter transition talks until Mubarak steps down.
> 
> Youth activist Abdel-Rahman Youssef told The Associated Press that members of the group met with the prime minister late Friday to discuss how the standoff will end.
> 
> "The message is that they must recognize the legitimacy of the revolution and that president must leave one way or the other, either real or political departure," he said.
> 
> Youssef said "there is no force" that can dislodge young protesters from Tahrir square, which has become the heart of the demonstrations.
> 
> However, it remained far from clear whether their demands would be met.
> 
> In Germany, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the White House was endorsing Mubarak's vice president to handle the transition. Order was needed to keep extremists from seizing power, she said.
> 
> "It's important to support the transition process announced by the Egyptian government actually headed by now-Vice President Omar Suleiman," Clinton told the crowd at an international security summit in Munich.
> 
> Kamran Bokhari, a Middle East analyst with the global intelligence firm Stratfor, said the influence of the United States in Egypt can't be ignored.
> 
> The country of 80 million people has long been considered one of Washington's closest allies in the region -- it receives more than $1.5 billion a year in U.S. foreign aid -- and Bokhari said the White House is concerned about setting the right example.
> 
> "Clearly the United States would not like to humiliate President Mubarak -- that sets a very bad precedent for U.S. allies in the region," he told CTV News Channel.
> 
> News of the resignations in Mubarak's party came just hours after Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq appeared on state TV to tell viewers that stability is returning to the North African country.
> 
> Shafiq's statements suggested that Egypt's autocratic leader may stay on and try to ride out calls by the protesters for his immediate resignation.
> 
> The prime minister said that Friday's demonstration, which drew an estimated 100,000 protesters to Tahrir, or Freedom Square in downtown Cairo, had failed to oust the 82-year-old president.
> 
> "We haven't been affected and God willing next Friday we won't be affected," Shafiq said. "All this leads to stability."
> 
> A self-described "group of wise men" made up of the country's elite held talks with Shafiq regarding Mubarak's departure late Friday.
> 
> One proposal asked that the president hand authority to Suleiman. But Mubarak would retain his presidential title for the time being, allowing the country's ruler of three decades to save face as he's eased out.
> 
> Mubarak has refused to oblige requests for his departure, saying he plans to finish the remainder of his term through September. His aides have said the president should not be humiliated in the transition.
> 
> With files from The Associated Press




More on LINK


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *Transition in Egypt
> 
> *
> 
> *ElBaradei Wants to Negotiate with the Army
> *
> 02/05/2011
> SPIEGEL ONLINE
> 
> 
> LINK
> 
> *The Egyptian demonstrators want a quick transition of power -- and there are already plans afoot for what happens after Mubarak. Leading opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei told SPIEGEL that he wants to hold talks with the army, while the deputy head of the Muslim Brotherhood explained that they reject violence.*
> 
> The seeds of change are sprouting in Egypt - and the opposition is continuing to push for mass protests. Egyptian Nobel Prize laureate and opposition politician Mohamed ElBaradei says he wants to continue to mobilize protests against President Hosni Mubarak as an "agent of change."
> 
> In an interview with SPIEGEL, ElBaradei called for Mubarak's immediate resignation. "Mubarak must go, not at some point, but now," the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency told SPIEGEL. He said he was certain Mubarak could "find some Arab state that would be willing to take him in. I have heard from Bahrain."
> 
> Media reports suggest that considerations have also been made to send Mubarak to Germany. The New York Times reported on Saturday that Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman and other top military leaders are considering flying Mubarak to Germany for a medical checkup. This is apparently a part of a leadership plan to find a dignified way out of the crisis for Mubarak, according to the paper. According to the plan, Mubarak would fly to Germany for his annual medical leave, only this time he would remain for an extended check-up. Another variant would see the president retreating to his holiday home in the Red Sea resort Sharm el Sheik, the New York Times wrote, citing unnamed US government sources. The goal is to provide a graceful exit for Mubarak that would see him leaving the presidential palace without being immediately stripped of the presidency.
> 
> *'The Country Is Falling Apart' *
> 
> ElBaradei is now calling for new leadership in Egypt and he says he is prepared to negotiate with the military. "The longer things continue with Mubarak, the clearer it becomes: The country is falling apart, politically and economically," he told SPIEGEL. "I would prefer to speak to the army leadership soon," the opposition politician said, to "explore" how we could achieve a peaceful transition without bloodshed.
> 
> ElBaradei also warned the Israeli government that it must accept the end of the Mubarak regime. "The Israelis should understand that it is in their long-term interest to have a democratic Egypt as a neighbor." He also said it would be "prudent" for the Israelis to "acknowledge the legitimate interests of the Palestinians and to grant them their own state" for the sake of good relations with Cairo.
> 
> Meanwhile, the deputy head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Rashad al-Bayoumi, is calling for a transition government that includes all the opposition groups, new elections and the release of all political prisoners. "After 30 years of repression, corruption and dictatorship, we are now definitively at a crossroads," Bayoumi said in a SPIEGEL interview. "The revolution will continue until our demands have been fulfilled." He said the Muslim Brotherhood would also respect those with different religious beliefs. "Those are our principles," he said. "We are not the devil," he said, claiming the government had created a false image of the group "Our religion is not a diabolical religion," he added.
> 
> Bayoumi said he didn't know how many members the Muslim Brotherhood currently has in Egypt. "We don't count," he said. "The government says we are 3 million - all I know is that we are everywhere." The Muslim Brotherhood has remained deliberately reserved at the protests. "We don't want the revolution to be portrayed as the revolution of the Muslim Brotherhood," he said. "This is a popular revolt of all Egyptians." He said the government alone is responsible for the deaths and injuries that have occurred during the protests. "I swear to you, the Muslim Brotherhood has not called for violence and we will not do that."
> 
> In Germany, the government has offered cautious signs of support for the opposition. Chancellor Angela Merkel reiterated the European Union's willingness to aid a transformation in North Africa. "There will be changes in Egypt," she said at the annual Munich Security Conference. But this transformation must be formed, she said, and Europe is prepared to support this process through a new partnership.
> 
> Merkel also reiterated the "absolute necessity" of protecting the civil rights of the Egyptian people. She expressed her relief that the protests are again proceeding largely peacefully.
> 
> _Check back on Monday for the full English-language versions of the interviews with Mohamed ElBaradei and Rashad al-Bayoumi._




More on LINK


----------



## 57Chevy

As an example of the "Anglosphore" group of nations (primarily Christian) bringing change and advancement to other cultures
We can look at what is known as "The Golden age of Islam" and we find that at the time, there was a much greater tolerance to Christianity and therefore of the western influence on their culture.

With the rise of Islamism, the ousting of western values and incompatibilities became imminent and thus deteriorated the ability for co-existence. Even so the 'graft' as was mentioned remained. (I think)
The lack of the ability to co-exist has always been a deciding factor in the decline of otherwise global superpowers and in the use of military force.

We design many things for the benefit of all people no matter their culture but we design laws according to our own specific culture. With time, we come to know and accept those laws as being the 'normal'. So then we expect other cultures to adhere to them and accept them into their own culture. And we say "why not ? It works for us". So it should work for you, but it doesn't. 
As a people we lack the ability to co-exist whether it be because of the difference of religions, skin color or language. (Even with nature and sometimes with new technology.) We all fall short of that ability. Why is that ?  jealousy, greed, money, power or what ?
Advancement in the ability to co-exist requires the observation of other cultures with minimal or without interference (as China exercises) but with full dialogue, full support of trade ventures and issues pertaining to health and welfare.
Are we able ? Indeed we are.

We are already on the right road but we are so easily deviated from that accomplishment by the complexity and the diversity of factors. One of those factors is our ability in the use of words and wording.
And lets face it, we have become quite versed in word management.
We have had many years of practice and created organizations that deal mainly in dialogue. If we made an equal effort in human co-existence as we do in word management the world (perhaps) would be a better place. We see it everyday in every sector of humanity no matter the language. Diplomats weigh their words in an effort to maintain a workable balance between nations. Heads of state seek the perfect wording or that perfect phrase that suits the expectations of the people or caters toward a desired or anticipated accomplishment. 
We weigh our words in appraisal or at times in the hope of intimidating others, to cast doubt or direct blame. At times in the hope of rallying support for a cause, whatever it may be. 
That is what I was referring to in my earlier post. 
Journalists at times use this ability to direct attention away from some very real issues that exists. In the case of the Egyptian uprising pro islamists journalists will utilize events so as to favoritize their cause and place the blame on the west.
Just as the anti-semitic journalist will blame the jews utilizing the same current events. While both know very well the true cause of the uprising is corruption. And not only that, in their attempt of drawing attention to their 'cause' there arises bloodshed or destruction where there normally wouldn't be.

Being totally wrapped up in their own quest of attempting to direct attention to their own sacred cause they may overlook other equally or more important factors which may have devastating effects not only for the Middle East and the West including Israel, but the entire world. 

The control of the Suez Canal which is of extreme importance to the Egyptian economy and one of the worlds most widely used shipping gates. Stable government is a basic requirement in any area that has an effect on global matters.

The question is not, What is the US position regarding Egypt or The whole world awaits Canada's position on Egypt  or The Brotherhood of Islam..., The Jewish State...., Iran.....etc.
Frightened by the possible overwhelming snowball effect, today the world powers walk on eggs and hone their words diligently.

IMO The real question is: What is the position of the whole world concerning Egypt and The Suez Canal ?


----------



## nuclearzombies

Pardon me, a bit of a semi-relevant afterthought. If I recall correctly, Tunisian troops distinguished themselves as part of UNAMIR, in that they proved to be (also the Ghanians under Joe Anyidoho) some of the more useful troops among Dallaire's limited stable after UNSC chopped his legs off.


----------



## Edward Campbell

I think it is interesting that the "golden age" of Islam depended, above all else, on outside knowledge: from Classical Europe (Greece and Rome) preserved and propagated by Jews, and from India and father East, brought to Baghdad and Cairo by Jews. The later European _Renaissance_ (rebirth) depended upon the same Jews and their stock of knowledge, burnished, as it was, by the scholars - mostly Jews - of the Islamic "golden age."

We, the later "reformed," "enlightened" and "industrialized" Europeans, brought little to the world except process - Aristotle, Livy, Plato and Seneca are still 2,500 years later, the firm base upon which our _civilization_ rests. The One problem faced by our African, Middle Eastern and West Asian brethren is that their classical foundation is too weak - the philosophical superstructures they attempt to build cannot stand.

It isn't really "states" that fail - the modern nation-state is a 17th century (Treaty of Westphalia) construct: it is cultures (what Samuel Huntington called "civilizations") that fail because they are too weak to succeed.


----------



## MarkOttawa

Or the "cultures" lose their internal _raison d'être_, go flabby and turn into "civilizations"--see Spengler:
http://www.amazon.com/Decline-West-Oxford-Paperbacks/dp/0195066340

Mark
Ottawa


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *ElBaradei on Democracy's Chances in Egypt
> *
> 
> *'We Could Experience an Arab Spring'
> *
> 02/06/2011
> SPIEGEL ONLINE
> 
> 
> LINK
> 
> *In a SPIEGEL interview, Egyptian opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei explains why President Hosni Mubarak should leave Egypt as soon as possible, how Israel should view the popular revolts across the Arab world and how he could go from being an "agent of change" to Egypt's next president.*
> 
> SPIEGEL: Mr. ElBaradei, is Egypt in danger of a civil war?
> 
> ElBaradei: I see this danger. We've experienced a complete collapse of public order and bloody, sometimes even fatal assaults. These were carried out by provocateurs, most of whom were recruited by the intelligence service and the police.
> 
> SPIEGEL: Do you have any proof of that?
> 
> ElBaradei: Yes, the culprits took off their uniforms so that they could not be recognized. Some of them still had their identification papers on them when they were seized by the demonstrators. The only way they could have caused widespread panic on horses and camels was with the government's support. They robbed passersby and journalists, and they tried to prevent the demonstrators from getting supplies.
> 
> SPIEGEL: Shouldn't you be headed down to Tahrir Square to try to use your authority to calm people down there?
> 
> ElBaradei: I was there once, and things broke out in turmoil. I need to watch out for my own safety. There are people who think they'd be doing the regime a favor by killing me. The longer things continue on this way with Mubarak, the clearer it becomes that the country is imploding both politically and economically. Mubarak must go; not at some point, but now. I believe the Americans are also getting very impatient.
> 
> SPIEGEL: You've given Mubarak an ultimatum. It expired on Friday, which the demonstrators dubbed the "day of departure" ...
> 
> ElBaradei: ... and I will say it again: He must go away quickly. I'm sure that some Arab country will take him in. I've heard from Bahrain. If he still has one spark of patriotism, this is his last chance.
> 
> SPIEGEL: You know Mubarak personally. How does he think?
> 
> ElBaradei: I've met with him on a few occasions. We discussed Egyptian foreign policy. The conversations weren't at all uncomfortable. Still, I believe he is afflicted with the malady of dictators. No one within his circle dares to contradict him anymore, to tell him the truth. I think it has gotten very lonely around him.
> 
> SPIEGEL: So who should convince him he has to go?
> 
> ElBaradei: The Egyptian people. Now that the culture of fear has been vanquished in Egypt, the people know that they can accomplish everything. I am very proud of my fellow countrymen. Just a few months back, when I was at an event with my brother, I turned to him and said, depressed: 'Dead souls; the Egyptians are all dead souls.' Today, I look young people in the eyes and I see self-confidence, a spirit of optimism and a belief in what the future holds.
> 
> SPIEGEL: Did you expect that would ever happen?
> 
> ElBaradei: I had hoped it would, but I didn't see it coming -- at least not at this speed. A people that was frozen in a political coma just a few months ago is now a model for all the world's oppressed peoples. It's truly astounding.
> 
> SPIEGEL: Do you think it is more of an advantage or disadvantage that the movement doesn't have a real leader? Or would you go so far as to say that you ...
> 
> ElBaradei: ... no, I'm not that presumptuous. It is a broad-based movement. I can't say that I am its leader. I'm happy to be an agent of change, and I'm working closely with the demonstrators. Young people, in particular, should be praised for what they've accomplished. I'm prepared to advise them on how to transform their successes on the street into concrete political results. Three of their leaders will be coming to visit me for this very purpose right after we're done talking.
> 
> SPIEGEL: Very little has been said recently about your National Alliance for Change, which includes members of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood in addition to students. Are you still representing that group when you negotiate with the government?
> 
> ElBaradei: Yes. Yesterday, I spoke with (government) representatives once again. But the scorched earth policy will only end when the conditions are right, when the president is gone. We do not cede any legitimacy to representatives of the regime who support Mubarak.
> 
> SPIEGEL: Newly appointed Vice President Omar Suleiman has already entered into a dialogue with opposition leaders -- but not with you or any representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood.
> 
> ElBaradei: I've heard that, as well. He met with representatives of the established parties ...
> 
> SPIEGEL: ... and, in doing so, has started driving a wedge into the opposition ...
> 
> ElBaradei: ... but these parties don't have much to say. The most important forces are the demonstrators and the Muslim Brotherhood, both of which are the best organized groupings. I would prefer to speak with the army leadership soon to explore how we could achieve a peaceful transition without bloodshed. With a new constitution and the dissolving of the current parliament. How we can build a modern, democratic state.
> 
> SPIEGEL: Do you see any parallels between the toppling of the regimes in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989 and the ongoing popular uprisings in the Arab world?
> 
> ElBaradei: Absolutely. Both are major, historic breaks. What's currently playing out in the Arab world -- from Tunisia all the way to Yemen -- resembles a wildfire. I have no doubt that the transition in Egypt will be accompanied by a transition in the entire Middle East. We could experience an Arab Spring ...
> 
> SPIEGEL: ... which hopefully won't end as tragically as the Prague Spring of 1968, when Warsaw Pact troops violently suppressed political liberalization in Czechoslovakia. The Israelis seem more worried than anyone.
> 
> ElBaradei: There are a few myths that Mubarak has successfully disseminated in the West and in Israel. First, that if he falls, there will be immediate chaos. Second, that if Egypt transitions into a democracy, the peace treaty with Israel will be annulled and we will be on the verge of entering into a new war in the Middle East. And, third, that if there is a transformation, an ayatollah à la Iran will take over in Cairo. All of that is nonsense.
> 
> SPIEGEL: Does that mean you can't sympathize with people's nervousness about Egyptian Islamists?
> 
> ElBaradei: I don't think like the Muslim Brotherhood, and I don't share their conservative religious ideology. Incidentally, they are not a majority; instead they have the potential to win about 20 percent of the Egyptian vote. Nor do they have ties with al-Qaida. They have sworn off violence and agreed to play by democratic rules.
> 
> SPIEGEL: Are you now saying that a government that included participation by the Muslim Brotherhood would continue on with Mubarak's policies toward Israel?
> 
> ElBaradei: No. Something the Israelis also need to grasp is that it's impossible to make peace with a single man. At the moment, they have a peace treaty with Mubarak, but not one with the Egyptian people. The Israelis should understand that it is in their long-term interest to have a democratic Egypt as a neighbor, and that it is prudent to acknowledge the legitimate interests of the Palestinians and to grant them their own state."
> 
> SPIEGEL: What should a new president change about Egypt's relationship with Israel? Would you go to Israel to meet with Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's hard-line prime minister?
> 
> ElBaradei: I have already made earlier trips to Israel. But, when it comes to politics, I'm always much more concerned with the substance than the form. Of course conditions have to be made better for the people in the Gaza Strip, and the blockade needs to be lifted immediately. I always tell my Israeli friends: 'It's also in your security interest to treat the Palestinians as partners, to grant them rights and to not humiliate them.'
> 
> SPIEGEL: And, last but not least, do you think you will be Egypt's next president?
> 
> ElBaradei: That's not what I'm striving for. But if people's expectations are directed toward me, I will also not disappoint them. I would like to remain independent and maintain a certain distance -- both from the Muslim Brotherhood and US policy.
> 
> _Interview conducted by Erich Follath; translated from the German by Josh Ward_




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## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *John McCain on the Dangers of the Muslim Brotherhood
> *
> 
> *'They Should Be Excluded from any Transition Government'
> *
> 02/06/2011
> SPIEGEL ONLINE
> 
> 
> LINK
> 
> *In a SPIEGEL interview, Republican senator and former presidential candidate John McCain, 74, discusses the United States' Middle East policies and his fears of a role for the Muslim Brotherhood in the country's transition to democracy.*
> 
> SPIEGEL: Did it take the Obama administration too long to find a clear position on Egypt?
> 
> John McCain: I don't think that I can second guess the president. While I wanted to be, I am not in his position, I don't have all the information and background that he has. All I can say is that I think the president has handled the issue well so far.
> 
> SPIEGEL: Many policymakers in Washington say they want to "end up on the right side of history" with regards to Egypt. and not on the wrong side as they were in Iran after the fall of the Shah. How can that be achieved?
> 
> McCain: There's very little doubt that for a long time we have not been on the right side of history in the Middle East, in that we have not recognized that these same ambitions for democracy and freedom are held by people everywhere in the world. The president has come a long way since 2009 when he refused to condemn the Iranian government when the demonstrations were taking place in Tehran and refused to support the demonstrators then. I think that was one of the biggest national security mistakes so far of his presidency.
> 
> SPIEGEL: You have called for open elections in Egypt. Should that happen quickly or could elections lead to chaos if organized prematurely?
> 
> McCain: The process that I would like to see and I think a lot of other people would like to see is Hosni Mubarak stepping down and the army taking charge along with other democratic organizations within Egypt -- not the Muslim Brotherhood. A transition government should then launch a campaign for fair, open and democratic elections that take place in September.
> 
> SPIEGEL: How optimistic are you that the Arab world is capable of establishing democratic institutions?
> 
> McCain: I think they are very capable, especially Egypt, the center culturally and politically of the Middle East. But I would add that the longer that these demonstrators are repressed, the more likely the scenario that the issue is hijacked by radical Islamic elements.
> 
> SPIEGEL: In 2006, the US pushed for elections in Gaza -- a move which ultimately brought Hamas into power.
> 
> McCain: In Gaza, people basically had only two choices: Fatah, which was a failed and corrupt organization, or Hamas, which as we know was supported by the Muslim Brotherhood. Instead what they should have had was a multi-party campaign with lots of candidates and lots of choices for the people of Gaza.
> 
> SPIEGEL: Many people are drawing comparisons between the situation in Cairo and the Iranian revolution of 1979 which led to the country's takeover by religious leaders. If you look at elements like the Muslim Brotherhood, how likely is a similar outcome in Egypt?
> 
> McCain: I am deeply, deeply concerned that this whole movement could be hijacked by radical Islamic extremists.
> 
> SPIEGEL: What is your assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood?
> 
> McCain: I think they are a radical group that first of all supports Sharia law; that in itself is anti-democratic -- at least as far as women are concerned. They have been involved with other terrorist organizations and I believe that they should be specifically excluded from any transition government.
> 
> SPIEGEL: Are you afraid that someone like Mohamed ElBaradei is instrumentalized by the Muslim Brotherhood?
> 
> McCain: Oh yeah, I think it's very clear that the scenario is very likely he could be their front man. He has no following nor political influence in Egypt. After all, he has lived outside of Egypt for most of his life.
> 
> SPIEGEL: A certain role of the Muslim Brotherhood in the transition process in Egypt seems acceptable to the Obama White House. Does that concern you?
> 
> McCain: It concerns me so much that I am unalterably opposed to it. I think it would be a mistake of historic proportions.
> 
> SPIEGEL: Could the events in Egypt lead to a domino effect in other countries of the region?
> 
> McCain: I don't think there's any doubt that this movement is spreading to other countries, but I think that to say that every country would have the same events and every country would have the same result lacks in knowledge of the differences in these different nations in the Middle East. In other words, I don't think Yemen is Egypt and I don't think Egypt is Jordan. Each has their own unique kinds of challenges but the fundamentals, the desire for democracy and freely elected governments is a common thread throughout.
> 
> SPIEGEL: Some people argue that the developments in Egypt mark the end of realpolitik.
> 
> 
> McCain: I think that there is always an element of realpolitik that has to be present in the conduct of any nation's national security affairs. But, at the same time, we have to also have a balance between realpolitik and Wilsonian principles of freedom and democracy and human rights. And maintaining that balance is the greatest challenge that we in the West, including the Federal Republic of Germany, have to face because it's many times a very difficult decision-making process. If it was strictly realpolitik we wouldn't have a problem, things would be easy. But we are also advocates for the fundamental principles that all of us are endowed with certain inalienable rights.
> 
> SPIEGEL: Do you find it a little ironic that in a way we are seeing results now that the previous Bush administration was shooting for with its "freedom agenda"?
> 
> McCain: I think so, but my job right now is to work with President Obama in every way that I can to see that this incredibly difficult crisis comes to a successful conclusion.
> 
> _Interview conducted by Marc Hujer and Gregor Peter Schmitz_




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## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *Middle East*
> 
> *Will Egypt's government now strike a deal with the Muslim Brotherhood?
> *
> By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / February 6, 2011
> The Christian Sciende Monitor
> 
> 
> LINK
> 
> *The Muslim Brotherhood said it was entering direct talks with the government Sunday. Democracy protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square remain suspicious of any compromise deals that may be promised by Vice President Omar Suleiman.*
> 
> *Cairo*
> 
> Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, slow to join pro-democracy protests and wary of a government that has banned it for 56 years, says it will enter direct talks with President Hosni Mubarak's government. The move is a sharp reversal of course for Egypt's best-organized opposition group, which two days ago insisted it wouldn't negotiate with the government until Mr. Mubarak steps down.
> 
> The decision also bolsters the likelihood of a compromise end to the political impasse. But any deal that leaves major elements of the current government in place will severely disappoint both secular and Islamist protesters who have flooded Cairo's central Tahrir Square in recent days to call for Mubarak's immediate departure.
> 
> Many Egyptian activists also say they worry that the Brotherhood's elderly leadership, who have become increasingly inward-looking in the face of government repression, are no match for the old-guard members of Mubarak's regime, who will use them to split the forces pushing for democratic change and avoid meaningful reform.
> 
> "This is a bad idea," says Ibrahim al-Houdaiby, a former Brotherhood youth leader who left the group two years ago. "The compromises are going to be too great."
> 
> *Compromise talks begin*
> 
> Al Arabiya reported in the early afternoon in Cairo that talks had begun between Vice President Omar Suleiman, Brotherhood representatives, Coptic Christian billionaire Naguib Sawiris, and a representative of Mohamed ElBaradei, the Egyptian Nobel Prizewinner who has been pushing for democratic reform in Egypt in the past two years. They are presenting themselves as a broad front representing multiple streams in Egyptian society, but ground-level democracy demonstrators are suspicious that a group of elites without true grass-roots support is about to cut a back-room deal.
> 
> "The protesters know that if we withdraw before our demands are met, the government will hunt us down and try to crush us," says Khaled Abol Naga, an Egyptian film star who has joined the protests. "There is no trust of anyone from the regime, not just Mubarak."
> 
> *Vice President Suleiman's key role*
> 
> Over the weekend, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton strongly supported Vice President Suleiman -- a former general and longtime intelligence chief until Mubarak named him vice president in late January -- as the focal point for efforts to open up Egyptian politics. Mubarak appears to have handed off all responsibility for dealing with the protesters to Suleiman and other members of the military establishment.
> 
> Suleiman is a devout Muslim himself and is also deeply suspicious of the Brotherhood, a longtime enemy of the Mubarak government. Though the movement eschewed violence decades ago and has hewed to a gradualist course, men like Suleiman -- not to mention much of the foreign policy establishment in the US and Europe -- view them as a threat to stability.
> 
> Suleiman's place in Egyptian politics was secured in 1995, when he insisted that Mubarak use an armored car on a trip to the Sudan. While both men drove through the streets of Khartoum, they were ambushed by members of the Gamaa Islamiyah, a group of violent Islamists that split from the Brotherhood in disgust over the group's refusal to use violence in the 1970s. Mubarak credited Suleiman's advice, and the two men spent the next decade working in concert to wipe out the group.
> 
> Now he's at the forefront of the old military elite, which appears likely to shed Mubarak in elections scheduled for September but do what it can to maintain its position (the 82-year-old Mubarak promised last week that he won't run).
> 
> *Muslim Brotherhood makes its move*
> 
> Blake Hounshell, the managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine who's in Cairo following the uprising, says it appears the Brothers are turning their back on the protesters at Tahrir and attending to their own interests.
> 
> "They see they're losing leverage, and they want to get the best deal possible they can, now," he says. "The longer this thing draws out, the more it goes against the protesters, and the Brotherhood knows that."
> 
> At Tahrir Square, which has been turned into an encampment for democracy protesters over the past 12 days, many today were suspicious of the Brotherhood.The group is clearly popular in Egypt, but without free elections or decent polling, their true support is impossible to gauge. Many Egyptians argue that the group wouldn't be able to take clear power in fair elections, and may see a deal now that allows it to legally participate in politics and give it a voice in some political reforms as its best chance at short-term influence.
> 
> "The Muslim Brotherhood wants to steal the success of this revolution. They are welcome to play a part, but they're not the leaders," says Samie el-Shafie, a woman who holds a senior position at the Ministry of Health and has just joined the protests at Tahrir Square. "They don't represent us."
> 
> _-- Ann Hermes contributed to this report._




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## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *Middle East*
> 
> *Iraq PM Nouri Maliki 'will not seek third term'*
> 5 February 2011 Last updated at 10:22 ET
> BBC World News
> 
> LINK
> 
> *Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has said he will not seek a third term in office when his mandate runs out in 2014, state media say.*
> 
> Mr Maliki returned for a second term after polls last year but endured nine months of wrangling before a unity government could be formed.
> 
> He said he would back the insertion of a clause in the constitution bringing in a two-term maximum.
> 
> The move comes amid continuing pro-democracy protests in the Middle East.
> 
> There has been widespread unrest, including in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Jordan.
> 
> *'Change is necessary'*
> Mr Maliki told Agence France-Presse: "The constitution does not prevent a third, fourth or fifth term, but I have personally decided not to seek another term after this one.
> 
> "I support the insertion of a paragraph in the constitution that the prime minister gets only two turns, only eight years, and I think that's enough."
> 
> Referring to Egypt, he said: "The people have the right to express what they want without being persecuted.
> 
> "One of the characteristics of a lack of democracy is when a leader rules for 30 or 40 years. It is a difficult issue for people, it is intolerable and change is necessary."
> 
> Mr Maliki this week decided to give half his pay back to the treasury in a gesture viewed as an acknowledgement of the income gap between rich and poor.
> 
> Mr Maliki faces a number of key challenges in his second term, including the continuing instability and violence, the division of oil wealth and the planned withdrawal of US troops by the end of 2011.
> 
> Mr Maliki's Shia bloc fell two seats short of a majority early last year, triggering a political crisis that gave Iraq the unenviable record of the longest time ever to form a working government.
> 
> Mr Maliki eventually pulled together a unity government that included a number of MPs who are followers of staunchly Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.



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## Edward Campbell

George Wallace said:
			
		

> Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.
> 
> ElBaradei on Democracy's Chances in Egypt
> 
> 'We Could Experience an Arab Spring'
> 
> More on LINK




Be a bit cautious when listening to El Baradei: he's a foreigner, now. He was born and raised in Egypt but, largely, educated overseas (Geneva and New York) and, after a stint in the Egyptian diplomatic service he made his (distinguished) career internationally, most notably, from 1984-2009 (25 years) in the Vienna based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). While I have no doubt that Mohamed El Baradei is well connected and respected I seriously doubt he can spring, fully formed - like a warrior bred from a dragon's tooth, into a leadership position in Egypt.


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *
> *
> 
> *Tunisia suspends ruling party activities
> 
> *
> 06/02/2011 3:29:53 PM
> CBC News
> 
> 
> 
> LINK
> 
> *Tunisia's interior minister has suspended all activities of the former ruling party after the deaths of two people in one of the most violent protests since president Zine el Abidine Ben Ali fled the country.*
> 
> Fahrat Rajhi declared that all Democratic Constitutional Rally (RCD) meetings be suspended and RCD party offices and meeting places be shut down. He added the party will eventually be dissolved.
> 
> Rajhi said the move was taken because of the "extreme urgency" of the situation in the country.
> 
> The statement, released through the official TAP news agency, came hours after police fired at an angry crowd of about 1,000 attacking the police station in the northwestern town of Kef on Saturday, killing two people and injuring 17 others, the interior ministry said.
> 
> The official Tunisian news agency said the crowd had turned on police after the police chief "abused" a member of the community.
> 
> A local journalist said the police chief slapped a woman during a demonstration, triggering the violence between police and citizens.
> 
> A statement by the interior ministry, which is in charge of police, said that citizens threw stones and small firebombs at the police station in a surge of anger after the "abuse" by the police chief.
> 
> The crowd burned two cars, one a police vehicle, a ministry statement said.
> 
> Police fired tear gas, then fired into the air in a vain effort to disperse the crowd, then began firing on demonstrators, the ministry said.
> 
> The statement did not specify the nature of the abuse by the police chief that triggered the incident, but the witness said a woman was slapped.
> 
> The ministry confirmed the police chief was under arrest and said investigators had been sent to Kef.
> 
> Tunisia remains tense since demonstrations pushed President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali into exile in Saudi Arabia on Jan. 14.
> 
> Police, in particular, have been long distrusted by the population for carrying out the repressive policies of Ben Ali's regime.




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## OldSolduer

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Be a bit cautious when listening to El Baradei: he's a foreigner, now. He was born and raised in Egypt but, largely, educated overseas (Geneva and New York) and, after a stint in the Egyptian diplomatic service he made his (distinguished) career internationally, most notably, from 1984-2009 (25 years) in the Vienna based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). While I have no doubt that Mohamed El Baradei is well connected and respected I seriously doubt he can spring, fully formed - like a warrior bred from a dragon's tooth, into a leadership position in Egypt.



Kinda like Ingnatieff....


----------



## George Wallace

;D

Anyway.....Back to the News on day 15 of the demonstrations in Cairo.

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *Bittersweet Anarchy
> *
> 
> *Days of Rage in Alexandria
> 
> *
> 02/07/2011
> By Alexander Smoltczyk in Alexandria, Egypt
> SPIEGEL ONLINE
> 
> 
> 
> LINK
> 
> *For days, residents of Egypt's second-largest city, Alexandria, have been living in a largely lawless zone. And while there is anger and rage on the streets, there is little of the enthusiasm and joy that usually marks a revolution.*
> 
> There are revolutions that smell like jasmine, but not this one. There are revolutions where people celebrate what they've accomplished and are so happy that they can only repeat the word "crazy" in stunned disbelief. The revolution in Alexandria isn't one of these either. Instead, the revolution here reeks of growing piles of garbage, and it sounds like the sticks the revolutionaries beat upon the empty pavement to bolster their courage.
> 
> For days, Alexandria's four million inhabitants have been living without a state. Near Alexandria Stadium, a young man in a hoodie pulls a board studded with nails into the street to stop cars. What looks like a 15-year-old boy with a hockey stick resting on his shoulder helps him out. Others have steel rods, pipes and machetes. They have now tasted what it feels like to have power.
> 
> The police station behind the stadium in the Bab Sharqi (or "eastern gate") district of the city has been burnt down. Torched personnel carriers once belonging to elite police units are now lying on the street surrounded by soaked bundles of files and drawers.
> 
> An old man with a book on his knees is sitting in the midst of this debris. He is Mahmud Rushdi, a retired professor of cybernetics. He and a friend hastily cleared some space in the hallway and stuck a piece of paper on the wall with packaging tape that reads: "Public Committee for Citizens' Issues."
> 
> For now, Rushdi is the state. "If someone is missing their car, where should they go?" he asks. "There are no longer any public offices here or any police." Given these circumstances, Rushdi decided to step in for the authorities. He logs all the reports, notifications and complaints in his book, which he will take to the military outposts later on.
> 
> Rushdi says that the people must learn that the police are not only responsible for tear gas and bribes. "The military has promised not to shoot. Good. But it's also not shooting at Mubarak," Rushdi adds. "So the mood is subdued. Our revolution hasn't experienced its moment of joy yet. The Bastille is still standing."
> 
> *Days of Rage*
> 
> People come to visit the Bab Sharqi police station to take pictures of the ruins and of themselves standing in front of them. All of a sudden, a stout man wearing sunglasses jumps out of his car and yells: "What's going on here?" before laying into the elderly men. "You traitors! You spies!" he shouts, beside himself with rage because foreigners are being shown the humiliation of the state authority. The man cannot be calmed down. When he starts throwing punches, the shoulder holster peeks out from under his leather jacket. The bystanders just look on.
> 
> The Bastille might still be standing, but the counter-revolution has already begun. The revolution in Alexandria skipped a few stages: the rapture, the feeling of airy anticipation of empowerment, the carnival.
> 
> There are only a few people on the streets and hardly any women. The people are in hiding, as if it were somehow too eerie to be left to their own devices. Only the yellow-and-black Lada taxis continue to race through the run-down streets of the old town as they always have -- like a roused swarm of wasps.
> 
> Not far from the main railway station, two archaeologists are standing guard in front of the Roman amphitheater. They have hidden two police cars on the site behind Corinthian columns to protect them from the popular rage. They ask for no photographs to be taken, saying: "Things are chaotic here. So you have to follow the rules." Across the way, a man covered in filth is squatting on the street and sorting through the garbage around him as contentedly as a young boy with his pieces of Lego.
> 
> *'The Brain of Egypt ' *
> 
> There are families living in the streets of the old city who can only afford to eat once a day. Radi Atalla Iskandir says that the rage is understandable. The Anglican minister is standing on the roof of his rectory, looking down on the groups of people carrying homemade placards while making their way to the square outside the train station for another day of rage. The minister feels uneasy about what's happening. From up here, you can gaze out over almost the entire city. You can see the residences of the patriarchs and the archbishop as well as the rooftop restaurant of the Hotel Cecil, which used to be frequented by the singer Umm Kulthum, the poet Constantine Cavafy and the writers Lawrence Durell and Giuseppe Ungaretti.
> 
> Alexandria was once "the brain of Egypt," Iskandir says, the "first city of the eastern Mediterranean." And yet, in history, it has always been too early or too late. "We have lived here for almost 2,000 years," he says. "Under Nasser, we Christians lost our property. Under Sadat, we were stripped of our right to do business. Under Mubarak, they have burned our churches." He stops there with his train of thought.
> 
> Iskandir feels uneasy these days when he goes out to the Corniche, the city's long coastal road, and sees a pick-up truck drive by with its bed packed with young men shouting "Allahu akbar!" Iskandir wrote his doctoral dissertation of the "rebirth" of Islam. He knows the members of the Muslim Brotherhood in his neighborhood. He says that they no longer have beards, "but they have their plan."
> 
> Unlike in Cairo, the Muslim Brotherhood has come to assume a leading role in the protests in Alexandria. In other places, regime opponents might be organizing themselves via Facebook. But, in Alexandria, every demonstration starts on the front stairs of the Qaed Ibrahim Mosque in a somewhat more traditional way: with bullhorns and crowds of people chanting "Enough!"
> 
> The BMW and Mercedes dealerships on the road leading to the airport have been plundered, as well as the Carrefour hypermarket. Rumor has it that a police officer was tied up and dragged behind a car all the way to the Italian Cultural Institute.
> 
> *Opening a Window to Freedom*
> 
> The days of rage have pushed open a window to freedom, and the people have been able to look out of it. Not everyone has been pleased with what they've seen. One man sitting in the small street-side cafe "Sultan," who only gives his name as "Monsieur Robert," would like to see that window quickly shut. "Egyptians need order," he says. "Freedom is not enough." Monsieur Robert is your classic Alexandrian: a Christian whose family came here ages ago from the Levant, fluent in five languages and a chain smoker with the build of a Giacometti sculpture, almost too lean to even cast a shadow.
> 
> Monsieur Robert, who used to manage the local Kuwait Airways office, also hates the regime's stupidity, including the ministers who protect their vested rights and the obscene wealth of the Egyptian upper class, which can't even muster the decency to build houses or hospitals for the poor. "A liter of milk costs 6 Egyptian pounds, and the average salary is maybe 300 pounds. How is that supposed to work?" he asks. Every year, there are only new promises. "The demands are justified," he says, "but now we have anarchy." And that makes him nervous.
> 
> The fiercest battles have been fought right where he lives, on Sheik Ibrahim Street. When the police fled, the concierges of the houses formed a "national guard." Though their opinions might differ, they man the posts together. Mahmud does it for the revolution, but Ahmed -- who has actually found the president and his "30 years of peace" rather good -- does it because he's afraid of looters. They have written the name of their street on white clothes tied around their upper arms. They've organized a phone chain and emergency numbers. From night to night, their supply of arms has gotten progressively better. One insurance broker shows off his stun gun.
> 
> At around 11 p.m., the sea lying beyond the wall of the coastal road is a dark, slowly pulsating emptiness. Some demonstrators approach us. One elderly man, still intoxicated by the day's activities, calls out to Monsieur Robert: "I am a martyr. I intend to die for freedom." To which Robert responds: "OK, do what you want. But not here on our street."
> 
> Then they continue on their way. In a voice above a whisper, the insurance broker says: "We need another revolution to save this country." There are revolutions that smell like jasmine. And there are revolutions where the people involved know each other too well to allow themselves to celebrate their freedom.
> 
> *'Alexandria Declaration'*
> 
> The Library of Alexandria, the most famous of the ancient world, was burnt down when Julius Caesar captured the city in 48 BC. Standing in its place since 2002 is the "Bibliotheca Alexandrina," which faces the sea like a large tilted disk.
> 
> Over the years, the institution has hosted workshops and lectures on democracy, reforms and religion. In one room, there is a copy of Salman Rushdie's "Satanic Verses." In March 2004, Arab intellectuals and civil society institutions composed the "Alexandria Declaration" here, a sort of "Charter 77" for reform in the Arab world. While police stations were being burnt down and the court buildings and the governor's residence were stormed, students formed a protective chain in front of their library. They don't want to see another fire destroy their written treasures.
> 
> "It's a wonderful moment," says Ismail Serageldin, the library's director and one of Egypt's leading intellectuals, breaking the complete silence in his office. Serageldin holds 30 honorary degrees and a professorship at the "Collège de France," the Pantheon of intellectual life in France. Despite everything that's happening, Serageldin is still convinced this revolution will reach its goal.
> 
> "Victor Hugo once wrote: 'No one can resist an idea whose time has come,'" Serageldin says. "Everything you are seeing -- the fighting, the looting -- are merely ripples on the surface."
> 
> *A Triangle of Power*
> 
> Instead, Serageldin says, the real issue is the deep undercurrents -- and these are being driven by the secular youth. "In Egypt," he explains, "there is a triangle of power: the Islamists, the statists of the Ancien Régime and us, the liberals. And we will win." Serageldin doesn't view the current uprising as being part of Islamist movement. "Don't worry," he says. "The times when Arab rulers could treat their people like naughty children are over."
> 
> Serageldin then goes into the library's conference room to look out the window upon the square where legend holds that Alexander the Great ordered the city to be founded. Hanging in the room is a tapestry bearing the face of the president. "After all," Serageldin says by way of explanation, "Mubarak made this library possible, and his wife chairs our board of trustees. But take a look at this."
> 
> Serageldin presses a switch, and a screen comes down in front of the tapestry -- covering first the hair and then the eyes, mouth and chin of Egypt's ruler. Then Serageldin hits the switch again and the screen goes back up so that the "raïs" or president is visible once more.
> 
> When you live in a port city, you know just how deceptive the ripples and currents can be.
> 
> _Translated from the German by Josh Ward_




More on LINK


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *Muslim Brotherhood's Rashad al-Bayoumi
> *
> 
> *'The Revolution Will Continue Until Our Demands Are Met'
> 
> *
> 02/07/2011
> SPIEGEL ONLINE
> 
> 
> 
> LINK
> 
> *The West is worried that the Islamist group Muslim Brotherhood will take on an influential role in post-Mubarak Egypt. SPIEGEL spoke with the group's deputy leader, Rashad al-Bayoumi, about what the Brotherhood wants, the West's "refusal to listen," and non-violence.*
> 
> SPIEGEL: Are we seeing the beginning of a new era for Egypt?
> 
> Bayoumi: After 30 years of oppression, corruption and dictatorship, we are definitely standing at a crossroads. The question now is do we want to make way for democracy and human rights, or do we still want dictatorship? The revolution will continue until our demands are met.
> 
> SPIEGEL: And what are they?
> 
> Bayoumi: First, we need a regime change. We want a new government. Second, we need new elections. The current parliament has no legitimacy and only took office following massive election fraud. Third, all political prisoners must be released immediately. We want justice. And, finally, we need a transitional government that includes representatives from all opposition groups.
> 
> SPIEGEL: Does this transitional government also include leading opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei? Do you accept him as a candidate?
> 
> Bayoumi: Our demands are compatible with the demands of all opposition groups, including the young people -- and not just from within the political parties. It is, however, too early to talk about new leaders. Now the people will first have to decide -- let's let the people speak.
> 
> SPIEGEL: The Muslim Brotherhood is widely regarded as the largest opposition movement in Egypt. Why are you not present at the demonstrations?
> 
> Bayoumi: That is ridiculous! Of course we are present. But we are keeping a low profile as an organization. We are not marching with our slogans. We don't want this revolution to be portrayed as a revolution of the Muslim Brothers, as an Islamic revolution. This is a popular uprising by all Egyptians.
> 
> SPIEGEL: In the West there is the fear that the Brotherhood is preparing to take power -- that they want to transform Egypt into an Islamic state.
> 
> Bayoumi: The West refuses to listen to us. We are not demons. We want peace, not violence. Our religion is not a diabolical religion. Our religion respects people of other faiths, these are our principles. But this regime purposely misrepresents us and manipulates public opinion.
> 
> SPIEGEL: How many members does your movement have?
> 
> Bayoumi: I don't know -- we don't count them. The government says that there are over three million of us. All I know is that we are everywhere, in every city, every village, every neighborhood. We are an essential part of the people.
> 
> SPIEGEL: How many Egyptians would vote for you if free elections were actually held in the near future?
> 
> 
> Bayoumi: Let's wait until the people speak. This is a period of upheaval and democratic transition. That is what we want to talk about now, not election results.
> 
> SPIEGEL: Will calm return to Egypt?
> 
> Bayoumi: The government is solely responsible for the chaos. I promise you that the Muslim Brotherhood has not called for violence, nor will we do so.
> 
> _Interview conducted by Daniel Steinvorth and Volkhard Windfuhr_





More on LINK


----------



## George Wallace

An interesting development.  Some of you may be familiar with this location.


Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *Possible Exile in Germany
> *
> 
> *Clinic Near Baden-Baden Considered For Mubarak
> *
> 02/07/2011
> By Björn Hengst and Christoph Schwennicke
> SPIEGEL ONLINE
> 
> 
> LINK
> 
> *Will Hosni Mubarak travel to Germany as a patient as part of a graceful exit strategy for the Egyptian president? Plans for a possible hospital stay here appear to be more concrete than previously believed. SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned that a luxury clinic near Baden-Baden is being favored. *
> 
> The United States government's scenario for an end to the political chaos in Egypt appears to be this: President Hosni Mubarak travels to Germany for a "prolonged health check" that would offer the 82-year-old a dignified departure. Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that secret talks to that effect were being held between the US government and Egyptian military officials.
> 
> According to information obtained by SPIEGEL ONLINE, plans for a possible hospital stay in Germany are far more concrete than had been assumed so far. Talks are already being held with suitable hospitals, particularly with the Max-Grundig-Klinik Bühlerhöhe in the southwestern town of Bühl near Baden-Baden, SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned from sources close to the clinic. The hospital management declined to comment.
> 
> The luxury clinic has an excellent reputation, as well as a respected oncology department, and says on its website it offers "first-class medical care" and the "comfort and service of a top hotel." Patients are accommodated in suites up to 200 square meters (2,152 square feet) in size. Former Ukrainian President Vickor Yushchenko and former Russian Economics Minister German Gref have been treated there.
> 
> In the past there have been rumors that Mubarak is suffering from cancer. During the spring of 2010, Mubarak had his gallbladder and an intestinal polyp removed in the Heidelberg University Clinic. Doctors in Heidelberg quashed the cancer rumors at the time.
> 
> Currently, Mubarak is residing in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh in a holiday villa. Politicians from Germany's center-right coalition government under Chancellor Angela Merkel have said in recent days they were open to a hospital stay by Mubarak in Germany.
> 
> "We need a peaceful transition in Egypt. If Germany can make a constructive contribution in an international framework, we should receive Hosni Mubarak -- if he wants that," said Andreas Schockenhoff, a senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party.
> 
> Elke Hof, security policy spokeswoman for the business-friendly Free Democratic Party, the junior coalition partner to the CDU, said: "I would welcome an early departure by Mubarak if this can contribute to stabilizing the situation in Egypt.


 

More on LINK


----------



## The Bread Guy

I'll bet one of these ....





... that before week's end, the new leader of EGY's going to have a rank as part of his name/title.


----------



## George Wallace

With talks with Omar Suleiman being the topic of the news today (2011/02/07) this may be an indicator of what European leaders are discussing.


Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *The World from Berlin
> *
> 
> *'The West Must not Place Too Much Faith in Suleiman'
> *
> 02/07/2011
> SPIEGEL ONLINE
> 
> 
> LINK
> 
> *The West has no credibility with the Egyptian opposition because its response to the uprising was divided and hesitant, say German commentators. It must now keep a distance to Vice President Omar Suleiman and avoid interfering in the talks underway -- or risk damaging Egypt's transition to democracy.*
> 
> Public life is gradually returning to normal in Egypt, with banks and stores reopening at the weekend as Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman met opposition groups including the officially banned Muslim Brotherhood for talks about the country's political future. President Hosni Mubarak remains in office, and the West still isn't explicitly calling on him to step down now.
> 
> 
> In Germany, top Western officials at the annual Munich Security Conference warned at the weekend that a transition to democracy must not be rushed, otherwise the crisis could worsen and the Middle East could become more destabilized.
> 
> Meanwhile Egyptian opposition figure Mohammed Elbaradei criticized the talks on Egypt's future, saying the negotiations were being managed by the same people who had ruled the country for 30 years. He said the negotiations were not a step toward the change protesters have demanded in 13 days of demonstrations calling for the removal of Mubarak.
> 
> Retired US diplomat Frank Wisner, sent by President Barack Obama to talk to Mubarak, said he should remain for an unspecified period to steer through reforms. The remarks were criticized by European diplomats and the US State Department also distanced itself from them, saying it did not necessarily share Wisner's views.
> 
> German media commentators criticize the mixed messages about Egypt and say the West must refrain from placing too much faith in Omar Suleiman, the country's former intelligence chief who was appointed vice president by Mubarak on Jan. 29.
> 
> Business daily *Financial Times Deutschland* writes:
> 
> "The West is just an onlooker and it should make do with that role. It was surprised by the uprising and has been divided ever since on how to react to it -- there is a cacophony among the Americans, EU representatives and European governments. The West should concede that its influence on events in Cairo is marginal in any case. It can offer money and good advice. But anything that would create the impression that the West was trying to influence the reform process to suit its own interests would be only be damaging."
> 
> "The EU countries and the Americans have lost credibility with the Egyptians because they turned a blind eye for too long to the true situation in the country. They tolerated that Mubarak locked away and suppressed the opposition. Whoever the West now supports as opposition leader will be discredited by that backing. If the Europeans and Americans now oppose the Muslim Brotherhood because they fear their Islamic zeal, that will end up strengthening them. Besides, it would make no sense, because no one can ignore the biggest and oldest opposition group in the country."
> 
> "The Europeans and Americans should learn from this: If you stick for too long with a dictator -- because he acts in the interests of the West -- you won't have enough credibility to intervene in times of change."
> 
> Center-left *Süddeutsche Zeitung* writes:
> 
> "Mubarak's regime is weakened. But it's still standing.
> 
> "And the opposition? A colorful crowd that has been occupying Cairo's central square and mobilizing people in astonishing numbers. No more. The protestors are now supposed to negotiate with the representative of a system that won't give any guarantees: When will the prisoners be freed? Who will guarantee freedom from prosecution? The opposition's only leverage at present remains constant demonstrations. It needs a second source of pressure. That could come in the form of credible support from outside, in the form of a critical distance to Suleiman. If the Americans and Europeans place too much faith in the vice president, they could soon find themselves on the side of an Egyptian autocracy with a new face and old methods. That would provoke the Egyptians even more. Then a different kind of revolution may loom: anti-American, anti-Israeli, anti-Western and maybe Islamic."
> 
> Mass-circulation *Bild* writes:
> 
> "President Mubarak is a ruler without a people. No one in Egypt supports him anymore, apart from the profiteers of his regime, and paid thugs. What an opportunity for the Munich Security Conference. The top politicians of Western democracies gathered there should have sent the revolutionaries on the Nile a clear message: Mubarak must go and Egypt is ripe for democracy -- for the rule of the people. But the conference failed, didn't side with freedom and human rights. Instead, the Europeans and Americans are hesitating and manoeuvring."
> 
> "The West must unconditionally side with those who are calling for self-determination -- like in 1989 with the peaceful revolution against the communist regime. Our message must be: democracy -- and now."
> 
> 
> The center-right *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung* writes:
> 
> "She wasn't and isn't a revolutionary. But among the western government leaders currently agonizing about the popular uprisings in the Arab world and the opportunities and risks posed by them, German Chancellor Merkel is the only one with personal experience of post-revolutionary politics. Everyone should heed her advice that notwithstanding all the enthusiasm for the Egyptians' right to freedom and self-determination, one must remember that democracy and the rule of law don't just materialize out of nothing. In a country like Egypt that has never experienced democracy, it's not enough to hold elections to make everything right. The political decision-making process must be organized and channelled. And even that wouldn't guarantee that the acclaimed 'Festival of Freedom' doesn't produce a different, and possibly even worse autocratic regime. There are plenty of radical forces in Egypt that would wish for such an outcome."
> 
> "The hesitancy over the removal of Mubarak and his system shouldn't immediately be seen just as a sign of European or German indecisiveness or cowardice. The Americans and the Europeans know that there is no going back to the way things were before. But they want to do everything in their -- in this case not especially considerable -- power to prevent the most populous and politically most important Arab country from descending into civil war or into a dictatorship of Islamists."
> 
> David Crossland




LINK


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *The Fragile Dream
> *
> 
> *Egypt's Fight for Freedom
> *
> 02/07/2011
> SPIEGEL ONLINE
> 
> 
> LINK
> 
> *The Egyptian revolution is fragile, and it isn't yet clear where it will lead. Still, it does provide reason for hope: Those reaching for power are not bearded old men, but young people who yearn for democracy. They have impressed the world, inspired their neighbors and forced the West to allow an old ally to fall. By SPIEGEL Staff *
> 
> The drive from Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo to the home of Mohammed ElBaradei on Alexandria Desert Road is a trip in fast motion, through all layers of modern, sorely afflicted Egypt and through almost all ages of this miracle land of mankind.
> 
> 
> The square smells of burning tires. Stones have been torn out of its pavement, and since late last week, tanks and barricades have separated the few supporters of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his many opponents.
> 
> The route leads past the Egyptian Museum, which is being strictly guarded by the army. Hardly any other country on earth can look back on a cultural history that is more than 5,000 years old and remains present today, and nowhere else do the people live with and within their past in quite the same way.
> 
> Then comes the bridge across the Nile, the river to which the people here owe their very existence. From Zamalek Island, with its upper middle-class residential neighborhood, we drive across another bridge to the western bank of the river. The outlying districts are filled with rows of apartment buildings, with illegal, primitive huts erected on their roofs. Then one of the world's wonders emerges from the smog, admired since the days of the Greek historian Herodotus: the pyramids of Cheops, Chephren and Mykerinos, like a serrated Fata Morgana.
> 
> Alexandria Desert Road leads into an upscale residential neighborhood, where those who are envied by ordinary mortals live, behind high walls and gates with guards posted outside. It is a wealthy neighborhood, where our host, who is expecting us, is already waiting at his front door, as friendly and diffident as ever.
> 
> *'The Face of the Revolution'*
> 
> Anyone trying to picture the opposite of a charismatic revolutionary would probably hit upon someone who looks like Mohammed ElBaradei, 68. The bald intellectual, with his horn-rimmed glasses, is no tribune of the people. How is it, then, that many in the West see this gentle man, with a passion for golf and opera, as what the German national daily Süddeutsche Zeitung calls Cairo's "face of the revolution?"
> 
> ElBaradei, 68, has nothing left to prove to himself. He headed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 for his efforts there. Encouraged by the enthusiasm of the Egyptian revolution, ElBaradei says that he would be willing to serve as transitional president. "Egypt was long gripped by a culture of fear," he says. "Only a few months ago, I felt as if I were in a country of dead souls. Now that this fear has been overcome, so quickly and comprehensively, everything is possible," he says.
> 
> At the moment, ElBaradei is the man everyone wants to talk to: those in power, the revolutionaries and people abroad. A contact within the army has just reported to him where the street fighting is taking place on this particular day. He has an afternoon meeting planned with the activists who are pulling the strings at many of the protest events. Generally regarded as a bookworm, ElBaradei has apparently joined forces with the Facebook generation, uniting the young liberals with the Muslim Brotherhood to form a loose "Alliance for Change" under his leadership. Can ElBaradei be Egypt's liberator?
> 
> The world learned an Arab word this week, Tahrir, or "liberation," the name of the square in Cairo where tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands have congregated day and night to protest against the regime of President Mubarak and for a new, democratic Egypt.
> 
> For the rest of the world, Tahrir Square became a stage where the Egyptians' impressive struggle for their freedom was on display, a place where they sang together, chanted slogans and supported each other -- with food, blankets and fire -- and where they prayed, Muslims and Christians alike.
> 
> But it was also the setting for the brutal acts of a regime that refuses to be driven out, a regime that deployed thugs armed with rocks and guns against peaceful protesters, with orders to mow down anything that resisted them, and to target foreign journalists and their cameras in an effort to prevent the world from witnessing what was happening in Cairo.
> 
> *Destroyed Prejudices *
> 
> The week on Tahrir Square was one full of hopes for a better future, but it was also a week full of horror and uncertainty. The fact that the protesters persevered destroyed prejudices -- namely that the Islamic world is rigid, backward and aggressive, and that it will never find a way to join the modern, democratic world. And, of course, the young Egyptians inspired people in other Arab countries, who are now rising up to demand their own freedom.
> 
> The Arab revolution has spread like wildfire, a torch of freedom carried by many. It began in Tunis, where the pressure of the street brought down a despotic regime less than four weeks ago. Then came the uprising on the Nile, which has already turned the country upside down in less than two weeks. And now there are also protests in Yemen, Jordan and Algeria, and even in Syria and Sudan.
> 
> Whether a domino effect will ensue, toppling one regime after another, is still unclear. What is clear, however, is that the world is experiencing a twilight of the dictators.
> 
> 
> It took an entire week, an agonizing, glorious and nightmarish week, until Barack Obama, the leader of the Western superpower could bring himself to characterize the Arab revolution as an "inspiration" for the whole world.
> 
> It was one of those rare weeks in which history was being made in small and large ways alike. It was being made in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, where a mother was mourning a son who had set himself on fire, and it was being made on a round plaza in the center of a world city of 16 million people. And suddenly what is happening in the Middle East has become relevant in all the places around the world where kings and despots fear that they could soon be suffering the same fate as Mubarak.
> 
> It's also relevant in Washington, DC, of course.




More on LINK 



Part 1:  Egypt's Fight for Freedom   (Top of Page)

Part 2:  Washington Struggles to Find Its Role  

Part 3:  Germany Uncertain Where to Turn in Egypt  

Part 4:  The Israeli Paradox


----------



## tomahawk6

Not much faith in Suleiman,but we have all the faith in the world with the Muslim Brotherhood ? It would be a real coup for Iran to bloodlessly topple the pro-Western regimes of North Africa,Jordan and SA. They already control Lebanon. The noose is going to tighten on Israel while the West watches. Once the nukes start going off the hand wringing will commence because Israel wont go quietly to their destruction.


----------



## George Wallace

If things go "nuclear" there will be a great deal of damage in effect creating a large "NO GO ZONE" stretching from most of North Africa through the Middle East into all the 'Stans" bordering China; perhaps even into western China.  Would even NW Europe be safe from 'Fallout'?  I am sure that those controlling the 'buttons' know this and are not totally mad, although if one wanted to become a martyr, that would be a heck of a way to go.


----------



## George Wallace

Not all is smooth sailing for the Muslim Brotherhood.

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *The Middle East
> *
> 
> *Egypt protests: Muslim Brotherhood's concessions prompt anger
> *
> By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / February 7, 2011
> The Christian Science Monitor
> 
> 
> LINK
> 
> *Egypt protests have sought Mubarak's removal. The Muslim Brotherhood suddenly dropped that demand in talks Sunday, angering participants in Egypt protests and causing an apparent split in the group's ranks.*
> 
> *Cairo *
> 
> Three senior leaders of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, all of whom have suffered arbitrary imprisonment and torture at the hands of President Hosni Mubarak’s regime, sat shoulder to shoulder at a press conference in what should have been a moment of great triumph.
> 
> Two Brothers had just come from the group's first formal talks ever with a government that has hounded the Brotherhood, Egypt’s oldest and best-organized opposition group, for generations. Along with secular democracy activists and reform-minded tycoons, they sought to present a united front for reform to Vice President Omar Suleiman, the former spymaster whose career was largely built on crushing Islamist movements.
> 
> But the moment had a hint of a climbdown. The Brotherhood backed off its demand that Mr. Mubarak step down immediately and make other concessions, for apparently little concrete in return. Suddenly, the one clear demand uniting them with the youths in Cairo's Tahrir Square – Mubarak's resignation – was gone.
> 
> The Sunday afternoon talks drew outrage in the square, where protesters described the Brother's concessions as helping the establishment buy time and find a way to preserve one-party rule here beyond September elections, in which Mr. Mubarak has promised not to run. They also expressed concern that Mr. Suleiman was leading the reform movement into a trap.
> 
> “I don’t know what [senior Brotherhood leader Esam el-] Erian is thinking, I really don’t,” said a secular protest leader, who’s spent years trying to bring the Brotherhood into a broader reform camp. “We all know who Suleiman is and what he’s capable of. This is splitting the Brotherhood and could leave all of us isolated and in danger.”
> 
> The Brothers, ever cautious and aware that they bear the brunt of regime repression when they join protests, were slow to participate in the demonstrations that broke out on Jan. 25 and have struggled to craft a united front ever since.
> 
> *A split Brotherhood?*
> 
> A sign of the split came soon after Mr. Erian, who has done at least eight stints in jail, and his two colleagues spoke. He declared the current parliament “illegitimate," but said that the Brotherhood will give negotiations a chance to work, particularly regarding Mr. Suleiman’s promise of constitutional reform.
> 
> “We wanted the president to step down but for now we accept this arrangement,” said Mohamed Saad El-Katatni, a member of the Brotherhood’s Guidance Council. “It’s safer that the president stays until he makes these amendments to speed things up because of the constitutional powers he holds.”
> 
> An influential Brotherhood member of the reform camp then took to Al Jazeera and appeared to contradict the official line.
> 
> “The Muslim Brotherhood went with a key condition that cannot be abandoned ... [Mubarak] needs to step down in order to usher in a democratic phase," Brotherhood leader Abdel Moneim Aboul Futuh said on Al Jazeera. “If they were serious, the parliament would have been dissolved [and there would have been] a presidential decree ending the emergency law.”
> 
> *Key demand: Lifting of emergency laws*
> 
> Egypt’s emergency laws have been in place since Mubarak took power in the wake of Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. Ostensibly designed to deal with the militant Islamist movements behind Sadat’s murder, they have been used ever since to extrajudicially detain tens of thousands of people, from peaceful Brotherhood members to labor activists to human rights workers, and to override the orders of the Egyptian courts.
> 
> Unlike the more complex question of constitutional reform, the emergency laws could be ended with the stroke of a pen. The fact that they remain, the hardcore of democracy activists say, is a sign of Suleiman’s ultimate intent.
> 
> Suleiman, who has been taking the lead in dealing with the opposition as Mubarak is relegated to lame-duck status, is currently presiding over security forces that continue to arbitrarily detain and torture activists from all sides.
> 
> He acknowledged last night that Wael Ghonim, a Google executive and a major online organizer of the protests who’s been missing for almost two weeks, has been in government detention. He was reportedly released today and joined protesters in Tahrir Square, according to Twitter updates.
> 
> *Suleiman's vague promises*
> 
> In his statement last night, Suleiman said “the state of emergency will be lifted based on the security situation and an end to the threats to the security of society.” That has essentially been the government’s position for the past 30 years, with new and vaguely defined threats to “security” found each year to maintain the supposedly temporary laws.
> 
> Suleiman’s statement also included vague promises of constitutional reform to allow for fair elections, a “peaceful transition of authority,” and investigations into the killings of activists.
> 
> In his statement, which was written as if fully supported by all of the opposition figures he met with, Suleiman praised Egypt’s democracy protesters while also ominously sticking with the government’s line of recent days that the uprising has somehow been stirred up by outside powers.
> 
> He referred to “foreign intervention into purely Egyptian affairs and breaches of security by foreign elements working to undermine stability in implementation of their plots.”
> 
> State television has been filled with warnings that Iranian, Palestinian, and Israeli plotters are behind Egypt’s largely spontaneous uprising, a message that has gained traction among large segments of Egyptian society.
> 
> *Egyptians say protests fomented by outside powers*
> 
> Outside Tahrir Square, a suspicious member of state intelligence stopped two journalists as they left. As he flipped through all 400 pictures on one of their cameras, he gestured towards the thousands of Egyptians massed yards away. “Those people aren’t Egyptians. They’re with foreigners sent here to destroy our country for money. The real Egyptians hate them,” he says.
> 
> In Shubra, a sprawling working class Cairo neighborhood, a member of one of the “popular committees” that have provided security for most of the past week, and appear to be melting away now that the police are returning to work, says many of his friends who originally supported the uprising have been swayed by what they’ve seen on TV.
> 
> “They think all foreigners are spies now, and that the protesters are being used to destabilize Egypt,” he says by phone. “I can’t guarantee your safety or mine if you come over here.”




More on LINK 



Special Report:   How the Egyptian revolt will recast the Middle East  

Egypt protests:   An endgame seems to be approaching, but whose?

Egypt street battles:   How Cairo's Tahrir Square turned into a war zone overnight


----------



## 57Chevy

;D We can at least forsee keeping the seal on the "Egypt Nuke Button". (hopefully for ever) 
Irans push for the Muslim Brotherhood gaining a political stance in Egypt is essential to its
intended future power exertion over the west and any alliances with Israel.
The Suez Canal will remain the hard bargain and it will not come easy. Although it can possibly be disrupted, 
its' operations remaining fluid are likely due to the naval presence. 
An interesting article: 
Egypt: Will U.S. And NATO Launch Second Suez Intervention?
   
On February 1 General James Mattis, commander of United States Central Command whose area of responsibility includes Egypt on its western end, stated that Washington currently has no plans to reinforce naval presence off the coast of that country, but added that in the event of the closure of the Suez Canal:

“Were it to happen obviously we would have to deal with it diplomatically, economically, militarily….”

continued at link...

* of note
Egypt is too strategically important to the U.S. and its European and Israeli allies to permit its citizens to exercise control over the nation’s military and energy policies, over what passes through the Suez Canal. Before that will be permitted to occur, the threats of a military takeover and intervention loom over the nation.


                                   (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)


----------



## MarkOttawa

An exceptionally well-researched post at _Taylor Empire Airways_ (one of the best-designed Canadian blogs, Chris Taylor used to post at _The Torch_): 

On Egypt
http://taylorempireairways.com/2011/02/on-egypt/

Pity our major media do not do similar research.

Mark
Ottawa


----------



## Bo

Great article. Lots of interesting statistics.


----------



## Journeyman

I have to agree that this is a well-written blog article, with obvious efforts made at providing both a degreee of empirical data and the 'so what' -- an interpretation of the 'evidence.'

Personally, I've never been a fan of a Pavlovian COIN response of "give them democracy and market economy and all will be well." The same situation is extant here. As such, the final paragraph may be the most worthy of reinforcement for we folks in the non-Islamic west:


> One can see why the decision is difficult for the President; support a tyrant who is a “friend”, or hang the tyrant out to dry and—even in the best case—he will be replaced by a profoundly hostile democratic government.




Edit: In fact, thank you very much for posting the link to that blog. Reading his thread, "What Grinds my Gears," not only have I learned a new word ("concupiscent"), but I've found his writing to be variously spot on, hilarious, or simply well done.


----------



## VinceW

Here's a poll done last year in Egypt,

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/crisis-in-egypt/poll-shows-egyptians-favour-democracy-and-stoning-for-adultery/article1892414/

The Egyptians contradictions show there is a likely chance that they'll support a Islamic extremist government.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Journeyman said:
			
		

> ...
> Personally, I've never been a fan of a Pavlovian COIN response of "give them democracy and market economy and all will be well ..."




Bingo! But it is the classic American and Canadian, _instant gratification_/"better results every quarter" mindset: we have _a_ and _b_ and we are "happy" "good" "peaceful" "rich" and so on (delete which not applicable) so if we build a pale, weak imitation of what we think we have, i.e. elections = democracy, then all will be well.

The social, political and economic _institutions_ and the all pervasive mindset (*culture*) cannot be transplanted or "given" to someone else. It took us 2,500 years of trial and error to make what works for us, it's taken the Chinese even longer to get to their state of "civilization," why in hell would anyone with the brains the gods gave to green peppers expect Afghans or Kenyans or even Mexicans to get there overnight?


----------



## 57Chevy

From Guns and Patriots:

No Heroes in This Story! Why Does Egypt Matter, Where is it Headed, and US Policy?


----------



## George Wallace

This may be worth some contemplation.  What real credibility does the MSM have in shaping the history or nations?  Does this article point at a possibility that Media moguls may have some power to shape the direction politics will be played out in nations?   Could the media be a tool of a powerful individual or organization to direct certain populations in a direction that would shift the political orientation of a nation?  Can this be taken further to affect whole Regions or Continents or more?  Has the MSM become so finely polished as to become a mass propaganda tool for those who have the financial clout and an agenda?  In the case here, with Al-Jazeera owned by the emir of Qatar, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, we have the question being posed to us.  

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *A Voice as Powerful as Countries
> 
> *
> 
> *Can Al-Jazeera Topple Governments?
> *
> 02/08/2011
> By Matthias Gebauer and Yassin Musharbash
> SPIEGEL ONLINE
> 
> 
> LINK
> 
> *The wave of protests in the Arab world has highlighted the power of Al-Jazeera, which has unparalleled influence in the Middle East. It has been banned from reporting on the unrest in Egypt, where its reporters have been targeted by Mubarak supporters. Governments in the region fear the station could be their undoing.
> *
> 
> It is 10:22 a.m. and 7 seconds in Doha in the Emirate of Qatar, according to the red digital numbers on the studio clock. It's an hour earlier in Cairo. The anchorwoman, sitting in a sky-blue studio, is just switching over to the Egyptian capital, where several people were killed and wounded the night before in brutal attacks by regime loyalists against opponents of President Hosni Mubarak. Al-Jazeera is showing the images of the street fighting once again.
> 
> A professor is on the phone from Cairo. He is so distraught that the anchorwoman in Doha can hardly interject her questions as he continues to speak. Both the anchorwoman and the professor are speaking very loudly. On top of that, there are the images of violence and the news updates running across the bottom of the screen in red lettering, like warnings from another world -- a world descending into chaos. The Arab world is in crisis. Anyone watching Al-Jazeera at this moment understands that fact immediately. And a lot of people watch Al-Jazeera.
> 
> No other Arab TV network, no daily newspaper and no radio station reaches as many of the Arab world's 360 million people. Al-Jazeera's Arabic-language station is broadcast into about 50 million households.
> 
> The network is powerful in the Arab world, where it has more influence than CNN or the BBC. It determines which images are important for the people in the region -- and which emotions these images trigger in Tunisia, Egypt or Saudi Arabia or elsewhere
> 
> *Political Factor*
> 
> Al-Jazeera isn't just a news network, but also a political factor -- and one with a sense of mission. Its editors are particularly zealous in scrutinizing secular regimes like Mubarak's. Al-Jazeera is generally pan-Arab, but there is also a pro-Islamist spectrum within the network.
> 
> About two weeks ago, when Al-Jazeera revealed that the PLO delegation was allegedly prepared to make extensive concessions in its negotiations with Israel, the main beneficiary of the report was the radical Islamist group Hamas, which favors confrontation instead of cooperation with Israel.
> 
> In airing the story, Al-Jazeera set the stage for days of accusations. The PLO already accuses the network of waging a campaign against it and supporting Hamas with propaganda. And as nonpartisan as the network purports to be, it is certainly not entirely without bias.
> 
> Al-Jazeera seems to have been getting even more powerful of late -- so powerful, in fact, that governments are now asking themselves whether the network has the power to incite popular uprisings in the Arab world.
> 
> The Egyptian regime was hunting down journalists last week, in an apparent effort to prevent the world from witnessing its thugs attacking the protesters. German journalists were also affected. An employee of the ZDF television network spent 20 hours in jail. And during the ZDF news show "Heute Journal," a laser pointer was aimed at a correspondent who was reporting live from Cairo.
> 
> *'Why Are You Breaking the Law?'*
> 
> The Qatar-based network was also affected. The Al-Jazeera office in Cairo was vandalized last Friday, an act the network blames on Mubarak supporters. But the reprisals had already begun at about 1:00 p.m. on the previous Monday, when four soldiers burst into a room on the 24th floor of the Ramses Hilton Hotel, from which all major TV networks are running their live reporting operations. The hotel is very close to Tahrir Square and offers a view of the center of the uprising. The soldiers, wielding Kalashnikov rifles, immediately pushed their way to the balcony, knocked over Al-Jazeera's cameras and began searching the room and collecting passports and mobile phones.
> 
> One of the uniformed men shouted at the journalists, saying: "Why are you breaking the law? You know perfectly well that we have closed your office here, and that you no longer have a license." Six employees were taken downstairs in a service elevator. The soldiers, their weapons at the ready, urged the reporters to hurry.
> 
> An army colonel, speaking politely but loudly, explained his quandary to the six journalists. "I know you're just doing your job," he snapped at the reporters, "but by doing your job you make my work more than difficult."
> 
> The journalists were released, but not before the colonel had confiscated their equipment.
> 
> *Rough Treatment *
> 
> But it is questionable just what benefits the regime will obtain through its rough treatment of journalists. In Tunisia, the government tossed out Al-Jazeera's journalists shortly before it was overthrown, but to no avail. A Tunisian anchorman for the network made arrangements for Lotfi Hajji, an old friend, to report from a secret location in Tunisia. In addition to being a journalist, Hajji also describes himself as a human rights activist, according to the New York Times.
> 
> When the uprising began, Tunisians sent him homemade videos documenting incidents of police brutality. Al-Jazeera broadcast the videos. More and more videos turned up, and they too were broadcast. Did the overthrow of the Tunisian leader, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, originate in Doha? Could the same fate be in store for Egyptian President Mubarak?
> 
> *'We Don't Wish to Take Any Sides'*
> 
> The Al-Jazeera newsroom, the nerve center of the network, where all editorial decisions are made, could not offer a greater contrast to the feverish nature of the news broadcasts. The journalists greet each quietly when they arrive at work, and they walk slowly across the pale green carpet. No one here runs or shouts.
> 
> It is 10:35 a.m. and 45 seconds when Mustafa Souag walks into his office. The tall man is wearing a light green suit, and he carefully hangs his jacket onto a coat hanger. Souag is the director of news at Al-Jazeera's mother ship, its Arabic-language station. This is also the center of power, where decisions are made on what is important in the Arab world. In contrast, Al-Jazeera's English-language station is more relaxed and aloof, more like CNN or the BBC.
> 
> Souag uses a pen with the network's logo on it, and the logo is also printed onto a package of tissues on his desk. Al-Jazeera is Souag's life. He seems modest at first, when asked whether his TV news machine has political power and whether it can topple regimes.
> 
> The question amuses him. "Lotfi Hajji is not some kind of Superman who can cover all of Tunisia for us by himself!" But how much influence did the station have on the revolt in Tunisia? Souag dodges the question to a certain degree. "Academics should look into that. We are not politicians. And we don't wish to take any sides. Instead, our goal is diligent reporting -- and I believe that's enough."
> 
> *Multiple Perspectives*
> 
> The newsman is a native Algerian and an intellectual. He once taught literature at university, and later worked for NBC and the BBC. He is intimately familiar with the standards Western critics apply to evaluate his network, and he believes that Al-Jazeera meets those standards. "We believe in the right of citizens to information, and we show our audience what freedom of opinion means every day," he says. "Sometimes we are accused of not being balanced. But when we ask for evidence (of the alleged bias), we don't get much in response. After all, we are constantly showing various perspectives and standpoints."
> 
> Al-Jazeera has been accused of everything since it was founded in 1996. And for every claim that is targeted at the station, there is invariably someone else who accuses it of the exact opposite. Some people say it is too tolerant of Islamists, while others claim it treats them unfairly. Some say it allows itself to be influenced by Arab autocrats, while others accuse it of not respecting them. Some say it only portrays the side of Arab victims, while others disagree completely, saying that it talks with Israelis far too much. Al-Jazeera seems to be the network that no one likes but everyone watches.
> 
> Does Al-Jazeera really take its motto ("the one opinion -- and the other") seriously? It is unquestionably true that, unlike the state-controlled media in the Arab world, where censorship is standard, Al-Jazeera does not ignore the other opinion. But it's also clear that the network has obvious biases.
> 
> For example, the network's sympathy for the protesters was clear in its reporting on the revolution in Tunisia and the current uprising in Egypt. When regime supporters attacked regime opponents in Cairo on Thursday of last week, a message periodically appeared at the bottom of the Al-Jazeera screen stating that the demonstrators had asked the army for "protection against a massacre."
> 
> But those who criticize Al-Jazeera for being too emotional and biased often forget that Western media are not immune from such things either: At around the same time, CNN correspondent Ben Wedeman sent out a Twitter message that a "government-sanctioned mass lynch" was "underway" in Tahrir Square.
> 
> *'Special Responsibility'*
> 
> People from more than 60 countries work at Al-Jazeera in Doha. "We have men and women, people on the right and the left, Islamists, pan-Arabists and nationalists," says Souag. He is proud of this diversity. Perhaps it is also a means of protection against too much partisanship at the network.
> 
> At Al-Jazeera, the management decrees how the network is to refer to specific crises, as an uprising, intifada, revolt or revolution. The current policy for the events in Egypt is to call them "popular protests". Of course this is discussed, says the news chief, "but then everyone drinks coffee together." He calls this the "spirit of Al-Jazeera."
> 
> Whether the network will have a similar impact on the Egyptian revolts as it did in Tunisia is hard to say. It is clear, however, that as long as it assigns top priority to the protests, the Arab world as a whole will remain caught up in the excitement. Al-Jazeera shows Arabs what other Arabs are saying, without translation, without filters, unabbreviated and in the raw.
> 
> People throw themselves at the Al-Jazeera cameras and weep uncontrollably, curse, scream and beg their Arab brothers and sisters for help. "The fact that we have influence isn't a problem," Souag says nonchalantly. "It just means that we have a special responsibility."
> 
> _Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan_




More on LINK 


Short history of Al-Jazeera


----------



## The Bread Guy

Good piece, GW.

While media, publicly and privately owned, help shape messaging and the info environment, I don't think they, _alone_, can "flick the switch" for regime change - there has to be pent-up frustration in the population to get that going.  

_How much_ of a role does media play in the equation?  Depends on the situation and all the other factors affecting it - in Egypt's case, I'm going to estimate 25-30%, if only because of the restrictions placed on reporters in country (at least in place before the worst of the fracas).  My gut tells me much of the avalanche effect is from human momentum + behind-the-scenes organizing/driving.


----------



## George Wallace

Here is a perspective from a Westerner who has lived in Egypt for five decades and witnessed the many changes in the population and government over time.



Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *Egypt's Blight
> *
> 
> *A Correspondent Reminisces on 56 Years in Cairo
> *
> 02/08/2011
> An Essay By Volkhard Windfuhr
> SPIEGEL ONLINE
> 
> 
> LINK
> 
> *SPIEGEL's longtime Cairo correspondent has spent more than five decades living in the city. He describes Egypt's decline under a leader obsessed with discipline, calm and stability who lost touch with his people and allowed the Arab world's most vibrant country to stagnate. *
> 
> _Volkhard Windfuhr, 74, has been living in Cairo since 1955. He joined SPIEGEL as its Middle East correspondent in 1974. Since then, he has reported on the major crises in the region and met and interviewed nearly all Arab leaders, including the three Egyptian presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak. In an essay for SPIEGEL, he describes the changes that have taken shape in Egypt in the decades he has spent in the country._
> _______________________________________________________________________
> 
> I am among the oldest in the crowd to cross the Nile Bridge and enter Tahrir Square this Wednesday morning. I have lived in Cairo longer than nearly everyone else who strolls along peacefully beside me: women, men, young people, old people, educated and less educated, workers, preachers and engineers. We talk about this and that. I know their language. I know their jokes. It is also my language, and they are my jokes, too.
> 
> But what befell us three hours later, seemingly out of nowhere, shattered my image of this country in which I have lived for the past 56 years. This was not the country I know and love.
> 
> "Al-Maut lil-Kilab!" shouted two young men who suddenly appeared in front of the Sudan Air offices on Talat Harb Street, with their fists flying: "Death to the dogs!" One wielded a butcher knife, the other started beating up a demonstrator. "Down with the regime" it said on the cardboard sign that he tore from the man's hands. At first, I didn't understand what was happening. What did these people want? Where did this aggression come from?
> 
> But then people started to scream, horses and camels galloped across the square, and it slowly dawned on me: This was a gang of thugs sent to break up a peaceful demonstration. They tore off women's blouses and headscarves, knocked over people in wheelchairs, and even kicked children aside.
> 
> I fled to an archway and took a closer look at them: They were, without a doubt, men who belonged to the regime -- some had even sewn onto their jackets the emblem of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP). I know that this government doesn't tread lightly when it breaks up demonstrations -- but having such a mob rush a crowd like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? I have never experienced anything like it. An older man, a law professor who had been hit on the back of his head, fled with me into a small side street and said: "I don't understand my people anymore." They were my thoughts precisely.
> 
> I feel ashamed of this country, which I see as my second homeland. How could the government allow something like this to happen? How does the tank commander feel who is not allowed to prevent the massacre? What higher standard allows soldiers to look away who only one day before were hailed as the people's protectors?
> 
> *A Uniquely Disarming Open-Heartedness *
> 
> I have experienced tumultuous crowds in Egypt before -- also in Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan, Iraq, Algeria, Tunisia and Iran. But the emotions of my fellow Egyptians were always different: softer, less aggressive. When the Iraqis overthrew their monarchy in 1958, they killed their 23-year-old king and dragged his body through the streets of Baghdad. In 1952, the Egyptians sent off their last ruler, King Farouk I, from the port of Alexandria with gun salutes and military honors. And when the man detested by the putsch officers died in exile in Italy, al-Ahram, Cairo's largest daily newspaper, appeared with mourning borders around the front page. Syrian and Iraqi friends teased me as a "friend of the Egyptian wimps." I took that as a compliment. Perhaps it is the Egyptians' uniquely disarming open-heartedness that has made it so easy to settle down here.
> 
> "Family and religion are what the Egyptians value most of all," Mubarak's predecessor Sadat once said. He could have put at the top of the list their sense of community, which has shaped the rhythm of life here since the age of the pharaohs and, based on a neighborly division of labor, allowed them to refine their irrigation systems.
> 
> Feb. 2, 2011 represents a decisive and rupturous departure from this tradition. It contradicts everything that I have experienced in this country to date. I remember the helpless rage of the Egyptians in late October 1956. I was riding on a tram from my neighborhood in eastern Cairo to visit a schoolmate on Zamalek, the big Island on the Nile, where large numbers of foreigners had always lived and had their schools -- including the German school that I attended back then. It was dark, and the streetcar halted at a stop in front of the Lutheran Church on Gala Street, flanked by the publishing houses of the two large daily newspapers, al-Ahram and al-Achbar. Then the tram started to move again, but shuddered to such a lurching stop again that I fell to the floor.
> 
> Then I saw it: Red, blue, green and yellow flares burst in the sky. I screamed, but the attendant had a smile on his face as he pulled me back down to my seat. "Alaab," he said, "fireworks". A strong blast of air, glaring flashes of light and earsplitting detonations ensued. The British Royal Air Force had launched air strikes on Cairo, marking the beginning of the Suez crisis.
> 
> *Polite and Always Ready to Lend a Hand *
> 
> During the Suez War, the Egyptians remained -- just as I was also to experience them later time and again -- polite and always ready to lend a hand. And although there was a great deal of anger toward the British and the French, foreigners were left alone.
> 
> When US President Dwight D. Eisenhower ended the war, the British and the French withdrew in humiliation and the founder of the state of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, had to retreat from the Sinai, which his forces had overrun right up to the Suez Canal. It was the first time that the Americans intervened in the Middle East. A new era had begun.
> 
> The Americans are by no means as hated as they are often portrayed to be. Not even Nasser wanted to break with Washington. "They don't understand that we have thrown out the British and taken the Suez Canal away from them," he said. "They don't understand that we want to be independent and refuse to be told what to do again by a foreign power."
> 
> *'Stay with Us, You Are One of Us'*
> 
> When I worked for Radio Cairo in the 1960s and was asked to act as an interpreter for a conversation between Nasser and East German leader Walter Ulbricht, the Egyptian president firmly gripped my shoulder and said: "Make this precisely clear to your listeners -- that's something people simply have to understand." The eldest of Nasser's two daughters even studied at the American University in Cairo, in the midst of the Cold War.
> 
> Nasser didn't woo the people -- he had already won their hearts. Despite the undeniable brutality of the dictatorship that he imposed, and the darkness of his torture chambers, he conveyed an undisputed sense of self-esteem to the barefoot masses. "Irfaa rasak, ja achi," -- "Lift your head, brother!" is how he began his speeches.
> 
> Nothing could dent his charisma, not even the most brazen lies told by his administration -- nor the devastating defeat in the Six-Day War. When I left my apartment at 9 a.m. on June 5, 1967, and stepped onto the street, marching music and a special news report droned from the loudspeakers that were installed everywhere in the city at the time. "The Zionist enemy attacked Egypt early today. But we are prevailing. We have already shot down 186 Israeli aircraft." We believed what was said that morning, even I did.
> 
> But towards noon we knew that Israel had destroyed all of Egypt's airbases, overrun the Sinai, taken tens of thousands of soldiers prisoner, and was marching toward the Suez Canal. It was the end. Egypt wept. Four days of mourning and dismay.
> 
> On June 10, a broken Nasser addressed his people. "I assume full responsibility and shall resign." Everyone ran into the streets, people hugged each other, then they chanted: "Maalisch," "It doesn't matter" -- I can't find the right words to accurately translate this sentiment here -- "Stay with us, you are one of us."
> 
> That was the big-heartedness of the Egyptians. That was Nasser. When he died three years later, some people were so distraught that they took their own lives.
> 
> *Peace with Israel*
> 
> His successor Sadat was loyal. For years, he had his own presidential portrait hanging next to an oversized picture of Nasser. Sadat didn't come into his own until 1973, when, despite the heavy casualties that this entailed, he launched a successful attack across the Suez Canal during the Yom Kippur War. Sadat had plans for this victory. Negotiating from a position of strength -- he wanted to broker peace with Israel. And he was successful. I accompanied him on his trip to Jerusalem and reported on his speech to the Knesset.
> 
> Sadat was a visionary, a talented speaker who could win people over. And when he finally turned his back on Nasser's failed pan-Arabism, when he made Nasser's "United Arab Republic" into the state of "Egypt" once again, the Egyptians cried. These were tears of pride. With this move, he struck a fundamental chord with his people: We are the descendents of mankind's oldest culture.
> 
> Initially, the peace accord with Israel was very popular. Although the stern Syrians and the defiant Iraqis threw Egypt out of the Arab League, the Egyptians believed that peace had now been brought to the Middle East. Even the Palestinians believed that at the time. But the peace process came to a standstill. Sadat's good friend Menachem Begin annexed Arab East Jerusalem -- and humiliated the "hero of the war and the peace," as the Egyptian leader was known.
> 
> *Bread Riots and Political Islam*
> 
> That wasn't, however, what alienated Sadat from the Egyptians. It was the fact that he lost touch with his people. It was his thoughtless privatization of over 6,000 state-owned enterprises, a move which benefited the fat upper crust of society while the poor went hungry and the first bread riots erupted in 1977. And it was political Islam, which he, like most US allies at the time, gave free rein to in a bid to counter the communist menace.
> 
> In the last interview of his life, he vehemently denied that he was under threat. "No, the misguided youth know that I am their father. Sons don't kill their fathers," he said four days before he was assassinated. On Oct. 6, 1981, during a parade to celebrate the eighth anniversary of his victory in the Yom Kippur War, six men left the military procession, approached the stands, and shot down Sadat. His vice president, who threw himself on the ground to avoid the hail of bullets, survived: Hosni Mubarak.
> 
> *A Man Who Has Failed to Speak to the Hearts*
> 
> The third president of modern Egypt had neither Nasser's charisma nor Sadat's visionary strength. I have interviewed him on a number of occasions, and no matter how disappointed I am with him today, I cannot help but give him credit for his accomplishments. Mubarak stabilized the peace that was brokered by Sadat -- in fact, he kept his predecessor's word with a degree of reliability that is uncommon in the Middle East. He expanded tourism to make it the largest source of income, and he improved the infrastructure. I had to wait 12 years before I received my first telephone connection in the late 1960s; it took four days for my first cell phone to be activated in 1996.
> 
> But in his 30 years in office, Mubarak hasn't managed a single time to speak to the hearts of his people. He lacks this ability. He is not a national hero. When he nevertheless tries to adopt this posture, as he did during his speech last Tuesday, it seems phony and rehearsed. The air chief marshall has always remained an officer -- a commander who is concerned with discipline, calm and stability -- which eventually led to stagnation. Egypt was always the most vibrant of the Arab countries, but a blight has descended on this state during Mubarak's 30 years of rule.
> 
> Mubarak no longer saw the suffering and the lack of freedom that spread under his rule. When I once called him "pharaoh" after an interview at his farm on the Mediterranean coast, west of Alexandria, he was annoyed. "What do you mean by that?" I reassured him: "The pharaohs were the backbone of Egyptian culture. Even your predecessor Nasser allowed himself to be portrayed as a pharaoh." This prompted only a brief smile.
> 
> Nasser gave us Nasserism; Sadat left behind an agreement that brought his people peace and earned him the Nobel Peace Prize -- but Mubarak has failed magnificently. It is bitter, also for me, that he will depart with a question that has no answer: Why doesn't he step down in a manner that is worthy of Egypt?




More on LINK


----------



## George Wallace

The West, which includes us, is now facing a new dilemma; what to do about former members of the ruling factions who are fleeing these countries.  Will they be offered asylum or be denied entry?  Will there be problems with new governments in these nations demanding the return of those who have fled to face criminal charges?  This is not a new problem, but then again society has changed and perhaps lessons learned from past experiences in dealing with these matters will have also changed our attitudes towards offering foreign despots refuge in our nations. 


Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *The Despot Dilemma
> *
> 
> *Germany Divided over How to Deal with Dictators
> *
> 02/08/2011
> By Sebastian Fischer, Björn Hengst and Veit Medick
> SPIEGEL ONLINE
> 
> 
> LINK
> 
> *Speculation about Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's possible departure for Germany for medical treatment is putting pressure on Berlin. The case highlights the German government's problems in dealing with autocratic leaders: It craves stability but doesn't want to be seen as propping up dictators.*
> 
> The Max Grundig Clinic is an exclusive getaway 800 meters (2,600 feet) above sea level in the idyllic surroundings of the Black Forest in southwestern Germany. The luxury private hospital has large suites and oil paintings on the walls. It proudly trumpets the claim that it provides "an ideal atmosphere for recuperation, relaxation and reorientation."
> 
> Could it also be a place for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to retreat to?
> 
> The long-standing autocrat may soon check into the clinic in Bühl near the city of Baden-Baden. According to information obtained by SPIEGEL ONLINE, exploratory talks are already underway about a possible stay by Mubarak in Germany. The scenario is certainly attractive: Egypt would get rid of its unpopular president, and Mubarak could make a dignified departure.
> 
> But it's still not clear whether the man himself is even interested in this exit strategy. In fact, it currently looks increasingly likely that he could tighten his grip on the reins of power.
> 
> *Facilitating a Political Transition*
> 
> Nevertheless, the mere possibility that Germany might host a former dictator has sparked fierce political debate in the country. Martin Schulz, the head of the Socialist group in the European Parliament, has nothing against such a retreat. "Why not?" he says. "I'm in favor of any moves that will allow him to relinquish power in a dignified manner and facilitate the political transition in Egypt."
> 
> "The German government should discreetly signal to Mubarak that he can come to Germany if he wants to," Elmar Brok, a member of the European Parliament for the center-right Christian Democrats, told the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper. "If there is a way to achieve a peaceful transition in Egypt, then one should do it."
> 
> Other members of Germany's governing Christian Democrats and their business-friendly coalition partners, the Free Democratic Party, have voiced similar sentiments about a possible hospital stay for Mubarak in their country.
> 
> But many others oppose the very notion. Green Party floor leader Jürgen Trittin, for example, told the Hannoversche Allgemeine newspaper that Germany should not provide Mubarak with an easy way out of his predicament. "That's about the last thing the Egyptian people expect us to do," he says.
> 
> The Green Party co-leader Cem Özdemir is also skeptical. "Care must be taken," he says, "to ensure that Mubarak doesn't use a stay at a German hospital to duck his responsibilities toward the people of Egypt. Germany cannot become a luxury sanctuary for deposed despots."
> 
> Rainer Stinner, a foreign policy expert with the FDP, told the Frankfurter Rundschau that a stay in Germany on medical grounds would be acceptable. "But exile in Germany would be very problematic," he added. He argued that there were other countries that could take Mubarak.
> 
> *Softly-Softly Approach *
> 
> The dispute perfectly highlights the dilemma that Germany's diplomats face in dealing with the Egyptian autocrat and other dictators in the region. These regimes have been tolerated for decades as part of a quid pro quo for cooperation on security issues. These dubious pacts worked fine for a long time. But now uprisings in various Arab countries have turned the arrangement into a political albatross around the German government's neck. After all, years of close ties with shady leaders can't be undone overnight.
> 
> This was most recently evident at the Munich Security Conference this weekend, where not a single minister, prime minister or head of state so much as mentioned the Cairo demonstrators' central demand, namely that Mubarak resign immediately.
> 
> The German government is well aware of the possible dangers of such a move. One cabinet member has already admitted the government is skating on thin ice. Chancellor Angela Merkel has also suggested as much. The German chancellor argues in favor of a realpolitik approach, but insists she is always very reserved in her contact with authoritarian leaders like Libya's Moammar Gadhafi and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
> 
> How, then, should autocrats be treated? Should Berlin continue with business as usual, or has the time come to reassess its softly-softly attitude to often brutal dictators?
> 
> The proponents of the former approach see no reason to change the way autocratic leaders are treated, and believe Germany should carry on as before. In other words, they want Germany's politicians to go on cooperating with despots behind the scenes and only call for democracy in pious-sounding public speeches at most. The advantage of this approach is that Germany can rely on a certain amount of stability in the countries in question, which in turn favors security and trade.
> 
> Political scientist Christian Hacke is one of those calling for such pragmatism. "We have to weigh up the moral imperatives and other interests on a case-by-case basis," the foreign-policy expert says. "You can't generalize. Whether it's dealing with Tunisia, Egypt, Syria or Yemen, the German government should never decide abstractly, but rather based on the individual situation."
> 
> Hacke says that such a policy has ensured that few mistakes were made in recent years. If anything, he says, German foreign policy was "too steeped in moral considerations." Hacke points to Afghanistan, where he says people initially argued about rights for women and about new schools but gave too little thought to strategic geopolitical considerations.
> 
> "There are no grounds for a fundamental shift in German foreign policy," argues Ruprecht Polenz, a Christian Democratic politician who chairs the parliamentary foreign-affairs committee. Whether it's China, Russia, Uzbekistan or Egypt, "the strategy will always change depending on the relevant country's size and significance." One thing is clear, he says: "There can be no such thing as 'business as usual' when dealing with authoritarian regimes."
> 
> *A Clean Break with Cairo?  *
> 
> The opponents of Germany's previous approach, however, feel that history has vindicated them. They are now calling for a complete overhaul of Germany's attitude to autocrats -- even if they're not totally sure what they want in its place. Jürgen Trittin is one of these revisionists. The Green politician is constantly criticizing Chancellor Merkel's handling of the Egyptian crisis. "The German government must now unambiguously demand a peaceful transition," he recently said. "That is why we want Mr. Mubarak to resign." Trittin even proposes considering a freeze on European Union aid to pressure the Egyptian president into leaving. It's an argument in favor of a clean break with the regime in Cairo.
> 
> That's something Trittin's Green Party colleagues have always shied away from, however, not least because Merkel's cabinet wasn't the first to find itself backed into a corner over the despot dilemma. The former coalition government of the center-left Social Democrats and Greens, which was in power between 1998 and 2005, turned a blind eye to Mubarak's transgressions. "We knew human rights were being trampled on in Egypt," admits Kerstin Müller, who was a senior official in the German Foreign Ministry under then-Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, also a member of the Green Party.
> 
> In a recent appearance on a popular German television talk show, Jürgen Chrobog, another former senior Foreign Ministry official from the Fischer era, criticized the fact that "stability is still our number-one priority." He added that Mubarak had to go "immediately." Chrobog said he had nothing against Germany wanting stable partners, but argued that Berlin should have spoken out more strongly about conditions in Egypt. "After all, it goes without saying that we knew about the human rights abuses there."
> 
> Germany's Social Democrats have also become self-critical. One of those speaking out is Gernot Erler, who was a senior official in the Foreign Ministry under former Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Erler says that Mubarak played such a pivotal role in the Middle East peace process between the Israelis and Palestinians that people didn't look more closely at his domestic policies. It was "a high price to pay," as Erler now readily admits. Worse still, the pact with the despot didn't pay off. "The peace process is in a disastrous state. That's the hardest thing to accept," Erler concedes.
> 
> *West's Credibility at Risk*
> 
> But what does the German chancellor want? As is often the case, she's keeping her cards close to her chest, and waiting to see how things develop in North Africa. Even after Mubarak leaves power, which he must do eventually, there will probably be a new strongman in place that Berlin will have to deal with.
> 
> Foreign-policy expert Hacke doubts Egypt has the prerequisites for the hoped-for civil society and liberal democracy. "We shouldn't rule out the possibility of an enlightened military dictatorship with greater legal security," he says.
> 
> One thing is certain: Whoever comes to power in Cairo will be viewed much more critically in Berlin. Merkel and her colleagues have raised the bar, and the West won't tolerate another Mubarak. If it did, it would weaken its own credibility even further -- and sink deeper than ever into the despot dilemma.
> 
> _SPIEGEL ONLINE editors Florian Gathmann and Philipp Wittrock contributed to this report.
> 
> Translated from the German by Jan Liebelt_




More on LINK


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## The Bread Guy

Shared in accordance with the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the _Copyright  Act_:

This from the Ahram Online Egyptian news site**:


> Suez Canal Company workers from the cities of Suez, Port Said, and Ismailia began an open-ended sit in today. Disruptions to shipping movements, as well as disasterous econmic losses, are expected if the strike continues. Over 6000 protesters have agreed that they will not go home today once their shift is over and will continue their sit-in in front of the company's headquarters until their demands are met. They are protesting against poor wages and deteriorating health and working conditions.



A bit more from Reuters-Africa:


> Strikes by workers in companies in the Suez Canal zone will not affect Suez Canal operations and movement of ships, a senior official said on Tuesday.
> 
> "The strike by companies will not affect the operation of the Suez Canal and movement of ships. These companies work in areas far from the canal zone and movement of ships," the official told Reuters. Around 3,000 workers in companies owned by the Canal authorities and based in Ismailia and Suez had gone on strike on Tuesday over pay and conditions. Workers in Canal-owned companies in Port Said will go on strike on Wednesday.



More from businessweek.com:


> Shipping on Egypt’s Suez Canal, used to carry about 8 percent of global seaborne trade, is transiting on schedule after service workers linked to the waterway began striking, the Suez Canal Authority said.
> 
> Workers from Suez Canal Co. began a sit-in today, Al-Ahram newspaper reported earlier today in its online edition, without saying where it got the information. The 6,000 workers are from Suez, Port Said and Ismailia, Al-Ahram said.
> 
> “This doesn’t have anything to do with Suez Canal traffic and the canal is operating normally,” Mohamed Motair, director of companies at the Suez Canal Authority, said by phone. The striking employees belong to seven service companies linked to the waterway and are not involved in operations, he said ....



