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Originally posted by NewOldBrownCoat:
Isn't the main push of the people in Egypt that their government isn't sufficiently anti-Israel and anti-America?

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Originally posted by canttakesky:
You got a link?

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Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
In all the interviews I've seen from Tunisia to Cairo it's the same explanations given. The people want freedom and an end to tyranny. Gee, wonder where they got a crazy idea like that. Iraq? .... Nah!

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Originally posted by AnthonyT:
Freedom... to do what?

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An End to the Tyranny... of what?

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Originally posted by AnthonyT:
Possibly France? ;-)

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Pizmo

Iran is a democracy. Ahmadinejad's not *really* a dictator, that's just us. They voted for him, and re-elected him, because they like him. The Ayatollah holds no more power than the pope does in a Catholic country.

Sorry, just a skeet flying by.

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Iran is a democracy.

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Originally posted by mincingbeast:
Devil take the rest of this worthless world--most especially Australia.

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Originally posted by AnthonyT:
But natural? I don't know. Not even in the heart of democracy do I find people who don't chafe against it.

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Originally posted by canttakesky:

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Originally posted by AnthonyT:
But natural? I don't know. Not even in the heart of democracy do I find people who don't chafe against it.

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In my view and experience, most people prefer security/comfort over freedom: a reasonable living (food, wages), reasonable assurance that their living won't be taken away (crime), reasonable hope for their children's futures (education).

I have traveled a lot and talked to people in dictatorships. Most people like the security they have under dictatorships, as long as "disappearances" don't happen to them. They don't mind giving up the freedom of speech or assembly or of changing govt policy, as long as govt policy grants them reasonable security and comfort. I hear things like,

"Pinochet (military dictator, Chile, 1973 - 1990) was great, cause he stabilized our economy and improved our standard of living."

"Stroessner (military dictator, Paraguay, 1954 - 1989) was great, cause he freed the country of crime. You can walk the streets now without fear."

"The Shah (dictator, Iran, 1941—1979) was great. Our industries are modernized, jobs were created."

"Lee Kuan Yew ("benevolent dictator," Singapore, 1959 - 1990) was great, cause he took a small island country with no natural resources and turned it into a clean, educated, and developed country."

Etc.

People are completely ok with being serfs as long as they are comfortable serfs.

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Originally posted by Niki2:
It’s not about food and water, from the look of it;...They HAVE for the most part a reasonable living, food, wages, somewhat lack of crime (unless you count the thug cops themselves!), and expectations that things will continue.

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"Egyptians are sick and tired of being corrupted, and when you live on 300 pounds a month [about $51], you have one of two options, you either become a beggar or a thief," said Ghada Shabandar, a longtime human-rights activist. "The people sent a message: 'We are not beggars, and we do not want to become thieves.'...

As Egypt's economy enjoyed record growth in recent years, the number of people living in poverty grew.

"I graduated from the university about 16 years ago, and the only jobs open to me were cleaning other people's houses," Ali Suleiman said last week, offering a common lament.

..."I am lucky I was able to start selling newspapers. I have three daughters, and I make about 20 pounds," or $3.50, a day.

That is Mubarak's Egypt, where about half the population lives on $2 a day or less, and walled compounds with green lawns and swimming pools and names like Swan Lake spring up outside cities. It is a place where those with money have built a parallel world of private schools and exclusive clubs, leaving the rundown cities to the poor."

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Living standards in Egypt are low by international standards, and have declined consistently since 1990. According to United Nations figures, some 20 to 30 percent of the population live below the poverty line. Despite widespread poverty, however, uneven development has led to the emergence of an affluent class that controls most of the country's wealth and enjoys an elevated standard of living that includes shopping at centers that feature the best imported goods. Living in such Cairo suburbs as Garden City, al-Zamalek, and Nasr New City, the wealthy send their children to private schools and to universities abroad. Yet not far from these affluent neighborhoods, a significant number of poor Egyptians live in squalor, with poor and overcrowded housing, limited food supply, and inadequate access to clean water, good quality health care, or education. The extremes are reflected in the country's distribution of income: in 1996, the wealthiest 20 percent of Egyptians controlled 39 percent of the country's wealth, while the poorest 20 percent controlled only 9.8 percent of wealth.

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The increase in poverty, at a time when GDP continues to grow, opens the door to a discussion on a number of policies. The two largest question marks, according to experts, are the subsidy system and education. Since poverty has increased, the policies may not be working.

...For example, the government subsidizes 270 million loaves of baladi bread per day at 19 piasters a piece, yet 29 percent of children in the country are malnourished, according to Sholkamy.

“Subsidies are very, very important but if you look at the actual income and expenditures you'll find that the very poor are unable to get the subsidized goods,” she says.

...The CIA World Factbook says that 17 percent of men and 40.6 percent of women in Egypt are illiterate.

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The country's youth are the latest to lead a national fight for freedom.

MY BIRTH at the end of July 1967 makes me a child of the naksa, or setback, as the Arab defeat during the June 1967 war with Israel is euphemistically known in Arabic. My parents' generation grew up high on the Arab nationalism that Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser brandished in the 1950s. But we ''Children of the Naksa'', hemmed in by humiliation, have spent so much of our lives uncomfortably stepping into pride's large, empty shoes.

But here now finally are our children - Generation Facebook - kicking aside the burden of history, determined to show us just how easy it is to tell the dictator it's time to go.
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To understand the importance of what's going in Egypt, take the barricades of 1968, throw them into a mixer with 1989 and blend to produce the potent brew that the popular uprising in Egypt is preparing to offer the entire region. It's the most exciting time of my life.

