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What is going on in Egypt?

Steve

Well-known member
as we watch what apprears to be a country collapsing on TV.

what is really going on? a fight for democracy?

or Poverty?, joblessness, insecurity?

"Don't be fooled by anyone pointing to just one answer , but the real answer may be a combination of problems, and groups exploiting those problems in an effort to collapse the country into strict sharia Law and governance


30/09/2010
the government announced that the poverty rate in 2010 jumped to 23.4 percent, up from 20 percent the previous year.

The Egyptian government released this week its latest figures on poverty in Egypt and the signs are not good. The poverty rate reached 23.4 percent, up from 20 percent the previous year,

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 “There is so much leakage and wastage that it's more lucrative to deal in subsidized flour than it is to deal drugs,”

“Poverty of course is present and rampant, but I think what people are talking about is insecurity,” adds Sholkamy. “It's become expensive to be secure. You have to be richer than you used to be to have a secure, basic life with an education.”

Recent reports show the government is not quite as honest as they should be with themselves.

In fact, half of the population in Egypt, that's 40 million people, are living in or - in poverty or even under the poverty line. That's less - on less than two U.S. dollars a day, Michel. That's just to give you an idea about how poverty is widespread here.

these were ordinary Egyptians who made history on Tuesday and Wednesday with these protests. And some people are saying Mr. El Baradei and other figures should not be allowed perhaps to use - or to hijack this popular movement. Obviously they will be taking to the streets with the population and perhaps they will have a role in leading these protests. But definitely this was a people movement and it was about poverty more than politics.
source NPR

and it will get worse.
With regard to Arab countries, statistics show, 73 million people were below the poverty line and 10 million suffered from malnutrition.

While Arab nations are expected to halve the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day as laid out in the U.N. goals, poverty and hunger are believed to have risen in many Arab countries since 2005 in step with fuel and food prices.

"The Arab region as a whole has not experienced significant progress in reducing poverty," The U.N. Development Program found.

soon the "educated elite" "world travelers" will take the uneducated masses and free them from the grips of the presidents and kings, only to enslave them using religion.
 

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
Maybe obama will win a 2nd peace prize for his contribution.


Egypt protests: America's secret backing for rebel leaders behind uprising

The American government secretly backed leading figures behind the Egyptian uprising who have been planning “regime change” for the past three years, The Daily Telegraph has learned.

By Tim Ross, Matthew Moore and Steven Swinford 9:23PM GMT 28 Jan 2011

381 Comments

The American Embassy in Cairo helped a young dissident attend a US-sponsored summit for activists in New York, while working to keep his identity secret from Egyptian state police.

On his return to Cairo in December 2008, the activist told US diplomats that an alliance of opposition groups had drawn up a plan to overthrow President Hosni Mubarak and install a democratic government in 2011.

The secret document in full

He has already been arrested by Egyptian security in connection with the demonstrations and his identity is being protected by The Daily Telegraph.

The crisis in Egypt follows the toppling of Tunisian president Zine al-Abedine Ben Ali, who fled the country after widespread protests forced him from office.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/egypt/8289686/Egypt-protests-Americas-secret-backing-for-rebel-leaders-behind-uprising.html



Does the Obama administration realize the difference between freedom-based revolutions and violent overthrows that will help jihadists?


Editorial: Will Obama Lose Egypt?

Posted 06:56 PM ET

An Ally Imperiled: What Egyptians are demonstrating against, whether they know it or not, is socialism. What they — and we — could end up with is another Iran. Is President Obama repeating Carter's Shah betrayal?

Revolutions are like fires. They can make life better, or they can destroy.

Three decades ago, Iran — after being saved from Soviet dominance by the U.S. in 1953 — traded in the flawed autocratic rule of the Shah for the bloodthirsty Islamist fanaticism of the Ayatollah Khomeini.

At the time, Jimmy Carter's presidency was, in the name of "human rights," on the side of the Islamists — with U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young going so far as to call Khomeini "some kind of saint."

Does the Obama administration realize the difference between freedom-based revolutions and violent overthrows that will help jihadists?

In 2009, the Egyptian daily Almasry Alyoum reported that President Obama secretly met in Washington that year with representatives of Egypt's jihadist Muslim Brotherhood, the Hamas ally that, while banned, dominates the opposition in the country.

Obama also chose Egypt as the locale for his ill-conceived Muslim outreach speech in June 2009.

As Newsweek's Jonathan Alter points out in his White House-friendly book on the president's first year, "The Promise," "Obama never said the words 'terrorism,' 'terrorist,' or 'war on terror'" in the speech, because "the t-word had become inflammatory to Muslims" and the "faster way to the hearts and minds of a Muslim audience was to talk about the tensions between Islam and the West in a different key."

Bet the president didn't think he was planting the seeds of today's protests in Egypt. But what does he expect when he goes to a country in a decades-long police-enforced state of emergency, with tens of thousands of political prisoners, and announces that "you must maintain your power through consent, not coercion"?

He may have awakened a sleeping giant. Too bad the Iranian people didn't receive the same favor a year and a half ago when they were protesting in the streets against a regime that makes Egypt look Jeffersonian by comparison.