** Alexa.com, whois and siteanalytics.complete.com information on ahream.org.eg site.


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *Middle East*
> 
> *Jordanian Beduin tribes demand political reforms*
> By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
> 02/08/2011 22:22
> The Jerusalem Post
> 
> LINK
> 
> *Tribal leaders launch attack on Queen Rania, who is of Palestinian descent, accusing her of corruption and interference. *
> 
> In an unprecedented move, leaders of powerful Jordanian Beduin tribes have warned King Abdullah II that he risks a popular revolt unless he implements political reforms.
> 
> The tribal leaders also launched a scathing attack on Queen Rania, who is of Palestinian descent, and accused her of financial corruption and interfering in the government’s running of the kingdom.
> 
> The attack on the queen reflects increased tensions between Jordanians and Palestinians living in the country.
> 
> The queen, “her sycophants and the power centers that surround her” are dividing Jordan, said the statement signed by 36 tribal leaders.
> 
> The statement likened Rania to Leila Trabelsi, the wife of ousted Tunisian President Zine el Abideen Bin Ali.
> 
> The Beduin leaders urged the king to fight against corruption and those who have “looted the country and public funds.” A Jordanian news website that published their strongly worded statement said it had come under attack by “international hackers.”
> 
> Some Jordanians, however, held the mukhabarat, or General Intelligence service, responsible.
> 
> “The Tunisian and Egyptian hurricane will come to Jordan, sooner or later,” said the statement.
> 
> “We express regret over the fact that the regime has surrounded itself with a group of corrupt commercial partners.
> 
> Jordan is suffering from a regime and government crisis, as well as a crisis of corruption.”
> 
> The tribal leaders said that “people without freedom are a people without an identity, and a people without freedom and justice are a people without dignity. Political reform is now an urgent matter that cannot be delayed; holding the corrupt and the thieves accountable and freezing their assets, prohibiting them from traveling, are all part and parcel of political reform.”
> 
> The statement warned of an “explosion if poverty humiliates people.”



More on LINK


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## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *Middle East*
> 
> *Gulf leaders hear rumblings of dissent
> *
> By ASSOCIATED PRESS
> 02/08/2011 14:06
> 
> The Jerusalem Post
> 
> LINK
> 
> *It's too early to predict if protests could rise across a region symbolized by its wealth, powerful sheiks and important US military footholds.*
> 
> *DUBAI, United Arab Emirates* — There were only a few dozen Saudi women at a protest to demand the release of prisoners they claim are unfairly linked to militants. Yet the small act of defiance in Riyadh is part of a wider question for autocratic rulers in the Gulf who wonder if the ripples from Egypt could head their way.
> 
> It's too early to predict what — if any — street demonstrations could rise across a region symbolized by its skyscraper-studded wealth, super-powerful sheiks and monarchs and some of Washington's most important military footholds.
> 
> The failure to draw crowds at planned rallies in Syria last week also underscores that the protest fire from Tunisia and Egypt apparently can be stamped out by hard-line state security, which is also a hallmark of Gulf states.
> 
> But there's no shortage of hints that reform-seeking groups in the Gulf are trying to seize the moment.
> 
> The rare protest rally on Saturday in Saudi's capital came a week after Saudi activists launched a Facebook page demanding more jobs and political accountability in the world's biggest oil exporter. Calls on social media sites also have gone out for protests next week in Bahrain and next month in Kuwait — the two Gulf nations with the most active and organized political opposition.
> 
> Even the United Arab Emirates — with almost no public voice in decision-making — is urging for new faces on a 40-member government advisory panel in a bid to show a response to the upheavals that began in December in Tunisia and now grip Egypt.
> 
> "There will be pressures coming to the Gulf for reforms on things like corruption, abuses of power and a greater voice for civil society," said Mustafa Alani, a regional analyst at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai. "What happened in Tunis may make these ruling families somewhat more flexible to bend with the wind."
> 
> But Alani believes any calls for change will not include demands to topple the tribal-centric regimes.
> 
> "This is a red line because, simply, there are no alternatives," he said.
> 
> Still, even the smallest cracks in the Gulf status quo would be closely watched in the West, which has deep economic and military ties across the region. Washington also depends on its Arab allies in the Gulf as a front-line buffer against Iranian influence and as host for key Pentagon outposts, including major air bases and the US Navy's 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain.
> 
> It was a safe choice because the risk of political uncertainty is so low. Some of the Gulf dynasties stretch back to the region's hardscrabble past before oil was king. And their attitudes about sharing power remains generally rooted in desert tradition: keep the real decision-making in just a few hands.
> 
> Some nations, led by Kuwait, have brought in parliaments that can challenge ruling authorities. Others have advisory groups with limited clout such as the UAE and Qatar — whose state-founded Al-Jazeera network has been accused by some Arab leaders of fomenting protests with its blanket coverage of Tunisia and Egypt.
> 
> "This is the Achilles' heel of the Gulf," said Christopher Davidson, a Gulf expert at the University of Durham in Britain. "There might be belief in change in other parts of the Arab world, but they don't want it to get too close."
> 
> In some ways, it's already at their doorstep.
> 
> A Kuwaiti group calling itself Fifth Fence is using Twitter messages for calls to rise up against "undemocratic practices" by the government, which has been under increasing pressure from opposition lawmakers over allegations of fiscal abuse and attempts to roll back political freedoms.
> 
> On Sunday, Kuwait's rulers accepted the resignation of the scandal-battered interior minister in an apparent attempt to undercut the protest plans. It seems to have bought them some time.
> 
> The protest group had called for a rally outside parliament for Tuesday, but postponed it until March 8 "in response" to the interior minister stepping down. The statement, however, repeated its goal of forcing out the entire government.
> 
> In Bahrain, meanwhile, a Facebook page and other websites carry appeals for an anti-government demonstration on Feb. 14, the anniversary of the country's 2002 constitution that brought in an elected legislature and reforms such as allowing women to vote and run for office.
> 
> The tiny island kingdom has been the most volatile in the Gulf. Majority Shiites have long alleged discrimination and other abuses by Sunni rulers. A wave of arrests of Shiite activists last year touched off weeks of protests and clashes — and a highly sensitive trial of 25 Shiites accused of plotting against the state. The next trial session was initially set for Thursday, but has been postponed for Feb. 24.
> 
> "The Gulf states are not that far removed from what has happened in Tunisia and Egypt," said Ali Fakhro, a political analyst and commentator in Bahrain. "Why? Because all Arab youth have similar demands: jobs, freedom, a feeling they are not oppressed by their leaders. The Tunisian revolution, as well as Egypt, is spreading new principles and a new definition for Arab youth."
> 
> The impression of a political hunger in the Gulf can seem at odds with the widely held perception of a passive citizenry content with generous state handouts and cushy public sector jobs. Kuwait, for example, is giving every citizen the equivalent of about $3,600 and free food coupons this month to mark 50 years of independence and other anniversaries.
> 
> But Gulf governments are trying to shrink their bloated payrolls. They also face the lopsided demographics that fueled their stunning growth: a glut of foreign companies and workers that squeeze out opportunities for young locals.
> 
> The UAE and others are pressing to enforce quotas for businesses to hire nationals in an effort to avoid a backlash from university graduates with limited job options.
> 
> Last month, the New York-based group Human Rights Watch accused Gulf states of stepping up pressure on political activists, including blocking blogs and web forums.
> 
> The attention on human rights is "very, very new for the region," said Ahmed Mansour, a human rights activist and a blogger in the UAE. "But they are starting to express themselves."



More on LINK


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## George Wallace

An interesting claim to fame:


Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> *International*
> 
> *Freed Google executive: I helped spark Egypt revolt*
> By ASSOCIATED PRESS
> 02/08/2011 09:35
> 
> The Jerusalem Post
> 
> LINK
> 
> *Marketing manager Wael Ghonim was held by Egyptian authorities for 12 days; says he was behind Facebook page that ignited demonstrations.*
> 
> *CAIRO* — The young Google Inc. executive detained by Egyptian authorities for 12 days on Monday said he was behind the Facebook page that helped spark what he called "the revolution of the youth of the Internet."
> 
> Wael Ghonim, a marketing manager for the Internet company, wept throughout an emotional television interview just hours after he was freed on Monday. He described how he spent his entire time in detention blindfolded while his worried parents didn't know where he was. He insisted he had not been tortured and said his interrogators treated him with respect.
> 
> "This is the revolution of the youth of the Internet and now the revolution of all Egyptians," he said, adding that he was taken aback when the security forces holding him branded him a traitor.
> 
> "Anyone with good intentions is the traitor because being evil is the norm," he said. "If I was a traitor, I would have stayed in my villa in the Emirates and made good money and said like others, 'Let this country go to hell.' But we are not traitors," added Ghonim, an Egyptian who oversees Google's marketing in the Middle East and Africa from Dubai, one of the United Arab Emirates.
> 
> Ghonim has become a hero of the demonstrators since he went missing on Jan. 27, two days after the protests began. He confirmed reports by protesters that he was the administrator of the Facebook page "We are all Khaled Said" that was one of the main tools for organizing the demonstration that started the movement on Jan. 25.
> 
> Khaled Said was a 28-year-old businessman who died in June at the hands of undercover police, setting off months of protests against the hated police. The police have also been blamed for enflaming violence by trying to suppress these anti-government demonstrations by force.
> 
> Ghonim's whereabouts were not known until Sunday, when a prominent Egyptian businessman confirmed he was under arrest and would soon be released.
> 
> The unmasking of Ghonim as the previously unknown administrator of the Facebook page that started the protests could give the crowds someone to look to for inspiration to press on.
> 
> Whether Ghonim forcefully takes up that mantle remains to be seen, but he said repeatedly in Monday night's interview that he did not feel he was a hero.
> 
> "I didn't want anyone to know that I am the administrator," he said. "There are no heroes; we are all heroes on the street. And no one is on their horse and fighting with the sword."
> 
> The show commemorated some of those killed in the protests and showed their pictures during the interview, sending Ghonim into sobs just before he got up and walked out of the studio.
> 
> "I want to tell every mother and father: I am sorry. I swear it is not our fault. It is the fault of everyone who held on tight to authority and didn't want to let go," he said before cutting short the interview.
> 
> Ghonim looked exhausted and said he had been unable to sleep for 48 hours, but not because he was being mistreated.
> 
> He said he was snatched off the streets two days after the protests first erupted on Jan. 25. After he left a friend's house, four men surrounded him, pushed him to the ground and took him blindfolded to state security. He said he spent much of the following days blindfolded, with no news of the events on the street, being questioned.
> 
> In contrast, he said, in his release he was treated with respect. Just before he was freed, he said, he was brought before Interior Minister Mahmoud Wagdy — installed only days earlier in a government reshuffle — in his office. The minister "talked to me like an adult, not like someone of strength talking to someone weak" and then the new head of the National Democratic Party escorted him home.
> 
> "This is because of what the youth did in the street," he said in the interview on private station Dream 2 TV.
> 
> He said his interrogators were convinced that foreigners were backing the movement, but Ghonim asserted it was just young Egyptians "who love this country." He also sought to debunk the government's accusations that the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, Mubarak's most bitter rival, was involved in planning the protests.
> 
> He referred to his arrest as a "kidnapping" and a "crime" but also sounded conciliatory, saying "this is not a time for settling accounts or cutting up the pie; this is Egypt's time."
> 
> He did forcefully place blame for the country's ills on Mubarak's National Democratic Party and said the good among them should abandon it and start something new to earn the people's respect.
> 
> "I don't want to see the logo of the NDP anywhere in the country," he said. "This party is what destroyed this country. The cadre in this party are filthy."
> 
> US-based Human Rights Watch told The Associated Press on Monday that two weeks of clashes have claimed at least 297 lives, by far the highest and most detailed toll released so far. It was based on visits to seven hospitals in three cities and the group said it was likely to rise.
> 
> While there was no exact breakdown of how many of the dead were police or protesters, "clearly, a significant number of these deaths are a result of the use of excessive and unlawful use of force by the police," said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch.



More on LINK


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## 57Chevy

Al-Qaeda calls for “holy war” in Egypt
article link (with video)

The Iraqi branch of al-Qaeda has entered the fray in Egypt, calling on the people demonstrating there to launch a “holy war” to install a government that will enact Sharia law.

It calls on the Egyptian people to abandon the paths of “pagan nationalism” and “disappointing democracy”.

It is the first time the terrorist organisation has made any statement on the Egyptian crisis.

With pressure building within the country for faster change, the White House made it clear overnight that it agreed with proposals announced by the new government, but wanted to see quicker implementation.

“We believe there has to be a process; that in this process that results in free and fair elections, that the emergency law be lifted, as we’ve talked about many times, and that specific constitutional changes are made,” said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.

Tuesday saw some of the biggest demonstrations yet against President Mubarak, who continues to insist on September as the date for his departure. With popular suspicions rising that a behind-the-scenes deal is being worked out by Vice-President Suleiman to neuter reforms, there is fertile ground for subversive networks to work on.

                                   (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)


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## The Bread Guy

57Chevy said:
			
		

> Al-Qaeda calls for “holy war” in Egypt
> article link (with video)
> 
> The Iraqi branch of al-Qaeda has entered the fray in Egypt, calling on the people demonstrating there to launch a “holy war” to install a government that will enact Sharia law.
> 
> It calls on the Egyptian people to abandon the paths of “pagan nationalism” and “disappointing democracy”.
> 
> It is the first time the terrorist organisation has made any statement on the Egyptian crisis ....
> (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)



If you want to read the statement via a non-jihadi site link, researcher/analyst Aaron Zelin has posted it to his Jihadology blog in Arabic here - Google English translation available here.


----------



## 57Chevy

Egypt regime warns of crackdown as revolt spreads

CAIRO - Egypt's embattled regime warned of a military crackdown on Wednesday as massive protests demanding its overthrow spilled out across the country and deadly unrest flared in the remote south.

Hundreds of demonstrators marched on parliament from the epicentre of the uprising in Cairo's Tahrir Square the day after the largest protests since the revolt began, as other demonstrations erupted in cities across the country.

Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit warned the army, until now a respected and mostly neutral force on Cairo's streets, would intervene to protect the country if the protests against President Hosni Mubarak escalated.

"If chaos occurs, the armed forces will intervene to control the country, a step . . . which would lead to a very dangerous situation," the official MENA news agency said, paraphrasing Abdul Gheit's interview with Arabic-language satellite television channel Al-Arabiya.

His remarks came after newly appointed Vice President Omar Suleiman warned of a possible "coup" in the absence of a peaceful transfer of power.

The protesters however showed no sign of backing down on their demand for Mubarak's overthrow as tens of thousands of people filled Cairo's Tahrir Square well into the third week of a revolt that could reshape the Middle East.

Around a thousand marched on parliament to demand its members' resignation, vowing to remain until the legislature — widely seen as unfairly dominated by the ruling party — is dissolved.

The night before they had been joined by several hundred thousand supporters for the biggest rallies yet in the two-week-old drive to topple the autocratic president and replace his 30-year-old U.S.-backed regime.

On Wednesday, volunteers were building portable toilets, indicating the protesters have no intention of leaving the "liberated" square, now a sprawling tent city with sound stages, flag vendors and a mobile phone charging station.

In a sign the protests were widening beyond Cairo, unrest gripped the remote oasis of Kharga, where at least five people were killed and 100 wounded when security forces opened fire on demonstrators, a security official told AFP.

In the Suez Canal city of Port Said, some 3,000 protesters stormed a government building, torching office furniture and the governor's car.

In the southern town of Assiut, some 4,000 protesters blocked a railway with wooden planks and bricks and shut down a major highway with burning tires.

Several smaller strikes broke out in Cairo and the Nile Delta to the north, where textile workers demanded higher wages and better conditions.

The 82-year-old Mubarak has charged Suleiman, his longtime intelligence chief, with drawing selected opposition groups into negotiations on democratic reform before elections due in September.

Some parties have joined the talks, but the crowds in Tahrir Square insist that Mubarak must go before they will halt the protest. Suleiman, however, warned that the transition must be slow and orderly.

"The second, alternative way would be a coup — and we want to avoid that — meaning uncalculated and hasty steps that produce more irrationality," he warned Egyptian news editors.

Protesters in Tahrir said they were unmoved by Suleiman's remarks and vowed to remain in the square until their demands are met.

"He is acting as they've been acting with us for 30 years. The same talk, the same lies," said Neven al-Sergany, a 44-year-old teacher. "I don't think I will leave. The people here are so determined."

The Muslim Brotherhood, the country's best organized opposition group despite a half century of illegality, meanwhile moved to reassure observers who fear an Islamist takeover should Mubarak's regime be toppled.

"The Muslim Brotherhood does not seek power. We do not want to participate at the moment," senior leader Mohammed Mursi told reporters, adding that the movement would not field a presidential candidate.

The United States is watching events in the most populous Arab country with great concern, hoping the transition to elected rule can take place without a descent into violence, or an Islamist or military takeover.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the government had yet to meet the "minimum threshold" of reform demanded by Egyptians.

Suleiman's proposed transition process "does not appear to be in line with the people of Egypt. We believe that more has to be done," he said, adding that it was not for the United States to dictate the shape of reforms.

In another sign the regime has not gone far enough, Culture Minister Gaber Asfour — appointed just nine days ago in a cabinet shake-up prompted by the revolt — resigned for "medical reasons."
                                   (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)


----------



## Journeyman

57Chevy said:
			
		

> White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the [Egyptian] government had yet to meet the "minimum threshold" of reform  demanded by Egyptians.
> 
> Suleiman's proposed transition process "does not appear to be in line with the people of Egypt. We believe that more has to be done," he said, adding that it was not for the United States to dictate the shape of reforms.


No contradiction there.  :


----------



## The Bread Guy

Shared in accordance with the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the _Copyright  Act_.

Ahram.org.eg (state-run, as it happens):


> President Hosni Mubarak is to deliver a televised address to the nation within hours, according to Egyptian state TV. It is widely believed that Mubarak will announce that he stepping down, though it is as yet not known if this will take the form of a resignation or the transferring of his power to the vice president. The announcement of the prospective address by the president comes in the immediate wake of the release of Communique #1 of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which declared the council was in open-ended session in order to safeguard the nation and the achievements of its people.



Reuters:


> The head of Egypt's ruling party told the BBC on Thursday that he would be surprised if President Hosni Mubarak was still president on Friday.
> 
> "Yes, I would be, because I think the right thing to do now is to take the action that would satisfy ... protesters," Hossam Badrawi told BBC television in a live interview.



Bloomberg:


> Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will decide “within hours” whether he will step down or not, according to cabinet spokesman Magdy Rady.
> 
> “The decision was not taken yet,” Rady said when asked if the president plans to step down today. “The decision will be taken within hours by the governing bodies of the country and by the authorities of the country and by the president of the country. He has to decide himself whether he leaves or not.”
> 
> Mubarak will address the nation from his headquarters in Cairo tonight, state-run Al Masriya television reported, without giving further details.



Associated Press:


> President Hosni Mubarak will meet the demands of protesters, military and ruling party officials said today in the strongest indication yet that Egypt’s longtime president may be about to give up power and that the armed forces were seizing control.
> 
> Gen. Hassan al-Roueini, military commander for the Cairo area, told thousands of protesters in central Tahrir Square, “All your demands will be met today.” Some in the crowd held up their hands in V-for-victory signs, shouting “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great,” a victory cry used by secular and religious people alike.
> 
> The military’s supreme council was meeting today, without the commander in chief Mubarak, and announced on state TV its “support of the legitimate demands of the people.” A spokesman read a statement that the council was in permanent session “to explore “what measures and arrangements could be made to safeguard the nation, its achievements and the ambitions of its great people.” ....


----------



## The Bread Guy

....via the BBC:


> Statement Number One, issued by the Higher Council of the Armed Forces,
> 
> Stemming from the armed forces' responsibility and committing to the protection of the people, safeguarding their interest and security, and keen on the safety of the homeland, the citizens and the achievements of the great Egyptian people, and asserting the legitimate rights of the people,
> 
> The Higher Council of the Armed Forces convened today, Thursday, 10 February 2011, to deliberate on the latest developments of the situation and decided to remain in continuous session to discuss what measures and arrangements could be taken to safeguard the homeland and its achievements, and the aspirations of the great Egyptian people.
> 
> Peace, mercy and the blessings of God.



Two views on the statement, saying the military's holding back....


> The Egyptian military top brass showed extreme restraint over more than two weeks of street protests with a culminating set of events showing on Thursday the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces ready to take power.
> 
> The Council, consisting of Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, defense minister and commander of the armed forces; Lt. Gen. Sami Annan, military chief of staff; the chief of operations; and the heads of the Egyptian army, navy, air force and air defenses, came out with the release of a statement, titled, “Statement No.1.”
> 
> One political pundit noted, “It is significant that the Council has numbered the communique – showing its intention to follow up with more such statements in future.”
> 
> This is the third Council meeting with two earlier meetings held in 1967 and 1973 during the conflict with Israel, but on Thursday the Council promised to have regular and more meetings in future ....



.... or stepping in:


> Egypt's military announced on national television it had stepped in to secure the country and promised protesters calling for President Hosni Mubarak's ouster that all their demands would soon be met. Mubarak planned a speech to the nation Thursday night, raising expectations he would step down or transfer his powers .... The developments created confusion over who was calling the shots in Egypt and whether Mubarak and the military were united on the next steps.  The military's moves had some trappings of an outright takeover, perhaps to push Mubarak out for the army to run the country itself in a break with the constitution. But comments by Mubarak's aides and his meetings with the top two figures in his regime — Vice President Omar Suleiman and Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq — before his speech suggested he may try to carry out a constitutionally allowed half-measure of handing his powers to Suleiman while keeping his title as president ....


----------



## MarkOttawa

Good piece by David Ignatius:

In the Middle East, a Catch-22 for the CIA
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/09/AR2011020904531.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions



> The CIA uses the term "liaison" to describe its contacts with foreign intelligence services. And in Arab capitals such as Tunis, Cairo and Amman, these relationships can be so seductively beneficial that they limit the CIA's ability to run its own "unilateral" operations to learn what's going on inside the host country.
> 
> This conundrum - how to work with your hosts and also spy on them - is one of the difficulties facing the CIA as it tries to understand the youth revolution spreading across the Middle East. The agency has cultivated its relationships with people such as Gen. Omar Suleiman, Egypt's chief of intelligence and now vice president, but it has not done as well understanding the world of the protesters.
> 
> It's a Catch-22 of the intelligence business, especially over the past decade, when counterterrorism became the CIA's core mission: The agency needed good relationships with Arab intelligence services to collect information about al-Qaeda, but to maintain those relationships, the agency sometimes avoided local snooping. The CIA did recruit some long-term contacts within the Egyptian establishment who are said to have provided crucial intelligence in recent days. But it's a far cry from the early 1980s, when the Cairo station chief would regularly meet the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and other opposition groups.
> 
> "We pulled back more and more, and relied on liaison to let us know what was going on," says one former station chief who's a veteran of the CIA's Near East Division...
> 
> The problem of dependency became acute after Sept. 11, 2001, when the agency spent many hundreds of millions of dollars bolstering friendly services - especially from authoritarian, pro-American regimes such as Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen and Pakistan. Those are the countries now shaken by protest...
> 
> The revolution in Tunisia was a surprise, says this CIA defender, because it "wasn't clear even to President Ben Ali that his security forces would quickly choose not to support him." As for Egypt, he says, "analysts anticipated and highlighted the concern that unrest in Tunisia might spread well before demonstrations erupted in Cairo. They later warned that unrest in Egypt would likely gain momentum and could threaten the regime."
> 
> Here's the bottom line: The CIA is caught in a jam that's emblematic of America's larger problem in the Middle East. The agency has been so focused on stopping al-Qaeda that it has been distracted from other questions. America depends on good intelligence as never before, and the simple truth is that the CIA has to lift its game.


   

Mark
Ottawa


----------



## The Bread Guy

Twitter tidbits from Mubarak's speech (still ongoing at this point) via Postmedia News/National Post, AP and BBC:

*"I will protect the constitution until a transfer of power occurs next Sept"

#Egypt President Hosni Mubarak "will not accept or listen to any foreign interventions or dictations"

Must continue the national dialogue (he repeats that line alot)

#Mubarak says emergency laws can only be lifted when stability returns and calls on all Egyptians to come together

BREAKING NEWS: Egyptian President Mubarak says he passed on his authority to his vice president.*


----------



## Old Sweat

This has the potential to go very, very bad within the next 36 hours. There are just too many variables and too many players here to make any sort of prediction. What seems clear to me that there are too many competing interests. Maybe the best short term solution is a transfer of power (willingly or not) to the military to provide a few months of stability, but I fear how that may play out in the longer term. Mubarak may be ruling by rumour to buy time, if the various stories that broke today are any indication; he must may realize he is past his best before date, but what he does is anyone's guess. Whether he intends to make some sort of transfer is not clear. It also is not clear what the people will do if they begin to sense they are being played for suckers. Hopefully the junior officers in the streets are disciplined and trained in the use of force in aid of the civil power, and understand the people are not the enemy.

In the meantime the King of Jordan is probably watching this with more than a little interest and concern.


----------



## vonGarvin

OS:
I agree that this has the potential to go pear shaped, and soon.  I just hope that the Army fulfills its stated role to protect The People.  My impression from here, far far away in Canada, is that it seems to be a professional force that takes its role quite seriously.  I hope that my impression is correct.


----------



## The Bread Guy

OS/TV - Also agree things could go downhill pretty quickly.  Twitter (for what it's worth) coverage from the square suggests the crowd's not entirely satisfied with the speech.  The military's stepped in before (ask Mubarak), so it's not out of the question now.

A bit more, from BBC:


> Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak has said he will stay in office and transfer power after September's presidential election.
> 
> His comments appeared to confound reports he was preparing to stand down immediately.
> 
> In an address on national television after 17 days of demonstrations against his 30-year rule, he praised the "youth of Egypt" protesting in Cairo.
> 
> But he said he would ignore "diktats from abroad".
> 
> Egypt's military had earlier said it was standing ready to "protect the nation".
> 
> "I express a commitment to carry on and protect the constitution and the people and transfer power to whomever is elected next September in free and transparent elections," Mr Mubarak said ....



... the Australian Broadcasting Corporation....


> Egypt's embattled President Hosni Mubarak has handed some of his powers to his vice-president, but reiterated that he will stay on as leader.
> 
> Mr Mubarak previously announced he would not contest polls scheduled for Septmber.
> 
> Ahead of the nationally televised speech, tens of thousands of protesters packed Cairo's Tahrir square, amid anticipation he would annouce he was stepping aside.
> 
> Egypt's armed forces have announced they will be taking necessary measures to protect the nation and support the legitimate demands of the people.
> 
> Egyptian television cut into a sheduled program to broadcast a statement from a panel of senior military officers issuing what they described at communique number one of the Supreme Council of the Armed forces.
> 
> They said the armed forces were committed to protecting the people and supported the legitimate demands of the people ....



.... the Voice of America ....


> Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak said in a national address Tuesday evening that he will not step down until a new president is selected in elections scheduled for September.
> 
> Saying a peaceful transfer of power is underway, Mr. Mubarak refused to give in to demands of tens of thousands of anti-government protesters who took to the streets for a 17th straight day.
> 
> It is the second time in two weeks that Mubarak told the nation he will stay in office until September.
> 
> The dramatic announcement came on state television shortly after 10:45 p.m. in Egypt. Demonstrators in Cairo's main Tahrir Square had earlier danced and sang in jubilation in expecation that Mubarak would resign.
> 
> Earlier in the day, Egyptian military officials and members of the ruling party said Mr. Mubarak will "meet protesters' demands." ....



.... and Reuters:


> Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said on Tuesday he would not leave Egypt although he would step down from the presidency at the end of his term, due to end when the country holds a presidential election in September. "The Hosni Mubarak who speaks to you today is proud of his achievements over the years in serving Egypt and its people," he said in an address broadcast on state television.
> 
> "This is my country. This is where I lived, I fought and defended its land, sovereignty and interests, and I will die on its soil," he said.
> 
> He also said pledged to implement a series of reforms, including calling on the judiciary to combat corruption, one of the complaints of protesters who have pushed him to announce an end to his presidency later this year ....


----------



## Journeyman

milnews.ca said:
			
		

> BREAKING NEWS: Egyptian President Mubarak says he passed on his authority to his vice president.



Actually, the Twit post reads "Mubarak: I have decided to hand over powers to VP Omar Suleiman according to the laws of the country." It doesn't say he's passed on _his_ authority.

Given that al Jazeera's live reports state that Mubarak is refusing to stand down before the end of his term, I suspect that Mubarak is just providing Suleiman with suitable Vice-Presidential powers and authority.

That the crowd is not satisfied with isn't remotely 'news'  


Edit:


> ... the Australian Broadcasting Corporation....
> Egypt's embattled President Hosni Mubarak has handed some of his powers to his vice-president, but reiterated that he will stay on as leader.



Ya, what _they_ said  ;D


----------



## 57Chevy

On Egypt

Might as well refer to the US as the Egyptian political wedge
Every journalist has an updated story, and every newspaper carrys one
but there is no advancement for "Made in Egypt politics" and I think there never will be.
Anger and tensions approach the boiling point. What next ?  

The idea of stepping down is being said ever so loudly by the people and so much more has been added by some of the worlds most influentual people, and still they are unable to bend that long standing autocratic government, whose members enjoy some of the greatest wealth ever ammassed in the modern world. Of all of it, a near 0% is set aside for aid to the most impoverished nations. 
The change of command (so to speak) must be done quickly, has changed suddenly and abrupty into taking a much more slower and prolonged transition.

The people revolt in ever greater numbers in hope to be heard. But their voices fall upon sealed ears of corrupt men who are well accustomed to outright denial while they sit in extremly high places. Members of that government spoil themselves with tens of billions in personal wealth while there are people literally starving to death in neighboring African countries not so far off to the south. And if that does not spell out corruption enough, they deny their countrymen the basic necessities like schooling, by creating and enforcing a ridiculous emergency law. A nonsense law whether lifted or not should be urgently weighed in the highest courtroom possible. Without a doubt it would be found to be likened to a crime against humanity.

The members of government that so willingly enforced that law should be stripped of all illegitimately gained personal wealth and dealt with as crimminals. They should be tried by the very laws of the state that they themselves designed and enforced upon their own countrymen. Without appeal and without political asylum.
Without shame they boast that their own army receives billions per year in US handout dollars, and that for exceedingly too many years. 
Consider that one of the greatest contributors to the existing starving African nations is the US of A. 

Lets give him all the time necessary to do the right thing before it turns into what nobody wants, disruption/closure of the Suez canal or worse yet, a military coup or both.  

Western credibility on the issue may be the talk around European watercoolers over the last few days, and not for nothing, Germany knows full well the strategic importance of Egypt and The Suez in world economics and recognize the resulting dwindling american financial situation. 
Collectively they wait the opportune moment to flex their muscle (first) over the Egyptian thoroughfare should the need arise.
Germany as the political center of the EU will not accept threats lightly that affect its articulated supremacy nor its economic base.

Egypt, being a long standing US ally sends a powerful message to the whole of the Middle East while assuring Israel.
Mr Mubaraks' stance of ignoring external pressure will make things worse. He hopes that there will be no undermining nor an
alienation from the existing political choir except the transfer of some powers to his friend Omar Suleiman. 

Hopefully a voice (such as billionaire strongman Naguib Sawiris) can be enough to quench the thirst and initiate political change
demanded by the younger generation, but I have my doubts because that voice needs to convince the Egyptian people of the West's interest in the maintenance of the Muslim culture within the state, and at the same time guarantee the ousting of the Iranian influenced Brotherhood.

All the while the US needs to maintain its long standing ties with Israel and take appropiate consideration for the fragility of its own neighbor (the PA).
Quite the balancing act from outside the box.
Germany and the EU know that the US will not take the back seat after going the long haul with Egypt, but they are surely watching developements closely.

(MO 57Chevy)


----------



## The Bread Guy

Journeyman said:
			
		

> Actually, the Twit post reads "Mubarak: I have decided to hand over powers to VP Omar Suleiman according to the laws of the country." It doesn't say he's passed on _his_ authority.


Cut/pasted the wrong link - thanks for that.


----------



## MarkOttawa

If the Egyptian Army's senior leadership stay with the regime too long, perhaps a "revolt of the colonels"?  And what might their political and religious positions be?  And with whom US influence may be less--or even more?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Officers_Movement

http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=%22revolt+of+the+colonels%22++&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=

http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=%22revolt+of+the+colonels%22++&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=

Mark
Ottawa


----------



## a_majoor

Looks like the only person who will have a say in Mubarak's resignation is....Hosni Mubarsk:

http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/29332



> *Mubarak 1, Obama 0*
> February 10, 2011 by Don Surber
> 
> So our CIA told President Obama that Hosni Mubarak would resign today.
> 
> From Rush Limbaugh: Obama went to Northern Michigan University in Marquette, Michigan, and said: “I just want to say that we are following today’s events in Egypt very closely. We’ll have more to say as this plays out. But what is absolutely clear is that we are witnessing history unfold. The moment of transformation is taking place because the people of Egypt are calling for change.
> 
> “They’ve turned out in extraordinary numbers representing all ages and all walks of life. But it’s young people who’ve been at the forefront — new generation, your generation, who want their voices to be heard. So going forward, we want those young people and we want all Egyptians to know America will continue to do everything that we can to support an orderly and genuine transition to democracy in Egypt.
> 
> “As we watch what’s taking place, we’re also reminded that we live in an interconnected world. What happens across the globe has an impact on each and every one of us.”
> 
> Except, Mubarak did not resign.
> 
> In fact, Mubarak told the people protesting at Tahrir Square in Cairo, go home. I told you I am not leaving until after the September elections, and I am not.
> 
> Good for him. Good for us.
> 
> From the Washington Post:
> 
> CAIRO – Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, defiantly rejecting opposition demands that he leave power immediately, vowed late Thursday that he would follow through with his plans to transfer authority to an elected government after his term ends in September and would continue efforts to amend Egypt’s constitution in the meantime.
> 
> In a televised address to the nation, the 82-year-old president indicated that he was taking steps to lift a widely despised emergency law. But the speech fell far short of demands that he give up the office he has held for nearly 30 years and start an immediate transition to democracy.
> 
> Obama was just played.
> 
> Let’s get a few things straight: 1. Mubarak is a loyal friend of the United States and Israel. 2. Mubarak has been extremely valuable in the war on terrorism. 3. Mubarak may not be disliked at all. His government, sure. But I am not so sure that people don’t like him. 4. The Muslim Brotherhood is the only winner if Mubarak suddenly leaves without a reliable successor. 5. Obviously, Mubarak has the power to stay in power. The people at Tahrir Square tonight are not necessarily the majority of Egyptians.
> 
> The Muslim Brotherhood wants to take over Egypt. I have a feeling that in the next 7 months — before Mubarak leaves — the Muslim Brotherhood will be a few members smaller.
> 
> Who the hell does President Obama think he is trying to dictate who should or should not be in charge of a country?
> 
> He’s a dictator?
> 
> Fine. Let’s rid the world of all dictators, beginning with North Korea and Cuba.
> 
> If we can back a fellow like Josef Stalin in World War II — a man who killed tens of millions of his own people — we can stand by Mubarak as he sets up his retirement from office.
> 
> If Camp David means anything it is that Egypt and Israel are friends. After the assassination of Anwar Sadat, Mubarak stepped in and kept the faith in that accord.
> 
> The hypocrisy of those who want to pressure him to leave because he is a dictator is thick and dripping. Most of these sudden advocates for democracy opposed ousting Saddam Hussein. Remember that line, the Iranians didn’t ask to be freed?
> 
> That’s like the kid who tells his Mom he didn’t ask to be born.
> 
> Patience.
> 
> Let’s have an election and have the people pick his successor before we toss Mubarak overboard.
> 
> Now, I may be full of wax beans, but consider the lefty reaction.
> 
> From Steve Benen: “MUBARAK MANAGES TO MAKE MATTERS MUCH WORSE.”
> 
> Yea, that makes me feel better about mine assessment of the situation.
> 
> Linked by Glenn Reynolds. Thanks. Glenn Reynolds said: “The country’s in the very best of hands.”
> 
> Yes, but which one?
> 
> UPDATE: Dave in Boca has some insights into this. Suffice it to say, 53% of America really screwed up in 2008.



Lots of links in Instapundit today as well....


----------



## Journeyman

Thucydides said:
			
		

> Looks like the only person who will have a say in Mubarak's resignation is....Hosni Mubark


The thinking at STRATFOR, a US think-tank, is that the decision by Mubarak not to resign seems to have caught both the Egyptian military and western governments by surprise. Now, more than anytime previous in this crisis, the military has a potential to move, à la "Colonels' Revolt," mentioned above.


Basically, this action now creates a massive crisis for the Egyptian military. Its goal is not to save Mubarak but to save the regime founded by Gamal Abdel Nasser. The military faces three choices, and those choices are time-sensitive. 

The first is to stand back, allow the crowds to swell and likely march to the presidential palace  and perhaps enter the grounds. This opens the door to regime change as the crowd, not the military, determines the course of events. 

The second choice is to move troops and armour into position to block more demonstrators from entering Tahrir Square  and keep those in the square in place. This creates the possibility of the military firing on the protesters, which have not been anti-military to this point. Clashes with the military (as opposed to the police, which have happened) would undermine the military’s desire to preserve the regime and the perception of the military as not hostile to the public.

The third is to stage a coup and overthrow Mubarak. The military does not want an extraconstitutional action, but Mubarak’s decision leaves the military in the position of taking one of the first two courses, which is unacceptable. That means military action to unseat Mubarak is the remaining choice.

What was that Asian curse about "living in interesting times"? 



Note: My excerpt; this is not the complete STRATFOR text available to subscribers; nonetheless, the details are republished acknowledging STRATFOR as the copyright holder


----------



## The Bread Guy

Based on early reports ....


			
				Journeyman said:
			
		

> .... The second choice is to move troops and armour into position to block more demonstrators from entering Tahrir Square  and keep those in the square in place. This creates the possibility of the military firing on the protesters, which have not been anti-military to this point. Clashes with the military (as opposed to the police, which have happened) would undermine the military’s desire to preserve the regime and the perception of the military as not hostile to the public ....



Statement from Higher Council of the Armed Forces (2 minute video, via BBC)

Aljazeera English:


> Egyptian military leaders have pledged that the country's emergency law will be lifted, but only "as soon as current circumstances end".
> 
> The promise was made as part of the Armed Forces Supreme Council's response to the mass protests which are intensifying after President Hosni Mubarak's latest refusal to step down.
> 
> In a statement read out on national television, the army leaders also pledged to support work towards peaceful transition of power, in the light of Mubarak handing over some powers to Omar Suleiman, the vice-president.
> 
> The third point made was that "the honest men who called for an end to corruption and for reform" will not be prosecuted.
> 
> The army generals also called for a return to normal life in the country, as thousands of protesters streamed into Cairo's central Tahrir Square.
> 
> Hussein Tantawi, the chief commander and defence minister, chaired Friday's meeting ....



Canadian Press/Associated Press:


> Egypt's powerful military backed President Hosni Mubarak's plan to stay in office until September elections, but massive crowds outraged by his refusal to step down packed squares in Egypt's two biggest cities Cairo and Alexandria on Friday. They marched on Mubarak's presidential palaces and blockading state television in a move against symbols of his authoritarian regime.
> 
> The Armed Forces Supreme Council, a body of top generals, depicted itself as the champion of reform, promising to make sure Mubarak's leadership carries out promised change and lifts hated emergency laws immediately once protests end, an attempt to win over a population where the army is more trusted than politicians.
> 
> But its statement was a heavy blow to many protesters who called on the military to take action to push Mubarak out after he announced on state TV Thursday night that he would hand most of his powers to Vice-President Omar Suleiman but remain in office. With the speech, Mubarak showed a blunt determination not to bend in the face of the biggest mass uprising in Egypt's history, now in its 18th day.
> 
> "What are you waiting for?" one protester yelled in the face of an army officer outside Mubarak's main palace, Oruba, in northern Cairo, where a crowd of demonstrators grew to more than 1,000. "Did you sign an oath and pledge your allegiance to the president or the people?" another shouted. It was not known if Mubarak was in the palace, one of at least three in Cairo. The palace was protected by four tanks and rolls of barbed wire, but soldiers did nothing to stop more people from joining the rally ....



Voice of America:


> Egypt's military has endorsed the transfer of powers from embattled President Hosni Mubarak to Vice President Omar Suleiman and called for a return to normal life in the Egyptian capital, wracked for 18 days by anti-Mubarak demonstrations.
> 
> The military released its statement Friday after a meeting of its Supreme Council, on a day protest organizers predicted the largest demonstrations since the start of the popular uprising last month.
> 
> The military statement said the army will ensure that reforms proposed by Mr. Mubarak are carried out as planned, including a the eventual lifting of 30-year-old emergency laws that enabled the government to keep tight control on Egyptian citizens.  The statement also promised that the presidential election scheduled for September will be free and fair.  The military urged protesters to return to their homes.
> 
> It is not yet clear what effect the statement will have on the tens of thousands of protesters packed into Cairo's Tahrir Square and other parts of the city.  The huge crowd continued to build after Friday prayers ....


More on links


----------



## OldSolduer

Now its been reported that Mubarak has left for a palace on the Red Sea. Any bets on his NOT returing?


----------



## nuclearzombies

Jim Seggie said:
			
		

> Now its been reported that Mubarak has left for a palace on the Red Sea. Any bets on his NOT returing?



I'm in......

(reprinted as per fair use)
*Hosni Mubarak and his family have left Cairo. The AFP's source said it wasn't clear whether the embattled autocrat had left the country or was headed to his villa in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. During yesterday's speech refusing to resign, Mubarak said, he would not leave Egyptian soil until he was "buried under it." [AFP via Inquirer Politics]* original article here: http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/02/hosni_mubarak_has_left_cairo.html

He might want to watch what he says, certainly there are a few folks that would be more than happy to take him up on being buried.  :facepalm:


----------



## The Bread Guy

Jim Seggie said:
			
		

> Now its been reported that Mubarak has left for a palace on the Red Sea. Any bets on his NOT returing?


Coming up next - ANOTHER address to the nation:


> The  Egyptian presidency is to make an "urgent and important" statement shortly, state television said on Friday, after a ruling party spokesman confirmed the president had left Cairo for Sharm el-Sheikh.
> 
> "An important and urgent statement will be made by the presidency of the republic shortly," state television said.
> 
> A spokesman for the ruling National Democratic Party said on Friday that Egypt's embattled President Hosni Mubarak was no longer in Cairo.
> 
> "He is in Sharm el-Sheikh," said Mohammed Abdellah after another source close to the government told AFP that the veteran ruler and his family had quit Cairo ....



Also, this tidbit from state-run Ahram.org:


> Maj. Gen. Safwat El-Zayat, a former senior official of Egypt’s General Intelligence and member of the Egyptian Council of Foreign Affairs, asserted, in an interview with Ahram Online, that the address delivered by President Mubarak last night was formulated against the wishes of the armed forces, and away from their oversight. He claimed that Vice Preisdent Omar Suleiman’s address, which came on the heels of Mubarak’s address, was equally in defiance of the armed forces and away from its oversight.
> 
> Attributing this information to his own sources within the Egyptian military, Maj. Gen. El-Zayat said there was now a deep cleavage between the armed forces, represented in its Supreme Council, and the Presidential authority, represented in both President Mubarak and his Vice President, Omar Suleiman.
> 
> According to El-Zayat, communiqué #2 issued this morning by the Supreme Armed Forces Council was not, as many people in Egypt and elsewhere understood it, an affirmation of the addresses of Mubarak and Suleiman, but rather an attempt to avoid an open conflict, while at the same time underlining that the army will act as guarantor for the transition to full democracy. He adivced that people should listen carefully to the anticipated communique #3.


----------



## a_majoor

From BBC World News Service:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12307698



> *Egypt army vow on emergency rule*
> 
> No need to reload, updates automatically.
> Follow @BBCWorld on Twitter
> 
> BREAKING NEWS: Vice-President Suleiman: Hosni Mubarak stepping down as president of Egypt.
> 1612: Full statement from Vice-President Suleiman: "In the name of God the merciful, the compassionate, citizens, during these very difficult circumstances Egypt is going through, President Hosni Mubarak has decided to step down from the office of president of the republic and has charged the high council of the armed forces to administer the affairs of the country. May God help everybody."
> 1611: It's taken 18 days of mass demonstrations. Mr Mubarak gave three televised statements in which he offered some concessions, but the protesters refused to be appeased.
> 1608: This is the moment the protesters have been waiting for. Mr Mubarak is stepping down after 30 years as Egypt's head of state.
> 1607: State TV says Mr Mubarak has handed over responsibility for running the nation's affairs to the higher military council.
> 1606: Tahrir Square has erupted - pictures show cheering crowds waving flags in the dark.
> 1604: The vice-president made a very brief televised statement. He said Mr Mubarak was stepping down for the benefit of the republic.



Twitter updates all the time, you may see something different on the link


----------



## The Bread Guy

This from Talking Points Memo:


> Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman has just read a statement saying President Hosni Mubarak has stepped down as president, ending his 30-year rule. Suleiman said that the higher council of the armed forces will lead the nation.
> 
> Earlier on Friday, The New York Times reported that the Egyptian military "appeared to assert its leadership... amid growing indications that President Hosni Mubarak was yielding all power." The Associated Press reported that Mubarak had left Cario for the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, where he has a palace, and often spends time ....



.... and this from AP:


> Egypt's vice president says Hosni Mubarak has resigned as president and handed control to the military.
> 
> Car horns were heard around Cairo in celebration after Vice President Omar Suleiman made the announcement on national TV on Friday.
> 
> "In these difficult circumstances that the country is passing through, President Hosni Mubarak has decided to leave the position of the presidency," Suleiman said. He has commissioned the armed forces council to direct the issues of the state."



Also, check out screen captures from AlJazz English online attached.


----------



## The Bread Guy

_- edited to add Tantawi info links -_
Even the Wikipedia page is talking about Mubarak's presidency in past tense.  ;D

This appears to be an important chap to keep an eye on now.









- COMMANDER -IN- CHIEF OF THE ARMED FORCES, MINISTER OF DEFENSES AND MILITARY PRODUCTION, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi (links to official EGY bio)
- Wikipedia bio (usual Wikipedia caveats apply) - already listed as "acting president" **
- Reuters FactBox on Tantawi


The following is shared in accordance with the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the _Copyright  Act_.

AlJazeera English:


> Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, has resigned from his post, handing over power to the armed forces.
> 
> Omar Suleiman, the vice-president, announced in a televised address that the president was "waiving" his office, and had handed over authority to the Supreme Council of the armed forces.
> 
> Suleiman's short statement was received with a roar of approval and by celebratory chanting and flag-waving from a crowd of hundreds of thousands in Cairo's Tahrir Square, as well by pro-democracy campaigners who attended protests across the country on Friday.
> 
> The crowd in Tahrir chanted "We have brought down the regime",  while many were seen crying, cheering and embracing one another.
> 
> "Tonight, after all of these weeks of frustration, of violence, of intimidation ... today the people of Egypt undoubtedly [feel they] have been heard, not only by the president, but by people all around the world," our correspondent at Tahrir Square reported, following the announcement.
> 
> Pro-democracy activists in the Egyptian capital had marched on the presidential palace and state television buildings on Friday, the 18th consecutive day of protests.
> 
> Anger at state television
> 
> At the state television building earlier in the day, thousands had blocked people from entering or leaving, accusing the broadcaster of supporting the current government and of not truthfully reporting on the protests.
> 
> "The military has stood aside and people are flooding through (a gap where barbed wire has been moved aside)," Al Jazeera's correspondent at the state television building reported.
> 
> He said that "a lot of anger [was] generated" after Mubarak's speech last night, where he repeated his vow to complete his term as president ....



BBC News online:


> Hosni Mubarak has decided to step down as president of Egypt.
> 
> Vice-President Omar Suleiman made the announcement in a brief statement on state TV.
> 
> It came as thousands massed in Cairo and other Egyptian cities for an 18th day of protest to demand Mr Mubarak's resignation.
> 
> Protesters responded by cheering, waving flags, embracing and sounding car horns. "The people have brought down the regime," they chanted.
> 
> Mr Suleiman said Mr Mubarak had handed power to the high command of the armed forces.
> 
> "In the name of God the merciful, the compassionate, citizens, during these very difficult circumstances Egypt is going through, President Hosni Mubarak has decided to step down from the office of president of the republic and has charged the high council of the armed forces to administer the affairs of the country," he said.
> 
> "May God help everybody." ....



Reuters:


> Hosni Mubarak stepped down as Egypt's president on Friday, handing over to the army and ending three decades of autocratic rule, bowing to escalating pressure from the military and protesters demanding that he go. Skip related content
> 
> Vice President Omar Suleiman said a military council would run the affairs of the Arab world's most populous nation. A free and fair presidential election has been promised for September.
> 
> A speaker made the announcement in Cairo's Tahrir Square where hundreds of thousands broke down in tears, celebrated and hugged each other chanting: "The people have brought down the regime." Others shouted: "Allahu Akbar (God is great) ....



The Associated Press:


> Egypt's Hosni Mubarak resigned as president and handed control to the military on Friday after 29 years in power, bowing to a historic 18-day wave of pro-democracy demonstrations by hundreds of thousands. "The people ousted the president," chanted a crowd of tens of thousands outside his presidential palace in Cairo.
> 
> Several hundred thousand protesters massed in Cairo's central Tahrir Square exploded into joy, waving Egyptian flags, and car horns and celebratory shots in the air were heard around the city of 18 million in joy after Vice President Omar Suleiman made the announcement on national TV just after nightfall.
> 
> Mubarak had sought to cling to power, handing some of his authorities to Suleiman while keeping his title. But an explosion of protests Friday rejecting the move appeared to have pushed the military into forcing him out completely. Hundreds of thousands marched throughout the day in cities across the country as soliders stood by, besieging his palace in Cairo and Alexandria and the state TV building. A governor of a southern province was forced to flee to safety in the face of protests there ....



Initial reaction from around the world, via Reuters:


> .... * PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA:
> 
> -- "The President was informed of President Mubarak's decision to step down during a meeting in the Oval Office. He then watched TV coverage of the scene in Cairo for several minutes in the outer Oval (office)," White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said.
> 
> -- Obama is to deliver a statement on Egypt at 1830 GMT.
> 
> * EU FOREIGN POLICY CHIEF CATHERINE ASHTON
> 
> -- "The EU respects President Mubarak's decision today. By standing down, he has listened to the voices of the Egyptian people and has opened the way to faster and deeper reforms," Ashton said.
> 
> "It is important now that the dialogue is accelerated leading to a broad-based government which will respect the aspirations of, and deliver stability for, the Egyptian people."
> 
> "The future of Egypt rightly remains in the hands of the Egyptian people. The EU stands ready to help in any way it can." ....



Canada's initial response?


> Prime Minister Stephen Harper says Canada wants free and fair elections in Egypt and respect for the rule of law.
> 
> Speaking in St. John's on Friday, Harper said the federal government also wants Egypt to respect peace treaties it has signed and pursue peace in the Middle East.
> 
> Harper spoke during a brief visit to Newfoundland and Labrador as news began to filter out that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was on his way out, but before it was confirmed he had stepped down and handed power to the military.
> 
> "We are all seeing what's happening," Harper told a news conference. "Transition is taking place in Egypt."
> 
> He said what's happening in Egypt cannot be undone.
> 
> "I think the old expression is: 'They're not going to put the toothpaste back in the tube on this one.' "
> 
> He said Canada would like those in power in Egypt to lead change.
> 
> "Get in front of it," he added. "Be part of it, and make a bright future happen for the people of Egypt."



** - Since it's only a wikipedia reference, I won't take it anywhere near gospel that the head of the military is the acting president yet.  I will humbly accept being at least 1/2 right on this prediction from Monday, though  ;D


----------



## HavokFour

Well, they did it. Lets see how this turns out now. I'm not holding my breath.


----------



## PanaEng

Thucydides said:
			
		

> Looks like the only person who will have a say in Mubarak's resignation is....Hosni Mubarsk:
> 
> http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/29332
> 
> Lots of links in Instapundit today as well....



Love your sources   :facepalm:


----------



## Journeyman

Military coups _can_ be bloodless.

And from the looks of statements like, 





> the address delivered by President Mubarak last night was formulated against the wishes of the armed forces, and away from their oversight. He claimed that Vice Preisdent Omar Suleiman’s address, which came on the heels of Mubarak’s address, was equally in defiance of the armed forces and away from its oversight


 [post #188 above] the military control didn't just magically happen in the past 20 minutes.


At least the military leadership is Airborne. What can possibly go wrong now?    ;D


Edit: wordsmithing to ease comprehension.


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse

Journeyman said:
			
		

> At least the military leadership is Airborne. What can possibly go wrong now?    ;D



A Liberal government??


----------



## 57Chevy

;D Hooah !!!   (Elections being too far off could spell trouble)     

 Who's getting chopped out next ?
______________________________________
End of Mubarak era as protests topple president

CAIRO - A furious wave of protest finally swept Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak from power on Friday after 30 years of one-man rule, sparking jubilation on the streets and sending a warning to autocrats across the Arab world and beyond.

Mubarak, the second Arab leader to be overthrown by a popular uprising in a month, handed power to the army after 18 days of relentless rallies against poverty, corruption and repression caused support from the armed forces to evaporate.

Vice President Omar Suleiman said a military council would run the affairs of the most populous Arab nation. A free and fair presidential election has been promised for September, though some question the army's appetite for real democracy.

Full story at link...
            ___________________________________________________________________________

Who's next after Mubarak?<---link

First it was Tunisia. Then Egypt and Yemen. Algeria, Morocco, Jordan, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, North Korea, Belarus and Tajikistan could be next. The long list of autocratic regimes that could fall sends shivers down my spine, because they won't go without a fight. There will be bloodshed.

Every year we see new lists of the autocrats, tyrants and dictators who will be toppled, if not today then tomorrow, or maybe in six months or a year. Regardless of the timeframe, their fate is sealed. Not all predictions come to pass, but new lists crop up every year.

TIME Magazine published the latest list of the top 10 doomed autocrats: Hosni Mubarak, Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, Algerian president

Abdelaziz Bouteflika, King Abdullah and the House of Saud, Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko and Tajikistan's Emomali Rahmon.

Article continues...
                                 (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)


----------



## MarkOttawa

Regarding a possible "revolt of the colonels":
http://forums.milnet.ca/forums/threads/98663/post-1017871.html#msg1017871

From a WikiLeak:
http://213.251.145.96/cable/2008/09/08CAIRO2091.html



> ...
> ¶2. (C) A series of recent conversations with academics and other civilian analysts reveals their sense that while Egypt’s military is in decline, it nevertheless remains a powerful institution. (Note: These academics’ expertise in Egyptian politics and willingness to comment on the sensitive issue of the military’s current role makes them valuable interlocutors for us. End note.)..
> 
> ...XXXXXXXXXXXX noted, the regime has not allowed any charismatic figures to reach the senior ranks. “(Defense Minister) Tantawi looks like a bureaucrat,” he joked. XXXXXXXXXXXX described the mid-level officer corps as generally disgruntled, and said that *one can hear mid-level officers at MOD clubs around Cairo openly expressing disdain for Tantawi* [emphasis added]. These officers refer to Tantawi as “Mubarak’s poodle,” he said, and complain that “this incompetent Defense Minister” who reached his position only because of unwavering loyalty to Mubarak is “running the military into the ground.”..



Mark
Ottawa


----------



## 57Chevy

Seize Mubarak's money: watchdog
Governments and international banks should seize Hosni Mubarak's assets and hold them in escrow to be returned to the people of Egypt, an international corruption watchdog said Friday.

"What is happening in Egypt today shows there is a major problem with a lack of transparency," said Huguette Labelle, the chair of Transparency International, an influential international corruption watchdog with ties to the UN.

After 18 days of protests, former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak stepped down on Friday, although his exact location remains unknown. His wife and sons are rumoured to have long since fled the North African nation.

His financial assets are believed to be spread across the globe, and as the motions to replace him in a democratic Egypt lurch into action, so too has the international movement to retrieve any financial assets he may have absconded with.

"When there is a dictator who appears to have acquired much more wealth than he would warrant as a salary of a head of a corporation or country, they should investigate immediately because you don't know where those assets are parked," Labelle said.

Labelle spent 19 years in deputy ministerial positions in the Canadian civil service across a variety of departments before chairing the international lobby group in 2005. She is also chancellor of the University of Ottawa and is a Companion to the Order of Canada.

She spent seven years presiding over CIDA, the Canadian International Development Agency, and now calls for international governments and banking institutions to investigate Mubarak's assets and seize any illegitimate funds.

"If there is any evidence of illicit transfers, then you put this money in escrow," she told CBC News on Friday. "It's the people's money. It should return to the people assuming there is a government that will look after it."

$40B stolen? 

Reports this week estimated that Mubarak's family wealth could be in excess of $40 billion - a figure that would put him just behind Berkshire Hathaway head Warren Buffett, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Carlos Slim Helu, the world's richest man.

Those figures were based on numerous estimates, as finding an exact figure of how many funds the deposed leader could even theoretically have access to is as yet unknown. But it's estimated that 40 per cent of Egypt's 80 million people live on less than $2 a day.

A report by think tank Global Financial Integrity released in January found that Egypt is losing more than $6 billion US a year - more than $57.2 billion US between 2000 and 2008 - to illicit financial activities and official government corruption.

"Egypt, like many countries in the Middle East, is a business," said Avner Mandelman, a money manager and director at Venator Capital Management Ltd. "And it's currently a company being restructured.

"All the money that flows into the country is passing many hands," he said. "And those hands are sticky."

On Friday, Switzerland froze any assets belonging to Mubarak or his family. "I can confirm that Switzerland has frozen possible assets of the former Egyptian president with immediate effect," a spokesman for the Swiss finance ministry said.

In recent months, the country - which is shedding its reputation as a haven for hiding assets - has also frozen assets belonging to Tunisia's former president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, as well as those of Ivory Coast's Laurent Gbagbo.

Labelle welcomes moves like that and said it is incumbent upon other governments and banks to follow suit.

"You don't necessarily do this on Day One," she said. "Right now is the stabilization period. But you can't wait two years from now either.

"After elections, that first government should create a commission of inquiry to investigate those who have assets that are beyond what one would expect."

Mandelman expects it would not be difficult, in time, to track most of those funds. "Big money has a weight and a magnetic pull all its own," he said. "You just have to follow the money."

A spokesperson from TD Bank declined to comment when asked whether the bank is considering actions similar to those taken in Switzerland to seize assets. "Because of privacy laws and policies we do not comment on, or confirm our clients," Mohammed Nakhooda said.

Similar requests to Canada's other major lenders were not immediately returned Friday.

                                   (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)

Attached: Mr. Mubaraks new flag ;D


----------



## a_majoor

How the Egyptian security services shut down the Internet. It would be very interesting to see just how we are connected to the wider world, since single points of failure could also be exploited by hostile powers to disrupt our economy:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/02/egypt-off-switch/



> *Report: Egypt Shut Down Net With Big Switch, Not Phone Calls*
> 
> * By Ryan Singel Email Author
> * February 10, 2011  |
> * 1:15 pm  |
> * Categories: Censorship
> *
> 
> The Egyptian government shut down most of its country’s internet not by phoning ISPs one at a time, but by simply throwing a switch in a crucial data center in Cairo.
> 
> That according to a February presentation to the Department of Homeland Security’s Infosec Technology Transition Council, obtained by Wired.com.
> 
> The presentation — made by Bill Woodcock, research director of the Packet Clearing House — argues that the Egyptian Communications Ministry acted quite responsibly in the procedure it used to cut ties from the net, after the shutdown was ordered by Egypt’s much-feared intelligence service.
> 
> “Most of the outage was effected through a breaker ﬂipped in the Ramses exchange, and the rest was phone calls and arm-twisting,” the presentation says. ‘Ramses exchange’ refers to a central building in Cairo where Egyptian ISPs meet to trade traffic and connect outside of the country, a facility known as an Internet Exchange Point.
> 
> The report’s timeline also contradicts many observers’ guesses that a smaller internet provider called Noor escaped the initial shutdown because it provided connectivity to Egypt’s stock market and several government agencies. According to the presentation, Noor seems to have been hunted down by the intelligence service, just like many other small Egyptian ISPs.
> 
> Woodcock, an expert on internet security and infrastructure — especially connection hubs in developing countries — did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the document. confirmed the document’s veracity, but pointed out that the facts remain scant. What he does know is that his company’s monitoring equipment was shut off, as was equipment from other companies; that the intelligence service did call some ISPs; and that the shutdown didn’t involve manipulation of BGP, a routing protocol, as many had originally assumed.
> 
> Most media, including Wired.com, reported that government officials contacted individual ISPs and told them to shut down their networks, under threat of losing their communications licenses.
> 
> But the document (embedded below) contradicts that narrative, providing new details on the outage — largely laying the blame on Egypt’s internal security service, while describing the “flip-the-switch” shutdown as a “politically liberal” choice by the Egyptian communications ministry.
> 
> That’s because turning off the internet at the center exchange made it very easy to switch it back on, prevented surveillance, made it clear to everyone what had happened, and prevented spyware from being placed on the networks.
> 
> Compare that to Tunisia, where Facebook login pages were manipulated — presumably by the government — to grab the passwords of Tunisian activists in order to delete their accounts and protest pages.
> 
> The presentation suggests the weeklong shutdown had severe effects on Egypt’s economy, in the short term from loss of commerce, and in the long term from a likely plummet in tourism, and an exodus of call centers from Egypt.
> 
> The presentation concludes that the ministry’s course of action in obeying the orders may have some positive effects in the future: “Itʼs unlikely that Egyptʼs communications ministry will ever be asked to ﬂip that switch again.”
> 
> Here’s the timeline in the report (verbatim):
> 
> Tuesday, January 25:
> Amn El Dawla, the State Security Intelligence Service, orders the blocking of Twitter, which was largely accomplished.
> 
> Wednesday, January 26:
> The State Security Intelligence Service orders the blocking of Facebook, and DNS is blocked but this is not completely effective.
> 
> This was the second time they had tried to have Facebook blocked, but the previous attempt had been successfully countered by the communications ministry.
> 
> Arrests of people posting to the El Shaheeed and Yom Elsawra 25 January groups on Facebook begin.
> 
> Friday, January 28:
> 12:28am – Breakers thrown in international transport and national IXP section of Ramses exchange, 3500 preﬁxes and 50 Egyptian ASNs drop to 300 preﬁxes and 25 ASNs. All of the large ISPs are ofﬂine: TEData, Link.net, Raya Telecom (owned by Vodafone), and Nile Online and EgyNet (both owned by Etisalat).
> Morning – Further ISPs ofﬂine, down to about 240 preﬁxes, and the intelligence service orders mobile operators to suspend voice service in some areas.
> 
> Wael Ghonim, a Google employee who was running the El Shaheeed Facebook group, is arrested.
> 
> Saturday, January 29 Morning – Mobile operators allowed to resume voice service and international SMS, but domestic SMS remains shut down and under the control of the intelligence service.
> 
> Omar Suleiman is appointed vice president after having been denied that ofﬁce several years ago. Suleiman had run the Mukhabarat, the General Intelligence Service, since 1993 and Egyptʼs military intelligence service before that. Heʼs most generally recognized in the rest of the world as the coordinator of the extraordinary rendition program.
> 
> Sunday, January 30
> The intelligence service begins astroturﬁng SMSes on Vodafoneʼs network, over Vodafoneʼs objection: “honest and loyal men: confront the traitors and criminals and protect our people and honor.”
> 
> Monday, January 31
> Tarek Kamel reconﬁrmed as Communications Minister, while several of his cabinet colleagues are replaced with intelligence service generals.
> 
> The intelligence service continues to hunt down other ISPs, taking down Noor, whose customers include the stock exchange, major banks, the national airline, and government agencies. Only 12 ASNs and 130 preﬁxes remain.
> 
> Tuesday, February 1
> Morning – Tarek Kamel announces that Internet service will be restored “soon.” In a separate television interview, prime minister Ahmed Shaﬁq is asked when and replies “within 24 hours.”
> The intelligence service continues to shut down remaining ISPs, and continues astroturﬁng SMSes:
> “Egypt’s youth: Beware rumors and listen to the voice of reason. Egypt is above all so preserve it.”
> 
> Wednesday, February 2
> Noon – Internet service resumed, routing converges over the course of an hour.
> 
> The intelligence service continues astroturﬁng SMSes:
> “To each mother-father-sister-brother, to every honest citizen: Preserve this country because the
> homeland stays forever.”
> “A sweeping demonstration starting at noon on Wednesday from the Mustafa Mahmoud square in Mohandessin to support president Mubarak.”
> 
> Thursday, February 3
> OECD estimates the outage cost the Egyptian telecom sector a minimum of $90M.
> Forbes ups that estimate to $110M, noting that the OECD had not included call-center revenue.
> Omar Suleiman says the economic impact on the tourism industry alone is “at least $1B.”
> 
> Saturday, February 5
> All SMS services restored.
> Tarek Kamel calls a meeting of call-center executives to try to assess the scale of losses. Vodafone, for instance, relocated hundreds of call-center jobs from Egypt to New Zealand during the prior week.
> 
> Illustration: Screenshot from a presentation to a DHS internet committee on Egypt’s January 2011 internet shutdown


----------



## The Bread Guy

*Statement by the Prime Minister of Canada following the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt*
11 February 2011


> Prime Minister Stephen Harper today issued the following statement after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak announced his resignation:
> 
> “Canada respects President Mubarak’s decision to step down in order to promote peace and stability in the country. The future of Egypt is for Egyptians to decide.
> 
> “Canada wants to see free and fair elections; we want to see the rule of law and stability; we want to see respect for human rights, including the rights of minorities, including religious minorities; we want to see the transition to a democratic Egypt.
> 
> “Our Government encourages all parties to move forward with a peaceful, meaningful, credible and orderly democratic reform process towards new leadership, including free and fair elections in order to build a brighter future for the people of Egypt.
> 
> “Canada will continue to support Egypt in implementing meaningful democratic and economic reforms.  We will also continue to encourage and support Egypt’s efforts to promote regional stability and peace, including with Israel as well as continued respect for peace treaties in the Middle East.”


----------



## MarkOttawa

Letter sent to the _Toronto Star_:



> Re: *Travers: Once a Middle East player, Canada now a spectator, Feb. 12*
> http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/937508--travers-once-a-middle-east-player-canada-now-a-spectator
> 
> Mr. Travers fails to understand what Canadian policy--as much Prime Minister St. Laurent's as External Affairs Minister Pearson's--on Suez in 1956 was really about.  Their main concern was not the Middle East.  It was rather finding a way to avoid a complete falling out between the U.S. (which strongly opposed Western military intervention) on the one hand and the U.K. and France (who were attacking Egypt in collusion with Israel) on the other.   It was feared that such a major falling out would be to the great benefit of the USSR, which was just suppressing Hungary.  The main point was to maintain NATO Cold War solidarity, not to bring peace to the Middle East.  The second point was trying to avoid the Soviets' gaining substantial ground in the Third World generally in reaction to perceived British-French neo-colonialism.
> 
> I worked as research assistant on the relevant section of Volume II of Mr. Pearson's memoirs, _Mike_.  People should look at it for a good account of what really went on.  Canada was actually very "cozy with the U.S.", something Mr. Travers now decries us for being.  The "peacekeeping" force was in fact as much an American idea as Canadian; the U.S. asked us to front it for them at the UN as a way of salving Franco-British amour propre, i.e. so it did not look publicly as if the latter were bowing to the overwhelming power of the former.  Which of course they were.  The U.S was threatening to bring down the pound amongst other things.
> 
> References:
> http://www.amazon.com/Mike-memoirs-Honourable-Lester-Pearson/dp/0802002544
> http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2001/09/boughton.htm



Mark
Ottawa


----------



## time expired

The euphoria sweeping the MSM and seemingly the whole World ,on President Murbarak leaving his post is surely a

little premature.How does anyone believe that a country that is 116th in GNP per capita ($2771),Canada by the way

is 11th at $45888,will ever be able to support the systems and institutions required to maintain a viable democratic

system.

I can only see two possible outcomes,the military,when the people realize that you can not eat democracy,will clamp down

and we will see more of what we have had but with a new strongman that we can all hate or when the pot starts to

boil again the Islamist radicals will see their chance make their move and seize power.Naturally they will use the elections

to do this and them claim it was all done democratically,and of course our liberal friends here in the West will agree with

them,then they will eliminate the opposition and never have an election again,an effective Ha mas tactic used before in

the Gaza strip.

OK someone tell me I am old pessimist and completely out of touch with the modern world and I don't understand the power

of Twitter.

                                                                       Regards


----------



## GAP

Human nature being what it is, the above scenario makes perfect sense to me


----------



## tomahawk6

Protests have spread to Algeria. The government shuts down web and Facebook. Thousand of protestors have been arrested. This entire thread is mistitled. None of these countries are failed islamic states at least not yet. An islamic state to my mind is one that operates under sharia law.


----------



## nuclearzombies

:2c:Though it's hard not to root for the citizens, the unfortunate reality is this is a potentially unstable mess just waiting for the wrong individual or group to exploit the chaos of the situation(s). My concern is the domino effect of these collapsing autocratic regimes will ultimately result in less political stability through the region, and that any resultant power vacuums may yield something far worse than it's progenator. The optimist in me hopes that calm heads will prevail, and reforms will be positive ones. The pessimist in me is convinced one or more exremist groups are going to use this unrest as a context to conduct violence to fill whatever cockamamie agenda. The pessimist also resents the implication that democracy is the only way to go. It isn't. Installing democracy is not in and of itself a solution, only a part. You simply cannot go off of autocracy "cold turkey", and I believe the Egyptian Military is on that same wavelength.

My compliments to the folks serving with the Egyptian Armed Forces, for the most part their members have shown excellent discipline and courtesy throughout this situation. But I tell ya's, if anybody tried to paint crap on my AFV, I would go into an apoplectic fit :threat:


----------



## 57Chevy

Algeria police stifle Egypt-inspired protest
Thousands of riot police block march through capital

ALGIERS, Feb 12 (Reuters) - Thousands of police in riot gear blocked off the centre of Algeria’s capital on Saturday and stopped government opponents from staging a protest march that sought to emulate Egypt’s popular revolt.

Small groups of demonstrators angry at President Abdelaziz Bouteflika gathered in May 1 Square in the centre of Algiers shouting “Bouteflika out!.” They waved newspaper front pages reporting Friday’s overthrow of Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak.

But riot police hemmed them in, stopping them from carrying out a plan to march through the city. Other protesters trying to reach the square found their way blocked and at least one of the protest organisers was arrested.

“It is a state of siege,” said Abdeslam Ali Rachedi, a university lecturer and government opponent.

After about three hours, hundreds of people left the square quietly, with police opening up gaps in their cordon to let them through. Some 200 young men from a poor neighbourhood nearby stayed on the square. Some threw objects at police.

Mubarak’s resignation and last month’s overthrow of Tunisia’s leader have electrified the Arab world and led many to ask which state could be next in a region with an explosive mix of authoritarian rule and popular anger.

Widespread unrest in Algeria could have implications for the world economy because it is a major oil and gas exporter. But many analysts say a revolt is unlikely because the government can use its energy wealth to resolve most grievances.

HUGE POLICE DEPLOYMENT

Officials had banned Saturday’s protest, citing public order concerns. A massive police mobilisation, which started on Friday afternoon, appeared to have stifled it.

“I am sorry to say the government has deployed a huge force to prevent a peaceful march. This is not good for Algeria’s image,” said Mustafa Bouchachi, a leader of the League for Human Rights which helped organise the protest.

The protest was not backed by the main trade unions or the biggest opposition parties. Nearly all members of Algeria’s radical Islamist groups, which were banned in the 1990s but still have grassroots influence, stayed away.

Responding to opposition pressure, government officials say they are working hard to create more jobs and improve housing, and they have promised more democratic freedoms including the lifting of a state of emergency in force for 19 years.

Reuters reporters at the demonstration said there was a hardcore of about 150 protesters and probably substantially more but it was hard to determine how many because they were mingled with onlookers.

They said they saw police detaining a handful of protesters. There was also a small counter-protest nearby, with people chanting “We want peace not chaos!” and “Algeria is not Egypt!”

Estimates given by police and protest organisers for the numbers involved diverged greatly.

The Interior Ministry said in a statement: “An attempt to organise a march was recorded today at May 1 Square by a crowd estimated at 250 people. Fourteen people were detained and immediately released.”

Officials with the opposition RCD party, which helped organise the protest, told Reuters the demonstrators totalled between 7,000 and 10,000 and that 1,000 people were arrested.
          _____________________________________________________________________________
also:
Now revolution takes hold in Algeria: Hundreds arrested as '30,000' riot police try to quell democracy march inspired by downfall of Hosni Mubarak
Algeria uprising

 *  Estimated police figures outnumber demonstrators by three to one 
 * Human rights activist says more than 400 arrested 
 * Government cuts food prices and promises end of state of emergency to mollify demonstrators
Thousands of riot police arrested hundreds of demonstrators in the Algerian capital today as they tried to stop a banned pro-democracy rally a day after Egypt's authoritarian leader was toppled.
Armed police blocked off streets in Algiers and set up security barricades at strategic points along the march route and outside the city to try to stop busloads of demonstrators from reaching the capital.
Armed police were also posted near newspaper headquarters.

Organisers of the march estimated some 10,000 people had flooded Algiers, where they skirmished with riot police attempting to block off streets and disperse the crowd.

News reports suggested security forces outnumbered demonstrators. The Algerian daily La Liberte said some 30,000 riot police had been deployed in the capital.
Ali Yahia Abdenour, a human rights activist, said more than 400 people - including women and foreign journalists - have been arrested.
Abdenour, who heads the Algerian League for the Defense of Human Rights, said some 28,000 security forces were deployed in Algiers to block the march.
Protesters chanted slogans including 'No to the police state' and 'Bouteflika out,' a reference to President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who has been in power since 1999.

Under the country's long-standing state of emergency, protests are banned in Algiers, but the government's repeated warnings for people to stay out of the streets apparently fell on deaf ears.
The march comes at a sensitive time in Algeria - just a day after the uprising in Egypt that forced Hosni Mubarak to abandon the presidency after 30 years. It also comes on the heels of a 'people's revolution' in neighbouring Tunisia that pushed President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali into exile on January 14.
Some observers have predicted Algeria could be the next Arab country hit by the wave of popular protests.

The democratic domino-effect has electrified the Arab world and led many to ask which country could see uprisings in a region where a mix of authoritarian rule and popular anger are the norm.

pictures and video at link...

                             (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)


----------



## Kat Stevens

It will be interesting to see, five years from now, how many of these pro-democracy protesters on the front pages will setting their sisters on fire for daring to show a little ankle at the beach.


----------



## OldSolduer

Nature abhors a vacuum. I bet the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the military, opposition parties and the democracy movement.

Just my two cents, plus the HST.


----------



## Dennis Ruhl

Kat Stevens said:
			
		

> It will be interesting to see, five years from now, how many of these pro-democracy protesters on the front pages will setting their sisters on fire for daring to show a little ankle at the beach.



Exactly! I suspect few of those democratic idealists who helped overthrow the Shah of Iran had any idea that they would end up in a 7th Century theocracy.


----------



## The Bread Guy

A few more tidbits to share from the Muslim Brotherhood's web page, to give only a bit of a feel of what they've been telling the world in English via their web page.



> .... The Brotherhood has been working for years on projects to create a civic charter and a constitution, preparing for the time when a new democratic government came to power. During the past week of protests, members of the cross-partisan groups were able to quickly reactivate their networks and help form a united opposition front. It is likely that these members will play a key role in drafting Egypt's new constitution.
> 
> Over the last 30 years, the Brotherhood has developed expertise in electoral competition and representation, and has developed new professional competencies and skills, forging closer ties with Egyptian activists, researchers, journalists, and politicians outside the Islamist camp. The leadership is more internally diverse today than ever before.
> 
> There is a new generation of Islamist democracy activists both inside and outside the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood is using discretion in its function in the uprising, aware that the greater its role, the higher the risk of a violent crackdown. There is a historic precedent for this in the harsh wave of repression that followed its strong showing in the 2005 parliamentary elections. Its immediate priority is to ensure that President Hosni Mubarak steps down and that the era of corruption and dictatorship associated with his rule comes to an end. The Brotherhood also knows that a smooth transition to a democratic system will require an interim government palatable to the military and the West, so it has indicated that it would not seek positions in the new government itself ....


"Clarifying the Muslim Brotherhood," 7 Feb 11




> .... It is true that Egypt , mainly due to  economic and other reasons, had to sign the infamous peace treaty at Camp David, which only formally ended the state of belligerency between Israel and largest and most powerful Arab country. But it is also true that the vast majority of Egyptians continued to hate Israel as a hostile and criminal entity despite all American inducements and bribes to create good chemistry between Egyptians and Israelis.
> 
> In the final analysis, it would be a form of morbid imagination to expect Egyptians, who nearly on a daily basis watch Zionist thugs and terrorists murder, terrorize and savage their coreligionists and brethren in Palestine and destroy their homes, bulldoze their farms, and expel them form their places of residence ....


"Of course, Israel is Egypt's enemy," 7 Feb 11




> .... Khaled Hamza, Ikhwanweb's chief editor, strongly condemned statements by jihadist groups affiliated with  Al-Qaeda  concerning the ongoing protests in Egypt, calling for Egyptians to wage violent "Jihad" to topple the regime in Egypt.
> 
> Hamza confirmed the Muslim Brotherhood's firm stance against use of  violence  to achieve legitimate popular demands, rejecting any interference in Egypt’s domestic affairs. He stressed that Egyptians are capable of solving their problem without intrusion, meddling and prying from foreign groups such as Alqaeda and simialr groups advocating the use of violence.
> 
> The MB is confident that Egyptians will ignore latest al Qaeda statements and its ideology, which contradict with the basic tenets of Islam and the peacedul nature of the Egyptian people.
> 
> Hamza confirmed that the current revolution in Egypt is the "People’s revolution" not an Islamic one, and includes all sects, trends and religions. Egyptian men, women, children, Muslims and Christians have united in their call for freedom and democracy, and the MB group has participated as part of the people ....


"MB denounces Al-Qaeda's call to Egypt's protestors to wage Jihad," 9 Feb 11]"MB denounces Al-Qaeda's call to Egypt's protestors to wage Jihad," 9 Feb 11




> .... We aim to achieve reform and rights for all: not just for the Muslim Brotherhood, not just for Muslims, but for all Egyptians. We do not intend to take a dominant role in the forthcoming political transition. We are not putting forward a candidate for the presidential elections scheduled for September.
> 
> While we express our openness to dialogue, we also re-assert the public’s demands, which must be met before any serious negotiations leading to a new government. The Mubarak regime has yet to show serious commitment to meeting these demands or to moving toward substantive, guaranteed change.
> 
> As our nation heads toward liberty, however, we disagree with the claims that the only options in Egypt are a purely secular, liberal democracy or an authoritarian theocracy. Secular liberal democracy of the American and European variety, with its firm rejection of religion in public life, is not the exclusive model for a legitimate democracy.
> 
> In Egypt, religion continues to be an important part of our culture and heritage. Moving forward, we envision the establishment of a democratic, civil state that draws on universal measures of freedom and justice, which are central Islamic values. We embrace democracy not as a foreign concept that must be reconciled with tradition, but as a set of principles and objectives that are inherently compatible with and reinforce Islamic tenets ....


"What the Muslim Brothers Want," 11 Feb 11

_- edited to fix missing link -_


----------



## MarkOttawa

The conclusion of a lengthy substantive post at his blog by David Akin of Sun Media:

Reporting on the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt
http://davidakin.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2011/2/13/4749573.html



> ...
> All of which is to say: Journalists reporting on the situation in Egypt would be fools to ignore the Muslim Brotherhood. But journalists on the ground in Egypt have no reason, at this point, to come to the conclusions that Levant and Kelly have arrived at, that the Brotherhood should be condemned as violent fundamentalists. The reality, for now at least, is much more complicated.



Mark
Ottawa


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## MarkOttawa

But a very cautionary note at the _National Post's_ "Full Comment" (further links at original):

Lawrence Solomon: Cairo’s protesters don’t speak for Egypt
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/02/13/lawrence-solomon-cairos-protesters-dont-speak-for-egypt/



> Mubarak is deposed, to the general delight of Westerners who watched for 18 days as Cairo’s democracy protesters challenged his regime. The Westerners are wrong, however, both in thinking the protesters can achieve any good through democracy anytime soon, and in thinking of democracy as inherently desirable.
> 
> Democracy is not an end in itself but a means to an end. In Western countries, the end we seek is most famously stated as “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” a phrase in the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Other Western societies seek similar ends — the French tout liberté, égalité, fraternité, Australians life, liberty, and prosperity, Canadians life, liberty, and security of the person. Our Western system of democracy is merely the most effective system of governance devised to date to allow us to achieve our ends.
> 
> In Egypt, the ends that democracy would bring are more likely death, submission and the pursuit of jihad, as defined by the country’s Muslim Brotherhood. “The Koran is our constitution, the Jihad is our way, and the Death for Allah is our most exalted wish,” it proclaims. The word Islam does mean “submission.”
> 
> Most Egyptians — three-quarters of its overwhelmingly Muslim population, public opinion polls say — want “strict imposition of Sharia law” and a larger proportion wants policies that most in the West would view as human rights abuses — 82% would stone adulterers and 84% want the death penalty for Muslims who leave their faith...
> 
> ...traditional Egypt need not forever prevail. A poll just released by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, taken between Feb. 5 and Feb. 8 of residents of Cairo and Alexandria, the two centres of protest, shows both how different the major cities are from the rest of the country, and how much hope there is for a modern Egypt in the future.
> 
> The protest was mostly driven by the economy, with 37% citing either “poor economic conditions” or “Unemployment/Job conditions.” Corruption came in next, at 22%, followed by “poor delivery of services like electricity and water” at 5%. The social causes touted by the Western media were all but non-existent: Just 3% cited “political repression/no democracy” and another 3% cited “abuses by security services/arrests/torture etc.” Neither are the populations in these urban centres motivated by fundamentalism. Only 4% complained of a “Regime not Islamic enough,” only 4% of a “Regime Too Connected to the U.S.,” and just 3% of a “Regime Too Supportive of Israel.” In a hypothetical election for president, one-third of the residents of these cities favoured either Mubarak (16%) or his vice-president, Omar Suleiman (17%), compared to 26% for Amr Musa, a prominent diplomat...
> 
> Even in this urban population, democracy does not yet loom large. When asked what they hoped to see for Egypt in five year’s time, the top choice at 26% was a country “whose might and power is respected and feared throughout the Middle East and Africa.” Just 22% wanted an Egypt “widely praised as the first real democracy in the Arab world.”
> 
> Yet it is also easy to imagine a Western-style democracy in the future, following more of the urbanization and Westernization that Egypt has seen in recent decades. In addition to the 22% now democratically inclined, another 17% want Egypt to become “open and developed enough to welcome 20 million tourists from around the world.” Those tourists, and that development, would be a powerful force for change — if we don’t pre-empt it by forcing a crude democracy on Egypt before it has the opportunity to join the modern world.



Mark
Ottawa


----------



## a_majoor

Interesting post on Instapundit:



> It is a commonplace that the history of civilisation is largely the history of weapons. In particular, the connection between the discovery of gunpowder and the overthrow of feudalism by the bourgeoisie has been pointed out over and over again. And though I have no doubt exceptions can be brought forward, I think the following rule would be found generally true: that ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance. Thus, for example, tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, longbows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon–so long as there is no answer to it–gives claws to the weak.
> 
> So where does Twitter fit in?



Social media tools Will be in play as Islamic radicals, pro democracy activists and the military jockey for power in Egypt. Since Egypt has demonstrated the ability to "throw the switch" on the Internet, the Military currently has the upper hand in that battlefield. This is a very crude countermeasure, however (something like nuking the battlefield) with lots of negative implications for the larger economy (which complicates things, if the economy slumps more, the causes of the revolution will be amplified).

Islamic radicals can spread the message through the mosque, and mass distribution of cassette tapes of sermons and speeches by radical Imans and Moslem Brotherhood leaders are old hat in Egypt, so WRT communications I'd say the Islamic radicals have the upper hand...


----------



## The Bread Guy

Thucydides said:
			
		

> Social media tools Will be in play as Islamic radicals, pro democracy activists and the military jockey for power in Egypt. Since Egypt has demonstrated the ability to "throw the switch" on the Internet, the Military currently has the upper hand in that battlefield. This is a very crude countermeasure, however (something like nuking the battlefield) with lots of negative implications for the larger economy (which complicates things, if the economy slumps more, the causes of the revolution will be amplified).


Not to mention an element of "cutting one's nose off to spite one's face" given how much of the economy the military is involved in (around 30% according to some).


----------



## 57Chevy

Stashing away billions is what I call corrupt to the very bone.
Did anyone ever tell him that he will not be taking it down into the pit with him.
                                        ________________________________________ 

Hosni Mubarak used last days in power to stash billions
Ousted Egyptian president shifted fortune to untraceable accounts

NEW YORK/CAIRO - Hosni Mubarak used the 18 days it took for protesters to topple him to shift his vast wealth into untraceable accounts overseas, Western intelligence sources have said. 

The former Egyptian president is accused of amassing a fortune of more than about $5 billion - although some suggest it could be as much as $65 billion - during his 30 years in power. It is claimed his wealth was tied up in foreign banks, investments, bullion and properties in London, New York, Paris and Beverly Hills, Calif.

In the knowledge his downfall was imminent, Mubarak is understood to have attempted to place his assets out of reach of potential investigators.

On Friday night, Swiss authorities announced they were freezing any assets Mubarak and his family may hold in the country's banks while pressure was growing for the UK to do the same. Mubarak has strong connections to London and it is thought he has millions stashed in the UK.

But a senior Western intelligence source claimed that Mubarak had begun moving his fortune in recent weeks.

"We're aware of some urgent conversations within the Mubarak family about how to save these assets," the source said. "And we think their financial advisers have moved some of the money around. If he had real money in Zurich, it may be gone by now." 

The revelation came as the ruling military council, which took power as Mubarak stepped down on Friday, confirmed its pledge eventually to hand power to an elected civilian government, although it did not set a date.

                           (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)


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## tomahawk6

Corruption is endemic throughout the world - including the US. We see people get into politics with little money and years later are millionaires. It is very hard to eliminate even in dictatorships like China and Russia even though both continue to try. The Egyptian military like China have gotten into business to augment funding and to put money into the pockets of the generals. Look at the Assad regime. They have amassed quite a fortune and they are supported by ruthless security services and an army that doesnt mind shooting their own people to put down revolt. Thats the difference between Syria/Iran and Egypt/Tunisia. The media didnt do much when Iran was killing its own democracy protestors but rebellion in pro-Western countries is a different matter. The message to our allies is that you have a big target on your chest and the anti-western forces will do everything they can to foment internal strife. Of course we could have done the same to Iran and Syria but our leaders dont have the stones to do what needs to be done.


----------



## a_majoor

Why the confused responses by the administration?

http://althouse.blogspot.com/2011/02/why-do-some-people-presume-best-of.html



> *Why do some people presume the best of the Egyptian protesters and the worst of the Tea Party protesters?*
> 
> This is something I've been mulling over especially after I heard Rush Limbaugh tie up a long monologue like this:
> 
> _ I find Obama's respect for protests funny.  He hates the Tea Party, he hates their rallies, he accuses them of being all kinds of things, but the protesters in Egypt, why, they are great, Muslim Brotherhood, secular, they're not interested in violence. Obama loves these people in Egypt all the while he is in violation of a federal judge.  This man is so concerned about the law in Egypt, he's got his own health care bill declared unconstitutional, and he acts like the court has never ruled.  So all this talk about democracy and the rule of law, give me a break, he's flipping Judge Vinson the bird.
> 
> He may claim to love democracy in Egypt.  He knows what that group is.  He's a community organizer.  He knows exactly what that group is.  That's why he's such a big supporter of that.  He knows that group's just a bunch of agitators.  But to sit around and start talking about, "Oh, we love democracy, and whenever we see it bubbling up, we're gonna support it out there."  Yeah, except when the judge says your health care bill's unconstitutional, we're gonna ignore that.  He loves democracy in action except when it's the Tea Party.  Then all of a sudden they become a bunch of tea baggers, as far as he's concerned.  Yeah.  I'm not kidding.  The American Tea Party, they're responsible for shooting people, they're responsible for all the violence. I mean, who's worked this crowd up into a fevered pitch?  I don't know that my program's on the air there.  And if it were -- he-he-he-he-he-he-he -- they wouldn't like me much.
> _
> There's a lot of stuff in there. I'm focused on the question I put in the title. Obviously, I'm also interested in the health care case. He wove that into the discussion — awkwardly... or elegantly?
> 
> Meanwhile, the NYT reports:
> 
> The Egyptian military, complying with most of the principal demands of the opposition, said Sunday that it had dissolved the country’s parliament, suspended its constitution and called for elections in six months, according to a statement by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces read on state television. It also said it would honor all of Egypt’s international agreements, including the peace treaty with Israel.
> 
> The military did not address a third major opposition demand to lift emergency rule. In previous statements, the council had promised to take that step once the security situation improved.
> 
> So, at this point, it's pretty much a military coup, making references to an entity called "the opposition," dissolving parliament, and suspending the constitution. I'm just trying to understand what's going on and why we should feel so much confidence about it.
> 
> Or is it political theater? Perhaps Obama et al. are only acting as though they have full confidence that the outcome will be democratic and free, because it is a way to state our expectations, make that outcome more likely, and position us to pressure the military government if that doesn't happen.
> 
> Have I stumbled into the answer to my original question up there in the post title? If it's "political theater," then a completely different set of gestures with respect to the Tea Party makes perfect sense.


----------



## OldSolduer

No good is going to come of this. I have a bad feeling about this move towards "democracy".

just my opinion.


----------



## GAP

The scary thing is, is that most of these countries have known little else except dictator/strong man ruling them. This predisposes them to pick what they know/are comfortable with. 

In many of the on street interviews from Egypt people were wondering where they are going to get someone like Mubarak again...sheesh....

In some cases they'll oust one dictator to pick another worse one.......see IRAN....


----------



## MarkOttawa

Two useful pieces:

_STRATFOR_:

Egypt: The Distance Between Enthusiasm and Reality
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110213-egypt-distance-between-enthusiasm-and-reality

_WSJ_:

Understanding the Muslim Brotherhood
In 1979, Western thinkers were quick to call the Ayatollah Khomeini 'moderate' and 'progressive.'
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&tbs=nws%3A1&q=%22It%27s+what+the+good+people%22&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=



> It's what the good people on West 40th Street like to call a "Times Classic." On Feb. 16, 1979, the New York Times ran a lengthy op-ed by Richard Falk, a professor of international law at Princeton, under the headline "Trusting Khomeini."
> 
> "The depiction of [Khomeini] as fanatical, reactionary and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and happily false," wrote Mr. Falk. "What is also encouraging is that his entourage of close advisers is uniformly composed of moderate, progressive individuals."
> 
> After carrying on in this vein for a few paragraphs, the professor concluded: "Having created a new model of popular revolution based, for the most part, on nonviolent tactics, Iran may yet provide us with a desperately needed model of humane governance for a third-world country."
> 
> Whoops.
> 
> The Times is at it again. Last week, the paper published an op-ed from Essam El-Errian, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood's Guidance Council, who offered this soothing take on his organization: "We aim to achieve reform and rights for all: not just for the Muslim Brotherhood, not just for Muslims, but for all Egyptians." Concurring with that view, Times reporter Nicholas Kulish wrote on Feb. 4 that members of the Brotherhood "come across as civic-minded people of faith."..



Mark
Ottawa


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## Rifleman62

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/losing_ground_across_mideast_ARysFD44h1u3rbZKzza2JI

New York Post

O's losing ground across mideast 

Peter Brookes

It would be easier to forgive the Obama administration's lackluster handling of the political crisis in Egypt over the last couple of weeks if things were going our way elsewhere in the Middle East. Unfortunately, they're not. 

Start with Iran. Despite two years of engagement, Tehran is still developing nuclear weapons -- significantly shaking stability in the Middle East as they do. 

And, sorry: Neither cyber ops like the "Stuxnet" computer virus (which we may have been behind) nor UN-prescribed economic sanctions seem to have put much of a hitch in the giddyap of Iran's runaway nuclear horses. 

Despite the president saying that a nuclear Iran is "unacceptable," Iran may become a card-carrying member of the Mushroom Cloud Club this year; some experts believe it already has gathered enough uranium for at least a couple of A-bombs. 

Not to mention that its ever-expanding space-launch and satellite programs have put Tehran closer to developing an ICBM capable of reaching the US homeland -- all while our missile-defense programs lag behind the threat. 

Then there's Syria, where the Bush administration recalled the US ambassador five years ago over probable Syrian involvement in the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister. Obama ended Damascus' "time-out" this year by sending a new ambassador -- signaling that it's OK that President Bashar Assad continues his anti-US stance, steps up his crackdown on political opposition and delays any progress on finding peace with his neighbor Israel. 

Washington also appears to be looking the other way on Damascus' lack of cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency on Syria's (covert) nuclear program, its growing alliance with Iran and its continuing financial, moral and military support of Hamas and Hezbollah. 

And don't forget about Lebanon right next door, where, on the administration's watch, both Iran and Syria have dug their claws in again -- after the Cedar Revolution loosed their near-death grip on the country in 2005. Tehran's and Damascus' proxy Hezbollah was recently able to bully its candidate into the prime minister's job, setting back US (and Israeli) interests. 

In Iraq, where the remaining 50,000 US troops will be leaving this year, there's concern about growing Iranian influence due to American inattention -- threatening to create an arc of Persian power across the Middle East's midsection. 

Meanwhile, the Middle East peace process -- where success, the Obama administration insisted, would set everything right with the region -- has gone nowhere in the last two years. 
Instead, America's relations with Israel hit new lows on a regular basis; we're no closer to a two-state solution for the Israelis and Palestinians, and Hamas still has an iron grip on Gaza.

It doesn't end there.

Key Arab partners in places like Jordan and Saudi Arabia must be unnerved by how the Obama administration got caught flatfooted by Egypt's turmoil, had trouble finding its "voice" -- and seemingly had no plan for influencing the outcome. 

There's still hope for a positive ending in Egypt -- but that's far from guaranteed at this point. Lots of nightmarish scenarios could come to pass instead, including an Islamist takeover of the Cairo government. 

Unless the Obama administration gets its Middle East act together soon and starts to get some traction on these pressing problems, our influence will continue to wane, undermining vital US interests. 

If things don't change, we're not going to like what -- or who -- steps in to fill the void the Obama administration's policies are creating in the Middle East 

Peter Brookes is a Heritage Foundation senior fellow and a former deputy assistant secretary of defense.


----------



## MarkOttawa

Some serious research at _Taylor Empire Airways_ on sexual harassment (and more, "Lara Logan’s sexual assault") in Egypt:

Poisoned environment
http://taylorempireairways.com/2011/02/poisoned-environment/

Just a note in keeping with Chris Taylor's blog--Imperial Airways used to serve Egypt with flying boats:
http://www.flightglobalimages.com/pictures_1571623/-february-imperial-airways-began-regular-operation-of-southampton-alexandria-services-with-c-class-flying-boats-the-first-service-was-by-g-aduw-castor-the-aircraft-had-departed-on-6-february-but-returned-with-oiled-plugs%3B-rough-water-prevented-dep.html



>



Mark
Ottawa


----------



## 57Chevy

UN Chief Deeply Troubled by Bahrain Violence

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday he is deeply troubled by the violent crackdown on anti-government protesters in the Gulf kingdom of Bahrain. The U.N. chief also said there is "no turning back" on promised elections and reforms in Egypt, where he urged leaders to start working together. 

Mr. Ban acknowledged that each country and situation is unique, but he called for respect for human rights on all sides as change sweeps the Middle East.

"Throughout this period, the United Nations has been clear and consistent in supporting basic human rights and freedoms. Above all, we have insisted on respect for the rights of peaceful protest and assembly, freedom of the press and access to information," he said.

Mr. Ban told reporters that he is deeply troubled about reports of violence in the small Gulf kingdom of Bahrain, where several protesters were killed when riot police fired tear gas and beat demonstrators demanding political reforms.

"Here as elsewhere, violence should not be used against peaceful demonstrators and against journalists.  It must stop," said the U.N. chief. 

'"Those responsible must be brought to justice. In responding to peaceful protests, authorities have an obligation to respect human rights. There should be no violence from any quarter.  I urge all parties to exercise restraint."

The secretary-general said that in a number of countries, transitions have been initiated and reforms have been promised, and he urged leaders to deliver on those promises. He also urged leaders to listen to the frustrations of their people, especially their large youth population. 

"Many young people have been frustrated by their inability to participate, with decent jobs and freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and freedom of communication should be fully guaranteed," said Mr. Ban. "Those have been largely neglected in the region.  That is the lesson which the leaders should learn and try to change, as soon as possible, reflecting such strong voices from their own people."

On Egypt, where weeks of protests succeeded in unseating President Hosni Mubarak, Mr. Ban said he welcomes public commitments that have been made on the holding of elections as part of a transition to democratic, civilian rule.  He said those commitments must be fulfilled and there can be no turning back.

He added that the United Nations stands ready to assist in any way.

                                        (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)


----------



## GAP

The majority in Bahrain are Sunni Shia, but ruled by the minority Sunni....most of the activists are Shia....They may have legitimate concerns, but there also may be an invisible backer, especially if any change affects the continuance of the US bases....

Correction on the majority segment....


----------



## MarkOttawa

'Twixt the devil and the deep blue sea:

U.S. Takes Cautious Line on Fifth Fleet's Base 
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703561604576150662599202064.html



> Unrest in Bahrain is putting the future of a key U.S. ally in doubt, a microcosm of how the Middle East's roiling political landscape is challenging U.S. policy in the region.
> 
> A U.S. ally in a geographically strategic perch, Bahrain is positioned near the world's most important oil reserves, and its Sunni government has been seen as a reliable bulwark against nearby Shiite-led Iran. At the center of U.S. strategy there is the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet—a base that is home to 3,000 military personnel who oversee the 30 naval ships and some 30,000 sailors that patrol the Persian Gulf and Arabian and Red seas.
> 
> The Bahrain base isn't the most important U.S. base in the Middle East, but it oversees all of its naval operations there, a critical task. While it could conceivably be moved, former officials say no other country has been as reliably welcoming to the U.S. presence as Bahrain.
> 
> "Could we find some other place to put a fleet headquarters? Probably we could," said Anthony Cordesman, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "But if Bahrain becomes unstable, if it comes under Iranian influence...[that] threatens the entire structure of world oil markets."
> 
> The U.S. has so far been relatively quiet in condemning Bahrain's moves against protesters. President Barack Obama, at a news conference this week, pointedly avoided criticizing Bahrain's leaders as he eventually did amid building protests against Egypt's now-deposed Hosni Mubarak.
> 
> But the State Department on Thursday expressed its sharpest concerns yet over the events in Bahrain, highlighting the delicate path it continues to carve between guarding its longtime alliances in the region and supporting its emerging democracy movements.
> 
> On Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke with her Bahraini counterpart to express "deep concern about recent events and [urge] restraint moving forward," according to a State Department official...
> 
> American ties to Bahrain go back to the 1940s, when U.S. Navy vessels first began to use the port. The U.S. took over the navy base in Bahrain from the British in 1971.
> 
> Though Bahrain was heavily used in the Gulf war, the U.S. presence remained modest until Sept. 11, 2001, when the U.S. dramatically rebuilt its naval presence in the Persian Gulf. Today the base is a logistics resupply point and command and control node. Two carrier battle groups, one led by the USS Carl Vinson the other by the USS Enterprise, are under Fifth Fleet command.
> 
> Bahrain has little in the way of its own energy reserves and a small military. But its location near key Saudi fields, and its rulers' pro-American track record, have given it outsized importance. U.S. efforts to build up defense cooperation among the Arab gulf states would be undermined if Bahrain's Sunni royal family were to be replaced with a pro-Iranian administration.
> 
> Some analysts see Iranian influence among the Shiite protesters in Bahrain, and few doubt Tehran would like to see the U.S. forced to pull out of the kingdom. "It is a natural goal of Iran to try and expel the Fifth Fleet from Bahrain," said Elliott Abrams, a former senior State Department official...