I struggle with the magnitude of my feelings as my country revolts and I cry when I hear my father's accent in the English of Egyptian men screaming at TV cameras through tear gas: ''I'm doing this for my children. What life is this?''

And Arabs from the Mashreq to the Maghreb are watching, egging on those protesters to topple Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt for 30 years, because they know if he goes, all the other old men will follow, those who have smothered their countries with one hand and robbed them blind with the other. Mubarak is the Berlin Wall. ''Down, down with Hosni Mubarak,'' resonates through the whole region.

My Twitter feed explodes with messages of support and congratulations from Saudis, Palestinians, Moroccans and Sudanese. The real Arab League; not those men who have ruled and claimed to speak in our names and who now claim to feel our pain but only because they know the rage that emerged in Tunisia will soon be felt across the region.

Brave little Tunisia, resuscitator of the Arab imagination. Tunisia, homeland of the father of Arab revolution: Mohammed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old who set himself on fire to protest at a desperation at unemployment and repression that covers the region. He set into motion Tunisian protests that in just 29 days toppled Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's 23-year dictatorship. We watched, we said wow and we thought: that's it? It's that easy?

It took Mubarak just four days into Egypt's revolt to call the army. He unleashed the brutality of his security forces and their riot police, but they couldn't stem the determination of the thousands who continued to demand his ousting. He put Egypt under information lock-down by shutting down the internet but still they came.

Ben Ali's fall killed the fear in Egypt. So imagine what Mubarak's fall could do to liberate the region. Too many have rushed in to explain the Arab world to itself. ''You like your strongman leader,'' we're told. ''You're passive, and apathetic.''

But a group of young online dissidents dissolved those myths. For at least five years now, their blogs and Facebook updates and notes and, more recently, tweets offered a self-expression that may have at times been narcissistic but for many Arab youths signalled the triumph of ''I''. I count, they said again and again.

Most people in the Arab world are aged 25 or are younger. They have known no leaders but those dictators who grew older and richer as the young saw their opportunities - political and economic - dwindle. The internet didn't invent courage; activists in Egypt have exposed Mubarak's police state of torture and jailings for years. But we've seen that even when the dictator shuts the internet down protesters can still organise, can connect with ordinary people and form the kind of alliances that we're seeing on the streets of Egypt where protesters come from every age and background. Youth kickstarted the revolt, but they've been joined by old and young.

I know that each Arab watching this revolution does so with the hope that Egypt will mean something again. Thirty years of Mubarak rule have shrivelled the country that once led the Arab world. But those youthful protesters, leapfrogging our dead-in-the-water opposition figures to confront the dictator, are liberating all Egyptians from the burden of history. Or reclaiming the good bits.

In cracking down on protesters, Mubarak immediately inspired resistance reminiscent of the Arab collective response to the tripartite aggression of the 1956 Suez crisis.

Meanwhile, the uprisings are curing the Arab world of its obsession with Israel. Successive Arab dictators have tried to keep discontent at bay by distracting people with the Israeli-Arab conflict. Israel's bombardment of Gaza in 2009 increased global sympathy for Palestinians. Enough with dictators hijacking sympathy for Palestinians and enough with putting our lives on hold for that conflict.

Arabs are watching as tens of thousands of Egyptians turn Tahrir (or Liberation) Square into the symbol of their revolt. This is the square Egypt uses to remember the ending of the monarchy in 1952, as well as of British occupation. The group of young army officers who staged that coup claimed it as a revolution, heralding an era of rule by military men who turned Egypt into a police state.

Today, the army is out in Tahrir Square again, this time facing down a mass of youthful protesters determined to pull off Egypt's first genuine post-colonial revolution.

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Originally posted by canttakesky:

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Iran is a democracy.

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Was this a serious comment or was it tongue in cheek?

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Originally posted by DREAMTROVE:
Do you think a third party candidate could be elected president in 2005 if it was a dictatorship?

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Here's my definition: if the govt. That is in power can be not in power as a direct result of its unpopularity through a means of a measure of that disapproval of people at the voting booth, then that's democracy. If that cannot and does not happen, then it is not.

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Originally posted by canttakesky:
Why did Iranians risk death, torture, and rape to protest a government which they could have simply ousted through votes?

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Originally posted by citizen:

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Originally posted by canttakesky:
Why did Iranians risk death, torture, and rape to protest a government which they could have simply ousted through votes?

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The fact Iran isn't some perfect democracy, doesn't prove it isn't a democracy. I'd expect better reasoning of you.

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If you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear demonic voices. The scary part is that if you play it forwards it installs Windows.

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
It's not really up to debate.

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Every news agency in the world polled the population and found them to be a minority.

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The three top opposition leaders have all been branded “heads of sedition” and traitors, ....

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Originally posted by DREAMTROVE:
a refusal to argue or debate

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and targeting the opposition argument as offensive.

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under your definition the United States is also not a democracy

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Originally posted by canttakesky:
Voting rigging is, I believe, in its infancy.

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:

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Originally posted by canttakesky:
Voting rigging is, I believe, in its infancy.

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More like its dotage, given that it pre-dates democracy...
-F

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Originally posted by DREAMTROVE:
But as for Ahmadinejad and Khameni, I'll give them credit for this: They are actually trying to defend their country against take over from foreign interests, while at the same time trying to see that education and science prevail against a backwards religious fundamentalism.

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