Monday, February 7, 2011

Monday Rant, Tear Down These Walls Mr Mubarak and Mr Netanyahu

Paul Krugman
Fareed Zakaria
"President Mubarak says he won’t step down until September, but that he won’t seek another rigged election. He plans to retire to his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Is this guy really leaving in September, or is he just pulling a Leno?" – David Letterman
"The big rumor: Sarah Palin said she may run for president. I understand there's an opening in Egypt." – Jay Leno
"These days it seems like you can't have an armed street mob without it turning ugly."
 – Stephen Colbert


About half of the news analysis articles in the NY Times and Washington Post are trial balloons sent out by the State Department, waiting to see how the public reacts to the different spin scenarios it concocts. The latest tale of BS and condecention comes from the mouth of Hillary Clinton, saying how the immediate ouster of Hosni Mubarak will lead to further instability. Towards that end they are pushing the Muslim Brotherhood forward into the spotlight as the only opposition group that can be viably recognized, and so they will end up with more positions in the next government than if they tried to win them through an election... This instant recognition for the Muslim Brotherhood comes from them playing nice with our intelligence agencies the past few years. Last year they were even formally thanked when the senior officers came to Washington DC, and were wined, dined, and slam-bammed thank-you-maamed during their week's stay. This maybe their reward for becoming a nice, moderate political group that hasn't snuck in Iranian made rockets and munitions like their bad-boy cousins...

As for Mubarak, he still can't see how he has done anything wrong. Instead, the Egyptian people should be thanking him for being a patriot and keeping their country together and strong. The blindness of a dictator comes from their truly believing they are doing what is right for their country, and see any attack on themselves as an attack on the country. What doubly hurts/angers is that the regular people want him out, not some fringe group. Of course, any negotiations involving the US will be a win for Mubarak, because we will let him keep the over $70 billion that he has skimmed and plundered from the treasury.

Of all of the neighboring political groups that wrap themselves up in religion, Hezbollah has said all of the right things, proving why they have a lot of support in Lebanon and Syria: "In his address, Nasrallah praised what he termed the achievements of the protesters in Egypt, saying they had been as significant as the 2006 war between Hezbollah in and Israel in Lebanon.


He said he wished he could join protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square, which has been the epicentre of demonstrations. "What you have done is no less significant than the historic steadfastness the Islamic Resistance achieved in 2006 and the resistance in Gaza in 2008," he said, referring to the Israeli military assault on Gaza. "You are going through the battle of Arab dignity, restoring the dignity of Arab people." But, he can't join them because he's too chicken to match actions to his words, as he's a leader and not a fighter. But mostly, he's not Egyptian...

If Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah is the good Shiite revolutionary, then the Ayatollah Khamenei is the evil twin Shiite, who also has the blindness when it comes to listening to what his citizens are telling him... In his mind, what is going on in Tunisia and Egypt is all about Iran. Well his country did start it, but it was the Green Revolution against his own government, the Islamic Republic: "In his address, during Friday prayers at Tehran University in Iran's capital, he said that people are witnessing the reverberations of Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution.


"The awakening of the Islamic Egyptian people is an Islamic liberation movement and I, in the name of the Iranian government, salute the Egyptian people and the Tunisian people," he said. Khamenei has urged Egypt's protesters to follow in the footsteps of the Iranian revolution which toppled a pro-US leader and installed an Islamic Republic, calling on Egyptians to unite around religion. He said events in Tunisia and Egypt, were a sign of "Islamic awareness" in the region and that these movements will spell an "irreparable defeat" for the United States." Again, the Grand Ayatollah shows why he isn't wearing the tightest turban around, and probably didn't get very good marks while in school: these revolutions stem from a government treating its own people badly for no reason at all, and their success is a win for basic human dignity, and a desire to be treated honestly and politely. It has nothing to do with religion although the granting and exercising of these rights is the base for successful spiritual development. Nobody wants to emulate the style of government in Iran because they still repress people in the name of religion; there's no difference between a Hosni Mubarak, with his secret police, and the Ayatollah Khoamenei, with his basij para-military. Heck, we'll become Iran's New Best Friend Forever if they will sell us enough cheap oil...

So, in Egypt, we support the ex-head of the intelligence, nicknamed  Sheikh al Torture, and willingly accept him in place of the "despot." In the meantime, Israel may well become the only country in this region to end up living a lie. While calling themselves the only democratic country in the region, while maintaining barbed wire border crossings, and stationing its soldiers in the West Bank and Gaza....


No comments:

Post a Comment

Hi! Thanks for commenting. I always try to respond...