I suspect many of these troops are Baluchs:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/africa-mideast/bahrains-crackdown-shows-the-limits-of-a-revolution/article1910989/



> ...
> It was a familiar pattern: In each of the past four decades, whenever people – usually Shia Muslim Bahrainis – protested too vehemently for political or economic reform, the government summoned the same forces.
> 
> And the forces have been specially chosen for the task. They are almost entirely made up of foreign nationals, mostly Sunni Muslims from Pakistan; often with contempt for Shiites whom they regard as heretics. The forces’ officers hail from Bahrain, Saudi Arabia or Jordan.
> 
> “It’s not like a domestic police force or army,” said Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs Centre in Herzliya, Israel. “These guys are paid to beat people such as these protesters and to do it without feeling.”..



Mark
Ottawa


----------



## MarkOttawa

Two posts on Canada's role at the Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute's _3Ds Blog_:

1) J.L. Granatstein - Canada and Cairo: What Influence?
http://www.cdfai.org/the3dsblog/?p=106



> What’s all the cheering about? Yes, it was heartening to see the crowds of young and old Egyptians in Cairo demonstrating more or less peacefully in recent weeks, while the army stood by, its arms folded. Yes, it is always wonderful to see a despot — and he was no benevolent one — like Hosni Mubarak toppled.
> 
> But what is next? The assumption in the Canadian media, just as much as on the streets of Cairo, seems to be that democracy will inevitably follow. Perhaps. Democracy is always a good thing, but unfortunately there is absolutely no guarantee that anything approximating democracy will flow from these events.
> 
> We need to remember that it was the Egyptian military that took over from Mubarak, and these men are a collection of faceless generals all interested in protecting their stolen wealth and acquired perks. In the background lurk even hungrier colonels, eager for their turn at the trough. And in the anterooms waits the Muslim Brotherhood, the only organized political grouping in Egypt, one that has hitherto been outlawed but semi-tolerated. Its credo is Islamist, anti-Semitic, and bitterly anti-Israeli.
> 
> And just offstage, cheering on the development of as much chaos as possible, sit the ayatollahs of Iran, seeing the opportunity to spread their anti-Americanism and enmity to the “Zionist entity.”
> 
> So what should the Canadian position in all this be? The Harper government had it exactly right during the demonstrations: stability was important and an orderly transition was critical. That still remains the correct position, despite what the Jeffrey Simpsons and Jim Traverses might write in their columns. The reality is that Canada has never had much influence in the Middle East, and such as it has today should be directed toward promoting stability...



2) Mark Collins - Canadian Suez Policy was not About the Middle East
http://www.cdfai.org/the3dsblog/?p=105



> A letter of mine sent to the _Toronto Star_ that was not published:
> 
> "Re: *Travers: Once a Middle East player, Canada now a spectator, Feb. 12*
> http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/937508--travers-once-a-middle-east-player-canada-now-a-spectator
> 
> Mr. Travers fails to understand what Canadian policy - as much Prime Minister St. Laurent’s as External Affairs Minister Pearson’s - on Suez in 1956 was really about.  Their main concern was not the Middle East.  It was rather finding a way to avoid a complete falling out between the U.S. (which strongly opposed Western military intervention) on the one hand and the U.K. and France (who were attacking Egypt in collusion with Israel) on the other.   It was feared that such a major falling out would be to the great benefit of the USSR, which was just suppressing Hungary.  The main point was to maintain NATO Cold War solidarity, not to bring peace to the Middle East.  The second point was trying to avoid the Soviets’ gaining substantial ground in the Third World generally in reaction to perceived British-French neo-colonialism..."



Mark
Ottawa


----------



## a_majoor

Some people just aren't getting it:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/02/mile-high-building-has-official-go.html#more



> *Mile high building has official go ahead*
> 
> Saudi Arabia-based Kingdom Holding Company, headed by Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal, is going ahead with its plan to build a 1.6-kilometre-high tower in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah. Report from October, 2010
> 
> The mile high tower has been covered here before
> 
> Despite an economic slowdown in much of the world and falling oil prices design work has continued on the Smith and Gill penned Kingdom Tower in Jeddah. The intentions are to create what will be the tallest building in the world, although as of yet no one has much idea of just how tall it will be. Heights mentioned have gone all the way from 1,001 metres upwards.


----------



## 57Chevy

High time for some UN intervention in Bahrain
                                               _________________________

Bahrain troops shoot at protesters, many hit: Ex-MP

MANAMA — Bahraini security forces shot at protesters near Pearl Square on Friday and wounded at least 23, a former Shiite lawmaker said, a day after police forcibly cleared a protest camp from the traffic circle in Manama.

"We think it was the army," said Sayed Hadi, of the Wefaq bloc that resigned from parliament on Thursday.

Another Wefaq MP, Jalal Firooz, said demonstrators had been elsewhere, marking the death of a protester killed earlier this week when riot police fired tear gas at them.

The demonstrators then made for Pearl Square, where army troops who took it over after Thursday's police raid opened fire, Firooz said. Police had no immediate comment.

Lebanon's Hezbollah-run al-Manar television quoted a doctor at Salmaniya hospital in Manama as saying 25 wounded had been admitted, two of them with serious wounds.

"This is a peaceful protest," the doctor, Mahmoud Abbas, told al-Manar. "How can it be confronted with bullets? There is a humanitarian disaster. We cannot handle this."

Witnesses said about 20 police cars had driven toward the square after the initial shooting..

Four people were killed and 231 wounded when riot police raided the protest camp in the early hours of Thursday, when most of the demonstrators were sleeping.

Soldiers in tanks and armoured vehicles later took control of the square, which mainly Shiite protesters had hoped to use as a base similar to Cairo's Tahrir Square, the heart of protests that toppled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Feb. 11.

                                 (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)


----------



## Journeyman

57Chevy said:
			
		

> High time for some UN intervention in Bahrain


 :rofl:

I love when the week ends with laughter.


----------



## aesop081

57Chevy said:
			
		

> High time for some UN intervention in Bahrain



I doubt that poorly-worded, mild-language request to stop would have any effect.


----------



## MarkOttawa

Conference of Defence Associations' media round-up:

Arab World: The real politics have yet to begin
http://www.cdaforumcad.ca/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1298050856/0#0

Note:



> The Economist provides a map of the Arab world with key statistics and facts for each state.
> http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/02/arab_league_map



Mark
Ottawa


----------



## 57Chevy

Journeyman said:
			
		

> I love when the week ends with laughter.





			
				CDN Aviator said:
			
		

> I doubt that poorly-worded, mild-language request to stop would have any effect.


Shooting innocent people while they sleep in not a laughing matter
I was referring to this:


			
				57Chevy said:
			
		

> U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday he is deeply troubled by the violent crackdown on anti-government protesters in the Gulf kingdom of Bahrain.
> ---
> He added that the United Nations stands ready to assist in any way.



Read the full article here: UN Chief Deeply Troubled by Bahrain Violence

Have a nice weekend just the same guys.


----------



## Journeyman

57Chevy said:
			
		

> Shooting innocent people while they sleep in not a laughing matter
> 
> I was referring to this:
> 
> 
> 
> He added that the United Nations stands ready to assist in any way.
Click to expand...

Agreed that shooting people in their sleep is not a laughing matter. 

Believing that the League of Nations II is capable of doing _anything_ useful in this current situation is laughable.

Coming back to further defend the UN, while failing to offer up even a single thought on what substantive actions the UN _could_ do, borders on embarrassing.


ps - the Secretary General being "deeply troubled" is not really a substantive contribution.


----------



## OldSolduer

Journeyman said:
			
		

> He added that the United Nations stands ready to assist in any way.Agreed that shooting people in their sleep is not a laughing matter.
> 
> Believing that the League of Nations II is capable of doing _anything_ useful in this current situation is laughable.
> 
> Coming back to further defend the UN, while failing to offer up even a single thought on what substantive actions the UN _could_ do, borders on embarrassing.
> 
> 
> ps - the Secretary General being "deeply troubled" is not really a substantive contribution.



Once again, epic FAIL. The UN has been hijacked.  :rage:


----------



## MarkOttawa

Many moons ago:

CANADA'S PROPOSED PEACEKEEPING REFORM:
A RAPID REACTION FORCE FOR THE UNITED NATIONS
http://library.jid.org/en/mono35/alvarado.pdf



> BY
> LIEUTENANT COLONEL MAX G. ALVARADO, CANADA
> ...
> Canada, a nation with considerable peacekeeping experience, recognized the problem and
> initiated a study to examine ways the UN could be more responsive and effective in handling
> international crises. The study, involved consultations with peacekeeping experts from various nations,
> took a year to complete, and was presented to the UN in September 1995. The report is a
> comprehensive package which suggests substantial reforms are needed, throughout the UN, in the short
> to mid-term as well as in the future, if peacekeeping is to become efficient and viable. The main thrust of
> the report is mid term reform based on the "vanguard concept." It entails providing the UN with a multinational,
> multi-disciplinary force of about 5,000 personnel available for rapid deployment upon approval
> of the Security Council. The force would consist of a small, permanent HQ established within the
> Secretariat controlling units selected from standby forces contributed by UN members...



To what extent does this still exist?

SHIRBRIG: The Future of Canada’s Contribution to UN Peace Operations?
http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/vo8/no2/army-armee-eng.asp



> ...In the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide, the nation  played a leading role in the establishment of the Multinational Standby High Readiness Brigade for UN Operations (SHIRBRIG) to provide the United Nations with a rapid reaction capability for the initial six months of a peace support operation. Since SHIRBRIG declared its availability for UN operations in January 2000, Canadians have figured prominently in SHIRBRIG deployments to the UN missions in Ethiopia-Eritrea, Liberia, and most recently, Sudan. Canada held the Presidency of SHIRBRIG in 2003, and provided the brigade commander, Brigadier-General Gregory Mitchell, from January 2004 until summer 2006...



Answer: It's been shut down:
http://www.shirbrig.dk/html/2009.htm

Mark
Ottawa


----------



## 57Chevy

Journeyman said:
			
		

> Believing that the League of Nations II is capable of doing _anything_ useful in this current situation is laughable.
> Coming back to further defend the UN, while failing to offer up even a single thought on what substantive actions the UN _could_ do, borders on embarrassing.



Your thinking that the UN is incapable of doing anything borders on embarrassing.

Your discrediting the possibilities of UN intervention does not only border it, but is truly embarrassing.
From your profile, quote  "If in doubt, choose silence"
Please practice what you preach.



			
				Jim Seggie said:
			
		

> Once again, epic FAIL. The UN has been hijacked.  :rage:


So then you must understand that I agree with Mr. Seggie

Marc of Ottawa,
Thanks for the SHIRBRIG information.

That being said.

As soon as someone speaks of UN intervention it is too easy to envision a bunch of blue helmets 
racing to the aid of the oppressed.
That may be a part of the big picture but it is quite far from the reality of the policies and functioning of the UN body.

It is a well known fact that the pen is a mighty weapon.
When applied properly, the UN has proven countless times the world over that its intervention no matter the type or method used has had a prevailing effect.
That initial intervention is first applied through carefully selected dialogue aimed directly at the heart of the problem.
If and where required it will further intervene by initiating trade embargos etc via those countries within the partnership.
In this case, 
and it should be noted as a fine example of further UN intervention.
The British and French unilateral pressure regarding certain exports to Bahrain.
UK arms export licenses under review for MENA states
Britain, France halt security exports to Bahrain and Libya
Britain and France halted exports of some security equipment to Bahrain and Libya after violent clashes between security forces and anti-government protesters in both Arab states.
(That article continues at link)

The initial UN dialogue urging restraint including the condemnation of unlawful acts committed, are seemingly weak in nature to some but they carry the weight and intent of the combined nations.
In my opinion, the State in question (Bahrain) harkened quickly to those demands after some additional action was taken by UN member states.

Result: Crown Prince calls upon political associations to dialogue.
And the latest news:
Bahrain opposition meets to agree demands

MANAMA, Feb 20 (Reuters) - Bahrain’s opposition parties met on Sunday to discuss demands they will present to the Gulf Arab country’s rulers, as protesters gathered in a central Manama square clamouring for immediate political change.
Protesters swept back into Pearl Square late on Saturday after Crown Prince Sheikh Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa ordered troops and armoured vehicles to withdraw and offered to lead a national dialogue after days of unrest that left six dead.

Article continues at link....
                               (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)


----------



## Edward Campbell

I think, 57Chevy, that you failed to note the emphasis in JM's statement. Absent another team like Ralph Bunche, Mike Pearson and Brian Urquart and/or something akin to another "uniting for peace" resolution (UNGA Res 377 (1950)), the UN is a "captive" of either or both of:

1. UNSC vetoes (welded by any one of Britain, China, France, Russia and/or the USA); or

2. Block voes in the UNGA.

This leaves the Secretary General and the UN, itself, limited to hand wringing and platitudes - neither of which offers much anything useful towards acceptable solutions to the Islamic Crescent's latest round of crises.

But, what should the UN do, indeed, what should it be able to do n these situation? In my view: Sweet Fanny Adams. These are domestic, internal matters for the states involved. Let us remember, please, *why* the UN exists. In 1948 the original UN members agreed that they, the whole world, needed:

    * to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and

    * to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and

    * to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and

    * to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

Neither these fundamental purposes nor the more recent (and legally/morally dubious) Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine did or does give the UN any mandate to interfere in the internal affairs of members, absent a real, pressing threat of the "scourge of war," or the "obligations of treaties."

In other words, not only is JM quite correct in saying that UN is hamstrung in the current situation, but that is at it should be. The form of government most likely to meet the legitimate demands of the people of Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Libya and Tunisia is for those peoples, only, to decide and they, alone, have the right to alter and abolish their current governments and replace them with ones which derive their just powers from the consent of those peoples. (Allusions to the US Declaration of Independence are intentional.)

The UN is not the answer to all our problems; sometimes, as now, in the current situation, it is part of the problem - or would be if it was able to do anything except whinge and blather.


----------



## 57Chevy

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> I think, 57Chevy, that you failed to note the emphasis in JM's statement. Absent another team like Ralph Bunche, Mike Pearson and Brian Urquart and/or something akin to another "uniting for peace" resolution (UNGA Res 377 (1950)), the UN is a "captive" of either or both of:
> 1. UNSC vetoes (welded by any one of Britain, China, France, Russia and/or the USA); or
> 2. Block voes in the UNGA.



If I failed to note an emphasis in both of JM's statements perhaps he should have been more specific regarding his position concerning UN matters and not rely so heavily on an assumption.
My initial brief remark "High time for some UN intervention in Bahrain" was in reference to Mr. ki-Moons' ending statement from the article posted in reply #223, of the previous page,(which may or may not have been read) quote " The United Nations stands ready to assist in any way".
I added that because they were shooting innocent people while they were sleeping. Of which I found to be "way out of line".
And therefore "high time for........."
(the use of the word "some" in my quote was for whatever assistance the UN may have been purposed to propose)
Those responsible for such actions are criminal and hopefully they will be dealt with accordingly.



			
				E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> This leaves the Secretary General and the UN, itself, limited to hand wringing and platitudes - neither of which offers much anything useful towards acceptable solutions to the Islamic Crescent's latest round of crises.


 
I don't think the UN has offered a solution to the Islamic crises nor should it undertake to do so.



			
				E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> But, what should the UN do, indeed, what should it be able to do in these situation?.


 
First and foremost the UN is providing a means of much needed dialogue between the governing body and its people.
They are providing for reflection the violent response the government enacted upon their own people. They also provide a means of recognition by supporting the demands of the people that have been made toward the governing body.
The UN states are not without other avenues that can be readily utilized where the need arises, notwithstanding veto action within the body.
Member states may assume an action or response within its own internal dealings with the given state without paying
heed or submitting to pressure from the other member states.



			
				E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> In my view: Sweet Fanny Adams. These are domestic, internal matters for the states involved.


 
In a lot cases that would be an acceptable truth. Diddly squat.  (this is not the case here)
Bahrain did make mention of disregarding any external pressure on internal affairs. As if the whole world would look the other way.
As mentioned, their own reflection bears witness to the keeping within their own law, in that, it is against the principals of Islamic law to use violence against their own people.



			
				E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Let us remember, please, *why* the UN exists. In 1948 the original UN members agreed that they, the whole world, needed:
> * to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and
> * to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and
> * to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and
> * to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.


 
Quite right and very true. 
A gathering of wise phrases for reflection and study.
Of which are found the reason for the UNs view and grounds for support of the people in the current ME uproar.
Except for a doctor likening the outright massacre of innocent people to war there has been no emphasis made to any
possibility of war. If UN intervention was based solely on the possibility of saving future generations from the scourge of war
then it would not be possible for the UN to intervene under any circumstances.
(IMO that particular statement should be amended or deleted)  



			
				E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Neither these fundamental purposes nor the more recent (and legally/morally dubious) Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine did or does give the UN any mandate to interfere in the internal affairs of members, absent a real, pressing threat of the "scourge of war," or the "obligations of treaties."
> In other words, not only is JM quite correct in saying that UN is hamstrung in the current situation, but that is as it should be.



The UN emphasis is not being placed on possibilities of the "scourge of war" in this case as mentioned above, but more so on relative details pertaining to the current situation that are also outlined within the same Charter and noted above, "fundamental human rights", "dignity" etc.
In fact, noting that the UN has only offered the possibility of dialogue and perhaps strong condemnation, as such there is no physical interference with the internal affairs of that nation.



			
				E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> The form of government most likely to meet the legitimate demands of the people of Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Libya and Tunisia is for those peoples, only, to decide and they, alone, have the right to alter and abolish their current governments and replace them with ones which derive their just powers from the consent of those peoples.


 
That's right, and these people should not be slaughtered by their own rulers when trying to do so.
Corruption may be a lasting problem in our world but authoritarian rule is soon to be extinct.



			
				E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> (Allusions to the US Declaration of Independence are intentional.)


 
No one has made demands to install some sort of Middle East Declaration of Independence modelled after the US of A.
Their demands can be seen as being more relative to the French "Droit de L'Homme".
Their demands are clear. They are based on basic human rights that should be enjoyed by all peoples in all the world, and the UN makes well known its position and stands by it.



			
				E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> The UN is not the answer to all our problems; sometimes, as now, in the current situation, it is part of the problem - or would be if it was able to do anything except whinge and blather.



True enough.
It is well known that the talking of peace (peace talks) kill more people than if there was a war.
However, it is in the best interest of all people to contribute to the peace process no matter the time and place.
And no matter who they think they are.
   to the UN

* edited to remove an error


----------



## Journeyman

57Chevy said:
			
		

> ..... authoritarian rule is soon to be extinct.


I disagree



Yes, this response was edited _multiple_ times.


----------



## Fishbone Jones

57Chevy said:
			
		

> authoritarian rule is soon to be extinct.



If your considering millennial time spans such as that from the age of dinosaurs up until ours, _perhaps_ your right. If you're talking our lifetimes or even the next, I don't see the likes of China or North Korea changing anytime soon and can't agree with such a broad statement as the one you've made. You'd have to be able to implicitly guarantee almost the exact, near future, time of those types of regimes demise for your statement to hold water.


----------



## 57Chevy

I admit that I should have added "hopefully" to that phrase when I edited out an irrelevancy.  :facepalm:


----------



## nuclearzombies

My optimist owes my pessimist 20 dollars, after betting the pessimist that certain governments wouldn't crack down in certain ways....


----------



## daftandbarmy

It's about time that these states gave up on their failed experiments with self-rule and gave in to the facts: colonialism was just about they best thing that they ever had going since the death of Sulieman the Magnificent. I'm sure that Colonialism Part II is on the cards in some cases. This could be followed by a more even transition to self-rule.

It would be interesting to see the Italian COA for a sudden collapse of the Ghadaffi regime in Libya, for example. I'm sure they're aware that the UN would likely stand idly by and watch another slaughter of Old Testament proportions take place, much like Rwanda, and are prepared to do something about it...  for a price.


----------



## MarkOttawa

1989 vs 2011--Comparing Communist Europe (USSR excluded) with the Arab world. In 1989 those living in European Communist countries had a clear and attractive alternative to their regimes: Western European social democracy of various types, an alternative that from any rational, moral, economic and indeed emotional view (hard-core believing Communists excepted but they no longer dwelled in that part of the world) was obviously superior to present realities.

The wave of popular unrest now moving around the Arab world has, to use the obvious phrase, uncanny similarities in the underlying sameness of repressive conditions being rebelled against. Could Libya be the new Romania?

What is strikingly different is the absence of an obvious alternative model for government, economy and society in Arab countries. Where is the Arab EU model? As for other possibilities...

Anne Applebaum draws another historical comparison:

In the Arab world, it’s 1848 - not 1989
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/21/AR2011022104244.html

Mark
Ottawa


----------



## MarkOttawa

Canada's middle east influence--historian takes on a former ambassador at the CDFAI's _3Ds Blog_:

B.J. Davis - Historian Gets it Wrong
http://www.cdfai.org/the3dsblog/?p=113

J.L. Granatstein - Response to B.J. Davis - Historian Gets it Wrong
http://www.cdfai.org/the3dsblog/?p=114

Mark
Ottawa


----------



## Journeyman

MarkOttawa said:
			
		

> Canada's middle east influence--historian takes on a former ambassador at the CDFAI's _3Ds Blog_



Gee, a 'heated agreement'





> Granatstein: When Canada speaks, no one listens.
> 
> Davis: Granatstein is correct that we don’t wield a big stick in the Middle East. But we used to wield a small one.
> Now, we don’t wield one at all.


I guess that's what passes in Canadian diplomacy as a "scathing retort." He should work for the UN  :


----------



## sean m

Mercenaries in Libya?  If this is true it seems that Gaddafi is losing support of his armed forces that he is turning to mercenaries to fight. If anyone is curious by the way a good source of viewing what is going on in the streets of these current countries in conflict would be the site, Liveleaks.  It seems to be huge, since news sources and supposedly people in Libya on Twitter are posting it.

Here is the news article source

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/22/gaddafi-mercenary-force-libya


----------



## a_majoor

The big picture:

http://dailypundit.com/?p=40634



> *Bill’s Black Swan*
> February 22nd 2011 Government
> 
> _And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
> Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?_
> William Butler Yeats
> 
> Hats off to Quick. Earlier this year, he predicted that a “black swan” event in 2011 would reshape the global landscape in significant ways, and lookie: what began as a minor revolt in Tunisia has spread, first to Egypt, then to Bahrain and Yemen. These developments, earth-shaking as they seemed, took place in relative calm with only minor bloodshed, until yesterday, when one of the world’s craziest despots began bombing and strafing revolutionaries in Tripoli, after appearing for several seconds on local television leaning out of a car window wearing a funny hat and brandishing an umbrella.
> 
> Now dour political analysts with the furrowed brows of the professionally grim murmur grave words about the fall of Saudi Arabia. Frankly, they have probably missed the point. This isn’t about just the Middle East any more.
> 
> Yesterday, another completely whacked wingnut, Robert “Call Me Bob” Mugabe, the creaking chieftain of Zimbabwe, rounded up people and tossed them in jail for watching these events on television, denouncing such gatherings as treasonous. And our old friend of perestroika days, Mikhail Gorbachev, suddenly lashed out at Vlad “The Impaler” Putin and his sidekick Medvedev for arrogantly and carelessly dismissing talk about the upcoming presidential election in Russia by saying “We will decide who is to be the next President.”
> 
> Suddenly every despot in the world finds himself in the unwelcome glare of an increasingly hot spotlight. There is a very good possibility that the world as we know it is about to change in very radical ways, as Bill’s black swan cracks through its eggshell and begins to stretch its wings.



My fear is when the walls go tumbling down, the most organized and ruthless will be the ones who end up on top. In the ME; that means the Muslim Brotherhood or perhaps the Iranian proxies of Hamas and Hezbollah. I'm not too sure who is able and willing to take the reigns in Russia, and there was a report a few days ago (refer to the China superthread) that some demonstrations of this type were popping up in China.

If there is an upside to this, fighting for power and consolidating the new regimes may leave little time for mischief and foreign adventures.


----------



## Journeyman

Thucydides said:
			
		

> My fear is when the walls go tumbling down, the most organized and ruthless will be the ones who end up on top.


Historically, there is a recurring theme that those who brought about revolution, even with the best of intentions, weren't running the circus at the end of the day -- shame the Mensheviks couldn't say "but...but, the UN is 'deeply concerned!' "

Specifically regarding Egypt, I think the Muslim Brotherhood is getting too many boogy-man points within US media, simply because they _sound_ nefarious. I suspect that there has been a critical mass of western-trained Egyptian military officers who will keep Egypt from the radical Islamist hoards. If it needs to be spelled out  -- "hey, secular western capitalism is _awesome_....as long as I'm plugged into the cash-cow, and it's now my turn." 

Regarding the Islamic Brotherhood, I think they will be a necessary part of whatever solution plays inevitably out. While the 'right' media decry "Islamic Brotherhood infiltration of the military,"  there's an obvious 'military infiltration of the Brotherhood' and, again, military leadership will look favourably upon capitalism.  Personally, I'd be more concerned with the many Hamas who supposedly crossed through the Sinai between the Egyptian police abandoning the borders and Israel OK'ing the Army to move in to the demilitarized zone to resestablish security.

I believe the critical point is......is western political leadership willing to say, "liberal democracy cannot flourish overnight, and this leader (whoever) is somewhat a bastard, but he's the best game in town just now"?


----------



## sean m

Here is  a  video  of  some,  believed to be, mercenaries  that  the Libyan ruler brought in  attempting to start fires to houses

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e0f_1298444189


----------



## sean m

Here is a documentary  About the Role  of the  April 6 Movement  as  well as the Muslim  Brotherhood. The first part might not work for some people on this site due to their location.  The part about the Brotherhood works though.  This second part is vary interesting since the reporter covers the actions taken by the Muslim  Brotherhood. It is obvious to see that they have huge power in the country and are a major player both politically  and socially.  Even though they are a radical Islamic  Group  I  feel  that it is necessary to engage them and involve them in the process of creating a new and better Egypt. If the Muslim Brotherhood is shunned out of talks with the West  then this will only cause problems and destabilize the nation and possibly  elsewhere.  If this happens then, I feel, there would be violent conflict in the streets between Islamists, Liberals and others fighting for control of government. We have  all witnessed when a crisis such as this happens with Lebanon.  The documentary depicts the youth movement of the Muslim Brotherhood and how they are changing the inner workings of the group.  Sometimes it is necessary to dance with the devil if it helps achieve desired results, and that desired result is  a safe, peaceful, strong Egypt.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/revolution-in-cairo/?utm_campaign=viewpage&utm_medium=grid&utm_source=grid


----------



## GAP

sean m said:
			
		

> Sometimes it is necessary to dance with the devil if it helps achieve desired results, and that desired result is  a safe, peaceful, strong Egypt.



And history repeats itself.....we said the exact same thing with Khomeini and Iran...................


----------



## Sapplicant

I, for one, am very thankful to have been born in Canada. To all the people who claim our government is "oppressive", "facist", "useless", or otherwise, I say to you:

 Our lawmakers, security forces, and Constitution Act are intended to protect and empower the citizens of this great land, not to render us voiceless.

 If we, as a people, want to topple our governmentt, we take to the polls rather than the streets.

 If a protest in Canada actually gets broken up, it's done with as little violence as possible by the Police, not through the use of soldiers, warplanes, tanks, helicopters, or mercenaries.

 We are free to practice, or not practice, any religion we choose.

 If we want to go to school, work hard, and earn a decent living, we can do so.

 In our universities, we are taught whatever we want to learn, not what a dictator or imam wants to ram down our throats.

 We have popular suffrage, not mass-suffering.

 If you live here, either through birth or immigration, you have been given a golden opportunity. If you screw it up, or choose not to participate in your civic duties, it is not the government's fault. It is the person you see in the mirror every morning who is to blame.

 My :2c:/rant for the month of February.


----------



## 57Chevy

Egyptians march to protect their victory as Mideast protests continue

CAIRO — One month after their uprising began, tens of thousands of Egyptians gathered Friday in the square where their unexpected journey originated, taking stock of what they have accomplished and affirming what they want next.

Banners, chants and conversations made clear that the crowds in Cairo's Tahrir Square were of a single mind: Freedom has been won but not yet guaranteed. The generals ruling the country remain trusted, but they must replace the prime minister and his cabinet, lift a long-standing emergency law and put the Interior Ministry police under civilian control.

More than anything, the demonstrators seemed proud. Not only had they deposed Hosni Mubarak, their president of 30 years, but the example they provided, along with that of Tunisia, has also inspired their neighbors to pursue their own quests for freedom.

On Friday, that call resounded across the region, in some places at high cost. A "Day of Rage" in Iraq sent tens of thousands rallying nationwide for government reform and an end to corruption. At least 19 people were killed.

In Yemen, rent by recent deadly protests, tens of thousands of people gathered peacefully in the southern city of Taiz to demand that President Ali Abdullah Saleh step down. Many had come from outside Taiz, suggesting that the clamor for Saleh's resignation might be widening.

In the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, anti-government demonstrators and Saleh supporters staged rival rallies under heavy security. Saleh had instructed security forces to protect demonstrators and prevent clashes, after the deaths of at least 19 people nationwide over the past nine days.

The dead include two activists killed Friday in clashes between protesters and security forces in the restive southern city of Aden, where more than 10,000 people took to the streets, according to Reuters.

Seven people have died since Feb. 14 in the Persian Gulf kingdom of Bahrain, home to the U.S. 5th Fleet. On Friday, authorities allowed tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators to converge unimpeded on the capital's Pearl Square, now a raucous encampment. Some Bahrainis seek a greater voice in their government, but elements of the majority Shiite population want the Sunni king and rulers to go.

Bahrain's foreign minister, Khalid bin Ahmad al-Khalifa, sounded a conciliatory note in an interview, describing protesters' grievances as "legitimate." But he said the longer it takes for negotiations to start, the more he worries. "There are hardheaded people on both sides that could do something," he said.

Meanwhile, in Amman, to Egypt's east, about 6,000 Jordanians - the largest turnout yet - pressed their king for political and economic reforms.


But it was the plight of Egypt's Libyan neighbors that resonated most deeply among the demonstrators in Cairo. Scores of young men carrying - or wearing - Egyptian flags coursed through the crowd chanting, "With our blood and with our hearts we are united." Others bore a 40-foot-long banner proclaiming "Libya and Egypt are one." One man held a sign: "Gadhafi is a serial killer."

Describing their Jan. 25 revolution as unfinished, they appeared to have come to Tahrir Square to communicate their intention of seeing it through on their terms. From morning until well into the night, the protest was peaceful, but after midnight the military began ordering demonstrators to leave, resulting in angry scuffles.

"This is a revolution of the people, not the army," said George Ishaq, a founder of the 2005-era Kifaya protest movement. "We trust the army, but we have our demands."

Gray-haired, distinguished in bearing, Ishaq drew an admiring entourage eager to hear his thoughts as he walked among the people. He drew nods of agreement as he called for the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to replace itself with a triumvirate of a judge, a civilian and a general until elections can be held. And those new rulers should dismiss the prime minister and cabinet, mostly appointed by the old regime, and replace them with seasoned managers, he said.

The military rulers, led by 76-year-old Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, stepped into the void left by Mubarak's Feb. 11 departure displaying neither familiarity with nor affinity for the political arts.

Their preferred medium is the communique, with Communique No. 1 , issued Feb. 10, read by a stone-faced officer who assured the nation the army would "support the legitimate demands of the people."

Gradually, the generals have come to realize that the medium is the message. On Friday they issued Communique No. 19 - "The Egyptian ruling military Council pledged its continued efforts related to the return of Egyptian nationals from Libya" - on their Facebook page.

Last weekend, Tantawi appeared on a talk show on a privately owned television channel, speaking directly to young people in the studio with him. The younger generation loved it, declaring themselves reassured about the army's intentions.

"Now we want podcasts of their meetings," said Noha Wigah, a young activist.

                      (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)


----------



## a_majoor

As if the situation wasn't complicated enough:

http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article.aspx?id=209812



> *'Israeli intelligence aware of Syrian nuke facilities'*
> By YAAKOV KATZ
> 02/25/2011 06:05
> 
> Barak says sites known to IAEA, UN; Ya'alon warns Assad "not to challenge" Israel; uranium conversion reactor said to be located east of Damascus.
> 
> Talkbacks (1)
> Israeli intelligence agencies are aware of additional Syrian nuclear facilities, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Thursday, amid reports that Syria was harboring a uranium conversion reactor near the town of Marj as-Sultan, about 15 km. east of Damascus.
> 
> The German Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper on Thursday identified the location of the site, which is suspected of containing a small uranium conversion facility that is functionally related to the covert reactor at al-Kibar that the Israel Air Force destroyed in September 2007.
> 
> RELATED:
> Satellite images reveal 'uranium plant' in Syria
> Barak: Iranian ships crossing Suez part of 'wider scheme'
> 
> According to the newspaper and a subsequent analysis of satellite footage by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), the facility is reportedly intended for processing uranium yellowcake into uranium tetrafluoride (UF4), and could have been related to making fuel for the reactor destroyed in 2007.
> 
> Barak said that Israeli intelligence and the International Atomic Energy Agency were aware of the Syrian facilities and that United Nations inspectors were working to gain access to them.
> 
> Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu declined to comment on the reports, but Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon was quoted as warning Syrian President Bashar Assad “not to challenge us.”
> 
> Minister-without-Portfolio Yossi Peled told Israel Radio that Israel would not allow hostile countries to obtain nuclear weapons.
> 
> “Assad has already proven that he has negative intentions,” Ya’alon said on the sidelines of an IDF memorial service. “We know him as someone who is connected to Iran on one side and Hezbollah on the other.”
> 
> In December, The Jerusalem Post reported on a previous ISIS report that named three suspected facilities as being functionally related to the al-Kibar reactor.
> 
> Thursday’s report said the Marj as-Sultan facility’s operational status was still unknown, but Damascus was suspected of clearing out the buildings before mid-2008, in an effort to disguise activities carried out there.
> 
> Syria has continued to refuse requests by the IAEA to inspect the Marj as-Sultan facility, as well as other sites that may be related to the nuclear reactor project, the report said.
> 
> Satellite images of the site near Marj as-Sultan, obtained by the ISIS, reveal that on July 25, 2008, there was considerable activity involving pouring material on the ground, as well as movement by trucks and other vehicles.
> 
> The ISIS document said this could have been part of a plan to lay down concrete or asphalt, which could be “an attempt to defeat the environmental sampling that IAEA inspectors would likely carry out to see if uranium was present, in the event of a visit to these suspect sites.”
> 
> 
> The document cites the Sueddeutsche Zeitung to the effect that among the equipment kept inside two buildings near the Marj as-Sultan site, there was a scrubber, two cyclone separators, large diameter pipes, a manifold, reaction vessels made from stainless steel, and storage tanks.
> 
> This equipment is in line with “what would be expected in a small uranium conversion facility,” the ISIS report said.


----------



## MarkOttawa

One can hope:

As Regimes Fall in Arab World, Al Qaeda Sees History Fly By
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/world/middleeast/28qaeda.html?src=twrhp



> For nearly two decades, the leaders of Al Qaeda have denounced the Arab world’s dictators as heretics and puppets of the West and called for their downfall. Now, people in country after country have risen to topple their leaders — and Al Qaeda has played absolutely no role.
> 
> In fact, the motley opposition movements that have appeared so suddenly and proved so powerful have shunned the two central tenets of the Qaeda credo: murderous violence and religious fanaticism. The demonstrators have used force defensively, treated Islam as an afterthought and embraced democracy, which is anathema to Osama bin Laden and his followers.
> 
> So for Al Qaeda — and perhaps no less for the American policies that have been built around the threat it poses — the democratic revolutions that have gripped the world’s attention present a crossroads. Will the terrorist network shrivel slowly to irrelevance? Or will it find a way to exploit the chaos produced by political upheaval and the disappointment that will inevitably follow hopes now raised so high?
> 
> For many specialists on terrorism and the Middle East, though not all, the past few weeks have the makings of an epochal disaster for Al Qaeda, making the jihadists look like ineffectual bystanders to history while offering young Muslims an appealing alternative to terrorism.
> 
> “So far — and I emphasize so far — the score card looks pretty terrible for Al Qaeda,” said Paul R. Pillar, who studied terrorism and the Middle East for nearly three decades at the C.I.A. and is now at Georgetown University. “Democracy is bad news for terrorists. The more peaceful channels people have to express grievances and pursue their goals, the less likely they are to turn to violence.”
> 
> If the terrorists network’s leaders hope to seize the moment, they have been slow off the mark. Mr. bin Laden has been silent. His Egyptian deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, has issued three rambling statements from his presumed hide-out in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region that seemed oddly out of sync with the news, not noting the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, whose government detained and tortured Mr. Zawahri in the 1980s.
> 
> “Knocking off Mubarak has been Zawahri’s goal for more than 20 years, and he was unable to achieve it,” said Brian Fishman, a terrorism expert at the New America Foundation. “Now a nonviolent, nonreligious, pro-democracy movement got rid of him in a matter of weeks. It’s a major problem for Al Qaeda.”..
> 
> Abu Khaled, a Jordanian jihadist who fought in Iraq with the insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, suggested that Al Qaeda would benefit in the long run from dashed hopes.
> 
> “At the end of the day, how much change will there really be in Egypt and other countries?” he asked. “There will be many disappointed demonstrators, and that’s when they will realize what the only alternative is. We are certain that this will all play into our hands.”
> 
> Michael Scheuer, author of a new biography of Mr. bin Laden and head of the C.I.A.’s bin Laden unit in the late 1990s, thinks such enthusiasm is more than wishful thinking.
> 
> Mr. Scheuer says he believes that Americans, including many experts, have wildly misjudged the uprisings by focusing on the secular, English-speaking, Westernized protesters who are a natural draw for television. Thousands of Islamists have been released from prisons in Egypt alone, and the ouster of Al Qaeda’s enemy, Mr. Mubarak, will help revitalize every stripe of Islamism, including that of Al Qaeda and its allies, he said.
> 
> “The talent of an organization is not just leadership, but taking advantage of opportunities,” Mr. Scheuer said. In Al Qaeda and its allies, he said, “We’re looking over all at a more geographically widespread, probably numerically bigger and certainly more influential movement than in 2001.”..



Mark
Ottawa


----------



## GAP

On another note, there are rulers/rulers relations that have brought stuff like this on simply because of similiar stupidity as shown in the article below.....

A Princely Collection of Rotting Cars
The air conditioning was off, but the tropical sun was not, so the Ferraris and McLaren F1s sat and cooked
As appeared in:
Sports Car Market—March 2011 issue Sheehan Speaks by Michael Sheehan
Article Link

Imagine seeing hundreds of high-end Ferraris, Lamborghinis and McLarens—many with hardly any miles on the odometer—rotting away in tropical heat and humidity.

While much has been written of the Sultan of Brunei’s car collection—and there are no lack of spy photos of the collection on the Internet—the estimated 2,500 cars are actually not the Sultan’s. They were the property of Prince Jefri, the Sultan’s third brother. As the Minister of Finance for Brunei (until 1997) Prince Jefri controlled the revenue from oil and gas through the BIA or Brunei Investment Authority and a network of companies under the name Amadeo.

The 1997 Asian Financial Crisis depressed oil prices and triggered a financial crisis in Brunei. The Sultan had Arthur Andersen audit the BIA books, which showed that between 1983 and mid-1998 some $40 billion in “special transfers” were made by the BIA, and that Prince Jefri had personally squandered $14.8 billion. In July 1998, Prince Jefri’s Amadeo investment group collapsed under $10 billion in debt. In 2000, Prince Jefri settled with the government of Brunei and began to return assets—including more than 500 properties in Brunei and abroad, more than 2,000 cars, 100 paintings, five yachts, and nine world-class aircraft. According to court documents, the Prince spent $78 million at Pininfarina SpA for coachbuilt RHD Ferraris, $475 million at Rolls-Royce and $900 million at British jeweler Asprey.
Will fly to buy

In early 2002, I was offered a package of 13 very special Ferraris and McLaren F1s from the collection by a Brunei importer. After the usual negotiations, I agreed to buy two McLarens, a Ferrari F40 LM and a 288 GTO Evoluzione for clients, with an option to buy another 16 McLarens and Ferraris.

In May 2002, I flew to Brunei and stayed at the Empire Hotel. Commissioned by Prince Jefri and built at a cost of $1.1 billion, the Empire Hotel is beyond opulent. The Empire was built to hold over 1,000 guests, but I never saw more than a dozen people anywhere in the hotel at any time. I also visited the Jerudong Park, the largest and most expensive amusement park in Southeast Asia, which was also commissioned by Prince Jefri for a modest $1 billion. Like the Empire hotel, it was empty. A strict Muslim country, Brunei has no alcohol, virtually no nightlife and hence no tourists.
A maximum-security prison for Cars

I was picked up by an ex-New Zealand Special Forces (SAS) officer working as a bodyguard for the Brunei Royal Family. The car collection was a few kilometers down the coast and housed in a large compound surrounded by a high wall topped with razor wire and with a “bomb-proof” front gate. Once inside, we had to turn in our cameras and passports and stay with our guide, as armed Gurkhas with very serious German Shepherds patrolled the compound.

We first went through eight two-story buildings—each about 250 feet long by 60 feet wide—with each level holding about 120 cars. Each level had a semblance of a theme, with the first building filled with Porsches from 959s up to cars from the late 1990s. Another floor held mainly black-on-black 1996-97 Mercedes-Benz 500 sedans. Another building held coachbuilt Rolls-Royces, Bentleys and Aston Martins. Another building held mainly 1990s model Ferraris, including a few dozen 456s and 550s. Several 550s were fitted with experimental XTRAC automatic gearboxes. About a half a dozen were coated in radar-absorbent, matte-black coatings and fitted with infrared cameras for night driving, which is high-tech stuff for the late 1990s.
Ferraris and McLaren F1s cooking into Goo

Another lower floor held rows of RHD Testarossas, 512 TRs and F512 Ms. Another building contained mainly coachbuilt Ferraris with four 456 four-doors, four 456 Venice Cabriolets, more 456 Venice station wagons, five FXs, a pair of Mythos and an incredibly ugly one-off called an F90. The token Enzo-era Ferrari was a RHD 275 GTS, s/n 7795.

Between the eight large buildings was a glass-walled showroom with three McLaren F1s, a 288 GTO Evo, an F50 and an F40 LM. The F40 LM was black with a black leather interior, red piping, air conditioning, and power windows.

As in the other buildings, the air conditioning was off, so the showroom had become a very efficient greenhouse, and the cars were cooking away.

Underneath this building was a windowless theatre filled with rows of RHD F40s, 288 GTOs and other exotics.
A reef’s worth of derelict Mercedes

At the back of the compound were two long, two-story buildings about fifty feet apart. A corrugated tin roof between them offered some protection from the blistering sun—but not from the rain. Under the shade were another 300 or so 1995-97 500 SELs and SLs, all black/black, many with the windows down, all rotting into oblivion. Many were AMG specials with wood or carbon fiber trimmed interiors, big motors, etc. We soon called this group as “the reef” as turning them into an artificial ocean reef was probably their best use. As an example, a 1997ish Rolls-Royce convertible was near the Mercedes-Benz fleet, but it was under a real roof and better protected. The roof notwithstanding, the Rolls had gotten so hot with the windows up that the steering wheel’s foam padding had melted into a puddle on the driver’s seat and the leather wrap hung from the barren steel rim. The entire interior had “gone off” with mold in the heat and humidity and the interior was a fuzzy gray!

A single-story building held 60 or so truly unique cars, most in a very bright yellow—including a row of four-wheel-drive Bentley Station wagons and a dozen late-model Lamborghinis. A few non-yellow cars, such as a black 456 Venice wagon with mirrored side windows were also in this building. A side room was filled with high-end motorcycles, while another room was filled with hundreds of empty Rolex, Cartier and Patek Philippe watch presentation boxes.

Behind one of the buildings was a row of “lesser” cars, including the collection’s token Corvette—all destroyed by the sun and rain. The mechanics had left in 1998, and nothing was in drivable condition. What had once been the planet’s largest collection of coachbuilt and high-end exotics was now a vast automotive tomb, patrolled only by a few Gurkhas with dogs.
Poster children for a study in deferred maintenance

When I totaled things up, there were less than 100 Ferraris, and only a few hundred cars in total were commercially viable. All had minimal mileage—but all were also poster children for deferred maintenance.

The lesser cars were beyond saving. None had been started in five years. Our offer was cheerfully accepted by the importer who offered the cars, but none of them came with any service records. Even worse, none had titles and getting a bill of sale or export documents was almost impossible, as the mid-level bureaucrats were paralyzed by indecision or the fear of making a political mistake and issuing export paperwork. While my trip to Brunei was an amazing cultural and automotive experience, we were never able to get a car out of the collection. Eight more years in a steamy tropical rain forest has certainly not helped any of these cars.

The local officials have no to plans to save or to sell the collection, and the cost to turn it into a tourist attraction would be staggering. Over the last eight years less than a dozen significant cars have left, most as gifts to well-connected expats. Another few hundred pedestrian Mercedes-Benzes have been given to Brunei locals, but the bulk of the collection is still there and will die there, rotting into oblivion.
end


----------



## a_majoor

Iran is having its tenticals chopped off by local forces:

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/breaking-iran-has-several-military-bases-in-libya/



> *Breaking: Iran Has Several Military Bases in Libya*
> 
> Posted By 'Reza Kahlili' On February 27, 2011 @ 5:14 pm In Iran,Middle East,World News | 13 Comments
> 
> In an interview today on the Al Arabyia news network [1], an informed source within the Revolutionary Guards Corps revealed that Iran has several military bases in Libya.
> 
> The source, who requested anonymity due to his sensitive position within the Guards, elaborated further that the Iranian military bases are located mostly along Libya’s borders with the African countries of Chad and Niger. From there, he said, the Guards actively smuggle arms and supply logistical assistance to rebellious groups in the African countries.
> 
> According to this source, Guards enter Libya under the guise of oil company employees. Most of these companies are under the control of the Revolutionary Guards.
> 
> The source, who is a colonel in the Guards, added that Gaddafi and his government are quite aware of these activities and have even signed joint contracts with those Iranian oil companies so that the the Guards can enter Libya without any trouble.
> 
> The colonel stated that with the current unrest in Libya, over 500 Guards  have been unable to evacuate and are under orders to destroy all documents.
> 
> According to this source, the military collaborations between the Revolutionary Guards and the Gaddafi government date back to 2006.
> 
> It is important to note that Nigerian officials recently confiscated an Iranian arms shipment [2] destined for Gambia. The weapons included mortars, rockets, and shells for anti-aircraft guns and were hidden in containers marked building materials. Nigerian officials have accused a suspected member of the Guards and a Nigerian of illegally importing arms and have set the trial for later this year.
> ————–
> Also read: “Endgame in Libya? Gaddafi’s ‘nurse’ to leave Tripoli” [3]
> 
> Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com
> 
> URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/breaking-iran-has-several-military-bases-in-libya/
> 
> URLs in this post:
> 
> [1] Al Arabyia news network: http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/02/27/139473.html
> 
> [2] Iranian arms shipment: http://af.reuters.com/article/nigeriaNews/idAFLDE71N1NP20110224
> 
> [3] “Endgame in Libya? Gaddafi’s ‘nurse’ to leave Tripoli”: http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/2011/02/27/endgame-in-libya-gaddafis-nurse-to-leave-tripoli/


----------



## Old Sweat

The following story which was posted on CTV.ca is reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions on the Copyright Act.

   
Date: Mon. Feb. 28 2011 5:43 PM ET

The Canadian military has sent a reconnaissance team and medics to Malta, as Western countries weigh their options for a possible intervention in Libya, including a ‘no-fly zone' to protect civilians. 

The 13-member team landed on Monday along with two new C-130J cargo planes and two C-17 transports. The planes will be used to help get foreign nationals out of the increasingly chaotic North African country. 

"A team of Canadian Forces is now on the ground in Malta. We continue to provide assistance to those who need it and we encourage Canadians who need further assistance to contact the Department of Foreign Affairs," Defence Minister Peter MacKay confirmed during question period Monday. 

The Canadian Press is reporting that special forces teams are also preparing to deploy. 

The United Kingdom have used commandos to escort their transports into Libya and protected them while on the ground. 

One British plane was fired on during an evacuation and took minor damage. 

Earlier Monday, the federal government issued tough sanctions against Libya on Monday and renewed calls for Col. Moammar Gadhafi to resign, with Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon saying it was "the only acceptable course of action." 

Cannon joined the chorus of world leaders urging Gadhafi to heed the call of protesters and step down. 

"A tide of change is sweeping the Middle East and North Africa. Leaders who try to defy or repress the tide, like Gadhafi or the leadership in Iran, will eventually be overwhelmed," Cannon told the United Nations in Geneva, Monday afternoon. 

Earlier in the day, Government House Leader John Baird released more details about sanctions Canada is imposing on Libya and the Gadhafi regime. 

He said Ottawa is freezing any Canadian assets belonging to Gadhafi and his regime and placing a ban on financial dealings with Libya, saying the actions will help end "the appalling violence." 

Baird said the Harper government hopes the sanctions will help force Gadhafi from power quickly. 

Baird refused to go into details about how much money in Canada was linked to the Gadhafi regime, or how long it had been here, citing "operational" concerns. 

But he said "there were specific instances brought to our attention." 

Speaking to CTV's Power Play, Baird said the assets of Gadhafi, the Libyan government, the Libyan central back and those of 15 "close associates" have been frozen by the Canadian government. 

"We don't want that money to be stolen from the Libyan people, we don't want it to be used to spread the appalling violence we've seen in the capital," he said Monday. 

The Harper government is also banning any Canadian company operating in Libya from making any transactions with the Libyan government, its agencies or the central bank. 

However, companies will not be banned from operating in Libya, Baird said. 

"We are hoping the hard line taken by the international community and the even harder line taken by our government against the current Libyan regime will bring about change quickly and the negative impact of these sanctions will be limited and will be very short term," Baird said. 

He added that the situation in Libya is "deteriorating rapidly" and since Canadian companies are now evacuating their workers, it's unlikely any organizations would be looking at expanding any time soon, anyway. 

However, Baird said he hoped the sanctions would be "short-term" and regime change will occur "very quickly." 

The UN Security Council voted unanimously over the weekend to impose an arms embargo and urged member states to freeze the assets of Gadhafi, four of his sons and a daughter. 

Prime Minister Stephen Harper then said Canada would add to those restrictions by banning financial transactions with the Libyan government and its agencies. 

Canadians continued to flee Libya Monday by any and all means of transportation possible, amid the ongoing political turmoil. A total of 250 Canadians have now been evacuated from the country, Baird said. 

Harper's communications director Dimitri Soudas sent out a message on Twitter Monday morning that 33 Canadians were aboard British ship HMS Cumberland that was approaching Malta, in the Mediterranean Sea. 

The ship, which was "due to arrive in Malta shortly," was carrying a number of expatriates from other countries as well. 

Soudas also wrote on his Twitter feed that a Canadian Forces C17 cargo plane had carried a load of evacuees, including one Canadian, to Malta. 

CTV's Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife reported that the C17 flew into Libya's isolated southwest region Monday morning. 

"The C17 military cargo plane has just landed in Malta carrying Filipino, Vietnamese, Thais, one German and one Canadian," Fife said, adding that Canada has two C130 Hercules aircraft and two C-17s based in Malta.


----------



## Edward Campbell

GAP said:
			
		

> On another note, there are rulers/rulers relations that have brought stuff like this on simply because of similiar stupidity as shown in the article below.....
> 
> A Princely Collection of Rotting Cars
> The air conditioning was off, but the tropical sun was not, so the Ferraris and McLaren F1s sat and cooked
> As appeared in:
> Sports Car Market—March 2011 issue Sheehan Speaks by Michael Sheehan
> Article Link
> 
> Imagine seeing hundreds of high-end Ferraris, Lamborghinis and McLarens—many with hardly any miles on the odometer—rotting away in tropical heat and humidity.
> 
> While much has been written of the Sultan of Brunei’s car collection—and there are no lack of spy photos of the collection on the Internet—the estimated 2,500 cars are actually not the Sultan’s. They were the property of Prince Jefri, the Sultan’s third brother. As the Minister of Finance for Brunei (until 1997) Prince Jefri controlled the revenue from oil and gas through the BIA or Brunei Investment Authority and a network of companies under the name Amadeo.
> 
> ...
> 
> The local officials have no to plans to save or to sell the collection, and the cost to turn it into a tourist attraction would be staggering. Over the last eight years less than a dozen significant cars have left, most as gifts to well-connected expats. Another few hundred pedestrian Mercedes-Benzes have been given to Brunei locals, but the bulk of the collection is still there and will die there, rotting into oblivion.
> end




One needn't be Muslim or even Arabic to squander a nation's wealth and mark oneself for a noose when, inevitably, the chickens come home to roost; see this:



> Son of African strongman plans $380-million yacht
> 
> GEOFFREY YORK
> 
> JOHANNESBURG— From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
> Monday, Feb. 28, 2011
> 
> The top-secret project, codenamed Zen, would produce a luxury yacht at an astounding cost of $380-million. English-designed and German-built, it would be the second-most expensive private yacht in the world, equipped with a cinema, swimming pool, bar, restaurant and helipad.
> 
> But the real shocker is the man who commissioned the plans. According to an investigation by a human-rights group, the yacht was ordered by the President’s son in Equatorial Guinea, a small African nation where 60 per cent of the population struggles to survive on less than a dollar a day.
> 
> The 118-metre-long luxury yacht, modelled on the $1.2-billion yacht of Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, would cost almost three times more than the country spends annually on health and education combined. It would be merely the latest extravagance of Teodorin Obiang, son of the long-ruling dictator of Equatorial Guinea, an oil-rich country where poverty and illness are widespread ...



Meanwhile, Canada sent only $710,000 - barely enough for two yachts - to Equatorial Guinea in 2008/09 according to CIDA.

Equatorial Guinea is a predominantly Christian nation; it is part of _La Francophonie_.


----------



## MarkOttawa

How comparative economic decline corrupts us--from the estimable Anne Applebaum:

Westerners, be careful the company you keep
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/28/AR2011022805864.html



> Every British newspaper worth its salt has written about Saif Gaddafi lately, but the Sunday Times had by far the best graphic illustration. A photograph of Moammar Gaddafi's second son - clad in a white jacket and tasteful silk tie, with a carefully pressed keffiyeh draped elegantly over his shoulders - occupies the center of a large box.
> 
> Photographs of his British friends and business partners cluster in a circle around him: Nat Rothschild, scion of the banking family, who gave a party for Saif when he completed his PhD on "civil society" and "global governance" at the London School of Economics; Sir Howard Davies, director of the LSE and one of Tony Blair's economic envoys to Libya; Lord Peter Mandelson, a former Blair adviser, cabinet minister and European commissioner, who now advises "companies hoping to expand markets overseas"; Prince Andrew, who promotes British trade abroad; and, last but not least, Blair himself.
> 
> Saif was popular: He went to parties in St. James's Palace and sailed in yachts off Corfu. He was also rich. Thanks to his contacts, he became the conduit through which British companies invested in Libya - and through which the Libyan Investment Authority invested in British companies. At least that was what he was doing until last week, when he appeared on Libyan television vowing that his father's bloody regime would fight "to the last man, the last woman, the last bullet." Suddenly, the acceptable face of Libyan tyranny became unacceptable: Underneath that Western-educated veneer, it seems there lurks a ranting psychopath.
> 
> Saif was not the only dubious character to inhabit the space where money meets politics in London, the city that has become the true capital of global capitalism. Any list of, say, people with whom Prince Andrew has recently dined will reveal dozens of similarly polished thugs: more Libyans, Kazakhs, Kirghiz, and of course, the ubiquitous Saudis.
> 
> Money, even foreign money (and particularly that Saudi money) has always been able to buy access to Western statesmen. But in the past decade or so, the proportions have subtly shifted. The democratic West has become relatively poorer, while a clutch of undemocratic "emerging" markets have become richer. To put it more bluntly, Western politicians, ex-politicians and even aristocrats have become much, much poorer than the very, very rich businessmen emerging from the oil-and-gas states of central Asia, eastern Europe and the Middle East. Twenty years ago, no retired British or German statesman would have looked outside his country for employment. Nowadays, Blair advises the governments of Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, among others; former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder collects a paycheck from Gazprom, the Russian energy behemoth...
> 
> Meanwhile Michele Alliot-Marie has just lost her job as France's foreign minister because she went on holiday in Tunisia during the revolution, hitched a few rides on a private plane belonging to a friend of the Tunisian president and helped her father do a business deal there, too. When she got back, she tactfully suggested that the French help their friends in the Tunisian police put down the riots.
> 
> Fingers crossed Alliot-Marie's departure is the first of many: If Western governments want to have any credibility in the post-revolutionary Arab world, they need to stop hiring people, even as "envoys," who are already in the pay of current or former Arab dictators. Blair should resign immediately from his informal negotiators' role in the Middle East; Prince Andrew should be told to stay home. The Wisners of the world should be sent back into retirement. Finally, for good measure, the legions of former public officials now in the pay of Chinese, Russian or Saudi businessmen should be kept far away from their previous places of employment, just in case. Come the revolution, you can be sure they will turn out to have embarrassing friends, too.


  

Whilst Jean Chretien seems almost to have a second residence in China (along with Maurice Strong) and then there's erstwhile PM Martin:

Inside Gadhafi's high-tech tent
http://www.thestar.com/world/columnist/article/687712

Send in the troops: UN must intervene in Libya, says ex-PM Paul Martin
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/united-nations-must-intervene-libya-says-ex-pm-20110223-081327-714.html

_Maudit hypocrite_!

Mark
Ottawa


----------



## a_majoor

Canadian connection:

http://www.sify.com/news/gaddafi-stashed-away-2-bn-in-canadian-banks-news-international-ldblEoihbaf.html



> *Gaddafi stashed away $2 bn in Canadian banks*
> 2011-03-01 11:40:00
> 
> Toronto, March 1 (IANS) Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has stashed away more than $2 billion in Canadian banks, according to a media report here Monday.
> 
> Canada's CTV News network said the Libyan leader siphoned the money into Canadian banks after the thaw in their relations in 2004 when Gaddafi admitted to Libya's role in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, paid $2.7 billion in compensation and renounced his programme of mass destruction.
> 
> According to the report, Gaddafi stashed away the money after the visit of then Canadian prime minister Paul Martin to Libya.
> 
> However, there was no comment by the Canadian government which Sunday night clamped sanctions on Libya and froze Gaddafi's assets in its banks.
> 
> But the government maintained Monday that sanctions won't compel Canadian companies to stop operations in the troubled North African country.
> 
> Engineering giant SNC-Lavalin, which made headlines in India in 2009 after being named in a Kerala power scam, is one of the major Canadian companies operating in Libya.
> 
> Government House leader John Baird said the government had contacted SNC-Lavalin to explain the sanctions.
> 
> 'They (SNC-Lavalin) can operate there, they can operate commercially. What they can't do is operate financially with either the Libyan government or the Central Bank of Libya,' he said. 'I think as the situation is deteriorating that we're not looking at expanding commercial activity,' said Baird.
> 
> He said the Canadian action doesn't 'eliminate commercial activities. What it does do is restrain financial transactions with the Libyan government and with the Libyan Central Bank'.
> 
> 'We don't want to see commercial operations flowing money into the regime at this time that would be used either to be stolen or, even worse, used to finance the violence against the Libyan people.'
> 
> SNC-Lavalin said it has temporarily suspended work on certain projects in Libya, adding that 'we will continue to monitor the situation to determine next steps.'
> 
> A company spokesperson said SNC-Lavalin was evacuating its workers in the next 48 hours.
> 
> (Gurmukh Singh can be contacted at gurmukh.s@ians.in)


----------



## Nemo888

sean m said:
			
		

> Sometimes it is necessary to dance with the devil if it helps achieve desired results, and that desired result is  a safe, peaceful, strong Egypt.





			
				GAP said:
			
		

> And history repeats itself.....we said the exact same thing with Khomeini and Iran...................



and like we did when we overthrew democratically elected Mossdeq and installed the Shah,..... Often our ideals are hijacked by neo-colonialists who see profit in the resources of other countries. I'd rather be self sufficient and not have to make shady deals with murderous dictators. Our immoral actions will eventually bite us in the ass. It is inevitable.


----------



## a_majoor

The uprisings in Iran continue unabated. While this may not be because of the other uprisings, most of the causes of discontent are the same:

http://pajamasmedia.com/michaelledeen/2011/03/02/the-iranian-civil-war/?print=1



> *The Iranian Civil War*
> Posted By Michael Ledeen On March 2, 2011 @ 4:04 pm In Uncategorized | 19 Comments
> 
> According to the Daily Beast [1], yesterday’s demonstrations against the Iranian regime were smaller than those on February 14th, but in fact they were both larger and more aggressive.  The chants of “Death to the dictator” are now quite specific:  “Death to Khamenei.”  They can be heard at night in every Iranian city, and posters of the supreme leader are now burned in the streets during the fighting — for fighting it is.
> 
> Perhaps we will someday see photos from Google Earth, but, lacking that, we have to go on eyewitnesses, with all the subjective limitations of such evidence, some videos [2], and what we know about the regime’s behavior, which is a far more reliable guide.  There were 617 arrests around the country — I believe that is the number provided to Khamenei and Ahmadinejad earlier today — and 270 people were seriously wounded, requiring medical attention (one of the uglier aspects of this regime is its use of ambulances as paddy wagons and mobile punishment centers;  protesters are thrown in and then beaten), and there are two women in coma who will most likely not survive.
> 
> The regime armed its “security forces” with all manner of weaponry, from sawed-off mafia-style shotguns to electric batons, tear gas, pepper spray and chains.  Armored personnel carriers were deployed, and helicopters were seen overhead at the peak of the fighting.  So concerned were the tyrants that they brought in outside forces against the Iranian dissidents:  Lebanese Hezbollah fighters (who deployed around Khamenei’s home) and, for the first time that I know of, young boys (15 years old and younger, down to 10-11) from mostly rural religious schools, who had been told they would be fighting infidels, and thus any level of violence was justified by divine command.  In addition, there were earthly rewards:  $50 dollars each.  If you look at #iranelection on Twitter you’ll find links to accounts of these young hoodlums, as well as some personal accounts of their savagery.
> 
> They are in training for future jihads.
> 
> In short, the regime went all-in and could not intimidate the people.  If anything, the fighting was tougher than in the past, and both sides are sure there is more to come.
> 
> Demonstrators took to the streets in the major cities, including Tehran, Isfahan, Tabriz, Shiraz, Ahwaz, Rashd, Kermanshah and others.  They were not only calling for Khamenei’s death but also for the immediate release of Mousavi and Karroubi, the two Green leaders who, along with their wives,  were  snatched from their homes last Thursday night.  The four have been moved from one “secure location” to another virtually every day.
> 
> The next round is scheduled for Tuesday the 8th.
> 
> Meanwhile, the regime is doing its best to create the Persian equivalent of the Hermit Kingdom.  They want to isolate the Iranian people from the outside world, and to that end they are striving to block or filter the social media, shut down international email, and jam foreign satellite broadcasts (or at least destroy the many millions of satellite dishes).  They hope, in this way, to become the only source of information and doctrine, and the campaign runs parallel to the intrusion of religious instructors and censors at all levels of public education, the rewriting of the history books to eliminate references to the glories of pre-Muslim Persia, and the vicious purge of the country’s leading film makers and artists.
> 
> You know that famous satellite photo of the Korean peninsula [3], the one where the south is all aglitter with lights and the north is virtually all dark?  The mullahs want to turn off all the cultural and informational lights except for a few that they control.
> 
> Big Brother would have approved.  Except that it’s too late.  The Iranians are too educated and too informed to go quietly, and the regime’s campaign is doomed.  Indeed, it is one of those efforts that is too impotent to succeed, but just enough to get the people much angrier.
> 
> Which is yet another reason why the demonstrations are getting bigger and stronger.
> 
> One more time:  if the West supported the opposition we could be rid of this evil regime and change the world.  I know, believe me, that Obama doesn’t want this to happen because he mistakenly believes that we do not have standing to challenge a regime that quite understandably and even properly, in his view of things, hates us.
> 
> But one day he’s going to send a message of congratulations to the new leaders of a free Iran, and they’re going to ask him where he’s been, and why they should be happy to hear from him.
> 
> What will he say, I wonder?
> 
> Article printed from Faster, Please!: http://pajamasmedia.com/michaelledeen
> 
> URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/michaelledeen/2011/03/02/the-iranian-civil-war/
> 
> URLs in this post:
> 
> [1] Daily Beast: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-03-01/mousavi-and-karoubi-arrested-irans-ticking-time-bomb/
> [2] videos: http://homylafayette.blogspot.com/2011/03/10-esfand-scrapbook.html
> [3] satellite photo of the Korean peninsula: http://www.sibelle.info/koreas.htm


----------



## a_majoor

Slideshow of the Lybian rebels: http://www.businessinsider.com/libya-rebellion-pictures-2011-3


----------



## a_majoor

What happens next?

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/how-must-the-west-guide-the-new-middle-east/?print=1



> *How Must the West Guide the New Middle East?*
> 
> Posted By Moshe Dann On March 4, 2011 @ 12:00 am In Uncategorized | 2 Comments
> 
> Two enormous appetites have suddenly arrived at the Middle East’s table: democracy and consumerism. Ravished from years of famine and abuse, the people revolted and opened the doors to the well-stocked pantry and kitchen. Yet despite having overthrown tyrants, they are not now unruled. Two strict overseers are watching: Islamists and the military. Crowded with tribes, Sunnis and Shiites, and colonialist operators who function like combinations of parasites and predators, the well-laden table is still a game of who gets full plates and who survives.
> 
> Revolutions taking place in countries that have been ruled by dictators and exploited by foreigners are breathtaking in the possibilities that they offer. But they can, like so many others before, become hideous monsters of abuse and destruction.
> 
> Americans and Europeans have dined at this table for years, supplying abundant feasts for tyrants who served their interests. A mild rebuke here and there, but the weapons kept pouring in; good for business was the polite mannered morality that determined the menu.
> 
> And now, having watched this partying from the window, the youngsters have come in for their share. A demographic necessity, they want education, decent jobs, freedom to express themselves, gender equality, and all the other things they see on TV. Their weapons are small: communication devices they hold in their hands, videos and computers, promising that dreams come true.
> 
> The question: where will this banquet go? Islamists have no interest in giving up power, and less interest in Western culture. Generally lacking wider education, Islamists don’t read (excepting Islamic texts) and are totalistic in thinking. Pluralism, variety, and openness are threats. Using a spiritual façade, their interest is political: control the world through shariah and a caliphate.
> 
> Military leaders, experts in giving and taking orders, are aware of the advantages of the technological advances. Secular, they like parades with modern weapons, fancy uniforms, and international connections. They are not medieval sheiks with harems, and their children, if not military types, want university educations, businesses, and fat bank accounts.
> 
> The modern Middle East table, because it has been transformed by a young generation of appetites, holds the promise of enlightenment, progress, new relationships, and hopefully peace. Having tasted freedom, they want more; with flat wallets, they want the money that was hidden in foreign bank accounts. They want a piece of the pie, at least.
> 
> This new enthusiasm for what the world offers is a hopeful sign. The question is whether it can be translated into institution-building, stable economies, employment, and a higher standard of living. They can be seduced by Al-Jazeera and politicians who speak their language, but a new spice has been added to the main course: a sense of empowerment and responsibility.
> 
> This presents a unique opportunity for America and Europe to serve their message on a silver platter: democracy works for people. We are ready to help build that new society. Islamists will try to trip up the servers and undermine programs that threaten their views. But they can’t compete with what the West can offer, if done carefully and correctly.
> 
> Western foreign policies, guided by maintaining political and economic hegemony, have ignored the social and moral content of their assistance and funds. As long as there is no connection between the money and what it does, the West will contribute to future disasters. Economic interests that exploit natural resources should promote nation-building, not private portfolios; that should direct Western foreign policy. There needs to be synergy that is sympathetic to social needs and problems.
> 
> Recent uprisings have opened the table to many new guests. It would be a terrible waste to make people scramble for crumbs, when they could eat with dignity and self-respect.
> 
> No more snacks and finger food; they want a place at the table: a constitution, an independent judiciary, and separation of religion and state — for starters.
> 
> That is the challenge to Western strategists. It can create a New World; it has done so before and it can do it again.
> 
> Getting rid of dictators is not only physically liberating, but changes consciousness. The West should know how to advance governments “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” That is the true flag of nationalism.
> 
> Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com
> 
> URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/how-must-the-west-guide-the-new-middle-east/


----------



## Edward Campbell

I'm afraid I do not see the same "menu' as Moshe Dann (this Mishe Dann, I presume, described (in pajamasmedia.com) as _"a former assistant professor of history, is a writer and journalist living in Jerusalem"_). I don't see any foundations for education, decent jobs, gender equality, an independent judiciary, enlightenment or even "progress." I guess the most likely outcomes, in several different countries, are US sanctioned military dictatorships that will keep a *temporary* lid on bubbling social frustrations. Then, my guess (again) is a series of uprisings and civil wars that will, eventually, spell catastrophe for the entire Middle East, including Israel - which is almost certain to get singed or, more likely, scorched and even burned to death (_holocaust_ anyone?) in the process, just because they are nearby, in the _ummah_.


----------



## CougarKing

Protests in Saudi Arabia as well?

link



> RIYADH (Reuters) - *Saudi Arabia said on Saturday it would ban all protests and marches after minority Shi'ites staged small protests in the oil-producing eastern province.*
> 
> Security forces would use all measures to prevent any attempt to disrupt public order, the interior ministry said in a statement carried by state television.
> 
> The ban follows a series of protets by Saudi Shi'ites in the kingdom's east in the past weeks mainly to demand the release of prisoners they say are long held without trial.
> 
> Saudi Arabia's Shi'ite minority mostly live in the east, which holds much of the oil wealth of the world's top crude exporter and is near Bahrain, scene of protests by majority Shi'ites against their Sunni rulers.
> 
> Saudi Shi'ites they complain they struggle to get senior government jobs and other benefits like other citizens.
> 
> The government of Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy without an elected parliament that usually does not tolerate public dissent, denies these charges.
> 
> Last week, King Abdullah returned to Riyadh after a three-month medical absence and unveiled $37 billion in benefits for citizens in an apparent bid to insulate the kingdom from protests spreading in several Arab countries.



Plus I see there hasn't been a post about the unrest in Yemen at this thread for awhile:

link



> *Yemeni troops killed four demonstrators and wounded seven others on Friday when they fired on an anti-regime rally in the north, officials and Shiite rebels said, as protests raged across the country.*
> The shooting, which came a day after the opposition and clerics offered embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh a smooth exit from power, took place in the village of Semla, 170 kilometres (105 miles) from the capital Sanaa.
> 
> "Two protesters were killed and nine others were wounded when soldiers opened fire from a military position on the demonstration calling for Saleh's departure," a leader of the Zaidi rebels said on condition of anonymity.
> 
> The death toll later rose to four when two protesters died of their wounds, according to a government official in the northern province of Amran, who declined to be named.
> 
> The shooting was also reported on the rebels' news website almenpar.net, which said the government troops "killed and wounded dozens" when they shot at them from a military post.
> 
> Protesters had taken to the streets of the nearby town of Harf Sufyan to criticise corruption and call for a regime change after 30 years of rule by Saleh, said the website.
> 
> The Zaidi rebels, also known as Huthis, on February 22 joined anti-Saleh protests which erupted across the poverty striken country in January and gained momentum last month.
> 
> (...)


----------



## a_majoor

Without comment:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/03/AR2011030304239.html?hpid=opinionsbox1



> *From Baghdad to Benghazi*
> 
> By Charles Krauthammer
> Friday, March 4, 2011
> 
> Voices around the world, from Europe to America to Libya, are calling for U.S. intervention to help bring down Moammar Gaddafi. Yet for bringing down Saddam Hussein, the United States has been denounced variously for aggression, deception, arrogance and imperialism.
> 
> A strange moral inversion, considering that Hussein's evil was an order of magnitude beyond Gaddafi's. Gaddafi is a capricious killer; Hussein was systematic. Gaddafi was too unstable and crazy to begin to match the Baathist apparatus: a comprehensive national system of terror, torture and mass murder, gassing entire villages to create what author Kanan Makiya called a "Republic of Fear."
> 
> Moreover, that systemized brutality made Hussein immovable in a way that Gaddafi is not. Barely armed Libyans have already seized half the country on their own. Yet in Iraq, there was no chance of putting an end to the regime without the terrible swift sword (it took all of three weeks) of the United States.
> 
> No matter the hypocritical double standard. Now that revolutions are sweeping the Middle East and everyone is a convert to George W. Bush's freedom agenda, it's not just Iraq that has slid into the memory hole. Also forgotten is the once proudly proclaimed "realism" of Years One and Two of President Obama's foreign policy - the "smart power" antidote to Bush's alleged misty-eyed idealism.
> 
> It began on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's first Asia trip, when she publicly played down human rights concerns in China. The administration also cut aid for democracy promotion in Egypt by 50 percent. And cut civil society funds - money for precisely the organizations we now need to help Egyptian democracy - by 70 percent.
> 
> This new realism reached its apogee with Obama's reticence and tardiness in saying anything in support of the 2009 Green Revolution in Iran. On the contrary, Obama made clear that nuclear negotiations with the discredited and murderous regime (talks that a child could see would go nowhere) took precedence over the democratic revolutionaries in the street - to the point where demonstrators in Tehran chanted, "Obama, Obama, you are either with us or with them."
> 
> Now that revolution has spread from Tunisia to Oman, however, the administration is rushing to keep up with the new dispensation, repeating the fundamental tenet of the Bush Doctrine that Arabs are no exception to the universal thirst for dignity and freedom.
> 
> Iraq, of course, required a sustained U.S. military engagement to push back totalitarian forces trying to extinguish the new Iraq. But is this not what we are being asked to do with a no-fly zone over Libya? In conditions of active civil war, taking command of Libyan airspace requires a sustained military engagement.
> 
> Now, it can be argued that the price in blood and treasure that America paid to establish Iraq's democracy was too high. But whatever side you take on that question, what's unmistakable is that to the Middle Easterner, Iraq today is the only functioning Arab democracy, with multiparty elections and the freest press. Its democracy is fragile and imperfect - last week, security forces cracked down on demonstrators demanding better services - but were Egypt to be as politically developed in, say, a year as is Iraq today, we would think it a great success.
> 
> For Libyans, the effect of the Iraq war is even more concrete. However much bloodshed they face, they have been spared the threat of genocide. Gaddafi was so terrified by what we did to Saddam & Sons that he plea-bargained away his weapons of mass destruction. For a rebel in Benghazi, that is no small matter.
> 
> Yet we have been told incessantly how Iraq poisoned the Arab mind against America. Really? Where is the rampant anti-Americanism in any of these revolutions? In fact, notes Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes, the United States has been "conspicuously absent from the sloganeering."
> 
> It's Yemen's president and the delusional Gaddafi who are railing against American conspiracies to rule and enslave. The demonstrators in the streets of Egypt, Iran and Libya have been straining their eyes for America to help. They are not chanting the antiwar slogans - remember "No blood for oil"? - of the American left. Why would they? America is leaving Iraq having taken no oil, having established no permanent bases, having left behind not a puppet regime but a functioning democracy. This, after Iraq's purple-fingered exercises in free elections seen on television everywhere set an example for the entire region.
> 
> Facebook and Twitter have surely mediated this pan-Arab (and Iranian) reach for dignity and freedom. But the Bush Doctrine set the premise.
> 
> letters@charleskrauthammer.com


----------



## old medic

Salacious and classified security files turning up on Facebook
Documents purport to lay out State Security's involvement in a church bombing, back officers' reputation for torture
By Hannah Allam and Mohannad Sabry, Vancouver Sun March 8, 2011
http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Salacious+classified+security+files+turning+Facebook/4400416/story.html



> Less than a month after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's caretaker government faces a new crisis: what to do about thousands of documents that protesters seized from State Security Agency offices over the weekend.
> 
> The military-led interim authority has demanded that the classified files kept by Mubarak's dreaded internal spy agency be returned.
> 
> Instead, they're being scattered throughout Egypt, with files turning up on Facebook and Twitter hourly, forcing the government to respond to them and raising fears among some activists that their value has been reduced for any future prosecutions for torture and kidnapping.
> 
> Some of what the documents contain is salacious and sinister.
> 
> One file includes a sex tape purportedly involving a Kuwaiti princess and a prominent Egyptian businessman. Another paints Egypt's highest-ranking cleric as a womanizer.
> 
> Israa Abdel Fattah, 32, a labour organizer and blogger, shared her file with McClatchy and marvelled at the thoroughness of the surveillance.
> 
> The file included detailed transcripts of emails sent from her Gmail account and phone conversations with her ex-husband. The feeling of violation was indescribable, she said.
> 
> "I knew they were watching me, but I never imagined they knew all this information about me," she said. "My friends tried to take me out to dinner that night. They tried to make me laugh, but I couldn't. I told them I should be alone, so I took my papers and went home."
> 
> Perhaps the most controversial document to surface was one that purports to lay out State Security's involvement in a church bombing on New Year's Day in Alexandria.
> 
> The bombing killed 21 people and wounded 80, the worst violence against Egypt's Coptic Christian minority in more than a decade.
> 
> The legitimacy of the document hasn't been determined, but its distribution touched off protests Sunday in Cairo by hundreds of Coptic Christians.
> 
> Copts, especially those in Alexandria, had suspected state involvement in the bombing, noting that a stepped-up security force that was supposed to have protected the church had vanished before the bomb exploded. According to the document, one of eight said to discuss attacks on churches, State Security used a jailed Islamist to help organize the plot, including details on the church's entrances and exits.
> 
> The document was dated Dec. 2, 2010, and was addressed to the interior minister. It referred to the church bombing as "Mission No. 77."
> 
> There are also several files that back State Security officers' reputation for torture. In one letter stamped "top secret" in 2008 and made available on Facebook, a senior official wrote that detainees suffered "injuries" while in State Security custody. He complained that questioning had to be delayed until the wounds had healed.
> 
> Questions abound. Why, for example, would such a serious plot as the church bombing be outlined in a document that was found so quickly? Why were some documents shredded and others not?
> 
> Almost all the documents bear the State Security letterhead and the signatures of senior officers. Military officers who were on the scene when the protesters barged into the State Security headquarters in Cairo and other cities tried to recover the documents, wrangling some of them from the crowds.
> 
> A message Sunday on the Facebook page of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which is now running the country, ordered anyone in possession of the files to stop publishing them and to hand them over immediately to the nearest army post. The council cited national security concerns.
> 
> Activists and human rights advocates worried that the disappearance of the files would hurt the chances that a new civilian government would prosecute officials for State Security's abuses.
> 
> "This is the one chance to hold (State Security officers) to account, but because there wasn't a procedure in place to access the documents, it's problematic," said Heba Morayef, a researcher in the Cairo office of Human Rights Watch. "Some are in the hands of activist groups that are fairly responsible, but in other cases, they're all over the place."
> 
> Protesters defended taking the documents, saying the interim authority had not secured them and that they were in danger of being lost or destroyed if they hadn't taken them. As if to endorse that claim, the Egyptian attorneygeneral on Monday ordered the arrests of 47 State Security officers for their involvement in destroying documents.
> 
> There was no effort Monday by protesters to stop publication. They formed a WikiLeaks-style online clearing house for the documents, and posted them on Facebook and elsewhere.
> 
> Abdel Fattah was shocked at what friends handed her as she waited outside the doors of State Security's Cairo complex Saturday.
> 
> She was arrested in 2008 after she urged a general strike to call attention to the plight of Egyptian workers. Her activism, her professional work and her private life were all documented, with notations of where backup copies of the files existed.
> 
> On Monday she made an appointment with a lawyer to discuss building a case against the officers named in her dossier.


----------



## MarkOttawa

What "democracy" is up against, from David Ignatius with some great power advice:

Building a culture of tolerance in the Mideast
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/11/AR2011031106173.html



> After weeks of exhilarating scenes from Tahrir Square, Egypt offered a reality check last week that shows how hard the transition to democracy will be in the Arab world: The essential ingredient will be a culture of tolerance - and a spirit of unity that overcomes political, religious and other differences.
> 
> The ugly old politics of division surfaced in Egypt in three dramatic confrontations: Participants in a women's march reportedly were groped by male bystanders; Coptic Christians clashed with Muslims following the burning of a church, leaving 13 dead; and protesters ransacked the files of the hated security police, looking for dirt on the old regime and perhaps on their neighbors.
> 
> What a democratic culture does is take these real and inescapable tensions and find a constructive outlet for them. The Arabic chant "Salmiya" - peaceful - was one of the unifying themes of Tahrir Square, and it's needed now just as much as it was in the campaign to topple Hosni Mubarak. The Tahrir movement was made up of disparate groups - socialists and capitalists, men and women, Muslims and Christians - but they found a common language. I hope they don't get amnesia.
> 
> The danger is that the nascent democracy will turn into anarchic discord, followed by renewed repression - a process all too common in post-revolutionary history. The idealism of the French Revolution gave way to the bloodletting of the Committee of Public Safety, which in turn brought the crackdown known as Thermidor. The young democrats of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya will avoid this tragic cycle only if they embrace tolerance.
> 
> Let's take the example of the security institutions of a new Egypt. The police became the enemy for the Tahrir Square protesters, and there's still a lot of pent-up rage at Mubarak's repressive state. But Egyptians want law and order, too, and they will need a modern, efficient police force that doesn't harass or torture people. They will need an effective intelligence service, too, for that matter.
> 
> How to help the Arabs build modern security services? After the fall of communism, the United States assisted the nations of Eastern Europe in establishing such organizations, with appropriate rules and oversight. America is not the right country to help reconstruct the new Egyptian security service (we were too involved in the evils of the old one), but how about a mission from Poland, or the Czech Republic, or other nations that created police and intelligence agencies on a democratic model?..
> 
> And on the subject of press freedom, it is disheartening to see regimes such as Jordan, which claim to want reform, encourage the suspension of the weekly column in the Jordan Times by Randa Habib, the widely respected Amman bureau chief of Agence France-Presse. Bravo to the 200 brave Jordanian journalists who demonstrated last week for press freedom. If King Abdullah II wants to be seen as a genuine reformer, he needs to embrace this cause rather than fight it...
> 
> Obama has been criticized for not being more interventionist in his response to the uprisings in Egypt and Libya. Mostly, I think that criticism is bunk; Obama has been right to keep this a narrative written by Arabs, without American meddling. But on the subject of creating new and tolerant democracies, Obama should find his voice. *Isn't it time for a new Cairo speech that aligns America with this process of change* [emphasis added--how much real use is jawboning?]?



As for that criticism...
http://forums.milnet.ca/forums/threads/99510/post-1025668.html#msg1025668

Mark
Ottawa


----------



## The Bread Guy

..... the Saudis will soon be lending a hand:


> Saudi forces are preparing to intervene in neighbouring Bahrain, after a day of clashes between police and protesters who mounted the most serious challenge to the island's royal family since demonstrations began a month ago.
> 
> The Crown Prince of Bahrain is expected to formally invite security forces from Saudi Arabia into his country today, as part of a request for support from other members of the six-member Gulf Co-operation Council.
> 
> Thousands of demonstrators on Sunday cut off Bahrain's financial centre and drove back police trying to eject them from the capital's central roundabout, while protesters also clashed with government supporters on the campus of the main university.
> 
> Amid the revolt Bahrain also faces a potential sectarian conflict between the ruling minority of Sunnis Muslims and a majority of Shia Muslims, around 70% of the kingdom's 525,000 residents.
> 
> The crown prince, Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa, said in a televised statement that Bahrain had "witnessed tragic events" during a month of unprecedented political unrest.
> 
> Warning that "the right to security and safety is above all else", he added: "Any legitimate claims must not be made at the expanse of security and stability." ....


----------



## a_majoor

It's on:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704893604576199733669908402.html



> *Saudis Send Force to Bolster Bahrain*
> 
> By ANGUS MCDOWALL, ALEX DELMAR-MORGAN And ADAM ENTOUS
> [0314bahrain] Reuters
> 
> Anti-government protesters block the roads from riot police at the junction of Bahrain Financial Harbour in Manama March 14.
> 
> MANAMA, Bahrain—Saudi military forces in tanks and armored personnel carriers crossed the 16-mile causeway into the tiny island kingdom of Bahrain to defend the Sunni monarchy against a Shiite revolt, raising the specter of sectarian clashes and heightened conflict with Iran.
> 
> The deployment, against U.S. wishes, compounded Washington's struggle for sway in the Arab world on a day when Col. Moammar Gadhafi's military threatened to encircle rebel forces in eastern Libya, and the international community continued to debate taking military action to stop him.
> 
> Gulf Cooperation Council states, by contrast, moved quickly in response to a request from Bahrain's ruling al-Khalifa family to dispatch the first deployment of Arab troops across national borders since a revolt in Tunisia in December sparked unrest across the Arab world.
> 
> Saudi Arabia said 1,000 of its soldiers took part and the United Arab Emirates said 500 of its police officers had arrived at Bahrain's request.
> 
> A Saudi official said the soldiers were sent to protect Bahrain's oil and power facilities and other key installations. The ultimate size of the force, and where in Bahrain it will be deployed, hasn't been revealed.
> 
> The deployment followed a dramatic escalation in protests that broke out one month ago. On Sunday, police firing tear gas and rubber bullets effectively lost control of large areas of Manama's financial district.
> 
> Protesters consolidated their control of the area Monday. Most of Manama's financial district was effectively closed because of the demonstrators' occupation and roadblocks.
> 
> A highway running through the Bahraini capital's business hub remained closed and demonstrators extended their blockade by laying bricks, fallen lampposts and trash cans across the highway. There was no sign of any police presence in the area late Monday.
> 
> The U.S. views stability in Bahrain, home base for the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, as critical to checking Iran's influence in the Persian Gulf.
> 
> But the U.S. fears that Saudi intervention will prompt Iran to step up its role in Bahrain by spurring the Shiite revolt through public statements and covert support, officials and diplomats said.
> 
> Iran criticized the move Monday. "The peaceful demonstrations in Bahrain is an internal affair and trying to create fear and tension by using foreign army forces to crack down on these protests will only make things worse," a foreign ministry official said, Fars News Agency reported.
> 
> The U.S. tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade its Saudi allies to keep their forces out of the fray.
> 
> Tensions between President Barack Obama and the Saudi king flared in February over Mr. Obama's push for the immediate exit of President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, rather than the graceful exit supported by the Saudis.
> 
> Officials and diplomats said the Saudis now appeared to be charting a largely independent course in response to unrest in Bahrain.
> Regional Upheaval
> 
> A look at the economic and political status of selected countries facing unrest in North Africa and the Middle East.
> 
> On Monday, Washington warned against taking any action to suppress the protesters. "We urge our GCC partners to show restraint and respect the rights of the people of Bahrain, and to act in a way that supports dialogue instead of undermining it," said White House National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor.
> 
> The Gulf Cooperation Council comprises Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the U.A.E., Qatar, Oman and Bahrain.
> 
> Mr. Vietor also put the onus on protesters to avoid provoking the military.
> 
> Bahrain's main opposition party, which has so far refused to enter into talks with the government, said prospects of dialogue were now dead. "Are you going to start dialogue with a gun to your head?" said Abdul Khalil, a senior member of the moderate al Wefaq party, which is calling for, among other things, a fully elected parliament.
> 
> Bahrain's Shiite opposition has been split between moderates wanting constitutional changes and hard-liners dedicated to unseating the monarchy. The arrival of foreign forces gave these groups something they could agree on, with some calling it "a flagrant occupation of the country" that puts the country in "in grave danger of a war being launched by an outside armed military."
> 
> The deployment hardened the attitudes of protesters gathered at the Pearl roundabout in the Bahraini capital of Manama, where thousands have staged a weekslong sit-in.
> 
> "People are preparing themselves and we are ready to fight back if any attacks come," said Sayed Ahmed, a 24-year-old engineer who is part of a hard-line youth group. "We will fight to the last breath."
> 
> Mr. Ahmed said his group's primary objective was to maintain control of the roundabout and the financial center.
> 
> U.S. officials said the foreign forces were keeping their distance from those areas in an effort to avoid confrontation.
> 
> With the growing unrest, the threat of sectarian violence has also been growing, with reports of clashes between Sunni and Shiite citizens.
> 
> The deployment of Gulf troops could exacerbate sectarian tensions. "Although this has been defined as a joint GCC force, they will be seen on the ground as Saudi troops who are there to bolster the Sunni monarchy," said Gala Riani of IHS Global Insight Middle East, a political risk consultancy.
> 
> The fears of sectarian violence are particularly acute for Saudi Arabia, where hundreds of protesters last week clashed with police in the Eastern Province, home to Saudi Arabia's Shiite minority.
> 
> "Saudi forces would be prepared to intervene if they judged that the al Khalifa's rule was at stake," said Neil Partrick, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics.
> 
> "King Abdullah and the rest of the Saudi leadership probably judge there would be a greater risk to stability in Saudi Shia areas and of Iranian exploitation of it in the kingdom and elsewhere in the Gulf if they weren't prepared to make it very clear that they are prepared to act decisively," he said.
> 
> Saudi Arabia has long warned against what it sees as Iranian expansionism in the Mideast, while Tehran has hinted at territorial claims to Bahrain.
> 
> Opposition groups in Bahrain deny any connection to Iran, and U.S. officials dismissed Bahraini allegations that Iran played a central role orchestrating the protests.
> 
> Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, analysts have seen a growing confrontation between Saudi Arabia and majority-Shiite Iran, the Persian Gulf's two major powers, as the two aligned with opposing sides in conflicts in Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian territories.
> 
> —Summer Said
> contributed to this article.


----------



## old medic

Hated state security agency closed 
17 March 2011
http://www.france24.com/en/20110315-egypt-dissolves-reviled-state-security-agency-mubarak



> REUTERS - Egypt on Tuesday dissolved an internal security and spying agency whose reputation for brutality helped ignite the uprising that swept Hosni Mubarak from power last month.
> The Interior Ministry replaced state security with a new National Security Force, which would serve "the nation without interfering in the lives of citizens or their right to exercise their political rights", the state news agency reported.
> 
> The new security agency would be tasked with guarding internal security and fighting terrorism in line with the constitution and the principles of human rights.
> 
> The dissolution of state security was one of the main demands of the activists who rose up against Mubarak, forcing him to step down on Feb. 11 and hand power to the military. "The choosing and appointment of the officers of the new force will take place in the coming few days," the agency said.
> 
> As with the Stasi in East Germany, state security had sweeping powers, intervening in everything from university elections to public sector appointments.
> 
> Pressure for action grew after protesters stormed state security's offices across Egypt earlier this month, finding piles of shredded files, evidence of torture and documents showing the full extent of the agency's internal espionage.
> 
> Its head has been arrested and is facing investigation for ordering the killing of demonstrators during the uprising against Mubarak. Another 47 of its personnel have been detained on suspicion of destroying documents.
> 
> A spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement that had been banned by Mubarak, described the dissolution of state security as "a step in the right direction".
> 
> Activists have said the survival of state security posed a danger to the sweeping changes they hope will turn Egypt from an autocratic, oppressive state into a democracy.


----------



## MarkOttawa

Meanwhile, "Our role in Bahrain"--BruceR (a Canadian Army reserve officer whose has served as a mentor in Afghanistan, notes an inconvenient fact at his blog, _Flit_:
http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/archives/2011_03_18.html



> ...at around 2:30 in the video you see the distinctive boat hulls of LAVs, most with the 90mm main gun armament that is unique to the Saudi variant. Made in Canada? Yes, most likely...
> 
> General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada (prior to 2003 the Canadian subsidiary of the defense division of General Motors) has been involved in equipping the Saudi military with LAVs for years, and continues to be...This is not, however, an issue that any party courting the Ontario auto union vote is likely ever to bring up to the public, so this shouldn't be an issue, at least until one of the Saudi drivers runs over a news crew or something.



Bruce has a certain cutting turn of phrase.  

Mark
Ottawa


----------



## a_majoor

If this is true, then a vast shift is underway and Libya is either a side show or the beginning of a vast operation spanning the entire Levant:

http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/2011/03/20/syria-too/



> *Syria, too*
> 
> There have been serious demonstrations against the Assad regime all over the country for weeks now, with near-zero coverage.  Yet, from the standpoint of American interests, this is way more important than Libya, since Syria is a vital cog in the Iranian-led war against us.
> 
> The best way to follow this is via the updates from the admirable Reform Party of Syria.  Here’s a link, you can sign up for  email alerts, which are coming fast and furious.  The latest flash is an unconfirmed report of tens of thousands of anti-Assad citizens marching in Aleppo.


----------



## The Bread Guy

MarkOttawa said:
			
		

> Meanwhile, "Our role in Bahrain"--BruceR (a Canadian Army reserve officer whose has served as a mentor in Afghanistan, notes an inconvenient fact at his blog, _Flit_:
> http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/archives/2011_03_18.html



Guess who else is bringing this it up?


> The federal government is being urged to prevent further shipments to Saudi Arabia of military vehicles made in Canada, and to institute an embargo on the export of all military goods to the region during the current political turmoil .... In the 1990s and early 2000s Canada sold more than 1200 LAVs, built by General Motors Diesel Division (now General Dynamics Land Systems Canada) of London, Ontario, to the Saudi Arabian National Guard.  "Arms built in Canada should not be used to prevent democracy in Bahrain or anywhere else," said *Steven Staples, President of the Rideau Institute*. "As more people in the Middle East and North Africa demand more accountability from their governments, Canadians should be very concerned about Canada exporting arms to that region."  The Government of Canada's export control policies are intended to "closely control" military exports to countries "involved in or under threat of hostilities" and countries "whose governments have a persistent record of serious violations of the human rights of their citizens."


----------



## The Bread Guy

Thucydides said:
			
		

> If this is true, then a vast shift is underway and Libya is either a side show or the beginning of a vast operation spanning the entire Levant:
> 
> http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/2011/03/20/syria-too/



Hmmm, OP Odyssey Dawn.... The start of a long journey?  An omen?


----------



## a_majoor

More on Syria. Lots of links embedded in the article:

http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/2011/03/21/syria-the-revolt-continues/



> *Syria: The Revolt Continues (UPDATED)*
> 
> This is probably the most important ongoing revolt in the Middle East right now.  If Assad were to fall, it would reverberate all over the region, and greatly weaken the Iranian regime.  Typically, it is getting far less coverage than the other “crises,” but we’ll follow it here.  Latest updates:
> 
> Dara’a. According to eyewitnesses, the whole city (Population: ~100,000) is up in arms. Tens of thousands are on the street demanding freedom and liberty. Many are aware that the French Foreign Ministry, the US State Department, and the world is watching what they’re doing. This video shows Syrian security men stopping ambulances from reaching the injured. The whole town is surrounded by tanks aimed at the city.
> 
> Jassem. Unconfirmed reports that demonstrations have started in Jassem, a small town close to the Golan Heights Northwest of Dara’a.
> 
> Qamoshli. This video shows demonstrations in Qamoshli March 20, 2011.
> 
> Damascus. Download this video to see security men beating worshippers outside the Omayyad Mosque in Damascus. The video was taken using a secret pinhole camera.
> 
> Madaya. This video was taken yesterday of a small demonstration in the town of Madaya on the outskirts of Damascus and not too far from the Lebanese borders. Madaya is located south of al-Zabadani, which is a suspected stronghold of Hezbollah and the Military Security of Assad.
> 
> Syria. Rumors are circulating that young Syrian army recruits have express unity with the people of Syria against the regime in the form of not firing any live ammunition against their own people.
> 
> (UPDATE: “More Syria: Tanks Move In To Dara’a.”)


----------



## 57Chevy

Makes me wonder.
Islamic law forbids a Muslim to kill another Muslim intentionally (Quran 4:92), 
The religions of all of these failing states as we know are predominantly muslim, be it sunni, shia, or sufi as in the case of Egypt, and perhaps some other lesser tribal relatives.
The supreme leader Khomeini is no lenient man and clearly not open to dialogue in any way. He is the deciding factor to all Islamic adherents and declares that all Muslims form a single Nation.
And that is too bad.
(from Wikipedia)
[...Before taking power Khomeini expressed support for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. "We would like to act according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We would like to be free. We would like independence." However once in power Khomeini took a firm line against dissent, warning opponents of theocracy for example: "I repeat for the last time: abstain from holding meetings, from blathering, from publishing protests. Otherwise I will break your teeth..."]

Taking an easy out answer he states;
[excerpt from article;( http://www.presstv.ir/detail/171150.html )]
{...In a major address on Monday marking the Iranian New Year, Iran's Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khomeini called the US-led military intervention in Libya “unacceptable,” insisting that the major aim of the move was Western oil interests. He further argued that if the West was really concerned about the plight of anti-government protesters in Libya, they would act against the Libyan dictator much earlier and not allow the killing of so many so far.
Ayatollah Khomeini also reiterated that the American claim of supporting nations has always served as a deception to promote policy interest and in reality the US has “no mercy” on people of the region...}

All the while he does even less.....or does he perhaps actually make matters even worse ? 

[excerpt of article from on board Air Force One by Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes and Senior Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs Dan Restrepo; ( http://www.isria.com/pages/22_March_2011_94.php )]
{....the Bahrainians yesterday said that they had uncovered a foreign plot. Is the United States aware -- and this was clearly aimed at Tehran -- is the United States aware of any evidence of Iran trying to foment trouble with the Shia community in Bahrain?

MR. RHODES: I think that what’s clear is that the protests that originated in Bahrain were by the Bahraini people, and that led to the series of events that continues to play out. So we believe that these movements in some of these opposition forces are longstanding political parties, for instance within Bahrain, have contributed to the protests there.

That said, I think across the region, Iran always seeks to find ways to exert influence. That’s not unique to Bahrain. I think we’ve seen Iran and countries like Lebanon, for instance, and others, seek to exploit opportunities for their own interests. So it’s something we watch very closely. I wouldn’t say that -- I wouldn’t say that we’re going to spell out in precise terms what we think their role might be in Bahrain other than to say that we always monitor these types of situations for Iranian efforts to try to take advantage of situations for their own interests...}

The reasoning behind some muslim states abstaining from the UN resolution revolves around that law, and yet muslim are killing muslims intentionally in vast numbers all over the middle east and Africa.
I think that would be a good enough reason to protest. 
However, they protest to expulse their rulers to become free of tyranny and corruption.
In Bahrain, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere the massacre of the innocent is rampant and leaders pocket change hire mercenaries.

How are atrocities allowable within states if that law is not enforced when measures are called upon for protection and an end to bloodshed ?
And when things finally get really out of hand, What do you hear ? Where is the UN ? Where is Uncle Sam ?  We need help !  Help us !  Help us !
Is the mess they make only for Western Cowboys and Europeans to handle ? I think not.
I can easily see why the US wants out of Libya ASAP.
[article: US wants out of Libya as quickly as possible ( http://politicsreport.com/news/us-wants-out-quick-possible )]

Neighbouring Muslim States are fully equipped, capable militarily and without a doubt
substantially rich enough to enforce not only the no-fly zone for as long as necessary, but also to enforce the law wherever required in those uprising Muslim States. It would seem that "pocket" law is used conveniently whenever any sort of formal commitment is sought.
Is that something like a "in case of fire break open" type law ? 

Open the eyes ! Laws are not in place only to be utilized when the need arises. If you abide within the law only half the time then you do not live within it, and become subject to the consequences.

