View Full Version : US backing Egyptian uprising?
craigepo
01-28-2011, 18:03
From the British Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/egypt/8289686/Egypt-protests-Americas-secret-backing-for-rebel-leaders-behind-uprising.html
When this frikis started a couple days ago, the first quotes from SoS HRC was something to the effect about expressing concern about the use of force by THE MILITARY..
Didn't sound like a lot of support for Mubarak???
Wasn't HRC the Jr Senator from NY when the dissident was snuck into NYC for the meeting??
Do you think the DoS would have given the Jr Senator and x-potus concubine a little heads up about the meeting??
Someone should look at Bill's speaking engagement calendar for the fall of 2008??
New Generation of Advocates: Empowering Civil Society in Egypt
Middle East and North Africa
Civil Society Development
Support for Human Rights
http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=66&program=84
Excerpt:
Challenge: Egyptian civil society is both vibrant and constrained. There are hundreds of non-governmental organizations devoted to expanding civil and political rights in the country, operating in a highly regulated environment. The government employs various laws and practices to silence advocates of reform and crack down on political activism.
Approach: A new generation of young Egyptian citizens is dedicated to expanding political and civil rights in their country. Referred to as the "YouTube Generation," many of these courageous men and women are supported by Freedom House to enhance their outreach, advocacy and effectiveness. The New Generation project helps to reinforce the values of free expression, human rights, women's rights, and rule of law.
Impact: Freedom House’s effort to empower a new generation of advocates has yielded tangible results and the New Generation program in Egypt has gained prominence both locally and internationally. Egyptian visiting fellows from all civil society groups received unprecedented attention and recognition, including meetings in Washington with US Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor, and prominent members of Congress. In the words of Condoleezza Rice, the fellows represent the "hope for the future of Egypt."
Freedom House fellows acquired skills in civic mobilization, leadership, and strategic planning, and benefit from networking opportunities through interaction with Washington-based donors, international organizations and the media. After returning to Egypt, the fellows received small grants to implement innovative initiatives such as advocating for political reform through Facebook and SMS messaging.
Bloggers Learn New Media Tools
March 24, 2010
http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=115&program=84&item=87
From February 27 to March 13, Freedom House hosted 11 bloggers from the Middle East and North Africa for a two-week Advanced New Media Study Tour in Washington, D.C. The Study Tour provided the bloggers with training in digital security, digital video making, message development and digital mapping. While in D.C., the Fellows also participated in a Senate briefing, and met with high-level officials at USAID, State and Congress as well as international media including Al-Jazeera and the Washington Post
Looks like Egypt learned from the protests in Iran and blocked media so they can't organize or get thier story out.
I'm surprised that with the Internet down things haven't become bloody.
x-potus concubine
I thought I had heard all of the nicknames... I was wrong :D
I think the White House made a smart move yesterday by holding off on their brief until the Egyptian leadership chose to say something. There's really no reason for them to say anything right now. 0 reported hostile deaths, 0 self-immolations.
It will be interesting to see how all this shakes out in regards to elections in the countries in turmoil.
The old Ba'ath party system in most countries lead to an effective one party system where only Ba'ath party members put up the name of the one ruling the country for leader in the elections.
The parlimentary system will lead to a number of factions. It will be interesting to see the power of each faction.
Which relates back to Turkey. Seeing how a faction gains power and then uses it's power to cement it in place.
I thought I had heard all of the nicknames... I was wrong :D
I think the White House made a smart move yesterday by holding off on their brief until the Egyptian leadership chose to say something. There's really no reason for them to say anything right now. 0 reported hostile deaths, 0 self-immolations.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/revolution-is-in-the-air-but-us-sticks-to-same-old-script-20110128-1a8e6.html
Revolution is in the air but US sticks to same old script January 29, 2011
Events in the Middle East are moving too fast for the Obama administration to think it can get away with Plan A and Plan B reaction strategies according to the regimes or leaders it wants to keep in and out of power.
Consider the response of the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, to Hezbollah tightening its grip on power in Lebanon this week - Washington might have to pull its funding worth hundreds of millions for Lebanon, her office warned.
