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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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 Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2011 8:34 am Post subject: |
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| bucheon bum wrote: |
| bucheon bum wrote: |
| Junior wrote: |
But the likes of Mubarak are made of sterner stuff.
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He lasted 17 days of protests. That's an even shorter amount of time than Tunisia's Ben Ali! |
I stand corrected. I can't believe the man. What arrogance. |
Ok, so I was off one day. 18 days of protests brought his downfall. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2011 8:36 am Post subject: |
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| rollo wrote: |
| Saudi no I cant see it. Kuwait, the al Sabahs have ruled there since the 1750's and are very clever and flexible. The average income in Kuwait is about $55,000 a year and only 2% unemployment. Iran , will blow up but the next candidate is Jordan. |
yes, agree. Jordan is ripe for "change" but it has the Palestinian/East Bank division that the King can exploit for his benefit. I'd say Yemen is also a candidate but it is a basketcase. If Salah is removed, I don't see anyone who could control the country any more than he has. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2011 8:52 pm Post subject: |
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| Junior wrote: |
| Rollo wrote: |
| Iran is next. |
They've been saying that for an awfully looooong time.
Iranians have risen up and taken to the streets numerous times in the past 20 years. But nothing ever changes.
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| The revolutionary guard unleashed the thugs in 2009 during the demonstrations. I think the dissidents will fight back this time. |
With what? shovels and rolling pins?
Nah.
What egypt shows is that it is impossible to remove a dictator by street protests, strikes or other campaigns. It requires bullets, bloodshed and weaponry, years of fighting and sacrifice. The new leader to be crowned inevitably turns into a dictator himself after a few years, and the cycle repeats.
Not all dictators are gutless. Tunisia got lucky, their dude lost his nerve and bolted. Ceaucescu ran at the sound of a few boos in the crowd. But the likes of Mubarak are made of sterner stuff.
Things would be vastly different in all these countries if the general populace had the right to bear arms. |
Do you have a favorite recipe for crow?
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I saw somewhere that the government fired on protesters in Yemen yesterday. The ruler of Bahrain just gave $3,000 to every family in the country. There just has to be a lot of nervous autocrats around the world today. Excuse me for taking a bit of delight in that thought.
A couple of months ago I read an article suggesting the Palestinians drop their rocks and adopt non-violent tactics. After watching the Egyptians topple a government in only 18 days, I have to wonder if someone in the Middle East wasn't reading the same article I did. |
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northway
Joined: 05 Jul 2010
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Sergio Stefanuto
Joined: 14 May 2009
Location: UK
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| Posted: Thu Feb 24, 2011 5:13 am Post subject: |
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Saturday (the Saudi equivalent of Monday) the 26th of February is an impromptu national holiday for us. The reason? King Abdullah returned (from the US) having had successful health treatment there. They were literally dancing in the streets. I'm not suggesting for a moment that Saudi Arabia is thereby unlikely to have a revolution, but the King is genuinely popular nevertheless. The House of Saud realized a long time ago that, in order to stay in power, they must make at least some attempt to please the rabble, unlike the other crummy Arab regimes which are dissipating by the day.
The Middle East is ripe for a revolution, yes. Alas the West's obssession with the Israeli occupation and with the "ultra-strict Saudi theocracy", and its concomitant ignorance of the human depravity of the wider Middle East and Muslim world, is a shameful reflection of the intellectual malfeasance that pervades our academia, politics and media.
My Saudi students are, fairly unsurprisingly, pig-ignorant. As a general rule, Saudis, if you avoid religion/politics at all costs, are among the nicest, most hospitable people you could possibly come across; but if they talk about religion/politics, they're an absolute pain in the arse. You know you're from Saudi Arabia when you think it's essential to exterminate the Shi'a, but it's the very height of grotesque indecency to eat pork. Anyway, my students, when I asked them about the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, said that it was great to overthrow him because he made peace with Israel. Er, not really, lads. It was great because 30% of Egyptians are illiterate and the Arab world's human development stats are pitiful to say the least.
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Many analysts are so preoccupied with Israel or the so-called �Middle East conflict�, a term that ignores or dismisses all other conflicts in the region as irrelevant and non-newsworthy, that they have no understanding of the region beyond Israel and the Palestinian Authority. They fundamentally ignored the Report for Arab states report in 2009UNDP Human Development which was a virtual roadmap for the events that took place during the last few weeks. This report stated that the Arab world is lacking in all areas of human development. In addition, nearly 40% of the Arab world lives below the international poverty line. For the Arab world to merely maintain its current position, which is at the lowest rung on the development ladder, it will need to create 51 million jobs in the next ten years.
http://cifwatch.com/2011/02/19/the-dinosaurs-still-looking-for-israeli-sharks-and-vultures/ |
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For decades now, they have been warning us that if you want �peace in the Middle East,� just fix the Palestinian problem. And what would happen if peace would break out between Jews and Palestinians? Would all those furious Arabs now demonstrating on streets across the Middle East feel any better? What bloody nonsense.
As if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has anything to do with the 1,000-year-old conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, or the desire of brutal Arab dictators to stay in power, or the desire of Islamist radicals to bring back the Caliphate, or the economic despair of millions, or simply the absence of free speech or basic human rights throughout the Arab world.
http://cifwatch.com/2011/02/08/israels-never-looked-so-good/ |
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