I was going to ask what this had to do with the topic, and then I remembered - “nothing.”
It has more to do with the topic than the post I was replying to. Why pick on my post and not the one I was replying to, hmmmm?
Easy, one need not be “radical” to be violent, and in any case, as you used radical and conflated it with violent, they are not the same thing.
I find it important to distinguish between merely disliking America (or the UK for that matter) and radicalism. Or Radicals from suicide bombing.
To the Egyptian government.
Jaysus that is some fantasy spun there. American assistance wasn’t uniquely to the military.
Militaries don’t order up large amounts of tear gas, in fact during the hotting up period, the news channels were discussing about worries as to what the military would do as they neither train nor equip for crowd suppression. Nor can one imagine that such kind of stocks would not have required explicit approval - and be "diverted
Face it, your government funded and supplies the oppressive government that suppressed democratic opposition of all kinds. Period.
Horeshit, that wasn’t even the damn point. After you said my expression was murky to you, I went to the trouble with a much longer post where I had already clarified and included violent, along with using radical and extremist Muslims in post #50 to separate them from peaceful Muslims. So you already knew what I was referring to with my terms after my clarification, and which I also gave examples. Only after all of that is when you made this ding-dong comment: Because it is an idiotic, non-nonsensical distinction. You know the kind of Muslims I was specifically referring too.
Talk about going into la la land with just one sentence you quoted from me which was this: The tear gas canisters came from a company in Pennsylvania that sells non-lethal weapons to foreign governments which I suppose this got approval from our government for their military, but Mubarak must have diverted the tear gas cannisters to his police.
Yeah, well, we supply our own military and police forces too, as do most. If I get shot by a bad cop with a “Smith and Wesson”, I will blame the bad cop, not “Smith and Wesson”. How would America not giving any aid have helped with making Egypt democratic? America giving Egypt 2 billion a year with roughly 1.3 billion a year of that going to their military seems like an odd way to oppress the people. Much of that military aid has helped secure the borders and keep them secure, and also help keep peace with Israel and others in the region. Had the aid been coming from Iran, what kind of Egypt would we have today?
Unfortunately, Mubarak didn’t seem to do anything to support democratic reforms. Now that Mubarak is out, their biggest threat to honest to goodness democratic reforms now will be radical forms of Islam getting in their way. It won’t be America, and if anything, America will probably be giving even more if they get most of this right.
F.A.Q. on U.S. Aid to Egypt: Where Does the Money Go, And How Is It Spent? — ProPublica Where American aid to Egypt goes .
The bulk of it , about 1.3 billion per year is in military aid. They buy military equipment like jet fighters, helicopters and tanks from us.
We also give many millions which were earmarked to perform specific aims, like job creation and teaching about democratic ideals. That was hard to gage for its success, but none was found.,
The difference here is that massive amounts of aid (or natural resources, which often has the same effect) allows a ruler to stay in power without responding even nominally to their people. Even the worst dictators, on their own, have to make some concessions to prevent popular uprisings or coups. But artificially supported dictators can beef up security to the point that they can do whatever they want. One problem, however, is that they still have to keep those closest to them in line (which is done through favors and corruption) and they need to ally with local (often ethnic) leaders on the borders where they cannot project force. When your ability to stay in power is based on your ability to pay off the opposition, that is naturally going to lead your country into massive corruption and probably ethnic warfare.
The (political) revolution might be over, but now labor unrest is spreading throughout Egypt.
That’s the problem with democracy. It gives people the idea they can complain about whatever they don’t like and then maybe something will get done about it.
Of course, ethnic warfare is not a danger in every country. Depends on local conditions. In Egypt’s case, the only ethnic (in the broad sense – the sense in which “Catholic” and “Protestant” are ethnic identities in Northern Ireland) conflict potentially looming is between the Christian minority (already subject to much de facto discrimination) and the Muslim majority. That’s about it. There is no Sunni-Shi’a conflict to speak of, and ethnic (in the narrow sense) minorities such as the Nubians have not been making any trouble lately. And I would guess all the Jews left for Israel decades ago.
I saw an interview with a leader of the unrest. He wants a longer delay before elections. He says they have to form and develop parties. I suppose Egypt could use some community organizers.
He claimed that the only organized party now is the Muslim Brotherhood. He also claimed Mubarak allowed the brotherhood ,to keep America support for the government. The brotherhood had no power but, they served as a boogie man to keep the money coming in. Now, they are the only organized power in Egypt.
The Muslim brotherhood was outlawed for decades.
Answer: The military junta has commissioned a panel of legal experts to produce a revised constitution in 10 days; it will be submitted to a referendum in two months.
Which means it does not exist? It has been percolating since 1928.
In 2005 elections, the brotherhood won 20 percent of the seats . That is when Mubarak cracked down a bit. They were a legal political party then.
Where do you get this stuff? They were absolutely not a legal party until 2005, and the candidates who won in 2005 were not officially affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood because it was illegal.