But as democracy demonstrators were confronted by thousands of baton-wielding policemen in the streets in Cairo, there was no mention of pulling the $US2 billion-plus cheque that Washington writes for the octogenarian President, Hosni Mubarak, each year.
Instead, a rhetorical nugget that Mubarak's mouthpieces would use in their defence - ''our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable'' and then some namby-pamby words about how Mubarak was ''looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people''.
That response came on Wednesday - more thugs in and out of uniform in the streets, more tear-gas and 860 more young Egyptians banged up in prison because, Oliver-like, they had the audacity to stand in the streets and to ask for more. Such is stability.
Undaunted, Clinton tried again on Wednesday, when she called on the Egyptian authorities to cease blocking the communications on which the demonstrators relied. But on Thursday the Twitter and Facebook websites were inaccessible and mobile-phone users in Cairo said that it was difficult or impossible to sent text messages.
Clinton uttered the ''stability'' line early in the week - before the seriousness of what is unfolding in the streets of Cairo and Alexandria came in to focus. Consider how it might be interpreted by ordinary Egyptians - the human rights of 80 million people have been trampled for 30 years but what the US Secretary of State is most concerned about is the stability of the state.
And, even as the focus sharpened, the administration refused to tell the truth about the despot upon whom Washington relies - ''Egypt is a strong ally,'' the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, replied when asked if the administration still supported Mubarak.
And, in a week in which the Middle East's historic self-started wave of democracy protests came to a head, Barack Obama might have used his State of the Union address to cheer along all the protesters; and perhaps to warn all the leaders, country by country, of the fate that awaits them.
Instead he confined his specific remarks to Tunisia, saying: ''The United States of America stands with the people of Tunisia and supports the democratic aspirations of all people.'' So, in a region of 333 million people, where to varying degrees a good 325 million are under the heel of unelected leaders, the US President addressed only little Tunisia.
The lame excuse offered to reporters was that Cairo erupted late in the drafting process of the speech but that last ''aspirations of all people'' phrase was a recognition that ''what happens in Tunisia resonates around the world''.
By current American thinking it would never do to have Islamists in power in the Palestinian Occupied Territories or in Lebanon and therefore they heed every despot's warning that the Islamists are waiting in the wings across North Africa and the Middle East.
But lost in the lunge to protect US strategic and commercial interests by propping up the region's dictator class is any realisation that that support is what leaves the youth of the region under-educated and under-employed and, thereby, ripe for the picking by Islamist and other underground movements.
In Tunisia the revolutionaries are still searching for a leader who can articulate their demands. And this week a leader flew in to Cairo - searching for a revolution. That was the former International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, whose return to Egypt underscores a challenge brought on across the region as much by the local community as the international community - the grooming of those who might form a half-decent opposition.
Tracing an arc through Obama's approach to the Middle East, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies professor Fouad Ajami described the President's foreign policy pragmatism as ''a break of faith with democracy''.
Alluding to the suppression of demonstrations in Tehran after the contested 2009 presidential election, he wrote in Lebanon's Daily Star: ''American diplomacy was not likely to alter the raw balance of power between the regime and its democratic oppositionists. But the timidity of American power and the refusal of the Obama administration to embrace the cause of the opposition must be reckoned one of American foreign policy's great moral embarrassments.''
The Mubarak machine's contempt for popular aspirations and whatever the US might think of them was on full display yesterday when Safwat el-Sherif, the head of the ruling National Democratic Party, feigned obliviousness to the reality of political power in Egypt as he lectured the protesters - ''democracy has its rules and process - the minority does not force its will on the majority''.
Abdel Moneim Said, a stooge government-appointed publisher, echoed Hillary Clinton's midweek ''stability'' comment when he told reporters: ''I can't think of anybody that I know that has any concern about the stability of the regime.''
Finding the right policy mix to influence events without being accused of interfering is a fine balance that some observers have concluded eludes the Obama administration.
''It's about identifying the US too closely with these changes and thereby undermining them; and not finding ways to nurture them enough,'' Aaron David Miller, of the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, told The New York Times.