How can they say it ? We will not intervene against the slaughter because it is against our law. What ! How precarious they stand in their boots !
Here we are arming and massively subsidizing the Egyptians with everything including the kitchen sink but when the time comes to take action they throw up their perverted version of the law and run to the sidelines.

Is the Muslim States 'military might' some kind of showpiece not to be rightfully used ? A treasure of uselessness or one to also be used against their own people ? Or to be found useful to protesters who one day may try to make good riddance of their leaders ? Because otherwise, in most cases, their armies are like teats on a boar. 
They must learn to better use their military arsenal for the real reasons like those at hand.

The West has plenty of experience and will gladly offer valuable guidelines and thorough expertise in all fields.
By law, Muslim States cannot allow the open murder of more brotherly muslims no matter their denomination and leave the dirty work to others.
Muslims must look to The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and exercise within the law the full spectrum of what it entails.
I think there is no better time for these Muslim States to shoulder the full burden of affairs and take action in a leading and Command Role.


----------



## a_majoor

I'm sure massive NATO airstrikes will be raining down on Syria any time now....

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20110324/syria-police-gunfire-freedom-march-110324/



> *Thousands shout for freedom at funeral march in Syria*
> 
> Anti-Syrian government protesters pass next to burning tyres set alight by the protesters, following clashes between the Syrian security forces and protesters, in the southern city of Daraa, Syria, Wednesday March 23, 2011. (AP / Hussein Malla)
> 
> Anti-Syrian government protesters pass next to burning tyres set alight by the protesters, following clashes between the Syrian security forces and protesters, in the southern city of Daraa, Syria, Wednesday March 23, 2011. (AP / Hussein Malla)
> 
> Date: Thu. Mar. 24 2011 9:23 AM ET
> 
> DARAA, Syria — Thousands called for liberty Thursday in the southern Syrian city of Daraa, defying a deadly government crackdown as they took to the streets in funeral marches for protesters killed by police gunfire, an activist said.
> 
> Media access to the marches was restricted but an Associated Press reporter heard sporadic bursts of gunfire echoing through the city in the afternoon. Almost all shops were shuttered, the streets were virtually empty and soldiers and anti-terrorism police stopped people at checkpoints and manned many intersections -- the heaviest security presence since the unrest began.
> 
> The activist in contact with residents of Daraa told The Associated Press that massive crowds shouted "Syria, freedom!" as they marched toward one of the agricultural hub's main cemeteries.
> 
> Others in Daraa held a sit-in in the al-Mahata neighbourhood to protest the killing of residents in clashes between security forces and anti-government protesters, the activist said.
> 
> Inspired by the wave of pro-democracy protests around the region, the uprising in Daraa and at least four nearby villages has become the biggest domestic challenge since the 1970s to the Syrian government, one of the most repressive in the Middle East. Security forces have responded with water cannon, tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition.
> 
> Syrian police launched a relentless assault Wednesday on a neighbourhood sheltering anti-government protesters, fatally shooting many in an operation that lasted nearly 24 hours, witnesses said.
> 
> A resident of Daraa who was reached by phone from Damascus said witnesses there reported seeing at least 34 people slain.
> 
> He said at least 20 bodies were brought to Daraa National Hospital, and seven others taken to hospitals in neighbouring areas. In the early evening, people from the nearby villages of Inkhil, Khirbet Ghazale and al-Harrah tried to march on Daraa but security forces opened fire and hit them with rifle butts as they approached. The resident said seven more were killed in that shooting. Hundreds were wounded, he said.
> 
> The resident spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
> 
> "It was a very difficult, bloody day," he said. "There is a state of undeclared curfew in Daraa, whenever troops see four or five more people gathered they open fire," he said.
> 
> "Daraa today is like a ghost town, we are very scared," he said. "Everything is closed and the streets are empty, everywhere you look there's security."
> 
> Abdul-Karim Rihawi, who heads the Syrian Human Rights League, said authorities had begun a campaign of detentions against activists, writers and bloggers in different parts of Syria.
> 
> Rihawi said the last to be detained was Mazen Darwish, a journalist who headed the independent Syrian Media Center. He said Darwish was summoned to a security office Wednesday noon and has not been seen since then. Also detained were well-known writer Loay Hussein and blogger Ahmad Hdaithi.
> 
> "These arrests will only increase tension," Rihawi said.
> 
> A statement posted Thursday on the Facebook page "The Syrian Revolution 2011" held Syrian authorities led by President Bashar Assad responsible for the violence and called on the Syrian people to hold protests in all Syrian provinces on Friday, which it dubbed "Dignity Friday."
> 
> An official at the Daraa National Hospital told The Associated Press by telephone that the hospital received a large number of casualties Wednesday and was "overwhelmed" with wounded people. He declined to say how many people were dead or hurt, saying he was not authorized to give out numbers or talk to the press.
> 
> He said the hospital had not received any new casualties since Wednesday night and that Daraa was "very quiet this morning."
> 
> Videos posted by activists on Youtube and Twitter showed dead and wounded people lying on a street in Daraa, as heavy gunfire crackled nearby and people shouted in panic.
> 
> One video showed a man with a bloodied face, apparently shot in the head, raising his index finger and saying "There is no God but Allah" -- the credo Muslims are required to say before they die.
> 
> The authenticity of the videos could not be independently confirmed.
> 
> In a tacit admission that the protests hitting the Arab world have reached Syria, Vice-President Farouk al-Sharaa said in remarks carried by state-media that "the developments in the Arab world should should be a catalyst to build nations and not for undermining national unity."


----------



## a_majoor

The Iranian leadership is preparing their population for the trials ahead:

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/iranian-rulers-believing-pre-messianic-destruction-is-imminent-make-film-to-prepare-muslims/



> *Iranian Rulers, Believing Pre-Messianic Destruction Is Imminent, Make Film To Prepare Muslims*
> Posted By 'Reza Kahlili' On March 28, 2011 @ 12:00 am In Uncategorized | 26 Comments
> 
> Several months ago, I was informed by my contacts in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that the Basij had started work on a film that had the approval of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The purpose of the project: to inform Muslims across the globe of the immediate coming of the last Islamic messiah. As my English translation of the film makes clear (watch it exclusively at PJTV [1]), the Iranian leaders, now more than ever, feel that all the stars are aligned for such event.
> 
> Ever since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the Islamic rulers of Iran have declared themselves representatives of God on Earth, believing their mission is to pave the way for the reappearance of the Shiites’ 12th imam, Mahdi.
> 
> Their belief is based on the centuries-old Hadith by Prophet Mohammad and his descendants, who have provided clear guidance as to the timing of The Coming.
> 
> According to the Hadith, in the age of The Coming a revolution takes place in Iran. This is a key sign indicating that the reappearance is near, and serves as the initial preparation in the worldwide movement for The Coming of the last messiah. Based on this belief, the leaders of Iran see it as their duty to prepare the ground for The Coming.
> 
> One of the most important keys to securing the reappearance of the last messiah — as called for in the Hadith — is the annihilation of Israel, and the conquering of Beitol Moghadas (Jerusalem). They state with conviction that Islam will soon conquer the world, and that all infidels will be destroyed.
> 
> The pursuit of nuclear bombs by the radicals ruling Iran is directly connected to this belief: war, chaos, and lawlessness must engulf the world to pave the way for Imam Mahdi’s reappearance.
> 
> This movie has been produced in Iran by an organization called Conductors of The Coming [2], in collaboration with the Iranian president’s office and the Basij (Iranian paramilitary force). Also, reports indicate that Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, President Ahmadinejad’s top adviser and chief of staff, was directly involved with this project. The movie was completed a few months ago and was recently screened for the high clerics by the Iranian president’s office, with one of its high-ranking official analyzing it.
> 
> Mashaei reflects the Iranian leaders’ belief very clearly:
> 
> Therefore let us shout out loud that The Coming is soon and that evil should be fearful. We live with these thoughts every day and our lives are filled with The Coming of the last imam. That human will reappear and fill the world with justice and establish his promised governance on earth. The very world has witnessed too much bloodshed of the innocent for others to build their palaces. The very world is filled with shouts for justice. The innocent and the oppressed are losing their lives to world powers. It is in this very world where the oppressors rule and this world that Allah will command the last imam to appear and forever put an end to injustice. At that time the world will belong to the righteous.
> 
> Currently this movie is being distributed throughout the Basij and Revolutionary Guards’ bases. The producers are in the middle of translating it into Arabic, with the purpose of mass distribution throughout the Middle East. Their intention is to incite further uprisings, with the hopes of motivating Arabs to overthrow U.S.-backed governments.
> 
> The final goal? The annihilation of Israel and Allah’s governance of the world.
> 
> Editor’s note: We can’t overstate the importance of the English translation of this film. Watch it exclusively at PJTV. [1]
> 
> Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com
> 
> URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/iranian-rulers-believing-pre-messianic-destruction-is-imminent-make-film-to-prepare-muslims/
> 
> URLs in this post:
> 
> [1] watch it exclusively at PJTV: http://pjtv.com/v/5147
> [2] Conductors of The Coming: http://u313.ir/index.php



Clearly they are far more open and agressive with their Info Ops strategy, and the only counter meme in play right now seems to be the "Arab Spring" and "Green Revolution" movement, although they are far from coherent and in constant danger of being hijacked by radical islamists, the military or simply the most ruthless thugs around.


----------



## 57Chevy

from the article above;
"Therefore let us shout out loud that The Coming is soon and that evil should be fearful. We live with these thoughts every day and our lives are filled with The Coming of the last imam. That human will reappear and fill the world with justice and establish his promised governance on earth. The very world has witnessed too much bloodshed of the innocent for others to build their palaces. The very world is filled with shouts for justice. The innocent and the oppressed are losing their lives to world powers. It is in this very world where the oppressors rule and this world that Allah will command the last imam to appear and forever put an end to injustice. At that time the world will belong to the righteous."
                                                               _________________________
According to their own beliefs,
I wonder how many of their leaders have read this paragraph without being filled with fear of that fateful day.


----------



## The Bread Guy

.... according to Reuters:


> Syrian President Bashar al-Assad accepted his government's resignation on Tuesday after nearly two weeks of pro-democracy unrest that has posed the gravest challenge to his 11-year rule.
> 
> But the move was unlikely to satisfy protester demands since the cabinet has little authority in Syria, where power is concentrated in the hands of Assad, his family and the security apparatus.
> 
> Tens of thousands of Syrians held pro-government rallies on Tuesday, awaiting a speech in which Assad was expected to announce a decision on lifting emergency laws that have served to crush dissent for almost 50 years.
> 
> That is a key demand of anti-government demonstrations in which more than 60 people have been killed.
> 
> "President Assad accepts the government's resignation," the state news agency SANA said, adding that Naji al-Otari, the prime minister since 2003, would remain caretaker until a new government was formed.
> 
> Protesters at first had limited their demands to greater freedoms. But, increasingly incensed by a security crackdown on them, especially in the southern city of Deraa where protests first erupted, they now call for the "downfall of the regime." ....


----------



## sean m

Considering what is going on in the Islamic world, there is a hope that hopefully democracy will sprout out of these conflicts will be democracy and strong economic, social conditions of these nations. This hopefully in turn would lead to the reduction of radical Islam.   As we know that jihadis greatly travel to other nations to engage in jihad. The Chechen men have been noted as having engaged in jihad in Afghanistan and possibly elsewhere. The Chechen extremists ave also been blamed for the Beslan and Moscow Theatre massacres. These are of course true, yet very few have looked at why there is so much religious extremism in this land.  Putin as leader and deputy leader has used military action to keep chechnya in it's grasp. Prior the actions of the Russian army was and is considered as war crimes by some.  There as been little coverage by the media do to the Russian government denying most media permitted to visit the nation. Some of those Russian journalists who have gone and reported on Chechnya have been murdered including Anna Politkovskaya, The Russian government has been suspected of being involved. Now The Russian armed forces have left yet they have placed their puppet  Ramzan Kadyrov. Kadyrov has been living a living a life in luxury while the people suffer. During his rule his actions have caused Chechnya to become more of an Islamic state. The Russians seem to be fine with this since they are less attacks against Russia, even though that hasnt stopped Chechen extremists from fighting abroad. Kadyrov continues to commit human rights violations, It would seem capable to believe that as Chechnya remains  and continues in the future as a  islamic state, That this will only lead to future radicalism in the country. Here is a recent article about the current situation in the country:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jWKVXJoGiOK8KJFaJXgrCnrEC7Mg?docId=CNG.3c9302d7a8d3fe772d9bb86f058e598c.4a1
This video is old yet still shows the russian past occupation of Chechnya,  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHVKSW6NKPk
What is your opinion on this problem? Should there be some sort of sanctions against this nation?


----------



## nuclearzombies

Seems to me that folks are running out of closet space to store all them skeletons......

Just read about that attack in Afstan, all I could do is shake my head....... things are lining up to get more than a little nuts, and that sorta bugs me....
All I can say is come hell or high water, I'm on one side: Canada's

To all our people serving in dangerous places:

Stay safe, take care of eachother and most important of all, please make it home in one piece
 :yellow:


----------



## Edward Campbell

sean m said:
			
		

> Considering what is going on in the Islamic world, there is a hope that hopefully democracy will sprout out of these conflicts will be democracy and strong economic, social conditions of these nations ...




I disagree (I do not know enough about Chechnya to comment on that part of your post). What is "going on" in North Africa and the Middle East appears, to me, to be a rebellion by disaffected young people. But I doubt it is democracy they are after: more likely it is a bigger piece of the pie - maybe just the power (and money) pie. Democracy is a lot more than just elections, even free and fair elections, and the peaceful, orderly transfer of power - they are the _symptoms_, the _indicators_ of a healthy democracy, not its underlying causes. Democracy takes root and flourishes only when certain ideas, habits of mind, and _institutions_ are in place, including but not just:

•	The rule of law and a healthy, ingrained _respect_ for the rule of law amongst the people;

•	The equal _application_ of the rule of law to everyone, governors and governed alike;

•	Respect for the fundamental rights – life, liberty (which does not equal license), security of the person, and property;

•	Established, _independent_ and _valued_ (by the people) _institutions_ like parliaments, courts and e.g. regulatory bodies like law societies, colleges of physicians and surgeons and securities and exchange regulators; and

•	Free and vibrant universities within which vigorous, public debate is heard about all issues, great and small, popular and unpopular. 

I detect little evidence that any of these exist to any measurable degree anywhere from Morocco through Egypt and Iran and on to Pakistan and, I see them threatened by Saudi funded fundamentalist Islam in e.g. Malaysia.


----------



## sean m

Wouldn't it seem though if the youth wanted a "bigger piece of the pie" that they would have after the protests had escalated that they would have gone to these dictators or they dictators would have gone to them, and they would have demanded Mubarak or Ben Ali to give them more money or power or else the protest would continue. It *could*  be possible that these dictators did go up to the youth and offer more power or money but the youth declined, since nothing has been stated it is impossible to know.  At least in the media these youth have stated they want democracy and nothing more, of course though they wouldnt state that they want a bigger peace of the pie. Yet the protests by the youth and other Egyptians seem to show that they will continue to protest until they have full democracy. I believe that even if the youth were to gain more power, the rest of the population wouldnt accept it since they were also key in removing mubarak from power Most would believe that it takes time to go from a dictatorship to democracy.  In Egypt even though there has been violence by radicals muslims, there have been many peaceful muslims protecting those of other faiths ex. Christians. There has been no anarchy in the streets of Egypt or Tunisia, if the reports are true. There are protest, yet it would seem that they are not violent. As those here have said that the fate of these countries is unkown, yet at least we can say that nothing has taken for the worse yet in either nation. There seems to be a large grouping of pro democracy supporters in both Egypt and Tunisia. Pakistan and Yemen as well as Bahrain, seem to be questionable as you have stated, since it seems more unclear on why they want their governments removed. I believe if we want these nations to go they way we want, possibly a good application would be to do what the United States and other nations did to improve Ireland's situation by having businesses invest in the country and help in economic growth. Ireland used to be broke and the country was in a tough situation but through foreign countries providing advise and investment towards building a strong economy, Ireland became one of the wealthiest nations in Europe at the time. This is probably to soon for these Middle Eastern- North African nations. Yet hopefully at some point in time in the future it can be pursued.




			
				E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> I disagree (I do not know enough about Chechnya to comment on that part of your post). What is "going on" in North Africa and the Middle East appears, to me, to be a rebellion by disaffected young people. But I doubt it is democracy they are after: more likely it is a bigger piece of the pie - maybe just the power (and money) pie. Democracy is a lot more than just elections, even free and fair elections, and the peaceful, orderly transfer of power - they are the _symptoms_, the _indicators_ of a healthy democracy, not its underlying causes. Democracy takes root and flourishes only when certain ideas, habits of mind, and _institutions_ are in place, including but not just:
> 
> •	The rule of law and a healthy, ingrained _respect_ for the rule of law amongst the people;
> 
> •	The equal _application_ of the rule of law to everyone, governors and governed alike;
> 
> •	Respect for the fundamental rights – life, liberty (which does not equal license), security of the person, and property;
> 
> •	Established, _independent_ and _valued_ (by the people) _institutions_ like parliaments, courts and e.g. regulatory bodies like law societies, colleges of physicians and surgeons and securities and exchange regulators; and
> 
> •	Free and vibrant universities within which vigorous, public debate is heard about all issues, great and small, popular and unpopular.
> 
> I detect little evidence that any of these exist to any measurable degree anywhere from Morocco through Egypt and Iran and on to Pakistan and, I see them threatened by Saudi funded fundamentalist Islam in e.g. Malaysia.


----------



## a_majoor

Looking at most of these Arab countries, we see there was a demographic explosion but little corresponding economic development; most of these young people want to have a job in places where there arre few or none. The protesters were after the autocrats because they knew:

a. these autocrats have been siphoning money from the economy for years if not decades;
b. practicing croney capitalism (i.e. jobs and prospects go to their friends), and
c. have no real plan or ability to change things

The dangerous downside is the collapse of old politcal structures provides room for the "man on the white horse" to ride in and offer to set things right. Many people will chose that over chaos and anarchy. Here the "man on the white horse" could be Islamic radicals, organized crime, thuggish political parties like the Ba'ath Socialist party or just replace dictator A with dictator B. A military coup might be a big improvement...


----------



## 57Chevy

Not only is there need for elected government but also the need for job creation.
I think that is one of the reasons for protests.....especially from the youth.

Instead of pocketing and stashing/investing billions all over the world for their private gain
they should have been investing it into their own economy.
Now the US will be doing it for them by providing more than 2 billion to catalyze their economy through OPIC
(Overseas Private Investment Corporation)
We buy oil from OPEC and give money to them through OPIC  :

provided by provisions of the Copyright Act:
(Thursday, March 17, 2011) Secretary of State Clinton announces initiative in Egypt; focus on small businesses and 'fast-track' project approvals    http://www.opic.gov/news/press-releases/2009/pr031711

OPIC is currently providing nearly $2.6 billion in support to projects in Middle Eastern and North African countries.

The OPIC financing is available for private sector investment in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, and potentially Algeria, Oman, and Yemen.


----------



## a_majoor

Well, the inevitable fallout of the Egyptian revolution is here:

http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/2011/04/07/mass-media-on-egypt-admitting-in-april-what-was-obvious-in-february/



> *Mass Media on Egypt: Admitting in April What Was Obvious in February*
> 
> Posted By Barry Rubin On April 7, 2011 @ 7:28 am In Uncategorized | No Comments
> 
> I now understand that the purpose of the mass media is to report on things that don’t fit the agenda only after they have happened and are so blindingly obvious that ignoring them is impossible. Oh yes, and by then it’s also too late to avoid catastrophes.
> 
> What prompted that conclusion is seeing that the mass media reports in April what was completely clear — and which I reported–in February. I mean, just look at this Los Angeles Times article:
> 
> “The secular reformers and twenty-something urbanites at the vanguard of Egypt’s Jan. 25 revolution have found themselves eclipsed. They lack experience and grass-roots networks to compete with the Muslim Brotherhood and other religious groups that have quietly stoked their passions for this moment. In a sense, Mubarak’s obsession with both co-opting and crushing Islamists instilled in them the discipline and organization that now propels their political agendas.”
> 
> Or in other words:
> 
> – Yes, it was obvious back in January that this was a small group that would inevitably be eclipsed, but the mass media and the Obama administration said they would run the country and transform it into a liberal, modern democracy.
> 
> – Yes, it was obvious back in January that the Brotherhood was well-organized, strong, determined, and possessing a compelling ideology. Will someone please compile a list of U.S. government, media, and “expert” statements saying the exact opposite?
> 
> – Ha! Notice how the last sentence tries to blame Mubarak for this outcome? What they should be saying is: We were wrong when we said that it was a lie perpetrated by dictatorships that the only choice was them or the radicals. You are welcome to dig up quotes on that point.
> 
> Paragraph 2:
> 
> “The military council ruling the country has astounded many by permitting Islam a wider role. The Muslim Brotherhood, the largest opposition party, expects a strong showing in September’s parliamentary elections. In Egypt’s first taste of true democracy, the Brotherhood and more fundamentalist Salafist organizations told followers that it was their religious duty to vote to approve a referendum on constitutional amendments that benefited Islamists by speeding up elections. One of Egypt’s leading ultraconservative sheiks, Mohamed Hussein Yacoub, influenced by Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi strain of Islam, was quoted as saying after the referendum had passed: ‘That’s it. The country is ours.’”
> 
> – I wasn’t astounded. We have been watching growing pro-Islamist feeling in the Egyptian army for years.
> 
> – Yes, I guess you never thought that an Islamist group in a highly religious country (even by Muslim and Arab standards) would tell people persuasively that it was their religious duty to vote for Islamists. Allah wants you to vote for me! Pretty good campaign slogan. Even better than: Yes we can (turn Egypt into an Islamist state, fight Israel, and tell America to go drink the Nile).
> 
> – Yes, we were repeatedly told that the Islamists were scared because peaceful democracy is shown to work.
> 
> Memo to experts, journalists, and government officials:
> 
> A revolutionary movement seeks to seize state power as its goal. A strategy is their long-term plan for doing so. Tactics are specific actions designed to fulfill that strategy and to achieve that goal. Violence and terrorism are only a tactic. If needed, other tactics — running for elections, building a base through social welfare services, etc. — can be used within the strategy to fulfill the goal.
> 
> Consequently, the use of elections or setting up afterschool activities for kids do not prove that a group isn’t a radical and dangerous organization. And, besides, afterschool activities are good for spotting potential suicide bomber candidates.
> 
> Is it too much to ask that highly trained, expensively educated, and well-paid people who make decisions and report or analyze events understand the previous two paragraphs?
> 
> Another factor ignored generally has been the upsurge by “Salafi” Islamists, that is, those even more radical than the Muslim Brotherhood. Many of these people, and certainly their leaders, have been radicalized by the Brotherhood but want a faster pace and higher level of violence for the revolution.
> 
> The Financial Times reports:
> 
> “Attacks against citizens by ultraconservative Muslims have deepened fears of a surge in religious violence in Egypt during the country’s political transition after the fall of Hosni Mubarak as president.”
> 
> And then it says something completely false:
> 
> “The attacks are being ascribed to followers of Salafi Islam, a purist form of religion whose conservative message was allowed to spread through society in the Mubarak years because it focused on morality rather than politics.”
> 
> No, these are the people who waged a virtual civil war in the 1990s and were repressed by the Mubarak regime. Indeed, many of them responded to repression and long imprisonment by declaring that they concluded violence had been a mistake. The Mubarak regime defeated an Islamist threat precisely by not appeasing it.
> 
> Now these ultra-radicals are being released from prison and returning to their old ways, or at least feeling emboldened by the new situation. The article blames the problem on the Mubarak regime which will make it impossible to understand what’s happening.
> 
> It continues:
> 
> “Egyptians have been shocked by news that Islamists cut off the ear of a Christian man in the southern city of Qena over allegations that he had a relationship with a Muslim woman. In the same week, hundreds of religious conservatives in a northern Nile delta town were reported to have ejected a woman from her flat and burnt it down because of rumours about her conduct. Salafis have also been accused this week of attacking and destroying the tombs of local Muslim saints in several small Nile delta towns. Salafis view the veneration of saints as a form of idolatry.”
> 
> This is only the start. Here’s what journalists miss: the key question is whether the army, police, and later an elected government will undertake the difficult, somewhat unpopular task of shooting it out with these people, catching them, and throwing them into prison, even if they “only” kill Christians or rough up women who don’t conform to Islamist norms. For ideological and electoral reasons, I don’t think this is going to happen.
> 
> Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org
> 
> Article printed from Rubin Reports: http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin
> 
> URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/2011/04/07/mass-media-on-egypt-admitting-in-april-what-was-obvious-in-february/


----------



## a_majoor

More fallout:

http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/2011/04/07/schoolbus-attack-is-a-strategic/?print=1



> *Hamas Is Moving Toward War With Israel*
> 
> Posted By Barry Rubin On April 7, 2011 @ 7:10 pm In Uncategorized | 56 Comments
> 
> Two events show us that an emboldened Hamas in the Gaza Strip is moving toward war with Israel.
> 
> First, an Israeli school bus, painted bright yellow, was hit by fire from the Gaza Strip and at least one child was seriously wounded. This is not just another terrorist attack but part of a wider strategy. What is strategically significant here is how the bus was attacked. Usually, attacks from the Gaza Strip — either carried out or sanctioned by the Hamas regime there — are by homemade rockets, mortars, or attempted cross-border ground attacks. Deaths and damage are usually random.
> 
> In this case, though, the attack was carried out with an advanced anti-tank rocket. In other words, a terrorist deliberately aimed at the bus and fired, hoping to kill the maximum number of children.
> 
> But there’s more. Hamas can fire an advanced anti-tank rocket because the Egyptian revolution has ended a regime that acted in its own interest to block most arms shipments to Hamas. The Egypt-Gaza border is now open. Terrorists and superior weapons are flooding into Gaza.
> 
> Another demonstration of this fact was the second major incident in which Hamas fired an Iranian-made Grad missile, far superior to the usual homemade rockets, at Israel. In this case, it was shot down by an Israeli anti-missile, part of the new defense system deployed only a few days earlier. A total of 50 rockets and mortars were fired on that one day, equaling the number shot from the Gaza Strip at Israel during the entire month of March. There were also several attempts at cross-border ground attacks, more in one day than at any time in the past.
> 
> It was clear to the Hamas leadership that this escalation — and probably more to follow — brings the situation closer to another war like the one fought in December 2008-January 2009 after Hamas ended the ceasefire and launched a massive rocket and mortar barrage against Israel.
> 
> While saved politically by Western intervention — which does not favor the overthrow of the Hamas regime and largely accepted Hamas propaganda portraying Israel as a villain — that war was a bad defeat for Hamas. Its forces fought quite poorly, especially when compared to Hizballah’s units in 2006 in Lebanon.
> 
> Why, then, is Hamas provoking a new war? Part of the answer, of course, is ideology. Hamas believes that the deity is on its side, that victory is inevitable, and that martyrdom is a substitute for good military strategy and strength. Hamas is also indifferent to casualties, material damage, and the suffering of its own people. Its goal is total victory, Israel’s destruction, and the mass murder of Israeli Jews.
> 
> But none of that is new. What is new is a shift in the strategic situation. The recent upheavals in the Arab world have emboldened revolutionary Islamists and Hamas most of all. Its close ally, the Muslim Brotherhood, can operate freely in Egypt. There is much support for Islamism in the Egyptian army. And even the “moderate” presidential candidate Muhammad ElBaradei said that Egypt would go to war if Israel attacked the Gaza Strip.
> 
> Does Egypt want war with Israel? Of course not. But Hamas calculates — and, of course, it often miscalculates — that crisis with Israel will increase its support from Egypt and perhaps even create a situation where Cairo intervenes on its side on some level.
> 
> At a minimum, thousands of Egyptian volunteers, mobilized by the Brotherhood, might fight on its side, money would be raised in Egypt on its behalf, and large amounts of arms would flow across the border.  Then, too, international public opinion could be mobilized against Israel with tales — often phony — of atrocities as happened last time. And the Palestinian Authority (PA), ruling the West Bank, could be shamed and subverted. While the PA can claim to be delivering some prosperity — which the West thinks is all people care about — Hamas can deliver heroism and jihad.
> 
> Thus, a dangerous crisis is being developed that could bring renewed war within two years and possibly far less time.  It’s a crisis for which U.S. and European policy is totally unprepared. And their most likely response — demands for a ceasefire and criticism of Israel — would benefit Hamas.
> 
> Article printed from Rubin Reports: http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin
> 
> URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/2011/04/07/schoolbus-attack-is-a-strategic/


----------



## 57Chevy

A couple of interesting articles with regards to the Iranian influence in Egypt and the effect on Israel

reproduced under the fair dealings provisions of the Copyright Act

Netanyahu: Danger that Egypt will go in direction of Iran
By: Rebecca Anna Stoil 
02/07/2011 22:14
http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=207232
Speaking to delegation of European Parliament members PM warns there are numerous possible outcomes for gov't upheaval in Egypt.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Monday warned that there are numerous possible outcomes for the governmental upheaval in Egypt- and noted that not all of them are necessarily democratic. “There is the possibility that the Islamists will take advantage of the situation to take control of the state,” he warned and “a third option that Egypt will go in the direction of Iran,” in which, he said, the regime would oppress its citizens and threaten its neighbors. 

Speaking to a massive delegation of over 400 members of the European Parliament at the Knesset, Netanyahu emphasized that whatever the outcome, Israel’s interest is to maintain the 30-year-old peace with Egypt.

He explained that this served the interests of the entire region. 

Israel, he said, expects that the international community will demand that any future Egyptian leader maintain the peace agreement signed by the two states. 

The prime minister added that Israel must expand its peace to encompass the Palestinians, but while maintaining dependable security arrangements in light of the fact that the situation in the Palestinian Authority remains volatile.

                                                  ________________________________________

Relations strained during Mubarak era
Stronger Iran ties likely in post-revolution Egypt
Sunday, 03 April 2011
http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/04/03/144066.html

DUBAI (Mohamed Obaid)

Among the numerous speculations about the changes that will take place in Egypt after the January 25 revolution that ousted the regime of former President Hosni Mubarak is the future of the relationship between Egypt and Iran in the coming stage. 

Although the nature of relations with the United States and Israel top the agenda of foreign affairs topic in the post-Mubarak era, ties with Iran seem to have become lately more pressing, possibly due to the strain they have suffered for more than three decades.

Relations with Iran have been regarded by observers as one of the most enigmatic of Egypt’s foreign policies with the Egyptian government giving mixed signals about the possibility of closer ties with the Islamic republic. 

It was obvious that Egypt was willing to mend fences with Iran at the time of reformist President Mohamed Khatami, from 1997 till 2005, while the situation was completely reversed when hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005.

Relations between Egypt and Iran deteriorated remarkably during Ahmadinejad’s time as both countries exchanged incriminations of spying and infiltration in addition to Egypt accusing Iran of smuggling weapons to Hamas in Gaza and destabilizing Egypt’s national security.

In addition to tension on the level of governments, the Egyptian people were infuriated by a statement made by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei during the January 25 revolution.

Khamenei argued that the Egyptian revolution is an extension of Iran’s Islamic revolution and predicted that an Islamic renaissance would take place in Egypt. 

Egyptians who took part in the revolution expressed their reservations on Khamenei’s statements which, they said, gave the revolution a religious character while in fact it focused on demanding social justice and an end to corruption. They also accused Iran of meddling in Egypt’s domestic affairs.

However, this tension dissolved when former President Mohamed Khatami gave a speech in which he praised the Egyptian people and said that Egypt has always been a source of inspiration for Iran.

First tests

The relationship between Egypt and Iran was put to the test a few days after Egypt’s Higher Council of Armed Forces took over after the ouster of the Mubarak regime when Iran asked for permission for two military ships to pass through the Suez Canal on their way to Syria.

Despite strong objections from Israel, Egypt allowed the two ships to pass, in the first step of its kind since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

A statement by newly-appointed Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil al-Arabi and which many perceived as a “political bomb” seemed to chart the path the relations between the two countries are expected to take in the future. 

“Iran is our neighbor and we have long-standing historical ties throughout different eras,” said Arabi.

Arabi added that the Egyptian government does not consider Iran an enemy state and hinted that relations will not be the same as before.

“We are turning a new leaf with all countries and this includes Iran.” 

The Egyptian minister noted the possibility of raising the level of diplomatic representation interest section to embassy level.

“This depends on what both parties agree on. From our part, we want to start anew and we’re waiting for their response.

Iran welcomes initiative 

Arabi’s statement was greeted with enthusiasm on the part of the Iranian government as Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi lauded the historical ties that have always existed between Egypt and Iran despite recent strains.

“We hope that the new environment in Egypt will see the two countries and their great people getting closer,” he was quoted as saying by the Iranian Mehr News Agency.

Salehi added that stronger ties between Egypt and Iran will contribute to establishing stability in the entire region.

He also praised the Egyptian revolution and the struggle of Egyptians to achieve justice.

“Egyptians have written a new chapter in history.” 

Salehi’s statements were followed by similar ones issued by head of the Iranian Parliament's Committee on National Security and Foreign Policy Alaeddin Boroujerdi who stated that restoring relations with Egypt is extremely important for Iranian diplomacy and urged the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to follow up on the matter thoroughly until this end is reached. 

Boroujerdi blamed the former Egyptian regime for being the main obstacle that hindered the resumption of relations between Egypt and Iran.
“Now that the regime fell and with the new developments taking place in Egypt, the environment is ready for this step,” he said.

Pending issues

Several issues that might have hampered the restoration of diplomatic ties between Egypt and Iran still need to be addressed like the approach to the peace process, nuclear proliferation, and security in the Gulf region. 

However, preliminary signs indicate that both sides are willing to resolve pending issues in a rational manner that works towards guaranteeing stability in the region and reaching a formula of understanding that serves all parties involved. 

(Translated from Arabic by Sonia Farid)


----------



## CougarKing

More from Syria again:



> By Agence France-Presse, Updated: 4/22/2011
> 
> *Syria forces fire at 'Good Friday' protesters
> 
> Syrian security forces fired at protesters in the central city of Homs as tens of thousands of people took to the streets for "Good Friday" rallies to test long sought-after freedoms, an activist said.*
> Syria forces fire at 'Good Friday' protesters
> 
> A day after President Bashar al-Assad scrapped emergency rule, his forces opened fire with live rounds to disperse the crowd in the central protest hub, wounding at least two people, the activist said on condition of anonymity.
> 
> Thousands of protesters also swarmed the streets of the northeastern city of Qamishli, southern flashpoint town of Daraa and Midan in Damascus, where an activist reported they were also dispersed by security forces, without elaborating.
> 
> "Freedom, freedom," and "God, Syria, freedom, that's all," the protesters, who witnesses said numbered around 6,000, chanted in Qamishli as they carried a giant Syrian flag.
> 
> Several thousand called for the fall of Assad's regime in Daraa, a key focus of the unprecedented demonstrations that broke out more than a month ago.
> 
> Assad, in power since replacing his father Hafez as president in 2000, issued decrees Thursday to overturn the state of emergency as well as abolish the state security court and allow citizens to hold peaceful demonstrations.
> 
> The demonstrations came after call by Facebook group The Syrian Revolution 2011 for rallies spanning the Christian and Muslim faiths on "Good Friday," which commemorates Jesus Christ's crucifixion.
> 
> Friday is also the Muslim day of rest when the biggest demonstrations have been staged across Syria after weekly prayers in mosques.
> 
> In Qamishli, a majority Kurdish city with Muslim and Christian communities, the protesters who started their march outside Qasmo mosque chanted "Liberty, fraternity," said one witness.
> 
> "Arabs, Syriac (Orthodox) and Kurds against corruption," said a banner they brandished.
> 
> In Daraa, a Syrian human rights activist said thousands of demonstrators staged a protest calling for the fall of Assad's regime and demanding the dissolution of his feared security services.
> 
> "Around seven to 10,000 people emerged from mosques and marched to the Saraya Square (governor's HQ) in Daraa," said a witness contacted by AFP by telephone from Nicosia.
> 
> The protesters called for "the abrogation of Article 8 of the constitution which describes the ruling Baath Party as the leader in the state and in society," the witness said.
> 
> Demonstrators also called for "the dissolution of the security services as well as the fall of the regime," the witness added.
> 
> Assad's move to scrap the emergency rule and abolish the state security court was the latest in a series of concessions he has unveiled over the past month to placate the protesters.
> 
> Two prominent rights activists welcomed Assad's action on Thursday but called for more changes while a key cyber activist insisted the people now want regime change.
> 
> "Lifting the emergency rule and the abolition of the state security court are positive steps but over the next few days we will monitor closely the security forces to see if they violate the law," said Rami Abdul Rahman of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
> 
> "Now we expect the release of thousands of people who have been sentenced" by the state security court, he said.
> 
> Beirut-based Syrian cyber activist Malath Aumran, a key player behind the protests, said ending emergency rule will "change nothing" in Syria, where the people now wanted a change of regime.
> 
> "From the first day people took to the streets with one goal in mind, the fall of the regime," Omran told AFP, reached by telephone from Nicosia.
> 
> Amnesty International urged Syrian authorities not to suppress what it termed the "Great Friday" protests.
> 
> "It is imperative that these demonstrations are policed sensibly, sensitively and in accordance with international law to avoid further bloodshed on Syria's streets," it said.
> 
> Human Rights Watch, for its part, urged the authorities "to permit Syrians to exercise their right to peaceful assembly" on Friday.
> 
> "President al-Assad has the opportunity to prove his intentions by allowing (Friday's) protests to proceed without violent repression."
> 
> Security forces and plainclothes police have killed about 220 people in a brutal crackdown on the protests, which broke out in Damascus on March 15, according to Amnesty International.
> 
> Syria's emergency law restricted many civil liberties, including public gatherings and freedom of movement.
> 
> The state security court operated outside the ordinary judicial system and prosecuted suspects considered a threat to the government's authority.


----------



## a_majoor

Video from Syria: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/pjm-exclusive-video-from-syrias-great-friday-uprising-content-warning/


----------



## 57Chevy

shared in accordance with provisions of the Copyright Act

Postmedia News April 23, 2011 5:10 PM
Canadians urged to leave Syria


With a month-long uprising turning even bloodier, the federal government is urging Canadians in Syria to leave that country while they still can.

The call comes as another dozen people were killed Saturday as Syrian security forces fired on mourners at a mass funerals in Damascus and surrounding areas. The mourners had been calling for the end of the rule of President Bashar al-Assad, who became leader in 2000 after the death of his father.

This past week has seen an eruption of violence in the country, which borders Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea. 

Friday was by far the bloodiest day in over a month of demonstrations to demand political freedoms and an end to corruption, with at least 100 people killed, according to reports.

It came despite the president’s move to repeal his country’s emergency law, which has been in place since his Baath Party seized power 48 years ago.

On its website Saturday, Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs said it is warning Canadians against any travel to Syria due to the volatility there. 

“Canadians in Syria should consider leaving by commercial means while these are still available,” the statement said. 

Travellers were urged to be extremely vigilant, and avoid political gatherings, crowds and demonstrations. 

“Canadians requiring emergency assistance should contact the Embassy of Canada in Damascus,” the statement said.

With files from Agence France-Presse and Reuters

article link:
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Canadians+urged+leave+Syria/4665648/story.html
                                       __________________________________

Embassy of Canada to Syria in Damascus

Street Address
Lot 12, Autostrade Mezzeh
Damascus, Syria

Tel.: (011 963 11) 611-6692
Fax: (011 963 11) 611-4000
Email: dmcus@international.gc.ca


----------



## a_majoor

Some people just ask for trouble:

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/olive-tree-initiative/?singlepage=true



> *Abandon the Olive Tree Initiative Before It’s Too Late*
> 
> Posted By Debra Galzer Esq. On April 24, 2011 @ 12:00 am In Culture,Education,Israel,US News,World News | 9 Comments
> 
> The following headline is fictitious, but just imagine a story like this in your newspaper (or laptop) sometime in 2011 or later:
> 
> “Bodies of 12 UC Students Found Headless in West Bank Town”
> 
> An official of the Palestinian Authority announced today that 12 headless bodies, believed to be students from the University of California’s Olive Tree Initiative program, have been located in the town of Nablus in the West Bank.The students were kidnapped over one week ago by Hamas terrorists, and efforts to secure their release were apparently unsuccessful. Hamas has announced that the slain students admitted in the moments before their execution that they were  “Jewish,  Christian, or Hindu infidels.” Hamas has issued a statement claiming that they continue to hold the other 6 OTI students, believed to be Moslem,  as ransom for the release of several of their fighters who have been imprisoned by the Palestinian Fatah party. The president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, has assured the university that its forces are looking for the 6 kidnapped students and will bring the perpetrators of these crimes to justice. He also stated that the actions of Hamas do not advance the goals of the Palestinian people.
> 
> Is this horrible imagined event improbable? Not when  you recall that, as has recently been disclosed pursuant to a California Public Records Act filing [1][1] [2], UC Irvine’s Olive Tree Initiative students met with Aziz Duwaik during their 2009 trip.
> 
> Duwaik is a representative of Hamas who serves as speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council.Hamas actually contends that he (and not Mahmoud Abbas) is the president of the Palestinian Authority.  The United States does not recognize his claim to the presidency, largely because Hamas is on the U.S.’s list of terrorist organizations.
> 
> In addition, Duwaik served time in Israeli prisons for almost 3 years, and was released only a few weeks before his meeting with the students. Hamas detests America and Americans, and has special antipathy towards Jews, whose genocide it calls for in the Hamas Charter. It is not too far-fetched to imagine that this group of unarmed students might quickly have found themselves surrounded and overwhelmed by terrorists who had decided to use them as pawns in the never-ending internecine warfare among Palestinian factions.
> 
> Nor is the imagined tragic event improbable when you consider that over the past few years, at least three European and American activists with the Palestinian International Solidarity Movement were murdered by Muslim terrorists or placed in situations leading to their deaths while engaging in violent activism against Israel[2] [3]. Indeed, the OTI student itinerary in the West Bank includes many meetings and discussions with founders and leaders of the ISM. The murdered ISM activists were naive but sincere and earnest devotees of the Palestinian cause who had come to the West Bank and Gaza to help the Palestinians fight to eliminate Israel. All of them must believed that they were safe from harm. But they were dead wrong. In fact, they are all dead – murdered [4]by the very people they thought they were helping.[3] [5]
> 
> If activists who are allied with the ISM can be brazenly kidnapped and murdered, imagine the fates of innocent University of CA students who are just traveling around Israel and the West Bank to dialogue with diverse groups involved in the conflict and learn firsthand, with their own eyes, about the neighborhood and its problems. That is the mantra and mission [6] of the OTI.[4] [7]
> 
> Community activists like Ha-Emet [8] have been warning the university, and the charities and individuals who support this program and others like it — including the Jewish Federation of Orange County — that they are taking on great risk in continuing to bring students to the West Bank. They are recklessly endangering the lives of these young people.
> 
> We wonder if they have thought through the consequences, and if they have undertaken the requisite risk assessment of these feckless projects. Have they purchased kidnap, ransom, and torture insurance? Have they obtained waivers and indemnification from the participants, and have they received written opinions from credible counsel that the waivers and indemnification will stand up in court? They may want to take a look at their directors and officers liability policies while they’re at it.  As a business attorney, I routinely advise clients to review their insurance coverages in light of their actual business operations. That is obviously an elementary and prudent step to take.
> 
> And, by the way, meeting with Hamas may have violated U.S. law. Not only that, but having the OTI faculty and advisors instruct the students to conceal the meeting, as disclosed [1]in the October 2009 letter[5] [9], may have violated U.S. and Israeli law, not to mention the university’s own policies of professorial conduct. Plus, it reeks of cover-up by all parties involved, including the Jewish Federation which failed to disclose this meeting with its own disgruntled community. The university, the Jewish Federation, and other supporters of OTI programs should be consulting with their compliance departments as well as with their risk managers.
> 
> If they haven’t assessed the risk and purchased enough coverage, which in and of itself is a very costly proposition, the taxpayers of California, as well as the generous donors to the Jewish Federation of Orange County, may be in for a great shock when they learn the extent of the multi-million dollar liabilities that these enterprises may someday face.
> 
> It is time to wise up, face reality, and act like adults. Abandon the Olive Tree Initiative before it is too late — before it spreads from UC Irvine to UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego, and elsewhere. Or else, the University of California, and the organizations that fund ventures like the OTI, better use their hard-earned and scarce dollars to buy insurance and set aside the necessary reserves for when tragedy strikes.
> 
> And then explain to the taxpayers and benefactors why it is more worthwhile to spend their money on these programs rather than on advancing core programs. In the case of the university, for example, it might want to consider using state funds and student fees to offer more courses and class sections so that students can actually graduate in four years instead of the five or six that it now routinely takes. And the Jewish Federation might decide that it should focus on strengthening local synagogues and Hebrew schools, and helping community members facing economic hardship, rather than play-acting the diplomatic game with hardcore Palestinian propagandists.
> 
> It is time that the university and the Jewish Federation come to the proper conclusion. The  OTI and similar programs are not worth the risk. Indeed, they jeopardize the very ability of the university and the Jewish Federation to carry out their other fine work. It is all a question of priorities. Setting priorities is what administrators are paid and expected to do wisely. Let’s hope that wisdom prevails.
> [1] [10] http://www.ha-emet.com/oti_students_meet_hamas.html [1] contains the text of  a letter written in October 2009 by the Jewish Federation of Orange County to UCI Chancellor Michael Drake,
> 
> [2] [11] These include Vittorio Arrigoni, Rachel Corrie, and Angelo Frammartino.  You could add Juliano Mer-Khanis,  the Jewish-Arab Israeli citizen who founded a cultural theatre group in Jenin, to the list.
> 
> [3] [12] For a revealing look at the brutal treatment often accorded to Western volunteers by the Palestinians, especially women, see  http://frontpagemag.com/2011/04/18/how-supporters-of-palestinian-terrorism-are-murdered-and-raped-by-their-palestinian-sponsors/
> 
> [4] [13] http://www.olivetreeinitiative.org/
> 
> [5] [14] http://www.ha-emet.com/oti_students_meet_hamas.html
> 
> Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com
> 
> URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/olive-tree-initiative/
> 
> URLs in this post:
> 
> [1] filing: http://www.ha-emet.com/oti_students_meet_hamas.html
> 
> [2] [1]: #_ftn1
> 
> [3] [2]: #_ftn2
> 
> [4] murdered : http://frontpagemag.com/2011/04/18/how-supporters-of-palestinian-terrorism-are-murdered-and-raped-by-their-palestinian-sponsors/
> 
> [5] [3]: #_ftn3
> 
> [6] mission: http://www.olivetreeinitiative.org/
> 
> [7] [4]: #_ftn4
> 
> [8] Ha-Emet: http://www.ha-emet.com/index.html
> 
> [9] [5]: #_ftn5
> 
> [10] [1]: #_ftnref1
> 
> [11] [2]: #_ftnref2
> 
> [12] [3]: #_ftnref3
> 
> [13] [4]: #_ftnref4
> 
> [14] [5]: #_ftnref5


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## a_majoor

Syria becoming another flashpoint:

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/04/23/war-in-syria-next/



> *War In Syria Next?*
> Walter Russell Mead
> 
> The long-brewing crisis in Syria has entered a critical phase and it is changing the rules of the Middle East.  If the people keep marching and the regime keeps shooting, the Obama administration could face its toughest Middle East choices yet.  Will Samantha Power bomb yet another country in the region, or will she try to sleep nights with the blood of thousands of Syrians on her hands?
> 
> A poster of Bashar al-Assad in Aleppo (Wikimedia)
> 
> The bloody-minded and repressive Syrian regime — after Saddam Hussein, the slave-trading Sudanese and the gay-murdering and woman-stoning Iranians, the worst bunch of thugs in a nasty neighborhood — has ripped off the mask.  An estimated 80 plus protesters were killed Friday; at least 6 more when relatives tried to bury Friday’s dead.  The violence can easily escalate.
> 
> The outside world, preoccupied by the dramatic events unfolding across northern Africa and in Yemen, had not paid much attention to Syria until the last 36 hours.  But now the scale of the protests and the brutal response have caught the world’s attention.  Britain, France and the US have all condemned the latest violence, with the White House using some of its sharpest language yet.
> 
> This crisis could have legs.  Although Syria is not an oil exporter, every moral and political argument that led to the intervention in Libya applies more strongly to Damascus.  And while the political, national interest rationale for regime change in Libya is a little sketchy, the case for regime change in Damascus is close to ironclad.
> 
> If the danger of genocidal repression was the reason we intervened in Libya, Syria is a much more clear cut case of genocide waiting to happen.  Perhaps the single worst incident of Arab-on-Arab violence ever recorded was committed by the Assad government in February 1982 when somewhere between 10,000 (the low estimate) and 40,000 (according to the Syrian Human Rights Commission) people were murdered to crush popular demonstrations against the dictatorship.
> 
> The city of Hama in 1982
> 
> The current Syrian president did not order the 1982 massacre himself, but the people who did it still populate the Syrian security forces.  Syria’s unhesitating use of mass violence against the current wave of protests suggests that the bad guys are still (literally) calling the shots. Samantha Power, check out the “duty to protect;” everything you said about Libya is true, in spades, for Syria.
> 
> The Great Loon of Libya was frothing and raving about his plans for vengeance before the allied intervention and he might well be capable of genocidal violence; in Syria, a security establishment bathed in the blood of past victims stands ready to murder again. If the repression intensifies, and the Syrian government murders thousands and tens of thousands of its citizens once more, it will make a hollow mockery of the fine words NATO and the Arab League used to justify their actions in Libya.
> 
> If the humanitarian case against Syria is strong, the national interest case is stronger.  For decades now, Syria has been a principal state sponsor of terrorism in the Middle East.  Hezbollah and Hamas would not exist in their present forms without Syrian protection and support.  On its own behalf, and as Iran’s closest strategic ally in the Arab world, Syria has a long record of arming, training and sheltering terrorists.
> 
> Moreover, regime change in Syria would be a body blow to Iran.  Iran is hated and feared by most of the Arab countries.  Only Syria, where a Shi’a-leaning Alawite minority tries to conceal its corrupt dictatorship behind a fig leaf of secular (and often rabid) Arab nationalism, is a reliable ally for the Iranian mullahs.  In the entire Middle East, no other country cooperates with Iran on anything like the Syrian scale.
> 
> Regime change in Syria would greatly increase the chance that Iran might come to its senses.  The shock of Assad’s downfall might rekindle the enthusiasm of the democracy protesters in Tehran; alone and friendless, a rattled Iran might be more willing to compromise on the nuclear issue.  Either way, there is a good chance that regime change in Syria would reduce the likelihood of a major confrontation between the US and Iran.
> 
> From a US point of view, regime change in Damascus has several possible upsides.  There is not only the sobering and isolating effect on Iran.  Regime change would likely strengthen the moderate camp among Palestinians (including the more realistic elements in Hamas) and could improve the chances for Israeli-Palestinian peace.  It would substantially reduce the chance of new Hezbollah attacks on Israel and could open the door toward a more effective and more democratic government in Lebanon as well as Syria.
> 
> There is something else to be gained.  The Assads, père et fils, have been among America’s most consistent opponents for decades.  (Like Gaddafi, they were somewhat more cooperative on anti-Al Qaeda after 9/11; their record on interdicting anti-US fighters crossing into Iraq was more mixed.)  Relying on a hysterical and hypocritical Pan-Arab nationalism, they took every opportunity to frustrate peace negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and did everything they could to whip up reflexive and unthinking anti-Americanism around the region.  They cooperated with the Soviet Union during the Cold War; they work with Iran today, and they apparently have worked with the North Koreans to develop nuclear weapons.  The fall of this regime will not only remove a long-term annoyance; it will offer an important intelligence windfall by giving the US access to vast amounts of information about what the bad guys have been up to.
> 
> Even though the US and its allies have their hands full with three wars in the region already, I would not discount the possibility of military action to protect civilians if the Syrians continue down their current path.  The list of people who want Assad gone is long and influential.  The Saudis have a personal grudge against Syrians for their presumed role in the murder of Rafiq Hariri, a former Lebanese Prime Minister who was very close to the Saudi royals.  More, Syria and the Saudis have been competing for influence in Lebanon for some time, and the Saudis have not been happy to watch the rise of Syria’s Shi’ite Hezbollah allies in a country the Saudis think belongs in the Sunni column.
> 
> Rafiq Hariri, who was murdered in Beirut in 2005 (Wikimedia)
> 
> Regime change in Syria would knock the keystone out of the “Shi’a Crescent” — the string of countries under Shi’a or Shi’a aligned rule stretching from Iran and Iraq through Syria and Lebanon.  This Crescent haunts the imagination of Sunni Arab strategic thinkers.  Some of the fury at the US invasion of Iraq reflected fears that this would give Shi’ites a strategic advantage and offer the Iranians an avenue of influence into the Sunni heartland.
> 
> Those fears are not as fanciful as they sometimes sound to American ears.  The Syrian connection gives Iran the opportunity to do more than bluster and fume about Israel; by supporting Hezbollah and the Sunni group Hamas Iran is burnishing its credentials as the leader of the Muslim world.  Taking a strong line against Damascus might help the Obama administration repair badly frayed ties with the Saudis, who have been deeply unimpressed by Obama’s track record in the Middle East.
> 
> The French also have reason to resent Syrian meddling in Lebanon.  The French have long had a ‘special relationship’ with their former colony and many educated Lebanese (especially but not only) Christians speak French and have close personal and business ties with the former imperial power.  The marginalization of the Maronite Christians in Lebanon and the reduction of French influence as Syrian power grew did not make many new friends for the Assads on the boulevards of Paris.
> 
> Note to aspiring dictators: If France, Saudi Arabia, the US and Israel all have reasons to wish you ill, you should perhaps behave more cautiously than President Assad has recently chosen to do.
> 
> If the current government collapses, Syria is likely to rejoin the Sunni Arab world — the overwhelming majority of its people are Sunnis who deeply resent the decades of corrupt and brutal rule by the Alawi minority and Clan Assad.  What that government will look like and how stable it will be are different questions.  While Syria has had a long dictatorship, and has communal tensions as intense as those that have made Lebanon the site of repeated civil wars in the past, it also has some very thoughtful and well-educated people.
> 
> Regime change is not a smooth process.  There are many reasons that the neighbors (Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, Israel and Iraq) don’t want to see turmoil in Syria.  The Turks in particular have invested money and energy in building a relationship with the Damascus regime.  A porous Syrian border can be a source of weapons and foreign fighters into the still-restive river valleys of Iraq.  There is a chance that an unfriendly Sunni Syria would drive Iraq closer to Iran.  The Jordanians have more than enough on their hands without wanting more refugees and more turbulence.  And while the Israelis don’t love the Assad government, the Golan front has been reasonably quiet for a long time.
> 
> Nevertheless, the Syrian government should tread carefully.  Ordinary people in Syria have been watching the events unfolding around the region, and they have followed the news of the international intervention in Libya.  Our actions have encouraged them to risk their lives by standing up for their freedom.  Words like “duty to protect” are ringing in their ears.  If coalition planes weren’t bombing Gaddafi’s forces in Libya, the crowds in Syria might have stayed home.
> 
> If the people keep protesting, and the government keeps shooting, can the White House really afford to stand by?
> 
> I personally do not want to see the US involved in yet another Middle Eastern war.  The potential that the conflict would spread into Lebanon and plunge both countries into a long period of chaos and civil war is far too significant for me to start beating the war drums.
> 
> But the situation in Syria has turned much more critical since Friday’s demonstrations.  Intervention in Syria is likely to involve higher stakes, more bloodshed and greater risks than the intervention in Libya.  We need this like we need a hole in the head.  But the courage of the Syrian people, the brutality of their government, the wishes of our allies and the logic of our interests may yet force our hands.
> 
> For the Obama administration, the prospect of making the painful choice between war in Syria or genocide in Syria cannot be welcome.  Whatever it does, the administration will run serious risks and invite bitter criticism; it may also start engaging in some serious introspection.  Both in substance and in the way it was handled the Libyan intervention makes a Syrian intervention both harder to pull off and harder to avoid. That is not normally what a successful policy looks like — but in the administration’s defense, these are not normal times.


----------



## 57Chevy

Shared in accordance with provisions provided in The Copyright Act

Familiar headlines

Canada 'deeply concerned' by Syria crackdown
AFP April 24, 2011 11:01 AM
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Canada+deeply+concerned+about+Syria/4667174/story.html#ixzz1KSpjUZx5

OTTAWA, April 24, 2011 (AFP) - Canada voiced deep concern Sunday over the Syrian regime’s bloody crackdown on demonstrators, which activists say left more than 120 people dead in two days.

Security forces in Syria were Sunday raiding homes to arrest regime opponents, a day after authorities opened fire on mourners at funerals for people killed at earlier protests, activists said.

The Canadian government "is deeply concerned by reports of the use of violence by security forces against peaceful demonstrators in Syria, resulting in many deaths," the foreign ministry said.

Canada calls on Damascus "to exercise restraint and to respect the rights of the Syrian people to freedom of expression and assembly," and urges Damascus engage in a "genuine dialogue on democratic reforms with all groups in Syria and to accelerate the implementation of measures already announced."

More than 300 people have been killed in Syria since protests were launched March 15, according to a compilation of figures provided by Amnesty International and Syrian activists.

"Officials at the Embassy of Canada in Damascus are closely monitoring the security situation and stand ready to provide consular assistance to Canadian citizens as required," said the foreign ministry statement.

Ottawa also advised against all travel to Syria and said Canadian citizens who were in the country should leave while commercial flights were still available.


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## larry Strong

Yup, stuck on the "merry-go-round". They can't say "Yes" to one and "No" to others..............


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## 57Chevy

Shared in accordance with provisions provided in The Copyright Act

Ottawa may help Canadians evacuate Syria
 Jordan Press, For Postmedia NewsApril 24, 2011 6:12 PM
 http://www.canada.com/news/Ottawa+help+Canadians+evacuate+Syria/4667630/story.html#ixzz1KUUT6IcY

OTTAWA — The federal government wouldn’t say Sunday whether it has an evacuation plan ready for Canadians in Syria, instead urging those in the country to get out while airports and border crossings remained open.

Should the situation in Syria become a crisis that requires evacuation, the government will help Canadians in the country get the nearest safe haven, said spokeswoman Claude Rochon.

“The government of Canada may assist Canadians in leaving a country as a last resort, when all means of commercial or personal transportation have been exhausted,” Rochon said. 

“At this time, means of commercial or personal transportation have not been exhausted in Syria. In fact, airports and other transportation systems in Syria are working normally.”

Rochon said there are about 870 Canadians registered with the Embassy in Damascus, but there are estimated to be 5,000 Canadians in Syria.

On Saturday, the Department of Foreign Affairs urged Canadians to avoid travelling to Syria, and urged those already there to leave.

The British government issued a similar warning to its residents, noting in a release that should the situation in Syria deteriorate, “it is highly unlikely that the British Embassy would be able to provide a normal consular service.”

The situation in Syria continued to deteriorate Sunday as government forces loyal to President Bashar al-Asad clashed with pro-democracy protesters.

Over the long weekend, more than 100 people were killed when security forces opened fire on demonstrators, according to reports and human rights groups. However, reports have not been able to independently verify death figures, which range from 100 to more than 300 in the past few weeks.

In its statement, the Foreign Affairs Department said it was “deeply concerned” about reports of violence against demonstrators, and called on the Syrian government to “engage in a genuine dialogue on democratic reforms with all groups in Syria.”

Anyone in Canada looking for information on Canadian citizens in Syria should contact the Emergency Operations Centre by calling 1-800-387-3124 or by sending an email to sos@international.gc.ca.


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## 57Chevy

Shared in accordance with provisions provided in The Copyright Act

Syria sends tanks to crack down on protesters; U.S. may impose sanctions
 By Paul Richter and Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles TimesApril 25, 2011 8:58 PM
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Syria+sends+tanks+crack+down+protesters+impose+sanctions/4670057/story.html#ixzz1KaqWOaSV

BEIRUT, Lebanon — With tanks now patrolling the streets of a restive Syrian city, the Obama administration is preparing to take its first concrete steps against President Bashar Assad and his top lieutenants - the imposition of sanctions for an increasingly bloody crackdown on demonstrators.

The regime in Damascus escalated the violence Monday, ordering army tanks and troops into action against protesters in the southern city of Daraa. The move follows a tumultuous weekend in which Syrian security forces gunned down an estimated 120 pro-democracy protesters. More than 200 people have died since the uprising erupted five weeks ago.

Obama administration officials said they are readying orders that would freeze U.S. assets of senior Syrian officials and deny them permission to travel in the United States.

U.S. sanctions are unlikely to produce a dramatic impact because Syrian officials apparently own few U.S. assets. But the move signaled a notable shift by the Obama administration, which has worked hard to build better relations with Damascus, a regime it considers a strategic key for security in the Middle East.

European officials said they also are considering steps against Assad's regime. Syrian officials maintain far larger investments in Europe than in the U.S., so economic sanctions or travel bans there would have a more direct impact.

The Obama administration hopes U.S. sanctions will help build pressure on its European allies, especially France and Britain, to follow suit. Officials in Washington have consulted closely with counterparts in London and Paris on how best to persuade Assad to show restraint.

Moves by British and French officials against Syria could be particularly important. France, the former colonial power, retains strong cultural and economic relations with Damascus. Assad lived a number of years in Britian and may have financial assets stored there.

David Schenker, a former Middle East adviser at the Pentagon, said steps to isolate Syria, especially by European countries, would sting.


More at link...


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## 57Chevy

Shared in accordance with provisions provided in The Copyright Act


Critics blast UN Rights Council's two-faced stance on Syria
Steven Edwards, Postmedia News April 27, 2011
http://www.canada.com/news/Critics+blast+Rights+Council+faced+stance+Syria/4685267/story.html#ixzz1KmBuiiyL

NEW YORK — The duplicity of the UN's Human Rights Council could be on full display Friday as the Geneva-based body holds an emergency session on human rights abuses in Syria — even as it appears set to welcome the Arab country as a member.

Canada was among 37 co-sponsors of a Wednesday measure that successfully scheduled the emergency session — but human rights monitoring groups noted that Syria's candidacy to join the 47-member council for an upcoming three-year term remained intact.

"Choosing Syria to be a global judge of human rights would be like appointing Bernard Madoff to defend victims of financial fraud," said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch in Geneva, referring to the former Wall Street broker convicted of operating a multi-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme

article continues at link


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## sean m

Here is footage of syrian forces shooting at innocent protestors (caution it is graphic)... Refering to discussions, after analyzing, everyone here who deems that it is important to review the situation in these countries in crisis are of course correct. Many here brought up a good point by stating how we as well as other western nations do not want to cause further problems for ourselves as well as others yet when looking at this footage how much should we take before we decide enough is enough or can it ever come to that point?

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=909_1303928809

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=224_1303590464


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## sean m

The BBC has developed a list of the top people providing advice as well as support for Al Assad

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13216195


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## Journeyman

57Chevy said:
			
		

> "Choosing Syria to be a global judge of human rights would be like appointing Bernard Madoff to defend victims of financial fraud," said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch in Geneva...



It was less than a year ago that Libya was elected to the UN Human Rights Council -- why suddenly wring your hands now about the dumb shit that the UN does
     :


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## a_majoor

How the Palestinians operate (another failed stae/culture):

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-mosab-yousef-saga-did-hamas-%E2%80%98defector%E2%80%99-dupe-all-of-us/?singlepage=true



> *The Mosab Yousef Saga: Did Hamas ‘Defector’ Dupe All of Us?*
> 
> Posted By Walid Shoebat On May 5, 2011 @ 12:00 am In Uncategorized | 5 Comments
> 
> While a prisoner of Israel in 1996, Mosab Hassan Yousef — the son of Sheik Hassan Yousef, a founding member of Hamas — was approached by Shin Bet agents who looked to recruit him to spy within Hamas. He agreed. Mosab’s information soon had Shin Bet calling him “the most reliable source in the Hamas leadership,” and Israeli lives were undoubtedly saved as a result of Mosab’s collaboration.
> 
> Despite this success, Yousef has since revealed himself to be more double agent than turncoat.
> 
> During the initial contact within Israel’s Maskubia (Jerusalem’s central prison), Mosab agreed to collaborate in exchange for Israel not targeting his father. After years of providing valuable intelligence, in 2007 Mosab declared his conversion to Christianity, moved to California, and went public with his story. His tale was a sensation, drawing attention and praise from U.S. pro-Israel organizations. But his tale has since been revealed to be a “long con,” the evidence coming from when he speaks publicly in Arabic.
> 
> Mosab did not convert to what the West would recognize as Christianity, but to a fiery, Palestinian brand of the faith that is vehemently anti-Israel. According to Mosab, his main goal in coming to the U.S. is to infiltrate the main source of international support for Israel: the American church. From an interview with Al-Arabiya:
> 
> During my tours in universities and even churches, [I found] the real support for Israel stems from the church in the West. … We need to understand the difference between “revenge” and “resistance” and once the Palestinians do, we will have our victory against Israel.
> 
> Activists like Mosab know very well that Western media rarely translate their doublespeak. He continues:
> 
> Israel is the problem and as an occupation it needs to end. … There are many ways to do this besides the coward explosive operations.
> 
> Mosab’s formula? Infiltrate the West with his book:
> 
> This will be the first time in history that a Palestinian book will find success so that the Western reader can see for himself the reality of what goes on over there. People in the West do not know what happens over there.
> 
> On the Arabic-language show Daring Question [1] — sponsored by the 700 Club — Mosab wore the symbol of pro-Palestine advocates, the kaffiyeh [2]:
> 
> With a balanced approach I discuss the life of the Palestinian child under the Israeli occupation, of course my life suffered under all the problems of murder and the criminal operations that were carried out by the Israeli occupation against my people, my family, myself, and against humanity.
> 
> To Mosab, the Palestinian struggle was lacking: while he praises Hamas leaders as “heroes and glorious defenders,” he instructs them to enlist more educated political defenders like himself:
> 
> With regret, our great leaders and mighty heroes and glorious defenders over there did not realize that instead of spending their wealth and monies on silly issues, they needed to enlist in their ranks writers and educated individuals in order to reverse the image of the Palestinian struggle.
> 
> Mosab stated that he is only against Hamas methodology, but not their agenda:
> 
> It appeared at first that my desire was to seek revenge against Hamas. … How could I do such a thing … revenge [against] my own father? He is one of the leaders of Hamas.
> 
> Perhaps the most shocking revelation: Mosab asks Arabs not to report terrorist activity. The host of Daring Question asked a caller:
> 
> If you were in Mosab’s position and have two choices: either someone from Hamas will be killed, or school children in a bus will be killed, will you report it?
> 
> The Arab Christian caller vacillated, then Mosab spoke:
> 
> If I was in your shoes, you should not report it to Israel.  I do not encourage anyone to give information to Israel or collaborate with Israel. If anyone hears me right now and they are in relation to Israeli security I advise them to work for the interest of their own people — number one — and do not work with the [Israeli] enemy against the interest of our people. They should collaborate with the Palestinian Authority only.
> 
> Most in the West do not understand the Arab “Christian” position when it comes to Israel. Witness the Daring Question host Rasheed, a Christian convert from Islam himself, pardoning Mosab from any wrongdoing: the pardon is not for Mosab’s connection to Hamas, but for his collaboration with Israel. To Rasheed, Mosab’s collaboration was during his Muslim life, while he was still unforgiven:
> 
> He [Mosab] did not become Christian then collaborate with Israel. He used to collaborate with Israel, then became Christian. [3]
> 
> Mosab’s book Son of Hamas — published in English — does not express Mosab’s views as openly as his Arabic statements do, and the book is additionally littered with factual errors and exaggerations.
> 
> For example: Mosab portrays the Jerusalem prison as a center for torture and persecution of Palestinians. The reality is much kinder; each inmate has his own bed and an in-the-cell shower as well.
> 
> I know this — I was a prisoner there myself.
> 
> We ate three full meals a day, and drank tea or sweet punch. And Mosab fails to mention that the Maskubia had Jewish inmates as well, who received the same treatment as the Palestinians and ate out of the same menu. Yes, you were beaten by security when lives were at stake: I witnessed first-hand Israeli soldiers in the corridor beating an inmate who attempted to kill his cellmate (I was selected to clean the mess afterward). What was so shocking to me at the time? The attempted murderer was a Jew.
> 
> I have never heard of Israelis killing Palestinians in prison. Yet Palestinian prisoners do kill each other, as Mosab himself describes. Palestinian inmates killed my landlord Muneer Abu-Sayb’a from Bethlehem, yet his death was blamed on Israel. My friend Basem Hanuneh was brutally murdered — his privates removed and stuffed in his mouth — which was also blamed on Israel.
> 
> Mosab is now touring churches to end Israel’s lifeline. Many Jews and Christians in the West are unable to determine friend from foe in the Mideast; they are not able to read what is said in Arabic. They must seek translations, and must be aware of double agents like Mosab.
> 
> Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com
> 
> URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-mosab-yousef-saga-did-hamas-%e2%80%98defector%e2%80%99-dupe-all-of-us/
> 
> URLs in this post:
> 
> [1] Daring Question: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSndfbSnD3Y&feature=related
> 
> [2] kaffiyeh: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKj7oNkshUo
> 
> [3] He [Mosab] did not become Christian then collaborate with Israel. He used to collaborate with Israel, then became Christian.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7E9iPx-fyU


----------



## a_majoor

Sadly, Egypt is now feeling the true effects of the Arab Spring. I suspect many of the Arab Spring states will soon be having similar outcomes:

http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/2011/05/09/egypt-situation-deteriorating-badly-and-rapidly/?print=1



> *Egypt: Situation Deteriorating Badly and Rapidly*
> Posted By Barry Rubin On May 9, 2011 @ 6:05 am In Uncategorized | 5 Comments
> 
> In the wake of bloody Muslim attacks on Egyptian Christians, the New York Times informs us:
> 
> “By lifting the heavy hand of the Mubarak police state, the revolution unleashed long-suppressed sectarian animosities that have burst out with increasing ferocity….”
> 
> No kidding! Did you think a single Egyptian Christian didn’t know this in February? Why didn’t the media report or the U.S. government understand that this was absolutely inevitable and predictable? But the only mentions of Christians were to claim that they were really enthusiastic about the revolution.
> 
> The remaining Christians in most of the Arabic-speaking world may be on the edge of flight or extinction. All of the Christians have left the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip which is, in effect, an Islamist republic. They are leaving the West Bank. Half have departed from an increasingly Islamist-oriented Iraq where they are under terrorist attack. Within a few years they might all be gone.
> 
> In Lebanon, while the Christians are holding their own, there is a steady emigration. As for Syria, the community has generally supported the Assad regime fearing a revolutionary Islamist replacement. One dissident recalled that as he was being beaten in a Syrian prison a few years ago, the police yelled at him, “Why are you doing this? You’re a Christian!”
> 
> Egypt has more Christians than Israel’s entire population. There have been numerous attacks, with the latest in Cairo leaving 12 dead, 220 wounded, and two churches burned. The Western media generally attributes this to inter-religious battles. Yet Egypt’s Christians, so totally outnumbered and not having any access to the power of the state, have generally kept a low profile.
> 
> It is hard to believe that gangs of Christians go out and attack Muslims, especially when the fighting revolves around mobs attacking churches. “How can they say we started it when we are defending our church?” asked one Christian. That makes sense.
> 
> The Christians cannot depend on any support from Western churches or governments. Will there be a massive flight of tens or even hundreds of thousands of Christians from Egypt in the next few years?
> 
> The U.S. government has just announced that it will forgive about $1 billion of Egyptian debt at a time when the American economy isn’t doing so well. You can just bet that there are no political strings attached: no pressure over Egyptian backing of Hamas, growing anti-Israel policy, cutting off natural gas supplies, the increasingly difficult situation of Christians, opposing Iran’s ambitions and nuclear weapons drive, or anything else.
> 
> What will happen if and when an Islamist-dominated regime is in power in Egypt — which could happen as early as September? Will U.S. aid and support continue?
> 
> Up until now, the strength of the Muslim Brotherhood has been badly underestimated in the West. But increasingly it is also apparent that the strength of anti-Islamist forces has been overestimated.
> 
> I have noted that even Amr Moussa, likely to be Egypt’s next president and a radical nationalist, has predicted an Islamist majority in parliament. That should be a huge story, yet it has been largely ignored.
> 
> He is not creating his own party, meaning that a President Moussa will be dependent on the Muslim Brotherhood in parliament. Rather than the radical nationalists battling the Islamists, these two forces might well work together.
> 
> And who will they be working against? Just guess.
> 
> Article printed from Rubin Reports: http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin
> 
> URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/2011/05/09/egypt-situation-deteriorating-badly-and-rapidly/


----------



## sean m

Here is a documentary about the powerful, radical Islamic groups have in Indonesia. They supposedly have powerful backers in government and/ or military. Hopefully this situation does not get out of control

http://www.youtube.com/user/journeymanpictures?blend=1&ob=5#p/c/2C32A4BDEAD6466A/0/LF0S4qUQWzU


----------



## a_majoor

A bit of a tangent, but here is a sample of the sort of reporting and veiwpoints that were common in 1968:

http://www.bookwormroom.com/2011/05/20/contemporary-coverage-of-the-six-day-war-clear-signed-and-moral/



> *Contemporary coverage of the Six Day War — clear-sighted and moral*
> Bookworm on May 20 2011 at 5:31 pm | Filed under: Israel
> 
> Given Obama’s obsession with the 1948 borders, this seemed like an appropriate day to resurrect some contemporary coverage of the Six Day War, culled from a commemorative issue that Life Magazine published back in 1967.  (For those with long memories, I first published these excerpts back in 2006.  It’s a shame Obama wasn’t reading my blog then.)
> 
> The commemorative issue opens by describing Nasser’s conduct, which presented such a threat that Israel had no option but to react. It makes for interesting reading, in part because it assumes a legitimacy to Israel’s 1967 preemptive strike. After describing how Pres. Abdel Gamel Nasser, speaking from Cairo, demanded Israel’s extermination, the Life editorial board goes on to say this:
> 
> The world had grown accustomed to such shows [of destructive hatred towards Israel] through a decade of Arab-Israeli face-offs that seasonally blew as hot as a desert sirocco. Since 1948, when Israel defeated the Arabs and won the right to exist as a nation, anti-Zionist diatribes had been the Arab world’s only official recognition of Israel. Indeed, in the 19 years since the state was founded, the surrounding Arab states have never wavered from their claim that they were in a state of war with Israel.
> 
> But now there was an alarming difference in Nasser’s buildup. He demanded that the U.N. withdraw the 3,400-man truce-keeping force that had camped in Egypt’s Sinai desert and in the Gaza Strip ever since Egypt’s defeat in the Suez campaign of 1956 as a buffer between Egyptians and Israelis. A worried United Nations Secretary-General U Thant agreed to the withdrawal, then winged to Cairo to caution Nasser.
> 
> He found him adamant. Plagued by economic difficulties at home and bogged down in the war in Yemen, Nasser had lately been criticized by Syrians for hiding behind the U.N. truce-keeping force. With brinksmanship as his weapon, Nasser had moved to bolster his shaky claim to leadership of the divided Arab world.
> 
> In contrast to the fevered, irrational hatred on the Arab side, the Life editors are impressed by the Israelis. Under the bold heading “Israel’s cool readiness,” and accompanied by photographs of smiling Israeli soldiers taking a cooling shower in the desert, listening to their commander, and attending to their tanks, Life has this to say:
> 
> With the elan and precision of a practiced drill team, Israel’s largely civilian army — 71,000 regulars and 205,000 reservists — began its swift mobilization to face, if necessary, 14 Arab nations and their 110 million people. As Premier Levi Eshkol was to put it, “The Jewish people has had to fight unceasingly to keep itself alive…. We acted from an instinct to save the soul of a people.
> 
> Can you imagine a modern publication pointing out the vast disparity in land mass and population between Israel and the Arabs, or even acknowledging in the opening paragraph of any article that Israel has a right to exist? The text about Israel’s readiness is followed by more photographs of reservists preparing their weapons and of a casually seated Moshe Dayan, drinking a soda, and conferring with his men. Under the last photograph, you get to read this:
> 
> The Israelis, Dayan said, threw themselves into their hard tasks with “something that is a combination of love, belief and country.”
> 
> After admiringly describing the Israelis’ offensive strike against the Arab air-forces, which gave Israel the decisive advantage in the War, Life addresses Israel’s first incursion into Gaza. I’m sure you’ll appreciate how the Gaza area is depicted:
> 
> Minutes after the first air strike, a full division of Israeli armor and mechanized infantry . . . was slashing into the Egyptian-held Gaza Strip. A tiny wasteland, the strip had been given up by Israel in the 1956 settlement and was now a festering splinter — the barren harbor for 315,000 refugees bent on returning to their Palestinian homes and the base for Arab saboteurs.
> 
> Wow! Those clueless Life writers actually seem to imply that Egypt, which controlled Gaza for eleven years, had some responsibility for this “festering,” dangerous area.
> 
> The Life editors, circa June 23, 1967were both clear-headed and prescient about the refugee problem that remained when war ended (emphasis mine):
> 
> The 20th Century’s excellence — and its horrid defects — find some of their most vivid monuments in the hate-filled camps of Arab refugees. The refugees have been supported by the voluntary U.N. contributions of some 75 governments, not to mention the Inner Wheel Club of Hobart, Australia, the Boy Scout Union of Finland, the Women’s Club of Nes, Iceland, the Girls High School of Burton-on-Trend, England, and (for some reason) a number of automobile companies including Chrysler, Ford, G.M. and Volkswagen.
> 
> The philanthropy, governmental and private, that has aided these displaced Arabs is genuine — and admirable. The stupidity and political selfishness that have perpetuated the problem are appalling.
> 
> Down the ages, there have been thousands of episodes in which whole peoples fled their homes. Most were assimilated in the lands to which they fled. Brutally or beneficently, previous refugee groups were liquidated. Not until our time have there been the money, the philanthropy, the administrative skill, the hygienic know-how and the peculiar kind of nationalism which, in combination, could take a wave of refugees and freeze it into a permanent and festering institution.
> 
> In the wake of Israeli victories, the refugee camps received thousands of new recruits, and there may be more if, as seems likely, Israel successfully insists on some enlargement of its boundaries. Thus the refugee problem, one of the main causes of Middle East instability, is about to be magnified.
> 
> The early Zionists, looking toward a binational state, never thought they would, could or should replace the Arabs in Palestine.  When terrorism and fighting mounted in 1947-48, Arab leaders urged Palestinian Arabs to flee, promising that the country would soon be liberated.  Israelis tried to induce the Arabs to stay.  For this reason, the Israelis do not now accept responsibility for the Arab exodus.  Often quoted is the statement of a Palestinian Arab writer that the Arab leaders “told us:  ‘Get out so that we can get in.’  We got out but they did not get in.”
> 
> After the Israeli victory, Arab leaders outside of Palestine reversed their policy and demanded that all the refugees be readmitted to Israel. Israel reversed its policy, [and] refused to repatriate large numbers of Arabs on the ground that they would endanger the state. Nasser, for instance, has said, “If Arabs return to Israel, Israel will cease to exist.”
> 
> Now 1.3 million Arabs, not counting the recent influx, are listed as refugees. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has an international staff of about a hundred and spends nearly $40 million a year, 60% of it from the U.S. government. UNRWA services are performed by 11,500 Arab employees, most them refugees. Obviously, this group has an interest in not solving the refugee problem.
> 
> So have the host governments. Consistently they have refused to go along with any plan or policy for the resettlement or assimilation of the refugees, preferring to use them politically. In 1955 the Arab League scuttled a Jordan Valley development project precisely because it would have reduced, perhaps by 250,000, the number of Arab refugees.
> 
> It’s about time this dangerous deadlock ended. The inevitable reshuffle of the Middle East ought to include a plan to phase out the refugee problem in five or 10 years. Israel, to show goodwill, should repatriate a few thousand refugees per year. All of the 1.3 million could be absorbed in underpopulated Iran and Syria, provided their governments would cooperate in internationally supported developments projects. Persuading Arab governments to adopt a policy of resettlement should be central to U.S. policy, and it would be worth putting up quite a lot of A.I.D. money to get the job done.
> 
> History has shown the Life editors to be correct when they predicted that UN economic interests and Arab political interests would leave the refugee camps as a permanent blight on the Middle Eastern landscape. They were naive only in believing that anyone had the political will to solve the problem. They also could not have anticipated that, in a very short time, the same situation, with its same causes, would be plunged into a looking-glass world, where the Arab governments and the UN were absolved of their sins, and the blame was placed on Israel for not having engaged in an act of self-immolation by taking in these 1.3 million (and counting, and counting, and counting) hate-filled refugees.
> 
> These same editors understood the Cold War aspects of the 1967 War. They editorialized about the Soviet Union’s UN fulminations (an editorial I’m also quoting in its entirety):
> 
> As the Arab soldiers and refugees made their sad and painful way from the scenes of their defeat, the Soviet Union threw its heaviest oratorical gun into the United Nations in an effort to salvage some of what it had lost in the Mideast. Premier Aleksei Kosygin arrived at the General Assembly with an arsenal of invective.
> 
> Kosygin put all the blame on Israel and its “imperialist” backers (i.e., the U.S. and Britain). As he saw it, Israel’s “atrocities and violence” brought to mind “the heinous crimes perpetrated by the fascists during World War II.” He demanded the Assembly’s approval for a resolution — rejected earlier by the Security Council — that would condemn Israel as sole aggressor in the conflict, and he proposed that Israel not only be made to pull back to her prewar borders but also to pay reparations to the Arabs for their losses.
> 
> He was answered by the Israeli foreign minister, Abba Eban [his speech is here], whose detailed documentation and eloquence told how the Arabs had given his country the choice of defending its national existence or forfeiting it for all time. Then he put Kosygin himself in the defendant’s dock. Russia, he charged, was guilty of inflaming passions in a region “already too hot with tension” by feeding the arms race and spreading false propaganda. He called Kosygin’s reference to the Nazis “an obscene comparison . . . a flagrant breach of international morality and human decency.” As for the Russian demand that Israel pull back to her prewar lines, that, he said, was totally unacceptable until durable and just solutions are reached “in free negotiations with each of our neighbors.” The Arab states “have come face to face with us in conflict; let them now come face to face with us in peace.” Israel was determined not be deprived of her victory.
> 
> Did you catch that the Soviet speaker used precisely the same rhetoric about Israel that has become normative throughout Europe and in most Leftist publications? He castigated Israel as an imperialist entity and claimed that her tactics were “atrocities” that were identical to those the Nazis used. Unlike today’s MSM, Life’s 1967 editorial team appears appalled by the tenor and falsity of those accusations.
> 
> My Mom was quite the packrat.  In addition to the Life magazine that I quoted from above,  which was published at the end of the War, my Mom also saved the June 16, 1967 edition of Life magazine, which was written within days of the War’s abrupt beginning and swift end.  The news reports are pretty much the same as in the commemorative edition (sometimes verbatim), but there’s still something new and surprising, making it an enlightening glimpse at a different era of reporting.  How’s this for unimaginable journalism , which appears in the magazine’s opening editorial?
> 
> The tremendous discrepancy between the competence of Israeli and Arab armies is the most obvious fact from which to start [in searching for meaning about the War].  The Israelis are very patriotic, brave and skillful soldiers, brilliantly led.  But that only gives half an explanation of their huge — and mounting — military superiority.  The other half may yield to an impolite but unavoidable question:  what is the matter with the Arab armies?  Was there ever a people so bellicose in politics, so reckless and raucous in hostility — and then so unpugnacious in pitched combat — as Nasser’s Egyptians?
> 
> The editors than take on what they perceive as the canard that the U.S. blindly allies itself with Israel.  Au contraire, say the editors.  The fact is that the U.S. allies itself with the moral side, and that side is Israel (can we find some editors to write this way now?):
> 
> The error [the belief that the U.S. unthinkingly supports Israel] arises out of the fact that in most disputes the U.S. has been found on Israel’s side.  That’s because it is the Arabs who challenge the existence of Israel, and not vice versa.
> 
> I really can’t add anything to that, can I? This is how normal people once viewed the world, before Leftism overtook academia and the media. People had a fundamental understanding of right versus, and they understood that, whether one viewed Israel from a historic, legal, military or moral perspective, Israel had the high ground.


----------



## 57Chevy

Shared with provisions of The Copyright Act
Tunisia's former president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and his wife sentenced to 35 years in prison
The Telegraph/20 Jun 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/tunisia/8588000/Tunisias-former-president-Zine-al-Abidine-Ben-Ali-and-his-wife-sentenced-to-35-years-in-prison.html

A Tunisian court on Monday sentenced ousted president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and his wife, in absentia, to 35 years in jail each after finding them guilty of theft and unlawful possession of cash and jewellery.

Reading out the verdict and sentence in the courtroom after just one day of deliberation, the judge also ruled Ben Ali and his wife would have to pay fines totalling 91 million Tunisian dinars (£40.6 million).

The judge said the verdict on other charges, relating to illegal possession of drugs and weapons, would be pronounced on June 30.

Ben Ali, who is in exile in Saudi Arabia, is being tried in absentia at the Tunis criminal court.

The court is hearing two embezzlement, money laundering and drug trafficking cases against the 74-year-old. It follows the discovery of around $27 million in jewels and cash plus drugs and weapons at two palaces outside Tunis after he flew to Saudi Arabia on Jan 14.

Saudi Arabia did not respond to an extradition request, and some Tunisians expressed frustration that he would not be present for his judgment.

article continues at link....


----------



## a_majoor

The ever expanding war. This might also be appropriate here

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2011/07/american-boots-hit-ground-somalia-after-drone-attacks/39539/



> *American Boots Hit the Ground in Somalia After Drone Attacks*
> 
> ADAM CLARK ESTESJUL 02, 20111,414 ViewsComments (5)
> 
> Somalia is now the sixth country over which the United States is flying attack drones. Last month, the same Special Operations Command unit currently operating in Yemen carried out an attack on two leaders of the Somali militant group al-Shabab in a June 23 mission. The Washington Post reported the attack on Wednesday, and on Friday, Somalia's defense minister says that American military forces touched down to collect the bodies of the insurgents. Al-Shabab has carried out attacks on the Somali government, and while the government is calling on more American drone missions, they say they were not aware of the first drone attack. "But we are not complaining about that. Absolutely not. We welcome it," Defense Minister Mohamoud Haji Faqi told the Associated Press. "We understand the U.S.'s need to quickly act on its intelligence on the ground."
> 
> Some are questioning the apparently hasty mission, however. Joshua Foust, a fellow at the American Security Project and a contributor to The Atlantic, warns that the United States may not accomplish much without a broader strategic framework in Somalia:
> 
> There is a very poor understanding of Somalia's politics, which almost by design results in poorly crafted policy. It's why libertarians continue to insist Somalia is some sort of anarchic paradise, rather than  the chaotic, violent hellhole it is: they just don't know how or why the country functions the way it does. […] (_Interpolation: not any libertarians I know..._.)
> 
> What we do know, based on past experience both within Somalia and with U.S. foreign policy in a general sense, is that without a strategic framework in place to help guide, inspire, and constrain policy, we really shouldn't expect anything different from the last 20 years of anarchic violence there. Because we won't be working toward anything else.
> 
> Eugene Robinson, a columnist at The Washington Post points out that drone warfare in general has not been publicly discussed in the United States. And the particular nature of "these antiseptic missile attacks" is raising concerns around the world. In addition practical and legal questions, the ethical quandary could lead to more animosity against Americans, Robinson says:
> 
> Most troubling of all, perhaps, are the moral and philosophical questions. This is a program not of war but of assassination. Clearly, someone like Ayman al-Zawahiri--formerly Osama bin Laden’s second-in-command, now the leader of al-Qaeda--is a legitimate target. But what about others such as the Somali “militants” who may wish to do us harm but have not actually done so? Are we certain that they have the capability of mounting some kind of attack? Absent any overt act, is there a point at which antipathy toward the United States, even hatred, becomes a capital offense?
> Of course, the most lasting memory of United States military involvement in Somalia is the botched "Black Hawk Down" mission in 1993, when 18 American soldiers were killed in the Somali capital Mogadishu. That lasting memory will likely turn the spotlight towards Somalia should the U.S. government continue to engage there.


----------



## a_majoor

Monetary and political stresses within OPEC. Add the addition of non OPEC oil production ramping up due to new technologies like Frakking and the Gulf and Mid East could be thrown in even more turmoil as their income stream is disrupted:

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/is-opec-headed-for-collapse/?print=1



> *Is OPEC Headed for Collapse?*
> 
> Posted By Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi On July 3, 2011 @ 12:00 am In Uncategorized | 15 Comments
> 
> In the comments section [1] of one of my previous articles, a reader asked me whether the collapse of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC — responsible for 40% of the world’s petroleum output) is likely in the near future. Fair question, especially in light of the currently dysfunctional state of the Arab League. Are we really about to witness the end of a monopoly on global oil prices?
> 
> In short, it is too difficult to predict either way. I discussed earlier how the  Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC ) is starting to replace the Arab League as an inter-Arab political body and Sunni axis against Iran, shifting the onus of decision-making to the Gulf region. However, some of OPEC’s most prominent members [2] — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, and Kuwait — are also part of the GCC, and it is notable that neither Syria nor Egypt, both of whose states of political turmoil have been responsible for the Arab League’s decline, is a major exporter of petroleum or member of OPEC. Thus, the growing importance of the GCC as opposed to the diminishing relevance of the Arab League is unlikely to have a major impact on OPEC’s future.
> 
> What is more interesting, however, is the conflict within OPEC between a bloc of states led by Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members, led chiefly by Iran and Venezuela, on the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) decision [3] to tap into “strategic” (or “excess”) stockpiles of petroleum in an attempt to boost output, provide relief for high oil prices, and to stabilize the global economy. The IEA hopes to increase production by around 2 million barrels per day. Following a meeting that resulted in a deadlock at OPEC’s headquarters in Vienna on June 8, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait parted ways with other OPEC members and promised to raise production levels by 1.5 million barrels per day. Indeed, over the past month the Saudis have already increased output by approximately 500,000 barrels per day.
> 
> Now, ostensibly, Saudi Arabia is complying with the IEA’s initiative, but John Shimkus [4] plausibly argues for another motive behind the Saudis’ behavior: namely, fear of Iran’s nuclear program, which is probably striving to develop nuclear weapons. As pointed out before, Iran has been at the head of an effort to block release of excess oil reserves. Hence, we should not be surprised if Saudi Arabia and its allies in OPEC might wish to flood the market with their own petroleum in the hope of bringing Iran’s government to the point of bankruptcy and thereby halting the Islamic Republic’s goals for its nuclear program.
> 
> To achieve such an objective, the Gulf nations led by Saudi Arabia would have to produce an extra 4 million barrels per day, besides having to enforce a naval blockade against Iranian oil tankers. Of course, the latter act is a remote prospect, as it would be perceived by Iran as a casus belli. Therefore, as Shimkus concludes: “What is more likely to occur is a continued increase in supply coming from Saudi Arabia [resulting in a] prolonged cut into Tehran’s oil profits.”
> 
> Nonetheless, Saudi Arabia also faces the problem of competition from Russia [5] in the oil market further east, where much Gulf oil is heading to facilitate the expansion of growing economic powers such as India and China. Russia now supplies almost five times more crude oil through its East Siberia-Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline than in 2008, and given ESPO oil’s higher quality, there is much more incentive for refiners in East Asia to buy Russian petroleum over Gulf oil grades, such that Russia now sells around 300,000 barrels per day to China.
> 
> To sum up: while the state of the Arab League has little bearing on OPEC’s functioning, there is potential for a major split within the cartel concerning the question of boosting output to dampen high oil prices and stabilize the global economy. Unsurprisingly, the rivalry is once again between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The Saudis could try to attain a massive growth in petroleum production, but one wonders whether the Wahhabi kingdom can compete with Russia in the lucrative Asian markets, perhaps leading to a reversal on Saudi Arabia’s plan to go along with the IEA. All we can do is watch how events will unfold.
> 
> Yet the more important point is that the United States cannot depend on oil imports for much longer. It is undeniable that demand for petroleum is accelerating at a much quicker pace than possible short-term increases in output. The need for energy independence is becoming ever more urgent.
> 
> Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com
> 
> URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/is-opec-headed-for-collapse/
> 
> URLs in this post:
> 
> [1] comments section: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/06/the_gulf_cooperation_council_vs_iran.html
> 
> [2] most prominent members: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPEC
> 
> [3] International Energy Agency’s (IEA) decision: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304447804576413860503688364.html
> 
> [4] John Shimkus: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Saudi-Arabia-Using-Oil-as-an-Economic-Weapon-Against-Iran.html
> 
> [5] competition from Russia: http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/06/29/155373.html


----------



## a_majoor

A discussion about how social media helped/hindered the Arab Spring movement. A particularly interesting comment in the article speaks of how the amorphus and selp organizing nature of the movement made it hard for the regimes to target them or build civil support for countermovements. On a slightly different scale, the same thing is happening with the TEA party movement in the United States; there is no "leader" and the various issues that unite TEA partiers are "universal" in the sense that everyone can identify with the issue and "gets it" on a visceral level:

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/guest/27110/?p1=A5



> *The Middle Ground between Technology and Revolutions*
> 
> Social media didn't cause the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, but it did achieve unique visibility.
> 
> Aaron Bady 08/26/2011
> 
> Is there still a debate on whether social media can cause revolutions? If this was ever a serious question, it was mainly an argument between straw men: on the one hand, wild idealists who saw the internet as an all-encompassing force for freedom and on the other, the crusty curmudgeons who fear technology and pooh-pooh the idea that social media is good for anything but posting pictures of cats. NYU professor Jay Rosen characterized the debate as "Wildly overdrawn claims about social media, often made with weaselly question marks (like: 'Tunisia's Twitter revolution?') and the derisive debunking that follows from those claims ('It's not that simple!')" and argued that these "only appear to be opposite perspectives. In fact, they are two modes in which the same weightless discourse is conducted."
> 
> I think we can safely put that debate aside. While Malcolm Gladwell made a lot of noise last October by declaring that "the revolution will not be tweeted," reporting like John Pollock's "Streetbook" demolishes the idea that there is some intrinsic and impassable barrier separating "street" activism from the kind of "slacktivist" organizing of which Gladwell is so dismissive. But it's worth noting that even the most visible "cyber-utopians" and "cyber-pessimists" seem to be converging on a point somewhere in the middle. In March, Clay Shirky significantly qualified the kinds of claims he makes for the centrality of social media—arguing that it is access to each other, not access to media, that makes revolutions—while Evgeny Morozov has pointed out that both he and Gladwell have been clear that the internet can be an effective tool for political change, as long as it is "used by grassroots organizations (as opposed to atomized individuals)." If you can see the fundamental divide between these arguments, you see more clearly than I do.
> 
> What's different, I suspect, is that we can now ask the question in the past tense, and the answer is that middle ground onto which both sides are converging, a very middling "kind of, but not completely." What happened in Egypt and Tunisia were revolutions, but they were obviously not caused by Facebook or Twitter: as Ramesh Srinivasan pointed out only 15% of Egyptians have Internet access, and only a small percentage use social media sites. But along with reporting like Pollock's, the work done by people like Zeynep Tufekci, Samir Garbaya, and Ramesh Srinivasan allows us to stop talking, hypothetically, about "technology" and "revolutions" in the abstract, and to start looking at what it was about these revolutions and these regimes that gave these social media tools such potency, visibility, and usefulness. Which is all to the good. Talking about the technology risks making Facebook or Twitter the hero of the story, thereby turning our attention away from the courage and commitment of face-to-face organizers and masses in the street.
> 
> But while Malcolm Gladwell may still think that "the least interesting thing [about the protests in Egypt] is that some of the protesters may (or may not) have at one point or another employed some of the tools of the new media," it still seems undeniable that social media has achieved a unique kind of visibility in the story of the "Arab Spring." You cannot tell the story of Khaled Said, after all, without talking about social media: he was dragged out of a cybercafé and beaten to death for posting a video showing police corruption, whereupon pictures of his battered face became a mobilizing point for the Facebook group "We Are All Khaled Said," moderated by Google executive Wael Ghonim. Ghonim's declaration to Wolf Blitzer on CNN that "This revolution started online...on Facebook" is not really credible, of course; at most, Facebook organizing managed to build on and enhance the Kifaya movement, which started years ago. But if Facebook is not the whole story, it is certainly part of the story. And what are we to make of the story of the Egyptian newborn named "Facebook"? Or of photos like this one?
> 
> It seems to me that there are two significantly different perspectives from which to ask the question of what social media technology does. On the one hand, what Pollock documents in the streets of Tunisia is the way social networking can enhance and enable forms of organizing that are utterly precedented: groups organized around Facebook merge seamlessly with groups organized around football. And as I think both Shirky and Morozov would agree, the important thing is the groups themselves, the grass-roots organizing and access-to-each other that could start with something like football, but which could also be maintained and expanded by something like Facebook. In this sense, "social media" is only one medium of revolution among many.
> 
> But the medium is also a message. After all, to join a Facebook group like "We are all Khaled Said" is not the same as joining the group for Hosni Mubarak's National Democratic Party. To "like" Hosni Mubarak would be to endorse a leader—the leader, in fact—but the extremely visible leaderlessness of "We are all Khalid Said" seems to be exactly the point. In other words, instead of the personality cult by which Presidents-for-life like Ben Ali and Mubarak have ruled for decades, the masses of nameless Cairenes and Tunisians—assembled on Facebook and in the street—represents a kind of anti-personality cult. When everyone is "Khaled Said" (or "Mohamed Bouazizi" in Tunisia), after all, the story being told is not only about that the nation is united, but that it is united by the common experience of having suffered at the hands of the state. In this sense, instead of "leaderless revolutions," perhaps we might think about how Facebook helped facilitate a "revolution of leaderlessness"?
> 
> If we pull back from the level of the street, in other words, and think about the story being told by people like Wael Ghonim about the revolution, "Facebook" doesn't just represent a medium of street-level organizing. It's also a media messaging strategy, a way of branding and identifying the revolution for the millions who were watching. And it's always worth remembering that these revolutions didn't only succeed in the streets: Mubarak and Ben Ali both lost power when their own militaries (and world opinion) turned decisively against them, siding instead with the nation united in opposition. But how did "the nation" come to seem so completely united? What happened to the ethnic, sectarian, political, and regional divisions that supposedly made it necessary for a strong man dictator like Mubarak to hold the state together? Remember, this has been the argument made for years (and by Mubarak, quite explicitly): Egyptians are so fundamentally divided that without a strong leader, the state would come apart at the seams, would explode into chaos. A Facebook group like "We are all Khaled Said" not only makes exactly the opposite argument—that Egypt is a nation united by its victimhood at the hands of the state— but it demonstrates, quite visibly, that this is the case.
> 
> What social media debunkers like Malcolm Gladwell have always argued is that platforms like Facebook are poorly suited for producing strong consensus on a program of action; for Gladwell, the Civil Rights movement was a social movement that could not have been tweeted. And this may be true. But if the movements to oust Mubarak and Ben Ali had been led by a single charismatic leader, or by a party with a clear platform, it would have been much easier for Mubarak or Ben Ali to divide the opposition, to make it seem not like a nation united in opposition to its leadership, but as a particular party or demagogue striving to supplant him. If the Muslim Brotherhood had taken a clear leadership role, after all, Mubarak would have received much more support from those leery of Islamist terrorism. But if the movement had taken on an exclusively secularist character, substantial portions of the population would have been alienated from it. In other words, what Gladwell flags as a weakness of social media—the difficulty of producing strong commitment to a single idea or plan—might actually be what makes it uniquely valuable. By uniting around the crimes of Ben Ali and Mubarak, the much more difficult political question of what kind of government was to succeed him could be deferred until later.
> 
> Aaron Bady is a PhD student in African Studies in University of California Berkeley's Department of English, and the author of the blog zunguzungu.com.


