Can Egypt hold it together? President's son, family flee to Britain

[deep]

Suleiman needs to borrow this guys speechwriters

YouTube - Our long national nightmare

[ryancoke71]

Mubarak just stepped down, and the video coverage of the celebrations are amazing!

[Just_Boy]

Apparently, the army has been entrusted with the republic.

[LuckyNumber7]

Well the celebration will not last too long... unfortunately.

[mama cass]

why not LuckyNumber7?

tis only the beginning but it is a huge thing!

let's hope the essential reforms can be pushed thru and a fair system implemented!

[LuckyNumber7]

Originally Posted by mama cass

why not LuckyNumber7?

tis only the beginning but it is a huge thing!

let's hope the essential reforms can be pushed thru and a fair system implemented!

I mean, I hope that it will last. Either way, their tourism industry is a dud for a while. I hope for the best, but expect the worst.

[kramwest1]

Egyptians

[deep]

I heard a report that Mubarack's accounts in Swiss banks have been frozen.



Also, I think the Muslim Brotherhood card has been way over-played.


This movement is very broad, at least 60-65% of the people.

I do believe a good 30% + or -, is/was satisfied with the status quo.
That is why Mubarak, who probably kept hearing from them behind the scenes, believed he could ride this out with some compromises.

Anyways, I do not see Egypt falling under the heavy hand of the Muslim Brotherhood.
This same group, the under 30 crowd (play station generation) would take to the streets again if they had some kind of authoritarian government imposing restrictions on them again.

Yes, the genie is out of the bottle.

[yolland]

They're not out of the woods with regard to how much change the army will ultimately allow. Yet the people have succeeded in forcing the resignation of one of the world's longest-standing dictators in the face of harsh resistance at the highest levels, and they did it peacefully and in a deliberate spirit of national unity and civic virtue. That is an incredible and historic achievement right there. They have also paid a high price for it, sadly.

I wish my own government had taken a stronger stand in support of the right thing, but considering the money we've invested in this regime since and because of the Camp David accords, I can't say I'm surprised.

[LuckyNumber7]

Originally Posted by yolland

They're not out of the woods with regard to how much change the army will ultimately allow. Yet the people have succeeded in forcing the resignation of one of the world's longest-standing dictators in the face of harsh resistance at the highest levels, and they did it peacefully and in a deliberate spirit of national unity and civic virtue. That is an incredible and historic achievement right there. They have also paid a high price for it, sadly.

I wish my own government had taken a stronger stand in support of the right thing, but considering the money we've invested in this regime since and because of the Camp David accords, I can't say I'm surprised.

Now that's just a harsh use of words there. Though recent times haven't been so great, Mubarak did bring great things to Egypt. Stuff that separated Egypt from the rest of the Middle East.

I'm white as sin (yet half Egyptian) and never once feared being in Egypt. Hell if I'd go anywhere else (perhaps Jordan) in the Middle East.

[mama cass]

Originally Posted by LuckyNumber7

I mean, I hope that it will last. Either way, their tourism industry is a dud for a while. I hope for the best, but expect the worst.

yeah i hope the industry picks up again... it is the livelihood for many though... i'm still heading over there for a holiday in a few weeks time... quite excited about it, little bit scared too though lol! will be going unless the UK foreign office says otherwise i think, or unless things get complicated...

[deep]

Originally Posted by LuckyNumber7

Now that's just a harsh use of words there. Though recent times haven't been so great, Mubarak did bring great things to Egypt. Stuff that separated Egypt from the rest of the Middle East.

.

I have heard it said that Mubarak had 12 good years followed by 18 bad or
10 good years followed by 20 bad years.

Either way if the last 18-20 years are viewed as bad, that is foremost in the people's minds. That is why his last couple of speeches that included his life story, with his service as a young man, failed to impress the protesters.

[LuckyNumber7]

Originally Posted by deep

I have heard it said that Mubarak has 12 good years followed by 18 bad or
10 good years followed by 20 bad years.

Either way if the last 18-20 years are viewed as bad, that is foremost in the people's minds. That is why his last couple of speeches that included his life story, with his service as a young man, failed to impress the protesters.

In the midst of all of this, two things happened. 1st, there is a bit of corruption going on which is why you get the bad, but second Mubarak was scapegoated by the people of Egypt for issues that are a worldwide problem.

I believe Egypt is the #1 importer of wheat, or something to that extent. The cost of food has shot up significantly, and so it has in Egypt as well. People demand affordable food, but that's sometimes not the governments fault.

I'm not saying Mubarak should've stayed, but that government was neither a dictatorship nor oppressive. Just poorly ran. The government system is what failed Egypt and led to the riots. The same man shouldnt be able to be in power for 30some years.

[yolland]

Originally Posted by LuckyNumber7

Though recent times haven't been so great, Mubarak did bring great things to Egypt. Stuff that separated Egypt from the rest of the Middle East.

I'm white as sin (yet half Egyptian) and never once feared being in Egypt. Hell if I'd go anywhere else (perhaps Jordan) in the Middle East.

If you were a labor activist, an opposition politician or a journalist (for starters), I think you would probably have a different view. 'Dictatorship' is primarily a characterization of a mode of governance (authoritarian rule by an individual or small faction which freely bends or ignores constitutional limits on its behavior); it's not based on ideas of how evil the leader(ship) is relative to other governments, and yes freely elected governments can be persecutory and corrupt too, not to mention monarchies and totalitarian regimes.