Meanwhile, observers on the ground in the region shake their heads. ''People want moral support,'' said Shadi Hamid, of the Brookings Doha Centre. ''They want to hear words of encouragement - right now they don't have that. They feel the world doesn't care and is working against them.''
His point seems to be this: it is time Washington thought in terms of investing in people in the region, not in dictators.
If so, we may be playing with fire...
LINK (http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=234854)
Hundreds detained in Saudi Arabia over protests
Saudi authorities detained hundreds of demonstrators on Friday in Jeddah who gathered to protest against poor infrastructure after deadly floods swept through Saudi Arabia's second biggest city, police and witnesses said.
Some Jeddah streets remained submerged on Friday, and electricity was still out in low-lying parts of the city two days after torrential rains caused flooding that killed at least four people and swept away cars.
The protest came after mass messages sent over BlackBerry smart phones called for popular action in response to the flood, an unusual move in the Arab state at a time of spreading anti-government unrest across the Arab world.
Protesters gathered for about 15 minutes after Friday prayers on a main Jeddah shopping street and shouted 'God is Greatest' before authorities broke up the protest and detained participants, a witness who works in a nearby shop told Reuters.
One police officer said around 30 protesters were detained and police were pursuing others who fled to a nearby building. Another officer put the number held at around 50.
About 12 police cars surrounded the building where protesters were hiding, and 30 more blocked off the street near where the protest happened.
A mass message sent via BlackBerry Messenger on Thursday urged Jeddah residents to join a demonstration on Saturday over the floods, while another urged all government and private sector employees to hold a general strike next week. But Friday's protest had been unexpected.
The call for action in the top oil exporter, where public protest is not tolerated, comes as open defiance of authoritarian rulers spreads, with protests in Egypt and Yemen inspired by unrest which toppled Tunisia's president this month.
(Source: Reuters)
Photo: A view of street chaos in front of Danube supermarket on Arbaeen St., Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. (Arab News/ Mohammed Imad)
Lets not forget we got some troops over in the AO on MFO duty, NG troops from IL(?).
Well away from the center of things but..................
Events in the Middle East are moving too fast for the Obama administration to think it can get away with Plan A and Plan B reaction strategies according to the regimes or leaders it wants to keep in and out of power.
Too Tunisia!!!!
Too Tunisia!!!!
CNN wants everyone to worry about the Caldera in Yellowstone..
http://www.professionalsoldiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32134
If we are not careful,, someone will make several Caldera's in the Middle East using air-burst technology...
It don't look good... :eek::eek::eek::eek:
incarcerated
01-30-2011, 21:37
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/30/AR2011013004401.html
Obama administration aligns itself with protests in Egypt with call for 'orderly transition'
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 30, 2011; 8:53 PM
The Obama administration firmly aligned itself on Sunday with the protest movement that has overtaken Egypt, calling for an "orderly transition" to a more representative government amid rising U.S. concern that the demonstrations are turning violent and that unrest could spread across the Arab world....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/30/AR2011013004401.html
Obama administration aligns itself with protests in Egypt with call for 'orderly transition'
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 30, 2011; 8:53 PM
The Obama administration firmly aligned itself on Sunday with the protest movement that has overtaken Egypt, calling for an "orderly transition" to a more representative government amid rising U.S. concern that the demonstrations are turning violent and that unrest could spread across the Arab world....
Solely based on Google-Fuing 'Obama Muslim Brotherhood' it would appear our CnC has a liking for these folks.....I think we may not like the CHANGE we are likely to receive from this investment.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/obama-met-muslim-brotherhood-members-in-u-s-1.277306
incarcerated
01-30-2011, 22:43
Two blog/opinion pieces:
http://www.redstate.com/laborunionreport/2011/01/30/the-american-lefts-role-in-leading-mid-east-regime-change/
http://www.newsrealblog.com/2011/01/30/the-american-left-and-the-crisis-in-egypt/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+nrb-feature+%28NewsReal+Blog+%C2%BB+Feature%29
Welp, we lost Iran during the Carter administration, and Egypt during this one. Stellar.
