Will Egypt follow Tunisia?

Dillon

But will it be enough to placate the masses?

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has said he will not stand for re-election in September, as protests against his rule grow.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12340923

Regards

Bora_Bora

^^^Add to that, another one who will not run for "re-election" with a promise not to hand over the presidency to his son:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/02/us-yemen-president-idUSTRE7111WC20110202

Obviously Jordan and Yeman get's it. Mubarak thinks all those bandaids he is tossing out to Egyptians is going make the problems, as he sees them, go away. Throw the people a few crumbs and empty promises, come September it will have passed, and Jamal can step in and the it's back to "business as usual".

As Mahmoud points out - too many people outside of Egypt are missing the core points that that are at the heart of the revolution.

When Egyptians say "Leave" to Mubarak, they don't mean leave the country, they mean for him to step down leave the seat of the presidency.

All the people wanted to hear him say in his speech was that he was stepping down.

Misery_Called_Life

In my view, Tunisia and Egypt were the first but not last victims of the World crisis. It must have been Greece or if EU had not granted the financial support. There are a lot of countries in the World, which cannot find own place between China and the West and don't have enough natural resources to survive in hard days.

On the other hand uncontroled birth rate makes it impossible to avoid hunger without import of food. Wise Den Xiaoping recognized self-sufficiency of food and moved in the both direction at the beginning of his reforms.

True! Stability of countries around the world will ultimately boil down to food security.

-- Fri Feb 04, 2011 11:38 am --

suddenly everyone is an expert with ME, Muslims, and Egyptians matters...

Ignore the loons. They were just waiting for an anti-Islamic angle and couldn't contain themselves when a snippet of news was highlighted on Islamophobic blog. They are nothing if not predictable - some looting goes on and it is now Islam's fault. 🙄

For example Pamella Geller (a loon blogger, indeed holds the title 'looniest blogger ever') is supporting Mubarak:

The blogger who still loves Mubarak
Pamela Geller cheers for mass arrests, worries that Obama will throw our "ally" under the bus

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/01/28/geller_egypt

And as Salon highlights, these guys aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer - their hatred of Muslims seems to over-ride logic:

Geller continued to demonstrate the limits of her simplistic, binary understanding of the world. "I am all for political freedom," she wrote, except that she prefers Mubarak to, uh, political freedom.
Cheers,
Shafique

I think Shafique it is you who needs to be ignored, primarily for your paranoia!!! Firstly you link an article of an article, which is nothing. Can I now link something you have said and make that out to be a fact?
When American bloggers or political observers talk of Mubarak, they talk of an ally and when they say USA lost an ally they are not praising Mubarak but critiquing Obama. Now if America had to pressure Mubarak and call free and fair elections and cut aid a long time ago, it would've bolstered America's image in Egypt. The new government which will hopefully be a representative of the people of Egypt is bound to be skeptical American foreign policy and will probably be more open to relations with other countries. In that respect political observers are quite justified in their criticisms about the Obama administration. (this logic may not hold sway with someone who clearly is a fan of Jimmy Carter 🙂 )

shafique

Perhaps I am paranoid - who knows? I'll let others be the judge. 😉 I thought the quote from Geller was quite pertinent myself, as well as Salon's commentary on it.

Moving on...I found myself nodding to this quote from Haaretz (and I give the direct link):

The late Arab-American scholar Edward Said appears to have been right. We’re all suffering from Orientalism, not to say racism, if the sight of an entire people throwing off the yoke of tyranny and courageously demanding free elections fills us with fear rather than uplifting us, just because they’re Arabs…

People are scaring us with talk of an Islamist takeover of our big neighbor. The Muslim Brotherhood will certainly play an important role in any political democratic structure that emerges in Egypt, and that has to be dealt with. But then, we also have religious fundamentalists in the government. That is the price of a parliamentary democracy. And the previous U.S. administration was intimately linked to fundamentalists, but that’s okay too, because evangelical Christians love Israel.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/why-should-israel-be-the-only-democracy-in-the-mideast-1.340717

Indeed.

Cheers,
Shafique

zubber

..The home-stretch... , *brace for impact*

Red_Chief

In my view, Tunisia and Egypt were the first but not last victims of the World crisis. It must have been Greece or if EU had not granted the financial support. There are a lot of countries in the World, which cannot find own place between China and the West and don't have enough natural resources to survive in hard days.

On the other hand uncontroled birth rate makes it impossible to avoid hunger without import of food. Wise Den Xiaoping recognized self-sufficiency of food and moved in the both direction at the beginning of his reforms.

True! Stability of countries around the world will ultimately boil down to food security.

The confirmation of this statement I found in the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) report:

Food inflation is among the factors blamed for the turmoil in Egypt and the overthrow of Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Full story is here. http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2011/02/03/world-food-prices.html

It's not news as all news agencies mentioned this reason for Tunisia at least.

In addition to the world crunch there were severe weather conditions in the world's main wheat exporters in 2010 which pushed prices up:

Traders also are concerned about the quality and quantity of the global wheat supply, particularly after devastating floods damaged Australia's crop on top of last year's drought in Russia and Ukraine and flooding in Canada.

Russia for instance banned export of weat in 2010-2011.

« Previous Page