----------



## Edward Campbell

the epitome of a "failed state" must be Somalia.

Here is an article, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, is an article with which I (broadly) agree:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/africa-mideast/somalia/war-and-corruption-are-responsible-for-famines-not-droughts/article2152432/


> War and corruption are responsible for famines, not droughts
> 
> THOMAS KENEALLY
> From Saturday's Globe and Mail
> 
> Last updated Sunday, Sep. 04, 2011
> 
> _The first part of a week-long look at the crisis in the Horn of Africa_
> 
> I have never quite believed that simplistic formula invoked in so many modern famines: “caused by a severe drought.”
> 
> Not that there isn't a severe drought now in southern Somalia, neighbouring Ethiopia and parts of Kenya. There undeniably is. Last October to December, rains did not appear at all in the area. The March-April rains this year were late. My skepticism arises, though, because I come from perhaps the driest continent on Earth, which has suffered recurrent droughts from earliest settler experience, including the El Nino-influenced drought that seemed to run nearly non-stop from the early 1990s to last year. Many of our farmers were forced off land their families had held for generations.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> There has always been drought-induced anguish in the Australian bush. But no one starves. Malnutrition, undeniably, and particularly in indigenous communities, but no famine.
> 
> How is it the citizens of drought-stricken homelands in Somalia and the “triangle of death” have none of the guarantees my drought-stricken compatriots have? It's because, as the famed aphorism of Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen puts it, “no famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy.”
> 
> Similarly, an Irish friend of mine, a respected historian of famine named Cormac Ó Gráda, writes, “Agency is more important than a food-production shortfall. Mars counts for more than Malthus.” In contrast to Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus, the 19th-century population theorist who blamed overpopulation and land overuse for the Irish famine, Mr. Ó Gráda sees war and other human actions as the engines of famine. His point is evident in the Horn of Africa now.
> 
> One of the affected areas of Ethiopia is, for example, the Ogaden, whose people consider themselves kinsman of the Somalis and are similarly Muslim. It is in their territory that conflict between the Ethiopian army and Somali rebels has occurred over recent years, with many savageries and violation.
> 
> 
> The central regime in Addis Ababa has never felt kindly or acted tenderly toward the Ogadenians anyhow, nor given them a decent share of roads or clinics or schools. Is it a priority now to feed and care for them?
> 
> All famines share common qualities, a similar DNA, that reduce acts of God like drought from real causes to mere tipping or triggering mechanisms. Famines often occur where farming and grazing are suddenly disrupted to fit some ideological plan of the leaders of the country, as in Mao's Great Leap Forward in the 1950s, Ethiopia in the 1980s and North Korea repeatedly since the mid-1990s.
> 
> Famines also strike in areas where people live in hunger and malnutrition year after year. Malnutrition is a sensitivity-numbing word – it does not capture the swollen joints, flaking skin, retarded growth, porous and fragile bone, diminished height, lethargy and disabling confusion of soul that characterize it.
> 
> As it's been said, a malnourished child can still howl out; a starving one has no strength to.
> 
> As many as 60 per cent of North Korean children aged six months to seven years were malnourished in 2010, so they were set up to become the victims of famine over the past year. Once again, ideology and military priorities offer a better explanation than mere food shortage: The regime's re-evaluation of its currency wiped out the spending power of families, all to sustain itself and its army.
> 
> Similarly, southern Somalia, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, had the highest level of child malnutrition on Earth in July this year. A few unlucky factors, and malnutrition becomes famine.
> 
> People in that rural hinterland already lived off only a few food staples. Among some pastoral people who survive by livestock holdings, death of animals by June this year was reaching 60 per cent. The value of a cow relative to how much grain a family could buy with it had fallen by two-thirds. Grain and lentils are what farmers live off there. As with the Irish and their buttermilk and potatoes long ago, the East African diet is balanced on a two-legged stool. Still, if drought were the cause, we could just help them until the rains returned. But it's the helping that is complicated. Climate isn't the complication; humans are.
> 
> *REFUSING AID FROM AN IDEOLOGICAL ‘ENEMY'*
> 
> The Ethiopian army invaded a civil-war-savaged Somalia in 2006 and, after a hard-fisted occupation, installed an unpopular and only partly successful transitional federal government. Assorted militias, such as the oft-mentioned al-Shabab (“the youth”), retained the hinterland, where conflicts, raids and molestation of citizens by both sides have been common ever since.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Al-Shabab has been driven from Mogadishu, but it is the most commonly cited military villain in this famine. Al-Shabab believes that many Western agencies oppose it because of its desire to make Somalia an Islamist state.
> 
> Therefore, it restricts the entry of agencies and non-governmental organizations into its area to those it considers neutral – Red Cross and Red Crescent in particular. It rules out the World Food Program and UNICEF and agencies such as CARE. It has created its own Office for the Supervision to Regulate the Affairs of Foreign Agencies.
> 
> There is denial that famine actually exists too. “The UN wants Somalia to be in famine,” a spokesman, Ali Mohamud Rage, has said. “They want push pressure on us through such calls. We agree that there is hunger in some areas, but there is no famine in Somalia.”
> 
> Agencies and aid bodies are not always without their flaws, but it is al-Shabab, not drought, that stands between the starving and the food.
> 
> Al-Shabab not only threatens aid workers but tries to prevent and punish refugees who try to cross into so-called Christian countries such as Ethiopia and Kenya.
> 
> It must be terrifying for the men, women and children now trying to get into Kenya to find themselves surrounded by militia men emerging from the thorn trees.
> 
> Is the transitional federal government in Mogadishu an improvement or another face of the problem?
> 
> It seems that it is either too venal or too powerless to prevent the plunder of aid food.
> 
> Joakim Gundul, a Kenyan assessor of aid results, says, “While helping starving people, you are also feeding the power groups who make a business out of the disaster. … You're saving people's lives today so they can die tomorrow.”
> 
> *HOW THE NEW HONESTY MIGHT BACKFIRE*
> 
> It seems to me that in earlier famines, this issue of human agency has not been nearly as honestly and openly discussed by journalists and officials. K'naan, the famed multitalented Canadian Somali, is rightly appalled at what he sees as a slow reaction of the world to this crisis, but the question arises whether the greater honesty about human blame is slowing the response.
> 
> The vigour and enthusiasm that came into play in the West's reaction to the Ethiopian famines of the early 1980s has not yet appeared.
> 
> Aid to Ethiopia lagged in the early phases of that famine too. The West was dubious about then-president Mengistu Haile Mariam's closeness to the Soviets until BBC and CBC footage, combined with the involvement of rock stars and telethons, shamed governments into increasing the flow of aid.
> 
> And not only governments: A farmer from Guelph, Ont., Fred Benson, galvanized by the news from Ethiopia, gave his 107-acre farm to a Mennonite aid agency for the sake of people whose faces he had never seen.
> 
> Yet it wasn't much discussed at the time that Mr. Mengistu was arming his troops for a so-called Red Star offensive against the Eritrean rebels with expensive Russian armaments bought with the substance of his starving nation.
> 
> With my own eyes, at the time, I saw the astonishing quantities of arms and aircraft he had brought to Eritrea, when I was caught unexpectedly for the better part of the week in a besieged town named Nacfa in the Eritrean highlands.
> 
> As an Eritrean minder told me, “He's blowing schools and clinics out of the mouth of his cannon.”
> 
> At the same time, Mr. Mengistu was putting great emphasis on celebrating the 10th anniversary of his regime, such that Addis Ababa became a Disneyland of Stalinist achievement in the midst of a hungering populace.
> 
> Few voices were raised to tell us all this, or to tell us about the forced resettlement of millions into unfamiliar country. If we had known it all, would Fred Benson have been as generous? Would there have been a Bob Geldof?
> 
> For us today, unfortunately, this Horn of Africa famine is another in a string of almost expected events. We expect that the world will get some emergency aid there. We feel as if we have heard the whole story before. Yet it is an utterly fresh and terrifying experience for the people of the “triangle.” They have tried every way of survival. They have skimped at meals, have seen what crops they could grow wither and have lost their livestock or tried to sell them in a glutted market. Meanwhile, the grain shortage sends prices up, and even encourages hoarding by merchants, while in their huts farmers face the massive question of whether they should eat next year's seed crop, one of the final acts of familial desperation.
> 
> These starving have looked for eyes of undigested grain in cow manure; they have foraged for wild foods, yehub nuts and berries, in competition with their neighbours. Any family jewellery has been sold. Many starving women probably have been forced to make a Sophie's choice, whether to feed a child likely to die or one not already sick.
> 
> And as they slide toward starvation, the devastation of their immune systems will attract assaults by opportunist bacteria. There's no sense of banal repetition in their struggles.
> 
> Perhaps we must try a new theorem: to try to get the Somalis and the Ethiopians fed precisely because their governments have not yet created societies in which supply and support are taken for granted.
> 
> Aid agencies could be given breaks from endless pie charts about administration costs and aid delivery per donor dollar and stop pretending that they will be permitted to go everywhere they like and to do all the good they can. They should simply invite us into the general struggle to deliver aid as energetically, cleverly and well as the malign circumstances on the desolate ground permit them.
> 
> As for the regimes, Mr. Sen's statement glimmers like a tinsel promise, an undeniable though not immediately useful tool, out there in what aid workers call “the field.”
> 
> But in approaching that dilemma – how to make regimes behave – I have moved far into “wiser-heads-than-mine” territory. And by the time we solved it, there would be millions dead in Africa.
> 
> _Thomas Keneally, an Australian novelist and writer, is the Booker Prize-winning author of _Schindler's Ark_ (which became the film Schindler's List), _The Great Shame_ and, recently, _Three Famines: Starvation and Politics.




Now, surely, we, as humans, have a moral obligation to do what we can to solve the starvation crisis. Maybe not ~ maybe we need to suppress our normal human emotions and try to force the Somalis (and others) to help themselves.

Or, perhaps, the *best* way we, the US led West, can *help*, really help, not just in the immediate term, is to invade, destroy the existing power structures - in more than one country - and then leave the people to, as some thoughtful Americans put it, _"institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."_

In any event, it is time to lay the blame for starvation where it belongs ... which is not with the climate.


----------



## a_majoor

Egypt's condition deteriorates:

http://pajamasmedia.com/spengler/2011/09/13/endgame-for-egypt/?print=1



> *Endgame for Egypt*
> 
> Posted By David P. Goldman On September 13, 2011 @ 3:21 pm In Uncategorized | 120 Comments
> 
> Robert Musil’s Der Mann Ohne Eigenschaften (“The Man Without Qualities”), one of the great novels of the past century, is a portrait of the Austrian early in 1914. The readers know that their silly world will come to a terrible end a few months later with the outbreak of war, but the protagonists do not. Musil published a first volume and spent the rest of his life trying to write a second, without success, for it is the sort of story that has no end except for the abyss.
> 
> Arab politics today has a Musil-like quality of unreality, for the conclusion will be the collapse of the Egyptian state. The misnamed “Arab Spring,” really a convulsion of a dying society, began with food shortages. Egypt imports half its caloric consumption, 45% of its people are illiterate, its university graduates are unemployable, its $10 billion a year tourism industry is shuttered for the duration, and its foreign exchange reserves are gradually disappearing. In August, the central bank’s reported reserves fell below what the bank calls the “danger level” of six months’ import coverage, or $25 billion, from $36 billion in February, although I suspect that even this number is bloated by $5 to $10 billion of Algerian and Saudi loans and trade credits. Despite reports in the press that food price inflation in Egypt has slowed, Arab-language Egyptian media report that the prices of some staples, like rice and sugar, have risen by 50% or more since March. The military government is distributing bread and propane (the main cooking fuel).
> 
> Egypt turned down a proposed loan from the International Monetary Fund earlier this year because the military government could not accept the conditionality attached to IMF money. The Gulf States and the West may keep Egypt on life support, which would leave a large proportion of Egyptians in a limbo of extreme destitution. The fiscal collapse of Southern Europe (and severe problems elsewhere) makes this an inopportune time to come to the West with a begging bowl. As for the Gulf States: they are not even meeting their commitments to the Palestine Authority, and can’t be expected to carry a $15 to $20 billion annual financing requirement for Egypt.
> 
> It does not compute. Western economists can concoct all the economic recovery plans in the world, but a country that can’t teach half its people to read, and can’t produce employable university graduates, and can’t feed itself, is going to go down the drain. Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak kept Egypt under control by keeping most of its people poor, ignorant, and on the farm, and by warehousing its youth in state-run diploma mills. After sixty years of such abuse, Egypt simply can’t get there from here.
> 
> The result, I predict, will be a humanitarian catastrophe that makes Somalia look like a picnic. It’s not surprising that the Egyptian mob might attack the Israeli embassy. The Egyptian street has nothing to do but rise up against perceived oppressors, because nothing good awaits them; and the desperation that will follow the collapse of the Arab “Spring” threatens every Middle Eastern regime, such that the rulers have to try to get out in front of the rage. But what will they actually do? The Egyptian military is hanging onto power by its fingernails. If it attacks Israel, it will lose, and generals will be hanged from lamp posts. The Syrian military is too busy killing protesters to attack Israel, or to assist Hezbollah in a confrontation with Israel.
> 
> What we are likely to witness during the next two years will be repellent, even horrifying — but not necessarily dangerous.
> 
> Article printed from Spengler: http://pajamasmedia.com/spengler
> 
> URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/spengler/2011/09/13/endgame-for-egypt/


----------



## a_majoor

Comparing Israel to the Netherlands in the 1600's (and a sidebar look at the collapse of Turkey):

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MI13Ak01.html



> *Israel as the Dutch Republic*
> in the Thirty Years War
> By Spengler
> 
> A small country, its land reclaimed from a hostile nature, fights for survival against overwhelming odds for 80 years. Surrounded by enemies dedicated to its destruction, it fields the world's most innovative army and beats them. Despite three generations of war, the arts, sciences and commerce flourish. Its population grows quickly while the conflict empties the failed states that surround it. And it becomes a beacon of hope for the cause of freedom.
> 
> I refer not to Israel, but to the Dutch Republic of the 17th century, whose struggle for freedom against Spain set the precedent for the American Revolution. The final three decades of the Eighty Years War (1568-1648) coincided with the terrible Thirty Years War.
> 
> In 1600, a million-and-a-half Dutchmen faced an Austrian-Spanish
> 
> 
> alliance with more than 10 times their population; by 1648, the people of the Netherlands numbered two million, while the Spanish and Austrians had perhaps a quarter of their people. Holland had become the richest land in the world, with 16,000 merchant vessels supplying a global trading empire, graced by artists like Rembrandt and Vermeer and scientists like Huygens and Leeuwenhoek.
> 
> We might speak of the "isolation" of the Dutch at the outset of the Thirty Years War, although England backed them from the outset; that is why Philip II of Spain launched the Great Armada in 1588. Holland faced more formidable enemies than modern Israel; in place of the feckless Third World armies of Egypt and Syria, the Dutch fought Spain, the superpower of the 16th century, with the world's best professional infantry bought with New World loot. The superior Dutch navy disrupted Spanish lines of communication, and a new kind of mobile infantry defeated the static Spanish square with continuous musket fire.
> 
> Holland confronted a formidable adversary, determined to extirpate its Protestant religion; Israel faces a group of failed or gradually-failing states whose capacity to make war is eroding. Seven months after the start of the Arab uprisings, Israel's position is a paradox.
> 
> The prospects for a formal peace are the worst since 1977, while Israel's military position has improved. The Syrian army is too busy butchering protesters to attack the Jewish state, and the uncertain position of the Bashar al-Assad regime weakens its Lebanese client Hezbollah. Egyptian popular sentiment has turned nastily against Israel, but the last thing the Egyptian army needs at the moment is a war with Israel that it inevitably would lose.
> 
> Egypt is a failed state. It has no way out. Chinese pigs will eat before the Egyptian poor, as wealthy Asians outbid impoverished Arabs for grain. Egypt imports half its caloric consumption, and its foreign exchange reserves last week dipped below what its central bank called the "danger" level of $25 billion covering six months of imports, down from $36 billion before Hosni Mubarak was toppled.
> The reported reserve numbers probably include Saudi and Algerian emergency loans. With no tourism and much of the economy in shambles, the country is sliding towards destitution; it barely can feed itself at the moment. What will Egypt do when its reverses are gone? Almost half of Egyptian adults can't read, and the 800,000 young people who graduate yearly from the diploma mills are qualified only to stamp each other's identity cards. It is not surprising that football rowdies attacked Israel's embassy in Cairo last week.
> 
> The rupture in Israeli-Turkish relations, in turn, reflects Turkish weakness as well as the fanaticism of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey faces a short-term squeeze and a long-term crisis. Erdogan won re-election last June more as an economic manager than as neo-Ottoman imperial leader, but his economic success rested on a 40% rate of bank credit growth, and a consequent current account deficit equal to 11% of gross domestic product, the same level as Greece or Portugal.
> 
> As I reported last month (Instant obsolescence of the Turkish model, Asia Times Online, August 10, 2011), Turkey's stock market has fallen by nearly half in dollar terms since late 2010, and its currency has lost 20% of its value. Erdogan's economic Cave of Wonders has dissolved into the Anatolian sand, and Turkey faces a long period of belt-tightening.
> 
> Turkey's economic problems are a discomfort; its ethnic problems, by contrast, present an existential threat in the long run. In a quarter of a century, Kurdish will be the cradle-tongue of nearly half of all Turkish children, as Kurds have four to five children per family while Turkish-speakers have just 1.5. At some point, Turkey in its present form will cease to exist. Kurdish nationalism is stronger than ever; as Omar Aspinar [1] of the Brookings Institution wrote on September 11 in Zaman Online:
> 
> Kurdish political aspirations have reached unprecedented levels in the last 10 years ... Kurdish ethnic, cultural and political demands are fueled by a young and increasingly resentful generation of Kurds who are vocal and frustrated not only in Eastern Anatolia but also in Turkey's large Western cities including Istanbul, Izmir, Mersin and Adana. Turkey's nightmare scenario is Turkish-Kurdish ethnic violence in such western urban centers.
> 
> The Kurds know that the demographic future belongs to them, and that Erdogan's frantic calls on Turkish women to have more babies will do nothing to change matters. "The Kurdish issue," warns Aspinar," remains Turkey's Achilles' heel."
> 
> Rather than isolate Israel diplomatically, Turkey and Egypt have buttressed its diplomatic position. By declaring the United Nations' Palmer Commission report on the May 2010 Gaza flotilla incident "null and void", Turkish President Abdullah Gul put his country in the position of the rogue state. Egypt's failure to prevent an attack on Israel's embassy was a gross violation of international standards. Diplomacy, though, makes little difference, because Israel requires only the support of the United States.
> 
> The most likely outcome is a prolonged low-intensity war in which Israel suffers more rocket attacks from Lebanon and Gaza, and occasional terrorist infiltration from Sinai and the West Bank, but no organized military threat from its immediate neighbors. Iran's nuclear program presents an existential threat to Israel, and remains the great unknown in the equation.
> 
> As Jonathan Speyer [2] wrote in a September 11 report for the Gloria Center, Iran's attempt to lead an anti-Israel resistance bloc "has fallen victim to the Arab Spring", particularly after Tehran aided the despised Syrian regime. But Speyer warns that this "should because for neither satisfaction nor complacency".
> 
> A country that knows it must fight daily for its existence may thrive under interrupted stress. That is unimaginable for the Israeli peace camp, which dwindled into political insignificance after the Intifada of 2000, as well as for America's liberal Jews. But most Israelis seem to have adapted well to a long-term war regime.
> 
> The Dutch certainly did. When the Thirty Years War began in 1618 over Bohemia's attempts to cast off Austrian rule, Holland knew that Spain would take the opportunity to settle accounts with its breakaway Protestant province. Expecting a Spanish invasion, the English Separatists living in Holland decided instead to become Pilgrims to the New World. ''The Spaniard,'' their leader William Bradford wrote in 1618, ''might prove as cruel as the savages of America, and the famine and pestilence as sore here as there.''
> 
> A year after the Mayflower sailed to Plymouth Rock in 1620, Spain sent an army into Holland, and in 1625 the Spanish took the great Dutch fortress of Breda, just 90 kilometers from Amsterdam; Velasquez's canvas depicting the city's surrender hangs in Madrid's Prado Museum. The Dutch defenders kept the Spanish army away from their coastal cities only by opening the dikes and flooding the countryside. Had the Pilgrims stayed and the Spanish won, the Pilgrims likely would have been burned as heretics.
> 
> Spain embargoed Dutch trade and succeeded in damaging its economy, although Dutch attacks on the Spanish fleets bringing treasure from the New World provided some breathing room. One by one, Holland saw its German and Danish Protestant allies beaten by Austro-Spanish alliance, and by 1625 was fighting alone. By the late 1620s, though, Holland was winning a war of attrition against overextended Spain, and could match the Spanish in the field.
> 
> The military balance remained precarious; in 1629 the Spanish army within 40 kilometers of Amsterdam. The turning point came in 1632, when the Dutch took the Flemish city of Maastricht, breaking Spain's hold on the Catholic Low Countries. When Spain and France went to war in 1635, the victorious Netherlands dominated European trade and its "Golden Age" reached fruition.
> 
> Holland boasted the world's strongest navy and a dominant position in world shipping trade, and its home provinces became impregnable.
> 
> The Dutch were smart and tough, but they beat the Spanish empire in large part by being better than their adversaries. The Dutch republic offered Europe's first example of religious toleration. Iberian Jews and French Huguenot found refuge in Holland against religious toleration, and the skilled immigrants made invaluable contributions to the Dutch economic miracle - something like the Russian immigrants to Israel today.
> 
> When Dutch armies invaded the Spanish Netherlands (now Belgium) they offered religious freedom to the Catholics they absorbed. Countries that attract talented people have an enormous advantage over countries that drive them out.
> 
> Without stretching the analogy too far, the religious conflict that surrounded 17th century Holland have something in common with today's Middle East. Americans know almost nothing of the Thirty Years War; not a single Hollywood film nor one popular novel recounts its major events. It is a tale of unrelenting misery, of battles and marches and countermarches that left nearly half of Central Europe dead.
> 
> It degenerated into a duel between two powers who both acted out of the mystical conviction that they were God's chosen people: the France of Cardinal Richelieu and the Spain of the Count-Duke Olivares. It foreshadowed the neo-paganism that nearly conquered Europe in what British statesman Winston Churchill called "the second Thirty Years War" of 1914-1945.
> 
> The conflict between Sunni and Shi'ite Islam may cause something like a Thirty Years War in the Middle East, as Arabs, Turks and Persians fight for the mantle of Divine Election. The difference is that Europe descended into the maelstrom from a peak of economic and cultural success; the Muslim nations of the Middle East are goaded by a profound sense of humiliation and failure.
> 
> What transpires may be even more horrific than the events of 1618-1648. The methods the American military employed to win a respite in Iraq might set such a conflict in motion, as I argued last year in "General Petraeus' Thirty Years War" [3]. Once again, the nation that embodies religious faith embedded in democratic values will prevail despite the chaos around it.
> 
> Notes
> 1. Time to focus on the Kurdish question Today's Zaman, September 11, 2011. 2. Israel, Iran and the New Middle East Gloria Center, September 11, 2001.
> 3. General Petraeus' Thirty Years War Asia Times Online, May 4, 2010.
> 
> Spengler is channeled by David P Goldman, the author of How Civilizations Die (And Why Islam is Dying Too), just published by Regnery. His collection of essays from First Things magazine and Asia Times Online, It's Not the End of the World - It's Just the End of You (Van Praag) appeared this month as well.


----------



## a_majoor

More disconnects between Libya, Syria and Iran WRT foreign policy:

http://pajamasmedia.com/michaelledeen/2011/09/21/the-shuttered-white-house-and-its-fantasies/?print=1



> *The Shuttered White House and Its Fantasies*
> 
> Posted By Michael Ledeen On September 21, 2011 @ 3:11 pm In Uncategorized | 27 Comments
> 
> I know exactly what is going on inside the Obama White House; the outside world has been banned and only the true believers are welcome.
> 
> This has very little to do with the many unique features of this administration. It is typical of any administration under siege, and it is as understandable and inevitable as it is unfortunate and even dangerous.  I know it well, having seen it with my own eyes during the Iran-Contra siege of the Reagan White House 25 years ago, when the president’s men and women concentrated all their energies and all their passions on “saving” the president from what many of them believed was the return of Watergate. I don’t know if the Obama faithful have an historical template for the current crisis, but their behavior, like Obama’s, is altogether familiar. The White House is hermetically sealed to reality and the president simply repeats his mantras and tries to look unconcerned, even confident and feisty.
> 
> That there is little room for reality at the highest levels of the administration is all too obvious. The president’s public statements are repeatedly off key, responding to imaginary events rather than real ones, and sometimes totally dissonant, as when he gave a speech about jobs at a company that was closing down, or in his increasingly odd and incoherent efforts in foreign policy. For example, consider these amazing lines from a story by Helene Cooper in the New York Times, concerning administration planning for Syria after the now-anticipated fall of Bashar Assad:
> 
> …the Obama administration has begun to make plans for American policy in the region after he exits.
> 
> In coordination with Turkey, the United States has been exploring how to deal with the possibility of a civil war among Syria’s Alawite, Druse, Christian and Sunni sects, a conflict that could quickly ignite other tensions in an already volatile region.
> 
> As Ms. Cooper explains, these explorations are driven by a desire to avoid repetition of the Bush administration’s errors in Iraq, where the United States did not adequately prepare for what came after the successful invasion of the country. A laudable goal, although the description of what happened in Iraq is typically misguided (there was no civil war; Syria and Iran supported a guerrilla war against the allied coalition), and the list of potential fighters in Syria surprisingly omits the Kurds, arguably the most important of all because they are a major factor in Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran. But it is the four words “in coordination with Turkey” that demonstrate the extent to which wishful thinking has trumped reality in the Obama White House, for the Turks are hardly ideal allies in the Middle East these days — they are seeking to establish their own hegemony — and as long as he is in that dangerous frame of mind, Erdogan is a totally unsuitable partner.  Listen [1] to our own Barry Rubin sum it up:
> 
> Turkey’s Islamist regime subverted and then opposed sanctions against Iran. That regime also declared Iran and Syria, Hamas and Hizballah to be its friends. It also sponsored a terrorist group (the IHH) to provoke Israel into an international incident that would generate Islamist martyrs and dead Israeli soldiers. Now, rejecting Israeli conciliation attempts (regrets; donations to families of jihadists who got killed trying to kill Israelis), the Turkish regime escalated to the verge of war.
> 
> Worse yet, Obama isn’t actively trying to help the victims of the mass murder in Syria, let alone bring down Assad, despite his proclamation that  “Assad must go.”  He is simply reading tea leaves, trying to avoid looking like an imperialist, and hoping to be able to take credit if anything good should happen.
> 
> But what if nothing good does happen?  What if Assad wins?  Ms. Cooper knows it’s possible, but the folks talking to her have a strange way of discussing it:
> 
> To be sure, Mr. Assad may yet prove as immovable as his father, Hafez al-Assad, was before him. Many foreign policy analysts say that the longer Mr. Assad remains in power, the more violent the country will become. And that violence, they say, could unintentionally serve Mr. Assad’s interests by allowing him to use it to justify a continuing crackdown.
> 
> As if there weren’t already a “continuing crackdown”?  As if Assad weren’t already ordering the slaughter of his citizens — sometimes randomly, as when his artillery lobs shells into cities full of protesters?  His violence is quite intentional, and he doesn’t “use it” to justify the slaughter.  It’s what he does, as his father before him.
> 
> Let’s put it in simple English:  Assad is slaughtering the Syrians who are challenging him.  The longer he stays, the more he slaughters.  And he may win.  Then what?  There’s no answer to this obvious question, because the White House is planning its moves after the happy moment when Assad falls and Obama takes credit for it and Erdogan calls the White House to get his orders.
> 
> Not so long ago, the White House was telling journalists that there was a new “Obama Doctrine,” driven by the three Valkyries (Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice and Samantha Power), according to which the United States is obliged to rally to the side of people protesting for their freedom against regimes killing them because of their courage.  That’s why, we were told, Obama authorized the American Air Force to bomb the Libyan armed forces.
> 
> That was clearly a hoax, wasn’t it?  For the Syrian and Iranian regimes have murdered more of their own than Qadaffi ever did, and they kill Americans too.  So if it was right to support Qadaffi’s opposition, it’s even more right to support Assad’s and Khamenei’s.  Forget it.  Instead, our most dangerous enemies — who turn out to be the most bloodthirsty killers in the region — are more often than not treated as if they were potential allies who have temporarily gone astray.  Take the Taliban, for example.
> 
> Just as LBJ was forever trying to apply just the right amount of violence in order to get the North Vietnamese to “reason together” at the negotiating table, so we are forever organizing (or, at a minimum, supporting) peace talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan.  The result:  the chief negotiator gets blown up [2] by a terrorist with a bomb in his turban (as in the famous Danish cartoon of Mohammed with a bomb in his own turban that was judged so insulting to the “Muslim world” [another fantasy] that it was used as an excuse for riots in Copenhagen and all over the Middle East).  And it seems, at least from a distance, that Taliban attacks are increasing, not diminishing.
> 
> Or take Iran.  Nowhere is the administration’s incoherence more dramatic.  The regime is conducting a widespread war against Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as slaughtering its own.  From time to time the administration, including the president himself,  puts out information confirming it all.  But not only is there no support for the Iranian people — who have long since demonstrated their hatred of the regime and their willingness to risk life and limb to challenge it — the president steadfastly refuses to call for regime change in Tehran.  In his speech to the United Nations today, he warned that if Iran does not clean up its act, it will suffer greater “isolation.”
> 
> Meanwhile, Khamenei and Ahmadinejad unleash mass murder against us and the Iranian people, and race towards acquisition of nuclear devices with which they can kill far more of us and our allies.  And what are we planning to do in response to their acts of war? Perhaps more sanctions (which are welcome but will not bring down the regime or force the mullahs to change their policy), and certainly more negotiations, which have been ongoing since Obama’s 2008 campaign.  It’s obvious that the hostage release was negotiated, for example.  One will get you five that the White House arranged the million dollar ransom, and the odds are that there were additional concessions as well.  This sort of incoherence is contagious, and spreads to the minds of people who ought to know better.  It seems that military planners are pondering the creation of a “hot line” to Tehran [3], to avoid “accidental war.”
> 
> But war is already under way, and it’s no accident.  This is more fantasyland.  Just listen to what the Wall Street Journal’s reporters have to say and you’ll see a masterpiece of blithering:
> 
> At least initially, defense officials are most enthusiastic about expanding navy-to-navy contacts with Iran to prevent miscalculations. But they remain wary of any direct engagement with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, due to its deep ties to Middle East militant groups the U.S. has designated terrorist organizations, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories.
> 
> At the same time, U.S. officials acknowledge that most of these near-altercations with Iran have involved the IRGC, making its command central to resolving many disputes.
> 
> So,  by the administration’s own standards, it’s a non-starter.  And that’s the least of it.  For unless you believe that the Iranians will use the hot line to avoid conflict, its creation offers them a golden opportunity to deceive us, to delay our response to their attacks, and to put even more Americans at risk.
> 
> It ought to be obvious.  But then, it should have been obvious a long time ago that Syria and Iran were foes, not friends, that they want our defeat and destruction, and that our only real choice is between defeating them or losing to them.
> 
> Hard to win when everyone around the president tells him he’s a genius.
> 
> Article printed from Faster, Please!: http://pajamasmedia.com/michaelledeen
> 
> URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/michaelledeen/2011/09/21/the-shuttered-white-house-and-its-fantasies/
> 
> URLs in this post:
> 
> [1] Listen: http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/2011/09/20/its-a-bird-its-a-plane-its-a-totally-wimpy-foreign-policy/
> 
> [2] the chief negotiator gets blown up: http://www.rferl.org/content/rabbani_killed_afghanistan_taliban/24334470.html
> 
> [3] creation of a “hot line” to Tehran: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903374004576578990787792046.html?mod=googlenews_wsj


----------



## a_majoor

A view of the Palestinian problem (long article part 1 of 2):

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/09/25/report-from-the-middle-east-part-one/



> *Report From The Middle East: Part One*
> Walter Russell Mead
> 
> I’ve just come back from a week of teaching, lecturing and conversation in Israel and the West Bank, and nothing I saw there has led me to change my basic view of the situation.  Peace is not at hand in the Middle East because neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians are really willing to accept the only kind of peace they can get.
> 
> The only peace now possible is one in which Palestinians become an independent nation on most of the West Bank and Gaza with “swaps” of land (probably in the Negev) to compensate for land annexed to Israel.  Most of historical Jerusalem will go to Israel; Palestinians will get a few scraps of the historical city with some sort of arrangement to cover the Islamic holy places and suburban developments that can more or less plausibly be called Jerusalem.  (This is more or less what the Israelis had until 1967 on the western side of historical Jerusalem, though Jews were banned from visiting their holy places.)  A few family reunifications may be possible and a handful of aged refugees may go back to pre-1967 Israel, but otherwise there will be no literal “right of return”.  There may be some compensation and large amounts of foreign aid will be committed to the new state.
> 
> The State of Palestine will be lightly armed for internal security purposes only; there may well be foreign troops of some kind on its soil.  Water rights and other difficult issues will be governed by treaties with Israel, Jordan and, perhaps, Syria; the Palestinian state will not negotiate those treaties from a position of strength.
> 
> Some Palestinians will be satisfied by this arrangement and others, though thinking it grossly inadequate and unfair, will choose to accept it as a way of ending the conflict.  Many will accept it grudgingly for now, but would expect Palestine to seize any favorable opportunity to revise the treaty in Palestinian favor, and would want their government to probe for ways of doing that.  Still others will reject it outright, consider those who sign it as traitors to the Palestinian cause, and like the IRA but on a much larger and more dangerous scale continue armed resistance both against Israel and what they will see as an illegitimate quisling government of Palestine.  Given the way the Middle East works, these groups will probably be able to get financial and other support from various governments looking to stir the pot.
> 
> If many Palestinians would reject a treaty like this because it offers too little, some Israelis would reject it because it gives away too much.
> 
> There are Israelis who don’t want a Palestinian state and who aren’t willing to give up any land Israelis now hold.  Their ideas for the Palestinian future include concepts like “self governing cantons” and a merger with Jordan.  (Jordan was part of the original Palestinian Mandate assigned to the British by the League of Nations; a majority of its residents today are of Palestinian origin and Jordan controlled the West Bank until the 1967 war.)  The most radical believe that Israel has a divine mandate to occupy all the territories assigned in the Bible to the ancient Hebrews which would include land on both sides of the Jordan.  For many religious Zionists, “Judea and Samaria” as they call the West Bank are more important to Jewish identity than the coastal plain, Galilee and the Negev territories that make up pre-1967 Israel.  Ironically, much of modern Israel occupies lands held by the Philistines in Biblical times; the old Jewish heartland and the sites associated with the patriarchs and prophets of Biblical times are mostly inhabited by Palestinians today.
> 
> These Israelis are by and large committed to expanding settlements as fast as they can.  Some believe that God will assist them in this process; all see the current settlement process as a simple and completely legitimate continuation of the original Zionist project that built a Jewish state in the teeth of Arab and world opposition in the first half of the twentieth century.  The essence of Zionism, I have heard settlers say in both the West Bank and the Golan, is Jews returning to their ancestral lands and building new homes.  Their love of the land is real; their commitment to the cause is clear.
> 
> The settlement lobby does not have a majority in Israel; if it ever does, the political situation would change — and it is likely that US support for the Jewish state would be tested to the limit.  (There is much more support in the US for a secure Israel in a two state solution than there is for Israeli expansionism, especially among American Jews.)
> 
> But to say that the settlers do not have a majority is not to say that most Israelis want to stop settlements now.  Some Israelis believe that the growth of settlements is the only thing bringing the Palestinians to the bargaining table at all, and that if Israel freezes settlement growth the Palestinians will lose the incentive to bargain.  Others just don’t want to take on the settler lobby — which opposes a freeze with all its might — until there is an agreement with the Palestinians.  Politically, it is much harder to support a freeze in exchange for negotiations which may lead nowhere than to support a specific peace treaty which requires both a freeze and a dismantling of many settlements.
> 
> This is why most American negotiators, correctly in my view, have tried to focus on the shape of the final treaty rather than mandating a settlement freeze as a precondition for talks.  The US does not have the power to force either the Israelis or the Palestinians to do things they fundamentally don’t want to do, and until President Obama’s mistaken intervention in the early months of his term, American negotiators understood that they should not promise what they could not deliver.
> 
> If a critical mass of Israelis believes that a proposed treaty is attractive enough, their elected leaders will take the difficult steps required to fulfill it and so, paradoxically, it is easier to get the Israelis to sign a treaty that requires them to dismantle a great many settlements than to get them to stop building a few marginal ones that almost certainly will have to be sacrificed when the treaty takes effect.
> 
> In the medium to long term many fear that that could change; pro-settler forces hope that as the number of settlers on the West Bank increases, Israel will reach a tipping point and there will no longer be a “land for peace” majority in the country.  I read it differently; including the largest settlement blocs in post-treaty Israel (as all parties have done for some time) means that settler demographics will not control the politics of this issue.  But there is no doubt that the longer the settlement process goes on, the harder it becomes to reverse course.
> 
> The real question is whether Israelis and Palestinians with or without outside help can negotiate a treaty that will cause Israelis to give up settlements and the status quo.  I am not optimistic.  Even many Israelis who in principle support the idea of the two state solution aren’t willing to support a treaty that has fragile support among Palestinians.  They fear that Hamas might win a post independence election and tear up the treaty at the first opportunity: arming, sponsoring or at least not cracking down on terror attacks.  They fear that even a pro-peace government would be politically too weak to crack down on anti-Israel resistance groups.  Israel would have given up land without getting peace.
> 
> These Israeli fears cannot be dismissed as fantasies. As it stands, it is clear that the Palestinian Authority now governing the West Bank cannot “deliver” a united Palestine: it cannot sign a treaty that Hamas will pledge to honor.  Hamas won the last Palestinian elections; does Israel have any guarantee whatever that, after the Israelis have dismantled settlements and turned over strategic territory to the Palestinians, the Palestinian government will continue to abide by a treaty that Hamas doesn’t accept?
> 
> The answer is no.  Until the answer is yes it is very unlikely that Israel will make large sacrifices for what is likely to be a bogus, temporary peace.
> 
> The core problem with the land for peace concept at the basis of both the Oslo Accords and every effort since to revive the moribund peace process is, simply, this: the process doesn’t offer enough land to the Palestinians or enough peace to the Israelis to be satisfactory to either side.
> 
> This is not because the two sides do not understand each other, or because there is something wrong with their leaders or their political processes.  There are good and rational reasons why impoverished Palestinians in Gaza don’t want to sign away their right of return, and there are good and rational reasons why Israelis don’t want to make territorial concessions and dismantle settlements for an illusory peace.
> 
> Both sides, however, are compelled to fake an eagerness for peace because neither wants to look like the skunk at the global garden party. For the US, the EU and the Arab states, peace between Israelis and Palestinians on almost any terms would be a huge plus.  Failing actual peace, a peace process that contains the political fallout from the dispute and allows the rest of the world to go about its business undisturbed is in the national interest of almost everyone.
> 
> The Israelis and Palestinians both know this; therefore both sides try to exact the highest possible price in aid and political concessions and assurances from outside powers before entering negotiations that, again, both Israelis and Palestinians don’t regard with much hope.
> 
> On the other hand, neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians want the blame for blocking negotiations or making them fail.  Both sides want to keep the outside world sweet.  The Palestinian Authority would be hard pressed to survive for six months without the cash it gets from Europe, the US and Arab states; Israel also cannot afford to endanger its political support in the US and elsewhere by too-obviously spurning the peace process.  What both sides do is to raise as many procedural and substantive obstacles and preconditions as possible in order to keep the process at bay.
> 
> President Obama fell into a trap when he made a settlement freeze a precondition for talks.  Secretly, both Israelis and Palestinian leaders are, I think, delighted that the US is now so tangled up in this demand that it has lost most of its influence over negotiations. The Palestinians are happier than the Israelis; it looks to world opinion as if it is Israeli intransigence on the settlement issue that is the chief obstacle to peace.  But the Israeli government — while angry at Obama for making them look even worse than usual to much of the world — is also relieved that the settlement demand is so unpopular in Israel that Prime Minister Netanyahu pays no domestic political price for rejecting it.
> 
> As I asked Palestinians why they were so enthusiastic about Abbas’ bid for statehood at the United Nations (a step many believed he was taking for personal reasons, to create a legacy for his presidency before he steps down), one reason that came up over and over again was frustration: 18 years of negotiations since the Oslo Agreements had failed to create a Palestinian state, while the Israelis had steadily expanded and deepened their network of settlements on the West Bank.  They were convinced that Israel is content with the status quo: gradually nibbling away at Palestinian territory in both Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank.  Israel, they felt, was simply making not very convincing noises about peace while steadily creating “facts on the ground” that make a Palestinian state less possible every day.
> 
> I did talk with some Israelis who feel more or less as the Palestinians say they do: they believe it is their right and destiny to re-occupy everything promised to Abraham and they are happy to see a farcical “peace process” drag on year after year while they establish more settlements on the West Bank and strengthen the Jewish presence in what Israel regards as the eastern district of its capital city of Jerusalem.
> 
> But most of those I had this discussion with were still willing to exchange land for peace — if they could be confident that the withdrawal from the West Bank and the dismantling of settlements would actually bring peace.  Instead they fear that the Palestinians would see this as the first step toward recovering more and more territory until in the end, Israel disappeared.
> 
> This is the reality and it is a bleak one.  Peace is no closer than at any time since 1948 because neither side is yet willing to settle for what it can actually get.  Israelis don’t want a small and insecure state with a Palestinian enemy next door; Palestinians don’t want a weak microstate that fails to solve the refugee problem. There are some people on both sides who are willing to accept peace on those terms — but not enough.
> 
> World public opinion wants good news and it wants action, and so diplomats have built the largest diplomatic cottage industry in the world around this intractable dispute.  Fair enough to some extent; we wrap a wound in bandages to prevent infection and allow time for it to heal.  It makes sense to wrap a conflict in processes and negotiations in the hope that conditions may change.


----------



## a_majoor

Part 2 of 2:

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/09/25/report-from-the-middle-east-part-one/



> For American presidents, a thriving peace process is good domestic and international politics.  This is one reason every US president sooner or later tries to get some kind of negotiation going, even though bringing Israelis and Palestinians together makes cat herding look easy.
> 
> Ever since the original peace process collapsed in 1999-2000 when President Clinton bet — and lost — the ranch on getting the final deal done while he was in the White House, the US has struggled to replace the old peace process with something new.  So far, nothing durable has emerged, but Plan B has had some success.  Under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the US and the EU have poured billions of dollars and a great deal of effort in helping the Palestinians build stronger institutions and a healthier economy on the West Bank.
> 
> The concept was that this policy would have two benefits.  First, by creating strong and credible institutions (including Palestinian security forces), the US and our EU associates can help Israel develop confidence that a Palestinian government exists which can carry out the terms of a peace treaty, suppressing violent Palestinian movements that will inevitably seek to torpedo peace.  Second, by developing the economy, universities and civil society, the US can promote the emergence of a sophisticated and modern thinking Palestinian national intelligentsia and business class who will prefer peace to war.
> 
> These efforts have made a real difference.  The Palestinian Authority was once a resistance movement; these days it is an emerging government, though often not a very transparent or effective one.  I hear from both Israelis and Americans who are familiar with these matters that the US-trained security forces are good at what they do and getting better, and that cooperation between them and their Israeli counterparts is pretty professional.
> 
> As a result of all this work, we seem to be edging closer to a situation in which the Palestinian Authority might, if it could assert authority over both Gaza and the West Bank, become what compromise-minded Israelis say they want: a credible partner for peace.
> 
> But it is not still not clear that any Palestinian government could say out loud what sophisticated Palestinians have known for years: the right of return is dead, and compensation is the best that can be hoped for.  When I visited Ramallah (the West Bank boom town and de facto capital city) in 2010, signs in English and Arabic all over the city proclaimed the PA’s determination to fight for the right of return.  Those signs had been taken down this time, but I don’t think the idea is dead in people’s hearts.
> 
> Palestinian capacity is growing, but to some degree that increased political and social capacity makes Palestinians more frustrated rather than less.  The more educated, sophisticated and experienced people are, the less willing they are to put up with fundamentally unacceptable political restraints.  The Palestinians by and large are better educated than almost any other Arab nationality, but they have less control over their lives than most — and the fact that their overlords are foreign rather than homegrown does not make the lack of autonomy easier to bear.
> 
> The US has been hoisted on its own petard here; the civil society that we help to build makes Palestinians less patient rather than more patient — and forces their leaders to pay closer attention to public opinion than in the past.  This makes it fundamentally harder to build a peace process that can move the ball down the field toward the ultimate (if distant) goal of peace while managing the day-to-day conflict in ways that reduce tension and make life better for people on both sides.  It also ensures that Palestinians aren’t particularly grateful for America’s financial help.
> 
> Each of the last three US presidents made poor decisions that have made this tangle worse.  President Clinton had good intentions and many accomplishments to his credit, but his final, foolhardy rush to peace in the closing months and days of his administration was perhaps the worst decision made by any US president on this issue since the controversy began.  His goal should have been to shore up a faltering peace process rather than pushing it to a premature climax.  The failure of his peacemaking effort was predictable and expensive, and the absence of a legitimate peace process has been a serious problem in the region ever since.
> 
> President George W. Bush inherited a bad situation and made it worse.  On the one hand, he inflamed Arab and world opinion by a confrontational approach on a range of issues and serial failures in both the development and presentation of policy alienated friends and antagonized enemies.  His record was not entirely bleak; he managed to nudge the Israelis back toward some kind of negotiating posture and his strengthening of Palestinian institutions and the promotion of a strong West Bank economic miracle helped to reduce tension.  Nevertheless, the US agenda was in worse shape when he left office than when he first took the oath.
> 
> President Obama added his own contribution to the record of failed US initiatives.  While I personally agree with him that an extendable settlement freeze would greatly simplify the task of getting a good peace negotiation going, in the real world to make that demand was to lose all initiative on the issue — and to miss the opportunity to get the Israelis to make less dramatic but quite useful concessions in its place.  He has allowed Prime Minister Netanyahu to outmaneuver him diplomatically and in US politics more than once.  The US president’s optimistic speeches about building bridges to the Muslim world fell hollow and flat after he linked that effort to progress on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute which his own errors placed out of reach.
> 
> In fairness to President Obama, this has never been an easy issue for the United States and his two predecessors both left the situation in worse shape than they found it.  But not even the President can believe at this point that his peace initiatives have had much success.
> 
> It’s doubtful at this point if the President can get much done before the 2012 election.  Palestinians don’t much like negotiating during US election years as they believe that Israel’s political popularity in the US makes itself felt most strongly then.  (One reason President Clinton’s peace blitz was ill-timed in 2000: his wife was running for the Senate in New York and Palestinians believed he would not force Israel to make difficult concessions while his wife was running in a state where the Jewish vote is so important and while his vice president Al Gore was in a tough race against George W. Bush.  After the election, Clinton was a lame duck and the Palestinians had little confidence that he could deliver on any promises he made.)
> 
> There are no magic solutions to this problem, but as long as the US has interests in the Middle East we must keep coming back to it.  Over the next few months, I hope the Obama administration — and the Republican foreign policy strategists who hope to return to power after 2012 — think carefully about how to manage this difficult process a little better.  After more than a decade of failure and retreat, it is time for a deep and searching review of the assumptions and ideas that have brought so little joy to us or to the parties involved.


----------



## a_majoor

Sad to condiser our enemies are actually so small really, yet we seem unwilling to do what is required:

http://pajamasmedia.com/michaelledeen/2011/10/04/victory-could-be-ours-if-only-we-want-it/?print=1



> *Victory Could Be Ours, If Only We Want It*
> Posted By Michael Ledeen On October 4, 2011 @ 1:38 pm In Uncategorized | 24 Comments
> 
> In the real war, our major enemies are the evil regimes in Iran and Syria, and both are hollow and wobbling, needing only one good push to go over.
> 
> Syrian soldiers are defecting in significant numbers, while brave, peaceful demonstrators continue to fill the streets despite the likelihood of arrest, torture, and death. The regime is unleashing mass slaughter, as army troops fire blindly into the crowds from a safe distance, a sure sign that Assad has lost control, despite massive Iranian assistance.
> 
> In Iran, the war of all against all at the highest levels of the regime continues unabated.  The latest tumult revolves around the theft of billions of dollars from the major banks, and it is accompanied by strikes at bazaars and factories, explosions in pipelines and refineries, and open warfare along the borders with the Kurds, where, despite the regime’s usual disinformation campaign, Iranian casualties have been significant.  Somehow the Kurds are being armed, and they are notoriously good fighters.
> 
> The defeat of Assad and Khamenei would be a world-changing event, pulling the plug on the ominous strategic alliance that runs from Tehran and Damascus to countries quite close to us, such as Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua. It would weaken Putin’s ability to sponsor dangerous mischief in the Middle East and our own hemisphere. And it would deprive the terror network of safe havens, funding, weapons,  logistics, and intelligence, along with the sort of documentation they need (think false passports) to travel safely.
> 
> In Iran, the opposition is overwhelmingly pro-Western, and eminently worthy of our support (once again, for those tuning in late, I’m talking about political, technological, and financial support, not military anything), while in Syria we should steer away from those many characters linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafist crowd. But there are plenty of good democrats fighting against Assad. Having dithered so long, we are now facing some nasty scenarios, and it may well be that the Free Syrian Army — the defectors from the regular armed forces — will need some sort of military assistance.
> 
> These decisions will have to be made by people who know more about the actual battlefield than you or I, but they should be made within a narrow context:  what is the best way to bring down Assad and Khamenei? Despite decades of bad policy, the fates have delivered our enemies to us. They are waiting for a swift kick, or a decisive thrust from our side. One will get you ten the tyrants have already made plans for life in exile.
> 
> How did this happen, without anyone seeming to notice? I think it is because we are not permitted to tell the truth about the war: we defeated al-Qaeda, Iran and Syria in Iraq, and the consequences of that defeat have been very serious for our enemies. They preached that Allah had blessed their jihad, and when they were beaten, it raised terrible questions to which they have no truthful answers. But the truth is quite obvious to the would-be enemy fighters, who know that the promise of victory was not fulfilled on the Middle East’s major battlefield, and whatever your view of the Afghan fighting, nobody I respect really believes that we are being beaten by the Taliban.
> 
> We’re right on the edge of an historic watershed, in which our totalitarian enemies can be driven into history’s bin of losers. It is time for us to declare victory and then impose our will on our enemies by giving their oppressed people  the opportunity to free themselves from the bloody tyrants.
> 
> It’s up to our leaders to demonstrate they have the will to win. Win a real war, not just a political poll.  And by the way, if our current leaders were to do that, they’d do a lot better in the polls.
> 
> Faster, please.
> 
> Article printed from Faster, Please!: http://pajamasmedia.com/michaelledeen
> 
> URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/michaelledeen/2011/10/04/victory-could-be-ours-if-only-we-want-it/


----------



## a_majoor

Arab spring descends into chaos:

http://pajamasmedia.com/spengler/2011/10/10/egypt-descends-into-chaos/?print=1



> *Egypt descends into chaos*
> 
> Posted By David P. Goldman On October 10, 2011 @ 2:30 am In Uncategorized | 34 Comments
> 
> Sunday’s massacre of protesting Copts is heartbreaking; from the initial reports, several thousand Christians marched to protest the military government’s blind eye towards Muslim violence when they were “were attacked by thugs carrying swords and clubs,” according to one Copt. The Egyptian government says that the Christian protesters began firing live ammunition at soldiers. That stretches credibility.
> 
> Meanwhile, according to today’s summary of the Egyptian press:
> 
> The state-owned [newspaper]  Al-Dostour reports on an “insane” increase in the prices of commodities and services that has left citizens “screaming,” presumably in despair. In its report, Al-Dostour claims that the “current state of lawlessness has left merchants and businesses with no supervision,” giving them free reign to raise prices without fear of repercussion. After a string of powerful metaphors depicting consumers as helpless prey in the grips of some fiercer yet unspecified predator, the report turns into an onslaught of numbers and percentages – food products up 80 percent since January of this year, LE7 for a kilo of sugar and LE13.75 for a liter of vegetable oil, 50 percent increase in the price of flour and LE22 for a kilo of duck meat, and on and on. LE9 for a kilo of humus, too.
> 
> No-one appears in charge. Central bank foreign exchange reserves are down to just $19 billion, or four months’ imports, the Financial Times reported last week. “After negotiating a loan from the International Monetary Fund, the military council decided to scrap it, partly on fears of popular criticism – the IMF has a negative reputation in Egypt because of its association with harsh structural adjustment programmes. In addition, only $500m of some $7bn of promised aid from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have arrived so far.”
> 
> Egypt literally will run out of food. It imports half its caloric consumption, mainly wheat (although Egyptians eat less wheat than Iranians, Moroccans, Canadians, Turks and Russians). Egypt spends $5.5 billion a year on food subsidies. Its social solidarity minister wants to change the system (which subsidizes some people who can afford to pay more than the penny a loaf the government charges), but seems deeply confused. “‘We need to change consumer habits so that we are not consuming so much bread. In Mexico, for example, they rely more on potatoes. Why can’t we start shifting toward that?’said Saad Nassar, adviser to the agriculture minister.” Mr. Nassar seems unaware that Mexicans eat more corn than wheat or potatoes. This discussion would be comical if not for the fact that Egypt is about to run out of money to pay for any sort of food.
> 
> It does not appear to be a source of comfort that the Egyptian army is in charge. This is an institution whose Golden Rule is: “Don’t report bad news up the chain of command.” One recalls the June 1967 debacle, when President Nasser and his top generals had no idea how badly they had been beaten until days after the events because no-one in the field would tell them.
> 
> I have been warning since Feb. 2 that the so-called Arab Spring represented the terminal convulsions of  a doomed society. It seems eons since The Weekly Standard complained last April about “grudging” support for Arab democracy, arguing that “the Arab Spring deserves to be greeted with enthusiasm and support.” The Arabs might even be an inspiration to us: “Helping the Arab Spring through to fruition might contribute to an American Spring, one of renewed pride in our country and confidence in the cause of liberty.”
> 
> Meanwhile, we can’t punish Pakistan for sponsoring an attack on America’s embassy in Kabul because we supposedly need Pakistan to help us stabilize Afghanistan. And Nouri Maliki, the leader of the supposed Iraqi democracy we spent a trillion dollars and 4,000 lives to put in place, is backing the Assad regime in alliance with Iran. We can’t attack Iran to neutralize its nuclear weapons program because that might destabilize Iraq (which seems an odd concern given that Iraq is an Iranian ally).
> 
> The problem is the faulty premise that American ingenuity, blood, and treasure could stabilize the Muslim world by building democracy. That premise is exploding in every single theater one cares to mention: Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan. Stability is a mirage in the Muslim world. Instability, though, can benefit American security interests, and under certain conditions we should actively destabilize hostile entities rather than attempt to stabilize them.
> 
> That’s why I wrote How Civilizations Die (and why Islam is Dying, Too).
> (Thumbnail on PJM homepage based on a modified image from Shutterstock.com)
> 
> Article printed from Spengler: http://pajamasmedia.com/spengler
> 
> URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/spengler/2011/10/10/egypt-descends-into-chaos/


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## a_majoor

"Arab Spring" turns very cold indeed:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/blogs/copts-will-fight_595803.html?nopager=1



> *The Copts Will Fight
> But they won’t win.*
> Lee Smith
> October 12, 2011 5:29 PM
> 
> This past Sunday night, the Egyptian revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak took another wrong turn when the same army once believed to be “hand in hand” with the people killed 27 Coptic Christians in Cairo and wounded hundreds of others. The Copts were marching toward Egyptian state television in the Maspero area to demand that the ruling authorities fulfill their obligations to the Christian minority. After the marchers were stoned by Muslim bystanders during their march, state security and the military attempted to put down the demonstration. When the authorities started to beat the protesters, the Copts fought back. The police opened fire, killing several Copts as others were crushed when soldiers turned their military vehicles into the crowds, leaving a trail of unspeakable gore in their wake.
> 
> This most recent expression of violence against the Copts will resonate for some time to come—not least because it appears that some local Muslim bystanders cheered on the army while others took an active role in the violence. (Here’s a video of a soldier who boasts of having shot a Copt in the chest and is cheered on by a crowd.) Egyptian state television called on “loyal Egyptians”—i.e. Muslims—to come to the streets to protect the army from the Copts, which evidently did draw many, including Salafists, to the incident.
> 
> Sunday night’s bloodshed is further evidence that, even if the army was the agent of violence, anti-Copt sentiment is widespread. The Sunday march was preceded by a smaller demonstration last week when Copts protested an attack on a church in Edfu, almost 500 miles south of the Egyptian capital, and demanded that the Muslim gangs responsible for the destruction of the church be brought to justice. The army and security forces beat Copt protesters when they marched last week, too, as this video shows. Perhaps what’s most noteworthy in this clip is that after the first few blows the officer in charge, in a red beret, seems to be trying to stop his troops from striking further. At one point the officer even hits one of the soldiers. This suggests that while Egypt’s ruling body, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, is intent on keeping the streets quiet and free of Copt activists, it is unlikely they ordered the army to kill civilians. Rather, it seems that individual soldiers acted on their own.
> 
> “There’s this idea that Egypt’s army is a professional force,” says Samuel Tadros, a research fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, and a senior partner at the Cairo-based Egyptian Union of Liberal Youth. “This is a mistake.”
> 
> We’re sitting in a café in Georgetown along with a colleague of his from EULY, Mina Rezkalla, visiting from Cairo whose family lives in the Shubra district where Sunday’s march originated. Two of Rezkalla’s friends were killed, including a young man recently engaged to be married. He shows me the engagement photo of his friend and his fiancée, and then another of the same woman sobbing over her fiancé’s mutilated corpse.
> 
> “The officers are professional,” says Tadros, “and there are professional units, like Special Forces, but these people were regular conscripts.” Every Egyptian male, unless he is the family’s only son, is required to serve in the military, which means that the army draws from a 90 percent Muslim majority across the general population that is typically hostile to Copts. “The soldiers are acting just like they would back in their village if they got into a fight with Copts,” says Tadros. “These officers have lost control of their soldiers.”
> 
> In the aftermath of Sunday’s bloodbath, the White House issued a statement from President Obama urging “restraint on all sides” and lamenting the "tragic loss of life among demonstrators and security forces." It seems the president was basing his erroneous assumption on early charges made by the Egyptian media that security and military personnel had been killed as well as Copt civilians, claims Egyptian officials retracted Monday. Only Copts were killed.
> 
> And yet despite their losses, it is difficult to imagine that Egypt’s ancient Christian community is about to recede into the shadows. Sunday’s events are proof not only of the army’s brutality and much of the majority Muslim community’s hatred of their non-Muslim neighbors, but also of a now-mobilized minority’s courage and pride. This Coptic awakening has been several decades in the making.
> 
> “If the Kurds are the Middle East’s most neglected minority,” says Tadros, “the Copts are the loneliest.” The Copts are proud of the fact that in spite of the Arab conquests and other violent encroachments on their community they did not fall like other long-forgotten and long-gone regional minorities. And in contrast to other surviving minority groups, like Lebanon’s Maronite and Druze sects, the Copts lacked influence abroad, which is to say they have been relatively separated from Western Christendom. They received little help, or even friendship, from London during Britain’s 72-year-long occupation of Egypt, and have been able to count on little support from Washington over the years, despite a substantial number of Coptic immigrants scattered throughout the United States.
> 
> Still, the international community’s indifference hardly spares Copts the contempt and suspicion of many of their Muslim compatriots, while the country’s elite ignores Muslims’ open hatred of Christians and instead blames Israel for Egypt’s sectarian strife. (Here, the “moderate” Islamist candidate for president Abdel Moneim al-Fotouh says Zionists were behind Sunday’s events.) One popular iteration of this conspiracy theory holds that former head of Israeli military intelligence Amos Yadlin openly bragged about Israel’s success in “promoting sectarian tension” in Egypt. It seems this bogus narrative first appeared on an Arab Israeli website, where Hezbollah picked it up before it hit the mainstream of Egypt’s Muslim community. Of course, Yadlin never said anything of the sort. “It’s total nonsense,” he told me in Washington, where he is a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “What Israel wants, and what I want, is a stable and democratic Egypt that will contribute to the peace and betterment of the greater Middle East.”
> 
> The fate of the Arab Spring shows just how difficult this is going to be. What we’ve seen revealed over the last eight months are the numerous sectarian tensions that are usually obscured by the world's focus on the Arab-Israeli conflict. But now the banner of Arab resistance under which for instance all Syrians once rallied is no longer relevant in a state where the ruling Alawite minority slaughters the majority Sunni opposition—with the support of Syrian minorities, including the Christians. In Bahrain, the Sunni government targets its Shia population, and in Lebanon and Iraq, the Shiites and the Sunnis are only for the time being deterred from going at each other’s throats, again. The Arabs may have no peace with Israel; but neither do the various sects and ethnicities (Sunnis, Shia, Kurds, etc.) commonly rolled into one and described by the blanket term “Arab” have peace with each other.
> 
> Tadros argues that even as Copts served in Egypt’s wars against the Jewish state, the community never had an issue with Israel. “Arab nationalism was an ideology that many Orthodox Christians from Syria and Lebanon pushed,” he says, “but not the Copts.”
> 
> For most of the last century, the community was politically quiescent, at least until 1977 when the Coptic Pope, Shenouda, opposed President Anwar Sadat’s plan to incorporate more aspects of sharia into the Egyptian constitution in order to placate his growing Islamist problem. Shortly before Sadat’s first trip to meet the recently elected Ronald Reagan, scores of Copts were massacred in Cairo in June 1981 by Islamists as well as local residents while the police did little to stop the slaughter (Copts claim 181 were killed while Egyptian authorities say the casualty figures are much lower). For the Egyptian leader, his visit to Washington was overshadowed by the large numbers of Copts demanding justice for their slain relatives. Fearing that Shenouda was getting too powerful, and accusing him of attempting to create an independent Christian state in Egypt, Sadat had him put under house arrest, and announced that the state no longer recognized Shenouda as pope. Even as most of Sadat’s other political adversaries were forgiven by the new Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in the wake of Sadat’s murder at the hands of Islamists, Shenouda was held in a monastery until January 1985.
> 
> For more than 15 years, Tadros explains, “the pope was quiet and there were no clashes with the government, even as there were several massacres of Copts that the Mubarak regime did little to prevent. But from the Copts’ perspective, it was wise to side with a government that was taking on the likes of Ayman al-Zawahiri.” Even worse was Omar Abd el-Rahman—the so-called “Blind Sheikh” now being held in an American prison for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center attack—who published a fatwa declaring that it was licit to rob and kill Copts. The 1997 massacre at Luxor, where Islamists killed 62 people, 58 of them foreign tourists, effectively brought an end to the jihadist insurgency as the Mubarak regime showed the militants no mercy in the aftermath of an attack that brought the Egyptian economy to a standstill.
> 
> Tadros and Rezkalla explain that the Coptic community saw the post-insurgency period as an opportunity to promote their community’s interests. The years 2001-2010 were crucial in forging a new identity among the Copts. Aside from a demonstration in front of the headquarters of a tabloid that had published scurrilous rumors about the clergy, there were few public protests. But there was plenty of political action on church grounds and within the churches themselves, led by several young priests. They published a magazine distributed in churches, The Theban Legion—named after 6,000 Coptic legionnaires of the Roman army stationed in Thebes who were martyred in the third century for refusing to offer the emperor a sacrifice. The clergy also started a group for young activists called “Kimi.” Rezkalla writes the word out for me in the Coptic alphabet and says that it refers to the fertile mud brought forth by the Nile. “It’s how the pharaohs used to refer to Egypt,” says Tadros—“Kimi.”
> 
> In November 2010 the Copts first came into open conflict with the security forces when they protested against the local government in Giza for suspending building of a new church. “It was also the first time the Copts refused a direct order coming from the pope,” says Rezkalla. However, Tadros allows it might have been a clever political move on Shenouda’s part in order to increase his own leverage with the Mubarak regime. “He might have been saying, ‘you see how they ignore me, so you have to give me some concessions I can show them.'" These were not the fatalistic Copts of old. Instead, they carried crosses and shouted slogans—“Raise your head up high, you are a Copt.”
> 
> About the January 25 uprising that eventually toppled Mubarak, the Coptic community was wary, understanding that for all Mubarak’s faults he had put down an Islamist insurgency in the '80s and '90s that specifically targeted Copts. Nonetheless, explains Tadros, many of the younger Copts were hopeful after Mubarak stepped down, at least until they realized that everyone’s demands were being met—especially those of the Islamists, and the revolutionaries—except the Copts. Indeed, no one was even held responsible for vicious attacks on the community, like the 2011 New Year’s Eve burning of a church in Alexandria.
> 
> So where do the Copts go from here? Their status and that of other regional Christian communities suggests that the Muslim fundamentalists had it right—first the Saturday people will go and then the Sunday people. The difference is that the Jews have their own state—along with an army, a nuclear weapon and a thriving economy based on the IT sector. There is no Christian refuge in the Middle East, not even Lebanon where the Maronites have seen their power evaporate so quickly that the part of the community which follows Michel Aoun seems not understand that his alliance with Hezbollah is in reality a suicide pact.
> 
> That recognition, among other reasons, is why the Copts will never come to a similar accommodation with Egypt’s Islamist groups. Nor on the other hand can they expect much success in their continued efforts to defend themselves. They have neither the numbers to protect themselves against the 90 percent Muslim majority, nor the geography. There are no mountains for the Copts to hide among, like the Kurds, Druze, Maronites, and Alawites, nor are there sufficiently large enough concentrations of Copts to make the sort of lasting self-defense that might turn into self-determination plausible. To be sure, as we saw on Sunday, the Copts will fight, but as we also witnessed, they won’t win.


----------



## 57Chevy

Shared with provisions of The Copyright Act

Canada warns citizens to leave Syria immediately as UN assails regime
Patrick J. McDonnell, Los Angeles Times 14 Oct
http://www.montrealgazette.com/Canada+warns+citizens+leave+Syria/5553135/story.html#ixzz1ansg9OvQ

BEIRUT — Canada's Foreign Affairs Department upgraded its warning on Syria Friday, advising any citizens currently in the protest-racked country to leave as soon as possible.

"Canadians in Syria should leave now by commercial means while these are still available," the government said in an updated statement on its website.

"Canadians who remain in the country despite this warning should be aware that the Government of Canada's ability to provide consular assistance may be extremely limited due to restrictions imposed by the Syrian Government."

Canada was already warning against all travel to Syria.

Canada's move came as the United Nations' top human rights official assailed the Syrian government Friday for a campaign of "ruthless repression and killings" and called for the international community to take steps to prevent the Middle East nation from plunging into civil war.

A statement issued in Geneva by Navi Pillay, UN high commissioner for human rights, essentially backed claims by antigovernment activists who say Syrian authorities have routinely attacked protesters without provocation. In contrast, the administration of President Bashar Assad has blamed the violence on terrorists armed from abroad seeking to overthrow the government.

Pillay's comments appeared to be the toughest to date from the United Nations, where a resolution condemning Syria's response to more than six months of protests failed to pass the Security Council earlier this month.

The Assad government faces a hardening of attitudes against it on many fronts. European countries and the United States have imposed economic sanctions. Turkey, Syria's longtime ally, has harshly criticized Assad's handling of the unrest and is also planning to impose economic penalties against its neighbour.

"Since the start of the uprising in Syria, the government has consistently used excessive force to crush peaceful protests," Pillay said. "Sniping from rooftops and indiscriminate use of force against peaceful protesters — including the use of live ammunition and the shelling of residential neighbourhoods — have become routine occurrences in Syrian cities."

The result has been "a devastatingly remorseless toll of human lives," said Pillay, a South African judge, who also expressed fears that the conflict was becoming increasingly militarized.

"As more members of the military refuse to attack civilians and change sides, the crisis is already showing worrying signs of descending into armed struggle," she said.

The death toll in Syria since antigovernment protests erupted in March has now topped 3,000, including at least 187 children, Pillay said, adding that more than 100 people have died in the past 10 days.

Thousands more, she added, have been "arrested, detained, forcibly disappeared and tortured," while family members both inside and outside Syria "have been targeted for harassment, intimidation, threats and beatings."

Antigovernment activists said at least 12 people were killed Friday in attacks by security forces at various sites in Syria. There was no immediate response from the government.

The jurist called on the international community to "take protective action in a collective and decisive manner, before the continued ruthless repression and killings drive the country into a full-blown civil war." But her spokesman said it was up to other governments and the Security Council to decide exactly what that meant.

In August, Pillay said she had found "credible evidence" of crimes against humanity in Syria and urged the Security Council to refer the matter to the International Criminal Court for possible prosecution.

It remains unclear whether the Security Council will take any action.


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## cupper

Well, there go my vacation plans.

I knew I should have gone with the refundable ticket and cancellation insurance. ;D


----------



## a_majoor

The Bush Doctrine continues to be the American plan for the Middle East:

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/10/20/farewell-to-the-great-loon/



> *Farewell To The Great Loon*
> Walter Russell Mead
> 
> Africa’s King of Kings, the Sword of Islam, the Guide of the People and the Great Loon of Libya is gone.  The crowds kicked his lifeless body through the streets of his hometown.  Those who trusted in him and who aided and abetted his crimes, are scattered to the four winds — the lucky ones.  The others are dead or in jail.  In the anarchy of the new Libya, the families of his allies are huddled in their homes, fearful that each day will bring  revenge from those the Great Loon and his henchmen tortured, murdered and dispossessed.
> 
> History will not shed any tears over the Loon, and neither will I.  He was an example of the worst type of ruler history sometimes throws up: an empowered, murderous, psychopathic clown.  He was a sick joke; it is a measure of the moral and political degradation of “third worldism” that his fellow thugs like Robert Mugabe, Hugo Chavez and dictators and kleptocrats without number considered him a member of the club, ignored his flagrant sins, and prostituted the name of justice by hailing him as a progressive, revolutionary leader who was making our world a better place.
> 
> There is a lot of scum in this world that calls itself cream; we live in an era when the most vicious evil, hatred and oppression portrays itself as an angel of light — and finds plenty of deluded ideologues, hate-crazed ‘resistance’ movements, and plain old fashioned thugs willing to further the deception.
> 
> The Great Loon wrecked his country in the service of his twisted ambitions and an incoherent philosophy; he believed the flatterers and toadies who told him that he was wise.  His relations and his allies pillaged the country. He persecuted the innocent, oppressed the poor, slandered the just.
> 
> Sadly, he deserved the death he received — just as Saddam Hussein deserved the humiliation and mockery of his last moments on earth.  Forty years of comfortable prison in the Hague would not have been just recompense for his crimes; for a man whose vanity and ambition turned a country into a concentration camp, death is a just sentence, however served.
> 
> I am glad he is gone, and I am glad that the United States shares in the honor of his fall. We should not forget to remember and thank the brave Americans who did their part to bring him down — and worked so hard to make the military strikes as effective as possible while bringing as little collateral damage to civilians as they could.   I can think of a list of other vain, vicious and delusional tyrants who deserve the same fate — though that does not mean that I want American forces to move to the next target on my list. An over-zealous quest for universal justice is likely to end in tears — and not the happy kind.
> 
> Had the Loon been willing to leave power peacefully six months ago, I would have favored making an agreement to give him immunity and a dignified though not lavish exile in some quiet part of the world.  When trying to get rid of a truly evil ruler, getting him out quickly is often more important than punishing him for his crimes.  I would rather prevent someone from committing 1,000 new murders than punish him for 1,000 he has already committed.  The first duty of justice must usually be to the living, and the restoration of freedom and security to the citizens of a country before more can be tortured and killed is the first thing to get done. There can come a time when the fire must burn itself out and the head of the dictator be kicked through the streets, but on the whole giving thugs a last chance to step aside is likely to do more good than harm.
> 
> There is one conclusion we ought to draw from the inglorious end of the Great Loon: the Bush agenda in the Middle East is alive and well.  The United States is, as Bush and Cheney so forcefully announced, a revolutionary power in the Middle East no longer seeking to prop up the status quo at any cost.  (The Saudi exemption still holds.)  Regime change remains on the table; the military forces of the United States stand ready to take out thugs whose viciousness has become insupportable, or who align themselves against the vital interests of this country.  We would prefer not to do this at all; if something must be done we would rather do it under the aegis of the UN, but we will do it with less prestigious blessings if we must.  Where possible, we do it with allies, and we would rather support and promote from behind the scenes than to bear all the burdens and costs on our own, but when American presidents say that “all options are on the table”, they mean exactly what they say.
> 
> This does not mean that Presidents Bush and Obama are less moderate and less law abiding than their predecessors.  Their policies changed in part because the region had changed: the dictators who once brought stability at the price of repression could no longer deliver.  Syria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen: the old rulers could still kill but they could no longer rule.
> 
> Additionally, the balance of military power has been steadily shifting in favor of the United States.  This runs counter to all the loose talk about inevitable, inexorable US decline: a close look at the facts on the ground suggests that the US has considerably more power to impose its agenda on most “third world” countries than it did twenty years ago.  This is partly because such countries can no longer realistically claim the protection of a rival superpower, but it is also because the American military is a much more formidable machine than it used to be.  Our weapons are much smarter and much more devastatingly effective, and our professional military has blossomed into the most effective force in the history of the human race.  We can still be made to take casualties in asymmetrical combat situations, and no amount of military power can overcome the absence of strategy, but between the battlefield advantages our high tech weapons and new methods of training and combat planning have given us, the revolution in force projection, and the range of cultural, diplomatic, humanitarian and developmental capacities our military has acquired in the last twenty years, America’s unprecedented military power has changed the way the world works.
> 
> This power is not a magic omnipotence pill; there are many things we cannot do.  But the days when a third world tyrant could rely on conventional weapons to deter American intervention are gone.  The US military swatted Saddam’s army, rated as one of the world’s better forces, like so many flies in the first Gulf War, and by the time of the second our conventional superiority was even greater.  The Libyan intervention was done with the back of our hand, so to speak; President Obama and his top commanders did not interrupt their efforts in the rest of the Middle East and Central Asia to provide the backup for NATO’s attacks.
> 
> This power does not work as well in asymmetrical settings, but in general we are back to the kind of military superiority that European forces enjoyed over non-European rulers in Victorian times.  Reinforcing that power is the fact that no other great power has the force projection capacities, or even the military resources overall, to come to the aid of a Libya or a Saddam.  Drone strike diplomacy is not all that different from gunboat diplomacy, and until and unless the military balance changes, the US is going to have more options for dealing with “bad guys” than we have had for many years.
> 
> We should use that power with care and restraint, and we have seen plenty of recent situations where overwhelming military power created new and vexing problems on the ground.  Just because we have an excellent hammer does not mean that every problem on earth is a nail.
> 
> Nevertheless, the disempowering of tyrants is a fact of our time, and I for one am glad.


----------



## 57Chevy

Shared with provisions of The Copyright Act

Heavy clashes in Yemen as thousands of anti-Saleh protesters take to the streets in Sanaa
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/yemen/8885512/Heavy-clashes-in-Yemen-as-thousands-of-anti-Saleh-protesters-take-to-the-streets-in-Sanaa.html

video at link

Witnesses and medical staff say at least 17 people were killed and 30 people injured when President Ali Abdullah Saleh's Republican Guards shelled some districts in Taiz, Yemen's third largest city, which has been a hotbed of anti-Saleh protests.

Opposition tribal fighters, using automatic rifles and shoulder-held rocket launchers, killed two soldiers and wounded seven, according to Yemen's Defence Ministry.

The violence comes a day after United Nations (UN) envoy Jamal Benomar began a new mission to push President Ali Abdullah Saleh to quit under a Gulf peace plan. The plan calls for Mr Saleh to hand power to his deputy, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who will oversee the formation of a national unity government ahead of an early presidential election.

In the capital Sanaa, tens of thousands of anti-Saleh protesters attended prayers on a main road. Some demanded the president be tried for what they called his crimes against the Yemeni people.

"We say (to the international community) - no immunity for murder. Ali Abdullah Saleh and his regime are shedding the blood of Yemenis in all the provinces. Any immunity or guarantee to those criminals is rejected, rejected, rejected," said protester Fouad Dohabah.
                              _______________________________________

Abd al-Rahman Mansur al-Hadi (Wikipedia)
Major General Abd al-Rahman Mansur al-Hadi; born 1945 is a Yemeni politician who has been the Vice President of Yemen since 3 October 1994. Between 4 June and 23 September 2011 he was the acting president of Yemen, when Ali Abdullah Saleh left for medical treatment in Saudi Arabia, after being wounded in an attack on the presidential palace during the 2011 Yemeni uprising.

Early life

He was born in 1945 in Abyan.[1] His name can also be spelled Abd Rabu Mansur Hadi, Abdo Rabo Mansour Hadi, Abdulrab Mansur al-Hadi, Abd al-Rab Mansur al-Hadi, Abd Rabbah Mansour Hadi or Abdurabu Mansour Hadi, among other variations.

He joined the Army of South Yemen in 1970 and became a Major General in early 1990.

Political career

He became Vice President of Yemen after Ali Salim al-Beidh resigned and lost the civil war. Al-Hadi was appointed by President Ali Abdullah Saleh as Vice President on 3 October 1994. Before his appointment as Vice President, he was briefly the Minister of Defense.
                               _________________________________________

Photo: Afro-Arab summit Oct 2010


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## 57Chevy

Shared with provisions of The Copyright Act

Saleh says will hand Yemen to army if he quits
20 Nov, 2011
http://www.haveeru.com.mv/world/38785
SANAA, Nov 20, 2011 (AFP) - Yemen's embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh said on Saturday he would hand the country over to the military if he were to step down as demanded by the opposition.

"We... are ready to make sacrifices for the country. But you will always be there, even if we step down," Saleh told loyalist troops, in statements carried by the official Saba news agency.

The news agency said Saleh made the remarks during an inspection of the Republican Guards, an elite army corps led by Saleh's son Ahmed.

Saleh, who has been in power in Sanaa since 1978, has come under mounting domestic and international pressure to step down in line with a Gulf-brokered peace blueprint.

Saleh has welcomed the plan but has yet to formally endorse it.

His remarks came ahead of a UN Security Council meeting due on Monday to discuss Saleh's refusal to hand over power under the Gulf plan in return for immunity from prosecution.

The council unanimously passed Resolution 2014 on October 21 condemning attacks on demonstrators by Saleh's forces and strongly backing the Gulf Cooperation Council plan.

Several hundred demonstrators have been killed in Yemen since anti-government protests broke out in late January.
                            ____________________________________________________

http://yemenpost.net/Detail123456789.aspx?ID=3&SubID=4361&MainCat=3
20 Nov, 2011
A mass march was stage today throughout Sana'a departing from "Change Square" as protesters wanted to decry the GCC immunity clause.
Banners were held high for the World to see as Yemenis people join up together demanding that their president be judged for his crimes. 
Men and women from all classes gathered today as they stood for Justice, forgetting for a day their petty arguments and social prejudices; realizing that Yemen was truly at a crossroads and that in order to go forward people needed closure, people needed to feel that their loved ones would not die another death by being ignored.
 "We are not calling for revenge but Justice. We need our dead to be at peace, we need to heal and for that we need Saleh to pay and stand trial", said a young woman activist.
 Calls for a refusal of the GCC proposal is growing louder across Yemen. From its southern shores to its northern mountains, Yemenis now refused to let go. After 11 long months of waiting, after 11 long months of being the target of the regime's guns, Yemenis are saying no more.
 Yemen might have taken a while to come out from its apathy but we are now witnessing the rise of a nation which is fully aware of its right, which better yet is clamoring for its right as it knows it should, as it knows it deserves.
 Taiz
 In the southern city of Taix which has been dubbed the Yemeni Benghasi as similarities between the 2 revolutionary towns are hard to miss, saw similar protests and similar demands.
                           ____________________________________________________


immunity from prosecution ?  :facepalm:


----------



## a_majoor

As Saudi Arabia's ability to generate oil wealth declines, the ability to divert unrest at home with cash subsidies and influence foreign powers through bribery and proxies will also decline:

http://www.financialpost.com/news/Saudis+face+waning+power+North+America/5747443/story.html



> *Saudis face waning power in North America*
> 
> Yadullah Hussain, Financial Post · Nov. 22, 2011 | Last Updated: Nov. 22, 2011 3:10 AM ET
> 
> While the green movement naively harbours hopes it will be able to shut down unconventional oil and gas development, in Saudi Arabia they are already contemplating a time when North American fossil fuel will replace their oil.
> 
> Looking past the din of protesters, state-owned oil giant Saudi Aramco is resigned to the fact that its influence will wane because of the massive unconventional fossil-fuel development underway in North America. As such, Saudi Arabia has no plans to raise its production output to 15 million barrels per day from 12 million, said Khalid Al-Falih, the powerful chief executive of Aramco.
> 
> "There is a new emphasis in the industry on unconventional liquids, and shale gas technologies are also being applied to shale oil," Al-Falih, president and CEO of Saudi Aramco, warned a domestic audience in a speech in Riyadh Monday.
> 
> "Some are even talking about an era of 'energy independence' for the Americas, based on the immense conventional and unconventional hydrocarbon resources located there. While that might be stretching the point, it is clear that the abundance of resources and the more 'balanced' geographical distribution of unconventionals have reduced the much-hyped concerns over 'energy security', which once served as the undercurrent driving energy policies and dominated the global energy debate."
> 
> Aramco is the powerful state entity that manages the Kingdom's nine million barrel-plus oil output. Saudi Arabia has long dominated oil markets by leveraging its spare oil capacity and, as the OPEC kingpin, striking a delicate balance between the interests of oil consumers and the exporter group.
> 
> But the oil chief's remarks reveal Saudi fears that the market dynamics are changing and its dominance over energy markets is under threat by new unconventional finds.
> 
> OPEC estimated in a recent report that global reserves of tight oil could be as high as 300 billion barrels, above Saudi Arabia's conventional reserves of 260 billion barrels, which are currrently seen as the second-largest in the world after Venezuela.
> 
> Global output of non-conventional oil is set to rise 3.4 million bpd by 2015, still dominated by oil sands, to 5.8 million bpd by 2025 and to 8.4 million bpd by 2035, when tight oil would be playing a much bigger role. By 2035, the United States and Canada will still be dominating unconventional oil production with 6.6 million bpd, the group forecasts.
> 
> Last year, even as the world consumed nearly 30 billion barrels of oil, not only was the industry able to replace this production but global petroleum reserves actually increased by nearly seven billion barrels, as companies increasingly turned toward higher risk areas, Al-Falih noted.
> 
> Clearly, the Kingdom is preparing for new market realities as the discussion on energy has changed from scarcity to abundance, particularly due to the new finds that can be produced feasibly and economically.
> 
> In the past, Saudi Arabia, along with its OPEC allies, could drive prices down by opening the taps to ensure unconventional fossil fuels remained firmly buried in the ground. But most analysts now expect oil prices to remain high, at least over the medium term, thanks to tight supplies and continued demand from emerging markets. That's great news for Canadian oil sands developers, which need prices around US$60 to US$70 per barrel to make their business models economically feasible.
> 
> Saudi Arabia's own break-even oil price has also risen sharply in the past few years, making it less likely to pursue a strategy of lower prices. The Institute of International Finance estimates that Saudi Arabia's break-even price has shot up US$20 over the past year to US$88, in part due to a generous spending package of US$130-billion announced this year to keep domestic unrest at bay.
> 
> The Saudis now find themselves between a shale rock and a hard place: While high crude prices mean the Saudis can maintain their excessive domestic subsidies for citizens, in the long run that means the world is developing new sources, making it less dependent on Saudi oil.
> 
> Although the Saudis have vigorously fought the Ethical Oil ads, which paint them in a negative light, they already know their oil is less welcome in the Americas - Saudi oil made up a mere 9.3% of U.S. oil imports last year, down from 11.2% five years ago, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
> 
> But while Saudis would be cheering on the green groups with 'No KXL' signs, they don't hold out much hope for renewable energies either. Calling them 'green bubbles,' Al-Falih says governments should stop focusing on unproven and expensive energy mix, as there is frankly no appetite for massive investments in expensive, ill thought-out energy policies and pet projects.
> 
> "The confluence of four new realities - increasing supplies of oil and gas, the failure of alternatives to gain traction, the inability of economies to foot the bill for expensive energy agendas, and shifting environmental priorities - have turned the terms of the global energy dialogue upside down. Therefore, we must recast our discussion in light of actual conditions rather than wishful thinking," the pragmatic chief said.
> 
> Somebody should explain this wishful thinking to the green movement.
> 
> yhussain@nationalpost.com


----------



## a_majoor

Two of the largest and most influential states in the Islamic crescent look like they are going to fail:

http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2011/11/22/egypt-and-turkey-middle-east-basket-cases/?print=1



> *Egypt and Turkey: Middle East Basket Cases*
> Posted By David P. Goldman On November 22, 2011 @ 6:03 am In Uncategorized | 101 Comments
> 
> The mainstream media has finally picked up the story I’ve been telling since February about Egypt’s impending economic collapse. The country is nearly out of money. Under the headline, “The Egyptian pound has a distressed future,” the Financial Times reported Nov. 16, just before the last days’ slaughter on Tahrir Square, “Investors are betting against the Egyptian pound, expressing their belief that it is soon to take a dive through the futures market while the spot market is held up by Egyptian government support. The pound’s twelve-month non-deliverable forwards (NDFs) weakened 2.8 per cent on Wednesday on fears that Egypt’s reserves, which are being used to support the currency, might be reaching critical levels. The spot market, in contrast, held steady – but for how long?”
> 
> Reuters reports:
> 
> CAIRO Nov 22 (Reuters) – Egypt’s pound fell to its weakest against the dollar since January 2005 on Tuesday as mass protests against army rule prompted the cabinet to tender its resignation and threw polls into doubt, giving a fresh jolt to a shaky business climate.
> 
> The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) has sought to defend the currency during the nine turbulent months since the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak, but now traders said the pound could soon break through 6 to the dollar as investors run for cover.
> 
> They said demand for dollars among local companies and individuals had grown with the street clashes that have left 36 people dead since Saturday. Voting in the three-phase poll for the lower house of parliament is due to start on Nov. 28.
> 
> Egypt’s stock market is in free-fall, down 50% since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak. What’s interesting is that Turkey’s stock market isn’t far behind.
> 
> The economic crisis overwhelming the Middle East stretches from Libya all the way through to Turkey. The problems are of a different order, to be sure. As I reported earlier, Egypt’s spendable foreign exchange reserves are down to just $13 billion and falling daily as the central bank buys its own unwanted currency from the market in order to postpone the inevitable collapse in the change rate. Why not just devalue? The probable answer is that the generals and their civilian front men are moving as much money as they can out of the country before Egypt goes bankrupt. Last month the generals fired all the private-sector board members of the central bank, as I reported at Asia Times Online. Everything that can be sold abroad for cash is being sold. Al-Ahram reported Nov. 19 that there is no enforcement of the ban on rice exports, because controls have simply broken down. Egypt subsidizes rice at a fraction of the world market price, so traders have an incentive to sell it overseas. Not only the country’s capacity to buy food in the future, but its existing stocks of food are disappearing. And Egypt imports half its caloric consumption.
> 
> No wonder the country is blowing up. An out-of-control kleptocracy is frantically trying to close on townhouses in Chelsea and apartments in the 16th arrondissement before the central bank’s foreign exchange reserves run out. What will ensue, will be horrifying.
> 
> Turkey is in no danger of starvation, to be sure, but it faces a severe economic setback: Tayyip Erdogan, the country’s Islamist prime minister, spurred the country’s banks to lend huge amounts to consumers in advance of last June’s national elections. Bank lending rose by 40% in 2010 and by another 40% in 2011, and Turks bought consumer goods from abroad, running up a balance of payments deficit exceeding 10% of GDP (the same level as Greece). Most of that is financed by short-term debt. Turkey won’t go bankrupt — it’s overall debt levels are manageable — but its economy will have to shrink by a good 5% to staunch the bleeding. That will deflate the neo-Ottoman balloon that Erdogan has been floating, and make it much harder to suppress Turkish grievances in the impoverished Eastern corner of the country.
> 
> There is no center of power, no reorientation, no neo-Ottoman empire, no Shi’ite crescent, no Arab Spring, no coherent description of what is occurring in the Middle East. There is only catastrophic social breakdown, civil unrest, despair and violence. If Iran gets nuclear weapons, they will be used. We cannot fix the Middle East. We can only protect ourselves from the fallout, starting with acquisition of WMD by a terrorist state. The last sentence of my book How Civilizations Die (and why Islam is Dying, Too) quotes Virgil’s warning to Dante in Canto III of the Inferno: Non ragionam da lor, ma guarda e pasa. Nothing to see here, folks. Keep moving.
> 
> Article printed from Spengler: http://pjmedia.com/spengler
> 
> URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2011/11/22/egypt-and-turkey-middle-east-basket-cases/


----------



## 57Chevy

Quote from article above;
"The last sentence of my book How Civilizations Die (and why Islam is Dying, Too) quotes Virgil’s warning to Dante in Canto III of the Inferno: Non ragionam da lor, ma guarda e pasa. Nothing to see here, folks. Keep moving."

should read;
 Non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda, e passa (Let us not speak of them, but look, and pass on.)
which is not the warning.
Actually,
It is not until the beginning of canto 3 that Dante finally enters hell-- at least its outer region--by passing through a gateway. The inscription above this gate--ending with the famous warning to ("Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate.")
 "abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

Just saying.


from The Literature Network for anyone interested in the english translated version
(Inferno) Canto III
http://www.online-literature.com/dante/inferno/3/


----------



## a_majoor

Pakistan is essentially a failed state already:

http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2011/11/28/what-do-we-do-about-pakistans-nukes/?print=1



> *What Do We Do about Pakistan’s Nukes?*
> 
> Posted By David P. Goldman On November 28, 2011 @ 5:01 am In Uncategorized | 58 Comments
> 
> If Pakistani border posts fired on NATO troops before they called in last week’s air strike, the simplest inference is that Pakistan provoked the whole incident in order to wrong-foot the United States. This seems to be Pakistan’s answer to American charges that its intelligence services helped set up the Sept. 13 attack on our Kabul embassy by the al-Haqqani network, as outgoing JCS Chief Michael Mullen charged on Sept. 22.
> 
> How does Pakistan get away with it?
> 
> In this morning’s “Spengler” column at Asia TImes Online, I observe that Pakistan has successfully deployed the “Blazing Saddles” defense against the United States: take yourself hostage and point a gun at your own head. “One step closer and the [N-word] gets it!,” the black sheriff tells a prospective lynch mob in Mel Brooks’ 1974 classic. Much as I admire Rick Santorum, his notion that we must be Pakistan’s friend because Pakistan has nuclear weapons is the wrong way to look at it. On the contrary, the U.S. should call the bluff, and threaten Pakistan with dismemberment and state failure in the event that it fails to control the terrorists who infest its military and intelligence services. It is a win-win proposition.
> 
> As I wrote:
> 
> If America puts a figurative gun to the head of the Pakistani government and orders it to extirpate the radical Islamists in the military, two outcomes are possible. One is that Islamabad will succeed. The second is that it will fail, and the country will degenerate into chaos. That is the scenario the American policy is supposed to avoid at all costs, but it is hard to see why America would be worse off. If the elements of Pakistani intelligence that foster terrorism cannot be suppressed, it is clear that they are using resources of the central government to support terrorism. In the worst case, they will continue to foster terrorism, but without the resources of the central government. From America’s vantage point, a disorderly collapse of Pakistan into a failed state is a better outcome than a strong central government that sponsors terrorism. At worst, a prolonged civil conflict between American-backed elements of the Pakistani military and Islamist radicals would leave the radicals weaker than they are now.
> 
> Pakistan’s congenital incapacity to be a “friend” of the United States stems from the fact that it is an artificial state in constant danger of fragmenting into ethnic components, and America’s objectives in Afghanistan exacerbate its problems. We have painted ourselves into a corner:
> 
> America’s misguided attempt to stabilize Afghanistan allows Islamabad to blackmail the United States by threatening to promote instability. If the United States accepts Afghan instability as a permanent condition and uses its in-country capability to wear down its enemies in a standing civil war, it can turn the tables by threatening to export the instability to Pakistan. Pakistan has been truncated before, when it lost Bangladesh. It could happen again. The object is not to dismember Pakistan, but rather to persuade Islamabad to behave. If this seems harsh, it is worth recalling that Washington has done this sort of thing before. The Reagan administration did its best to prolong the Iran-Iraq war.
> 
> As for the nukes: in the worst case, send in U.S. forces and take them away. That’s not as far-fetched as it might sound, as Jeffrey Goldberg and Marc Ambinder report in the December issue of The Atlantic. China’s presence in Pakistan complicates matters, but the Chinese have more to lose from Pakistani terrorism than we do (Pakistan’s intelligence services are training Muslim Uyghur separatists for infiltration into China’s Xinjiang province next door).
> 
> Article printed from Spengler: http://pjmedia.com/spengler
> 
> URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2011/11/28/what-do-we-do-about-pakistans-nukes/


----------



## Edward Campbell

We would do well to remember that Pakistan is China's client. Sending US troops - against a well trained, well equipped army - to "take away" Pakistan's nuclear weapons might not be the smartest move.


----------



## a_majoor

Probably not, but things are getting to a point that literally every possibility should be on the table for examination. The current situation is clearly unstable and set to collapse into some new and probably worse configuration...


----------



## Edward Campbell

The solution to the Pakistan problem - to America's Pakistan problem, anyway - comes in 2014 when we leave Afghanistan to its poor, wretched fate, to the tender mercies of Pakistan, India, Iran and China.

Then, after 2014, Pakistan will return to being a pawn - a pawn with a pretty good army - in the in the India-China competition for regional dominance.


----------



## 57Chevy

Agreed, attempting to take away the Pakistani nukes would certainly be a bad move.

The current situation is unstable but it may not necessarily completely collapse. Although tensions
are pretty much strained.

From The Christian Science Monitor and shared with provisions of The Copyright Act

After NATO strike, can US-Pakistan relations be patched up one more time?
Howard LaFranchi, Staff writer 28 Nov
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Foreign-Policy/2011/1128/After-NATO-strike-can-US-Pakistan-relations-be-patched-up-one-more-time-VIDEO

Pakistan announced it was closing its borders permanently to the transport of NATO supplies into Afghanistan. The move was one more retaliatory measure in a long-troubled relationship.

Washington

As Pakistanis burned American flags over NATO airstrikes on Saturday that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, the government in Islamabad announced a full review of US-Pakistan relations – signaling a new low in a relationship that already appeared to be at the breaking point earlier this year.

At the same time, the crisis showed signs of taking on regional dimensions, with China weighing in on the side of Pakistan in an apparent tweak of the United States.

Pakistan said on Monday it was closing its borders permanently to the transport of NATO supplies into Afghanistan after the weekend’s deadly airstrikes on a Pakistani border outpost. The measure promised hardship for US and allied military operations, but it also had a familiar ring, as one more retaliatory measure in a long-troubled relationship.

Twice already this year – in May, when US special forces launched a raid into Pakistan that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden, and a few months before that, when Pakistan arrested a CIA officer in the killings of two Pakistanis – relations between the two wary partners were described by some policymakers in both capitals as nearing a divorce.

Each time, the relationship was revived to some degree by high-level visits and an unvarnished taking-stock of mutual interests. But now, the weekend strike was the deadliest on Pakistani forces in the decade-long Afghan war. And a range of Western and Pakistani military and civilian officials are questioning how long repair will take, or whether it will be possible at all.

Pakistan’s relations with the US and NATO will not be “business as usual” after Saturday’s deadly strikes by helicopter gunship, Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said in interviews Monday.

NATO officials promised to conduct a full investigation of the weekend incident, but on Monday the attack and its diplomatic aftershocks showed signs of reaching new regional dimensions, with China uncharacteristically wading into the fray.

“China is deeply shocked by these events,” a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hong Lei, said in a televised statement Monday. “China believes that Pakistan’s independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity should be respected and the incident should be thoroughly investigated and be handled properly.”

The Chinese and Pakistani foreign ministers also held a lengthy telephone conversation on the incident, according to their offices.

Some Pakistani media announced that the government would refuse to take part in reconciliation efforts with the Afghan Taliban, but Mr. Gilani insisted that decision had not yet been made. The US is especially keen to see Pakistan involved in those efforts, since it does not believe reconciliation in Afghanistan can advance without Pakistan’s support.

Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik did announce that the closing of border crossings to NATO supply convoys would be permanent. The closure posed an immediate logistical problem, with NATO convoys and their supplies already starting to stack up inside Pakistan. 

On the other hand, less than half of the supplies used by US and NATO forces in Afghanistan enter from Pakistan. That’s because the history of tit-for-tat relations between the US and Pakistan had led the US to diversify its supply routes into Afghanistan away from a heavy dependence on Pakistan.

The result is that, while still troublesome, the border closure today constitutes less of a chokehold, as a growing slice of supplies enter Afghanistan through the so-called northern route from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

Some analysts of US-Pakistan relations say they assume the two countries will paper over their differences once again. But they also say this incident is likely to reinforce Pakistan’s determination to stick to its own interests to the detriment of a US it believes is set on pulling up stakes in the region anyway. 

“Even if – as seems most likely – Pakistan does reopen its supply routes to the US and [international forces in Afghanistan], relations will remain so tense that new incidents and crises in US and Pakistani relations are inevitable,” says Anthony Cordesman, in comments Monday on the Center for Strategic and International Studies website. “This will undermine the already uncertain chances the US can actually achieve any stable benefits from the war after 2014 – either in Afghanistan or Pakistan.”

More broadly, the NATO airstrikes may have opened the way to new rivalries in the region. Opening a northern supply route into Afghanistan required Russian approval, a process that took some time as Moscow weighed the pros and cons of aiding NATO’s, and in particular America’s, presence in Afghanistan.

Russia ultimately decided it had no interest in seeing Afghanistan sink back into instability or even renewed Taliban rule. But China’s motivations in taking a public stance on Saturday’s attack appear to be more focused on Pakistan – and on US involvement there and in Asia more broadly.

China’s comments followed on the heels of President Obama’s extended trip to Asia, which was widely interpreted in Beijing as part of a US effort to reassert its interests in the region and to contain China.

For its part, Pakistan has repeatedly brandished its relations with China as a potential alternative to its ties with Washington. When the US signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with Pakistan’s archrival India, for example, some Pakistanis warned that their country could turn to Beijing if Washington did not offer Pakistan a similar deal.