Welp, we lost Iran during the Carter administration, and Egypt during this one. Stellar.
In the context of Obama losing Egypt.....you must fight for something to lose it. So it would appear to me Obama gave it away or handed it over.
This aspiring idea of self-government and freedom (whatever that may mean to whomever) has been an American foreign policy staple and an on-going global series of nebulously conclusive events since our WW2 claims of fighting the Axis powers to make the world "safe for democracy."
Lake a restaging of The Crucible on Broadway or a remaking of the movie, the only thing really new about it all is a change in the cast.
And so it goes...
Richard :munchin
Welp, we lost Iran during the Carter administration, and Egypt during this one. Stellar.
We lost Iran well before Carter. 1953, if not before.
We lost Egypt when we insisted on backing a a guy for so long who was never going to allow elections.
We lost Iran well be for Carter. 1953, if not before.
We lost Egypt when we insisted on backing a a guy for so long who was never going to allow elections.
I apologize. I should have said, "I blame Iran's loss on Carter."
I also think people don't realize the potential for big time disaster with this Tunisia/Egypt conflagration; could well be the first domino of a world-wide effect.
Hence:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/31/us-egypt-israel-usa-idUSTRE70U53720110131
Israel shocked by Obama's "betrayal" of Mubarak
Analysis: Is Mubarak's time up after 30 years in power?
Sun, Jan 30 2011Related TopicsWorld »
By Douglas Hamilton
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - If Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak is toppled, Israel will lose one of its very few friends in a hostile neighborhood and President Barack Obama will bear a large share of the blame, Israeli pundits said on Monday.
Political commentators expressed shock at how the United States as well as its major European allies appeared to be ready to dump a staunch strategic ally of three decades, simply to conform to the current ideology of political correctness.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told ministers of the Jewish state to make no comment on the political cliffhanger in Cairo, to avoid inflaming an already explosive situation. But Israel's President Shimon Peres is not a minister.
"We always have had and still have great respect for President Mubarak," he said on Monday. He then switched to the past tense. "I don't say everything that he did was right, but he did one thing which all of us are thankful to him for: he kept the peace in the Middle East."
Newspaper columnists were far more blunt.
One comment by Aviad Pohoryles in the daily Maariv was entitled "A Bullet in the Back from Uncle Sam." It accused Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of pursuing a naive, smug, and insular diplomacy heedless of the risks.
Who is advising them, he asked, "to fuel the mob raging in the streets of Egypt and to demand the head of the person who five minutes ago was the bold ally of the president ... an almost lone voice of sanity in a Middle East?"
"The politically correct diplomacy of American presidents throughout the generations ... is painfully naive."
Obama on Sunday called for an "orderly transition" to democracy in Egypt, stopping short of calling on Mubarak to step down, but signaling that his days may be numbered. [nN30161335]
"AMERICA HAS LOST IT"
Netanyahu instructed Israeli ambassadors in a dozen key capitals over the weekend to impress on host governments that Egypt's stability is paramount, official sources said.
"Jordan and Saudi Arabia see the reactions in the West, how everyone is abandoning Mubarak, and this will have very serious implications," Haaretz daily quoted one official as saying.
Egypt, Israel's most powerful neighbor, was the first Arab country to make peace with the Jewish state, in 1979. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who signed the treaty, was assassinated two years later by an Egyptian fanatic.
It took another 13 years before King Hussein of Jordan broke Arab ranks to made a second peace with the Israelis. That treaty was signed by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated one year later, in 1995, by an Israeli fanatic.
There have been no peace treaties since. Lebanon and Syria are still technically at war with Israel. Conservative Gulf Arab regimes have failed to advance their peace ideas. A hostile Iran has greatly increased its influence in the Middle East conflict.
Snip
An interesting bit of cultural insight associated with the current unrest in Tunisia and Egypt.
To the Tyrants of the World
Abdul Qasim al Shabi
http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=133354601&m=133354628
Sic semper tyrannis.
And so it goes...
Richard :munchin