Super Moderator
Location: essex ma
|
this is an interesting account of watching egyptian television for the coverage of the debate between then prime minister shafik and folk from the opposition:
Egyptian Chronicles: Unforgettable night in the Arab TV history
following on which:
Quote:
Bowing to Opposition, Egypt Premier Resigns
By LIAM STACK
CAIRO — Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq resigned on Thursday, bowing to one of the main demands of Egypt’s opposition movement which has demanded his ouster for days from its informal headquarters in a resurrected tent city in Tahrir Square.
Egypt’s transitional military government, which has ruled since the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak on February 11, announced its decision to replace Mr. Shafiq on a Facebook page.
The new prime minister will be Essam Sharaf, who served as transportation minister from 2004 to 2006.
Mr. Shafiq’s resignation was one of several demands protesters said had to be met by the military and comes one day before a planned major demonstration in Tahrir Square to call for the removal all Mubarak-era ministers, including Mr. Shafiq and Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit.
Other demands which have yet to be met include an end to Egypt’s decades-old state of emergency, the dismantling of the country’s feared state security service, and the release of political prisoners jailed during the 30-year tenure of former President Mubarak.
Mr. Shafiq was appointed prime minister in the final days of Mr. Mubarak’s tenure after anti-government demonstrations forced him to dismiss the entire cabinet on January 29.
Many protesters and opposition figures viewed Mr. Shafiq as tainted by his association with the former president and feared that Mr. Mubarak, who has not been publicly seen or heard from since stepping down, would continue to rule through him.
“Ahmed Shafiq and Hosni Mubarak are working together,” said Gaby Osman, a 19-year-old protester in Tahrir Square on Monday night. “He became prime minister because of Hosni Mubarak, and we hear rumors that he calls Mubarak on the phone and asks him what he should do to look like he is doing something for the people.”
Mr. Shafiq has been heavily criticized over the last two weeks, and several hundred protesters have camped out in Tahrir Square since Saturday calling for his removal.
On Wednesday night, he fumbled an appearance on a popular satellite channel’s current events talk show during a roundtable discussion with the Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris and the opposition figure Alaa al- Aswani.
Mr. Shafiq defended Egypt’s State Security Force against questions about its use of torture, which has been described by Human Rights Watch as “routine and systematic.”
When pressed on possible reforms, Mr. Shafiq suggested that the s name of the security force be changed to the State Safety Force and that Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the Egyptian uprising, be cleaned up and turned into a version of London’s Hyde Park.
|
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/wo...gewanted=print
so the egyptian revolution makes another step, following more or less the pattern in tunisia (more or less)....
meanwhile, in iraq, from the foreign policy article quoted above:
Quote:
Saddam Hussein may have been overthrown in 2003, but the dawn of more representative government in Iraq has not inoculated the country from the popular unrest now sweeping through the Arab world. Over the past month, demonstrations protesting the woeful lack of services and widespread corruption have taken place throughout the country. These culminated in a violent “day of rage” in a number of Iraqi cities, including one in Baghdad on February 25 that left more than 20 protesters dead.
These protests have not reached the scale of those witnessed in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia, and demonstrators have not demanded regime change per se. Nonetheless, the tight security measures taken to contain the “day of rage” protests in Baghdad -- including blocking access to the city and putting a tight military cordon around Tahrir Square, the focal point of the demonstrations -- and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s efforts to link the unrest to al Qaeda and Baathist provocateurs suggest that his government is rattled. And with good cause, because if Baghdad cannot respond effectively to popular demands, the current government’s political survival is no less at stake than those in Cairo, Tripoli, and Tunis.
Although there is undoubtedly an element of contagion influencing events in Iraq, which began with small demonstrations in Baghdad led by intellectuals and professionals, the protests there are driven by local grievances. Popular anger at the persistent lack of services -- especially electricity -- has been rising steadily over the past few years. Demonstrations protesting power shortages occurred in Basra last summer, expressing a frustration common to Iraqis across the country; some parts of Baghdad, for example, received around two hours of electricity per day from the national grid in early February. Iraqis also share growing resentment toward pervasive government corruption, a factor that has been particularly important in driving demonstrations against the regional administration in Kurdistan. Iraq ranked 175 out of 178 countries on Transparency International’s 2010 corruption index. Meanwhile, there is broad resentment of the high salaries and generous benefits that public officials have granted themselves, especially given the government’s apparent ineptitude.
None of these grievances is new; Iraqis have complained about poor services and unresponsive government since the U.S. invasion in 2003. But in the bloody, chaotic years that followed Hussein’s fall, security was the biggest popular concern. Now that levels of violence have diminished, Iraqis’ patience with their government’s inadequacies is wearing thin.
|
Rage Comes to Baghdad | Foreign Affairs
no resemblance. no relation between the bush "democracy" and the democracy that people are now demanding. no way to justify bushwar by pointing to what's going on now. because in the heart of bushwar, it's corruption and incompetence and an inability to deliver basic services. cronyism and stupidity and an increasingly restive population. with the american military acting to suppress protests demanding democracy.
here's a country-by-country summary from the ny times:
Middle East Protests: A Country-by-Country Look - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com
and here is a peter singer edito from al jazeera about the question of intervening in libya, one which i do not think has been posed correctly much less resolved:
Global Justice and Intervention - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
|