Egypt: from 2011 demonstrations to today (16 Viewers)
- Thread starter ReBeL
- Start date
Hmmm, could be, the Egyptians here will tell us about that, but personally I think that the internal problems and the way people inside Egypt live is why they started this. Emotionally a normal Egyptian is against the Gaza blockade, but I doubt millions stood up, people are dying and many are risking their lives because of Gaza.
Breaking news:
Yemeni dictator phones Mubarak to discuss issues:
http://www.presidentsaleh.gov.ye/shownews.php?lng=ar&_nsid=9066
Yemeni dictator phones Mubarak to discuss issues:
http://www.presidentsaleh.gov.ye/shownews.php?lng=ar&_nsid=9066
Egyptian hip hop group Arabian Knightz have recorded a protest track called "Rebel" featuring a sample from Lauryn Hill.
You can listen to it here:
http://www.the9elements.com/2011/02/arabian-knights-f-lauryn-hill-rebel.html
You can listen to it here:
http://www.the9elements.com/2011/02/arabian-knights-f-lauryn-hill-rebel.html
Seeing what's going on in Tahrir square reminds me of us demonstrating against the corrupt government over a year ago except that Egyptian army doesn't seem as brutal as Iranian army when confronting people.
My mother however says it reminds her of the 1979 Islamic revolution when people of all kinds as well as all political parties wanted Shah to leave.
Mubarak needs to leave but I sincerely hope Egyptians don't take the path our people took 32 years ago which left us with an even bigger dictatorship, an Islamic dictatorship. In the end, what people vote for, what people of Egypt want must matter but Turk, 98% of Iranian people also voted for Islamic Republic regime 32 years ago and now we can't even freely choose the way we want to live our lives without the interference of the government.
Even though, as my mother says, there are similarities between what happens now in Cairo and what happened in Iran back in the day, I'm still hopeful that it will only eventuate in a freer and more developed Egypt.
In the end I hope all Egyptian members here stay safe and strong through all this
My mother however says it reminds her of the 1979 Islamic revolution when people of all kinds as well as all political parties wanted Shah to leave.
Mubarak needs to leave but I sincerely hope Egyptians don't take the path our people took 32 years ago which left us with an even bigger dictatorship, an Islamic dictatorship. In the end, what people vote for, what people of Egypt want must matter but Turk, 98% of Iranian people also voted for Islamic Republic regime 32 years ago and now we can't even freely choose the way we want to live our lives without the interference of the government.
Even though, as my mother says, there are similarities between what happens now in Cairo and what happened in Iran back in the day, I'm still hopeful that it will only eventuate in a freer and more developed Egypt.
In the end I hope all Egyptian members here stay safe and strong through all this
The cozy relationship between the lobbyists, members of the US Congress, Pentagon officials and the Egyptian government is easily explained: much is at stake. Egypt has received over $70bn in economic and military aid approved by the US Congress in the past 60 years, according to numbers compiled by the Congressional Research Service. Maj Gen Williams is the man in charge of the $1.3bn in annual US military aid supplied to the country.
Specifically, the aid money pays for US-designed Abrams tanks assembled in suburban Cairo under contract with General Dynamics. Boeing sells Egypt CH-47 Chinook transport helicopters, Lockheed Martin sells F-16s, Sikorsky Aircraft sells Black Hawk helicopters. Lockheed Martin has taken in $3.8bn from Egypt in the last few years; General Dynamics $2.5bn; Boeing $1.7bn; among many others.
In addition, hundreds of Egyptian military officers come for short training courses to the US each year. Two days after Livingston and Miner met with the US officials in Cairo, the embassy sent a cable to Washington with a list of Egyptian officials approved to take a three-week military training course in the US in February 2010. Under the "Leahy law" – a human rights requirement named after Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont that prohibits US military assistance to foreign military units that violate human rights – the embassy must, as a matter of routine, vouch for the prospective trainees.
One of the training courses listed in the cable made public by WikiLeaks was listed as one in how to handle explosives. The WikiLeaks cables show that numerous officials working for "state security", aged between 30 and 50 with ranks from major to lieutenant colonel, were given clean bills of health to take a variety of such specialised military training programmes.
After the US lobbyists returned to their offices in Washington, DC, Miner kept in touch with "Pink" Williams, corresponding via email. A little over three months later, an Egyptian military delegation led by Major General Mohamed Said Elassar, assistant to Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, the Egyptian minister of defence, came to Washington. Livingstone and Miner were on hand once again to take the Egyptian officials to meet with a number of members of Congress, as well to visit the office of the secretary of defence to discuss "US/Egyptian security issues".