It’s true that candidates affiliated with the Brotherhood were banned after 2005.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/30/AR2007093001309.html
http://www.currenttrends.org/research/detail/the-egyptian-muslim-brotherhood-after-the-2005-elections-2 This is none of many sites that will give you the info.
It’s less applicable in Egypt, where Mubarak had pretty good control of even the border regions. But in a place like Chad it is absolutely a major reason why politics leads to ethnic strife- in areas that the government does not control, they have to rely on existing organizational structures to keep order, and often that amounts to doing favors for or outright bribing local ethnic warlords. These interactions end up having national implications and soon you have ethnic warfare. So many wars in Africa get posed as “Oh, those silly Africans and their baseless tribal prejudices” while ignoring the very modern, very direct causes of these conflicts.
That said, if Egypt decided it wanted to have an ethnic warfare, they’d find a way. Ethnic identities have a habit of popping up/evolving/suddenly becoming important when someone figures out that they can get something they want by sowing division.
Well, I can’t argue with that. [By the way, your link does not say what you said. It does say there was a crackdown in 2005, including a law prevented the Muslim Brotherhood from selecting candidates.]
It takes a truly jaw-dropping degree of provincialism to compare the provisioning of the security forces of a dictatorship with a decades long record in violent suppression of even peaceful, democratic opposition with a local sheriff in a democratic country. Jaysus. The expectation from such a track record is that such supplies WILL be used on such people. It’s not like it’s a bloody damned out of character act.
First, Egypt doesn’t have any border threats on the order of 1 billion plus needs. The only serious military they face is Israel. Who the fuck do you think is threatening them?
Militaries in Africa are typically - indeed almost exclusively used to maintain power. Anyone pretending there is some real invasion threat is seriously deluded.
As for making them democratic, well who knows, it certainly did not contribute to any democratic reform.
But it is a pretty common observation in Africa circles that that regimes that benefit from massive foreign aide end up with the quite well-founded behaviour that they don’t need to take into account their population - they certainly don’t depend on local support in a real sense. It’s a fundamental liberal (that is libertarian to you) argument that such aide fosters despotism and enables dictatorship, by removing the need to be in tune with the population.
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Unfortunately, Mubarak didn’t seem to do anything to support democratic reforms.
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Nooooooo. What a surprise. Why blow me down.
Bollocks, the biggest threat to real democratic reform is the probability that the Military Elite with their cushy, corrupt system will simply kick the ball forward with some facade reforms to please the useful overseas idiots. I have not seen serious analyses in UK press suggesting the ‘radical mooslims’ are in any danger of taking over the tools of power.
Right precisely.
Well, unless they have some stability they’re going to go right down the drain.
Pet reforms, eh.
First of all, nobody has been much of a threat to Egypt due to America’s aid to this country and Israel’s peace treaty with them. Secondly, it is important to secure its borders. How are the rockets still getting to Israel? Most think the supply lines are still going through Egypt, mostly through tunnels to the Gaza strip. Israel is the only other country that borders this piece of land. Then there is the Mediterranean Sea which also demands high security. Not sure if Israel’s military or Egypt, or both help secure it.
Also, America will probably continue to supply them with military aid. Those tanks, helicopters, etc, needs expertise, parts and maintenance and eventually they break down and can’t run without them. It will be another bargaining chip. The Obama administration has said it’s going to scrutinize the aid very closely on their assistance programs, and they are going to get “maximum leverage on the Egyptian military to ensure a genuine democratic transition.”
Yeah, sure, it’s America’s fault. BTW, Britain gives to about a dozen or so non-democratic countries of which the Human Rights Watch (HRW) says are guilty of many serious crimes, despite their pathetic track record. UK spends more on Ethiopia than any other African country, despite the HRW noting their war crimes in Somalia region of Ethiopia, and receiving 99% of the vote in an election from not too long back. They must be mighty popular! Much of the vital food aid simply gets diverted to weapons and to starve out the rebels. Can you give me a bloody Jaysus, mate?!
You need to see it first in the UK press, eh? It will be interesting to see how who has the most influence over the military. If radical Muslims have the most influence with it, and are on par with Iran’s leadership, then we’ll see over time if they are no concern.
Personally, it’s very difficult for moderate and liberal Muslims to even get their voices heard if radical forms of Islam have taken over. This is happening over many parts of the Middle East and Africa. Many moderate and liberal Muslims have a story to tell, but often have to go under a pseudonym just to tell it. Radical Muslims either intimidate their enemy’s or kill them or other loved ones off, to where they are no longer a threat.
It’ll be interesting how it all plays out, and at this stage I don’t think anybody really knows much of anything of what will happen.
I’m interested to see what happens if more of these autocratic Arab shit-hole states start to fall. Will the walls closing in on the Islamist Persians cause enough pressure for them to lash out; a Parthian shot before they themselves fall? A few missles at Israel perhaps, to really go out with a bang!