No argument on much of the rest of the Middle East's governments being as oppressive (or worse) in their own way.

[deep]

Originally Posted by deep

Suleiman needs to borrow this guys speechwriters

YouTube - Mubarak leaves

close enough.

[CrashedCarDriver]

The devil is in the details with Mubarak stepping down

Mubarak is a cruel, corrupt, tyrant, yet the Americans (the world police) wanted him to stay on because with him as leader Egypt was an American ally in the Middle East

The chances are: with him gone the Egyptian people could vote in a questionable candidate who might not side with the Americans and possibly let the extremists (and theres plenty of them there in Egypt) reign!

[LuckyNumber7]

Originally Posted by CrashedCarDriver

Mubarak is a cruel, corrupt, tyrant, yet the Americans (the world police) wanted him to stay on because with him as leader Egypt was an American ally in the Middle East

Corrupt. Absolutely. Cruel? Absolutely not. Tyrant? No.

He gave Egypt a sense of security. Especially for the minorities there (the Christian Copts). Promoted religious freedom and tolerance. And was strong against terrorism in his own country. Cracked down hard.

So he cheated his way through some elections, and ran all other aspects of the government very poorly that led to the standard of living in Egypt to be driven down the shitter. But there was nothing wrong with his ideals at all. At all.

[Moonlit_Angel]

Thrilled the protesters got what they wanted .

Now everyone's going to have to deal with the inevitable tension between the army taking over for the time being and seeing who will eventually be Egypt's new leader. Should be a very interesting time of it for a while.

Angela

[Bonoa]

A bit late but:

YOOHOOO!!!

[yolland]

Al Jazeera (op-ed), Feb. 11

...Arab protests in solidarity with the Egyptian people also suggest that there is a strong yearning for the revival of Egypt as a pan-Arab unifier and leader. Photographs of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the former Egyptian president, have been raised in Cairo and across Arab capitals by people who were not even alive when Nasser died in 1970. The scenes are reminiscent of those that swept Arab streets in the 1950s and 1960s. But this is not an exact replica of the pan-Arab nationalism of those days. Then, pan-Arabism was a direct response to Western domination and the 1948 establishment of the state of Israel. Today, it is a reaction to the absence of democratic freedoms and the inequitable distribution of wealth across the Arab world...This is not to say that there is no anti-imperialist element within the current movement. But the protests in Egypt and elsewhere promote a deeper understanding of human emancipation, which forms the real basis for freedom from both repression and foreign domination.

Unlike the pan-Arabism of the past, the new movement represents an intrinsic belief that it is freedom from fear and human dignity that enables people to build better societies and to create a future of hope and prosperity. The old "wisdom" of past revolutionaries that liberation from foreign domination precedes the struggle for democracy has fallen. The revolutionaries of Egypt, and before them Tunisia, have exposed through deeds--not merely words--the leaders who are tyrants towards their own people, while humiliatingly subservient to foreign powers. They have shown the impotence of empty slogans that manipulate animosity towards Israel to justify a fake Arab unity, which in turn serves only to mask sustained oppression and the betrayal of Arab societies and the aspirations of the Palestinian people.

...Equally, it is no longer acceptable for the Palestinian Fatah and Hamas to cite their record in resisting Israel when justifying their suppression of each other and the rest of the Palestinian people. Young Palestinians are responding to the message of the movement and embracing the idea that combatting internal injustice--whether practised by Fatah or Hamas--is a prerequisite for the struggle to end Israeli occupation and not something to be endured for the sake of that struggle. Events in Egypt and Tunisia have revealed that Arab unity against internal repression is stronger than that against a foreign threat--neither the American occupation of Iraq nor the Israeli occupation galvanised the Arab people in the way that a single act by a young Tunisian who chose to set himself alight rather than live in humiliation and poverty has. This does not mean that Arabs do not care about the occupied people of Iraq or Palestine--tens, sometimes hundreds, of thousands have taken to the streets across Arab countries at various times to show solidarity with Iraqis and Palestinians--but it does reflect the realisation that the absence of democratic freedoms has contributed to the continued occupation of those countries.

I think ambivalence towards resurgent Arab nationalism as a force for democratization in the Middle East may be bound up in the surprising divides and strange bedfellows currently on display in Washington concerning the significance of events in Egypt. Ethnic nationalism has some tendencies which broadly appeal to liberals (friendly to religious freedom, but not to politicized fundamentalists; redirects the military's loyalty to 'the people,' rather than the regime or person of the leader), and other tendencies which broadly appeal to conservatives (romantically reifies the 'traditional values' of the people; frowns on class-war politics as a bar to unity). But nationalist leaders are harder to manipulate because of their accountability to their publics, and the classic way around that obstacle--making the army the foremost guardian of the 'national interest'--steadily erodes its popular legitimacy over time. Then there's the inherent risks blood-and-soil nationalism poses for resident minorities, as well as militarily weaker neighbors.

It'll be interesting, if that's the word, to see what unfolds in both the short- and long-term. Granted, the above article is one person's opinion, but its basic themes have cropped up repeatedly in news analyses on the Egyptian uprising, and I've noticed quite a bit of sometimes ambivalent nostalgia for Nasserism in Arab and Arab-American academics' commentaries, as well.