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legrande
Joined: 23 Nov 2010
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 Posted: Sat Jan 29, 2011 5:06 am Post subject: Unrest in Egypt- What's it all about |
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Unrest in Egypt: What�s going on? By Zachary Roth
Michele Dunne is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace. She has served as a specialist on Middle East affairs with the White House and the State Department, and has written widely on Arab politics, and political and economic reform. The Lookout asked her to explain what's going on in Egypt, and what it means for America.
LOOKOUT: What are the protesters angry about, and what do they want done?
M.D.: Protesters have a large number of economic, political, and human-rights grievances. Widespread youth unemployment, rigged parliamentary elections in November 2010, and the prospect of President Mubarak (in power since 1981) beginning another term--or being replaced by his son--are the sparks that set these demonstrations off. The demonstrators are asking for Mubarak to step down and make way for an interim government to prepare for free elections.
LOOKOUT: How might a shift in power affect U.S. interests?
M.D.: U.S. interests are being challenged here. The United States has been tepid in supporting human rights and democracy in Egypt for years and has to deal with the resentment among Egyptians because of that. |
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legrande
Joined: 23 Nov 2010
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pkang0202
Joined: 09 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2011 9:36 pm Post subject: |
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Wow, this is just flabbergasting.
The riots have nothing to do with Democracy. Do you honestly think the groups fomenting the riots (Muslim Brotherhood) want to install a government based on Democratic ideals? If Muburak's government falls, I guarantee the Muslim Brotherhood will use violence and intimidation to instill an Islamic government in Egypt.
Democracy? Anyone who thinks there will be "democracy" in Egypt has some pretty big blinders on. |
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Steelrails
Joined: 12 Mar 2009
Location: Earth, Solar System
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| Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2011 11:49 pm Post subject: |
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| pkang0202 wrote: |
Wow, this is just flabbergasting.
The riots have nothing to do with Democracy. Do you honestly think the groups fomenting the riots (Muslim Brotherhood) want to install a government based on Democratic ideals? If Muburak's government falls, I guarantee the Muslim Brotherhood will use violence and intimidation to instill an Islamic government in Egypt.
Democracy? Anyone who thinks there will be "democracy" in Egypt has some pretty big blinders on. |
Well if it was a Muslim thang I think the Coptics would be having a pretty stiff time of it right now, but there doesn't seem to be any of that sort of thing going on, so I don't know if we can call it Islamist.
It seems not necessarily pro-democratic, just anti-Mubarak. Who knows where this leads though.... |
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northway
Joined: 05 Jul 2010
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| Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 2:37 am Post subject: |
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| How can you say that the Brotherhood is behind the protests when the protests were going on in earnest for a solid three days before the Brotherhood even backed them? |
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legrande
Joined: 23 Nov 2010
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| Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 2:40 am Post subject: |
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| pkang0202 wrote: |
Wow, this is just flabbergasting.
The riots have nothing to do with Democracy. Do you honestly think the groups fomenting the riots (Muslim Brotherhood) want to install a government based on Democratic ideals? If Muburak's government falls, I guarantee the Muslim Brotherhood will use violence and intimidation to instill an Islamic government in Egypt.
Democracy? Anyone who thinks there will be "democracy" in Egypt has some pretty big blinders on. |
Well, hate to break it to you, but apparently they weren't getting much democracy or anything else with the US-supported Mubarak regime. Seems these days a lot of people in the Middle East don't seem too hot on having the US in their backyard/meddling with their business, Pakistan as well. Must be because they are all insane off-the-chart terrorists without any sense of justice or real values.
Just like the South Koreans in 1945-1950 who wanted the US to pack up and leave. Good thing they were eliminated and driven into hiding by the elite neo-consevative US sympathizers, as we know nowadays South Korea is a true democracy where freedom of speech, thought, and action are actively encouraged and realized. ROK citizens are under no systematic coercion whatsoever to devote any of their time and energy to a materialist image-obsessed consumer economy driven by the adage, "Money=Happiness, so you, too, can have it all one day if you just chase it hard enough, and have the right look/code of conduct/manner of thinking".
We also know that the North, or rather, the "Norks" (as they are not truly human, but are all more akin to savage backward idiot beasts, just like "Gooks"), degenerated into their current pathetic state all on their own, with absolutely no policies of containment/meddling/sabotage by foreign bodies in the form of crippling sanctions and the like. The US tried so earnestly to help them, but they simply wouldn't listen, so they had to be carpet-bombed into oblivion with more bombs than were used during the whole Pacific WWII campaign, never mind that the majority of those killed were civilians.
So yes, Michele Dunne, who as we see above served with the White House and the State Department regarding Middle East affairs, must be wrong when she says this little flare-up in Egypt has everything to do with Democracy, and you, big man in Korea, must know better. It is unfortunate that you feel flabbergasted and scandalized when your world-view, nourished,cultivated, and brought to fruition via a diet of CNN and Reuters, is challenged by someone who was hired by the White House.
Finally, we know that the extremist groups in the Middle East that are gaining support in no way owe their growing popularity to Middle Eastern people's opposition to US policies of invasion and meddling, so that if a fundamentalist Islamic group does manage to come to power, it has absolutely nothing to do with things like as many as 600,000 Iraqis having died as a result of the second US attack, or the US backing a tyrant like Mubarak. We all know that the US would enthusiastically welcome a democratic gov't in every country around the world, even if those gov'ts were somewhat averse to getting into bed with Uncle Sam. |
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comm
Joined: 22 Jun 2010
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| Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 5:31 am Post subject: |
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What's really disgusting is that a few words of earnest support and a few airdrops of essential supplies would do more to encourage democracy than the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.