----------



## a_majoor

The "Arab Spring" turns very cold indeed:

http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2011/11/30/flash-what-me-pessimistic-egyptian-election-outcome-is-worse-than-i-expected/?print=1



> *Flash: What, Me Pessimistic? Egyptian Election Outcome is Worse Than I Expected*
> Posted By Barry Rubin On November 30, 2011 @ 7:54 pm In Uncategorized | 61 Comments
> 
> Since last February I have predicted that the Muslim Brotherhood would win elections in Egypt. People have thought me very pessimistic. Now the votes are starting to come in, and … it’s much worse than I thought. My prediction that the Brotherhood and the other Islamists would gain a slight majority seems to have been fulfilled, and then some. According to most reports, the Brotherhood is scoring at just below 40 percent all by itself.
> 
> The results are worse than expected for two reasons:
> 
> First: the votes we now have come from the most urban areas of the country.
> 
> If there are Facebook sophisticates, they’re going to be in Cairo and Alexandria. If the moderates do that bad in the big cities, what’s going to happen in the villages up the Nile? If the fascist party came in first in some European countries’ Social Democratic districts, you know you are in trouble.
> 
> The Brotherhood came in first in Cairo and Alexandria. Think about that. Of course there are millions of migrants from rural areas in those places, but that’s also where the middle class, such as it is, lives.
> 
> Second: the moderate parties didn’t even come in second — they came in third, or close to it.
> 
> The Salafists — people who are even more radical than the Muslim Brotherhood — came in second. That they did that well is a surprise. That they did that well without bumping the Brotherhood down a notch is really shocking.
> 
> Estimates for the Justice Party, the Facebook kids of January, are getting 5 to 10 percent. Even together with the other two main moderate parties, that means the liberals won’t be able to block anything. Already the Brotherhood is tasting blood and talking about pressing the army junta to accelerate the turnover of power.
> 
> It’s hard to see, though, that there can be any such transfer of power. The voting is far from finished and will be going on for about three months more, followed by a presidential election. And yes: the results so far suggest that the Islamists will also win the presidency.
> 
> That’s when the fun really starts. President Barack Obama is going to face a challenge he is incapable of meeting, since he doesn’t even understand what’s going on. He’s like a man who has been told that a ferocious lion is really a playful kitten and then tries to feed it by hand.
> 
> Or, to switch metaphors in the middle of a stream of thought, perhaps Dr. Frankenstein is a more apt image:
> 
> “When younger,” said he, “I believed myself destined for some great enterprise. … I could not rank myself with the herd of common projectors. But this thought, which supported me in the commencement of my career, now serves only to plunge me lower in the dust. All my speculations and hopes are as nothing; and, like the archangel who aspired to omnipotence, I am chained in an eternal hell.” — Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
> 
> For the purposes of this election, Egypt has been divided into three sections, and each section will have a second round. I predict the moderates will fail to work together, and that the Islamists will thus end up  getting an even higher proportion of the seats in parliament.
> 
> The Wall Street Journal correspondent is saying that the Salafists will push the Brotherhood further to the “right,” and that’s a very sensible point. Why should the Brotherhood even pretend to be moderate when the people have spoken and they want Sharia with cherries on top?
> 
> So the Islamists won and the election was fair. Should we feel good that democracy has functioned and that the people are getting what they want?
> 
> Or should we feel bad that the people want a repressive dictatorship, the repression of women, the suppression of Christians, conflict with Israel, hatred of the West, and the freezing of Egyptian society into a straitjacket that can only lead to continued poverty and increasing suffering?
> 
> As the vote count becomes clearer, I’ll be refining my analysis, but now we know: this is what (Egyptian) democracy looks like.
> 
> —————
> 
> (Also read Michael Totten: “Watch Out.”)
> 
> Article printed from Rubin Reports: http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin
> 
> URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2011/11/30/flash-what-me-pessimistic-egyptian-election-outcome-is-worse-than-i-expected/


----------



## Retired AF Guy

57Chevy said:
			
		

> Agreed, attempting to take away the Pakistani nukes would certainly be a bad move.



You don't have to send any troops in to take away any warheads/nuclear weapons. I'm willing to bet that the Americans (and Brits) probably know the location of the Pakistani nuclear weapon storage facilities are located. If the situation in Pakistan went bad, really, really bad, all the Americans have to do is send aircraft and take out the storage facilities using conventional bombs, or, if they want to be really sure, tactical nuclear weapons.


----------



## 57Chevy

Retired AF Guy said:
			
		

> If the situation in Pakistan went bad, really, really bad



You mean like in the event of War.
Which would then be construed as an attack on China.

Responding to reports that China has asked the US to respect Pakistan’s sovereignty in the aftermath of the Bin Laden operation, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu used a May 19 press briefing to state Beijing’s categorical demand that the “sovereignty and territorial integrity of Pakistan must be respected.”

According to Pakistani diplomatic sources cited by the Times of India, China has “warned in unequivocal terms that any attack on Pakistan would be construed as an attack on China.” This ultimatum was reportedly delivered at the May 9 China-US strategic dialogue and economic talks in Washington, where the Chinese delegation was led by Vice Prime Minister Wang Qishan and State Councilor Dai Bingguo
.
Chinese warnings are implicitly backed up by that nation’s nuclear missiles, including an estimated 66 ICBMs, some capable of striking the United States, plus 118 intermediate-range missiles, 36 submarine-launched missiles, and numerous shorter-range systems.
Full article from Eu Times and shared with provisions of The Copyright act (dated 22 May 2011)
China warns US against war with Pakistan
http://www.eutimes.net/2011/05/china-warns-us-against-war-with-pakistan/


----------



## Retired AF Guy

57Chevy said:
			
		

> You mean like in the event of War.



No, I mean in the event the country completely collapsed and it looked the Islamic extremists would take over. 

I would doubt that the Chinese would risk thermonuclear war with the U.S.; the USN has eight Trident SSBNs in the Pacific, each one carries a *minimum* of 96 MIRV'd nuclear warheads capable of laying a good portion of China to waste, and the Chinese know it.

The other thing is that the Chinese (or Indians, Russians) would be very happy about Pakistani nuclear weapons falling into the hands of Islamic extremists; they might take action themselves.


----------



## Redeye

Thucydides said:
			
		

> The "Arab Spring" turns very cold indeed:
> 
> http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2011/11/30/flash-what-me-pessimistic-egyptian-election-outcome-is-worse-than-i-expected/?print=1



The Muslim Brotherhood winning the election wasn't a surprise, but it seems like that's immediately setting off all sorts of paranoid nonsense in the US amongst the right. It's not totally baseless, given some of the points of view that have been associated with them, but at the same time, they've made a lot of statements that sound quite reasonable. At the end of the day, this is what the people of Egypt chose, and we can't really extol the virtues of democracy and then complain about the winners when we don't like them. I doubt highly that the Muslim Brotherhood will push Egypt toward a theocracy, as they want to maintain electability and I don't see any reason to believe they have any desire to significantly alter Egypt's relationship with Israel. There's actually a great potential positive here, in that they may be able to help push Israel toward a two-state solution to Palestine, the only viable long term solution.

Egypt receives, and I'd speculate depends on American and other aid and goodwill, and I can't see any party, much less one with a fairly weak mandate, looking to squander it.


----------



## 57Chevy

RAF Guy
In the case of being overthrown by islamic terrorists I agree.
That is to say if they are unable to render safe by destruction themselves. 
It may be in the best interest if they were not able to.
If that were the case,
the Russians and Chinese would be throwing their "veto" strategy out the window.


----------



## Redeye

57Chevy said:
			
		

> You mean like in the event of War.
> Which would then be construed as an attack on China.
> 
> Responding to reports that China has asked the US to respect Pakistan’s sovereignty in the aftermath of the Bin Laden operation, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu used a May 19 press briefing to state Beijing’s categorical demand that the “sovereignty and territorial integrity of Pakistan must be respected.”
> 
> According to Pakistani diplomatic sources cited by the Times of India, China has “warned in unequivocal terms that any attack on Pakistan would be construed as an attack on China.” This ultimatum was reportedly delivered at the May 9 China-US strategic dialogue and economic talks in Washington, where the Chinese delegation was led by Vice Prime Minister Wang Qishan and State Councilor Dai Bingguo
> .
> Chinese warnings are implicitly backed up by that nation’s nuclear missiles, including an estimated 66 ICBMs, some capable of striking the United States, plus 118 intermediate-range missiles, 36 submarine-launched missiles, and numerous shorter-range systems.
> Full article from Eu Times and shared with provisions of The Copyright act (dated 22 May 2011)
> China warns US against war with Pakistan
> http://www.eutimes.net/2011/05/china-warns-us-against-war-with-pakistan/



I'm just going to put this out there: you're citing a source that is the same people who claimed that Canadian soldiers were being sent to California to put down a rebellion. (They were, in fact, there on work up training for Op Athena TF 1-10). http://www.eutimes.net/2009/12/prepare-for-rebellion-obama-orders-us-canadian-troops/

I'd take anything posted on that blog with an industrial-sized grain of salt.

In fact, a careful reading shows it's skewed. First it says that "China has officially put the United States on notice..." but then goes on to say that the source is an unnamed Pakistani diplomat. That's not "official" anything. That's rumour. In fact, pretty much everything the article claims is unsourced. Probably best dismissed. Or at least read skeptically.


----------



## 57Chevy

I usually read more than one but I always have the salt shaker close by.
Google this and choose one:

"China warns US against war with Pakistan"


----------



## Edward Campbell

A bit more on Pakistan and the USA from Fareed Zakariah, an observer whose views often turn out to be "on target," reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from Zakariah's web page and from _Time_ magazine:

http://www.fareedzakaria.com/home/Articles/Entries/2011/12/1_Friends_Without_Benefits.html


> FRIENDS WITHOUT BENEFITS
> 
> December 1, 2011
> 
> *It’s time to say what we already know—America’s Pakistan policy isn’t working*
> 
> By Fareed Zakaria
> 
> It is difficult to find a country on the planet that is more anti-American than Pakistan. In a Pew survey this year, only 12% of Pakistanis expressed a favorable view of the U.S. That number has probably dipped even lower in the wake of the NATO air attack on a Pakistani army post that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. Pakistan’s leaders are only slightly better disposed since they continue to support militias in Afghanistan that wage war on Americans. Populist rage and official duplicity have built up even though over the past decade, Washington has lavished Pakistan’s government with praise and aid, the latter totaling $20 billion. It is time to recognize that the U.S.’s Pakistan policy is just not working. I write this as someone who has consistently supported engaging with the Pakistani government as the best of bad options. But the evidence that this engagement is working is thin—and gets thinner with every passing month.
> 
> Supporting Islamabad has been premised on two arguments. The first is that if we don’t, the Pakistani government could collapse and the country’s nuclear weapons could fall into the wrong hands, perhaps even ending up with al-Qaeda. This misunderstands the problem. Pakistan is not Somalia. It has been ruled by a professional military for most of its independent existence, even when there has been a nominally civilian government in charge—as there is today. There have been no Gaddafiesque colonels’ coups in Pakistan; instead, the entire military, with its command chain intact, has moved to replace the civilian government. The military remains widely admired as a national institution that works.
> 
> The second argument is the one given by businesses when they pay off the Mafia: we need to keep these guys as allies, or else they will become enemies. The problem with this protection racket is that it isn’t working. Admiral Mike Mullen finally said publicly what insiders have said privately for years: Pakistan’s army, despite getting over a quarter of its budget from Washington, funds and arms the most deadly terrorist group in South Asia.
> 
> In a forthcoming essay in Foreign Affairs, Stephen Krasner, a Stanford professor who was a senior State Department official under George W. Bush, makes the important point that Pakistan’s behavior is not a product of weakness or irrationality. It is part of a deliberate strategy to keep Afghanistan weak and India off balance. Krasner advocates cutting off all aid to the military until it changes course and delivers on a genuine anti­terrorism strategy. That would be worth trying, but a larger shift needs to take place to get real results.
> 
> The Pakistani military holds to its worldview out of an ideological conviction that combines 19th century realpolitik with politicized Islam. But it also has a strong bureaucratic interest in regional friction. After all, with a win-win scenario in which peace with India results in prosperity for the region, why would Pakistan need a vast military that sucks up almost a quarter of the federal budget? The country’s military would end up looking like India’s— noninfluential, nonpolitical and well­contained within the larger society.
> 
> Pakistan needs a civilian conception of its national interest. It can get one only from a flourishing civilian government. That was the basic thrust of the memo that Pakistan’s former ambassador to Washington, Husain Haqqani, is alleged to have written. Haqqani’s ouster is part of a long pattern in which the military has removed anyone who proposed a new course for the country’s foreign policy. Recall that the coup that ousted the previous civilian government took place because then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif enraged the military by attempting to make peace with India. In recent days, the military has been building opposition to the effort of President Asif Ali Zardari’s government to start trade with India.
> 
> There is a fundamental tension in U.S. policy toward Pakistan. We want a more democratic country, but we also want a government that can deliver cooperation on the ground. In practice, we always choose the latter, which means we cozy up to the military and overlook its destruction of democracy. The only way to get real cooperation is by helping Pakistan move from being a military state to being a more normal country. If Washington continues to bolster Pakistan’s de?facto regime, we will get a dysfunctional nation where the?public—fed propaganda by the military establishment—vents its anger at?Washington.
> 
> The Arab Spring holds key lessons. When Washington props up a dictatorship because it needs foreign policy support, it is building up wellsprings of poison and anti-Americanism within society that, one day, will erupt.




I take issue with the comments attributed to Stephen Krasner, a Stanford professor who was a senior State Department official under George W. Bush. Krasner, correctly, I think concludes that Pakistan's policy is rational and in its own self interest but he is wrong, I believe to suggest that the US can gain leverage by cutting off aid to Pakistan's military. That will not work. Pakistan will receive the same or more aid ... from China which shares Pakistan's interests in containing India. China has, I suspect welcomed America's _courtship_ of Pakistan; it allowed China to send scarce foreign aid money elsewhere while still keeping Pakistan strong enough to contain India in its region - a win/win situation for China.

Pakistan's support for anti-American terrorists is real, as Admiral Mullin said, but it is also a rational policy - it makes sense for Pakistan.

The best American option, in my opinion is slow, steady disengagement from the region - from West Asia and the Middle East. Those regions, along with North Africa, are problems but not real, significant, strategic threats - let the peoples there bother the Europeans, Israelis, Turks, Russians and Chinese, the first and last of whom need the oil.


----------



## a_majoor

We may have to show leadership in allowing Egyptian Copts to flee Egypt and find refuge here:

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/12/24/will-desperate-egyptian-christians-seek-refuge-in-the-us/



> *Will Desperate Egyptian Christians Seek Refuge In The US?*
> 
> As political and economic conditions in Egypt deteriorate, a new kind of refugee is beginning to appear, one that will test America’s character.  Violence against Christians is growing; bad economic times, the inability or unwillingness of security forces and police to keep order, and the growing tide of Islamist political and religious mobilizations is making life increasingly insecure for Egypt’s eight million Christians.
> 
> An article in the Wall Street Journal offers a harrowing picture of a minority that is beginning to come under siege.  Christians are being threatened with violence if they fail to convert; women who do not cover their hair are harassed, harangued and threatened on the street; churches are burned and the wall of isolation around this ancient community deepens every day.
> 
> Under US and international law, growing numbers of Egyptian Christians will qualify as refugees if these conditions continue to worsen.
> 
> For Americans, the persecution of religious believes in other countries is more than a foreign policy problem.  Russian persecution of the Jews in the 19th century led millions of Jews to immigrate to the United States between 1880 and the start of World War One.  Religious and ethnic minorities fled to the US from all over Europe and the Middle East in the old days. One reason that so few Christians remain in most of the Middle East is that the United States primarily, but other western countries as well, have allowed millions of Christian Arabs to escape — in some cases looking for security and an end to persecution, and in others for better economic opportunity and the absence of discrimination.
> 
> The long record of Christian-Muslim relations contains much of which people of both faiths should be ashamed.  However, while there are exceptions (such as Serb treatment of Muslim Bosnians and Kossovars in the Yugoslav wars), in general the Christian treatment of Muslim minorities has been improving in the last 100 years; Muslim treatment of Christian minorities does not show as encouraging a trend.  Many Muslims don’t see it that way; they point out that western countries have invaded and occupied Muslim lands and have backed Israeli violence against Palestinians.  They set French violence in Algeria and US wars in Iraq and elsewhere into the long and bitter list of wrongs followers world’s two largest religions have inflicted on one another.) These arguments will go on, and so will the flight of Christians from increasingly militant Islamic societies.
> 
> There are, unfortunately, reasons to believe that the worsening of intercommunal relations in Egypt is more than a flash in the pan.  While political chaos and economic distress can unleash dark forces everywhere, the rise of an Islamist political consensus among many Egyptian Muslims suggests a more ominous long term trend.  Modern Egyptian history has seen waves of expulsions and dispersion.  Like much of the Ottoman world, Egypt’s great cities were once cosmopolitan places where many religions and ethnic groups lived cheek by jowl.  Greeks, Turks, Armenians, Albanians, Jews and many others made Cairo and especially Alexandria vibrant cultural and commercial hubs.
> 
> In Egypt as in many other countries, the twentieth century saw that diversity fade.  Instead of 80,000 Jews, Egypt now has a few hundred.  Nationalist and communal feeling combined with the socialist bent of the Nasser revolution led to the disappearance of most of the country’s urban diversity.  For Egypt as for many countries, nationalism was partly about purifying the country of a foreign presence seen as reflecting imperialism.
> 
> Egyptian Copts (unlike the Greek Orthodox, the Armenians and other religious groups seen as foreign) were protected by the secular Arab nationalism of the Egyptian revolution.  Secular Arab nationalism, which developed in part under the benign eye of American missionary universities, sought to submerge the religious differences among Arabic speaking peoples in the name of Arab unity.  Sunnis, Shias, Christians, Druze, Alawi and others were all Arabs first. Iraq, Syria and Egypt all paid lip service at least to the primacy of Arab identity over religious difference, and while discrimination continued not far under the surface, Christian Arabs could reach high positions in the business world and even politics.  (Tariq Aziz, Saddam Hussein’s foreign minister is an Iraqi Christian though perhaps not always a very good one; former UN Secretary General and Egyptian vice foreign minister Boutros Boutros-Gali is an Egyptian Copt.)
> 
> Secular Arab nationalism died slow and it died ugly, ending more as a cover for despots like Saddam Hussein and the Butcher of Damascus than as a viable political philosophy.  In Iraq it degenerated into a veil to cover Sunni domination of the Shia and Saddam’s domination over all; in Syria it covers the domination of the Sunni by the (sort of Shia) Alawites and of the House of Assad over all.  In Egypt it was little more than a fig leaf to cover the increasingly pharaonic Mubarakracy.
> 
> As secular nationalism died in the Arab world, religious rather than ethnic identity came to the fore.  Arab Christians are no longer seen by many as fellow citizens of a minority faith (like Mormons in America); they are seen as aliens of doubtful motives and allegiance.  Because many enjoyed good jobs and privilege under the nationalist governments, they are blamed for many of the failings of the old regimes, and much of the public believes that “justice” will involve a redistribution of privilege and access away from “pampered”, foreign leaning Christians to honest Muslim sons of toil.
> 
> There is no telling how this will work out.  The restoration of stable political authority (even if Islamist) and an economic recovery could leave Christians in a diminished but livable situation. More chaos and polarization could lead to something uglier.  It is, alas, not rare for problems like this to culminate in massacres and ethnic and religious cleansing. Most likely will be a period in which Egyptian Christians must live in suspense between the two scenarios, as conditions get better in some places, worse in others, and never quite settle down.
> 
> Many Egyptian Christians will now want to follow the well worn path of emigration.  Many will have legitimate grounds to seek asylum based on well founded fears of persecution at home.
> 
> America is going to have to make up its mind: will we find room for what could very well be a significant stream of Egyptian Christian refugees with us here in the inn, or will they have to go find a manger somewhere?  We can hope that we don’t have to face this choice and that cool heads and wise counsel will prevail in Egypt, but it is time to begin to think the possibilities through.


----------



## a_majoor

If we want dictators to fail, we need to get more active:

http://pjmedia.com/michaelledeen/2011/12/25/why-tyrants-fall/?print=1



> *Why Tyrants Fall*
> 
> Posted By Michael Ledeen On December 25, 2011 @ 1:18 pm In Uncategorized | 43 Comments
> 
> What spells the doom of dictators?  Nobody really knows, and there are so many “whats” that the whole subject defies quantification.  Coups and assassinations, revolutions, defeats in war, and even sudden collapses, are all to be found in the texts, ancient and modern.  Even those of us who have predicted the fall of tyrannies, as I did [1] in the case of the Soviet Empire, are surprised when it happens, and almost always fail to foresee how it happens.
> 
> Indeed, it’s the wrong question.  Since there are so many variations, and since one tyrant may survive a crisis that would bring down another dictator, we should ask specific questions about specific tyrants, and use historical examples of similar situations to guide our understanding.
> 
> Some years back, when I was working with Walter Laqueur, I asked him what he was reading, and he said something like “I mainly read biographies.”  A good lesson there;  some dictators will fall in crisis, while others grow stronger and more resolute.  Which sort are we dealing with in a given case?  So the question is not, what brings down dictatorships in general, but “how likely is this tyrant to fall?”  We have to look  carefully at the unique characteristics of a given dictatorship, and avoid the fruitless search for “rules.”
> 
> Finally, don’t forget that the Almighty put us on earth for entertainment value.  Most of the time we’re likely to get it wrong.  How many of us expected Qadaffi to fight to the death?  How many expected Gorbachev and his Soviet Empire to implode without a fight? We’re usually not smart enough to foresee such things.
> 
> That is why the nose, not the brain, is the greatest instrument for sensing when a regime is in danger of coming down.  The nose detects the first hints of rot, which generally attend an imminent failure of will by the ruler.  Ergo, we need to pay particular attention to the odors of the tyrant him/herself, and the nature of his/her tyranny.  While there are no general rules,  there are some patterns that might help us answer — or sniff out — the right questions.  If we even ask them.
> 
> I’m always intrigued when somebody thinks he or she can confidently predict that a tyrant is about to fall, as if it’s all a question of applying the good old manual.  I’ve been intrigued for months now, as expert upon expert tells us that Bashar Assad of Damascus is going down.  Just the other day, no less a pundit than Dennis Ross, recently retired from the Obama administration, let us know that he is quite confident [2] about it:
> 
> This is a regime that is entirely dependent on coercion, and the coercion is failing, and when a regime is entirely dependent on coercion that is not succeeding, you know that that’s a regime that’s not going to be around for an extended period.
> 
> I wish!  Let’s take just two counter-examples from Syria’s neighbor, Iran.  In 1953, Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeqh drove the shah into foreign exile, and millions marched through the streets of Tehran and other major Iranian cities to celebrate Mossadeqh’s victory. Yet the shah quickly returned, and Mossadeqh was removed, and millions marched to celebrate that event, just days after the pro-Mossadeqh parades. So regimes can fall and rise again.
> 
> More recently, in the summer of 2009, millions of Iranians took to the streets to protest the electoral fraud that retained Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the presidential office.  The regime unleashed coercion, but the demonstrations continued. Just as in Syria today, the coercion wasn’t working;  if anything, it was provoking even greater challenges to the regime’s legitimacy.  The regime cracked down harder, dissidents were arrested, tortured, and slaughtered, and the regime survived…for an “extended period.”
> 
> There are plenty of such examples, including the “Prague Spring” of 1968, where coercion failed for a while, but then succeeded. And there are other cases, such as the failed “color revolutions” in some former Soviet satellites, where it seemed tyranny had been defeated, but it came back.  Ask Putin and Medvedev how that one works.  Ask the Lebanese, while you’re at it.  Or the Egyptians.
> 
> We just don’t know, and cannot know, how Syria’s going to turn out, nor Libya, nor Tunisia.  We don’t know, and probably cannot know, how long Bashar Assad will keep slaughtering his people (right now there is no reason to think he’ll shrink from most any level of violence against them), and we don’t know and cannot even guess how many top Syrian military officers will defect to the dissidents.  Moreover, we don’t have a clear picture of the qualities of the leaders of the Free Syrian Army that is fighting Bashar’s army of some 700,000 armed men.
> 
> Most importantly, we don’t know whether, or to what extent, the Syrian opposition will get serious foreign support, which may be the crucial element in deciding Assad’s fate.  My heart sinks when I hear policy makers like Dennis Ross invoke a slogan instead of calling for action, because when such a person says Assad is doomed, I hear him saying “not to worry, we don’t have to do anything, it’s in the bag.”
> 
> That’s the sort of intellectual error that subverts good policy.  There’s a big fight in Syria, and someone’s going to win.  If we want Assad to lose, as Obama has said, it behooves us to support his enemies.  Ross’s historical law notwithstanding, it’s unlikely the Syrian opposition can win on their own (any more than Qadaffi’s enemies could have won without substantial Western military action).  Again, the next-door neighbor points the way.
> 
> Vigorous support for the Green Movement in 2009-2010 might well have brought Mousavi & co. to power in Tehran, but the West, including President Obama, in effect supported the mullahcracy, and never called for regime change.  This will certainly have encouraged the Iranians and the Assad mafia to fight fiercely in the current crisis, since they think they have learned that Obama will do nothing to bring them down.  To be sure, the president is calling for regime change in Damascus, but, so far, the Iranian “lesson” seems right:  Obama isn’t providing meaningful support to Assad’s opponents, thereby leaving the tyrant a free hand.
> 
> So I wouldn’t be so sure that Assad is doomed.  Nor, on the other hand, am I at all inclined to believe that the Iranian regime has prevailed.  These crises are determined by people fighting for power and survival, and questions of will, nerve, luck,  leadership, and unanticipated events are very much in play (earthquakes, for example, have sometimes been important in bringing down dictators, as, for example, the Nicaraguan tyrant Anastasio Somoza).
> 
> And just as the Syrian killers, working hand-in-mailed-glove with Iranian thugs, think they’ve got recent history on their side, so the Iranian people are watching Syria very carefully.  If the Syrian opposition does win — especially if the West is in the fight — the Iranians will take heart. But if we continue to betray freedom in Syria, the Iranians on both sides will conclude that the “history lesson” was well learned.  And that lesson is not that coercion fails, but quite the opposite:  he who fights best, laughs last.
> 
> Instead of reading tea leaves, our leaders would do better to try to win.  But don’t hold your breath.
> 
> 
> Article printed from Faster, Please!: http://pjmedia.com/michaelledeen
> 
> URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/michaelledeen/2011/12/25/why-tyrants-fall/
> 
> URLs in this post:
> 
> [1] as I did: http://www.amazon.com/Superpower-Dilemmas-U-S-U-S-S-R-Centurys/dp/0887388914/ref=sr_1_35?ie=UTF8&qid=1324689784&sr=8-35
> 
> [2] is quite confident: http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC07.php?CID=622


----------



## a_majoor

While I am a big fan of Hernando De Soto's work, I don't think he has a very good handle on the Muslim Brotherhood's world view, I certainly would not be as optimistic about the prospects for liberal reform concerning property rights and the rule of law under their rule. OTOH, if they are able to do this, the virtuous circle could indeed raise Egypt out of poverty the same way it has done elsewhere.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/12/just_call_me_poor?page=full



> *“Just Call Me Poor”*
> Want to work an economic miracle in Egypt? Hernando De Soto has some ideas.
> INTERVIEW BY CHRISTIAN CARYL | JANUARY 12, 2012
> 
> In 2004, Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto and his think tank, the Institute for Liberty and Democracy, were asked to come up with ideas for revitalizing the Egyptian economy. In an interview with FP’s Christian Caryl, he argues that those ideas remain more topical than ever.
> 
> Foreign Policy: Not many economists have been targeted by terrorists. Why did the Peruvian insurgent group Shining Path put you and your colleagues on its hit list?
> 
> Hernando de Soto: What happened in Peru at that time was like what happens in other countries that suffer terrorism. The terrorist groups identify an underclass that considers itself oppressed. They target it and offer it services. In the case of Peru what they offered this underclass was protection of assets that weren't protected by the law. When we drew up plans for bringing these unrecognized assets into law, Shining Path saw this reform would take away their constituency. Today, for example, women own close to 56 percent of the real estate assets that were previously informal in Peru. Back then it was less than 30.
> 
> So they decided to do what terrorist groups do: to resort to force. They set up a hit squad that was supposed to target me. They were unsuccessful but unfortunately some colleagues and bystanders were hurt during their attacks.
> 
> FP: When you made proposals for economic reform in Egypt back in 2004, the resistance came from rather different quarters. Can you tell us what happened and why?
> 
> HD: We determined that close to 8.2 million people were employed by the extralegal economy. In other words, these are people who don't have formal title to their property or legal protections for the assets they control. That's an awful lot of people and a lot of assets. We estimated that 82 percent of entrepreneurs operated extralegally and 92 percent of the population held their real estate assets extralegally. If you formalized the Egyptian economy you would have brought into the mainstream economy close to 400 billion dollars, more than all foreign investment since Napoleon.
> 
> So along with the Ministry of Finance, which commissioned the research, we drew up a program to formalize those rights and we submitted it to the economic cabinet of the Egyptian government. The whole program was about integrating those who were excluded and giving them a voice in their future, including specific property and business rights that would have allowed, for example, issuing shares to capture investment or protecting assets through the establishment of limited liability. It would have been a win-win for everyone. The poor would have been empowered. Investors would have had their legitimate rights protected. Governance would have been improved. The government could have improved tax collection and even reduced rates.
> 
> FP: And yet the reform package was ultimately torpedoed by people within the government.
> 
> HD: In Egypt there was a lot of open discussion about the measures, from conferences to talk shows. That was part of the strategy: Be as inclusive as you can. The idea was to stop mistakes in advance. All 11 members of the economic cabinet approved it. We expressly included a mechanism for popular consultation.
> 
> But in every system there is always a small group of people who believe that they have something to gain from the status quo. And that's what happened here. You can't conduct reforms without creating appropriate institutions. If you're going to change things, your enemy is the status quo. So we had argued that they needed an organization, right from the start, that would act as an advocate for the reforms within the bureaucracy. But that never happened, so the reforms never got off the ground. We don't know precisely who put up the resistance. They didn't show themselves.
> 
> FP: The results of the parliamentary elections suggest that the Muslim Brotherhood will control the next parliament and, more than likely, the next government as well. Will they be in position to do something about this issue?
> 
> HD: When you read the Quran there's no doubt about where it stands. It says very clear things about respecting property, recording transactions, honoring debts. It is very much in favor of the entrepreneurial class. That's why I'm quite optimistic.
> 
> You know, what we discovered was that in Egypt almost every extralegal building or business has some piece of paper authorizing its existence. The problem is that these papers rarely come from government. They usually come from neighborhood associations (quite often religious, but sometimes not) that have organized ways of certifying it. But this sort of documentation is rarely fungible. It rarely constitutes the kind of formalized right that will be recognized by everyone within the system regardless of who or where you are. It doesn't do what the formal system does with property, namely, to leverage it and turn it into capital.
> 
> But what this does mean is that in Egypt the starting point for awarding assets has already been created to a great extent at the shadow level. It's the same with property all over the world. The Domesday Book in medieval England recorded property data on a wide range of people: "John Smith owns so many barns, cattle, etc." Those records weren't titles, but as the years went by property titles were built up around them. As I like to say, historically property always starts with the king at least nodding in your direction.
> 
> FP: But that process took centuries, didn't it? Is there anything that can be done to liberate the energies of Egypt's entrepreneurial underclass right away?
> 
> HD: Well, back then, we calculated together with the Ministry of Finance that if these $400 billion of assets were brought under the rule of law, Egypt's GDP growth rate would double in the next five years.
> 
> Let me explain why it's not a miracle. The reforms that were done in Peru had the immediate effect of raising the price of the dirtiest and most neglected pieces of land. In Lima the average price of shanty property rose in average by 400 percent from 1997 to 2010. And that had a great deal to do with guaranteeing legal certainty of ownership.
> 
> Let's say you and I are in Cairo, and you want to buy a piece of property I own. I tell you that it's worth a million dollars, and that corresponds with your own estimate of how much the property is worth. But then you ask me if I have the title, and I have to admit that I don't. I know it's my property and all my neighbors know it too, but I don't have a piece of paper that says the same thing according to the rules of the legal system. Do you think you'll buy? But if you can implement the idea that you have one standard definition of property that you can compare and measure, then you free up an enormous potential.
> 
> FP: But can you really do this overnight?
> 
> HD: You can. But you have to take a political decision first. You have to make a decision to change the status quo, and then you have to put someone in charge of the program who has an interest in making it happen. The Japanese did it from 1945 to 1950. They went from being a feudal country with a per capita GDP below Latin America's to one of the world's most successful economies. Technologically it's not hard. But you have to solve that first problem: You can't change if the enemies of change lead the program.
> 
> FP: Can there be meaningful economic reform in Egypt without addressing the role of the military, which controls enormous swathes of the economy? Surely the generals know that they won't be able to compete in a genuinely open economy. Do you think they can be persuaded to play along? Or can there be no real economic progress without curtailing their role?
> 
> HD: Look, I'm not an Egyptian. That's a delicate question, and it's up for Egyptians to decide. But if it were up to me, right now I'd focus on the poor. I'd use the sorts of legal reforms I've suggested here to boost their opportunities, to empower them. Once you've improved their lives, not to mention your knowledge about the entire economy, then you can move forward in a more informed and dispassionate way. Do what's easy to do. Help Egyptians to become cognizant of the fact that they don't control most of their assets nor can they use them to raise capital and finance. Once they get that, other things become much easier to achieve. Keep your eye on the ball. Don't get sidetracked.
> 
> Let's imagine that all the electronic databases in New York City were wiped out by a virus. You'd have to create a team that goes from building to building, drawing up new titles. In most cases it's pretty easy to determine who owns what. There will be all sorts of corroborating documentation, and in more than 90 percent of the cases that will be quite clear. Here and there you'll find a case - I don't know, maybe Donald Trump got an unfair tax break - where it's a bit controversial. Here's what you do: You deal with the 94 percent really quick. Don't get hung up on the six percent.
> 
> Go to what people really care for first. It doesn't mean that these other things are not issues. Once you yourself have become an owner you'll have a better basis for making decisions. I like the idea of everybody getting their part of the action. Don't distract everyone from getting wiser.
> 
> FP: Are there some aspects of Marx's teachings that are applicable to the current economic situation of Egypt? And if so, why?
> 
> HD: Marx understood what brings certain societies or governments down. It's alienation: this sensation that you're not really part of productive apparatus, that you're marginal. I think that's very important. But what's true in Egypt is that the people who are alienated are not just a proletariat. They're an underclass that feels excluded. It's many of these people who set themselves on fire to protest their situation. They didn't tweet, they didn't use Facebook. They did the burning.
> 
> I was interviewing one of the ones who survived. He ran a small restaurant, but had to endure constant harassment. I said, "You're a businessman whose few rights have been taken away." He said, "Please don't call me that. I'm not a businessman. Just call me poor." It took me a while to understand why he insisted on this. By calling himself poor he got subsidized bread that he could put on the table in his restaurant. He had no idea that legal business tools would have improved his life far more. So what you have in Egypt and the rest of the Middle East is a badly labeled class of political upheaval. It's only by understanding this class and its needs that political leaders will be able to make the necessary reforms.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Not good news, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/egypt-reform-leader-elbaradei-ends-presidential-run/article2302752/


> Egypt reform leader ElBaradei ends presidential run
> 
> SARAH EL DEEB
> 
> CAIRO, Egypt— The Associated Press
> Published Saturday, Jan. 14, 2012
> 
> 
> Egypt's reform leader Mohamed ElBaradei said Saturday he is pulling out of the country's presidential race to protest the military's failure to put the country on the path to democracy.
> 
> The 69-year-old Nobel laureate, who has been seen as a driving force behind the movement that forced former President Hosni Mubarak to step down, said in a statement that the conditions for a fair presidential election are not in place.
> 
> Mr. ElBaradei said the military rulers who took over from Mubarak have governed “as if no revolution took place and no regime has fallen.”
> 
> His decision to pull out of the race just days before the annual anniversary of the Jan. 25 uprising reflects the dilemma in which Egypt's revolutionary movement finds itself — caught between a military that they say is trying to hold on to power, and a newly-elected parliament dominated by the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood which revolutionaries fear will give the generals what they want.
> 
> The military rulers have said they will transfer power after presidential elections, to be held before the end of June. But many expect a fierce struggle over the military's future privileges.
> 
> Mr. ElBaradei echoed fears that the military would not give up power to future elected rulers.
> 
> “I reviewed the best ways to serve the goals of the revolution in light of this reality, and I found none within the official framework, including (running for) the presidency,” he said.
> 
> “I had said from the start that my conscience will not allow me to run for president or any official position unless there is a real democratic framework, that upholds the essence of democracy and not only its form.”
> 
> The Muslim Brotherhood, whose associated political party looks poised to take more than 40 per cent of the seats in the next parliament, has also indicated that it might not field a candidate.
> 
> But the Brotherhood, by dominating parliament, is set to dominate the process of choosing a committee that will be entrusted with the writing of the country's new constitution — a situation that some liberals and youth groups fear will produce a bargain in which the army continues to control the executive power, but allows conservative Islamists to control the writing of the constitution.
> 
> Mr. ElBaradei had strongly advocated that the constitution be written prior to elections. Many revolutionaries say that the first free vote after decades of dictatorship is unlikely to yield a truly representative parliament, and advocated a constitutional committee made up of delegates of political parties, universities, labour unions, and other institutions.
> 
> Mr. ElBaradei admitted the protest movement was in dire straits, but blamed its current malaise on the military's failure to respond to its demands. He urged youth to continue their peaceful protests.
> 
> “The youth are the ones who will rebuild this country ... They are the dream, the hope,” he said.
> 
> Many had criticized Mr. ElBaradei's low profile in the street demonstrations since the Jan. 25 revolution, saying that he failed to seize the momentum to act as the forceful leader of an uprising that began without one, but soon found that it needed a figure to unify and guide it.
> 
> His decision to stand down from elections, and thus — in the revolutionaries' eyes — to not play the army's game, may restore some of his standing.
> 
> Presidential hopeful Ayman Nour supported Mr. ElBaradei's decision, saying it was a “positive shock” to the nation, and a new push for the revolutionary groups to demand more radical changes.
> 
> Activist and blogger Omar elhady wrote on his Twitter account: “ElBaradei's withdrawal proves he is a respectable and devoted man. I had stopped supporting him as president a while back. Now I see him as a national leader above official positions, and feared by presidents.”




I have no brief for (or against) Mr. ElBaradei, but Egypt matters in the region and the region matters to the world so: not good news.


----------



## 57Chevy

Shared with provisions of The Copyright Act


Egypt's Islamists win 75 per cent of parliament
Associated Press, Updated: January 22, 2012 
http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/egypt-s-islamists-win-75-percent-of-parliament-169308&cp

Cairo:  Final results on Saturday showed that Islamist parties won nearly three-quarters of the seats in parliament in Egypt's first elections since the ouster of authoritarian president Hosni Mubarak, according to election officials and political groups.

The Islamist domination of Egypt's parliament has worried liberals and even some conservatives about the religious tone of the new legislature, which will be tasked with forming a committee to write a new constitution. It remains unclear whether the constitution will be written while the generals who took power after Mubarak's fall are still in charge, or rather after presidential elections this summer.

In the vote for the lower house of parliament, a coalition led by the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood won 47 per cent, or 235 seats in the 498-seat parliament. The ultraconservative Al-Nour Party was second with 25 per cent, or 125 seats.


article continues at link...


----------



## a_majoor

Bahrain is often overlooked:

http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/pothot/articles/20120123.aspx



> *Bahrain, Maybe*
> 
> Items About Areas That Could Break Out Into War
> 
> January 22, 2012: Bahrain, a small (population a million or so) Persian Gulf monarchy with a Sunni minority ruling a Shia majority, has been wracked by a year of demonstrations and an increasingly violent crackdown. The Shia are demanding democracy, but this would mean the end of Sunni rule and the Sunni minority are not willing to pay that high a price for peace. The violence increased on both sides for about six months and then declined. At least 40 have died, most of them Shia, and thousands have been injured or arrested. Nearly 400 are being prosecuted. The king set up a commission (in June) to study the protester's demands and offered some concessions that fell far short of real democracy after the commission report was delivered two months ago. While the Sunni government finds all this unrest bothersome and embarrassing, it's not creating enough pressure to force fundamental change. The government sees the protest movement weakening and has been finding more takers for concessions. For example, several thousand Shia lost their jobs last year because of real or suspected participation in the violence. Those men are being given back their jobs, after pledging to stay away from protests.
> 
> The Shia protest leaders do not have time on their side. All the unrest and lost income erodes enthusiasm for the cause. The government has supported the use of Sunni civilian counter-demonstrators. These groups are protected by the police but are not given a free pass when it comes to violence against Shia. But these Sunni mobs are another reminder to the Shia that being a majority is not a decisive advantage. It's not lost on the Bahraini Shia that it took an American army to remove the Sunni minority government in Iraq and that was followed by a Sunni terror campaign (unofficially supported by Sunni nations in the region) that killed over 50,000 Iraqi Shia.
> 
> The Bahrain unrest is causing the government to spend about a billion dollars more than it takes in each year. That is easily covered by borrowing, and Saudi Arabia is the ultimate source of financial and military support. The Saudis have a restive Shia minority and increasing friction between more secular Saudis and the Islamic conservative old guard. Because the Saudi family justifies its rule via its role as protector of the most holy Islamic shrines in Mecca and Medina, Islamic conservatives have a lot of clout. Technically, Shia are heretics, but the Saudis have managed to prevent much public discussion of that in Saudi Arabia. Privately, many Saudi clerics have harsh things to say about Shia and non-Moslems (infidels) in general. Saudi Arabia is actually the source of much of the Islam based hatred and radicalism. The Saudi government keeps it under control at home and blocks the larger private efforts to support Islamic terrorism abroad. But Saudi Arabia continues to supply recruits for Islamic terror groups throughout the world. The Saudis have been under growing pressure (from Islamic and non-Islamic nations) to suppress the many Islamic radical clergy and their followers in the kingdom.  But those radicals have been part of the Arab culture since the founding of Islam in the 6th century. The Saudi leadership considers themselves heroes for controlling their Islamic radicals as much as they have. For example, Saudi radicals would prefer to apply a lot of deadly force (as in mass murder) against Shia protestors. The king draws the line at that, but many other forms of physical and economic coercion are used. Same deal in Bahrain, where the Sunni minority considers the Shia ungrateful and untrustworthy.
> 
> Meanwhile, this is not the first time the Shia Arabs have rebelled against their Sunni rulers in Bahrain, and it won't be the last. The latest bit of violence has involved destroying nearly a hundred mosques and other Shia meeting places. There have been over 3,000 arrests and tighter control of the media, especially the use of the Internet. The Bahraini government blames the violence on Iran, but it appears to be more a matter of the native Shia wanting a better political and economic arrangement. The growing violence by security forces has left over a thousand dead or wounded. Meanwhile, neighboring Arab nations have agreed to provide more economic aid (the 2008 global recession hit Bahrain particularly hard). It appears that the government will be able to outlast this latest Shia outburst. It hasn't been easy.
> 
> By late February last year, about ten percent of the population (nearly 100,000 people and nearly all Shia) was out on the streets on some days. The security forces increased the force used to disperse the crowds. The king then dismissed many senior officials and made other good-will gestures. But the protests continued, and on March 3rd, Sunni civilians began forming groups and fighting with Shia demonstrators.  On March 8th, three protest organizations united to call for a republic (a democracy, and deposing the monarchy and Sunni rule).
> 
> The majority Shia are the poorest and least educated part of the Bahraini population and want a democracy so that they will be in charge. The Sunni minority in Bahrain, and the Sunni rulers in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, will not tolerate this. Bahraini police were eventually unable to handle the growing number of Shia demonstrations, so the foreign reinforcements and recruited mercenaries were used to suppress the unrest. In mid-March, 1,600 police and paramilitary troops arrived from Saudi Arabia and the UAE (United Arab Emirates). Eventually, over 4,000 foreign troops and police came in. On March 15, the king declared a three month state-of-emergency. This makes it easier to arrest and imprison people. The demonstrations continued, and on March 25th the government complained to the UN about the Lebanese Hezbollah groups assisting the Shia in Bahrain.  The state of emergency ended, the king offered inadequate (to Shia radicals) concessions, and the unrest continues.
> 
> Then there's the threat from Iran, at least as far as Sunni Arabs throughout the region are concerned. Over the last few years, Iranian politicians have increasingly mentioned in public statements that Iran considers Bahrain the 14th province of Iran. That's because, well, it isn't called the "Persian" Gulf for nothing (although since all the oil money showed up the Arabs have been trying to popularize the term "Arabian Gulf," with mixed success). There have been ethnic Iranian communities on Bahrain for centuries, along with a Shia Arab majority, and Iran had a formal claim on the island until 1969 (when the claim was dropped, in order to improve relations with Arab neighbors). Iran has always been an empire and still is (only half the population is ethnic Iranian). The way this works you always have a sense of "Greater Iran" which includes, at the least, claims on any nearby areas containing ethnic Iranians or people of similar religion. Hitler used this concept to guide his strategy during World War II.
> 
> Bahrainis (both Sunni and Shia) get very upset when these claims are periodically revived, but the local Shia want an independent Bahrain run by the majority. The Iranian government officially denounces such claims but apparently many Iranians have not forgotten. Arabs are not very happy about that and have responded by pointing out that Iran was Sunni until 500 years ago and were forced to convert, on pain of death, by a Shia emperor (who killed about a million of his subjects in the process). Saudi Arabia is trying, with some success, to organize Arab resistance to Iranian expansionist moves. Iran has responded by encouraging the Shia minorities on the west side of the Gulf to demonstrate their unhappiness with their minority status. Thus the mid-March appearance of Saudi and UAE troops in Bahrain.
> 
> The Iranian claim is based on Iranian control of Bahrain for a few years during the 18th century. After that incident, Bahrain, and most of the other Arab Gulf States, sought protection from Britain. During World War II the U.S. joined with Britain in offering the Arab states of the Persian Gulf protection from Iranian aggression. Iran has always resented this, believing themselves to be the regional superpower and the final arbiter of who is sovereign and who is not.
> 
> Meanwhile, Bahrain should be, on paper, an excellent place to live for all its citizens. It isn't. The Bahrani population is only about a million (lots of illegal foreign workers are not counted, which makes it possible to keep the economy going without a lot of Shia), with oil and gas providing a per-capita income of over $20,000. The oil is running out, so Bahrain has been recasting itself as an Arab playground and financial center, replacing Beirut, Lebanon (which ceased, for two decades, to play that role in the late 1970-early 80s because of a civil war). Bahrain has used a lot of their oil revenue to build infrastructure and encouraged entrepreneurs to create shopping and entertainment facilities superior to anything available in the region. Unlike Saudi Arabia, which is connected to Bahrain by a causeway bridge, Bahrain does not enforce Islamic law on visitors or residents. That's nothing new. Bahrain has, for centuries, been a port of call for ships and sailors. That means booze and women were always available. But now there are also shopping malls, a full range of hotels, brothels, clubs, and bars. Most of the business for the entertainment spots comes from Saudi Arabia, but sailors, especially those from the 40-50 foreign warships that base themselves here, come a close second. A little over half the foreign sailors are American.
> 
> While generally peaceful the country has many unhappy and violence prone citizens. The problems are many. First, there is the monarchy. Although competent many of the educated citizens would prefer a democracy. Then there's the religion angle. The monarchy is Sunni while most of the population is Shia. Moreover, about 20 percent of the population is Christian and Hindu. This offends about ten percent of the population who are Islamic conservatives. Most of these are Shia and consider all the drinking and partying to be sinful and offensive. Meanwhile, the police have a Shia majority that is often stirred up when the Islamic radicals get violent. Then more Shia villagers will take to the streets, and riot, if they feel the police are being too hard on Shia Islamic radicals. This violence rarely gets into the urban, and tourist, areas. But at times the police have to warn visitors going outside the city to avoid certain towns and villages. Because so many of the police are Shia the government cannot always depend on the cops to control large scale rioting by Shia civilians. Thus over the last year a new, entirely Sunni, security force has been created.
> 
> A long range solution to that loyalty problem is being sought elsewhere. Bahrain sent recruiters to Pakistan to hire retired military personnel to staff the Bahraini security forces. The recruiters hired more than a thousand men quickly. There was no shortage of volunteers as the money is good even with the risk of death or injury. Pakistan has been supplying such mercenaries to the Arab Gulf states for centuries. Iran has leaned on Pakistan to ban this recruiting. Pakistan said it would look into it and the recruiting went on. Bahrain has long offered citizenship (and access to generous social welfare program) to Sunni migrants (who fill many civilian and military jobs). The local Shia resent this.
> 
> Standing in the wings are thousands of U.S. military personnel but more as potential targets than as additional security forces. Over the last few years the U.S. Navy has been expanding its naval base in Bahrain. The navy has taken over the Mina Salman port, which transferred all commercial operations to the new Khalifa bin Salman port two years ago. The navy leased 28 hectares (70 acres) of waterfront space at Mina Salman. At the capital the navy has a .4 hectare (one acre) area at the port there and 17 hectares (42 acres) at a nearby base. The new port is large enough to berth the largest U.S. ships (the Nimitz class carriers). The port currently supports over a dozen American warships operating in the area.
> 
> Thus the U.S. Navy has turned a minor naval station in the Persian Gulf into one of its most crucial bases for the war on terrorism. The U.S. moved into Bahrain in 1973, when the British gave it up. The Bahrainis, like most of the other small states along the west coast of the Persian Gulf, like to have some friendly Western power in residence. This provides some insurance against Saudi Arabia to the west and Iran to the east. Before 1918 the British presence helped keep the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire off their backs as well. All the Bahrainis ask is that the foreign troops be quiet and discreet. Until 2002, the Bahraini base was a place where U.S. warships could tie up for repairs or recreation for the crews. About 3,600 American military personnel were stationed there. There was an airbase for navy and air force transports and warplanes. The Bahrainis denied much of this activity, so as to avoid getting pilloried by other Arab states. But Bahrain is a small place (a 655 square kilometer island about 20 kilometers off the Saudi coast), and it's difficult for things like warships and warplanes to go unnoticed.
> 
> In the last eight years, several hundred million dollars has gone into building more permanent facilities. The trailers and other "temporary structures" were replaced by more permanent buildings and facilities. This included a new pier just for military ships. There is a shopping center just for the military and a lot of recreational facilities for the troops. Until 2004, some troops could bring their families. But now it's all military and the brass tries to keep everyone happy on base. It's a one year tour for most, but Bahrain is pretty popular. Living conditions are good, and the local Bahrainis are pretty mellow and friendly by Middle Eastern standards, at least most of the time.


----------



## a_majoor

Following the ideas of Samuel Huntington (the Clash of Civilizations):

http://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/article/?q=MTFhZjcyZmQ1Mjc0NGRmODY2ZGMyMWNmZjE2N2IyNjQ



> *‘Islam Is Islam, And That’s It’*
> The Arab Spring was not hijacked
> 
> BY ANDREW C. McCARTHY
> 
> The tumult indelibly dubbed “the Arab Spring” in the West, by the credulous and the calculating alike, is easier to understand once you grasp two basics. First, the most important fact in the Arab world — as well as in Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other neighboring non-Arab territories — is Islam. It is not poverty, illiteracy, or the lack of modern democratic institutions. These, like anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, and an insular propensity to buy into conspiracy theories featuring infidel villains, are effects of Islam’s regional hegemony and supremacist tendency, not causes of it. One need not be led to that which pervades the air one breathes.
> 
> The second fact is that Islam constitutes a distinct civilization. It is not merely an exotic splash on the gorgeous global mosaic with a few embarrassing cultural eccentricities; it is an entirely different way of looking at the world. We struggle with this truth, which defies our end-of-history smugness. Enthralled by diversity for its own sake, we have lost the capacity to comprehend a civilization whose idea of diversity is coercing diverse peoples into obedience to its evolution-resistant norms.
> 
> So we set about remaking Islam in our own progressive image: the noble, fundamentally tolerant Religion of Peace. We miniaturize the elements of the ummah (the notional global Muslim community) that refuse to go along with the program: They are assigned labels that scream “fringe!” — Islamist, fundamentalist, Salafist, Wahhabist, radical, jihadist, extremist, militant, or, of course, “conservative” Muslims adhering to “political Islam.”
> 
> We consequently pretend that Muslims who accurately invoke Islamic scripture in the course of forcibly imposing the dictates of classical sharia — the Islamic legal and political system — are engaged in “anti-Islamic activity,” as Britain’s former home secretary Jacqui Smith memorably put it. When the ongoing Islamization campaign is advanced by violence, as inevitably happens, we absurdly insist that this aggression cannot have been ideologically driven, that surely some American policy or Israeli act of self-defense is to blame, as if these could possibly provide rationales for the murderous jihad waged by Boko Haram Muslims against Nigerian Christians and by Egyptian Muslims against the Copts, the persecution of the Ahmadi sect by Indonesian and Pakistani Muslims, or the internecine killing in Iraq of Sunnis by Shiites and vice versa — a tradition nearly as old as Islam itself — which has been predictably renewed upon the recent departure of American troops.
> 
> The main lesson of the Arab Spring ought to be that this remaking of Islam has happened only in our own minds, for our own consumption. The Muslims of the Middle East take no note of our reimagining of Islam, being, in the main, either hostile toward or oblivious to Western overtures. Muslims do not measure themselves against Western perceptions, although the shrewdest among them take note of our eagerly accommodating attitude when determining what tactics will best advance the cause.
> 
> That cause is nothing less than Islamic dominance.
> 
> ‘The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism,” wrote Samuel Huntington. “It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture.” Not convinced merely in the passive sense of assuming that they will triumph in the end, Muslim leaders are galvanized by what they take to be a divinely ordained mission of proselytism — and proselytism not limited to spiritual principles, but encompassing an all-purpose societal code prescribing rules for everything from warfare and finance to social interaction and personal hygiene. Historian Andrew Bostom notes that in the World War I era, even as the Ottoman Empire collapsed and Ataturk symbolically extinguished the caliphate, C. Snouck Hurgronje, then the West’s leading scholar of Islam, marveled that Muslims remained broadly confident in what he called the “idea of universal conquest.” In Islam’s darkest hour, this conviction remained “a central point of union against the unfaithful.” It looms more powerful in today’s Islamic ascendancy.
> 
> Of course, conventional wisdom in the West holds that the Arab Spring spontaneously combusted when Mohamed Bouazizi, a fruit vendor, set himself ablaze outside the offices of the Tunisian klepto-cops who had seized his wares. This suicide protest, the story goes, ignited a sweeping revolt against the corruption and caprices of Arab despots. One by one, the dominos began to fall: Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya — with rumblings in Saudi Arabia and Jordan as well as teetering Syria and rickety Iran. We are to believe that the mass uprising is an unmistakable manifestation of the “desire for freedom” that, according to Pres. George W. Bush, “resides in every human heart.”
> 
> That proclamation came in the heady days of 2004, when the democracy project was still a Panglossian dream, not the Pandora’s box it proved to be as Islamic parties began to win elections. Like its successor, the Bush administration discouraged all inquiry into Islamic doctrine by anyone seeking to understand Muslim enmity, indulging the fiction that there is something we can do to change it. Inexorably, this has fed President Obama’s preferred fiction — that we must have done something to deserve it — as well as the current administration’s strident objection to uttering the word “Islam” for any purpose other than hagiography. In this self-imposed ignorance, most Americans still do not know that hurriya, Arabic for “freedom,” connotes “perfect slavery” or absolute submission to Allah, very nearly the opposite of the Western concept. Even if we grant for argument’s sake the dubious proposition that all people crave freedom, Islam and the West have never agreed about what freedom means.
> 
> The first count of contemporary Muslims’ indictment of Middle Eastern dictators is not that they have denied individual liberty, but that they have repressed Islam. This is not to say that other grievances are irrelevant. Muslims have indeed been outraged by the manner in which their Arafats, Mubaraks, Qaddafis, and Saddams looted the treasuries while the masses lived in squalor. But the agglomerations of wealth and other regime hypocrisies are framed for the masses more as sins against Allah’s law than as the inevitable corruptions of absolute power. The most influential figures and institutions in Islamic societies are those revered for their mastery of Islamic law and jurisprudence — such authorities as top Muslim Brotherhood jurist Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Cairo’s al-Azhar University, the seat of Sunni learning for over a millennium. In places where Islam is the central fact of life, even Muslims who privately dismiss sharia take pains to honor it publicly. Even regimes that rule by whim nod to sharia as the backbone of their legal systems, lace their rhetoric with scriptural allusions, and seek to rationalize their actions as Islamically appropriate.
> 
> If you understand this, you understand why Western beliefs about the Arab Spring — and the Western conceit that the death of one tyranny must herald the birth of liberty — have always been a delusion. There are real democrats, authentically moderate Muslims, and non-Muslims in places such as Egypt and Yemen who long for freedom in the Western sense; but the stubborn fact is that they make up a strikingly small fraction of the population: about 20 percent, a far cry from the Western narrative that posits a sea of Muslim moderates punctuated by the rare radical atoll.
> 
> The Muslim Brotherhood is the ummah’s most important organization, unabashedly proclaiming for nearly 90 years that “the Koran is our law and jihad is our way.” Hamas, a terrorist organization, is its Palestinian branch, and leading Brotherhood figures do little to disguise their abhorrence of Israel and Western culture. Thus, when spring fever gripped Tahrir Square, the Obama administration, European governments, and the Western media tirelessly repeated the mantra that the Brothers had been relegated to the sidelines. Time had purportedly passed the Islamists by, just as it was depositing Mubarak in the rear-view mirror. Surely the Tahrir throngs wanted self-determination, not sharia. Never you mind the fanatical chants of Allahu akbar! as the dictator fell. Never mind that Sheikh Qaradawi was promptly ushered into the square to deliver a fiery Friday sermon to a congregation of nearly a million Egyptians.
> 
> With a transitional military government in place and openly solicitous of the Brotherhood, there occurred the most telling, most tellingly underreported, and most willfully misreported story of the Arab Spring: a national referendum to determine the scheduling of elections that would select a new parliament and president, with a new constitution to follow. It sounds dry, but it was crucial. The most organized and disciplined factions in Egyptian life are the Brotherhood and self-proclaimed Muslim groups even more impatient for Islamization, collectively identified by the media as “Salafists” even though this term does not actually distinguish them from the Brothers, whose founder (Hassan al-Banna) was a leading Salafist thinker. By contrast, secular democratic reformers are in their infancy. Elections on a short schedule would obviously favor the former; the latter need time to take root and grow.
> 
> Egypt being Egypt, the election campaign was waged with the rhetoric of religious and cultural solidarity. A vote against a rapid transition was depicted as a vote “against Islam” and in favor of the dreaded Western hands said to be guiding the Christians and secularists. The vote was the perfect test of the Arab Spring narrative.
> 
> Four-to-one: That’s how it went. The democrats were wiped out by the Muslim parties, 78 percent to 22 percent. While Western officials dismissed the vote as involving scheduling arcana, it foretold everything that has followed: the electoral romp in the parliamentary elections, a multi-stage affair in which the Brotherhood and the Salafists are inching close to three-fourths control of the legislature; the ongoing pogrom against the Copts; and the increasing calls for renunciation of the Camp David Accords, which have kept the peace with Israel for more than 30 years.
> 
> Four-to-one actually proves to be a reliable ratio in examining Islamic developments. In a 2007 poll conducted by World Public Opinion in conjunction with the University of Maryland, 74 percent of Egyptians favored strict application of sharia in Muslim countries. It was 76 percent in Morocco, 79 percent in Pakistan, and 53 percent in moderate Indonesia. Before American forces vacated Iraq, roughly three-quarters of the people they had liberated regarded them as legitimate jihad targets, and, given the opportunity to vote, Iraqis installed Islamist parties who promised to hasten the end of American “occupation.” Three out of four Palestinians deny Israel’s right to exist. Even in our own country, a recently completed survey found that 80 percent of American mosques promote literature that endorses violent jihad, and that these same mosques counsel rigorous sharia compliance.
> 
> The Arab Spring is an unshackling of Islam, not an outbreak of fervor for freedom in the Western sense. Turkey’s third-term prime minister Recep Erdogan, a staunch Brotherhood ally who rejects the notion that there is a “moderate Islam” (“Islam is Islam, and that’s it,” he says), once declared that “democracy is a train where you can get off when you reach your destination.” The destination for Muslim supremacists is the implementation of sharia — the foundation of any Islamized society, and, eventually, of the reestablished caliphate.
> 
> Rachid Ghannouchi is swarmed by supporters in Tunis.
> Nicolas Fauque/abacausa.com/Newscom
> 
> The duration of the ride depends on the peculiar circumstances of each society. Erdogan’s Turkey has become the model for Islamist gradualism in more challenging environments: Slowly but steadily bend the nation into sharia compliance while denying any intent to do so and singing the obligatory paeans to democracy. Erdogan came to this formula after no shortage of stumbles — it is now rare to hear such outbursts as “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets, and the faithful our soldiers,” the sort of thing he used to say in the late Nineties when he was imprisoned for sedition against Ataturk’s secular order. His banned Welfare party eventually reemerged as the new and democracy-ready AKP, the Justice and Development party. Ever since a quirk in Turkish electoral law put these Islamists in power in 2002, Erdogan has cautiously but demonstrably eroded the secular framework Ataturk and his followers spent 80 years building, returning this ostensible NATO ally to the Islamist camp, shifting it from growing friendship to open hostility toward Israel, co-opting the military that was Ataturk’s bulwark against Islamization, and salting the country’s major institutions with Islamic supremacists.
> 
> The Turkish model will be the ticket for Brotherhood parties that have just prevailed in Tunisian and Moroccan elections. In Tunisia, Rachid Ghannouchi, a cagey Islamist of the Erdogan stripe, heads the Ennahda party, convincingly elected in October to control the legislature that will replace ousted ruler Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. In Morocco, an Islamist party whose namesake is the AKP won the fall elections, but further Islamization is apt to be slower. Far from being driven from power, King Mohammed VI remains popular, having balanced his affinity for the West with deference to sharia norms. Moroccan Islamists are making significant inroads, though, as are their neighbors to the east. Algerian Islamists are poised to accede to power this spring after being thwarted by a military coup that blocked what would have been their certain electoral success in 1991.
> 
> Egypt, by contrast, will go quickly. There, the most salient development is not the weakness of secular democrats but the impressive electoral strength of the Salafists. Their numbers are competitive with those of the better-known Brothers, and they will tug their rivals in a more aggressively Islamist direction. Vainly, the West hoped that the country’s American-trained and -equipped armed forces would serve as a brake. But the Egyptian military, from which several top al-Qaeda operatives have hailed, is a reflection of Egyptian society, especially as one descends to the conscripts of lower rank. The undeniable trend in Egyptian society is toward Islam. That trend is more blatant only in such basket cases as Libya, where each day brings new evidence that today’s governing “rebels” include yesterday’s al-Qaeda jihadists, and in Yemen, the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden, where even the New York Times concedes al-Qaeda’s strength.
> 
> Led by the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic parties have become expert at presenting themselves as moderates and telling the West what it wants to hear while they gradually ensnare societies in the sharia web, as slowly or quickly as conditions on the ground permit. They know that when the West says “democracy,” it means popular elections, not Western democratic culture. They know the West has so glorified these elections that the victors can steal them (Iran), refuse to relinquish power when later they lose (Iraq), or decline to hold further elections (Gaza) without forfeiting their legitimacy. They know that seizing the mantle of “democracy” casts Islamists as the West’s heroes in the dramas still unfolding in Egypt, Libya, and Syria. They know that the Obama administration and the European Union have deluded themselves into believing that Islamists will be tamed by the responsibilities of governance. Once in power, they are sure to make virulent anti-Americanism their official policy and to contribute materially to the pan-Islamic goal of destroying Israel.
> 
> We should not be under any illusions about why things are shaking out this way. The Arab Spring has not been hijacked any more than Islam was hijacked by the suicide terrorists of 9/11. Islam is ascendant because that is the way Muslims of the Middle East want it.
> 
> Mr. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.


----------



## a_majoor

Interesting, if true. Even if it is not true, it would stil make an astounding piece of propaganda and derail the narrative the Islamic radicals are trying to impliment:

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/02/12/bin-laden-gave-up-on-jihad/



> *Bin Laden Gave Up on Jihad*
> 
> The big news today: according to family members, by the end of his life Osama bin Laden was telling his family to “Go to Europe and America and get a good education.”
> 
> What? The great Islamic umma, center of global culture and light of the world has no universities where the children of the Great Jihadi can get a decent education?  The clueless, hell-bound infidels of Europe and America make the Sons of the True Faith look incompetent and backward on the vital matter of educating the young?  It isn’t enough to sit on a dirt floor in Pakistan memorizing the Koran and learning how to wear a suicide bomb vest?
> 
> But what about the obligation to take up the cause of jihad and violence and crush the evil doers in the West?
> Never mind about all that, Osama supposedly told his children and grandchildren.  “Do not follow me down the road to jihad,” he said.  “You have to study and live in peace and don’t do what I am doing or what I have done.”
> 
> All those Salafi ideologues promoting the idea of jihad against the West as a sacred obligation compulsory on all Muslims are presumably choking on their beards as they read these words.  The homosexual-hangers and the adultress-stoners are having a bad morning. No doubt they will tell themselves that this story is yet another lie from the cynical west, but they will have to wrap themselves ever more tightly in the delusions and wishful thinking that blinker their thoughts — and undermine their political effectiveness.
> 
> Beside welcoming evidence, however questionable, that a terrible sinner was exploring the path of repentance however tentatively, Via Meadia gloats. Bin Laden’s path was a dead end in more ways than one; any sign that he knew how futile his bloody deeds were and that his effort to topple American power had failed is welcome.
> 
> The information, given in an interview to the London Times by a sister of one of bin Laden’s wives, raises many questions.  Was bin Laden telling his own kids to avoid jihad while still trying to recruit misguided young people to the cause around the world?  Or, downloading porn in Abbotabad and reflecting on the consequences of his deeds, had bin Laden come to see the futility of his course? Is the sister-in-law saying whatever she thinks will give her relatives a brighter future now that bin Laden is dead and his movement is shattered?
> 
> One doesn’t know, and perhaps we never will for sure. But it looks increasingly as if America not only killed bin Laden: we are destroying his dream.
> His kids should have no trouble following his advice to study in America, by the way.  Just think of the essays they will be able to write on their college applications.


----------



## a_majoor

Oh, good. Nuclear weapons delivered in flower vans:

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-11/07/pakistan-nukes-delivery-vans?utm_source=Outbrain&utm_medium=CPC&utm_campaign=Outbrain%2BTrial



> *Pakistan carts its nukes around in delivery vans*
> By Spencer Ackerman
> 07 November 11
> 
> Pakistan is taking nuclear paranoia to a horrifying new low. And it's making the world a vastly more dangerous place in the process.
> 
> Freaked out about the insecurity of its nuclear arsenal, the Pakistani military's Strategic Plans Division has begun carting the nukes around in clandestine ways. That might make some sense on the surface: no military wants to let others know exactly where its most powerful weapons are at any given moment. But Pakistan is going to an extreme.
> 
> The nukes travel "in civilian-style vehicles without noticeable defenses, in the regular flow of traffic", according to a blockbuster story on the US-Pakistan relationship in The Atlantic. Marc Ambinder and Jeffrey Goldberg write that tactical nuclear weapons travel down the streets in "vans with a modest security profile." Somewhere on a highway around, say, Karachi, is the world's most dangerous 1-800-FLOWERS truck.
> 
> Tom Clancy should be suing Pakistani generals for ripping off the basic idea behind The Sum Of All Fears. You'll recall that Pakistan is home to al-Qaida, a particularly fearsome version of the Taliban, the leadership of the old-school Taliban, its friends in the Haqqani Network and a host of anti-Indian terrorist groups that the Pakistani intelligence service employ as proxies. Sometimes the Pakistani military helps these terrorist and insurgent groups attack US troops in Afghanistan. And any one of these groups would love a chance to wield a nuclear weapon.
> 
> Except that Pakistan isn't trying to safeguard its nukes from them. It's trying to safeguard its nukes from us. The Navy SEAL raid in Abbottabad that killed Osama bin Laden has made important Pakistani generals think that the US military's next target is Pakistani nukes. So off the vans go, along what Ambinder and Goldberg term "congested and dangerous roads," trying to throw off the scent of the US, with little more than hope to protect them from an adventurous highwayman.
> 
> The irony is that the US isn't planning to steal Pakistan's nukes -- but Pakistan's cavalier attitude toward nuclear security is making the US think twice about whether it should revise some worst-case-scenario contingency planning.
> 
> Should any of the nukes go missing, an "Abbottabad redux" would likely occur, Ambinder and Goldberg report. An anonymous military official tells the pair that the Joint Special Operations Command "has units and aircraft and parachutes on alert in the region for nuclear issues, and regularly inserts units and equipment for prep." Seizing Pakistani nukes during or after a military coup is a much harder mission, but the reporters consider it doable. "_t's wise for the US to try to design a plan for seizing Pakistan's nuclear weapons in a low-risk manner," Goldberg and Ambinder advise, placing a lot of rhetorical freight on the words "low-risk."
> 
> That is, if the US actually knows where the nukes are. "Anyone who tells you that they know where all of Pakistan's nukes are is lying to you," ex-national security adviser Jim Jones allegedly said. The Econolines of Doom make that knowledge even more uncertain.
> 
> All of which points to the self-reinforcing downward spiral of the US-Pakistan relationship. US cash continues to go into the Pakistanis' pockets, and from there into the hands of anti-American terrorists. There is, for many justified reasons, absolutely no trust between either side's security services and militaries. There is also no alternative to the toxic relationship that anyone cited in the Atlantic piece is willing to contemplate. (When I recently suggested that the US cut off aid and continue the drone war until Pakistan reins in terror groups, I got blasted on Twitter as a warmonger.) "There is no escaping this vexed relationship," Ambinder and Goldberg conclude, reflecting the conventional wisdom in Washington and Islamabad.
> 
> Which sinks the US into the nadir of absurdity. It funds a terrorist-sponsoring state while conducting a massive undeclared war on part of that state's territory. It wants that state's assistance to end the Afghanistan war while that state's soldiers help insurgents wage it. And seeking a world without nuclear weapons while its "Major non-NATO ally" drastically increases the probability that terrorists will acquire a the most dangerous weapon of all.
> _


----------



## cupper

Good thing Fed-Ex doesn't allow shipment of nuclear materials. ;D


----------



## GAP

In major reversal, Muslim Brotherhood will vie for Egypt's presidency

The Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group, could end up in control of all three branches of Egypt's new government. 
By Kristen Chick, Correspondent / April 1, 2012 
Article Link

The Muslim Brotherhood has nominated its deputy leader as a candidate in Egypt’s presidential elections, in a reversal that upends the race for Egypt’s first post-revolution leader and could leave the Islamist group in control of all branches of Egypt’s new government.

The decision to field Khairat El Shater, a wealthy businessman who has served mostly behind the scenes, came after nearly a year in which the Muslim Brotherhood said it would not contest the presidential elections so as not to provoke fear of Islamic rule in Egypt. But in a press conference Saturday night at their new headquarters, Brotherhood leaders said they found it necessary to change course because the transition to democracy is under threat, and the group was stymied in parliament.

"We have chosen the path of the presidency not because we are greedy for power but because we have a majority in parliament which is unable to fulfill its duties," said Mohamed Morsy, head of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party. Mahmoud Hussein, the group’s secretary general, cited attempts to “abort the revolution.”

Think you know the Middle East? Take our geography quiz. 

The move is the Brotherhood’s trump card in a recently escalating battle for power with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), the military council currently ruling Egypt, say analysts. But it could cause a backlash, not only at home but also abroad, among Western governments wary of an Islamist regime in Egypt. The risky step from the conservative movement is an indication of the difficult political realities confronting the Brotherhood as it attempts to transition from a repressed opposition group to a majority power.

“This is the last-mile fight,” says Khalil Al Anani, an expert on Islamist politics at Durham University who is currently in Egypt. “After [the Brotherhood] realized that the parliament is powerless, they decided to fight until the last point that they can reach to guarantee some kind of power over the new political system…. This is a serious conflict over power with the military.”
Still seeking clout

The Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, won nearly 50 percent of the seats in parliament in recent elections. But they have since found those seats gave them less clout than they had anticipated. The military refused repeated Brotherhood demands that SCAF sack the military-appointed cabinet and allow the parliamentary majority to form a government.

This lack of power, despite what was perceived as a strong victory in the elections, was embarrassing and damaging to their credibility, says Omar Ashour, an expert on Islamist movements who is a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center. “They're not going to accept being marginalized with such a popular mandate,” he says.

At the same time, the movement had few good choices when considering outside presidential candidates to back. They could not endorse any of the handful of Islamist candidates already in the race for various reasons, but risked revolt if they backed a non-Islamist candidate. Not backing a candidate was not an option, says Dr. Anani, because the leadership was afraid a president elected without their support might eventually turn on them. They deliberated mindful of 1954, when Gamal Abdel Nasser turned on the organization, officially banning it and imprisoning thousands of members. The SCAF invoked that history in a recent statement, as its confrontation with the Brotherhood heightened.
More on link


----------



## a_majoor

Here is a good news story for a change; an Islamic state which embraces Rule of Law and development, and one that should serve as a beacon of hope for Islamic nations everywhere and the world. The key is cultural; Somaliland is building from the leagacy of British Colonial rule and technically could be included in the Anglosphere group of nations:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/05/25/lawrence-solomon-capitalist-haven/



> *Lawrence Solomon: Capitalist haven*
> 
> Lawrence Solomon  May 25, 2012 – 8:23 PM ET | Last Updated: May 25, 2012 8:59 PM ET
> 
> British traditions boost the de facto state of Somaliland
> 
> Second in a series. Next: Cutting Greater Somalia down to size
> 
> It’s the only African country that doesn’t rely on foreign aid from the world’s rich governments. It’s a Muslim country in Africa that has had a functioning democracy for two decades. It’s an oasis of relative peace in one of the most vicious regions of the world, with a growing free-market economy, low inflation and a currency that has been appreciating against the U.S. dollar.
> 
> This anomaly of a country, Somaliland, is unrecognized by any other country in the world, even though the World Bank’s chief economist for Africa touts it as a “success story” and the World Bank itself doesn’t formally recognize it. Somaliland’s story is all the more astonishing given that it is officially part of Somalia, a failed state best known for its piracy at sea and al-Shabaab terrorists on land, and given that it declared independence in 1991 after surviving a brutal repression by Somalia’s Marxist dictator that dispersed much of its population to the U.K., Canada and other safe havens.
> 
> While much of Somalia descended into an ungovernable anarchy over the past two decades, Somaliland miraculously found its feet. The miracle lay largely in the country’s good fortune to have been in British hands over most of the previous century, and in its good fortune to be deprived of foreign aid. Without foreign aid lavished on leaders in the central government and with a decentralized British colonial parliament, Somaliland’s local governments exercised meaningful rule, citizens were accustomed to local rule, and citizens had no choice but to be self-­reliant.
> 
> In the rest of Somalia, where foreign aid propped up a corrupt central government without benefiting the populace at large, self-reliance meant banditry on the roads and piracy at sea. In foreign-aid-bereft Somaliland, such lawlessness would have killed the country’s best hope for survival — exports from the deep-sea port of Berbera that the British left behind, coupled with roads able to carry to port local goods as well as goods from neighbouring landlocked Ethiopia.
> 
> The local clan-based governments calculated they would earn less by plundering the few merchants willing to risk the trip to port than by ensuring safe passage along the road system and sharing in growing port revenues. It was an enlightened business decision. Livestock exports of goats, sheep, cattle and camels, which account for some 60% of Somaliland’s total exports and GDP, has soared, almost tripling in the last five years alone, while Ethiopia — the dominant economy in the region — increasingly ships through Somaliland. The once-underutilized port has already undergone a major upgrade and, to keep up with the needs of its burgeoning trade, Somaliland has announced it will privatize the port.
> Advertisement
> 
> Because Somaliland is unrecognized, credit has been hard to come by, the country has largely needed to rely on cash transactions, and foreign investment has been all but non-existent. Until now.
> 
> Although most of the world’s governments, fearful of encouraging other secessionist movements, are in solidarity with the central government of Somalia against Somaliland, the world’s capitalists are taking a second look. Somaliland may not have the official imprimatur of the United Nations or the backing of a major central bank, some investors ­reason, but it looks a lot more secure than a Greece, an Egypt, or many other countries blessed by officialdom.
> 
> This week, Coca-Cola opened a US$15-million bottling plant in Somaliland, the country’s first major industrial investment since independence. Others, including Toyota and foreign airlines, have announced plans to invest. And oil companies, too, are expressing interest — prior to the civil war, several oil majors were exploring in Somaliland.
> 
> But the biggest breakthrough for Somaliland may come from a sympathetic Britain, its former colonial master and present home to the world’s largest Somali Diaspora community. In a 21st-century twist on its colonial trading corporations such as the Hudson’s Bay Co. and the East India Co., the British parliament this year established the Somaliland Development Corp. as an end-run around countries that deny Somaliland the recognition, and investment, it deserves.
> 
> “The point of the corporation is to facilitate international investment in Somaliland and economic interaction for the benefit of the Somaliland people,” explained British MP Alun Michael in the House of Parliament. “As an unrecognized state, it is isolated. Despite its extraordinary achievements in stability and democracy, international donors cannot deal directly with its government, and foreign investors face uncertainty about whether contracts — the basis of secure business — can be enforced. The point of the corporation is to establish an entity to circumvent that problem.”
> 
> The Somaliland Development Corp. will be, in effect, an outsourced Somaliland ministry that will allow foreign investors to help Somaliland develop under the laws of the U.K. Fittingly, the U.K. is helping to advance the development of its former colony into a viable democratic state. The rest of what is official Somalia — a region that was Italian Somaliland, including the autonomous Puntland region, has had no such luck, not least because it lacked the British tradition of democracy. But the Somalis in the former Italian Somaliland also have a path to peace, as we shall see next week.
> 
> Financial Post
> LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com
> Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and a founder of Probe International.
> 
> For some historical background on the Somaliland success story, click here. For economic and trade data from the Somaliland Ministry of National Planning and Development, click here.


----------



## 57Chevy

From CBC News and shared with provisions of The Copyright Act


Egypt's ex-spy chief Omar Suleiman dies in U.S.
The Associated Press 20 Jul 2012
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/07/20/obit-suleiman-egypt-spy-chief.html

Democracy activists denounced plans for a military funeral honouring Omar Suleiman, Egypt's former spy chief and the closest lieutenant of Hosni Mubarak — a key pillar of the ousted president's authoritarian regime and holder of so many secrets that he was known as "the black box."

Suleiman, 76, died Thursday in a U.S. hospital. The shadowy statesman was considered Mubarak's most trusted man, handing the regime's most sensitive issues like relations with the U.S. and Israel and the fierce battle against Islamists. Suleiman's spy agency was responsible for tracking and suppressing opposition groups at home.

Tall, thin and often shown in dark sunglasses, Suleiman was also Egypt's point man in co-operation with the United States against terrorism and was involved in the post 9/11 rendition program in which terror suspects snatched by the Americans were shipped to Egypt and other countries for interrogation, sometimes involving torture.

In one case in 2002, the U.S. asked Suleiman for DNA material from the family of Ayman el-Zawahri, the Egyptian militant who at the time was al-Qaeda's deputy leader and now heads the group.

"No problem, we'll get his brother, cut off his arm and send it over," Suleiman replied.

The Americans said just a blood sample would suffice, according to the account by author Ron Suskind in his book on the rendition program, The One Percent Doctrine.

During the 18-day uprising last year, Suleiman was appointed vice-president in a last-gasp attempt by Mubarak to save his political life as hundreds of thousands of Egyptians took to the streets demanding his ouster. But the desperate measures, including talks between Suleiman and the formerly outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, were unable to stave off Mubarak's overthrow.

In the end, it was an ashen-faced Suleiman who appeared on state TV on Feb. 11, 2011, and read a terse announcement of Mubarak's resignation and the military's seizure of power.

Suleiman's sudden death came weeks after a member of his top nemesis, the Muslim Brotherhood, succeeded Mubarak as president. The intelligence agency Suleiman headed for 20 years was central to the Mubarak regime's repression of the Islamist group.

Suleiman called 'an international butcher'

Now President Mohammed Morsi faces new woes from Suleiman — over his funeral.

Presidential spokesman Yasser Ali told the state news agency that Suleiman, who was a general in the military, should have a military funeral. That brought quick denunciations from activists against honouring a figure whom they consider stained by his regime role and who should have faced trial.

"Omar Suleiman is an international butcher," said rights lawyer Malik Adly. "All the time he was the pampered man of the regime, the old and the new. Even the Brotherhood is holding a funeral for him. Why? All the time he was never questioned despite so many lawsuits against him."

Activists on social networking sites Twitter and Facebook launched a campaign of "no to military funeral to Omar Suleiman." Adly said they planned a symbolic funeral for the revolution's "martyrs" would be held the same day as Suleiman's.

The Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, where Suleiman had been treated since Monday, said in a statement he died of "complications from amyloidosis, a disease affecting the heart, kidneys and other organs."

Egypt's state news agency MENA said earlier that Suleiman had suffered from lung and heart problems for months, and his health condition had sharply deteriorated over the past three weeks. It said his three daughters will accompany the body to be buried in Egypt on Saturday.

Suleiman largely vanished from sight after Mubarak's fall. But he re-emerged in April in a surprise but short-lived attempt to join the race for president. He said he was running to prevent the Muslim Brotherhood from coming to power, warning that it would turn Egypt into a religious state.

But he was disqualified on technical grounds along with two Islamist candidates, including the Brotherhood's initial contender.

Testified in Mubarak trial

He also testified in the trial of his former boss, Mubarak, who was eventually sentenced to life in prison for failing to stop the killing of protesters during the uprising. Suleiman denied Mubarak issued orders to shoot at protesters, but said the president did learn about the killings when he ordered the formation of an investigative committee. Mubarak supporters blame that testimony for bringing the conviction.

But rights activists insist Suleiman should have been tried as well, for the protester deaths and for activities during Mubarak's rule. Adly said Suleiman hid information that could have convicted Mubarak for directly ordering the killings.

"Suleiman himself is deeply involved. But no one brought him to justice, why? This is the thing we never know," he said.

Suleiman was born in Qena in southern Egypt and graduated from the military academy as an infantry officer in 1955. He rose through the ranks and became deputy head of military intelligence in 1987. He became military intelligence chief in 1991 during the Gulf War, when Egyptians fought alongside other Arab forces in the U.S.-led coalition that drove Saddam Hussein's military out of Kuwait.

He indirectly saved his boss's life when he advised Mubarak to take an armored Mercedes with him on a state visit to Ethiopia in 1995. Islamic militants there sprayed his convoy with gunfire as he drove from the airport after arrival, but Mubarak was unscratched.

But his name only became known to the public in the early 2000s when Mubarak began moving the most vital issues of state to Suleiman, including relations in the U.S. and Israel and dealings with the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.

Hossam Sweilam, a former general who has known Suleiman since they were in the military academy together, said Suleiman's lack of political ambition helped him keep his job so long in a paranoid regime.

"There was no intelligence chief who survived that long but Suleiman," he said. Mubarak was known to fear and get rid of politicians who rise in prominence.

Still, his power made some view him as a potential successor to Mubarak. That created silent tension between Suleiman and the president's younger son, Gamal, who was seen as being groomed by his father as a successor.


----------



## GAP

The Arab Spring comes to Saudi Arabia
Article Link
Peter Fragiskatos, Special to National Post | Aug 24, 2012 

Of all the changes brought on by the Arab Spring, it is the ongoing unrest in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province – home to a large Shiite minority, and holding 90% of the country’s oil reserves – that could prove to be the most important in the long run.

When the Prophet Muhammad died in 632, tensions over who should lead the Islamic community – by that time covering almost the entirety of the Arabian Peninsula – emerged and persisted. On the one hand were those who favoured a succession that promoted the most qualified individual on the basis of wisdom, good conduct, devoutness and competence. This group came to be known as the Sunnis. The Shiites, for their part, believed that authority could only be exercised by members of the Prophet’s family. Unlike the Sunnis, they also saw the blood relatives of Muhammad as divinely inspired and infallible.

Today, most of the world’s Muslims are Sunni (around 85%) but Shiites are the majority in Iran, Iraq and Bahrain; and sizable populations live in Lebanon, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, Yemen and, perhaps most significantly, Saudi Arabia.

Estimated to number between 1.5- and 2-million people, the Shiites in Saudi Arabia make up 10% of the national population, and have experienced widespread discrimination since the founding of the Saudi Kingdom in 1932. As far as the religious realm is concerned, this has included bans on practicing their faith in public, restrictions on the building of mosques, and attacks on centres of learning and other gathering places.

At the political level, Shiites have been prevented from serving as cabinet ministers, and faced exclusion from the armed forces and police while the Eastern Province has been ruled over by an administration dominated by Sunni Muslims (who form the 90% majority in Saudi Arabia). Socially, they are viewed as heretics by much of the population, an attitude that has been encouraged by the ultraconservative clerics belonging to the Wahhabi branch of Sunni Islam that dominates in Saudi Arabia.

Inspired by the Arab Spring, Saudi Shiite demonstrators have become increasingly vocal in demanding an end to their marginalized position. Sporadic protests that began peacefully in February 2011 have now turned violent, most recently in early August in the eastern city of Qatif after demonstrators clashed with police.

Although only around a dozen have been killed – relatively low by the standards of the violence that took place in Egypt and Libya, not to mention the ongoing massacres in Syria – the conflict could escalate, posing serious challenges for the Saudi authorities and the world economy.
More on link


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## a_majoor

Israel executes a brilliant turning of the tables. If they work this meme long and hard enough to penetrate public awareness it will collapse a lot of the popular propaganda from the Palestinian side:

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/09/21/turnabout-fair-play-israel-demands-restitution-of-jewish-land-confiscated-by-arabs/



> *Turnabout Fair Play: Israel Demands Restitution of Jewish Land Confiscated by Arabs*
> 
> by
> ROGER L SIMON
> Bio
> September 21, 2012 - 5:48 pm
> 
> In a startling and revelatory initiative at the United Nations, Deputy Israeli FM Danny Ayalon (interviewed by PJTV in 2011 here) has asked for the restitution of Jewish land confiscated by Arabs. It is five times the state of Israel.
> 
> Israel has launched a new and controversial diplomatic initiative aimed at placing the plight of Jews in Arab countries on an equal footing with that of Palestinian refugees, insisting that the resolution of both problems is a prerequisite to Middle East peace.
> 
> Speaking at special conference convened on Friday at UN headquarters in New York, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said “We will not arrive at peace without solving the refugee problem – but that includes the Jewish refugees. Justice does not lie on just one side and equal measures must be applied to both.”
> 
> 
> The first-of-its-kind conference, which was convened over the objections of Arab representatives to the UN, attracted several hundred participants, including Israeli diplomats, senior Jewish organizational leaders, New York State and city politicians and a modest number of other countries’ ambassadors to the UN (8) as well as lower ranking representatives (17). The conference heard Israeli and Jewish officials – as well as eyewitness accounts by Jews whose families had been persecuted and expelled from Arab countries.
> 
> Delivering an impassioned speech, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor lambasted Arab leaders who “launched a war of terror, incitement, and expulsion to decimate and destroy their Jewish communities. Their effort was systematic. It was deliberate. It was planned.”
> 
> Prosor cited Arab statements inciting to violence as well as official decrees depriving them of their rights. He said that “billions of dollars of their property and assets were seized” and that “the total area of land confiscated from Jews in Arab countries amounts to nearly 40,000 square miles. That is five times the size of Israel.”
> 
> Ha’aretz has the rest – and it’s interesting. So far, no response from our State Department. But you knew that.


----------



## a_majoor

This could go into the "Visiting the way stations of the new Long War" thread as wel, since it shows many of the fault lines that we may need to watch as well. The future regional conflict predicted by ERC amy well follow the outlines described here. Graphs can be seen by following the link:

http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NJ10Ak02.html



> *The horizon collapses in the Middle East*
> By Spengler
> 
> "In the long run we are all dead," said John Maynard Keynes. To which the pertinent response is: "What do you mean, 'we'?" For most countries, the long run is a point on the horizon that never arrives. In the Middle East, by contrast, the horizon has collapsed in upon the present. It isn't the apocalypse, but in Iran, Syria, Turkey, and Egypt it must be what the apocalypse feels like. "What some hailed as an Arab Spring," I wrote in my September 2011 book How Civilizations Die (and Why Islam is Dying, Too), "is descending into an Arab Nightmare." The descent continues. We are a long way from hitting bottom.
> 
> The short-run problems of the Middle East appear intractable because they are irruptions of long-term problems, in a self-aggravating regional disturbance. It's like August 1914, but without the same civilizational implications: at risk are countries that long since have languished on the sidelines of the world economy and culture, and whose demise would have few repercussions for the rest of the world.
> 
> Egypt cannot achieve stability under a democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood regime any more than it could under military dictatorship, because 60 years of sham modernization atop a pre-modern substratum have destroyed the country's capacity to function.
> 
> Turkey cannot solve its Kurdish problem today because the Kurds know that time is on their side: with a fertility three times that of ethnic Turks, Anatolian Kurds will comprise half the country's military-age population a generation from now.
> 
> Syria cannot solve its ethnic and religious civil conflicts because the only mechanism capable of suppressing them - a dictatorship by a religious minority - exhausted its capacity to do so.
> 
> Iraq's Shi'ite majority cannot govern in the face of Sunni opposition without leaning on Iran, leaving Iran with the option to destabilize and perhaps, eventually, to dismember the country.
> 
> And Iran cannot abandon or even postpone its nuclear ambitions, because the collapse of its currency on the black market during the past two weeks reminds its leaders that a rapidly-aging population and fast-depleting oil reserves will lead to an economic breakdown of a scale that no major country has suffered in the modern era.
> 
> When the future irrupts into the present, nations take existential risks. Iran will pursue nuclear ambitions that almost beg for military pre-emption; Egypt will pursue a provocative course of Islamist expansion that cuts off its sources of financial support at a moment of economic desperation; Syria's Alawites, Sunnis, Kurds and Druze will fight to bloody exhaustion; Iraq will veer towards a civil war exacerbated by outside actors; and Turkey will lash out in all directions. And in the West, idealists will be demoralized and realists will be confused, the former by the collapse of interest in deals, the latter by the refusal of all players in those countries to accept reality.
> 
> Iran's population is aging faster than any population in the history of the world, its economy is a hydrocarbon monoculture, and its oil is running out.
> 
> Figure 1: Iranian Population Ages As Oil Runs Out
> 
> Sources: United Nations World Population Prospects: US Department of Energy
> 
> About 8% of Iranians are of retirement age now. But Iran's fertility has fallen from seven children per female at the time of the 1979 revolution to around 1.6 at present. When today's bulge generation of young people reaches retirement age, there will be few children to support them, and by mid-century a third of all Iranians will be elderly dependents. Nothing like this sudden shift form pre-modern to post-modern demographics ever has happened. Rich Western countries may not survive the graying of their population. For Iran, with US$4,000 in personal income per capita, low fertility is a national sentence. President Mahmud Ahmadinedjad called it "genocide against the Iranian nation".
> 
> Just when Iran most needs hydrocarbon revenues, its oil output will decline sharply. Natural gas exports can offset the decline to some extent, but not entirely. Iran's only chance of survival lies in annexing oil-rich regions on its borders: Bahrain, Iraq's Basra province, parts of Azerbaijan, and ultimately Saudi Arabia's Shi'ite-majority Eastern Province. That is why Iran needs nuclear weapons.
> 
> Figure 2: Iran's Population Train Wreck (Click to enlarge)
> 
> Iran's fertility collapse is the most extreme example of the trend across the Muslim world. Just behind Iran is Turkey.
> 
> Figure 3: Total Fertility Rate in Egypt, Turkey and Iran
> 
> Source: UN World Population Prospects
> 
> Turkey's overall fertility rate of 2.1 children per female masks a yawning demographic gap between Turkish-speakers, whose fertility rate is just 1.5, and the Kurdish minority, whose fertility is estimated variously at between three and four children per family. Half the military-age men in Anatolian Turkey will have Kurdish as a first language a generation from now.
> 
> That is why Kurdish separatists are confident that their guerilla campaign against Turkish security forces ultimately will triumph. There is a demographic time-bomb in the Middle East, but it isn't on the West Bank of the Jordan River, where the Palestinian Arab fertility rate long since converged with the Jewish rate. The map of Anatolia eventually will be redrawn, and probably the adjacent maps of Syria, Iraq and Iran along with it.
> 
> Syria's Kurds have become the vanguard of Kurdish hopes for autonomy, raising the Kurdish national flag in Syrian border towns in sight of the Turkish army. Turkey's threat to intervene in Syria's civil war is a bluff. The country's 2 million Kurds are divided among 17 political parties; a minority is cooperating with the Iraq-based Kurdish Workers Party, the main guerilla organization harassing Turkish security forces. Turkish analysts perceive no immediate threat that Syria's Kurds will ally with the independence movement and attempt to establish an independent Kurdistan in the foreseeable future, as Mesut Cevikalp wrote in August. If Turkish troops entered Syria, the Kurds would unite against Turkey.
> 
> Turkey's raids on Kurdish guerillas across the Iraqi border, meanwhile, prompted Iraq to threaten an alliance with Iran. That is the last thing that Ankara wants: the Turkish economy is living on credit from the Gulf states, which are paying for Turkey to contain Iran. If Turkey's internal problems push Iraq into the Iranian camp, making itself more of a nuisance than a help to the Sunni Gulf States, this arrangement will be in jeopardy.
> 
> Figure 4: Turkey's Rising Dependence on Short-Term Foreign Debt
> 
> Source: Central Bank of Turkey
> 
> Turkey's current account deficit is running at 8% to 10% of gross domestic product, about the same level as Greece before its financial collapse. Short-term debt doubled since 2010 to cover the deficit, most of it borrowed by Turkish banks from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States. That looks more like a political subsidy than a financial investment. For all of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's grandiosity, Riyadh has Turkey on a short leash.
> 
> "The Syrian civil war is now evidence of how much Turkey overestimated itself in its dreams of great power status," wrote the German daily Die Welt on October 6. "A year and a half ago, Foreign Minister [Ahmet] Davutoglu said that no-one could undertake anything in the entirety of the Middle East without first asking Turkey. But in the intervening year and a half, the supposed great power hasn't been able to get things in order at its own front door."
> 
> There is no Turkish solution for Syria. There is no Saudi or Jordanian solution, because the two conservative monarchies fear that the Muslim Brotherhood will dominate the Sunni opposition. Saudi Arabia fears the Muslim Brotherhood, the only credible organized opposition to the corrupt and feckless monarchy. The Jordanian monarchy already is under siege from the Muslim Brotherhood, which organized "reform" demonstrations last week demanding limits on the monarchy's power.
> 
> And there is no American solution for Syria. Robert Worth reported in the New York Times October 7 that Sunni Arab countries won't provide Syrian rebels with shoulder-fired missiles and anti-tank weapons out of fear that terrorists might obtain them. After Washington's embarrassment in Benghazi, compounded by the appearance that the Obama administration suppressed intelligence reports of al-Qaeda activities in Libya and Syria, American caution is understandable.
> 
> No-one in the region wants Syria's Sunnis to win, but no-one wants them to lose, either. The Syrian standoff is likely to continue into the indefinite future, lowering the cost of Arab life in the market of world opinion.
> 
> Egypt lacks all of the elements for successful economic development. Its population is 45% illiterate; its university graduates are almost without exception incompetent; it has insufficient water from the Nile to expand agriculture; its existing agriculture is inefficient and leaves the country dependent on imports for half its food; its population is for the most part pre-modern, with a 30% rate of consanguineous marriage and a 90% rate of female genital mutilation.
> 
> The bad news is that none of the major countries in the region can be kept from falling, and once fallen, they cannot be put back together again. The good news is that the bad news is not so bad. As long as the calamity is restricted to the region, and prospective malefactors are prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons, the impact on the rest of the world will be surprisingly small.
> 
> Spengler is channeled by David P Goldman. His book How Civilizations Die (and why Islam is Dying, Too) was published by Regnery Press in September 2011. A volume of his essays on culture, religion and economics, It's Not the End of the World - It's Just the End of You, also appeared last fall, from Van Praag Press.


----------



## Edward Campbell

I rarely agree with Doug Saunders, the _Globe and Mail's_ European political correspondent, but we do, broadly, on this issues, defined in this column which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/where-the-pakistani-state-fails-religion-steps-in/article4610201/


> Where the Pakistani state fails, religion steps in
> 
> DOUG SAUNDERS
> The Globe and Mail
> 
> Published Saturday, Oct. 13 2012
> 
> Try to look into the eyes of Malala Yousafzai, the 14-year-old Pakistani girl who was shot in the head by Taliban militants this week because she was advocating for universal education and the rights of girls, without despairing for the future. The war between human advancement and religious authority now has a human face. But it is a far wider war, threatening to engulf a country of 180 million people.
> 
> Yet even as Pakistanis rose in outrage against the shooting, influential people in both Pakistan and the West were dismissing the scope of the problem she has come to embody.
> 
> This is just a regional problem, Pakistani elites say. Her home is in the Swat Valley, in Pakistan’s lawless northern frontier, where extremist forces from Afghanistan are at work. This, they say, has nothing to do with the rest of Pakistan. And many Westerners, as well as Pakistanis, have rushed to condemn her shooting (and those of countless others) as a consequence of the U.S.-led drone war against the Taliban.
> 
> Yet the problem of religious extremism is not confined to Pakistan’s border provinces. It is now present in all four major regions. Punjab, in the east, has become a stronghold of violent, sectarian extremist groups in its southern regions. Baluchistan, in the west, is home to an insurgency supported by extreme Islamist groups, such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, that are seeking religious government. Karachi, in the centre, is being ripped apart by Islamic violence and houses countless circles of radicalism. Even Sindh, in the south, has seen its historically moderate, secular values ruptured by the establishment of religious schools in rural areas, financed by Islamists, that are radicalizing a generation.
> 
> Nor does it make sense to blame the United States for this. While there may be good reasons for criticizing its anti-Taliban air campaign, the attack on Malala had nothing to do with drone strikes.
> 
> “This is a war that is within Pakistan,” Pakistani historian Farzana Shaikh tells me. “It is between different visions of the kind of Pakistan people want … The Taliban themselves have blamed not U.S. policy or U.S. drone strikes for their attack on her, but the fact that she seemed to be promoting a secular agenda.”
> 
> Both Westerners and many Pakistanis are all too willing to assume that these developments are an inevitable consequence of Pakistan being a poor, Muslim-majority, postcolonial state with bad neighbours.
> 
> Yet if you look around the region, you quickly realize that almost every other state is moving in the opposite direction. Bangladesh recently passed a constitutional amendment declaring itself secular and recognizing religious minorities. And while it has had Muslim-Buddhist riots recently, the government has made strong progress in reducing the influence and power of extremist groups. Education levels are on the rise, poverty is dropping and birth rates have plummeted. In India, home to almost as many Muslims as Pakistan, Islamic extremism is rare (and usually originates in Pakistan) and on the decline. Both countries have seen more moderate forms of Islam and secularizing trends dominate, while Pakistan has shifted toward the more hardline, restrictive, Saudi-based practices of the religion.
> 
> What is happening in Pakistan is not military or religious or social, but purely a failure of politics. By obsessing over its unnecessary war with India and squandering billions in aid on an overly powerful military, by devoting itself to internecine wars of dynastic politics and grotesque corruption, and by tolerating religious voices within the state, Pakistan has allowed fringe religious groups to become a surrogate for a government gone missing.
> 
> “The state over many years has reneged on its primary responsibilities toward average citizens in Pakistan,” Dr. Shaikh says. “Things that one might normally have taken for granted from the state – access to decent education, access to decent health care, to housing – have simply not been there. That vacuum has been filled by many of these extremist groups, who have very powerful charitable arms.”
> 
> Those groups are the ones building the new schools. They are also the ones forbidding girls from becoming educated. This, in turn, is feeding a deadly cycle of alarmingly high birth rates, overpopulation and poverty.
> 
> Where the state fails, religion steps in. Malala was trying to stop that cycle – and only the education of women, and therefore the removal of religion from education, will accomplish it.
> 
> Pakistan’s future might be found in the eyes of Malala Yousafzai. Or it might lie with those who put a bullet in her head. Poorer, less generously assisted Islamic countries have prevented this from happening. Pakistan has no excuse.