So, when protesters in Cairo last week were struck by tear gas canisters fired by Egyptian security officials, it was not surprising that pictures taken by ABC TV would show that the canisters were manufactured in the US. Nor does it seem that surprising that a journalist from the Sydney Morning Herald would find 12-gauge shotgun shells with ''MADE IN USA'' stamped on their brass heads when he visited the wounded in a makeshift casualty ward in a tiny mosque behind Tahrir (Liberation) Square.
The photographs show that the tear gas comes from a company named Combined Systems Inc (CSI), which describes itself as a "tactical weapons company" and is based in Jamestown, Pennsylvania. A similar picture from the protests in Egypt was posted on Twitter of a "Outdoor 52 Series Large Grenade" grenade made by CSI, which is designed to discharge "a high volume of smoke and chemical agent through multiple emission ports". (CSI did not return calls for comment.)
Although CSI markets these products as "less-than-lethal", several incidents indicate that they can cause injury and death. Bassem Abu Rahmah, a Palestinian man, was reportedly killed on 17 April 2009, when a CSI 40mm model 4431 powder barricade penetrating tear gas grenade struck him in the chest, according to a report by the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem. Nels Cooper Brannan , a US marine deployed to Fallujah, Iraq, unsuccessfully sued CSI for injuries caused by an allegedly defective MK 141 flashbang grenade that caused serious damage to his left hand when it exploded accidently.
While the Egyptian protesters were facing tear gas grenades fired by security forces in Cairo, another delegation of Egyptian senior military officials led by Lieutenant General Sami Hafez Enan, the chief of staff of Egypt's armed forces, was back in Washington to meet with Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (No public records have been filed yet, so it is unclear if Miner and Livingstone were escorting them again.)
Within hours of the news of the huge protests, Enan cut short his trip and dashed back to Cairo last Friday, but his boss, Minister Tantawi, has kept in touch with Washington, making daily phone calls to US Defence Secretary Robert Gates. Both men – together with Egypt's spy chief, Omar Suleiman – are among President Hosni Mubarak's closest allies and enjoy close ties with Washington, according to the diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks. And it was these men that Thomas E Donilon, the US national security adviser, was frantically phoning last weekend to try to gauge how to prevent the collapse of the Mubarak regime.
It could days, maybe even weeks, before the future of the Egyptian government is decided, and with it, the relationship with the US. But one thing is clear: the Egyptian protesters are well aware of the close ties between officials in Cairo and Washington and not happy about the US training and tear gas shells supplied to the Egyptian military. Crowds gathered in Liberation Square last week chanted: "Hosni Mubarak, Omar Suleiman, both of you are agents of the Americans." The protesters believe that the billions in military aid that kept Mubarak in power have helped him keep democracy from flowering in Egypt.
Two years after Obama's famous speech in Cairo, in which he called for a "new beginning between the United States and Muslims", it might be a little late for his administration to heed the words of Mostafa Amin, Egypt's most famous columnist and journalist:
Maybe America gains a lot when it exports to us arms and cars or planes, but it loses more when it does not export the best that its civilisation has produced, which is freedom and democracy and human rights. The value of America is that it should defend this product, not only in its country but throughout the world! It may harm some of its interests, but it will make gains that will live hundreds of years, for the friendship of peoples live forever, because the peoples do not die, but governments change like the winter weather.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/feb/04/egypt-arms-trade
Specifically, the aid money pays for US-designed Abrams tanks assembled in suburban Cairo under contract with General Dynamics. Boeing sells Egypt CH-47 Chinook transport helicopters, Lockheed Martin sells F-16s, Sikorsky Aircraft sells Black Hawk helicopters. Lockheed Martin has taken in $3.8bn from Egypt in the last few years; General Dynamics $2.5bn; Boeing $1.7bn; among many others.
In addition, hundreds of Egyptian military officers come for short training courses to the US each year. Two days after Livingston and Miner met with the US officials in Cairo, the embassy sent a cable to Washington with a list of Egyptian officials approved to take a three-week military training course in the US in February 2010. Under the "Leahy law" – a human rights requirement named after Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont that prohibits US military assistance to foreign military units that violate human rights – the embassy must, as a matter of routine, vouch for the prospective trainees.
One of the training courses listed in the cable made public by WikiLeaks was listed as one in how to handle explosives. The WikiLeaks cables show that numerous officials working for "state security", aged between 30 and 50 with ranks from major to lieutenant colonel, were given clean bills of health to take a variety of such specialised military training programmes.
After the US lobbyists returned to their offices in Washington, DC, Miner kept in touch with "Pink" Williams, corresponding via email. A little over three months later, an Egyptian military delegation led by Major General Mohamed Said Elassar, assistant to Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, the Egyptian minister of defence, came to Washington. Livingstone and Miner were on hand once again to take the Egyptian officials to meet with a number of members of Congress, as well to visit the office of the secretary of defence to discuss "US/Egyptian security issues".