It's horrifying how disinterested the United States government is in promoting democracy. As Egypt inevitably redistributes power to the masses, those people will connect the US to their deposed dictator. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 5:35 am Post subject: |
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There is currently a thread devoted to unrest in the MEast
| pkang0202 wrote: |
Wow, this is just flabbergasting.
The riots have nothing to do with Democracy. Do you honestly think the groups fomenting the riots (Muslim Brotherhood) want to install a government based on Democratic ideals? If Muburak's government falls, I guarantee the Muslim Brotherhood will use violence and intimidation to instill an Islamic government in Egypt.
Democracy? Anyone who thinks there will be "democracy" in Egypt has some pretty big blinders on. |
Dude, no. The Muslim Brotherhood wasn't involved until several days after the riots began. It jumped on the bandwagon. And it is viewed by younger people as complicit with the Mubarak regime. You clearly have not been following what's been going on in Egypt for the past week or so. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 5:36 am Post subject: |
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| Steelrails wrote: |
| pkang0202 wrote: |
Wow, this is just flabbergasting.
The riots have nothing to do with Democracy. Do you honestly think the groups fomenting the riots (Muslim Brotherhood) want to install a government based on Democratic ideals? If Muburak's government falls, I guarantee the Muslim Brotherhood will use violence and intimidation to instill an Islamic government in Egypt.
Democracy? Anyone who thinks there will be "democracy" in Egypt has some pretty big blinders on. |
Well if it was a Muslim thang I think the Coptics would be having a pretty stiff time of it right now, but there doesn't seem to be any of that sort of thing going on, so I don't know if we can call it Islamist.
It seems not necessarily pro-democratic, just anti-Mubarak. Who knows where this leads though.... |
Yes. No one, including Mubarak, the protesters, and the Brotherhood have any idea of where we are headed. |
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Space Bar
Joined: 20 Oct 2010
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| Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 6:09 am Post subject: |
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Another view...
Revolutionary Change in #Egypt: Internal or Made in USA?
Posted: 2011/01/31
From: Mathaba
by Stephen Lendman
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US imperial policy includes regime change, affecting foes as well as no longer useful friends. Past targets included former Philippines leader Ferdinand Marcos, Iran's Shah (Mohammad Reza Pahlavi), and Iraq's Saddam Hussein, among others. According to some reports, Mubarak is next - ageing, damaged and expendable.
George Friedman runs Stratfor, a private global intelligence service. On January 29, he issued a special Egypt report, saying:
On January 29, "Egypt's internal security forces (including Central Security Forces anti-riot paramilitaries) were glaringly absent" after confronting protesters forcefully for several days. Army personnel replaced them. Demonstrators welcomed them.
"There is more (going on) than meets the eye." While media reports focus on reform, democracy and human rights, "revolutions, including this one, are made up of many more actors than (Facebook and Twitter) liberal voices...." Some are, in fact, suspect, using social network sites for other than purported reasons.
Like Iran's 1979 revolution, "the ideology and composition of protesters can wind up having very little to do with the" behind the scenes political forces gaining power. Egypt's military may be preparing to seize it. Former air force chief/civil aviation minister Ahmed Shafiq is new prime minister, tasked with forming a new government, and intelligence head Omar Suleiman is Egypt's first ever vice president under Mubarak, effectively second in command. |
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legrande
Joined: 23 Nov 2010
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| Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 12:42 pm Post subject: |
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| Space Bar wrote: |
Another view...
Revolutionary Change in #Egypt: Internal or Made in USA?
Posted: 2011/01/31
From: Mathaba
by Stephen Lendman
| Quote: |
US imperial policy includes regime change, affecting foes as well as no longer useful friends. Past targets included former Philippines leader Ferdinand Marcos, Iran's Shah (Mohammad Reza Pahlavi), and Iraq's Saddam Hussein, among others. According to some reports, Mubarak is next - ageing, damaged and expendable.
George Friedman runs Stratfor, a private global intelligence service. On January 29, he issued a special Egypt report, saying:
On January 29, "Egypt's internal security forces (including Central Security Forces anti-riot paramilitaries) were glaringly absent" after confronting protesters forcefully for several days. Army personnel replaced them. Demonstrators welcomed them.
"There is more (going on) than meets the eye." While media reports focus on reform, democracy and human rights, "revolutions, including this one, are made up of many more actors than (Facebook and Twitter) liberal voices...." Some are, in fact, suspect, using social network sites for other than purported reasons.
Like Iran's 1979 revolution, "the ideology and composition of protesters can wind up having very little to do with the" behind the scenes political forces gaining power. Egypt's military may be preparing to seize it. Former air force chief/civil aviation minister Ahmed Shafiq is new prime minister, tasked with forming a new government, and intelligence head Omar Suleiman is Egypt's first ever vice president under Mubarak, effectively second in command. |
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Dat iz intriquing |
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comm
Joined: 22 Jun 2010
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| Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 7:23 pm Post subject: |
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I'd be awfully proud if it did. But considering the U.S.' lackluster response to the protests, it seems unlikely. |
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Koreadays
Joined: 20 May 2008
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| Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 9:52 pm Post subject: |
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Kings and dictators have no place in this day and age.
He needs to give the country back to the people.
and all other nations need to do the same. |
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rollo
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: China
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| Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 10:30 pm Post subject: |
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I would assume that the demonstrators have a powerful ally and i would assume that would be the U.S. Mubarak is past his usefulness.
as for the U.s. in South Korea, notice the stream of thousands of South Koreans trying to get into the North where they can enjoy the the freedoms the Kim family provides. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Tue Feb 01, 2011 7:24 am Post subject: |
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| A heck of a lot of people are in the streets over there today. AJ said more than one million and up to 2 million. The military said they won't put down the protests too. The protesters may succeed and take down the government. |
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