One point on which I suspect Saunders and I disagree is the relative _weight_ he assigned to Pakistani political failure vs what I assign to Pakistani cultural weakness.

But, I do agree that Pakistan is *failing* and that medieval Arab clerics are now driving the political processes. I observed this, close up, last year in Malaysia; a Malaysian family with whom I spent part of a day were quite open in describing the cultural changes which they felt were being forced upon them by Arab religious 'leaders.' Even traditional Malay (female) dress, for example, was under attack as not being sufficiently "modest."


----------



## a_majoor

Deploying weapons of mass culture. This is one of the ways we can really create fault lines in Islamic societies and get them to turn on each other rather than against us. J lo as the carrot, and the UAV hovering overhead as the stick...OF course our active support for both these measures and these nations is needed for the strategy to get results.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/tiny-azerbaijan-unleashes-pop-power-against-irans-mullahs/2012/10/14/0a0819ec-14b3-11e2-bf18-a8a596df4bee_story.html



> *Tiny Azerbaijan unleashes pop-power against Iran’s mullahs*
> 
> View Photo Gallery — Azerbaijan relishes its anti-Iran role: The secular, Western-leaning country is socially and religiously tolerant, offering itself as a model of a nonsectarian Muslim-majority society.
> 
> By Joby Warrick, Published: October 14
> 
> BAKU, Azerbaijan — The latest weapon in this country’s ideological war with Iran arrived late last month in an armada of jets from California, accompanied by a private security force, dazzling pyrotechnics and a wardrobe that consisted of sequins and not much else.
> 
> A crowd of nearly 30,000 gathered to watch as the leader of this mini-invasion pranced onto a stage built on the edge of the Caspian Sea. With a shout of “Hello, lovers!” Jennifer Lopez wiggled out of her skirt and launched into a throbbing disco anthem, delighting her Azerbaijani fans and — it was hoped — infuriating the turbaned ayatollahs who live just across the water.
> 
> 278
> Comments
> Weigh InCorrections?
> 
> 
> Personal Post
> Video
> 
> In the space of 22 hours, a multilevel monument to sensory overload and celebrity adoration is built and unbuilt for a Jennifer Lopez and Enrique Iglesias show at the Verizon Center. It takes a cast of 100 to do it.
> More World News
> A look at metrorail suicides worldwide
> 
> Olga Khazan 7:53 AM ET
> New Delhi grapples with how to reduce suicides on public transit, a problem in cities around the world.
> Separatist fever rises in Spain
> 
> Edward Cody OCT 13
> Calls for Catalonian independence come at a time when they are least welcome.
> Nobel Peace Prize: Sometimes it’s premature . . . or head-scratching
> 
> PHOTOS | Not all of the laureates have achieved the peace the prize signifies.
> SEE: The 2012 Nobel laureates
> READ: Who has best chance of winning Nobels?
> 
> “You could almost feel the Iranians seething,” said an Azerbaijani official who attended the U.S. pop star’s first concert in this predominantly Shiite Muslim country of 9 million. “This stuff makes them crazy.”
> 
> The effect on Iran’s leaders is real enough, and it is at least partly by design. Azerbaijan, Iran’s neighbor and longtime rival, is coming to relish its role as the region’s anti-Iran, a secular, Western-leaning country that is working mightily to become everything that Iran is not.
> 
> As Iran sinks ever deeper into isolation and economic distress, its northern neighbor is sprinting in the opposite direction, building political and cultural ties to the West along with new pipelines connecting energy-hungry Europe with the country’s rich petroleum fields on the Caspian Sea. Where Iran is repressive and theocratic, Azerbaijan is socially and religiously tolerant, offering itself as a model of a nonsectarian, Muslim-majority society that champions women’s athletics and embraces Western music and entertainers.
> 
> It also enthusiastically pursues diplomatic and business ties with Israel, the Jewish state that Iranian officials have threatened to destroy.
> 
> Azerbaijan’s leaders insist that such policies have nothing to do with Iran, and they point to a record of mostly cordial relations with the vastly larger, notoriously peevish republic to the south. Yet, with each stride toward modernity — and with every Western diva who arrives to croon and titillate on Baku’s expanding international stage — Azerbaijan chips away at the legitimacy of Iran’s government and fuels discontent among ordinary Iranians, say Western officials who study the region.
> 
> “It is one of the most serious threats to the long-term viability of the Iranian regime,” said Matthew Bryza, a former U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan who now works as a private consultant. “Every day that Azerbaijan grows stronger economically and more connected to the Euro-Atlantic community — that’s another day in which the Iranian regime grows weaker.”
> 
> It is hardly a perfect role model. The government in Baku is dominated by a single political party, and it has frequently come under criticism by independent watchdogs for its human rights record and alleged corruption. Azerbaijan also is mired in a nearly two-decade-old conflict with another of its neighbors, Armenia, over control of the disputed enclave known as Nagorno-Karabakh.


----------



## a_majoor

Egypt is spiraling down a rabbit hole, mostly because while we (the royal *we*) sat back and applauded the "Arab Spring", no one seemed to take the time to look at who was really taking power. The "Narrative" created by the Legacy Media and echoed by the Administration seems to have totally collapsed, but the positive (if there is one) is the new regime seems to be having difficulty with their attempts to consolidate power. The Israelis may have scored a big win by "allowing" Mohamed Morsi to be seen as the dealmaker in the recent conflict with Gaza; many people will now be against him and by extension the Muslim Brotherhood.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/11/its-a-good-thing-weve-got-smart-diplomacy.php



> *It’s A Good Thing We’ve Got Smart Diplomacy!*
> 
> As Paul noted earlier today, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi followed up his supposed diplomatic triumph in Gaza by claiming new, more or less dictatorial powers. Morsi’s announcement was greeted with outrage by many Egyptians, some of whom took to the streets:
> 
> [A]nti-Morsi demonstrators set fire to Muslim Brotherhood offices in cities across Egypt on Friday. As enraged demonstrators torched Muslim Brotherhood offices in several Egyptian cities, a defiant Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi defended his recent decree granting himself sweeping powers before a crowd of supporters outside the presidential palace in Cairo Friday. …
> 
> Reacting to the decree, thousands of demonstrators gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Friday, responding to calls by Egyptian opposition leaders for a “million-man march” to protest against what they called a “coup” by the Islamist president.
> 
> Here, protesters have set the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters in Alexandria on fire:
> 
> In Tahrir Square, protesters objecting to Morsi’s tyrannical pretensions have gathered, only to be dispersed by government-fired tear gas:
> 
> I am so confused! When anti-Mubarak demonstrators gathered in Tahrir Square and were met with tear gas, they represented the Arab Spring. So what do these anti-Morsi demonstrators represent? Are they Arab Spring too? Or Arab Autumn? Or maybe the seasonal analogies are no longer operative.
> 
> The France 24 news report continues:
> 
> The rival demonstrations – which took place in several Egyptian cities Friday – exposed the deep divisions in the world’s most populous Arab nation five months after Morsi was elected with a 51% sliver of a majority.
> 
> What a coincidence! Obama got 51% too. So far, however, I haven’t heard anyone refer to Obama’s “sliver of a majority.”
> 
> But never mind that–I am still really, really confused! Mubarak was our friend, but a bad guy. So he had to go, and Obama denounced him and helped force him out. Morsi is our enemy, and also is a bad guy. So Obama thinks he’s A-OK, and helped Morsi take power. That’s called “smart diplomacy.” You probably wouldn’t understand.
> 
> Other things are confusing, too. Did Obama know that Morsi was about to claim dictatorial powers when he made Morsi the “hero” of the Israel-Gaza cease fire? If so, did he mind? If Obama didn’t know–which seems more likely–does he now think that Morsi double-crossed him by capitalizing on his faux diplomatic mission to proclaim himself a dictator? Or is that one more thing that is A-OK with Obama? If Obama doesn’t like the fact that Morsi has cut “Arab Spring” democracy off at the knees, does he intend to do anything about it? Or, when bad things happen, is it “smart diplomacy” to do nothing and pretend you don’t mind?
> 
> Investors Business Daily doesn’t have high hopes for the Obama administration:
> 
> The seriousness of Morsi’s coup, as many Egyptians are fearlessly calling it, is indicated by the posture of Mohamed ElBaradei, the longtime head of the U.N.’s atomic weapons oversight body and critic of the U.S., who on Friday called on Egyptians to “save the nation,” charging Morsi “blasted the concept of the state and the legitimacy and appointed himself ruler by divine decree.”
> 
> The left-leaning Nobel Peace Prize winner also declared: “The revolution is aborted until further notice.”
> 
> Just don’t expect White House press secretary Jay Carney to announce that the Egyptian people’s “grievances have reached a boiling point, and they have to be addressed,” as his predecessor Robert Gibbs did when Mubarak was on the ropes.
> 
> And don’t hold your breath for Clinton — or whoever her successor is at the State Department — to call for “an orderly, peaceful transition to real democracy, not faux democracy” in which “the people just keep staying in power and become less and less responsive,” as she said two years ago during street demos against Mubarak.
> 
> It took 24 hours for Morsi to take advantage of the prestige Obama and his secretary of state handed him. Now he’s using America’s stamp of approval to oppress his own people.
> 
> Some “new beginning.”
> 
> All I can say is, it’s a good thing we now have such smart diplomacy! If Obama, Clinton, Susan Rice and others weren’t so smart, things might go really badly in Egypt and the Middle East.


----------



## cupper

Perhaps the writer needs to expand their knowledge base a little more outside the conservative bubble. It might help clarify the confusion.

And help lessen the hypocrisy.

First, there was the criticism because the administration sat on the sidelines, not taking a position while the protests were going on. Then they went apoplectic when Obama said that Egypt was neither friend or foe in an interview.

It's not surprising that Egypt is going into a spiral. 

To borrow a quote from a foremost authority on the subject  :sarcasm: : "Sometimes Democracy can be messy"


----------



## a_majoor

No Cupper, the Administration sat on the sidelines while a pro-US client was deposed, yet made little or no efforts to understand what was actually going on.

Now US policy makers make vague "non statements" out of one side of their mouth, while still providing billions in aid to a nation they now have no handle on.  Attempting to use Egypt as a broker in the region and then discovering the President of Egypt had double crossed them (and did they really get what they wanted from Egypt's efforts in Gaza, or did Israel manage to outfox everyone?) is a sign of the confusion and outright incompetence of the Administration.


----------



## jollyjacktar

Mursis' Islamic Brotherhood seems to have whacked a hornets nest with his power grab.  The peasants are revolting again so it would seem and I'll bet there's some buyers regret among some supporters from the election.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2238416/Pharoh-president-Egyptian-opposition-strike-President-Mursis-grab-increased-powers-fuels-clashes.html


----------



## a_majoor

Another view of the greater Muslim Brotherhood movement and how they recruit and vet their members. An interesting mental exercise would be how to counter this sort of effort, and how to break current low ranking members free of the leadership:

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/michael-j-totten/egypts-morsi-proclaims-himself-pharaoh



> *Egypt's Morsi Proclaims Himself Pharaoh*
> 26 November 2012
> 
> Almost two years after Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak was removed from power, Cairo’s Tahrir Square is still an epicenter of protest and violence. It’s an epicenter of protest and violence because Egypt is again ruled by a man who has declared himself dictator. The country’s new president, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, announced that “constitutional declarations, decisions and laws issued by the president are final and not subject to appeal.”
> 
> He’s already being called the new Pharaoh. It makes no difference that he was elected. Democracy isn’t just about getting elected. A democratic election is not a one-time plebiscite on who the next tyrant is going to be. Democracy requires individual and minority rights and the separation of powers. Winners cannot oppress losers, nor do losers get to wage war on the winners.
> 
> Some of us are more surprised than others by this development, but the Muslim Brotherhood was never a democratic political movement. It's not even a close call. You don't have to be a cheerleader for Hosni Mubarak to recognize its inherent authoritarianism.
> 
> Egypt expert Eric Trager explains in The New Republic how the organization weeds out moderates by design.
> 
> It begins when specially designated Brotherhood recruiters, who work at mosques and universities across Egypt, identify pious young men and begin engaging them in social activities to assess their suitability for the organization. The Brotherhood’s ideological brainwashing begins a few months later, as new recruits are incorporated into Brotherhood cells (known as “families”) and introduced to the organization’s curriculum, which emphasizes Qur’anic memorization and the writings of founder Hassan al-Banna, among others. Then, over a five-to-eight-year period, a team of three senior Muslim Brothers monitors each recruit as he advances through five different ranks of Brotherhood membership—muhib, muayyad, muntasib, muntazim, and finally ach amal, or “active brother.”
> 
> Throughout this process, rising Muslim Brothers are continually vetted for their embrace of the Brotherhood’s ideology, commitment to its cause, and—most importantly—willingness to follow orders from the Brotherhood’s senior leadership. As a result, Muslim Brothers come to see themselves as foot soldiers in service of the organization’s theocratic credo: “Allah is our objective; the Quran is our law; the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.” Meanwhile, those dissenting with the organization’s aims or tactics are eliminated at various stages during the five-to-eight-year vetting period.
> 
> Last year in Cairo I met a couple of young activist recruits who washed out. They weren’t fired, exactly. One just up and quit because he could no longer stand the paranoid and authoritarian politics of its leaders, and the other was pressured out by what Americans call a hostile work environment.
> 
> “Hamas is more liberal,” Mohamed Adel told me, “and more willing to cooperate with other movements than the Muslim Brotherhood is.” He had left just weeks before I met him at the journalist syndicate. “The Brotherhood thinks dealing with anyone who is a former member . . . or someone from other movements and parties, is like dealing with an infidel.”
> 
> Abdul-Jalil al-Sharnouby, another young activist, was an editor at the Brotherhood’s Web site. Party officials treated him horribly and it became obvious, from his insider’s view, that the leaders would lord it over Egypt with a military regime or a police state if given the chance. “The Brotherhood as it exists now,” he told me, “wants to come to power and rule the way Hosni Mubarak did.”
> 
> Egypt’s political culture is authoritarian and always has been. The Muslim Brotherhood is a logical and perhaps inevitable product of a pre-existing problem bigger than itself and older than its religion.
> 
> I’ve met Egyptian liberals. They exist, but they’re a minority. Moderates are a larger minority, but genuine liberals belong to an even smaller minority and they know it. They feel it keenly, and are therefore far gloomier about Egypt’s prospects than Westerners were when the so-called Arab Spring started almost two years ago.
> 
> “The Western worldview is not very popular in Egypt,” Egyptian journalist Mohamed Ahmed Raouf told me. “They watch American movies, they drive American cars, but they don't accept Western culture or values of democracy, pluralism, and enlightenment. They don't accept it. People have to be open-minded, and that's not the case here.”
> 
> Hala Mustafa, a liberal intellectual at the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, told me the Muslim Brothers grotesquely distort the words “freedom” and “democracy.” “I heard one of them just the other day referring to individual rights,” she said, “but in a very backward way. He thinks Islam already has all rights for everybody and that we have to respect that. He thinks this is freedom, but it’s completely different from any liberal concept of freedom. The Muslim Brotherhood is against individual freedom not just for women and Christians, but also for Muslims and men.”
> 
> Egypt’s deeply embedded illiberalism isn’t exactly a secret. It’s the country’s most obvious political characteristic, one that imposes itself on the observant almost at once. Egyptian blogger Big Pharaoh explained it to me this way the first time I visited Cairo seven years ago: “Most of the armed terrorist groups we see now were born out of the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood…My biggest fear is that if the Muslim Brotherhood rules Egypt we will get Islamism-lite, that they won’t be quite bad enough that people will revolt against them. Most Egyptians don’t drink, so they won’t mind if alcohol is illegal. The same goes for banning books. Most Egyptians don’t read. So why should they care if books are banned? Most women wear a veil or a headscarf already, so if it becomes the law hardly anyone will resist.”
> 
> But sure, the Brothers threw the word “democracy” around when they were on their way up, especially when gullible foreign journalists were in town. They got a big kick out of portraying themselves as religiously conservative democrats, as though they were the Egyptian equivalents of Germany’s Christian Democrats or the Republicans in the United States. But their slogan is and always has been “Islam is the solution.” They’re only moderate compared with the totalitarian Salafists.
> 
> Morsi promises that his dictatorial powers are temporary. Feel free to believe that if you find it credible. Hey, it might even be true. Weird things happen in the Middle East all the time. The army could remove him tomorrow. Other regime components might tell him to get stuffed, making him more Hugo Chavez than Fidel Castro. The “street” might throw the country into ungovernable chaos. Morsi might even feel enough pressure from abroad that he dials it down. But whatever happens later, he just proclaimed himself dictator. If he isn’t stopped, that’s exactly what he will be.


----------



## cupper

Thucydides said:
			
		

> No Cupper, the Administration sat on the sidelines while a pro-US client was deposed, yet made little or no efforts to understand what was actually going on.
> 
> Now US policy makers make vague "non statements" out of one side of their mouth, while still providing billions in aid to a nation they now have no handle on.  Attempting to use Egypt as a broker in the region and then discovering the President of Egypt had double crossed them (and did they really get what they wanted from Egypt's efforts in Gaza, or did Israel manage to outfox everyone?) is a sign of the confusion and outright incompetence of the Administration.



All good and valid points. And I do not necessarily disagree with you. 

But I still stand by my assessment that the writer is simply continuing the echo from the bubble.


----------



## a_majoor

Islamic radicalism spreads in Africa. Equally horrid scenes play out in areas of Nigeria where the Boko Haram have taken control, and of course the "Arab Spring" seems to have become a springboard for the Muslim Brotherhood to grasp for power. Astute readers will not the Taliban used similar techniques and ideas during their reign during the 1990's in Afghanistan, and there are plenty of extremist groups willing to impose this version of Sharia law throughout the world. What we should do about this, or indeed what we can do about this with our resources is a difficult question to answer:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-northern-mali-islamists-attacks-against-civilians-grow-more-brutal/2012/12/11/5b74a734-3e46-11e2-8a5c-473797be602c_story.html



> *In northern Mali, Islamists’ attacks against civilians grow more brutal*
> 
> By Sudarsan Raghavan, Published: December 11
> 
> SEGOU, Mali — On a sweltering afternoon, Islamist police officers dragged Fatima Al Hassan out of her house in the fabled city of Timbuktu. They beat her up, shoved her into a white pickup truck and drove her to their headquarters. She was locked up in a jail as she awaited her sentence: 100 lashes with an electrical cord.
> 
> “Why are you doing this?” she recalled asking.
> 
> Hassan was being punished for giving water to a male visitor.
> 
> The Islamist radicals who seized a vast arc of territory in northern Mali in the spring are intensifying their brutality against the population, according to victims, human rights groups, and U.N. and Malian officials. The attacks are being perpetrated as the United States, European countries and regional powers are readying an African force to retake northern Mali, after months of hesitation.
> 
> But such an action, if approved by the U.N. Security Council, is unlikely to begin until next summer or fall, U.S. and other Western officials say, and political turmoil in the south is adding to the uncertainty. That has raised fears that the extremists could consolidate their grip over the Texas-size territory and further terrorize civilians, particularly women and children.
> 
> “The people are losing all hope,” said Sadou Diallo, a former mayor of the northern city of Gao. “For the past eight months, they have lived without any government, without any actions taken against the Islamists. Now the Islamists feel they can do anything to the people.”
> 
> Refugees fleeing the north are now bringing stories that are darker than those recounted in interviews from this summer. Although their experiences cannot be independently verified — because the Islamists have threatened to kill or kidnap Westerners who visit — U.N. officials and human rights activists say that they have heard similar reports of horrific abuses and that some may amount to war crimes.
> 
> The refugees say the Islamists are raping and forcibly marrying women, and recruiting children for armed conflict. Social interaction deemed an affront to their interpretation of Islam is zealously punished through Islamic courts and a police force that has become more systematic and inflexible, human rights activists and local officials say.
> 
> Two weeks ago, the Islamists publicly whipped three couples 100 times each in Timbuktu for not being married, human rights activists said.
> 
> The Islamist police had spotted Hassan giving water to a male visitor at her house last month. Hassan’s brother knew an Islamist commander and pleaded for mercy. After spending 18 hours in jail, she was set free with a warning. The next day, she fled here to Segou, a town in southern Mali that has taken in thousands of the displaced, mostly women and children.
> 
> It was fortunate, Hassan said, that she was handing the glass to her friend out on the veranda. “If they had found me with him near the bedroom, they would have shot us both on the spot,” she said.
> 
> With organization, ‘abuse’
> 
> Radical Islamists have transformed vast stretches of desert in the north into an enclave for al-Qaeda militants and other jihadists. They have imposed a hard-edged brand of sharia law, echoing Afghanistan’s Taliban movement, in this West African country where moderate Islam has thrived for centuries.
> 
> People are deprived of basic freedoms, historic tombs have been destroyed, and any cultural practices deemed un-Islamic are banned. Children are denied education. The sick and elderly die because many doctors and nurses have fled, and most clinics and hospitals have been destroyed or looted.
> 
> In March, the militants joined forces with secular Tuareg separatists, fueled by weapons from the arsenal of former Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, to seize control of the north in the wake of a military coup that crippled the government. The extremists then pushed out the Tuareg rebels and solidified their control.
> 
> In August, they began establishing courts, jails and police forces in major towns, according to human rights activists. The police scour neighborhoods for anyone who disobeys their decrees.
> 
> “It’s much more organized now,” said Corinne Dufka, a senior researcher on Mali for Human Rights Watch, referring to the network of courts and police. “The Islamists have taken away the joie de vivre of the people.”
> 
> On Oct. 9, Mariam Conate, 15, was walking to her uncle’s house in Timbuktu. She had forgotten to fully cover her face. Two Islamist police officers confronted her, and “one held me, the other beat me with the barrel of his gun,” Conate recalled. “They took me to their headquarters and threw me into a room. They locked the door and left.”
> 
> Outside, her jailors discussed her future. One wanted to cut off her ears as punishment. The other wanted to send her to a prison where six of her friends had been raped, she said. She was also worried that she would be forced to marry a militant, a fate her cousin had recently suffered.
> 
> “As I listened, I was trembling and crying,” Conate said.
> 
> U.N. and Malian officials said they have learned of many cases of rape and forced weddings by Islamist gunmen in the north. Two weeks ago, U.N. Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson told U.N. members that sexual violence is prevalent in the region.
> 
> Publicly, though, the Islamists have claimed moral righteousness, banning sex before marriage. In August, they stoned a couple to death after accusing them of adultery. Now the Islamists are systematically asking men and women who walk together whether they are married. In the town of Kidal, the Islamists are making lists of unmarried pregnant women in order to punish them and their partners, said U.N. and Malian human rights officials and local community leaders.
> 
> “They are going around asking every pregnant woman who made her pregnant,” said Alkaya Toure, an official with Cri de Coeur, a Malian human rights group. “They also rely on spies inside the populations in Gao, Timbuktu and elsewhere.”
> 
> But as a reward for loyalty, the Islamists have found a religious loophole. They have encouraged their fighters to marry women and girls, some as young as 10, and often at gunpoint. After sex, they initiate a quick divorce. In an extreme case that has shocked the country, a girl in Timbuktu was forced last month to “marry” six fighters in one night, according to a report in one of Mali’s biggest newspapers.
> 
> “They are abusing religion to force women and girls to have intercourse,” said Ibrahima Berte, an official at Mali’s National Commission for Human Rights. “This kind of forced marriage is really just sexual abuse.”
> 
> In a telephone interview, a senior Islamist commander conceded that his fighters were marrying young girls.
> 
> “Our religion says that if a girl is 12, she must get married to avoid losing her virginity in a wrong way,” said Oumar Ould Hamaha, the military leader of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, one of the three radical groups ruling the north. The other two are al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the network’s North and West Africa affiliate; and Ansar Dine, or “defenders of the faith.”
> 
> Conate was eventually set free after a cousin who knew one of the Islamists intervened. On Oct. 12, she fled to Segou, where she stays with an aunt in a small, crowded house.
> 
> Boys, too, are being abused. With a possible war looming, some as young as 10 have been taken to training camps, where they learn to use weapons and plant homemade bombs, U.N. officials and human rights activists say. And as the economy worsens in rebel areas, some parents have “sold” their children as it becomes harder to buy food and to curry favor with the Islamists.
> 
> “They give $10 to impoverished parents to recruit their children in the name of defending Islam,” said Gaoussou Traore, the secretary general of Comade, a Malian children’s rights group. “The Islamists tell parents that their children will go to paradise, that they will benefit in the next world.”
> 
> Pro-government self-defense militias in the south, made up of civilians seeking to liberate the north, have also recruited children, activists say.
> 
> “The situation of children in Mali is normally very bad,” Traore said. “With the arrival of the Islamists, it’s become a lot worse.”
> 
> ‘They came to destroy us’
> 
> In a few parts of the north, the Islamists have been more lenient with the locals because they are from the same tribes. But Timbuktu is controlled by hard-liners from all three groups, particularly AQIM, which is largely made up of foreigners. There, the sharia codes have been fiercely enforced.
> 
> By some estimates, more than half the population of 60,000 has fled; a majority of the refugees in Segou and the capital, Bamako, are from Timbuktu, said Western refugee officials and community leaders.
> 
> But the price of escape has been steep. Maman Dedeou, a 22-year-old laborer, has no job in Bamako, where he lives with relatives who are also refugees. Like them, all he possesses are bitter memories.
> 
> “I just eat and sleep,” he said, raising his injured right arm, wrapped in a thick white bandage, as an explanation.
> 
> The extremists have not stopped at destroying ancient mausoleums and shrines in Timbuktu, which was an important center for Islamic learning 500 years ago. They have also targeted shop owners such as Moktar Ben Sidi, 50, who sold traditional masks and other items to Western tourists. One day, a group of Islamist fighters broke down his door and smashed everything, he said.
> 
> “They said such artifacts were forbidden under Islam,” Sidi said. “They didn’t come to help us. They came to destroy us.”
> 
> Inside his barbershop, Ali Maiga, 33, had a mural of hairstyles favored by American and French rappers on the wall. The Islamists sprayed white paint over it, he recalled, and warned him that he risks being whipped if he shaves off anyone’s beard.
> 
> Juddu Bojuama, 26, was thrown in jail, accused by the Islamist police of drinking a beer. He denials went unheard. “They beat me 100 times with a tree branch,” he said, pointing at his back and legs.
> 
> Dedeou, the laborer, suffered even more. He recalled having no lawyer when he stood before an Islamic judge on charges of stealing a mattress. Afterward, he said, police tied his arms and legs and took away his cellphone. They took him to a clearing near the Niger River, where a man gave him two injections that put him to sleep.
> 
> Dedeou woke up in a hospital. His right hand had been amputated.
> 
> An Islamist fighter, standing guard at his bedside, uttered a judgment that Dedeou said he could never forget:
> 
> “This is the punishment God has decided for you.”


----------



## a_majoor

Egyptian liberals are being pushed out now that they are no longer needed to achieve power or as window dressing (Lenin had something to say about people like that), but the Muslim Brotherhoods have inherited a bankrupt and broken nation with no real plans or ideas of how to fix things. A distracting foreign war is one of the usual routes governments and political movements of that sort like to use; look for something along these lines in the near to mid future:

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/12/22/in-egypt-liberals-losing-at-polls-and-in-streets/



> *In Egypt, Liberals Losing at Polls and in Streets*
> 
> In much of Egypt, Islamists are dominating the streets as liberal protests fade away. Half the country is voting today in the second part of the referendum on Islamist President Morsi’s draft constitution today. Rival protestors are still clashing in cities like Alexandria, but the Islamists feel victory is heading their way.
> 
> The constitution won 57 percent approval in the first round of voting, and many predict that it will pass by an even larger margin in the last round, when rural, more religious parts of Egypt vote.
> 
> But the issues passing the constitution are only the beginning, as Reuters reports:
> 
> If the constitution is passed, national elections can take place early next year, something many hope will help end the turmoil that has gripped the Arab world’s most populous nation since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak almost two years ago.
> 
> But the closeness of the first day of voting and the low turnout suggest more difficulties ahead for Mursi as he seeks to rally support for difficult economic reforms needed to bring down the budget deficit, such as raising taxes and cutting fuel subsidies.
> 
> Morsi insists that the constitution, and the controversial measures taken to put it through a referendum, are necessary steps for Egypt to move away from military rule and towards a constitution-based democracy. Sadly, at best he is half-right. While Egypt’s greatest problems can’t be solved without stable political institutions of some kind, having a constitution (even a much better one than the cobbled together document the Islamists hastily whooped through the Constituent Assembly before the judiciary could shut them down) won’t solve Egypt’s problems.
> 
> We’ve noted the core problem for Egypt before: to our knowledge, nobody on Planet Earth has a viable strategy to put this venerable country onto a path out of poverty. At their best—and Egypt’s new constitution is a muddled one—constitutions establish a set of institutions and some procedures that allow the peaceful resolution of political disputes and provide legitimacy for decisions reached through constitutional means.
> 
> If the Muslim Brotherhood had a workable plan to make Egypt successful and prosperous, a constitution would provide a framework through which the plan could be enacted and applied. But the constitution is not a magic carpet on which Egypt can fly to paradise. Given the country’s poor prospects, the most difficult problem facing the Muslim Brotherhood isn’t how to get the constitution passed in a referendum; it’s how a broke government in a depressed economy can meet the enormous demands of angry, poor Egyptians—or how it can keep power after the masses realize those demands cannot be met.
> 
> Constitutions are much less useful when facing problems of that kind.


----------



## a_majoor

More on the growing Sunni/Shiite civil war brewing in the Middle East. We have a difficult time seeing this because our Legacy Media tends to try and keep things inside well defined narative boxes, rather than looking at what is really happening in the greater world. Of course it isn't as simple and clear cut as a straight religious conflict, many overlapping lines cover the region, including national, ethnic, linguistic and even demographic ones. The 30 years war is perhaps the best historic way of looking at the possible future:

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/01/04/what-a-car-bomb-in-iraq-means-for-the-civil-war-in-syria/



> *What a Car Bomb in Iraq Means for the Civil War in Syria*
> 
> A car bomb ripped through a procession of Shia pilgrims today in Musayyib, Iraq, almost 40 miles south of Baghdad, killing 27 people. The bombers were most likely Sunnis trying to reignite Iraq’s civil war.
> 
> As the Shia regime of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki grows increasingly authoritarian and sectarian violence gets worse and worse, the fear grows that Iraq is heading back into civil war. Parts of the country have been virtually under siege over the past few weeks, with 60,000 protesters turning out in Fallujah last Friday, blocking highways and chanting the familiar slogan of the Arab Spring—”the people want to bring down the regime!”—and the more direct “Maliki you coward, don’t take your advice from Iran!”
> 
> Iraq’s volatile mixture of Sunnis and Shia is once again boiling over, and the civil war next door in Syria is not making matters any easier. Iraqi fighters are operating in Syria on both sides of the war. The U.S. recently determined that the Nusra Front, which claims credit for several spectacular attacks on Syrian regime targets and is one of the strongest rebel groups, is virtually identical in personnel and ideology to al-Qaeda in Iraq.
> 
> Iraq’s and Syria’s troubles are closely related—a fact the mainstream media often forgets, choosing instead to stubbornly define the Syrian war as a fight for democracy against a dictatorship and the violence in Iraq as a contained sectarian conflict. This shortsightedness fails to recognize that across the Middle East Sunnis and Shia are engaged in a struggle for political power and religious legitimacy. Sunni rebel groups backed by Sunnis in the Gulf are fighting a Shia regime in Damascus backed by a Shia theocracy in Iran. The same is happening in Iraq, where a Shia authoritarian regime backed by Iran is fighting Sunni groups backed by the Gulf Arabs. Other actors, like the U.S., Turkey, and the Kurds, make this a truly volatile international conflict. And it is Iraq where all of this is going to erupt next, writes Henri Barkey here at the AI:
> 
> Today Iraq is held together by a shoestring. . . . The Saudis have not given him [Maliki] much quarter and would like to see him go. He has made an enemy of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as each accuses the other of putting sectarian interests ahead of regional interests and stability. Turks provided refuge to the Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, who escaped following his indictment on charges of helping Sunni death squads to operate in Baghdad. This increasing regional rift may be music to the ears of many Iraqi Sunnis, who have been heard saying, in effect, “the Ottomans are back in Istanbul, the Umayyad are about to re-conquer Damascus, and next Sunni Abbasid power will return to Baghdad.”
> 
> A Sunni victory in Damascus will necessarily mean a shift in the regional sectarian balance of power. Sunnis in Iraq have also revived the idea of seeking autonomous arrangements like the KRG, something they had violently supressed earlier. What is at stake is the 1916 Sykes-Picot Anglo-French-drawn regional boundaries. Having “lost” Syria, Iran’s natural reaction will be to double down in Iraq, where it already has a great deal of influence. It will want Iraq to provide strategic depth. It is even conceivable that Tehran will create a Shi‘a analogue of the Brezhnev Doctrine—once a government is Shi‘a, it stays Shi‘a, even if we have to send expeditionary forces to keep it that way. Will the neighbors stand idly by if this were to occur?
> 
> This is the broad outline of what we see as a Sunni-Shia war for the Arab world, and its two most volatile fronts, Iraq and Syria. If Assad falls, this conflict won’t be over. Expect Iraqi Sunnis to receive even more backing from their co-religionists.


----------



## a_majoor

And the situation deteriorates in Egypt. As WRM suggests, the failure of the Muslim Brotherhood to effectively govern or provide solutions could drive the population into revolt, but the choice isn't between the liberals and the Salafis, as he suggests, but between the military and the various more extreme Islamists:

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/01/05/the-most-important-story-from-egypt-this-week/



> *The Most Important Story From Egypt This Week*
> 
> From the FT, reporting on the consequences of the fall in the Egyptian currency:
> 
> At a central Cairo produce market, vendors have increased prices for green beans by 33 per cent, tomatoes by 50 per cent and zucchini and bananas by 100 per cent. Imported coffee prices have risen more than 20 per cent. The price of bread, a staple of the Egyptian diet, has gone up by 20 per cent in poor neighbourhoods and by even more in well-to-do areas.
> 
> Most Egyptians live very close to the margin; a 20 percent rise in the price of bread means that many people will be eating fewer calories and giving less food to their kids. For people in this situation, the only important political question is the availability of the basics you need for survival. The Muslim Brotherhood promised change; so far, the change involves mostly belt-tightening.
> 
> Significant further falls in the value of the Egyptian pound can be expected and any economic recovery is a long way off; the question now is whether the MB can hold onto popular (and military) support as conditions worsen, and, if the people begin to turn away from the government, do they turn toward the liberals and the old regime types, or do they double down on ‘Islam as the answer’ and go to the Salafis?


----------



## a_majoor

While the focus is on Egypt and Lebanon, the article points to a much deeper problem when *we* attempt to understand what exactly is going on in the world. Our perceptions are based on Liberal Democratic values, and we are inclined to look for similarities elsewhere. Some of this is valid; in most basic matters humans are the same in all times and places, otherwise there literally could not be studies like History or Anthropology. OTOH, culture does make a huge difference (otherwise we would be reading about missions to the Moon in Pharonic times).

I first understood this many years ago reading Victor Davis Hanson, who pointed out and explored the implications of the fact that 80% of the Greek people in Classical times were farmers (The Other Greeks). While this fact seems obvious and well known, most people who think about Classical Greece at all tend to think about figures like Pericles or achievements like building the Parthenon, and not on what the bulk of the people are thinking and doing (and without whom, there would be no Pericles or Parthenon to begin with). 

Learning to view things without the Liberal Democratic prism would certainly change may of our perceptions and ideas (remember how enthused the media and establishment was about intervention in Libya and the so called "Arab Spring"?), but will be quite difficult and disconcerting to do:

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/michael-j-totten/international-elite-bubble



> *The International Elite Bubble*
> 8 January 2013
> 
> Robert D. Kaplan is always worth reading. He’s interesting even when I don’t agree with him, and his recent piece in the Wall Street Journal called “The Return of Toxic Nationalism” is right on the money. (It was published over the Christmas holiday, so most of us probably missed it.)
> 
> Western elites believe that universal values are trumping the forces of reaction. They wax eloquent about the triumph of human rights, women's liberation, social media, financial markets, international and regional organizations and all the other forces that are breaking down boundaries separating humanity.
> 
> Tragically, they are really observing a self-referential world of global cosmopolitans like themselves. In country after country, the Westerners identify like-minded, educated elites and mistake them for the population at large. They prefer not to see the regressive and exclusivist forces—such as nationalism and sectarianism—that are mightily reshaping the future.
> 
> This is a real and serious problem. I’m prone to it myself and have to consciously go out of my way to counter it.
> 
> Lebanon taught me why this is necessary. When I first showed up there during the Beirut Spring in 2005, I met one cosmopolitan liberal-minded person after another protesting Syria’s military occupation in Martyr’s Square in downtown Beirut. I interviewed some startlingly bigoted sectarians at the same time in the same place in the same crowd of activists, though they were the minority.
> 
> Had I left the country immediately after hanging with that crowd, I might have come away with a completely distorted impression. Or had that revolution of sorts taken place in any other country, I might have fallen right into the trap Kaplan describes and assumed Beirut was Berlin in 1989. The reason I didn’t, and couldn’t, is because I stuck around because Lebanon is also where Hezbollah lives.
> 
> Hezbollah was, and still is, far too big and powerful and nasty to ignore. So one of the first things I did after orienting myself in Martyr’s Square with Lebanon’s liberals was head down to the Hezbollah office in the dahiyeh south of Beirut, which gave me a serious education in totalitarian Islamist politics which I narrate in detail in my first book, The Road to Fatima Gate. The Beirut Spring was not enough to save Lebanon in 2005. Hezbollah blew the country to hell the very next year.
> 
> The first time I went to Egypt, also in 2005, I met the same kinds of people I met in Lebanon. Cosmopolitan, liberal-minded individuals who were like Arab versions of me. Egypt had nothing like Hezbollah controlling large swaths of the country and warmongering against the neighbors. No foreign army smothered the country. Instead it had a police state. The narrative there at first seemed to be: democrats against the regime. That’s what it looked like. But my experience in Lebanon prompted me to ask a question of my liberal Egyptian friends that seems not to have occurred to some of the other journalists and Western internationalists who have been there. I asked these Egyptian liberals, “how many Egyptians agree with you about politics?” The answer stopped me cold: five percent at the most.
> 
> These people felt profoundly alienated by their own society, but it didn’t seem to occur to them to tell me about it until I asked. Perhaps they thought I knew that already. And of course they knew they were a tiny minority. How could they not? They belonged to a smaller minority than a Republican in San Francisco or gay feminist activist in rural Utah. It isn’t possible to be so out of step with everybody around you and be clueless about it, at least not before the Arab Spring started.
> 
> Well north of five percent of Egyptians are secular, to be sure, but liberalism isn’t Egypt’s only secular ideology. Its biggest competitors after Islamism are Arab Nationalism and socialism.
> 
> Kaplan is quite right that Western internationalists often don’t like to see what’s going on outside elite bubbles in distant societies. I also prefer not to see it, but I can’t help seeing it anyway. It’s unpleasant, but I force myself to look anyway. It’s not going away. And it’s not at all hard to see if you take the time and effort to look.
> 
> How big of a problem are we talking about? Here’s Kaplan again:
> 
> Asia is in the midst of a feverish arms race, featuring advanced diesel-electric submarines, the latest fighter jets and ballistic missiles. China, having consolidated its land borders following nearly two centuries of disorder, is projecting air and sea power into what it regards as the blue national soil of the South China and East China seas.
> 
> Japan and other countries are reacting in kind. Slipping out of its quasi-pacifistic shell, Japan is rediscovering nationalism as a default option. The Japanese navy boasts roughly four times as many major warships as the British Royal Navy. As for Vietnam and the Philippines, nobody who visits those countries and talks with their officials, as I have, about their territorial claims would imagine for a moment that we live in a post-national age.
> 
> The disputes in Asia are not about ideology or any uplifting moral philosophy; they are about who gets to control space on the map. The same drama is being played out in Syria where Alawites, Sunnis and Kurds are in a territorial contest over power and control as much as over ideas. Syria's writhing sectarianism—in which Bashar Assad is merely the leading warlord among many—is a far cruder, chaotic and primitive version of the primate game of king of the hill.
> 
> […]
> 
> Nor can Europe be left out of this larger Eurasian trend. A weakening European Union, coupled with onerous social and economic conditions for years to come, invites a resurgence of nationalism and extremism, as we have already seen in countries as diverse as Hungary, Finland, Ukraine and Greece. That is exactly the fear of the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize committee, which gave this year's award to the European Union in order to make a statement against this trend.
> 
> Fascists are not about to regain power anywhere on the Continent, but the age of deepening European integration is likely behind us.
> 
> I’d like to see a world where the majority of people everywhere have cosmopolitan values. That world might be less interesting to write about, but more pleasant to live in.
> 
> We’re not there yet. And I’m not at all convinced we’re even heading in that direction. The cultural elites of the world are heading in that direction, for sure, but it’s not true of everyone everywhere.


----------



## a_majoor

Staying out of MAli may have been a political calculation, but it also keeps our resources available for other, worse contingencies:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ilanberman/2013/01/14/the-brotherhoods-agenda-cairos-catastrophe/



> *The Brotherhood's Agenda, Cairo's Catastrophe*
> 
> It has been heralded as a humanitarian gesture and a sign of Arab leadership, but Qatar’s decision last week to double its $2.5 billion aid package to Egypt is also a telling indicator of the true economic state of affairs in post-revolutionary Egypt.
> 
> The prognosis is exceedingly grim. Two years after the ouster of long-serving strongman Hosni Mubarak, Egypt is in the throes of a full-blown economic crisis. Government reserves have dropped by more than half, plummeting from $36 billion in 2011 to just $15 billion today. That’s enough to cover just three months of imports of vital commodities such as food and petroleum. GDP growth has slowed to under 2 percent, and the country’s national currency, the Egyptian Pound, is in freefall. At the same time, unemployment has surged, now estimated at nearly 13 percent and rising. It’s no wonder that Maher Hamoud of the English-language Daily News Egypt recently likened the country’s economy to “a mud house in the rainy season.”
> 
> These statistics are all the more tragic because they could have been avoided. The February 2011 ouster of Mubarak was followed by a pronounced fiscal downturn, leading many to conclude that the country’s new, Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government—for all of its bluster to the contrary—wouldn’t impose radical changes on the country’s political direction. Instead, conventional wisdom held that the new powers-that-be in Cairo would, for both economic and political reasons, opt for a process of “creeping Islamization”—a slow, gradual changeover of the country’s civilian bureaucracy and legislature which wouldn’t rile international markets or spook jittery investors.
> 
> The conventional wisdom turned out to be wrong. In recent months, the Brotherhood has thrown caution to the wind and set about remaking the Egyptian state in its own image with a speed and ferocity that has surprised most onlookers.
> 
> In late November, in the wake of his public turn as peacemaker between Israel and Hamas, Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi made a significant power grab, issuing a presidential decree dramatically broadening his executive powers. Simultaneously, his government put forward a new draft constitution imbuing the country’s Islamist-dominated parliament with greater powers, trimming the size of Egypt’s Constitutional Court, and enshrining sharia as the law of the land. (The constitution was approved in a referendum the following month, and promptly signed into law by President Morsi). Since then Egypt has trended more authoritarian still, most recently via a draft law proposed by the Human Rights Committee of Egypt’s Shura Council which, if adopted, will significantly limit the rights of ordinary Egyptians to engage in political protest.
> 
> This anti-democratic drift might not have spurred Egypt’s economic ills, but it undoubtedly has made them worse. Tourism, the country’s economic lifeblood, which withered following Mubarak’s ouster in 2011, remains minimal as a result of widespread political and security concerns. The hotels in Egypt’s famed tourist town of Luxor, for example, are now reportedly mostly empty. Foreign direct investment into the country has dwindled to “near zero,” reports the Egypt Independent, as skittish investors seek greener pastures. And planned bailouts—chief among them a $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund widely believed to be critical to Cairo’s fiscal health—have stalled amid the political turmoil.
> 
> The cumulative effect is that Egypt is fast becoming a Middle Eastern version of Haiti: a country without meaningful tourism, minimal foreign investment, massive capital flight, and eventually an exodus of its best and brightest. That, of course, will inevitably become a crisis for Egypt’s neighbors, who will be forced to shoulder the political and security burdens of its implosion. But most of all, it is a tragedy for Egyptians themselves, who, having once dreamed of greater political liberalism after Mubarak, have woken up to an economic nightmare presided over by the Muslim Brotherhood.



An economic implosion in Egypt will have far reaching effects, especially since Egypt is perhaps the most populous of the Arab states, and also has lots of military hardware from old Soviet tanks to late model American helicopters and fighter/bombers. I expect the first stage (which may already be happening) is to "export" trouble and troublemakers in order to divert attention from "home".

If there is a positive side, many of the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia will be forced to divert lots of cash and resources to attempting to stabilize Egypt, or alternatively to knock off the Muslim Brotherhood, rather than exporting trouble of their own.


----------



## cupper

Found this interesting in an interview with General Stanley McChrystal regarding several issues with respect to the Middle East and North Africa.

http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2013-01-16/general-stanley-mcchrystal-my-share-task/transcript



> RAMIE
> Good morning. Yes, thank you for taking my call. Firstly, I wanted to thank the general for his service and his sacrifice. What he does really makes this country the shining beacon that I as an immigrant would strive to be a part of. And I want to thank him and all the veterans that do that. I have a two part question for the general. The first one is his opinion on the nominee Hagel vis-a-vis the Iran and Israel situation.
> 
> RAMIE
> And secondly, as an immigrant of Palestinian origin, I want to get his opinion of the situation in Palestine Israel and if that's the crux of the symptoms that we're seeing in the Middle East, and if that's get solved, what kind of reaction would we have in the greater Middle East area.
> 
> GJELTEN
> Thank you, Ramie.
> 
> MCCHRYSTAL
> Great. Thanks for your question and kind words first. I would say on the nomination of Senator Hagel, he's certainly got a great background. Of course, I like the fact that he served in the military. I like he's obviously thoughtful. I don't know him well, met him once. A lot of people are focusing on things that he said in his potential policy positions. My personal concern -- or my personal position is I don't worry too much about his policy positions. I think that the most important thing is he's going to be a policy implementer under President Obama.
> 
> MCCHRYSTAL
> I think that they're, as a group, a cabinet and as a wider government, they're going to have to deal with a lot of very difficult issues in the next four years. The reduction of the defense budget. There's clearly going to be some development of our relationship with Iran, North Korea. I really want to make sure that they've got a tight team that can navigate that and other unexpected things. So my tendency would be to say that if President Obama trusts him and he's willing to do it, that my default would be to support that request.
> 
> MCCHRYSTAL
> On the second issue on the Mid East region, I do think the Palestinian issue's extraordinarily important. I used to be able to go to remote places in Afghanistan and ask an Afghan villager about the situation in Palestine and they would be very, very opinionated on it. But then if you asked them where it was, they really didn't have much concept. So it's an important region or issue to the people right close to it in Palestine, but it's also one of those issues that has resonance far from it.
> 
> MCCHRYSTAL
> But I'm not sure that's the biggest issue in the region right now. I actually think that if we look at what's likely to drive events in the Mid East and the wider Mid East over the next 20 years, I think the Sunni, Shia divide is likely to be something that we are underestimating right now. If you see that, if you watch what's happening in Syria, there's a serious component to that there. And then also the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, I think that they're going to be a player bigger than some people expect. Egypt of course is the most obvious location right now. But their role and their evolution as a movement I think is going to be very, very important.
> 
> GJELTEN
> And of course there you spend a lot of time fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq and al-Qaeda in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan. And I think we have to conclude that al-Qaeda as a generalized foe has not been vanquished. We see what's going on in Mali right now where al-Qaeda linked Islamist militias have been making great inroads. And just this morning some very concerning news from Algeria where Islamist militants have apparently taken hostages, including some Americans, from a foreign operated gas field in Eastern Algeria. Your thoughts about the state of al-Qaeda right now, particularly in North Africa.
> 
> MCCHRYSTAL
> Yeah, it's dangerous and it's growing. The thing about al-Qaeda is I've always viewed al-Qaeda as a political movement wrapped in a religious cloak. It's also a flexible movement if you go to al-Qaeda in Yemen, al-Qaeda in the Horn of Africa, al-Qaeda in Maghreb. The local elements can fit that to their particular desire. So people who have aims for one thing or another can grab the al-Qaeda banner, they can use that, they can get a certain amount of legitimacy from that and then go forward. I think Mali, Algeria and other areas are going to be a difficult struggle, as much a war of ideas as anything else, but it's going to be -- it's going to be difficult.


----------



## sean m

Hopefully this field, is the best place to post this video. It refers to Iraq post US occupation. It specifically talks about Nouri Al-Maliki and his government, from what is mentioned, it seems that Al-Maliki is not the best man to run the country. With the crisis next door (in Syria), does anyone here think that the Islamist threat and the Kurdish issue could bring down the regime. One of the commentator's states that Iraq best asset is it's military.
Here is the video.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3tydPC1L7kU


----------



## a_majoor

The interconnectedness of all things. Diplomatic errors in Libya have cascaded across Northern Africa, with consequences we will be reaping for years and maybe decades to come:

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Swaminomics/entry/from-libya-to-algeria-a-bloody-trail



> *From Libya to Algeria, a bloody trail SA Aiyar*
> 27 January 2013, 06:02 AM IST
> 
> Barack Obama’s triumphal second inauguration as US President has been tarnished by Al Qaida’s attack on an Algerian gas plant that killed 38 foreigners. US analysts may ignore the connection, but the Libyan chickens have come home to roost.
> 
> A major Obama achievement is supposedly Gaddafi’s overthrow in Libya. Yet a line of direct causality runs from Gaddafi’s overthrow to the rise of Al Qaida in Mali and attack in Algeria.
> 
> Paranoid about the possibility of an internal coup, Gaddafi hired mercenaries from many African countries. These included Tuareg soldiers from Mali. Historically, the Tuaregs were great traders. They ferried gold and slaves from black Africa across the Sahara to the Mediterranean, and brought back salt. Their trade yielded huge wealth, with which they built the great city of Timbuktu.
> 
> Then came white colonial rule, dividing Africa through arbitrary lines on maps. One such artificial creation was Mali, combining blacks in the south with mostly Tuaregs in the Saharan north. The blacks were more numerous, so the capital was the southern city of Bamako, not Timbuktu.
> 
> After Gaddafi’s overthrow, his Tuareg mercenaries took their heavy weapons back to northern Mali. They joined hands with local Tuareg secessionists and an Islamist group, Ansar Dine. The Islamists soon came to dominate the new Tuareg combination. They linked up with Islamists in neighbouring countries to form Al Qaida of the Maghreb.
> 
> Mali had been a democracy for two decades. But after the Tuareg revolt, the Mali army staged a coup in Bamako. Under pressure of sanctions, the army allowed a partial restoration of civilian rule, but basically remained in charge. So, the NATO intervention in Libya, widely trumpeted as a triumph for democracy, actually ended up destroying both ethnic unity and democracy in Mali.
> 
> Meanwhile, the Islamist Tuaregs started moving south, taking several French hostages. France intervened to protect its citizens and greater interests. It is being supported by token forces from neighbouring African countries, but this is essentially a French/NATO move.
> 
> Islamists call this a religious war. This explains their suicide attack on the gas plant in Algeria, which was planned in Mali. Other attacks will surely follow.
> 
> The Islamists are not popular save in some pockets, and are feared by African governments. Their strict interpretation of sharia is widely resented. They have destroyed historic buildings in Timbuktu as unIslamic. Yet they are strong enough to take over territories.
> 
> Obama triumphalism over Gaddafi’s overthrow looks comic after the disastrous consequences in Mali and Algeria. The US media hail Hilary Clinton as a great Secretarty of State. Why? For exiting from Iraq leaving behind a Shia sectarian government, not an inclusive democracy? For exiting from Afghanistan after failing in all strategic goals? For promising to close down Guantanamo and not doing so?
> 
> May be Libya will evolve into a genuine democracy, but this is uncertain because of deep tribal rivalries that sparked Gaddafi’s overthrow. Democracy in next-door Egypt is already at risk, with secular parties accusing President Morsi of Islamist murder of the constitution. Of the Arab Spring countries, only Tunisia looks safe for democracy.
> 
> Militarization of the Arab Spring, by NATO in Libya, unwittingly destroyed democracy and ethnic peace in Mali. It greatly expanded Al Qaeda’s influence in the region. Yet we see no agonizing by US politicians or media over their role in this sorry sequence of events.
> 
> What lessons flow from this? In Syria, the US should stop the simplistic portrayal of the revolt against Bashir Assad as one of democratic forces against a tyrannical dictator. Overthrowing one nasty regime can simply lead to another.
> 
> Assad is a bloody dictator. But most rebel groups are Sunni and Islamist sectarians who have little time for secularism, democracy or minority rights. US support for these rebels could be as disastrous as was support to Islamist rebels in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The very Islamists who forced the withdrawal of Soviet troops have now forced the withdrawal of US troops.
> 
> The most powerful nation in history has been fiscally bankrupted by failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Debate on budget deficits drowns out debate on foreign policy.
> 
> French troops in Mali will, at least temporarily, check the advance of Islamist troops. But this has revived memories of colonial rule and is fraught with danger. Roping in troops from neighbouring countries makes sense, but these will be seen widely as colonial camp-followers, not a pan-African force. This will fuel Al Qaida’s propaganda.
> 
> There are no easy answers. Obama’s Libyan strategy of “leading from behind” will not work here. The ultimate solutions will have to come from within the region. Sadly, these are not in sight.


----------



## a_majoor

A look at how the various Arab states are dealing with the fallout of the Arab Spring. One big surprise is that, so far, no one has decided to go after Israel as a means of distracting people from the problems inside the nation, indeed Israel has dropped off most people's radar as more pressing issues are now at hand. Various other issues are touched on here, especially the looming backdrop of Shiite/Sunni conflict in the region:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/01/29/jonathan-kay-welcome-to-the-new-arab-world-where-no-one-really-cares-much-about-israel/



> *Jonathan Kay: Welcome to the new Arab world — where no one really cares much about Israel*
> 
> Jonathan Kay | Jan 29, 2013 11:56 AM ET | Last Updated: Jan 29, 2013 2:29 PM ET
> More from Jonathan Kay | @jonkay
> 
> When Israel declared independence in 1948, every single one of its Arab neighbours sent in their armies to destroy the Jewish state. The war convulsed the region, as did the many wars that followed. To this day, the received wisdom among bien-penants is that Israel’s very existence is the main destabilizing factor in the Levant.
> 
> And so, 65 years later, how bizarre is it to survey the results of the Arab Spring? Once again, every single one of Israel’s immediate neighbours is locked in a potentially cataclysmic struggle — but this time, the Arab chaos is all internal. For the populations of Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, it as if the Israeli menace were merely an engrossing, terrifying epic film that suddenly has come to an abrupt finale. The house lights have come on, and the viewers’ minds are returning to the real-life internal problems that have been festering in their autocratic societies for generations.
> 
> Syria is in a state of full-fledged civil war, largely waged by Sunnis who are seeking to dethrone Bashar Assad’s Allawite-led dictatorship. Mr. Assad has made some vague and pathetic attempts to implicate “Zionist” conspirators, but no one is buying it. The only Israeli border incident of note was a Syrian-on-Syrian skirmish, during which government ordinance accidentally fell on Israeli soil, to no effect.
> 
> Next door in Lebanon, there have been spillover skirmishes, and the country’s leaders are doing everything they can not to get sucked into the Syrian vortex. Yet Hezbollah fighters (who support the Assad regime, for cynical reasons connected to their Iranian patrons) go back and forth freely across the border, along with refugees. It is this border, not the Israeli-Lebanese border, that is likely to become Lebanon’s next flash point. Hezbollah remains the dominant power-broker in Lebanon, but will become isolated and vulnerable once Iran loses its logistical routes through Syrian soil. Lebanon fought a long and complicated civil war from 1975 to 1990, and another one could come soon — but this time, Israel will be smart enough to sit it out.
> 
> 
> Related
> Daniel Pipes on Barack Obama: the anti-Zionist
> Jonathan Kay: The rights and wrongs of Israel — as seen from the British Mandate
> Kelly McParland: Obama lets the world know he’s given up on Netanyahu even as Israel’s isolation grows
> .
> Egypt is not in a state of civil war. But its military leader is warning of a “collapse of the state,” amidst continued deadly clashes with protesters in several cities. (The latest spark involved was a spate of death sentences handed out to 21 Port Said soccer hooligans who’d rioted in 2012.) With a Muslim Brotherhood President at the helm, the country is racked with debate and anxiety about the role of Islam in public life. But even that grand theme has little to do with the current violence, which apparently is rooted in obscure inter-municipal grievances nursed by residents of Egypt’s non-Cairene population. While the Western press has spotlighted President Mohamed Morsi’s views on Israel, and Jews in general, the whole subject of confronting the Zionists is non-existent as an Egyptian national priority: Egypt’s only military project in Sinai has been to confront Jihadi terrorists who are the shared enemy of Egypt and Israel alike. In the May 2012 presidential debate between former Arab League secretary-general Amr Moussa and self-described Islamist moderate Abdel Moneim Abul Fotouh, four and half hours passed before the word Israel was even mentioned.
> 
> Finally, there is Jordan, long seen as the Morocco of the Levant. Last week’s parliamentary elections went smoothly. But the country has been destabilized by waves of refugees from Iraq, and now Syria. So much so that the country is now declaring that it will not accept any more refugees — including, most controversially, Syrian Palestinians. “We do not encourage our Syrian brothers to come to Jordan because their country needs them more and they should remain there,” the Jordanian PM declared, explicitly raising the prospect of a quasi-humanitarian military action on the border. “We will stop them and keep them in their country.”
> 
> For a regular observer of the Middle East, it is actually quite stunning to read such a steady stream of reports from countries that, in the not-too-distant past, have defined their entire national mission as being the eradication of the Jewish state. Syria is actually still technically at war with Israel — as, of course, is Hezbollah. Even in Egypt, which signed a peace treaty with Israel, explosive gestures of anti-Israel hate were a mainstay of street demonstrations under Hosni Mubarak, since it was one of the few officially permitted forms of political protest.
> 
> But now that Mubarak is gone, Egyptians are free to shout and protest, and even riot, over the things that really matter in their lives. And apparently, Israel doesn’t even make the top-10 list. Instead, what these people care about is the nature of their government, the price of bread and gas, the treatment of women and Copts and Allawites, soccer and — yes — freedom.
> 
> That f-word is important here because for the last decade, George W. Bush and the neo-cons have been denounced as naive, and worse, for insisting, post-9/11, that the Muslim world hungered deeply for Western-style liberty, so much so that they would welcome American troops on Arab soil.
> 
> That last part was wrong. But Bush was perfectly correct on his much larger point, which I never grow tired of repeating. “We must shake off decades of failed policy in the Middle East,” he declared in 2003. “In the past, [we] have been willing to make a bargain to tolerate oppression for the sake of stability. Long-standing ties often led us to overlook the faults of local elites. Yet this bargain did not bring stability or make us safe. It merely bought time while problems festered and ideologies of violence took hold.… No longer should we think tyranny is benign because it is temporarily convenient. Tyranny is never benign to its victims and our great democracies should oppose tyranny wherever it is found.”
> 
> Bush was talking about protecting America. Yet the Arab Spring (of which Bush deserves to be considered its godfather) also has destroyed the cynical Arab political game of funnelling all of their population’s accumulated hate and frustration at Israel and the Jews.
> 
> I haven’t the slightest doubt that anti-Semitism remains rife in these Arab societies, and that solidarity with the Palestinians will continue to guide their posturing at times of war. But current upheavals show that ordinary Arabs now increasingly view Israel as a sideshow to the acute birthing pains of their own crumbling autocracies. Amid all the death and chaos, that counts as good news.
> 
> National Post
> jkay@nationalpost.com
> @jonkay


----------



## a_majoor

Interesting article which suggests part of teh "why" the Arab spring collapsed into chaos or Islamist takeovers. This also touches a bit on the idea of "culture", if enough people think and act the same way, like in Poland, for example, the conditions were set there for a more liberal, democratic form of government to emerge:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/02/08/anne-applebaum-soviet-lessons-for-the-arab-world/



> *Anne Applebaum: Soviet lessons for the Arab world*
> 
> Anne Applebaum | Feb 8, 2013 12:01 AM ET | Last Updated: Feb 7, 2013 5:58 PM ET
> More from Anne Applebaum
> 
> Egypt recently “celebrated” the second anniversary of its revolution with riots, tear gas and angry demonstrations against an increasingly authoritarian regime. A few days earlier, the Tunisian army deployed to the southern part of that country to fight demonstrators who were demanding, on the second anniversary of their own revolution, to know why their lives had not improved. In anticipation of the Libyan revolution’s anniversary on Feb. 17, authorities are calling for vigilance and high security measures. Lufthansa has suspended its flights to Tripoli.
> 
> Much has changed in North Africa since the winter of 2011. But a lot more has not. To understand this, it’s worth looking at other countries that have undergone similarly radical changes. In post-communist Europe, for example, countries that faced similar problems took very different paths after they elected democratic governments in 1990. Yet some fell into economic stagnation or political turmoil while others thrived.
> 
> Neither politics nor economics alone explains the differences. On the contrary, the factor most closely linked to stability and growth is human: Those countries that had an “alternative elite” — a cadre of people who had worked together in the past, who had thought about government and who were at some level prepared to take it over — were far more likely both to carry out radical reforms and to persuade the population to accept them. Hungary, Poland — and, to a lesser extent, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and the Baltic states — all benefited from the presence of people who had been thinking about change, and organizing to carry it out, for a long time. The Polish opposition had created the Solidarity trade union in the early 1980s. In Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel had been advocating and promoting democratic values since the ’70s. Hungarian and Polish economists had spent a decade discussing how it might be possible to decentralize a centrally planned economy.
> 
> Elsewhere, opposition groups had not been so unified or repression had been harsher. So when the Soviet Union disbanded, former communists — perhaps dressed up as social democrats or nationalists — took charge again. Some were better, some were worse. On the whole they did not press for radical change — because radical change was not in their interests.
> 
> As the Arab Spring nations mark their second anniversaries, it’s worth keeping this precedent in mind. True, there were dissenters of many kinds in pre-revolutionary Egypt, as one expert told Foreign Policy this week. But “they were largely suppressed except for the mosque and the soccer pitch. With these two institutions, the numbers were too big and the emotions they evoked were too strong.” The result: The Muslim Brotherhood was the only political “party” with any organizational capacity after 2011. And Egyptian soccer clubs are the only organization that can reliably be counted on to create major protests, as they have recently. Another alternative elite was not available.
> 
> Nor is there a North African equivalent to those Polish and Hungarian economists who were waiting in the wings with plans to fix things once they got the chance. The Muslim Brotherhood arrived in power with no clear ideas about Egypt’s economy. In Libya, where the economy had been largely organized for the personal benefit of the Gaddafi family, a new leadership — drawn from the exile community and the leaders of the armed revolution — is starting to analyze and understand the country largely from scratch. In Tunisia, where both the Islamic party, Ennahda, and liberal democrats were heavily repressed in the past, the friends and relatives of the old ruling family are still thought to pull most of the economic strings. Radical change is not in their interests.
> 
> It’s not easy to draw policy conclusions from these observations. After all, the time to help create an alternative was three, five or, better yet, 10 years ago. But even then, an authentic alternative elite couldn’t have been wholly created on the outside, by exiles or by foreigners: If opposition leaders aren’t the product of an indigenous impulse to create alternative institutions — political parties, charities, newspapers, human rights organizations — then they won’t have the political clout to push through radical reforms when they get the chance. In many Arab states, the opportunity to start doing so arrived only in 2011, and the alternative elite is only forming now. Be careful of those who say, in the coming weeks, that the Arab revolutions are over: Maybe they’re just beginning.
> 
> The Washington Post


----------



## Edward Campbell

More problems for Gaza according to this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _Reuters_:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/13/us-palestinians-egypt-tunnels-idUSBRE91C0RF20130213


> Egypt floods Gaza tunnels to cut Palestinian lifeline
> 
> By Nidal al-Mughrabi
> GAZA
> 
> Wed Feb 13, 2013
> 
> (Reuters) - Egyptian forces have flooded smuggling tunnels under the border with the Palestinian-ruled Gaza Strip in a campaign to shut them down, Egyptian and Palestinian officials said.
> 
> The network of tunnels is a vital lifeline for Gaza, bringing in an estimated 30 percent of all goods that reach the enclave and circumventing a blockade imposed by Israel for more than seven years.
> 
> Reuters reporters saw one tunnel being used to bring in cement and gravel suddenly fill with water on Sunday, sending workers rushing for safety. Locals said two other tunnels were likewise flooded, with Egyptians deliberately pumping in water.
> 
> "The Egyptians have opened the water to drown the tunnels," said Abu Ghassan, who supervises the work of 30 men at one tunnel some 200 meters (yards) from the border fence.
> 
> An Egyptian security official in the Sinai told Reuters the campaign started five days ago.
> 
> "We are using water to close the tunnels by raising water from one of the wells," he said, declining to be named.
> 
> Dozens of tunnels had been destroyed since last August following the killing of 16 Egyptian soldiers in a militant attack near the Gaza fence.
> 
> Cairo said some of the gunmen had crossed into Egypt via the tunnels - a charge denied by Palestinians - and ordered an immediate crackdown.
> 
> The move surprised and angered Gaza's rulers, the Islamist group Hamas, which had hoped for much better ties with Cairo following the election last year of Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi, an Islamist who is ideologically close to Hamas.
> 
> A Hamas official confirmed Egypt was again targeting the tunnels. He gave no further details and declined to speculate on the timing of the move, which started while Palestinian faction leaders met in Cairo to try to overcome deep divisions.
> 
> CRITICISING CAIRO
> 
> Hamas said on Monday the Egyptian-brokered talks, aimed at forging a unity government and healing the schism between politicians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, had gone badly but had not collapsed.
> 
> While Gaza's rulers have been reluctant to criticize Mursi in public, ordinary Gazans are slightly more vocal.
> 
> "Egyptian measures against tunnels have worsened since the election of Mursi. Our Hamas brothers thought he would open up Gaza. I guess they were wrong," said a tunnel owner, who identified himself only as Ayed, fearing reprisal.
> 
> "Perhaps 150 or 200 tunnels have been shut since the Sinai attack. This is the Mursi era," he added.
> 
> The tunnellers fear the water being pumped underground might collapse the passage ways, with possible disastrous consequences.
> 
> "Water can cause cracks in the wall and may cause the collapse of the tunnel. It may kill people," said Ahmed Al-Shaer, a tunnel worker whose cousin died a year ago when a tunnel caved in on him.
> 
> Six Palestinians died in January in tunnel implosions, raising the death toll amongst workers to 233 since 2007, according to Gazan human rights groups, including an estimated 20 who died in various Israeli air attacks on the border lands.
> 
> Israel imposed its blockade for what it called security reasons in 2007. The United Nations has appealed for it to be lifted.
> 
> At one stage an estimated 2,500-3,000 tunnels snaked their way under the desert fence but the network has shrunk markedly since 2010, when Israel eased some of the limits they imposed on imports into the coastal enclave.
> 
> All goods still have to be screened before entering Gaza and Israel says some restrictions must remain on items that could be used to make or to store weapons.
> 
> This ensures the tunnels are still active, particularly to bring in building materials. Hamas also prefers using the tunnels to smuggle in fuel, thereby avoiding custom dues that are payable on oil crossing via Israel.
> 
> (Additional reporting by Youssry Ahmad in Egypt; Editing by Crispian Balmer and Angus MacSwan)




One wonders at Egypt's motives. Given my favoured lens I tend to look for economic reasons and Egypt has many economic reasons to curry favour with Israel and the USA.


----------



## Edward Campbell

This is tangentially related to the topic: in this case the United Arab Emirates provide foreign aid to the USA


----------



## a_majoor

More on the Shia/Sunni conflict that is spreading across the region. The high level of violence and extreme nature of the attacks will fuel a vicious circle of reprisals and counter reprisals, and quite possibly bring about the collapse of organized societies in the region, much as the Thirty Years war did to much of European society:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/02/the-talibans-new-more-terrifying-cousin/273502/



> *The Taliban's New, More Terrifying Cousin*
> 
> inShare
> 3 FEB 26 2013, 8:16 AM ET 66
> How a virulent Pakistani terrorist group is trying to annihilate an ethnic rival--and why we should be worried
> 
> 
> A boy stands at the site of a bomb attack in a Shi'ite Muslim area of the Pakistani city of Quetta on February 17, 2013. (Naseer Ahmed/Reuters)
> Abdul Amir (as we'll call him), a chemistry teacher in Quetta, Pakistan, was taking an afternoon nap on Feb. 16 when his house began to shake and the earth let out an almighty roar. His mother and sisters started screaming and ran out of the house, but by the time they gathered in the street, the noise had already stopped. He climbed to the roof to get a better view of what happened and saw a thick cloud of bright white smoke, a mile south, suspended above the market place where his students would be buying snacks after their weekend English classes. He rushed back down to the ground, started his motorcycle and took off toward ground zero, knowing all the while that this was foolish - during a bombing five weeks before, the people who came to help were killed by a second explosion.
> 
> Still he raced through the streets, swerving around people running away from the bomb, finally arriving at a scene even worse even than he'd feared. The blast had been so powerful that the market hadn't been destroyed so much as it had been deleted, as had the people shopping there and those in buildings nearby. Everything within 100 meters was simply flattened, and all that remained were the metal skeletons of a few flaming vehicles and the chemical smell of synthetic materials burning. Abdul would find more than fifty of his students were injured. One of his favorite students would die from her wounds six days later.
> 
> They believe their government is at best uninterested in protecting them, and many are so traumatized they believe it's complicit.
> In all, 17 students and two teachers in just one school would be killed, their bodies mostly unrecoverable. No secondary bomb went off that day, but it didn't need to, because the message to first responders had been heard: So few ambulances showed up that people were relegated to ferrying their dead and dismembered in their own cars.
> 
> For the Hazaras, a group of Shia Muslims from Afghanistan with a large population in Pakistan, leaving the house has become a fraught enterprise. Schools have emptied, students stay home and parents try to explain to their children why people want them dead. They believe their government is at best uninterested in protecting them, and many are so traumatized they believe it's complicit. The Feb. 16 bombing killed 85 people, almost all of them Hazaras, and the number is still rising as people succumb to their wounds. About a month prior, another attack had killed 96 people who were also almost all Hazaras. The victims are not bystanders; they are a people who are being exterminated.
> 
> The group doing the killing is called Lashkar e Jhangvi, "The Army of Jhangvi" or LEJ. They are Sunnis whose agenda is not much more nuanced than killing Shias. Though South Asia is a region rife with internecine conflict, with factions who have fought each other for all of recent history over land and religion, these attacks are unique. Even in a region violence visits far too often, what's happening now is singular, and it's getting worse.
> 
> First it was snipers picking off civilians, then LEJ members began stopping busses, shooting Shia passengers and leaving their bodies on the roadsides. Now, LEJ is using massive bombs in places frequented by Shia civilians: social clubs, computer cafes, markets and schools. About 1,300 people have been killed in these attacks since 1999, according to a website dedicated to raising awareness about them. More than 200 have been killed so far this year.
> 
> Hazaras are one kind of Shia for which LEJ has a particular fascination. Quetta sits just below the border with Afghanistan, and it's the city where members of a Shia group from Afghanistan--the Hazaras--have sought refuge whenever they've felt their own country doesn't want them. They've been coming to Quetta for over a hundred years, but while they're coming in search of safety, they're now being met with slaughter.
> 
> Over Afghanistan's long and tumultuous history, just about every group has suffered, but the Hazaras have the unique misfortune of being both Shia when most of the country is Sunni, and of looking different from other Afghans. Hazaras are Asiatic, having descended from Buddhist pilgrims or from Genghis Khan (or both). So if one is hell-bent on destroying Shias, Hazaras make really good targets: They can't blend in. The LEJ can simply seek out Asian faces and kill them.
> 
> Hazaras are hysterical now, holding protests wherever there's a sizable enough diaspora. In Quetta, where the killings are taking place, Hazaras decided not to bury their dead until the government took action because they are desperate for their suffering to be seen. They're beginning to use the term "genocide," and while it may be an exaggeration for what LEJ has accomplished thus far, it's certainly not for what they aspire to do.
> 
> "We are solely fighting this war in Allah's name," a spokesman for LEJ told local media, "which will end in making Balochistan a graveyard for the Shias." In an open letter that began to circulate a year and a half ago, LEJ made plain their belief that "all Shi'ites are worthy of killing. We will rid Pakistan of unclean people. Pakistan means land of the pure and the Shi'ites have no right to live in this country."
> 
> And as if to acknowledge that theirs is not merely a sectarian conflict but an ethnic one, they laid bare their desire to eliminate one group in particular: "We will make Pakistan the graveyard of the Shi'ite Hazaras and their houses will be destroyed by bombs and suicide bombers. Jihad against the Shi'ite Hazaras has now become our duty."
> 
> ***
> 
> If the Taliban is the schoolyard bully who keeps some semblance of order among the other children but then begins to abuse his power, LEJ is the hyperactive kid running around kicking shins, and who has free reign because the teachers are terrified of him, too. After a bombing last month, LEJ waited until rescue crews arrived at the scene, and then set off a bomb to kill them, as well. The message was clear: If you try to help Hazaras, you will end up like them.
> 
> Fear may explain why the government isn't doing anything about the attacks. LEJ is not hard to find and their leadership lives openly, mostly in Punjab. They do not pursue their means discreetly. The bomb LEJ used in February weighed 2,200 pounds, twice the size of the one Ramzi Yousef used to try to topple the World Trade Center towers in 1993. They had to tow it to the bombsite behind a tractor.
> 
> A twitter update just after a recent attack read: "Quetta Alert: 50 Shias in hell and over 65 injured due to blast on Alamdar Road."
> Nor do the killers try to avoid blame. On the contrary, they eagerly accept responsibility, post YouTube videos of themselves and tally up death tolls with transparent glee. A twitter update just after a recent attack read:
> 
> "Quetta Alert: 50 Shias in hell and over 65 injured due to blast on Alamdar Road."
> 
> LEJ's impunity may have to do with their provenance: They evolved in a kind of symbiosis with the state, which then officially but perhaps not practically disavowed them. The group's roots go back to a religious party with a political wing called Sipah-e Sahaba, which was formed in the early 80s to address a broadly shared concern in Pakistan that the country would be submerged under a tidal wave of Shia influence emanating from the revolution in Iran. In 1996, a group believing the party was too tame broke off and formed a new home for the most exuberant believers and called itself LEJ.
> 
> In 2002, bowing to international pressure after Pakistan-based terrorists attacked the Parliament in India, President Musharraf began banning militant groups , including this one. But they simply went underground and later remerged with a more violent outlook and new alliances with other fugitive groups. Perhaps most ominously, they began working with the Taliban. While the LEJ is animated by their hatred of Shias, the Taliban is animated by their hatred of anyone who helped America in Afghanistan. In the Hazaras, their two agendas neatly overlapped.
> 
> Pakistan has taken few affirmative measures to address the killings, and those that it has taken have been wholly insufficient to satisfy the people under siege. Hazaras have demanded military intervention, but the military has politely abstained, saying this is an internal law-and-order problem and not an appropriate application of federal force. And, so says the military, it'd be undemocratic to act without orders from the civilian government. However, Pakistan's military controls the civilian government at least as much as the reverse is true. ("In most countries," so goes the trope, "the state has a military. In Pakistan, the military has a state.")
> 
> Indeed, the military's excuses have proven so unsatisfactory that people have accused it of complicity in the attacks, allegations which have gained so much traction that the military actually conveneda briefing just to try and deny them. Meanwhile, the Frontier Corps reportedly went on a few raids, and the district police force had its own flurry of arrests, detaining twenty five LEJ members, including its leader. Hazaras just wondered why the leader was free in the first place--he'd loudly accepted responsibility for the bombing a month before.
> 
> Whether what's keeping the Pakistani military from doing anything about LEJ is fear, politics, or complicity -- or some unholy alloy of the three -- is unresolved.
> 
> Perhaps the only thing about LEJ that has everyone in agreement is that they're expanding their operations. They've ventured into Afghanistan with devastating success, carrying out a sophisticated, highly-coordinated attack just over a year ago in which Shias in three separate cities were bombed simultaneously. If the Pakistani military does not crack down on LEJ in Pakistan, it is LEJ more than any other group that would be able to turn back all the gains that coalition forces have made protecting and promoting vulnerable groups in Afghanistan. And for those in America who want American troops to come home but fear what will happen to minorities in Afghanistan when they do, LEJ provides a grim preview.
> 
> LEJ draws its religious inspiration, after all, from the very same Deobandi tradition that birthed the Taliban. They just have even more sophisticated methods and are even less discriminate when killing civilians. We shouldn't be surprised if, as the U.S. withdrawal accelerates, the LEJ incursion does too. And once they've established a base of operations in Afghanistan, they may look to expand again.


----------



## a_majoor

Egypt is failing and the more rational people are starting to pull back with their monetary support. Watching Egypt implode could be the trigger for even more instability in the region. OTOH this could also undermine the attractiveness of the Muslim Brotherhood to the population at large:

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/03/13/qatar-cuts-egypt-loose-as-financial-picture-darkens/



> *Qatar Cuts Egypt Loose as Financial Picture Darkens*
> 
> Egypt’s death spiral is now scaring off even its closest friends. Last year, Qatar give an Egypt in crisis $5 billion in aid money. But Qatar won’t help Egypt anymore, according to the FT. Qatar’s decision comes as Egypt continues its downward spiral:
> 
> Shortages of diesel in recent weeks have already created long queues in filling stations, fraying tempers and sparking anger, while villagers frequently cut roads and railway lines over such grievances as water cuts and irregular gas supplies.
> 
> The country’s toxic political atmosphere, with fractious leaders intent on undermining each other, could also fan the flames of popular fury and speed up a descent into chaos.
> 
> On top of that, the rising price of imported food ingredients is putting heavy financial burdens on the country’s poor. Reuters reports:
> 
> Flour and sugar are 50 percent more expensive than they were a year ago, said [baker Mohammed] Alif, and for now the bakery feels it has no choice but to absorb the increase rather than passing it on to customers:
> 
> “I can’t make it more expensive because people cannot pay,” he said, pausing between filling shelves with freshly baked rolls and serving a steady flow of shoppers on the pavement.
> 
> A $4.8 billion grant from the IMF could stanch the bleeding, but it requires Egypt to accept austerity measures. Austerity remains deeply unpopular with most Egyptians, and politicians are reluctant to risk losing support among constituents.
> 
> With the IMF loan in limbo and Qatar now unwilling to help out, Egypt may be at the mercy of the White House. The Obama administration may be about to face a deeply ugly choice: watch Egypt sink further into chaos or ask Congress to send even more aid money than we’ve already promised—to bail out a Muslim Brotherhood government.


----------



## Edward Campbell

It was over two years ago but I feel like repeating what I said then:



			
				E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> I think we need to take great care in saying that "democracy" is ascending in North Africa and the Middle East.
> 
> In my opinion it is dissatisfaction that is ascending; they are a long, long way from democracy.
> 
> Democracy is a whole lot more than elections, more, even, than regular free and fair elections; it requires some _cultural_ attributes including, _inter alia_, a respect for the rule of law and a sense that laws apply, equally and fairly, to all - governed and governors alike. If When those cultural attributes are present in a country then it _may_ evolve into a functioning democracy. I cannot see those attributes in any but a tiny handful of Muslim countries - none of which are in the Arab League, _per se_.
> 
> My suspicion is that many (most?) Muslims in North Africa, the Middle East and West Asia, given a free, democratic choice, would elect to be governed by an Islamist theocracy - something that is about as far from "democracy" as we can get.



Further: I see no interest, for us in the US led West, in interfering it what I think may be the disintegration of much of the Arab/MiddleEastern/North African world. The whole region doesn't make much geopolitical or even cultural sense: let the locals pull down the ruins of _Sykes-Picot_ an similar European colonialisms and, eventually, replace them with somothing more suited to their needs. We need neither help nor hinder the process ~ which I guess will be long (a generation or two) and bloody.


----------



## Edward Campbell

More, from one of the _perennially tottering_ Arab states, Jordan, in this article which is reproduced under the fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/in-jordan-a-king-sits-uncomfortably-on-his-throne/article10255053/
My highlight added.


> In Jordan, a king sits uncomfortably on his throne
> 
> PATRICK MARTIN
> The Globe and Mail
> 
> Published Saturday, Mar. 23 2013
> 
> It’s not easy being King – especially when your kingdom is impoverished and less than a hundred years old, and when a veritable invasion of outsiders outnumbers the native population. That situation pretty well sums up Jordan and its beleaguered King Abdullah II, who this weekend is hosting U.S. President Barack Obama, one of the few friends the Jordanian ruler still has.
> 
> Those outsiders – refugees – are flowing into Jordan, these days from Syria, and now close to half a million are sheltered there. But King Abdullah is being criticized for those that Jordan is not letting in, especially Palestinians who have lived in refugee camps in Syria since 1948 and now are seeking safety from that country’s civil war.
> 
> In a sharply worded report Thursday, Human Rights Watch said it contravenes international law for Jordan to deny sanctuary to these asylum seekers.
> 
> Palestinians who fled to Jordan 65 years ago now comprise about half of the country’s population of six million and the Abdullah regime is having enough trouble dealing with the political fallout from that.
> 
> His father faced it, too. King Hussein used to be called the Plucky Little King, or PLK for short, because the diminutive long-reigning monarch was renowned for standing up to many of the same threats his son now faces.
> 
> There were severe financial crises, uprisings from Palestinians, threats from Syria, conflicts with Iraq and frustrations with Israel. And King Hussein dealt with them all, usually with great tact.
> 
> This week, his son appears to have been less diplomatic, sharing with Atlantic writer Jeffrey Goldberg a blistering account of many of the people and issues that offend His Royal Highness.
> 
> He minced no words in describing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as provincial, the new Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi as shallow and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as disingenuous.
> 
> The King spared no one. Jordan’s secret police came under heavy criticism for their lethargy and his own family was denounced for taking excessive privileges.
> 
> Ominously, he described the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamist trend in his own country as a devious disease ravaging the region. They are “wolves in sheep’s clothing,” he warned.
> 
> Of all the threats he faces, it’s the one from Syria and the domestic Islamist movement that are the biggest.
> 
> Abdullah acknowledged this week that he is increasingly concerned about “a jihadist state emerging out of the conflict” in Syria, yet he is doing what he can to assist in the campaign against Mr. al-Assad. Jordan is taking in most Syrian refugees who come to the border and is reportedly allowing Saudi Arabia to supply weapons to the rebels in Syria by way of Jordan. He is even said to have permitted rebel fighters to be trained in Jordanian military camps with the United States picking up the tab.
> 
> Abdullah had hoped that the Syrian President, a younger, Western-educated man like him, would be a change from his father, Hafez al-Assad, a ruthless dictator who had claimed Jordan was part of greater Syria.
> 
> King Hussein had to ward off several threats from Syria, including one in 1970, when Damascus sought to take advantage of an attempt by the Palestine Liberation Organization to overthrow the King. For two days, Syrian tanks poured across the border into Jordan, until King Hussein found support in the unlikeliest of places – Israel.
> 
> As Syrian tanks captured the northern Jordanian city of Irbid, and the United States moved its fleet into the eastern Mediterranean, it was Israel that mobilized its forces along the Israeli-Jordanian frontier nearest the Syrians. The threat worked and Damascus ordered its forces to retreat.
> 
> Indeed, in his hour of need, King Abdullah, as well, appears to be turning to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Whereas relations between the two had been frosty at the start of Mr. Netanyahu’s previous term, the two met three weeks ago in the latest in a series of meetings over the past year.
> 
> Abdullah’s great-grandfather, a Hashemite, came from Mecca in the 1920s to rule over Transjordan, as it then was known, part of the British Mandate that followed the First World War. Like him, and like his father, the King has tried to carve out a workable relationship with “the cousins” [the Israelis], as he calls them.
> 
> He inherited a peace treaty with the Jewish state, signed by his father in 1994, and he intends to adhere to it. But he also inherited the resentment expressed, sometimes vociferously, by his Palestinian subjects, who note that the treaty did nothing to advance their people’s hopes for a state of their own.
> 
> And that resentment has led to Abdullah’s great domestic challenge.
> 
> At a time when calls for democracy are ringing out in the region, the King has tried to appease his citizenry with pledges to increase the power of an elected parliament.
> 
> Indeed, he moved on that front years before the so-called Arab Spring. In 2005, the King appointed Marwan Muasher, a respected former foreign minister, to develop a national agenda for political reform, but the program was shelved when Transjordanian tribal leaders balked at the idea.
> 
> For these leaders, whose tribes predated the Hashemite rule, government is all about patronage and they have insisted on a legislature that provides them with most of the seats. The King’s desire to change that arrangement to better reflect the national makeup is further complicated by the fact that he does not want to empower the Muslim Brotherhood’s party, the Islamic Action Front. That is a tough circle to square as the IAF constitutes a big part of the Palestinian vote.
> 
> In a national election in January, the number of seats was increased and several were open to Islamic and other candidates. It was not enough. The IAF boycotted the election and turnout, in what was to be a defining moment, was only 56 per cent.
> 
> “People in Jordan are deeply frustrated with the status quo,” Mr. Muasher said. “The way the country has been governed – with a relatively small decision-making circle and a very weak legislative check on power – is no longer sustainable in the post-Arab Awakening moment.”
> 
> In his comments to Atlantic magazine, the King acknowledged that and made it clear he wants his son to inherit a throne in “a Western democracy with a constitutional monarchy.”
> 
> This is appreciated by a number of Jordanians. “My impression is that King Abdullah understands the need to change the system into a constitutional monarchy in which parliament and the cabinet run the government,” says Rami Khouri, a Palestinian Jordanian who is director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut. “He just needs to do it slowly.”
> 
> But with thousands of new Palestinian refugees banging at the door, demanding to come in, time is running out.




Jordan is a weak but vital link in the 'wall' that surrounds Israel. Successive rules (Abdullah I, Hussein and now Abdullah II) have carefully, even artfully balanced Arabs and Israeli, but the several crises in the region threaten to topple that fragile house of cards. The highlighted sentence in the article may be the straw that breaks the camel's back: can Jordan remain _independent_ and, relatively, _neutral_ when it is surrounded by Islamists in Egypt, Syria and Iraq?


----------



## a_majoor

It is all about culture: remove the vibrant entrepreneurial culture and the rest stagnates. The Shias and Sunnis will be fighting over a rapidly shrinking economic pie:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/03/28/lawrence-solomon-christian-exodus-could-fuel-middle-east-decline/



> *Lawrence Solomon: Christian exodus could fuel Middle East decline*
> 
> Christian worshipper lights a candle in the Church of the Nativity, the alleged birth place of Jesus Christ, in the West Bank town of Bethlehem. Bethlehem has lost most of its Christians, and some predict it will lose the rest.
> 
> Christians in their millions are leaving Muslim lands, a heartbreak for the region’s 12 million remaining Copts, Catholics, Chaldeans and other Christian communities, many of which predate Muslim communities. But their exodus also represents a great tragedy for the region’s Muslims: The Middle East’s Christians, with their free-wheeling, free-market orientation, have for centuries created prosperity in an otherwise stagnant Middle East; once the Christians are gone, an economic desolation is likely to revisit their historic homelands.
> 
> Much of the Middle East today is known for its economic backwardness — only sub-Saharan Africa fares worse than the Arab world, according to the United Nations Arab Development Report. But it wasn’t always so. When Europe was a backwater in the centuries following Christ’s birth, the Christian Middle East was a splendour, its many peoples made the region among the world’s richest and most vibrant. In the first few centuries following the Arab invasion of the Christian countries in the 7th century AD, when Crusaders from then-backward countries such as England and France tried to take back the Holy Lands, they were amazed at the opulence they found.
> 
> The Crusaders ultimately failed in their Holy Wars and much of the Middle East would fall into disrepair under rule of the Ottoman Empire and the restraints of its Sharia Law. Christian Europe advanced, meanwhile, overtaking the Islamic lands in economic prowess by promoting individual liberty and capitalism, not least through the creation of joint stock companies, insurance and other financial innovations that furthered capital formation and international trade.
> 
> Muslim merchants could not compete well. For one thing, the Ottomans were insular. Seeing themselves as superior and having little to learn from the West, they sent to the West few embassies that could further trade. For another, under Islamic law a Muslim couldn’t settle disputes in the courts of infidels. This limitation handicapped Muslim-Christian business relations, particularly since under Islamic law the word of Muslims often trumped that of infidels, even when the infidels had documents to back up their claims. For a third, the laudable Islamic desire for equity required that upon death at least two-thirds of a Muslim estate be split among what are often numerous family members — children, wives, parents, siblings. This fragmentation of estates acted to thwart the continuance of family empires and other large business enterprises, typically leading Muslim enterprises to operate on a small scale.
> 
> The Ottomans were enlightened, however, in adopting a largely hands-off policy toward their many non-Muslim minorities. Whenever a Muslim wasn’t a party to a transaction, a Copt or Maronite Christian, or any minority for that matter, could freely enter into all manner of business arrangements and operate under the laws of any court the parties chose. With this wide array of structures on offer, and the freedom to choose, business deals were struck between non-Muslims in whatever way was least costly, least bureaucratic, and most secure. Sometimes deals would be structured along Western lines, sometimes along lines local to a Middle East community, sometimes even along Sharia lines — whatever best suited the parties. The effect was soon seen in the trading houses of the Middle East.
> 
> In Beirut by the mid-1800s, entrepreneurial Christian families controlled virtually all of the trade with Europe. In the Turkish trading city of Trabzon by the late 1800s, more than 80% of both exporters and importers were local Christians, generally Greek or Armenian. By the early 1900s, although Muslims constituted about 80% of the Ottoman Empire and Christians less than 20%, Muslims played almost no role in trade with Europe and only a small role in trade within the Ottoman Empire — two-thirds of the local traders then were either Greeks or Armenians, just 15% were Muslim.
> 
> Over the last century, the once-formidable Christian presence in the Middle East has ratcheted down down down, to now rest at 4% of the region’s population. Armenians fled Turkey in the convulsions of the First World War. The 1950s saw the departure of Egypt’s Greeks — the country’s most affluent and influential minority — under the military dictatorship of Abdul Gamal Nasser. The Lebanese Christians then had their turn to suffer persecution, then the Christians of Iraq. Now the Arab Spring is leading to more convulsions, and to an inevitable further departure of Christians from their native lands. Even Bethlehem, Christ’s very birthplace, has lost most of its Christians, and some predict it will lose the rest.
> 
> The Arab Spring with its resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism is striking out one of the hopes for prosperity that the UN Arab report cited — the liberation of women and their enlistment into the workforce. The resurgence of fossil fuel production in the Western world is striking out the likelihood that high energy prices in future will sustain the Middle East’s economies. The loss of the Middle East’s Christians — the region’s indispensable entrepreneurial class — would be the third strike.
> 
> LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com
> 
> For a fuller explanation of the rise of the Middle East’s religious minorities in previous centuries, click here.
> 
> To see the UN’s Arab Human Development Report 2002, click here.


----------



## a_majoor

More on the Civil War in the heart of Islam. If this means they turn on each other and are no longer able to project influence into the West, then it is an overall positive for us. People living along the edges will have to deal with spillover, however. The Strategic response of the West should be limited intervention to support moderates if possible, and to prevent one faction of radicals from becoming ascendant if supporting moderates is not possible (or the moderates are too weak and disorganized to matter) :

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/04/05/clifford-d-may-islams-global-civil-war/



> *Clifford D. May: Islam’s global civil war*
> 
> Clifford D. May, Special to National Post | 13/04/05 | Last Updated: 13/04/04 5:03 PM ET
> More from Special to National Post
> 
> In much of what we now call the Muslim world, Muslims are fighting Muslims. The conflicts fall into two broad categories: those in which militants battle militants, and those in which militants battle moderates.
> 
> The outcomes of these conflicts matter to all of us — Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
> 
> Syria is the most visible battlefield in these wars. Initially, Bashir al-Assad, satrap of the regime that rules Iran, was challenged by peaceful protesters demanding basic rights and freedoms. He brutalized them. Today, he is in a duel to the death with an opposition increasingly dominated by such al Qaeda-affiliated groups as Jabhat al-Nusra.
> 
> When jihadists are slaughtering jihadists, both sides claiming they are “fighting in the way of Allah,” a measure of schadenfreude is probably inevitable among us infidels. But people of conscience should not discount the human cost: 70,000 Syrian men, women and children killed over the past two years, more than a million refugees, ancient cities reduced to rubble.
> 
> The strategic stakes are high: The overthrow of Assad would deal a body blow to the hegemonic ambitions of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei. In Lebanon, Hezbollah’s hold on power would be weakened. Maximizing these opportunities should be a priority for Western policymakers. You can bet that Iranian and Hezbollah commanders are working on ways to minimize the damage.
> 
> Though we can’t predict what happens after Assad falls, we can plan for a range of contingencies. A rule of history is that those who are doing the shooting today will call the shots tomorrow. That implies that the Sunni jihadists will be in the strongest position post-Assad. The more — and the sooner — we bolster anti-jihadist Syrians the better.
> 
> Across Syria’s eastern border, al-Qaeda in Iraq has been revived. Iranian-linked Shia jihadist groups also are active again. Together, they are rekindling sectarian strife, which, it turns out, was not caused by the presence of Americans and has not been dissipated by the departure of Americans. Nor is the Shia vs. Sunni conflict merely a local phenomenon, the result of corralling different groups within European-drawn borders. Wathiq al-Batat, secretary general of the Iraqi branch of (Shia) Hezbollah, recently threatened to wage jihad against the (Sunni) state to the south, or, as al-Batat memorably phrased it, “the infidel, atheist Saudi regime.”
> 
> Across the Mediterranean Sea and the Sahara Desert, AQ-affiliated jihadists conquered and ruled much of Mali for 10 months. In January, the French — those old colonial masters — drove them out, to the cheers of a local population proud of their history, culture, and traditions, most vividly expressed in Timbuktu’s ancient mosques, shrines, and libraries. All this and more the jihadists had endeavored to destroy. Why? Because they see Africanized Islam as idolatrous, heretical, and, therefore, intolerable. The battle for Mali is not over. Fighting continued over this past weekend.
> 
> Another battlefield is in Tunisia. In February, secular opposition leader Chokri Belaid was assassinated by militants. Last week, my colleague Thomas Joscelyn broke the story that Abu Iyad al Tunisi, head of Ansar al Sharia Tunisia — an AQ-linked group that attacked the U.S. embassy in Tunis on September 14, 2012 — has threatened to wage war against Tunisian government officials “until their downfall and their meeting with the dustbin of history.”
> 
> The proximate cause: Tunisian prime minister Ali Larayedh dared to criticize Abu Iyan and other Salafi jihadists — Muslims who attempt to live and fight as did the seventh-century followers of the prophet Mohammed — for their “violence and arms trafficking.”
> 
> In Pakistan, Muslim-on-Muslim violence has become chronic, including attacks on Ahmadis — Muslims regarded as heretics by, among others, the Pakistani government — as well as on the Shia minority. Most recently, a bomb was set off in a market district of Quetta, killing more than 80 people. The Sunni militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi claimed responsibility.
> 
> Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid recently wrote in the New York Times that at “the heart of Pakistan’s troubles is the celebration of the militant.” That rings true, but he went on to blame Pakistan’s “fraught relationship with India … Militants were cultivated as an equalizer, to make Pakistan safer against a much larger foe.”
> 
> Really? Libya has no problem with India or any of its neighbors, yet Libyan government officials, including Prime Minister Ali Zeidan, a former human-rights lawyer and diplomat, have been receiving death threats from militants. Over the weekend one of Zeidan’s aides was kidnapped.
> 
> Thousands of Libyans have dared to demonstrate against jihadist groups, in September even storming the headquarters of Ansar al-Shariah, the militia linked to the attack that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. Some Libyan protesters chanted: “You terrorists, you cowards. Go back to Afghanistan.”
> 
> In Egypt there are protests day after day against attempts by President Mohamed Morsi to replace secular authoritarianism with religious authoritarianism. Militant Muslim Brothers have responded with lethal violence. In 2012, the Brotherhood swept student-union elections at Egyptian universities. Last month, by contrast, it was soundly trounced.
> 
> That’s encouraging — though without outside support, it is hard to imagine the moderates prevailing over the militants in Egypt or elsewhere. As for the militant vs. militant wars, it would be best if both sides were to lose. But that outcome is unlikely.
> 
> Scripps Howard News Service
> 
> Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on national security.


----------



## a_majoor

No surprise to anyone who has been paying attention, but it is actually refreshing to see this out in the open where everyone can see it. Far fewer opportunities to claim this was unknown, although given some of the comments it seems there are some people who will get into pretzle shaped contortions to do so. One comment in the article did attract my attention; since the schools are being used as paramilitary training camps, they have lost their protected status and are legitimate military targets.

This is simply an extension of Hamas placing its military infrastructure in civilian neighbourhoods and otherwise protected status buildings; when they are attacked and destroyed, the international media narrative is not about the secondary explosions as munitions stored within explode, or the deaths of Hamas commanders and fighters, but rather a propaganda victory for Hamas as the press goes on about how civil infrastructure is destroyed. I recall Hamas actually had a commander in the same hotel as many international reporters were staying; none of the reporters, to my knowledge, wrote about his death when their hotel was struck....

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/04/28/hamas-teaching-palestinian-schoolboys-how-to-fire-kalashnikov-rifles/



> *Hamas teaching Palestinian schoolboys how to plant IEDs, fire Kalashnikov assault rifles*
> 
> Phoebe Greenwood, The Telegraph | 13/04/28 8:28 PM ET
> More from The Telegraph
> 
> Palestinian schoolboys are learning how to fire Kalashnikovs, throw grenades and plant improvised explosive devices as part of a program run by Hamas’s education ministry.
> 
> The scheme has been criticized by Palestinian human rights groups, who point out that Hamas has previously banned sport from the school curriculum on the grounds that there is not enough time.
> 
> Hamas authorities introduced the “Futuwwa,” or youth program, into the state curriculum last September for 37,000 boys aged between 15 and 17, conceiving it as a scheme intended to initiate a new generation of Palestinian men in the struggle against Israel.
> 
> Izzadine Mohamed, 17, was among students who attended the weekly school classes, which cover first aid, basic fire-fighting and how to fire a Kalashnikov rifle. He was one of 5,000 boys across Gaza who also signed up for a two-week camp at a Hamas military base.
> 
> “I was excited to learn the right way to use a weapon,” said the teenager. “It’s important because of the occupation. I feel stronger with the knowledge, which I could use against the occupier.”
> 
> At the two-week camp, the boys dressed in a military-style uniform of black T-shirts and black jeans, and were trained by officers from the Hamas National Guard and militants with Hamas’s armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades.
> 
> Mr. Mohamed said that as well as martial-arts style street fighting, they were taught how to throw hand grenades, and what to do if one exploded nearby — “drop flat on the ground next to the grenade, it explodes outwards.” Hamas denies live weaponry is used and that militants are involved in the training.
> 
> Samar Zakout, of the Gaza-based human rights organization Al Mezan, described the move as “unbelievable” and likely to encourage Israel to see schools as targets during conflicts. He said: “They are trying to create a resistance culture, make our boys stronger to face Israel, but they shouldn’t be doing it in schools. Maybe Israel will use this as a reason to bomb Gaza schools in future.”
> 
> Mohamed Syam, head of the education ministry in charge of the program, said: “We are not conducting military training in our schools, we are providing information,” he said. Yet an article written in Arabic on the Hamas ministry of education website credits the al-Qassam Brigades for its contribution to the course and notes their presence at a graduation ceremony, attended by Mr Syam.
> 
> A YouTube clip showing a military demonstration in a Gaza school also appears to contradict the Hamas official line. Posted on April 5, the video shows a mock Israeli military post in a school playground, where Palestinian militants enact a battle. A rocket launcher is fired at the military post, leaving only a smoking metal frame and a billowing Israeli flag.
> 
> Mr. Syam said the video was not representative of the new initiative, and that the training course was designed mainly to instil discipline and respect.