So, when protesters in Cairo last week were struck by tear gas canisters fired by Egyptian security officials, it was not surprising that pictures taken by ABC TV would show that the canisters were manufactured in the US. Nor does it seem that surprising that a journalist from the Sydney Morning Herald would find 12-gauge shotgun shells with ''MADE IN USA'' stamped on their brass heads when he visited the wounded in a makeshift casualty ward in a tiny mosque behind Tahrir (Liberation) Square.
The photographs show that the tear gas comes from a company named Combined Systems Inc (CSI), which describes itself as a "tactical weapons company" and is based in Jamestown, Pennsylvania. A similar picture from the protests in Egypt was posted on Twitter of a "Outdoor 52 Series Large Grenade" grenade made by CSI, which is designed to discharge "a high volume of smoke and chemical agent through multiple emission ports". (CSI did not return calls for comment.)
Although CSI markets these products as "less-than-lethal", several incidents indicate that they can cause injury and death. Bassem Abu Rahmah, a Palestinian man, was reportedly killed on 17 April 2009, when a CSI 40mm model 4431 powder barricade penetrating tear gas grenade struck him in the chest, according to a report by the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem. Nels Cooper Brannan , a US marine deployed to Fallujah, Iraq, unsuccessfully sued CSI for injuries caused by an allegedly defective MK 141 flashbang grenade that caused serious damage to his left hand when it exploded accidently.
While the Egyptian protesters were facing tear gas grenades fired by security forces in Cairo, another delegation of Egyptian senior military officials led by Lieutenant General Sami Hafez Enan, the chief of staff of Egypt's armed forces, was back in Washington to meet with Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (No public records have been filed yet, so it is unclear if Miner and Livingstone were escorting them again.)
Within hours of the news of the huge protests, Enan cut short his trip and dashed back to Cairo last Friday, but his boss, Minister Tantawi, has kept in touch with Washington, making daily phone calls to US Defence Secretary Robert Gates. Both men – together with Egypt's spy chief, Omar Suleiman – are among President Hosni Mubarak's closest allies and enjoy close ties with Washington, according to the diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks. And it was these men that Thomas E Donilon, the US national security adviser, was frantically phoning last weekend to try to gauge how to prevent the collapse of the Mubarak regime.
It could days, maybe even weeks, before the future of the Egyptian government is decided, and with it, the relationship with the US. But one thing is clear: the Egyptian protesters are well aware of the close ties between officials in Cairo and Washington and not happy about the US training and tear gas shells supplied to the Egyptian military. Crowds gathered in Liberation Square last week chanted: "Hosni Mubarak, Omar Suleiman, both of you are agents of the Americans." The protesters believe that the billions in military aid that kept Mubarak in power have helped him keep democracy from flowering in Egypt.
Two years after Obama's famous speech in Cairo, in which he called for a "new beginning between the United States and Muslims", it might be a little late for his administration to heed the words of Mostafa Amin, Egypt's most famous columnist and journalist:
Maybe America gains a lot when it exports to us arms and cars or planes, but it loses more when it does not export the best that its civilisation has produced, which is freedom and democracy and human rights. The value of America is that it should defend this product, not only in its country but throughout the world! It may harm some of its interests, but it will make gains that will live hundreds of years, for the friendship of peoples live forever, because the peoples do not die, but governments change like the winter weather.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/feb/04/egypt-arms-trade
From Guardian:
Asked directly whether Mubarak should go, Obama said he had spoken to the Egyptian president twice since the protests began:
Each time I have emphasised the fact that the future of Egypt is going to be in the hands of...Egyptians but I have also said in light of what's happened over the past two week, going back to the old days is not going to work....in order for Egypt to have a bright future, which I believe it can have, the only thing that will work is moving an orderly transition process...a representative government that is responsive tot he Egyptian people....what I have suggested to him is he needs to listen to those around him in his government, he needs to listen to the Egyptian people and make a decision about a future that is orderly, that is meaningful and serious.
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What an answer that has nothing to do with the question!
Asked directly whether Mubarak should go, Obama said he had spoken to the Egyptian president twice since the protests began:
Each time I have emphasised the fact that the future of Egypt is going to be in the hands of...Egyptians but I have also said in light of what's happened over the past two week, going back to the old days is not going to work....in order for Egypt to have a bright future, which I believe it can have, the only thing that will work is moving an orderly transition process...a representative government that is responsive tot he Egyptian people....what I have suggested to him is he needs to listen to those around him in his government, he needs to listen to the Egyptian people and make a decision about a future that is orderly, that is meaningful and serious.
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What an answer that has nothing to do with the question!