Perhaps the president believes that the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Mohamed ElBaradei, the Egyptian who headed the U.N. nuclear agency, will emerge from house arrest and take over.

Revolutions are seldom so neat.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's Egyptian-born right-hand man who merged al-Qaida with Egyptian Islamic Jihad, has long had designs on his native land.

In the Pulitzer-winning history of al-Qaida, "The Looming Tower," Lawrence Wright notes that Zawahiri's "strategy was to force the Egyptian regime to become even more repressive, to make the people hate it. In this he succeeded."

Embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was as afraid of real capitalism as of political dissent. The Heritage Foundation's latest Index of Economic Freedom gives Egypt poor marks despite recent "incremental reforms to liberalize the socialist economy."

Egypt's GDP growth fell markedly in the wake of the global financial crisis, and government corruption and the lack of a dependable rule of law in the economic sphere are factors that have kept poverty and unemployment painfully high — poisonously mixed with political repression.

Even so, should Mubarak fall, there is real danger of the Islamic Brotherhood imperiling this U.S. ally. Barack Obama sure picked a foolish place to give a community-organizing speech.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/561401/201101281851/Fright-Of-Egypt.aspx



The Barack Obama administration has decided to lift a ban preventing Muslim Scholar Professor Tariq Ramadan from entering the United States. Ramadan, an Egyptian currently living in Switzerland, is a leading member of Europe’s Muslim Brotherhood branch and the grandson of the movement’s founder Hassan al-Banna. The Muslim Brotherhood is the parent organization for Hamas and some of the groups that recently merged into al-Qaeda, including Ayman al Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad

http://www.israelnationalnews.com//News/News.aspx/135654
 

Steve

Well-known member
January 6, 2011
Global food prices rose to a new high in December, according to the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization. Its food price index went above the previous record of 2008 that saw prices spark riots in several countries. We hear from reporters in Egypt, India, and Russia who tell us what that means for people on the ground.

Many Egyptians remember the fights that broke out in their bread lines back in 2008. A young woman told me she had been hit and pushed out of bread lines by other customers. She also complained that the government ration of bread wasn’t enough to feed her six-person family.

Rationing subsidized bread was one tactic the authorities used to solve the 2008 crisis. They also set up public kiosks to sell bread in a more orderly fashion. President Hosni Mubarak even ordered the army to bake bread. The 2008 “bread crisis” passed, but the problem has never really gone away. Food inflation in Egypt continues to run at a staggering 17 percent. Poor Egyptians spend more than half their income on food.

If global food prices rise again, millions here could face food insecurity. But the government has taken some steps to address the problem. It has cracked down on a black market in subsidized wheat. And it is reorganizing the subsidy system, trying to make subsidies efficient and targeted at those Egyptians who need them the most.

Furthermore, many here believe that the government will make an extra effort in this presidential election year. President Mubarak, who has ruled for the last 29 years, will probably run for another term. But there is a chance he will designate a successor.

In this time of political uncertainty, the regime will probably do everything it can to avoid unrest. The question is whether that will be enough.

Global food costs jumped 25 percent last year to an all- time high in December, according to the United Nations. Governments from Beijing to Belgrade are boosting imports, limiting sales or releasing stockpiles to curb food inflation.

The riots across Egypt and North Africa - which have already brought down the government of Tunisia - are substantially to do with higher food prices. It's no mystery. Rising food prices hit the poorest first. It works like this in poorer countries: much more is spent on food, maybe 50 per cent or more of the household budget, when costs rise the government either subsidizes it more causing rationing, or lets the price increase. Both cause unrest.

But now poorer countries are back in the commodities markets bidding up prices to buttress food stockpiles. The problem is that every time a country tries to stockpile, prices get pushed higher elsewhere.

for US the big question is.. Will Obama embargo grain?
 

Steve

Well-known member
President Hosni Mubarak, blew his last chance at holding his country together today.

he had one chance at defusing the mess and losing countrywide (if not world wide support)

and that was to name foe, Mohamed ElBaradei to either the Vice president, or prime minister spot...

in doing so he would have defused even the most ardent protesters, leaving only the thugs on the streets..

why wasn't Obama smart enough to demand that concession?

or is twitter more important?
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
mubarak supports the jews...the people there do not...he betrayed their country for money....just like our leaders have here...the difference is the egyptian people are much smarter than the people here are...
 

Bullhauler

Well-known member
shaumei said:
mubarak supports the jews...the people there do not...he betrayed their country for money....just like our leaders have here...the difference is the egyptian people are much smarter than the people here are...

No the difference is we have elections in this country. We don't have to riot in the streets to get a new president.
 

Steve

Well-known member
and about those rioters..

there is a plan to draw out a million to a march, to remove the dictator ..

a load and vocal group that is drowning out the other voices, those who are shocked by the violence, and looting, those now living in fear..

so who should we listen to.. consider this.. the country has a population of 85 million... so even if 1 million takes to the street while the other 84 million huddle at home in fear.. should we listen to the loud vocal mob?

should we really bow to as little as 2% of the population.. or should we push harder for a smooth transition to real democracy so the other 84 million can be heard?
 
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