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Toronto rallies for Egypt at Yonge and Dundas
Several hundred people gathered at Yonge and Dundas Square on Saturday in solidarity with protesters in Egypt and the Arab world who have been demanding more democratic rights in their home countries. The event was organized on Facebook "to raise awareness in Canada and to tell the Egyptian regime that we are all watching and their crimes against the people will not be tolerated." It follows five days of violent clashes between protesters and security forces in Egypt.
With shouts of "Down, Down Mubarak" and "Mubarak must go," the crowd called for human and democratic rights to be respected in Egypt and for the Canadian government to end ties with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak who has been power for almost three decades. They also called for Mohamed ElBaradei, an opposition figure in Egypt, to be released from detention.
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This is a global struggle against western-backed and funded dictators. The people of the world will no longer stay quiet in their increasing misery & displacement by white supremacy/empire!
However, it needs to be pointed out that even in the West, democracy is fairly new (less than 300 years old, really) and was initially full of stops and starts. Although it is unfair to hold Eastern and Middle-Eastern societies to a higher standard, it also needs to be pointed out that the French Revolution and the American Revolution (to name but 2 examples) were fairly localized events - neither side had nuclear weapons, F-15s or knew what germ warfare was. Any instability in the world today has to be viewed through the lens as potentially a global event.
Still, it would be a shame if Egypt were to implode in domestic turmoil: it was the one great hope to show that the Muslim world could function in the 21st Century.
Egypt/Israel or North and South Korea: the world could suddenly become a very interesting place.....
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1) It is not the West's fault.
2) The Middle East is good at creating conflict among great powers in the West.
3) Democracy was created and did not/does not continue to evolve.
4) Any instability today affects every country.
5) Egypt was the only hope for a compatibility of Muslim-based government (or the religion in general?) to work.
1) Many problems outside of the West are the West's fault. Just because the West has a leading role in many past problems, does not mean current one's should in any way be less associated with the west because some sort of blame-quota has been filled and it is someone else's turn.
2) The Middle East wants European powers to fight over it, because it loves the attention (and when proxies are fought within its borders).
3) Nope, just plain incorrect.
4) A banal statement. Many conflicts have real problems and horrific consequences, but are very localised. Has the civil conflict in the Darfur region affected your life at any non-cocktail party discussion/ pseudo-sympathy level?
5) See 3).
PS: The whole Korea thing is being blown out of proportion by the media to sell papers/ magazines. Yes the N. Koreans have nukes, no the leadership is not so stupid to use them.
Since WWII, the U.S. and Russia played a deadly game of chess throughout the globe. While we are quick to damn the United States (thanks to our free press that allows us to do just that, in a media that was created by Americans) The Russians and Americans were soon enough joined by the Chinese Communists. One by one, the triumverate of modern power carved up the globe throughout the 1950's through 1980s until the Soviet Union collapsed. And were has our so-called allies been through all of this? Germany and France get a kick out of selling arms to some of the scariest nations on Earth.
Under the banner of 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend,' a lot of unfortunate actions have taken place by the U.S., or one of the other powers in a giant game or Risk.
None of this is so simple as to blame the United States. Wasn't it the U.S. that demanded France and Great Britain leave the Suez to the Egyptians 50 years ago?
We have clear proof of what happens when the United States stays home: WWII raged for nearly 3 years, devastating much of Europe before the Americans were reluctantly dragged into that war. Russia had a free hand in Afghanistan for a decade - how did that work out?
None of this is simple. It is too convenient to blame the Americans because they won't send one of their agents to shoot you in the head in the middle of the night. We should be blaming the geo-politics of the day. We have the advantage of looking back and second-guessing whether troops should have gone into Vietnam or not (after France made a huge cluster f$ck there!), or whether Castro should have been allowed to fester for 50 years, holding an entire people hostage, but that is the nature of the beast.
Tell me, oh learned ones: who would you rather have rescue you from a burning house? The Russian army, the Chinese army or the American army? There's only one that would rescue you, rebuild your house and then give you a job selling products to them so you can rebuild your family, too.
Egypt needs stability, yes, but not through censorship, state of emergency, repression, torture, nepotism, corruption, and constant threat. Foreign governments can support Egypt by supporting the people in education, health care, non-sectarianism, and positive societal moves forward rather than pouring money into military spending.
Go, Egypt, go! Let the people speak and decide their own future.
The U.S. (under the Bush administration) suspended aid, thus ensuring that Ibrahim got out after a trial that cleared him, but let's face it; the U.S., Canada, and other nations aren't really concerned with democracy in Egypt or any of the other Arab states other than to make sure the Suez Canal is open and the oil flows. (And the protesters should be protesting outside the U.S. embassy on University Ave. as well.)
That's it in a nutshell, Gadfly, and if you can't get that, you are as I've called you.
Unfortunately rather than asking president Mubarak to step down and respect the wishes of the people, Obama chose to send additional monetary aid to the president in order to help contain & quiet the protesters, and while he stated that the president needs to implement new reforms, he also decidedly omitted to mention that after 30 years of corrupt elections it's about time for Mubarak to step down.
Claiming that this is an internal event and that whether or not Mubarak steps down is none of their business. Funny how they had no problem overthrowing the Iraqi president for being an oppressive dictator, yet now they claim to have no opinion on the legitimacy of the Egyptian president.
<b><i>Daniel .. Toronto</b></i>
http://bit.ly/bKGa13