----------



## Edward Campbell

According to Walter Russell Mead, Egypt is doing some sabre rattling to deflect attention from its own economic crisis. The issue is that Ethiopia Vows to Dam Nile River but Mead suggests that "there is little chance that Egyptian posturing could lead to actual armed conflict," instead he argues that "even the Muslim Brotherhood understands Islamism is not enough to maintain public support in the face of a decaying economy. The Brotherhood would like to divert Egyptian eyes from the economic wreckage all around them, and a nice Ethiopian threat to the Nile can work wonders."


----------



## a_majoor

Now Egyptian fighters are moving into Syria to fight against Assad, Hezbollah and the Iranians. The Shia/Sunni "civil war" is moving into high gear (and this will also destabilize the rest of the house of cards (artificial borders. demographics, ethnic divisions) as well). The author is correct to say that thee is probably little the US led West can do now except perhaps provide limited support to to one side or the other in order to prevent anyone from achieving more than a stalemate:

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/06/waves-of-egyptian-fighters-in-syria-represent-the-ominous-shape-of-things-to-come.php



> *WAVES OF EGYPTIAN FIGHTERS AND THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME*
> 
> The Washington Post reports that “waves of Egyptians” are pouring into Syria to join the fight against the Assad regime and its allies, Hezbollah and Iran. The Egyptians in question are “fired by the virulently sectarian rhetoric of Sunni preachers” who are “call[ing] for jihad.” In other words, the Egyptians pouring into Syria are Islamic jihadists.
> 
> Under Hosni Mubarak, the government did all it could to prevent such jihadists from leaving the country to fight in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq. And until recently, the current president, Mohammed Morsi tried to keep a lid on the hatred that impels radical Egyptians to fight in Syria. After all, Morsi has been cultivating closer relations with Iran.
> 
> But at the end of the day, Morsi is a Muslim Brotherhood man. Thus, under pressure from his hard line Islamist base, he has taken to denouncing Assad, Hezbollah, and Iran.
> 
> The lid is now off.
> 
> What does this mean? According to Khaled Salah, editor of a secular-minded Egyptian newspaper, it means that “the Middle East is shifting from a region that was dreaming of democracy to a battlefield between Shiite and Sunni.”
> 
> That’s exactly right, I think. And this means that, as much as people like me believe in American leadership, there isn’t much of a role for the U.S. to play in the region now. We have no dog in the battle between radical Sunnis and radical Shiites; nor is there much we can do to mitigate the tragic impact of this clash.
> 
> We did, with great difficulty and cost, act as a positive force during the Sunni-Shiite clash in one country — Iraq — because we had lots of boots on the ground and a hard-earned understanding of the players. But these conditions no longer obtain in any country in the region, much less across the range of emerging battlefields.
> 
> Moreover, as tragic as the Sunni-Shiite clash will be, it probably favors our interests. The hard question in the Middle East has long been: how can Western interests withstand the tidal wave of rampant Islamist fervor on the part of a vast, young, rootless population? The answer now seems to be: by having that wave play out in the form of vicious infighting, rather than in a war against the West.
> 
> As for the immediate problem of Syria, the wave of Sunni fighters from Egypt further undercuts the belief that a Sunni victory would lead to an outcome satisfactory, or even acceptable, to U.S. interests. The secular-leaning side of the Syrian rebel movement has already been pushed to the side. With every foreign unit that arrives in Syria, it becomes more clear that radical Islamists will dominate.
> 
> There’s also the questions of what will become of weapons the U.S. supplies to rebel forces. Khaled Salah, the aforementioned secular Egyptian newspaper man, predicts that the Egyptian jihadists fighting in Syria will “get weapons and training and one day could come back to fight us.” He may be hoping for a long war in Syria and/or elsewhere.
> 
> A long war would have its virtues. At the congressional hearing I attended this week on Iran, there was talk that Syria might become Iran’s Vietnam. That sounds overstated. Still, an Iranian regime bogged down to any significant degree in Syria doesn’t sound like a bad thing.
> 
> It would be inhumane, of course, to root for, much less try to promote, a long war. A viable peaceful settlement is the best option in Syria. But if there’s any hope for one, it depends on a military stalemate, it seems to me.
> 
> Here we see what I believe is the proper framework for the U.S. role in Syria and in the region generally. As I said, we cannot play a leadership role because we’re unwilling — wisely — to make a large scale military commitment.
> 
> But we can operate at the margin to lower the odds of victory for either side. And we can do this most effectively, and with the least risk of arming our adversaries, by military action that levels the playing field (e.g. a no-fly zone) and/or by air strikes against aspects of a party’s military capabilities.
> 
> Finally, if there are potentially viable secular forces in a particular trouble spot, we should identify them early and consider backing them. This may (or may not) have been an option in Syria two years ago. I don’t think it is now.
> 
> And given the growing sectarian nature of the struggle throughout the region, viable secular forces probably will be very much the exception in battlefields to come.
> 
> JOHN adds: We, and other countries, acted in the manner Paul advocates during the Iran-Iraq war, by giving Iraq modest amounts of aid when it appeared that Iran might prevail in the early 1980s. That war was bloodier than anything we are likely to see in the foreseeable future, and ended in a stalemate, which from our perspective was a desirable outcome.


----------



## a_majoor

Long article by Walter Russel Mead on Egypt. The failure of the Egyptian education system (providing people with worthless paper credentials but not equipping them to understand and act in the world around them) is probably the key to the entire debacle, it also tells us that any attempt to stabilize and reform Egypt will be a _generational_ project, since you not only have to educate the young, you also have to lever out people in positions of power who either think in the old way, or have vested interests in keeping things the way they are. Generally speaking, you need enough time to pass for all these older people to retire and pass on. OTOH, the Muslim Brotherhoods and their even harder core rivals, the Salafis, want to do things the fast way, which was trialed in the French Revolution as "The Terror". Why they have such a following (and indeed "western" style reformers and protesters are a very distinct minority in Egypt) is also discussed here:

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/06/29/turbulence-ahead-for-egypt/



> *A Light Fails In Egypt*
> Walter Russell Mead
> 
> Is Egypt’s revolution falling apart? Clashes between anti-government protestors and Muslim Brotherhood supporters turned deadly yesterday, leaving at least three—including an American college student—dead. These clashes come ahead of massive country-wide demonstrations against President Morsi scheduled for Sunday. The NYT reports that on-the-ground forces are even speaking of a civil war:
> 
> The use of firearms is becoming more common on all sides. Secular activists who once chanted, “peaceful, peaceful,” now joke darkly about the inevitability of violence: “Peaceful is dead.”
> 
> …Egypt’s most respected Muslim cleric warned in a statement this weekend of potential “civil war.”
> 
> It’s hard for the American press to wrap its head around what’s happening in Egypt. The Western media instinctively wants to view the conflict as Islamists vs. secularists or liberals, with the future of democracy at stake. The reality is both darker and more complicated, but at best only a handful of journalists have the intellectual chops to make sense of this picture, or the writing ability to help American readers understand a reality so different from our own experience here at home.
> 
> Leslie Chang gets closer than most in this piece in the New Yorker, but the problems are even deeper than the ones she puts her finger on. Based on interviews with leaders in the anti-Morsi movement, Chang correctly points out that Egypt’s opposition is neither particularly coherent nor interested in governing. The looming protests were organized by a movement known as Tamarod, or “rebellion” in Arabic—a movement founded mostly by young Egyptians whose sole goal is to drive Morsi from power. ”I have yet to meet a politician with a substantive plan to overhaul a system of food and fuel subsidies that eats up almost one third of the budget, or to reform the education sector, or to stimulate foreign investment.”
> 
> She continues:
> 
> After two years of watching politicians on both sides of the fence squabble and prevaricate and fail to improve their lives, Egyptians appear to be rejecting representative democracy, without having had much of a chance to participate in it. In a country with an increasingly repressive regime and no democratic culture to draw on, protest has become an end in itself—more satisfying than the hard work of governance, organizing, and negotiation. This is politics as emotional catharsis, a way to register rage and frustration without getting involved in the system.
> 
> It would be a mistake to attribute the ineffectiveness of Egypt’s opposition to the purely personal failings and intellectual blind spots of the people currently prominent in its ranks. We are looking at something more deeply rooted and harder to fix. An intense rage and dissatisfaction with the status quo without any idea in the world how to make anything better: this is the typical condition of revolutionary movements in countries without a history of effective governance or successful development. It is also often typical of political movements in countries dominated by a youth bulge. The unhappiest countries are the places where this large youth bulge comes up against failed governance and curdled hope. Think Pakistan, where a comprehensive failure of civil and military leadership is turning one of the world’s most beautiful countries into one of its most miserable ones.
> 
> Inexperienced 18 years olds who have grown up in corrupt, poorly governed societies, and been educated in trashy schools by incompetent hacks know very well that the status quo is unacceptable. Young people who know they are being ripped off and abused are typically not very patient. Throw in healthy doses of sexual frustration and contempt for an establishment that has lost confidence in its own capacity to lead, and you have a cocktail much more explosive than anything Molotov knew.
> 
> Egypt’s university system is particularly destructive. Year after year it turns out people with paper credentials, high expectations, and no real skills or understanding of how the world works. Those who manage to acquire real skills often go work in the Gulf, where Egyptian expats are able to have something approaching an effective professional career. But many Egyptian secondary school and university graduates end up in the worst of all possible worlds: too well-educated to accept the grinding poverty, soul-crushing drudgery and lack of status that so many jobs there entail, but not well-educated enough to build a better future for themselves or to organize effectively to remedy the ills of a society that creates such a dismal trap for youth.
> 
> Countries like Egypt a critical mass of people with a vision of how to build a modern society and an ideology through which they can effectively mobilize the majority to support a project which the masses of the people may not fully understand. In much of the developing world in the twentieth century, the critical mass was made up of a small number of people with advanced western education and the ideology was one or another of the varieties of social nationalism that dominated that century in much of the world. Whether communist and totalitarian as in Russia, China or Vietnam, democratic socialist as in India, nationalist and quasi-capitalist as in Ataturk’s Turkish Republic and Peron’s Argentina, or any of the other varieties of twentieth century developmentalist ideology, these big ideas and grand visions mobilized populations for the difficult work of transformation and uplift.
> 
> A significant source of Egypt’s trouble today is that it has already had one ideological transformation and convulsive moderation under the charismatic leadership of President Nasser. Nasser captured the hearts and minds of the Egyptians as no one else has done, mobilized the entire energy and enthusiasm of the nation for a great project of renewal and development, and failed horribly, utterly and humiliatingly. The shocking 1967 defeat by Israel was the most dramatic sign of the failure to make Egypt a modern and effective country, but signs of Nasserite economic, social and technological failure litter Egypt even today. Egyptians grow up in the rubble of shattered dreams, in a society corrupted and degraded by the long aftermath of disillusion and despair.
> 
> Islamism in its various forms is the sole candidate in Egypt for an ideological alternative to the corpse of Nasserist nationalism; it has sold itself to the masses as the once-rejected rival to nationalism whose time has finally come. For decades, often under conditions of persecution and repression, the Muslim Brotherhood and similar movements demonstrated an idealism and a public spirit that the corrupt heirs of Nasser could not match. They operated soup kitchens for the poor; they offered young people patronage and improved educational access. Building on centuries of national tradition and religious aspiration, they developed a comprehensive, all-embracing world view that offered, or appeared to offer, answers to the three great problems of Egypt’s youthful population.
> 
> First, Islamist economic policy administered by an honest and competent government would address the poverty and lack of opportunity afflicting so many Egyptians. Second, Islamist ideas would help the youth make sense of a chaotic and confusing world filled with disturbing ideas and values. And last but not least, Islamist success would restore dignity to Egyptians as human beings, as Egyptian citizens, as Arabs and as Muslims by overcoming backwardness and making Egypt self-sufficient and free-standing, respected in the world.
> 
> That was the dream. Morsi’s biggest problem never was, and still is not today, the twittering liberals of early Tahrir; western oriented secular liberalism has a long way to go before it can become a significant ideological force among the masses in Egypt. His greatest ideological opponents are cynicism and despair and he is in such deep trouble today because the collapsing economy and the general paralysis make him look like another snake oil salesmen selling a fake route to progress. What if Islamism like Nasser’s nationalism is a failure in Egypt? What then? What next?
> 
> Salafis, the ultra-Islamists who think Morsi’s problems stem from his failure to roll out the full glory of Islamist governance, hope that as the Muslim Brotherhood loses its appeal, their harder and purer faith will carry the day. It’s not impossible; the situation in Egypt is fluid and Islam is a powerful force in what remains a pious and serious society. But sooner or later the Salafis will come to the place in the road where Morsi stands; there is little reason to believe that more radical Islamist ideas and practices can heal what’s wrong with Egypt’s economy.
> 
> So though the Morsi government is losing its ability to govern by hope and by faith, that doesn’t mean it will fall; from an ideological and political standpoint, it has no serious opposition. A lot of people hate the government and blame it for making everything worse, but they cannot agree among themselves on an alternative course.
> 
> Whatever happens in the demonstrations scheduled for an increasingly tense country, it seems that as ideology and hope weaken, the role of force in Egypt’s government must rise. That means first and foremost the Army; flawed as this institution is, it has no rivals in Egypt. If (when) Islamism fades, force remains.
> 
> The Army, which loyally served Mubarak until, under the influence of his wife and son, the aging president sought to turn the Egyptian state into the private property of his family, knows that Egypt must have order even if it doesn’t have hope. At the height of his popularity, Morsi hoped to subordinate the Army to the Islamists; it seems clear now that the Army holds the higher cards. The Army is not necessarily opposed to having an Islamist president. It gives people something to talk about, and someone to blame other than the military.  A weak elected president with a dented mandate suits the military pretty well— and in any case many Egyptian officers are quite pious and don’t mind having a civilian government that imposes religious norms.
> 
> The really scary question in Egypt is whether things have decayed so far that the Army, either directly or indirectly, can no longer maintain order. Are so many Egyptians so angry, so disillusioned and so desperate that they will simply refuse to accept another stitched-up military backed state? If so, Egypt is less likely to explode than to implode: the economy would collapse further, food riots and other forms of violence would break out, minorities would face persecution and pogroms, criminal gangs would emerge. There could well be mass killings and civil chaos— though, despite the cleric’s words, we don’t see Egypt descending into a Syrian style civil war. Egypt lacks Syria’s ethnic and religious diversity; the largest minority group, the Copts, are too interspersed with the rest of the population to fight a civil war and are neither well-armed nor well-organized.
> 
> This would likely end in the emergence of a strong man who crushed dissent and imposed a new government, however harsh. Egypt has more than 5,000 years of continuous civilization and governance, and as a people, Egyptians have repeatedly chosen the dangers of strong government over the dangers of weakness and division. Tyranny relies on despair; combine fear of anarchy with a lack of faith in a truly bright future, and dictatorship is on its way.
> 
> Most revolutions fail and leave people worse off than before. The true believers of the Muslim Brotherhood want to keep their dream alive, and we can expect them to fight hard for that. Many ordinary Egyptians may have decided that Islamism is a flop, but the hard core true believers will argue that they haven’t had a chance to put in into practice yet. They will want to crush their opponents, tighten their grip on the state, and follow the Islamist path for many more miles before the true believers are ready to give up. They may well prevail in this next round of demonstrations and confrontations, but time is not on the Islamists’ side. Yet again, cynicism is winning its war against hope in Egypt, and yet again the Army is standing in the wings.
> 
> Nobody knows what will happen in Egypt this week, and the Muslim Brotherhood could lose the battle for public opinion but gain the power for control of the state. Sometimes revolutionary movements prevail even though they fail to satisfy the hopes that brought them to power. Revolutionaries often turn out to be failures at utopia-building, but very good at building police states.
> 
> That could be happening in Egypt this summer; we shall see. But the hopeful phase of the Egyptian Revolution has come to a close. It looks more and more as if the Muslim Brotherhood must either become a much harsher movement in a much bleaker world, or it must learn to watch power slip from its hands.


----------



## Retired AF Guy

Speaking of Egypt; CBC Radio was reporting that the military has given the politicians 48 hrs to sort things out or they will do it for them. 

More from the New York Times that is re-produced under the Fair Dealings section of the Copyright Act.



> Egypt’s Army Issues Ultimatum to Morsi
> 
> By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, KAREEM FAHIM and BEN HUBBARD
> Published: July 1, 2013
> 
> CAIRO — Egypt’s top generals on Monday gave President Mohamed Morsi 48 hours to respond to a wave of mass protests demanding his ouster, declaring that if he did not, then the military leaders themselves would impose their own “road map” to resolve the political crisis.
> 
> The Lede: Egyptians React to Army’s Ultimatum (July 1, 2013)
> Egypt, Its Streets a Tinderbox, Braces for a Spark (June 30, 2013)
> 
> Their statement, in the form a communiqué read over state television, plunged the military back to the center of political life just 10 months after they handed full power to Mr. Morsi as Egypt’s first democratically elected leader.
> 
> The communiqué was issued following an increasingly violent weekend of protests by millions of Egyptians angry with Mr. Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood backers. It came hours after protesters destroyed the Brotherhood’s headquarters in Cairo.
> 
> In tone and delivery, the communiqué echoed the announcement the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces issued 28 months ago to oust President Hosni Mubarak and seize full control of the state. But the scope and duration of the military’s latest threat of political intervention — and its consequences for Egypt’s halting transition to democracy — were not immediately clear, in part because the generals took pains to emphasize their reluctance to take over and the inclusion of civilians in any next steps.
> 
> For Mr. Morsi and his Islamist allies in the Muslim Brotherhood, however, a military intervention would be an epic defeat. It would deny them the chance to govern Egypt that the Brotherhood had struggled 80 years to finally win, in democratic elections, only to see their prize snatched away after less than a year.
> 
> “We understand it as a military coup,” one adviser to Mr. Morsi said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential deliberations. “What form that will take remains to be seen.”
> 
> The military’s ultimatum seemed to leave Mr. Morsi few choices: cut short his term as president with a resignation or early elections; share significant power with a political opponent in a role such as prime minister; or attempt to rally his Islamist supporters to fight back for power in the streets.
> 
> Mr. Morsi’s adviser said the military should not assume that the Brotherhood would accept its ouster without an all-out battle to defend his democratic victories. The Brotherhood may not “take this lying down,” the adviser said.
> 
> Citing “the historic circumstance,” the military council said in its statement that “if the demands of the people have not been met” within 48 hours then the armed forces would be forced by patriotic duty “to announce a road map of measures enforced under the military’s supervision” for the political factions to settle the crisis.
> 
> Just what would meet “the demands of the people,” the military did not specify. The rallying cry of the protests that precipitated the announcement was the demand for Mr. Morsi’s immediate departure.
> 
> It remained possible, though, that many might accept a less drastic power-sharing measure until the election of a new Parliament expected later this year, especially under military oversight.
> 
> But the military council also emphasized its reluctance to resume political power. It has made the same disclaimer at its seizure of power in 2011, but reiterated more vigorously on Monday.
> 
> “The armed forces will not be party to the circle of politics or ruling, and the military refuses to deviate from its assigned role in the original democratic vision that flows from the will of the people,” the statement said.
> 
> But it also noted that the “political forces” had failed to “reach consensus and resolve the crisis” on their own by a deadline set last week in a statement from the defense minister, Gen. Abdul Fattah el-Sisi.
> 
> “The wasting of more time will only create more division and conflict,” the statement continued, pledging that the armed forces’ own “road map” would include “the participation of all the sincere national factions and trends.” The general added a special mention for inclusion of “the youth,” who the generals called “the exploders of their glorious revolution.”
> 
> Many of the demonstrators now calling for Mr. Morsi’s ouster spent months last year marching to demand that the military give up its hold on power. And at a continuing demonstration outside the presidential palace to call for Mr. Morsi’s exit, marchers had been chanting against both “Brotherhood rule and military rule” when the announcement came out.
> 
> But different cheers broke out immediately. “The army and the people are one hand!” protesters chanted, recalling the heady days immediately after the overthrow of Mr. Mubarak when the military was first hailed as a savior.
> 
> Many said their protests would continue. “I think it’s late,” said Hassan Ismail, a local organizer. "There has been a lot of blood."
> 
> He rejected any compromise that would leave Mr. Morsi in office, and at the same time sought to distinguish the anti-Morsi movement from the military. “We don’t want to be against the army,” Mr. Ismail said. "And we don't want the army to be against us."
> 
> The Health Ministry said earlier on Monday that 16 people had died in the protests, including eight in a battle outside the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters, most of them from gunshot wounds. All of those killed outside the headquarters were young, including one who was 14 and another who was 19, the ministry said. One died of heat-related causes at a demonstration outside the presidential palace.
> 
> After dawn broke Monday, some demonstrators remained in Tahrir Square, epicenter of Egypt’s Arab Spring revolution, resting under impromptu shelters. While much of the protest elsewhere in Cairo seemed peaceful, activists reported dozens of sexual assaults on women in Tahrir Square overnight.
> 
> The fiercest confrontation seemed to be at the Brotherhood headquarters where members of the organization who were trapped inside fired bursts of birdshot at the attackers and wounded several of them.
> 
> After pelting the almost-empty building for hours with stones, gasoline bombs and fireworks, the attackers doused its logo with kerosene and set it on fire, witnesses said, seeming to throw what appeared to be sandbags used to fortify the windows out onto the street.
> 
> It was not immediately clear what became of the Brotherhood members, but shortly before the building was stormed, armored government vehicles were seen in the area, possibly as part of an evacuation team.
> 
> The scale of the demonstrations, just one year after crowds in the same square cheered Mr. Morsi’s inauguration, appeared to exceed even the mass street protests in the heady final days of the uprising that overthrew Mr. Mubarak in 2011.
> 
> Clashes between Mr. Morsi’s opponents and supporters broke out in several cities around the country, killing at least seven people — one in the southern town of Beni Suef, four in the southern town of Assiut and two in Cairo — and injuring hundreds. Protesters ransacked Brotherhood offices around the country.
> 
> Demonstrators said they were angry about the lack of public security, the desperate state of the Egyptian economy and an increase in sectarian tensions. But the common denominator across the country was the conviction that Mr. Morsi had failed to transcend his roots in the Brotherhood, an insular Islamist group officially outlawed under Mr. Mubarak that is now considered Egypt’s most formidable political force.
> 
> The scale of the protests across the country delivered a sharp rebuke to the group’s claim that its victories in Egypt’s newly open parliamentary and presidential elections gave it a mandate to speak for most Egyptians.
> 
> “Enough is enough,” said Alaa al-Aswany, a prominent Egyptian writer who was among the many at the protests who had supported the president just a year ago. “It has been decided for Mr. Morsi. Now, we are waiting for him to understand.”
> 
> Shadi Hamid, a researcher at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar who studies the Muslim Brotherhood closely, said: “The Brotherhood underestimated its opposition.” He added, “This is going to be a real moment of truth for the Brotherhood.”
> 
> Mr. Morsi and Brotherhood leaders have often ascribed much of the opposition in the streets to a conspiracy led by Mubarak-era political and financial elites determined to bring them down, and they have resisted concessions in the belief that the opposition’s only real motive is the Brotherhood’s defeat. But no conspiracy can bring millions to the streets, and by Sunday night some analysts said the protests would send a message to other Islamist groups around the region in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.
> 
> “It is a cautionary note: Don’t be too eager for power, and try to think how you do it,” Mr. Hamid said, faulting the Egyptian Brotherhood for seeking to take most of the power for itself all at once. “I hear concern from Islamists around the region about how the Brotherhood is tainting Islamism.”
> 
> Mr. Morsi’s administration appeared caught by surprise. “There are protests; this is a reality,” Omar Amer, a spokesman for the president, said at a midnight news conference. “We don’t underestimate the scale of the protests, and we don’t underestimate the scale of the demands.” He said the administration was open to discussing any demands consistent with the Constitution, but he also seemed exasperated, sputtering questions back at the journalists. “Do you have a better idea? Do you have an initiative?” he asked. “Suggest a solution and we’re willing to consider it seriously.”
> 
> Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting.



 Article Link


----------



## 57Chevy

The situation in Egypt is likely to go from bad to worse.

Egypt authorizes police use of deadly force after 638 killed
 CBC News 

From The Associated Press (15 August) and shared with provision of The Copyright Act

* further links on article page that include Canada's condemnation of the attacks in Egypt


----------



## 57Chevy

Perhaps the LAW is not clear enough. 

 FULL STOP                                  

                                 From NBC and shared with provisions of The Copyright Act

Lawmakers react to Obama on Egypt
 NBC Politics 

By NBC News staff

After President Barack Obama condemned Egypt’s interim government Thursday over bloody clashes with protesters that have left hundreds dead, lawmakers were quick to weigh in, despite the August recess that has taken both the commander in chief and Congress outside the Beltway for part of the month.

Republican and possible GOP presidential contender Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky slammed Obama for failing to cut off billions of dollars in aid that the U.S. government continues to send to the conflict-torn nation.

“The law is very clear when a coup d'état takes place, foreign aid must stop, regardless of the circumstances,” Paul said. “With more than 500 dead and thousands more injured this week alone, chaos only continues to grow in Egypt. So Mr. President, stop skirting the issue, follow the law, and cancel all foreign aid to Egypt."

Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the president was right to criticize the Egyptian military’s actions but that the administration should also urge calm from dissidents who are members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

“I appreciated much of what the president had to say, and while it reflected an arms-length disapproval of the military's actions, I wish he had stressed more clearly the need for the Muslim Brotherhood to also act responsibly. I hope the White House is actively working with other countries in the neighborhood behind the scenes to reduce tensions between the parties and get the democratic process back on track," said Corker.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi echoed the president’s condemnation of the “horrific” violence in Egypt and lauded the White House’s announcement that the United States will cancel a planned joint military operation with Egypt in protest over the bloody clashes.

"The President is right to strongly condemn the horrific violence in Egypt and to cancel the joint exercises with the Egyptian military,” she said. “The continued state of emergency must come to an end. It is clear that violence begets violence and only serves to move Egypt further away from an inclusive government that reflects the full participation of every part of Egyptian society.”


----------



## Inquisitor

The One Chart That Shows the Importance of Egypt's Massacre

Yesterday was one of the deadliest single-day instances of police-on-protester violence since Tiananmen Square. 
Link here http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/the-one-chart-that-shows-the-importance-of-egypts-massacre/278732/

Reproduced under the fair dealings provision of the copyright act from The Atlantic

The thing that stuck with me most from stories on yesterday's clashes in Egypt were the people attempting to flee the protest center as police beat them and snipers mowed them down. 

This is from Washington Post reporter Abigail Hauslohner's  personal account  of her harrowing experience near the site of the violence: 


Police carried a wounded fellow officer past us. Another officer beat a teenager over the head with a handgun before hauling the youth away. A woman implored a police officer not to kill protesters as they shoved back a man who, through tears, said he was trying to get to his younger sister, who was trapped inside Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque. 

For the uninitiated, it can be hard to keep up with the significance of day-to-day developments in Egypt. Morsi's fall was precipitated by protests that erupted regularly over the course of the year, and after his ouster, violence has only picked up. Egypt's entire summer has been punctuated by protests, clashes, and crackdowns. The horror of yesterday's massacre speaks for itself, but when a country is in the throes of such turbulence, it can be hard to get a sense of the scale of individual tragedies. 

But in fact, yesterday was one of the deadliest single-day instances of police-on-protester violence since the infamous Tiananmen Square incident in China in 1989. 

Using news reports, I pulled together the high and low estimates of deaths in major recent events in which police or security forces shot civilians. The dots represent the low death toll estimate, and the line shows the range leading up to the high estimate: 

Screen Shot 2013-08-15 at 1.15.29 PM.png

There are of course plenty of caveats to this chart: For some of these events, casualties are impossible to confirm. Some say several thousand -- not hundred -- died in Uzbekistan in 2005 when the country's military forces opened fire on protesters in the city of Andijan, for example. And estimates for the death toll from Tiananmen Square have gone as high as 5,000 or more. 

And because the Arab Spring protests came in waves and lasted months, thousands of protesters died across the region over the course of 2011, often at the hands of security forces. In Syria, more than 100,000 have perished so far in what started as a protest movement, though for our purposes here, I captured only the first few months after the government's initial crackdown in 2011. 

But even with that in mind, it's clear that yesterday is comparable to some of the deadliest attacks by security forces in recent history, and it's the clearest sign yet the Egyptian military has no interest in compromise. 

Comment: Any comment seems hopelessly weak, Stephen Walt at Foreign Policy has a good article that you can find here http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/

This might be the time to pray that cooler heads prevail, reminded of an old prayer "For those that we treat as enemies, that god may bless them,  and spare both them and us from the terror of destruction" Amen


----------



## George Wallace

This to me is a major concern, and one that is totally flying under the radar:

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.
LINK



> Stop the persecution
> By Michael Coren	,QMI Agency
> First posted:  Friday, August 16, 2013 06:28 PM EDT
> 
> A Coptic Christian Church in Upper Egypt dating from the fourth century was destroyed last week by the Muslim Brotherhood. It was not of any military significance, it was attacked simply because it was a church.
> 
> At the time of writing, 30 churches have been destroyed in Egypt by Muslim mobs. Some of the buildings are ancient; most are modern, however, because it is extremely difficult in Egypt and in most Muslim countries for Christians to get permission to build new churches and repair old ones.
> 
> I suppose that compared to the thousands of people killed and wounded in the past week this is insignificant. Yet no matter tragic human suffering is, the deliberate removal of a fourth century church from Egypt is on a different level of sociological violence and ethnic cleansing.
> 
> You see, Christianity pre-dates Islam by 600 years, and Egypt was a majority Christian country long before Islam existed. The attack on the church was a clear statement to the 15% of Egyptians who refuse to abandon Christ. “You do not belong, you never existed.”
> 
> At almost the same time as the church was destroyed, a little Christian girl, 10-year-old Jessica Boulous, was shot through the chest and killed in Cairo as she walked home from a Bible class. Her teacher had briefly turned away to buy something from a market. “I just can’t believe she is gone,” Nasr Allah Zakaria, her uncle, said. “She was such a sweet little girl. She was like a daughter to me.”
> 
> We should remember Jessica as a daughter to the world. As a symbol of the legions of Christians who have been martyred in Egypt, Syria, Pakistan, Iraq, Sudan, Nigeria, China, and elsewhere. But mostly, it must be admitted, in the Muslim world. Not just the Arab world; the Islamic world.
> 
> The Copts of Egypt are the indigenous people of the country, with far more rights to the land than many Muslims. But while the world will sympathize with Palestinians, or for that matter Canadian natives and Australian aboriginals, it prefers to ignore persecuted Christians.
> 
> A former speechwriter to Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff went so far as to actually mock the plight of these poor souls when I wrote of them on my Twitter account recently. British actor and author Stephen Fry has written a letter to his prime minister demanding action be taken against Russia for its legislation regarding gay demonstrations. Will he write something similar for Christians tortured to death, raped and imprisoned? Of course not.
> 
> The situation in Egypt will probably get worse before it gets better, and the one guarantee we have is — just like the Jews of the past — the majority will somehow find a way to blame and beat the Christians when social breakdown and chaos occurs.
> 
> There are fashionable causes, trendy minorities, easy campaigns to support. Then there are the genuine cases of massive suffering, the open wounds on the international body politic. The world has turned its back before and held its head in shame afterwards.
> 
> The phrase “never again” sounds somewhat hollow right now, and this agony is not historical but contemporary. Its colour is blood red.


----------



## Inquisitor

Umm, don't look now but ... seems things might be getting interesting in the country  that most of the 9/11 terrorists came from. 

If the bovine excrement hits the rotating air circulating device there, things in the ME and elsewhere could go south in a very unfunny way. 

Saudi prince defects: 'Brutality, oppression as govt scared of Arab revolts' (EXCLUSIVE link here http://rt.com/news/saudi-arabia-opposition-prince-374/

Saudi prince Alwaleed dismisses TV preacher for Brotherhood links  link here http://www.worldbulletin.net/?aType=haber&ArticleID=115344


Saudi Prince: Fracking Is Threat To Kingdom link here http://news.sky.com/story/1121610/saudi-prince-fracking-is-threat-to-kingdom


----------



## Edward Campbell

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> It was over two years ago but I feel like repeating what I said then:
> 
> Quote from: E.R. Campbell on 2011-01-27, 19:47:50
> 
> 
> 
> I think we need to take great care in saying that "democracy" is ascending in North Africa and the Middle East.
> 
> In my opinion it is dissatisfaction that is ascending; they are a long, long way from democracy.
> 
> Democracy is a whole lot more than elections, more, even, than regular free and fair elections; it requires some cultural attributes including, inter alia, a respect for the rule of law and a sense that laws apply, equally and fairly, to all - governed and governors alike. If When those cultural attributes are present in a country then it may evolve into a functioning democracy. I cannot see those attributes in any but a tiny handful of Muslim countries - none of which are in the Arab League, per se.
> 
> My suspicion is that many (most?) Muslims in North Africa, the Middle East and West Asia, given a free, democratic choice, would elect to be governed by an Islamist theocracy - something that is about as far from "democracy" as we can get.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Further: I see no interest, for us in the US led West, in interfering it what I think may be the disintegration of much of the Arab/Middle Eastern/North African world. The whole region doesn't make much geopolitical or even cultural sense: let the locals pull down the ruins of _Sykes-Picot_ and similar European colonialisms and, eventually, replace them with something more suited to their needs. We need neither help nor hinder the process ~ which I guess will be long (a generation or two) and bloody.
Click to expand...



I have been beating this drum for a few years now, here is some published support in an article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _Reason.com_:



> Why Arab Democracy Will Fail
> *Youth, history, income, and complexity.*
> 
> Ronald Bailey
> 
> August 23, 2013
> 
> The auguries of political science strongly predict that the Arab Spring rebellions will succumb to new autocrats in the near term. Sparked by a 2010 uprising in Tunisia, the Arab Spring revolutions toppled autocratic regimes not only in Tunisia but in Egypt, Yemen, and (with outside military assistance) Libya, while civil war broke out in Syria.
> 
> So why the gloom over the hopes for a wave of Arab democratization? Because, broadly speaking, data on the arcs of post–World War II revolutions suggests that their chances of successfully transitioning from autocracy to democracy are less than 50/50.
> 
> That dispiriting appraisal is based on a new data set, compiled by the UCLA political scientist Barbara Geddes and her colleagues, that provides transition information for the 280 autocratic regimes (in 110 countries with a population of more than a million) in existence from 1946 to 2010. More than half of the time, one autocrat has been followed by another. The odds of transitioning from autocracy to democracy are even worse for personalist dictatorships and one-party states, although military dictatorships make the transition about two-thirds of the time. A personalist dictator is a ruler who basically runs the state as a family business. As it happens, all of the regimes in which Arab Spring revolutions were successful were more or less personalist dictatorships: Muammar Qaddafi in Libya, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen, and Bashar Hafez al-Assad in Syria.
> 
> Besides the dismal record of revolutions of gone bad, four other social and political characteristics help stake the deck against these Arab states: youth, past democratic history, income, and complexity.
> 
> *Youth*: The George Mason University political scientist Jack Goldstone argues that the low median age of these countries' populations lessens the probability that they will successfully negotiate a transition to democracy. That would follow the pattern spotted by the Stuttgart University researcher Hannes Weber, who in a 2011 study in the journal Democratization looked at data from 110 countries between 1972 and 2009. “Democratic countries with proportionally large male youth cohorts are more likely to become dictatorships than societies with a smaller share of young men,” he writes.
> 
> Why? One hint might be found in an intriguing 2012 study, “On Demographic and Democratic Transitions,” by the London School of Economics population researcher Tim Dyson. Dyson contends that it is no accident that the shift toward lower fertility rates coincided with the rise of democracy in Western Europe. Falling fertility signals that people are gaining more control over their lives. “As the structure of a society becomes increasingly composed of adult men and women, autocratic political structures are likely to be increasingly challenged and replaced by more democratic ones,” Dyson argues. The median ages of Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, and Yemen are 30, 25, 25, 22, and 18 years, respectively. For comparison, the median age of the European Union is 41 years and the United States’ is 37 years.
> 
> *History*: The fact that none of the Arab regimes have had much past experience with democracy also suggests that their revolutions are probably doomed to devolve into autocracy, at least in the short run. Goldstone maintains that former communist states in central Europe and the Baltics had smoother transitions to democratic regimes than did those of Central Asia and the Balkans because they had some involvement with democratic institutions before the Iron Curtain fell.
> 
> How big has the Arab democratic deficit been? The Polity IV Index measures countries on a scale in which -10 indicates total autocracy and +10 signals full democracy. In 2011, the Dubai Economic Council macroeconomist Ibrahim Elbadawi and his colleagues reported that the Arab countries entered the 1960s with an average polity index score of -5.3—and by 2003 that score had fallen to a -5.5.  In other words, while much of the world was democratizing at the end of the last century, Arab countries as a whole had become more authoritarian.
> 
> *Income*: A 2006 study by the Columbia University political scientist David Epstein and his colleagues found that political regimes have a greater propensity to become and remain democratic as per capita incomes increase.
> 
> Back in 2000, the New York University political scientist Adam Przeworski and his colleagues claimed to have identified an income threshold above which no democratic country had ever reverted to autocracy: About $6,000 per capita GDP ($,8,100 today). “Democracies never die in wealthy countries,” they asserted.  According to the World Bank, the current per capita GDPs of Yemen, Syria, Egypt, and Tunisia, are $1,500, $3,300, $3,200, and $4,200 respectively. Given Libya’s continuing political chaos, the Bank doesn’t estimate its per capita GDP, but other sources report that it has fallen by about half to $6,000. None of the Arab Spring countries are now above the democratic consolidation threshold.
> 
> *Complexity*: It is harder to build democratic institutions than it is for a strongman and his thugs to impose his rule on a country. In their 2012 study, “Complexity and the Limits of Revolution: What Will Happen to the Arab Spring?,” the New England Complex Systems Institute researchers Alexander Gard-Murray and Yaneer Bar-Yam analyzed data tracking regime changes in the 10 years following revolutionary events in countries around the world during the period between 1945 and 2000. They find, “In these events higher levels of disruptive violence result in greater incidence of autocratic outcomes.” The revolutions in Yemen, Libya, and Syria were or are all notably violent.
> 
> The uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia were relatively peaceful, but the ousting of President Mohamed Morsi by Egypt’s army in July and a recent spate of assassinations in Tunisia dim the prospects of near-term democratic consolidation in both countries. As a consequence of their analysis, the two researchers infer that the “new governments are danger of facing increasingly insurmountable challenges and reverting to autocracy.”
> 
> Why? Revolutions often flatten the state’s institutions leaving little for the victors to use for governance. When post-revolutionary social, political, and economic turmoil causes hope for better lives to falter, weary populaces often look for a “man on horseback” to rescue them and restore order. Democratic institutions must take into account a wider range of social, political, and economic interests and are thus much more complex than autocracies.
> 
> In contrast to the Arab Spring countries, the two complexity researchers agree with Goldstone and observe that the relatively peaceful revolts against the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe left intact most of the governance apparatus of those states. These institutions were then successfully adapted, with the guidance of the European Union, to democratic norms.
> 
> Why hasn’t the Arab Spring spread to other Arab autocracies? Aren’t the Arab monarchies personalist regimes too? Goldstone argues that monarchies tend to have “a reservoir of nationalist, ethnic, or religious legitimacy due to their traditional leadership role.” In addition, Arab monarchs can deflect popular protests by blaming prime ministers or even offering a bit of power sharing. Goldstone also points out the oil-rich monarchies in Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait had the money to buy off their restive populations. For example, Saudi King Abdullah showered $37 billion in house-building and job creation schemes on his 18 million subjects. Similarly, Murbarak and Qaddafi tried to bribe support by promising to boost the salaries of government employees. But handing out wads of cash to bureaucrats was not enough to save those upstarts.
> 
> Goldstone further contends that Lebanon, Algeria, the Palestinian Authority, Morocco, and Iraq remained relatively calm largely because their peoples are fatigued by their own recent political upheavals.
> 
> Goldstone also offers an interesting analysis of the feckless role that the United States has played in the region helping to fuel the revolts. U.S. foreign and military aid enables dictators to bribe opponents for a while but ends up making them appear as U.S. stooges to their people. Once the despots are dependent on U.S. largesse, our government demands that they begin to liberalize. This weakens the fear that underpins their regimes and so they fall. “In times when the United States seemed satisfied with lip service regarding protection of human rights and democratization,” writes Goldstone, “the United States came to be viewed by domestic elites and popular groups as an insincere and untrustworthy advocate of popular rights and national self-determination.” In the wake of the Arab Spring, that appraisal sounds all too right as the Obama administration floundered about seeking haphazardly to join a parade that had already taken off.
> 
> So are Arab countries perpetually doomed to rule by autocrats? Not necessarily. The overall trend is for more and more countries to become and remain free. According to the think tank Freedom House, only 29 percent of the world’s countries were free in 1973, 25 percent were partly free, and 46 percent were not free. By 2013, 46 percent were free, 30 percent partly free, and 24 percent not free.
> 
> The taste of liberty, however fleeting, sharpens the appetite for more. Eventually, Arab peoples will depose their dictators and join the growing ranks of free countries.




Whereas I was willing to go out on a limb and define "soon," in another context, I am far, far less certain about when "eventually," in the last sentence, might be. I will not disagree, but don't hold your breath.

Look at the four factors: Youth, History, Income and Complexity. I am most persuaded by the historical and economic arguments, I find both compelling, but I accept that young populations (which are victims of weak education systems) have great difficulty in managing complexity.

I stick with my oft stated position: "I see no interest, for us in the US led West, in interfering it what I think may be the disintegration of much of the Arab/Middle Eastern/North African world. The whole region doesn't make much geopolitical or even cultural sense: let the locals pull down the ruins of _Sykes-Picot_ and similar European colonialisms and, eventually, replace them with something more suited to their needs. We need neither help nor hinder the process ~ which I guess will be long (a generation or two) and bloody."


----------



## a_majoor

And Mark Steyn on why Islam is failing (and the dangerous contortions that we are undertaking to appease Islamists):

http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/full-comment/blog.html?b=fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/09/06/mark-steyn-blunt-words-about-muslim-backwardness



> *Mark Steyn: Blunt words about Muslim backwardness*
> 
> Mark Steyn, National Post
> Friday, Sept. 6, 2013
> 
> In 2010, the bestselling atheist Richard Dawkins, in the “On Faith” section of the Washington Post, called the pope “a leering old villain in a frock” perfectly suited to “the evil corrupt organization” and “child-raping institution” that is the Catholic Church. Nobody seemed to mind very much.
> 
> Three years later, in a throwaway Tweet, Professor Dawkins observed that “all the world’s Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though.” This time round, the old provocateur managed to get a rise out of folks. Almost every London paper ran at least one story on the “controversy.” The Independent‘s Owen Jones fumed, “How dare you dress your bigotry up as atheism. You are now beyond an embarrassment.” The best-selling author Caitlin Moran sneered, “It’s time someone turned Richard Dawkins off and then on again. Something’s gone weird.” The Daily Telegraph‘s Tom Chivers beseeched him, “Please be quiet, Richard Dawkins, I’m begging.”
> 
> It’s factually unarguable: Trinity College graduates have amassed 32 Nobel prizes, the entire Muslim world a mere 10
> 
> None of the above is Muslim. Indeed, they are, to one degree or another, members of the same secular liberal media elite as Professor Dawkins. Yet all felt that, unlike Dawkins’s routine jeers at Christians, his Tweet had gone too far. It’s factually unarguable: Trinity graduates have amassed 32 Nobel prizes, the entire Muslim world a mere 10. If you remove Yasser Arafat, Mohamed ElBaradei, and the other winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, Islam can claim just four laureates against Trinity’s 31 (the college’s only peace-prize recipient was Austen Chamberlain, brother of Neville). Yet simply to make the observation was enough to have the Guardian compare him to the loonier imams and conclude that “we must consign Dawkins to this very same pile of the irrational and the dishonest.”
> 
> Full disclosure: Five years ago, when I was battling Canada’s “human rights” commissions to restore free speech to my native land, Richard Dawkins was one of the few prominent figures in Her Majesty’s dominions to lend unequivocal support. He put it this way: “I have over the years developed a dislike for Mark Steyn, although I’ve always admired his forceful writing. On this issue, however, he is clearly 1000% in the right and should receive all the support anybody can give him.”
> 
> Let me return the compliment: I have over the years developed a dislike for Richard Dawkins’s forceful writing (the God of the Torah is “the most unpleasant character in all fiction,” etc.), but I am coming round rather to admire him personally. It’s creepy and unnerving how swiftly the West’s chattering classes have accepted that the peculiar sensitivities of Islam require a deference extended to no other identity group. I doubt The Satanic Verses would be accepted for publication today, but, if it were, I’m certain no major author would come out swinging on Salman Rushdie’s behalf the way his fellow novelist Fay Weldon did: The Koran, she declared, “is food for no-thought … It gives weapons and strength to the thought-police.”
> 
> That was a remarkably prescient observation in the London of 1989. Even a decade ago, it would have been left to the usual fire-breathing imams to denounce remarks like Dawkins’s. In those days, Islam was still, like Christianity, insultable. Fleet Street cartoonists offered variations on the ladies’ changing-room line “Does my bum look big in this?” One burqa-clad woman to another: “Does my bomb look big in this?” Not anymore. “There are no jokes in Islam,” pronounced the Ayatollah Khomeini, and so, in a bawdy Hogarthian society endlessly hooting at everyone from the Queen down, Islam uniquely is no laughing matter. Ten years back, even the United Nations Human Development Program was happy to sound off like an incendiary Dawkins Tweet: Its famous 2002 report blandly noted that more books are translated by Spain in a single year than have been translated into Arabic in the last thousand years.
> 
> What Dawkins is getting at is more fundamental than bombs or burqas. Whatever its virtues, Islam is not a culture of inquiry, of innovation. You can coast for a while on the accumulated inheritance of a pre-Muslim past — as, indeed, much of the Dar al-Islam did in those Middle Ages Dawkins so admires — but it’s not unreasonable to posit that the more Muslim a society becomes the smaller a role Nobel prizes and translated books will play in its future. According to a new report from Britain’s Office of National Statistics, “Mohammed,” in its various spellings, is now the second most popular baby boy’s name in England and Wales, and Number One in the capital. It seems likely that an ever more Islamic London will, for a while, still have a West End theater scene for tourists, but it will have ever less need not just for Oscar Wilde and Noël Coward and eventually Shakespeare but for drama of any kind. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe Dawkins is wrong, maybe the U.N. Human Development chaps are wrong. But the ferocious objections even to raising the subject suggest we’re not.
> 
> A quarter-century on, Fay Weldon’s “thought police” are everywhere. Notice the general line on Dawkins: Please be quiet. Turn him off. You can’t say that. What was once the London Left’s principal objection to the ayatollah’s Rushdie fatwa is now its reflexive response to even the mildest poke at Islam. Their reasoning seems to be that, if you can just insulate this one corner of the multicultural scene from criticism, elsewhere rude, raucous life — with free speech and all the other ancient liberties — will go on. Miss Weldon’s craven successors seem intent on making her point: In London, Islam is food for no thought.


----------



## a_majoor

A farily long piece which tries to explain why *we* are doind such a bad job in the West when trying to understand what is going on in the Middle East. Since Islamic fundamentalism is on the move in places like Indonesia and Africa, it would be well to understand the real issues before we are blind-sided in some place like Mali or South Sudan, or suckered into a mission because of a "red line" that might make some sense to the Western public, but has little or no applicability where the events take place:

http://www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/156181



> *Watching the Middle East Implode*
> by Bruce Thornton (Research Fellow; W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow, 2009–10, 2010–11; and member, military history working group)
> 
> Only when we recognize the fundamental role Islam plays in the region can we begin to craft sensible policies that put U.S. interests first.
> The revolutions against dictators in the Middle East dubbed the Arab Spring have degenerated into a complex, bloody mélange of coups and counter-coups, as have happened in Egypt; vicious civil wars, like the current conflict in Syria; a resurgence of jihadists gaining footholds in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Sinai; and a shifting and fracturing of alliances and enmities of the sort throwing Lebanon and Jordan into turmoil. Meanwhile, American foreign policy has been confused, incompetent, and feckless in insuring that the security and interests of the United States and its allies are protected.
> 
> A major reason for our foreign policy failures in the region is our inability to take into account the intricate diversity of ideological, political, and especially theological motives driving events. Just within the Islamist outfits, Sunni and Shia groups are at odds—and this isn’t to mention the many bitter divisions within Sunni and Shia groups. Add the other players in the Middle East––military dictators, secular democrats, leftover communists, and nationalists of various stripes––and the whole region seems embroiled in endlessly complex divisions and issues.
> 
> Yet a greater impediment to understanding accurately this bloody and complex region is our preconceived biases. Too often we rely on explanations that gratify our own ideological preferences and prejudices, but that function like mental stencils: they are a priori patterns we superimpose on events to create the picture we want to see, but only by concealing other events that do not fit the pattern. We indulge the most serious error of foreign policy: assuming that other peoples think like us and desire the same goods as we do, like political freedom and prosperity, at the expense of others, like religious obedience and honor.
> 
> One persistent narrative attributes the region’s disorder to Western colonialism and imperialism. The intrusion of European colonial powers into the region, the story goes, disrupted the native social and political institutions, imposing in their place racist norms and alien values that demeaned Muslims as the “other” and denigrated their culture to justify the exploitation of resources and markets. This process culminated after World War I in the dismantling of the caliphate, and the creation of Western-style nation-states that ignored the traditional ethnic and sectarian identities of the region. As a result, resentment and anger at colonial occupation and exploitation erupted in Islamist jihadism against the oppressor.
> 
> The Islamists themselves have found this narrative a convenient pretext for their violence, thus reinforcing this explanation for some Westerners. The most important jihadist theorist, the Egyptian Sayyid Qutb, wrote, “It is necessary to revive the Muslim community which is buried under the debris of the man-made traditions of several generations, and which is crushed under the weight of those false laws and customs which are not even remotely related to the Islamic teachings.”
> 
> Qutb was clearly alluding to the European colonial presence in the Middle East, and specifically to the nearly half-century of British control of Egypt. Al Qaeda, Hamas, and other jihadist groups similarly lace their communiqués with references to colonial “oppression” and neo-imperialist interference, as when Osama bin Laden scolded the U.S. in 2002 for waging war in the region “so that you can secure the profit of your greedy companies and industries.” The Arabs likewise routinely describe the creation of Israel as a particularly offensive act of colonial aggression against the lands of Islam.
> 
> Such pretexts, however, are clearly for Western consumption, exploiting the Marxist demonization of imperialism and colonialism that informs the ideology of many leftist intellectuals in Europe and America. When speaking to fellow Muslims, however, most Islamist groups ground their motives in the traditional doctrines of Islam, which call for war against the infidel and the enemies of Islam.
> 
> The narrative of colonial oppression may be gratifying to leftist Western intellectuals, but it cannot alone explain the disorder of the region that has persisted long after the exit of the colonial powers. And it is hard to take seriously complaints of imperialism, colonialism, and occupation coming from followers of Islam. After all, Muslims were one of history’s most successful conquerors and imperialists who, as Efraim Karsh writes, “acted in a typically imperialist fashion from the start, subjugating indigenous populations, colonizing their lands, and expropriating their wealth, resources, and labor.”
> 
> Something else is needed to explain Islamic violence when India, a British colony for nearly 200 years, or South Africa, another ex-colony subjected to the indignities of racial apartheid, has not spawned global terrorist networks responsible for over 20,000 violent attacks just since 9/11.
> 
> The other dominant narrative is a reprise of Wilsonian democracy promotion. In this view, the dysfunctions of the region reflect the absence of open economies, liberal democratic governments, and recognition of human rights. Subjected to autocrats and dictators, the peoples of the Middle East are denied freedom, individual rights, and economic opportunity, and as a result are mired in poverty, oppression, and political disorder that explode into violent jihad.
> 
> George W. Bush sounded these themes in January 2005 in his inaugural speech, in which he linked U.S. security and global peace to the “force of human freedom” and the expansion of democracy: “The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.” Hence Bush’s attempts to build democratic institutions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and President Obama’s early support for the “Arab Spring” revolutions: “I think it was absolutely the right thing for us to do to align ourselves with democracy [and] universal rights.” Both presidents agree that more democracy in the region will mean less of the violence, suffering, and disorder caused by frustration and oppression at the hands of dictators and kleptocrats.
> 
> Like the left-wing narrative of colonialism’s blowback in the form of terror and political dysfunction, democracy promotion suffers from the same limitations, particularly the imposition of Western political categories and goods onto a different culture. The fetishizing of democracy ignores the complex network of mores, values, and principles that undergird political freedom and that took over two millennia in the West to coalesce into liberal democracy. And it ignores the absence of those principles and mores in most Middle Eastern countries.
> 
> So we focus instead on the photogenic process of voting, the ink-stained fingers and lines at polling booths that we confuse for belief in the liberal foundations of genuine democracy. More important, like the left-wing narrative, democracy promotion is ultimately based on material conditions and the goods of this world––prosperity and individual freedom–– at the expense of religious beliefs. Religion is treated as a private lifestyle choice, as it has become in the West, rather than the most fundamental and important dimension of identity both personal and political, as it is in the Muslim world.
> 
> Much of the conflict in the Middle East reflects the collision of these two sets of goods, the religious and the secular, which we oversimplify by emphasizing only the latter. We assume that if a liberal democracy can be created, the tolerance for differences of religious belief, respect for individual rights, and a preference for settling political conflict with legal processes rather than violence, will automatically follow. We forget that in our own history, despite the long tradition of separation of church and state whose roots lie in Christian doctrine, Europe was torn apart by wars of religion that killed millions before that tolerance for sectarian differences triumphed.
> 
> The power of Islam is the reality our various narratives ignore or rationalize away when we attempt to understand the violence and disorder of the Middle East. But as the scholar Bernard Lewis reminds us, “in most Islamic countries, religion remains a major political factor,” for “most Muslim countries are still profoundly Muslim, in a way and in a sense that that most Christian countries are no longer Christian . . . in no Christian country at the present time can religious leaders count on the degree of belief and participation that remains normal in the Muslim lands . . . Christian clergy do not exercise or even claim the kind of public authority in most Muslim countries.”
> 
> This observation provides an insight into recent events in Egypt. After Mubarak fell, many believed that the secular democrats were on their way to creating a more democratic political order. But ensuing elections brought to power the Muslim Brothers, an Islamist organization that scorns democracy and Western notions of human rights as alien impositions preventing the creation of an Islamic social and political order based on sharia law.
> 
> When the deteriorating economy created frustration with the Muslim Brothers’ arrogance and ineptitude, mass protests sparked a military intervention that once again was interpreted as a rejection of the Brothers and sharia, and a yearning for liberal democracy. Our ideological stencil assumed that our secular goods of freedom and prosperity had trumped the religious goods of fidelity to Islam and its doctrines.
> 
> Yet it is not so clear that this is the case. Impatience with the Muslim Brothers’ inability to provide basic necessities and manage the economy, or anger at its heavy-handed tactics, do not necessarily entail rejection of the ultimate goal of a political-social order more consistent with Islamic law. Polling of Egyptians suggests that the general program of the Muslim Brothers is still supported even as their tactics and governing are rejected.
> 
> In a Pew survey earlier this year, 74 percent of Egyptians said they want sharia to be “the official law of the land,” and 55 percent said sharia should apply to non-Muslims, which in Egypt includes 15 million Christian Copts. An earlier survey from 2010 found more specific support for sharia law: 84 percent of Egyptians supported the death penalty for apostates, 82 percent supported stoning adulterers, 85 percent said Islam’s influence on politics is positive, 95 percent said that it is good that Islam plays a large role in politics, 59 percent identified with Islamic fundamentalists, 54 percent favored gender segregation in the workplace, 82 percent favored stoning adulterers, 77 percent favored whippings and cutting off the hands of thieves and robbers, 84 percent favored death for those leaving Islam, and 60 percent said that laws should strictly follow the teachings of the Koran.
> 
> These attitudes, consistent with the program of the Muslim Brothers, suggest that their opponents are angry not with their long-term goal of creating a more Islamized government, but with the Brothers’ abuse of power and their managerial incompetence that alienated the even more radically Islamist Nour party. As the Middle East analyst Reuel Marc Gerecht recently wrote, “Only the deluded, the naïve and the politically deceitful . . . can believe that Islamism’s ‘moment’ in Egypt has passed. More likely, it’s just having an interlude.”
> 
> These results will not surprise anyone who understands how profoundly religious beliefs determine Middle Eastern attitudes to politics and society. Rather than ignoring this widespread religiosity, or subordinating it to our own goods such as prosperity and personal freedom, or explaining away the patent illiberal and intolerant dimensions of this belief, as the dominant narratives continue to do, we should instead recognize and acknowledge the critical role of Islam in the violence and disorder rending this geopolitically strategic region. Only then can we craft a foreign policy that protects our security and interests.
> 
> Bruce S. Thornton is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. He received his BA in Latin in 1975 and his PhD in comparative literature–Greek, Latin, and English–in 1983, both from the University of California, Los Angeles. Thornton is currently a professor of classics and humanities at California State University in Fresno, California. He is the author of nine books and numerous essays and reviews on Greek culture and civilization and their influence on Western civilization. His latest book, published in March 2011, is titled The Wages of Appeasement: Ancient Athens, Munich, and Obama's America.
> 
> Letters to the editor may be sent to definingideas@stanford.edu. Editors reserve the right to reject or publish (and edit) letters.


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## a_majoor

Although we talk and think in terms of states, a better way to look at this is _failing Islamic Culture_. The things this author talks about are fare worse than almost any historical event or situation that I can think of. Past uses of unrestrained violence were to make a point and terrorize a people or place into submission (think of the Golden Horde stacking pyramids of skulls), the only even remotely analogous event might be the spread of Russian Nihilists in the late 19th century, who's campaign of bombings and assassination also had no clearly defined end state in mind (or at least not one that the average Russian of the time or even a reader today could understand):

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/brendanoneill2/100238080/im-sorry-but-we-have-to-talk-about-the-barbarism-of-modern-islamist-terrorism/



> *I'm sorry, but we have to talk about the barbarism of modern Islamist terrorism*
> By Brendan O'Neill World Last updated: September 28th, 2013
> 
> In Western news-making and opinion-forming circles, there’s a palpable reluctance to talk about the most noteworthy thing about modern Islamist violence: its barbarism, its graphic lack of moral restraint. This goes beyond the BBC's yellow reluctance to deploy the T-word – terrorism – in relation to the bloody assault on the Westgate shopping mall in Kenya at the weekend. Across the commentating board, people are sheepish about pointing out the historically unique lunacy of Islamist violence and its utter detachment from any recognisable moral universe or human values. We have to talk about this barbarism; we have to appreciate how new and unusual it is, how different it is even from the terrorism of the 1970s or of the early twentieth century. We owe it to the victims of these assaults, and to the principle of honest and frank political debate, to face up to the unhinged, morally unanchored nature of Islamist violence in the 21st century.
> 
> Maybe it’s because we have become so inured to Islamist terrorism in the 12 years since 9/11 that even something like the blowing-up of 85 Christians outside a church in Pakistan no longer shocks us or even makes it on to many newspaper front pages. But consider what happened: two men strapped with explosives walked into a group of men, women and children who were queuing for food and blew up themselves and the innocents gathered around them. Who does that? How far must a person have drifted from any basic system of moral values to behave in such an unrestrained and wicked fashion? Yet the Guardian tells us it is “moral masturbation” to express outrage over this attack, and it would be better to give into a “sober recognition that there are many bad things we can’t as a matter of fact do much about”. This is a demand that we further acclimatise to the peculiar and perverse bloody Islamist attacks around the world, shrug our shoulders, put away our moral compasses, and say: “Ah well, this kind of thing happens.”
> 
> Or consider the attack on Westgate in Kenya, where both the old and the young, black and white, male and female were targeted. With no clear stated aims from the people who carried the attack out, and no logic to their strange and brutal behaviour, Westgate had more in common with those mass mall and school shootings that are occasionally carried out by disturbed people in the West than it did with the political violence of yesteryear. And yet still observers avoid using the T-word or the M-word (murder) to describe what happened there, and instead attach all sorts of made-up, see-through political theories to this rampage, giving what was effectively a terror tantrum executed by morally unrestrained Islamists the respectability of being a political protest of some breed.
> 
> Time and again, one reads about Islamist attacks that seem to defy not only the most basic of humanity’s moral strictures but also political and even guerrilla logic. Consider the hundreds of suicide attacks that have taken place in Iraq in recent years, a great number of them against ordinary Iraqis, often children. Western apologists for this wave of weird violence, which they call “resistance”, claim it is about fighting against the Western forces which were occupying Iraq in the wake of the 2003 invasion. If so, it’s the first “resistance” in history whose prime targets have been civilians rather than security forces, and which has failed to put forward any kind of political programme that its violence is allegedly designed to achieve. Even experts in counterinsurgency have found themselves perplexed by the numerous nameless suicide assaults on massive numbers of civilians in post-war Iraq, and the fact that these violent actors, unlike the vast majority of violent political actors in history, have “developed no alternative government or political wing and displayed no intention of amassing territory to govern”. One Iraqi attack has stuck in my mind for seven years. In 2006 a female suicide bomber blew herself up among families – including many mothers and their offspring – who were queuing up for kerosene. Can you imagine what happened? A terrible glimpse was offered by this line in a Washington Post report on 24 September 2006: “Two pre-teen girls embraced each other as they burned to death.”
> 
> What motivates this perversity? What are its origins? Unwilling, or perhaps unable, to face up to the newness of this unrestrained, aim-free, civilian-targeting violence, Western observers do all sorts of moral contortions in an effort to present such violence as run-of-the-mill or even possibly a justifiable response to Western militarism. Some say, “Well, America kills women and children too, in its drone attacks”, wilfully overlooking the fact such people are not the targets of America’s military interventions – and I say that as someone who has opposed every American venture overseas of the past 20 years. If you cannot see the difference between a drone strike that goes wrong and kills an entire family and a man who crashes his car into the middle of a group of children accepting sweets from a US soldier and them blows himself and them up – as happened in Iraq in 2005 – then there is something wrong with you. Other observers say that Islamists, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the individuals who attacked London and New York, are fighting against Western imperialism in Muslim lands. But that doesn’t add up. How does blowing up Iraqi children represent a strike against American militarism? How is detonating a bomb on the London Underground a stab at the Foreign Office? It is ridiculous, and more than a little immoral, to try to dress up nihilistic assaults designed merely to kill as many ordinary people as possible as some kind of principled political violence.
> 
> We have a tendency to overlook the newness of modern Islamic terrorism, how recent is this emergence of a totally suicidal violence that revels in causing as many causalities as possible. Yes, terrorism has existed throughout the modern era, but not like this. Consider the newness of suicide attacks, of terrorists who destroy themselves as well as their surroundings and fellow citizens. In the 1980s and 1990s, there were an average of one or two suicide attacks a year. Across the whole world. Since the early and mid-2000s there have been around 300 or 400 suicide attacks a year. In 2006 there were more suicide attacks around the world than had taken place in the entire 20 years previous. Terrorists’ focus on killing civilians – the more the better – is also new. If you look at the 20 bloodiest terrorist attacks in human history, measured by the number of causalities they caused, you’ll see something remarkable: 14 of them – 14 – took place in the 1990s and 2000s. So in terms of mass death and injury, those terrorist eras of the 1970s and 80s, and also earlier outbursts of anarchist terrorism, pale into insignificance when compared with the new, Islamist-leaning terrorism that has emerged in recent years.
> 
> What we have today, uniquely in human history, is a terrorism that seems myopically focused on killing as many people as possible and which has no clear political goals and no stated territorial aims. The question is, why? It is not moral masturbation to ask this question or to point out the peculiarity and perversity of modern Islamist violence. My penny’s worth is that this terrorism speaks to a profound crisis of politics and of morality. Where earlier terrorist groups were restrained both by their desire to appear as rational political actors with a clear goal in mind and by basic moral rules of human behaviour – meaning their violence was often bloody, yes, but rarely focused narrowly on committing mass murder – today’s Islamist terrorists appear to float free of normal political rules and moral compunctions. This is what is so infuriating about the BBC’s refusal to call these groups terrorists – because if anything, and historically speaking, even the term terrorist might be too good for them.



Failure to call these people and groups out (like the BBC and our own media) is a failure of our culture and values as well


----------



## GAP

quite a painted picture.....

Young, angry, male and Muslim
by Michael Galak October 2, 2013
Article Link

One of the most painful faults dividing the Middle East is an institutionalised misogyny.  Habitual deprivation of women of their equality and freedom of choice is the way of life in Islamic societies.

Male control over female reproductive choices is achieved through the denial of effective contraception, institutionalised polygamy and paedophilia, denial of financial independence, widespread unwillingness to educate girls and, the most barbaric practice of all, clitoridectomy -- sometimes wrongly called ‘female circumcision’. Women are expected, and ofted forced, to give birth to as many children as possible, regardless of their wishes, preferences or, indeed, physical age. As a result the tragedy of the Middle East is complicated, and in many ways determined, by the existence of the so called ‘Youth Bulge’– an excess of young unemployed and angry males with rudimentary or non-existent educations, unable to create their own families.

Even what passes in the Muslim world for an education does not guarantee a young Middle-Eastern male a place in a society or an ability to build and support a family. In effect, supplying their young men with worthless, unusable degrees makes a bad situation worse. The devaluation of a male self-worth and high levels of societal anxiety result in the loss of self-respect and perpetual narcissistic rage, fuelled by unused testosterone. The level of violence, both sexual and personal, inevitably increases in such a society.

The post-WWII acceleration of the Islamic emigration to the West, despite a direct Quranic prohibition on Muslims living under “non-believers” rule, is a direct consequence of these failing societies' systemic faults. This emigration brought about the rapid increase in the number of angry and alienated young Islamic males in Western countries, replicating the same “youth bulge” within respective immigrant conclaves.

European precedents

Radical Islamism, which is the most common ideological justification of violence against “infidels”, is a convenient self-serving excuse for an expression of  habitual rage. If not Islamism, something else would have taken its place to facilitate and justify the violence.

The seemingly unrelated phenomena of the Middle Eastern oppression of women and earlier waves of European emigration have common roots, such as unrestricted population growth; resulting population pressure; inability of impoverished and ineligible males to occupy a decent place in a society. The universality of this phenomenon is illustrated by two examples from the European history.  

South American colonisation, or Conquista, was carried out by the Spanish Conquistadores or, as they were known at the time – “Secundos”, meaning impoverished younger sons of often wealthy aristocrats who were ineligible to inherit their fathers’ estates. The dormant violence of these superfluous and redundant young males was unleashed against “Indian heathens".  The cause of spreading of Christianity was a very convenient, even “holy”, excuse for letting out the bottled rage.  

The second example is to be found in the mass migration of Irish younger sons to the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa. They migrated for exactly the same reason their Spanish counterparts did – inability to get their share of an inheritance, because family plots were small and, thus, indivisible. These plots were unable to support the whole family, especially in light of Ireland’s history of catastrophic crop failures. Similarly, these forced emigrants were not able to marry because they had no means nor sources of income to support future spouses and children.
More on link


----------



## Retired AF Guy

Thucydides said:
			
		

> Although we talk and think in terms of states, a better way to look at this is _failing Islamic Culture_. The things this author talks about are fare worse than almost any historical event or situation that I can think of. Past uses of unrestrained violence were to make a point and terrorize a people or place into submission (think of the Golden Horde stacking pyramids of skulls), the only even remotely analogous event might be the spread of Russian Nihilists in the late 19th century, who's campaign of bombings and assassination also had no clearly defined end state in mind (or at least not one that the average Russian of the time or even a reader today could understand):
> 
> http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/brendanoneill2/100238080/im-sorry-but-we-have-to-talk-about-the-barbarism-of-modern-islamist-terrorism/
> 
> Failure to call these people and groups out (like the BBC and our own media) is a failure of our culture and values as well



Personally, I don't these killings have anything to do with politics, religion, Islam, or whatever. I think these guys are just a bunch of psychopaths ( _ala_ Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, etc) who just get their jollies from killing people and the reason they target the innocent is that if they really had to fight someone armed they would crap their pants. 

My two cents.


----------



## a_majoor

I might question how it is possible to gather large numbers of sociopaths together to do such things (given the small numbers and random distribution of sociopaths in the population, and the fact that sociopathic personality traits seem to prevent large numbers of them working together), but an alternative is to consider the leaders of such groups are indeed sociopathic, and use their ability to "model" people's emotional states to gain followers and whip them into a killing frenzy (and said leaders stay behind to watch the mayhem on TV).

If this is true, then the shooters are equally victims (although we should not have too much sympathy for them). It also raises the question about the social matrix they are raised in: what sort of filters and blocks are in place to deter people from acting out on impulses and becoming vulneerable to manipulation?

So at the bottom it still is a question of culture.


----------



## tomahawk6

Thucydides said:
			
		

> I might question how it is possible to gather large numbers of sociopaths together to do such things (given the small numbers and random distribution of sociopaths in the population, and the fact that sociopathic personality traits seem to prevent large numbers of them working together), but an alternative is to consider the leaders of such groups are indeed sociopathic, and use their ability to "model" people's emotional states to gain followers and whip them into a killing frenzy (and said leaders stay behind to watch the mayhem on TV).
> 
> If this is true, then the shooters are equally victims (although we should not have too much sympathy for them). It also raises the question about the social matrix they are raised in: what sort of filters and blocks are in place to deter people from acting out on impulses and becoming vulneerable to manipulation?
> 
> So at the bottom it still is a question of culture.



How did the Nazi's accomplish the samething ? How did Saddam's thugs murder thousands of people ? Break down inhibitions and offer rewards and people can do anything.


----------



## a_majoor

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> How did the Nazi's accomplish the samething ? How did Saddam's thugs murder thousands of people ? Break down inhibitions and offer rewards and people can do anything.



Which is the point I was trying to make (although not as effectively). It seems to me that the social structure of many Islamic/Middle Eastern states lacks many of the cultural and institutional checks and balances that mold the sort of behaviour we recognize as "civilized". Western civilization is built and held together by various "small platoons"; formal and informal associations that provide common ground and sense of purpose that bind people together. Even the removal of large parts of the government (as we see in the United States right now with the shut down) does not create chaos and anarchy, similar mobilization of the "small platoons" is taking place in Detroit, where people are coming out and doing the things the municipal government has abandond due to its financial crisis. Contrast this to the situation in Egypt, which has very few functioning formal or informal institutions or organizations, and rapidly spiralled into chaos with the fall of government.


----------



## a_majoor

And a piece of good news. Tunisia has thrown the Islamists out of power, the people wishing for a more secularist government/State. This is going to be a difficult task, as there are many secular parties but only one Islamist party, so vote splitting will be an issue. As well, religion is one of the powerful institutions and value setters in that culture, so there will be a strong pull against secularism. A place to watch:

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/michael-j-totten/fall-tunisias-islamists



> *The Fall of Tunisia's Islamists*
> 
> 4 October 2013
> Ennahda, the Tunisian Islamist party affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, has been forced from power by an overwhelming secular opposition.
> 
> I didn’t know this was going to happen, but I had a pretty strong sense that it would. Tunisia is a modern, pluralistic, civilized place. It’s striking liberal compared with most Arab countries. A person couldn’t possibly show up in Tunis from Cairo and think the two are remotely alike. Egypt is at one extreme of the Arab world’s political spectrum, and Tunisia is at the other.
> 
> The Islamists won less than half the vote two years ago, and the only reason they did even that well is because Ennahda ran on an extremely moderate platform. They sold themselves to voters as Tunisia’s version of Germany’s Christian Democrats.
> 
> It was a lie, of course, and once Tunisians figured that out, support for Ennahda cratered.
> 
> The assassination of leftist politician Mohamed Brahmi this summer pushed the country over the edge. Ennahda didn’t kill the guy. A Salafist terrorist cell did the deed. But Ennahda has been playing footsie with the Salafist fringe while the rest of the country recoils in horror, so Ennahda is getting blamed too.
> 
> Unlike in Egypt, the Islamists weren’t thrown out by force. Tunisia doesn’t have an Egyptian-style military that’s big and powerful and ideological enough to occupy the country and rule it through a junta. Also unlike in Egypt, Tunisia has a critical mass of secular citizens who won’t put up with even a whiff of theocracy.
> 
> The other reason Ennahda’s partial victory was possible two years ago is because they had an organizational advantage after the dictator Ben Ali fell. They had the mosques while the secular parties had nothing. And since the Islamists were smart enough to pretend to be moderates, they managed to get moderate people to vote for them.
> 
> That’s over now. In the meantime, the liberal and leftist parties have had a lot more time to get organized and merge into larger entities so they can avoid the vote splitting that hurt them so much last time. When a single religious party squares off against dozens of secular parties, it doesn’t take a political or mathematical genius to figure out which will get the most votes.
> 
> Tunisia is the one and only Arab Spring country that I’ve been cautiously optimistic about. Libya is too much of a mess, Egypt was a lost cause begin with, and Syria is in worse shape than Bosnia in the mid-1990s. Tunisia, though, is doing as well as could be expected.
> 
> And get this: now that Ennahda is out, not a single post-Arab Spring country is ruled by Islamists. All of them are secular now.


----------



## a_majoor

An "oops" moment, when we realize that we are getting exactly what *we* asked for...

http://pjmedia.com/blog/islams-protestant-reformation/?print=1



> *Islam’s ‘Protestant Reformation’*
> Posted By Raymond Ibrahim On June 20, 2014 @ 12:12 am In Homeland Security,Middle East,Politics,Religion,US News,World News | 27 Comments
> 
> In order to prevent a clash of civilizations, or worse, Islam must reform.  This is the contention of many Western peoples. And, pointing to Christianity’s Protestant Reformation as proof that Islam can also reform, many are optimistic.
> 
> Overlooked by most, however, is that Islam has been reforming. What is today called “radical Islam” is the reformation of Islam. And it follows the same pattern of Christianity’s Protestant Reformation.
> 
> The problem is our understanding of the word “reform.”  Despite its positive connotations, “reform” simply means [1] to “make changes (in something, typically a social, political, or economic institution or practice) in order to improve it.”
> 
> Synonyms of “reform” include “make better,” “ameliorate,” and “improve” — splendid words all, yet words all subjective and loaded with Western references.
> 
> Muslim notions of “improving” society may include purging it of “infidels” and their corrupt ways; or segregating men and women, keeping the latter under wraps or quarantined at home; or executing apostates, who are seen as traitorous agitators.
> 
> Banning many forms of freedoms taken for granted in the West — from alcohol consumption to religious and gender equality — can be deemed an “improvement” and a “betterment” of society.
> 
> In short, an Islamic reformation need not lead to what we think of as an “improvement” and “betterment” of society — simply because “we” are not Muslims and do not share their reference points and first premises.  “Reform” only sounds good to most Western peoples because they, secular and religious alike, are to a great extent products of Christianity’s Protestant Reformation; and so, a priori, they naturally attribute positive connotations to the word.
> 
> Islam’s Reformation Has Produced Results Opposite to Protestant Antecedent.
> 
> At its core, the Protestant Reformation was a revolt against tradition in the name of scripture — in this case, the Bible.  With the coming of the printing press, increasing numbers of Christians became better acquainted with the Bible’s contents, parts of which they felt contradicted what the Church was teaching.  So they broke away, protesting that the only Christian authority was “scripture alone,” sola scriptura.
> 
> Islam’s reformation follows the same logic of the Protestant Reformation — specifically by prioritizing scripture over centuries of tradition and legal debate — but with antithetical results that reflect the contradictory teachings of the core texts of Christianity and Islam.
> 
> As with Christianity, throughout most of its history, Islam’s scriptures, specifically its “twin pillars,” the Koran (literal words of Allah) and the Hadith (words and deeds of Allah’s prophet, Muhammad), were inaccessible to the overwhelming majority of Muslims.  Only a few scholars, or ulema — literally, “they who know” — were literate in Arabic and/or had possession of Islam’s scriptures. The average Muslim knew only the basics of Islam, or its “Five Pillars.”
> 
> In this context, a “medieval synthesis” flourished throughout the Islamic world.  Guided by an evolving general consensus (or ijma‘), Muslims sought to accommodate reality by, in medieval historian Daniel Pipes’ words [2]:
> 
> [Translating] Islam from a body of abstract, infeasible demands [as stipulated in the Koran and Hadith] into a workable system. In practical terms, it toned down Sharia and made the code of law operational. Sharia could now be sufficiently applied without Muslims being subjected to its more stringent demands.…  [However,] While the medieval synthesis worked over the centuries, it never overcame a fundamental weakness: It is not comprehensively rooted in or derived from the foundational, constitutional texts of Islam. Based on compromises and half measures, it always remained vulnerable to challenge by purists (emphasis added).
> 
> This vulnerability has now reached breaking point: millions of more Korans published in Arabic and other languages are in circulation today compared to just a century ago; millions of more Muslims are now literate enough to read and understand the Koran compared to their medieval forbears.  The Hadith, which contains some of the most intolerant teachings and violent deeds attributed to Islam’s prophet, is now collated and accessible, in part thanks to the efforts of Western scholars, the Orientalists.  Most recently, there is the Internet — where all these scriptures are now available in dozens of languages and to anyone with a laptop or iPhone.
> 
> In this backdrop, what has been called at different times, places, and contexts “Islamic fundamentalism,” “radical Islam,” “Islamism,” and “Salafism” flourished.  Many of today’s Muslim believers, much better acquainted with the often black and white words of their scriptures than their ancestors, are “protesting” against earlier traditions, are “protesting” against the “medieval synthesis,” in favor of scriptural literalism — just like their Christian Protestant counterparts once did.
> 
> Thus, if Martin Luther (d. 1546) rejected the extra-scriptural accretions of the Church and “reformed” Christianity by aligning it more closely with scripture, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab (d. 1787), one of Islam’s first modern reformers, “called for a return to the pure, authentic Islam of the Prophet, and the rejection of the accretions that had corrupted it and distorted it,” in the words of Bernard Lewis in his 1997 book, The Middle East [3].
> 
> The unadulterated words of God — or Allah — are all that matter for the reformists.
> 
> Note: Because they are better acquainted with Islam’s scriptures, other Muslims, of course, are apostatizing — whether by converting to other religions, most notably Christianity, or whether by abandoning religion altogether, even if only in their hearts (for fear of the apostasy penalty).  This is an important point to be revisited later.  Muslims who do not become disaffected after better acquainting themselves with the literal teachings of Islam’s scriptures, and who instead become more faithful to and observant of them are the topic of this essay.
> 
> Article printed from PJ Media: http://pjmedia.com
> 
> URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/blog/islams-protestant-reformation/
> 
> URLs in this post:
> 
> [1] means: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/reform
> [2] Daniel Pipes’ words: http://www.danielpipes.org/13033/can-islam-be-reformed
> [3] The Middle East: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00309CNI0/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00309CNI0&linkCode=as2&tag=pjmedia-20


----------



## Edward Campbell

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Financial Times_ is an interesting overview of the situation and and around Iraq:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/c9c9b8d0-f89b-11e3-815f-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=intl#axzz35AlgcErD


> Middle East: Falling to pieces
> *It is imperative that rivals unite in the face of an Isis threat. Failure to do so could spell the end of Iraq*
> 
> By Roula Khalaf
> 
> June 20, 2014
> 
> The surge of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the group known as Isis, poses a threat to all countries in the Middle East as well as to western interests. The Sunni jihadi group, whose rapid takeover of swaths of northwestern Iraq could lead to all-out civil war, considers not only Shia Muslims as its enemy. Isis’s aim is to dismantle existing borders among Sunni states and demolish prevailing power structures. If left unchecked and with territory under its control, its agenda might well expand to include global violent jihad.
> 
> In the twisted world of Isis, no one wins – not the Shia clerical regime in Tehran nor the Sunni theocracy in Saudi Arabia. Both have an interest in ridding the region of the new wave of jihadi extremism. But, this being the Middle East, having a common enemy is not sufficient to establish unity of purpose.
> 
> It was in Iraq just over a decade ago that the balance of power in the region was radically altered. The shift unleashed a power struggle that has taken on Sunni-Shia sectarian overtones and has been played out across the Middle East, from Syria to Lebanon, Bahrain and Yemen.
> 
> The 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq removed a Sunni-dominated regime that was, through elections, replaced with a government led by the Shia majority.
> 
> Since then, Iraq has been a battleground for regional score-settling, with Gulf monarchies supporting Sunni tribes and parties and Iran bolstering Shia groups. The power struggle has shifted to Syria over the past three years with Iran and the Gulf powers backing opposing sides of a civil war.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> But while attention was focused on Syria, tensions were simmering in Iraq. Since the US troop withdrawal from Iraq in 2011, Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, has pursued policies that have further alienated the Sunni minority, fuelling widespread resentment of the central government and its military institutions that has facilitated the Isis offensive.
> 
> Former Ba’athists who never came to terms with the new political order in Iraq have been staging a comeback, fighting alongside Isis.
> 
> Interactive map
> 
> Ironically, perhaps, Iran and the US, estranged since the Islamic revolution in 1979, have good reason to co-operate in Iraq today. But co-operation is not without risks. The US is reluctant to hand any leverage to Iran during the critical negotiations under way over Tehran’s nuclear programme.
> 
> The US objective of a more balanced power- sharing agreement in Iraq is also at odds with the Iranian interest for Shia dominance. US-Iranian co-operation on Iraq is also certain to inflame Saudi passions and confirm to a suspicious Riyadh that Washington is on the way to abandoning its traditional Gulf allies.
> 
> In Riyadh and other Gulf capitals, concern about Isis is mitigated by the prospect of dealing a rare setback to the Shia-led government in Baghdad, and by extension Iran. Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy has become fixated on checking Iranian influence in the Arab world.
> 
> In this page, the Financial Times attempts to explain, through maps and graphics, the regional dynamics that complicate efforts to preserve Iraq as a united nation. More than at any time in the past decade, Iraq confronts the danger of dismemberment into Shia, Sunni and Kurdish entities, a prospect that would have huge ramifications across the Middle East.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ● Iran, the leading Shia power, is probably the most important player in Iraq. It wants a stable Iraq with the Shia majority as the dominant political power. Iran is keen to co-operate with the US against Isis in Iraq and has the influence to secure an unstated US goal: a new government that would no longer be led by Nouri al-Maliki.
> 
> The US and Iran, however, back opposite sides in Syria. The same security forces that assist Iran’s Shia groups have been bolstering Bashar al-Assad, while the US has supported moderate rebels.
> 
> The US is also concerned Iran could use their co-operation as a bargaining chip in nuclear negotiations and that even the appearance of working with Iran will heighten tensions with Sunni Gulf Arab regimes.
> 
> ● Saudi Arabia is the big Sunni power in the Middle East. But the Iraq conflict has broken out at a time when its long-established strategic alliance with the US is under strain. For Saudi Arabia, Iraq is a battleground for its cold war with Iran. In recent years, the Saudis have ignored repeated US pleas to help stabilise Iraq by launching a dialogue with Mr Maliki. They have shunned the prime minister and sought to prop up Iraq’s Sunni tribes and political parties.
> 
> The jihadi networks that fund Isis are assumed to include private Saudi donors. Riyadh has also been a big backer of Syria’s rebels, some of whom might have joined Isis. The Sunni Gulf monarchies appear to be taking some pleasure in Mr Maliki’s predicament today, even if Isis’s expansion could pose a threat to their own rule.
> 
> ● Syria’s conflict is closely intertwined with the Iraq crisis. Isis has been the most ferocious of the disparate groups in the largely Sunni rebel movement that has been trying to unseat Mr Assad. It is now in control of parts of the north and east of Syria.
> 
> While Isis is designated as a terrorist organisation in the US, the more moderate anti-Assad rebels are backed by Washington. Mr Assad and the US therefore appear to be on the same side when it comes to Isis.
> 
> But not completely. Complicating the issue are the suspicious ties between Mr Assad and Isis. The jihadi group is believed by western intelligence to be infiltrated by the Assad regime, whose objective is to portray the rebels as Sunni extremists determined to oust a minority Alawite regime.
> 
> ● Turkey has much at stake in Iraq, including growing commercial interests, particularly in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in the north. It shares with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies the concerns over Iran’s nuclear programme. And it has co-operated with the monarchies and the US in Syria, where it has been a leading opponent of Mr Assad.
> 
> But Turkey has been accused of turning a blind eye to the flood of foreign fighters crossing into Syria to join the rebellion, including jihadi groups such as Isis.
> 
> Ankara’s paramount concern is the fate of Iraq’s Kurds, who have been trying to carve out self-government areas in Syria as well. Turkey’s worry is that separatist sentiment could spread to its own Kurdish minority.




Now, I don't even to pretend to understand what's happening in the Middle East and I seriously doubt the capabilities of most whoclaim they do (maybe Bernard Lewis does, but he's nearly 100 years old!). The article above does, it seems to me, explain who care about what ...  but: :dunno:


----------



## Edward Campbell

And, here, _CNN_ provides three useful maps to help understand the situation in Iraq.


----------



## CougarKing

Qatar reportedly steps into line with its neighbours by stopping the funding for their favourite extremist group: the Muslim brotherhood:

Yahoo News



> *Qatar steps back into line on Brotherhood*
> 
> Dubai (AFP) - Long seen as the "black sheep" of the Gulf monarchies for backing the Muslim Brotherhood, Qatar appears to have fallen into line with its neighbours and started to curb the group's activities, experts said.
> 
> Doha's support for the Brotherhood -- banned by most Gulf monarchies, who see the group's political Islam as a threat to their stability -- harmed ties with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
> 
> After the ouster of Egypt's Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, Cairo labelled the Brotherhood a "terrorist organisation" and some of the group's leaders fled to Qatar.
> 
> (...EDITED)


----------



## Edward Campbell

I found this on _Twitter_:






My  :2c: : Saudi Arabia is not our friend, it is certainly not an ally, it is, basically, a gang of oil rich 13th century barbarians.


----------



## Flavus101

Slightly different circumstances though?  ???


----------



## a_majoor

Without Qatari funding, the Muslim Brotherhoods and their virulent offshoots like ISIS (ISIL/IS) will be much easier to deal with, and the Iranians, Syrians and Hezbollah no longer "need" US intelligence or airpower to deal with them. Once again, the real strategy is to let the Shia's and Sunnis do all the intramural fighting between themselves, while we step back and watch the show.

As for the humanitarian crisis this will cause, that is another excellent place for the oil rich Gulf States and the Iranians and their allies to use their wealth to "buy" influence; once again there is nothing that *we* should do, and only a small cadre of "friends" in the region we should be supporting.


----------



## jollyjacktar

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> I found this on _Twitter_:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> My  :2c: : Saudi Arabia is not our friend, it is certainly not an ally, it is, basically, a gang of oil rich 13th century barbarians.


If,  they are whacking murderers etc as the US is and by decapitation as France once did albeit by sword vs guillotine,  what's the difference?  If, they were whacking folks for the same reasons ISIS are, that's a different kettle of fish.  I do agree, however,  they are not our friends and their worldview is barbaric.   All of the fundamentalists are as far as I'm concerned.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Here is a list of capital crimes in Saudi Arabia (I found it on _Wikipedia_, and there is no supporting reference, so take it for what it's worth, but there are plenty of reputable reports to suggests that many of the "crimes" on the list end up with a death sentence):

1.   Adultery (Unmarried adulterers can be sentenced to 100 lashes, married ones can be sentenced to stoning.)
2.   Apostasy (Apostates are sentenced to beheading but are usually given three days to repent and return to Islam.)
3.   Armed robbery
4.   Blasphemy
5.   Burglary
6.   Carjacking
7.   Aircraft hijacking
8.   Drug smuggling
9.   Fornication
10. Home invasion
11. Sodomy, homosexuality, or lesbianism (If a man or woman is sodomized by their own consent, then they will also be sentenced to death along with the sodomizer)
12. Idolatry
13. Murder
14. Rape
15. Sedition
16. Sexual misconduct
17. Sorcery
18. Terrorism
19. Theft (fourth conviction)
20. Treason
21. Waging war on God
22. Witchcraft

Now I don't know if all drug smugglers are beheaded, probably not, but some are.


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## McG

Is number 22 judged with a large balance scale and a duck?


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## jollyjacktar

I did see a bit about the guy who is the executioner for SA.  He was pleased and proud with his part in the system.  I will sayat least he does use a big f-off sword that takes the head in one cut, not a knife like those ISIS arseholes.


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## CougarKing

While the world's attention was focused on Iraq and Syria, in Yemen things got more than a little out of hand when the Shia Houthi rebels captured the capital last month:

*Btw, isn't it time we changed the title of the thread? Since the events reported here have gone way beyond the Arab Spring of 2011.

Reuters



> *Yemen on the brink as rebels oust the old guard*
> 
> By Peter Salisbury and William Maclean
> 
> SANAA/DUBAI (Reuters) - *The Houthi rebels who stunned the Arab world with the sudden seizure of Yemen's capital will have to strive to cement their power in the face of well-armed rivals, a test of strength that could tip the unstable country deeper into turmoil.*
> 
> A suicide bombing last Thursday that killed 47 in Sanaa is an example of the indiscriminate tactics Yemenis fear some armed groups are prepared to employ to check the ascent of the Shi'ite Muslim movement that swept into the city on Sept 21.
> 
> The attack was claimed by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), apparently furious at the ability of Houthi fighters to take over Yemen's fragile state and dictate terms to its embattled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
> 
> The mood in Sanaa is apprehensive.
> 
> "This is just the beginning,” said Mohammed Saleh, a taxi-driver who ferried passengers away from the scene of the blast.
> 
> *"It is a war now between al Qaeda and the Houthis and those who will be hurt the most are ordinary people."*
> 
> (...SNIPPED)


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## a_majoor

Many people here have suggested that the real "Solution" would be for some sort of "Reformation movement" within Islam. Well perhaps we are going to get our wish:

http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2015/01/03/egypts-al-sisi-makes-extraordinary-speech-on-islam/?print=1



> *Egypt’s al-Sisi Makes Extraordinary Speech on Islam*
> Posted By Roger L Simon On January 3, 2015 @ 10:20 pm In Middle East,Uncategorized | 98 Comments
> 
> Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi made an extraordinary speech [1] on New Year’s Day to Cairo’s Al-Azhar and the Awqaf Ministry calling for a long overdue virtual ecclesiastical revolution in Islam.  This is something no Western leader has the had the courage to do, certainly not Barack Obama, despite his Muslim education.
> 
> Accusing the umma (world Islamic population) of encouraging the hostility of the entire world, al-Sisi’s speech is so dramatic and essentially revolutionary it brings to mind Khrushchev’s famous speech exposing Stalin. Many have called for a reformation of Islam, but for the leader of the largest Arab nation to do so has world-changing implications.
> 
> Here are the key parts as translated on Raymond Ibrahim’s blog [1]:
> 
> I am referring here to the religious clerics.   We have to think hard about what we are facing—and I have, in fact, addressed this topic [2] a couple of times before.  It’s inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire umma [Islamic world] to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world.  Impossible!
> 
> That thinking—I am not saying “religion” but “thinking”—that corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the years, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world.  It’s antagonizing the entire world!
> 
> Is it possible that 1.6 billion people [Muslims] should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants—that is 7 billion—so that they themselves may live? Impossible!
> 
> I am saying these words here at Al Azhar, before this assembly of scholars and ulema—Allah Almighty be witness to your truth on Judgment Day concerning that which I’m talking about now.
> 
> All this that I am telling you, you cannot feel it if you remain trapped within this mindset. You need to step outside of yourselves to be able to observe it and reflect on it from a more enlightened perspective.
> 
> *I say and repeat again that we are in need of a religious revolution. You, imams, are responsible before Allah. The entire world, I say it again, the entire world is waiting for your next move… because this umma is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost—and it is being lost by our own hands.* [bolds mine]
> 
> Al-Sisi is certainly correct.  The whole world has been waiting for a long time for the next move of these imams or for somebody, anybody that will modernize Islam as other religions have done..  Whether that will happen, of course, is another question, but what al-Sisi is saying here is in many ways more revolutionary than the “Arab Spring.”  People ask, where are the “moderate Muslims”?  Well, one of them may be the president of Egypt. The boys from Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, Boko Haram, al Qaeda, etc., etc., are probably not too happy about what al-Sisi said.  Let’s hope he doesn’t suffer the fate of Anwar Sadat for his courage.
> 
> Also at PJ Media:
> 
> A Modest Proposal to Combat Islamic Violence [3]
> 
> Article printed from Roger L. Simon: http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon
> 
> URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2015/01/03/egypts-al-sisi-makes-extraordinary-speech-on-islam/
> 
> URLs in this post:
> 
> [1] extraordinary speech: http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/egypts-sisi-islamic-thinking-is-antagonizing-the-entire-world/
> [2] addressed this topic: http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/gen-sisi-religious-discourse-greatest-challenge-facing-egypt/
> [3] A Modest Proposal to Combat Islamic Violence: http://pjmedia.com/blog/a-modest-proposal-2/


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## Kat Stevens

Well, he should be dead before Ramadan ends.


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## jollyjacktar

Wow, that both needed to be said by a major figure and took huge balls to step forward.   I hope it starts the dialogue Islam and the rest of us so  desperately needs.


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## cryco

I wonder how many imams went into apoplectic shock when hearing those words. 
At least they were said though, let's see how far this goes.


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## OldSolduer

MCG said:
			
		

> Is number 22 judged with a large balance scale and a duck?


As long as the scale is balanced with some very small rocks.....


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## a_majoor

Free speech for me, none for thee. Stifling free inquiry is a big part of why Islamic states and societies are falling behind, and their efforts to "criminalize" blasphamy are intensifying both their self inflicted problems and radicalization:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/01/11/defending-islam-free-speech-muslim-oic-un-hate-speech-criticism-column/21609273/



> *Defending Islam from free speech: Column*
> 
> Robert C. Blitt 11:25 a.m. EST January 12, 2015
> 
> Powerful, mainstream Muslim groups must recognize they're breeding religious intolerance.
> 
> Many have taken false comfort in blaming the cold-blooded attack of Charlie Hebdo on the fanatical action of a small minority of Muslims. But attributing the horror perpetrated in Paris to a band of Salafist radicals alone betrays a willful blindness to a longstanding campaign by broad-based Islamic groups to silence those they consider blasphemers.
> 
> The Islamic State and al-Qaeda are by no means the most powerful purveyors of the destructive idea that Islam demands unqualified protection against perceived insult. In the aftermath of the Paris attack, reputable Muslim groups around the world have denounced the violence, but important bodies such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the Arab League, as well as many of the individual states comprising these groups, must bear responsibility for nurturing an environment that breeds violence in the name of defending Islam.
> 
> Moderates, radicals agree
> 
> The OIC, whose member states range from moderate U.S. allies such as Jordan to adversaries such as Iran, describes itself as the world's largest international body after the United Nations. For more than a decade, "the collective voice of the Muslim world" has spread the belief that any insult directed against the Muslim faith or its prophet demands absolute suppression. Quashing "defamation of Islam" is enshrined as a chief objective in the organization's charter.
> 
> With countless internal resolutions, relentless lobbying of the international community and block voting on resolutions advocating a prohibition on defamation of religion at the U.N., the OIC continuously pushes to silence criticism of Islam.
> 
> Translated into practice inside Islamic nations and increasingly elsewhere, this toxic vision breeds contempt for freedom of religion and expression, justifies the killing of Muslims and non-Muslims alike, and casts a pall of self-censorship over academia and the arts.
> 
> By building the expectation that dissent or insult merits suppression, groups such as the OIC and the Arab League have emboldened extremists to take protection of Islam to the next level. With the most authoritative Muslim voices prepared to denounce violence but not to combat the idea that Islam should be immune from criticism, a meaningful response to counteract the resulting violence continues to be glaringly absent.
> 
> An OIC statement released after a 2011 Charlie Hebdo issue "guest-edited" by the prophet Mohammed typifies this troubling position: "Publication of the insulting cartoon ... was an outrageous act of incitement and hatred and abuse of freedom of expression. ... The publishers and editors of the Charlie Hebdo magazine must assume full responsibility for their ... incitement of religious intolerance."
> 
> This ominously prescient declaration tepidly closed by urging that Muslims exercise restraint.
> 
> Blasphemy is a crime
> 
> Likewise, after the attack last week, the OIC "strongly condemned the terrorist act," but quickly added "that such acts of terror only represent the criminal perpetrators."
> 
> It had nothing to say about the principle of free speech. Perhaps that is because blasphemous speech is a crime in a vast arc of Islamic countries from Morocco in the West to Indonesia in the East.
> 
> If the OIC, Arab League and Muslim states genuinely want to distance themselves and the religion of Islam from such ghastly acts of terror, they must reversethe years spent advancing the motive that spawned them. As a start, they should stop punishing their own citizens for failure to properly respect Islam.
> 
> Support for a prohibition on defamation of religion must be decisively repudiated. To counteract the damage that has been done, OIC members should embrace the promotion of tolerance, including sponsorship of moderation and tolerance efforts in mosques and madrassas globally. The OIC and its members should compensate Charlie Hebdo and the victims' families.
> 
> Clinging to the position that a prohibition on defamation of Islam is somehow a justifiable and measured response to perceived insult will continue inciting attempts to silence critics.
> 
> With millions marching in France and increasing unrest across Europe focused on Muslim immigrants, let's hope the leaders of the Muslim world acknowledge that the effort to turn blasphemy into a crime has done more to breed religious intolerance than any cartoon or YouTube video.
> 
> Robert C. Blitt, a University of Tennessee associate professor of law, was an international law specialist for the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
> 
> In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, including our Board of Contributors. To read more columns like this, go to the Opinion front page or sign up for the daily Opinion e-mail newsletter.


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## Oldgateboatdriver

We tend to forget that freedom of expression was developed and came into being as a fundamental freedoms specifically to protect speech from two sources of censorship: Religions and Undemocratic states action.

It developed so that the Religions in Europe (all of them "Christian" by the way) would stop being able to use the power of the state to impose their view (and yes, through "blasphemy" laws amongst others) and their religious practices on those of other (Christian) religions and put an end to centuries of useless religious waring. The American founders, an enlightened bunch, saw fit to introduce the concept in their state right of the bat, including the corresponding need for a state without any religion in its government.

That is why, other than incitement to violence against a identifiable group, the only other limit on freedom of speech is found at the individual level: You cannot defame an individual. When Muslims around the world clue in to that concept, all will be fine. Heck! They may even find that it protects them from each other in their fights amongst all their various schismatic interpretations of their own religion.


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