The last Pharaoh has gone and his legacy will soon be as covered in sand as his predecessor’s. A debate about the Middle East took up the whole of Friday in the Lords but their Lordships are no more certain of the future than anyone else. Given the lack of any democratic infrastructure and viable opposition parties, I am concerned about the transition from the military to a secular democratic government in Egypt; but hopeful that other Arab countries will follow suit and depose their autocratic rulers. We are now all in favour of regime change. P.S. Not just Arab countries. This morning there is news that the women of Italy are to demonstrate against Berlusconi!
1)Is what is happening destabilising the region further ?
2)Has the internet and technology spread Western culture and capitalism in a way that has prompted the desire for more freedom ?
3)Does democracy work in Countries without financial stability or will the West subsidise stability ?
I’m afraid I’m a little cynical, it was all too easy and now the talk is of the same Police going back to work to control the people. Mubarek maybe gone but the regime hasn’t been torn apart by a revolution.
And you still that being ruled by an elected, partially inherited body is correct in the UK.
You’re next.
We need democracy in the UK, and that means getting rid of the unelected rulers like you.
Surely what we should all be in favour of is regime-improvement, no matter what the prevailing regime, no matter what the nation-state.
It is past time for Britain to lead the way not only with individual-expertises, such as should be comprehensive and in-depth in the Upper House, but with small teams of win-win-win (method III) needs & hows and cooperative problem solving facilitators (few if any of which are ever open to or shown to us Public even if they are being allowed any effective breathing-room).
It should be so clear that Democratisation is still in its infancy, anywhere in the World including Britain, Europe, and America, that we the English need to be giving the worldwide English language a good clean-up, and putting-forward new response-abilities fitting to the thrival of the year-to-year World and especially to our longterm human-civilisational survival with its mammoth-task of “Noah’s Ark-ing” our own, probably meaning most of this Earth’s, Lifesupports.
2341Sn1130211
JSDM: Another case of Hansard moderators falling short of what is required of them. They have allowed you to publish an email address when blog rules require anonymity and privacy regarding email addresses.
What you have also to consider is that gmail is a free service provided by Google and public email addresses like yours are trawled by spam bots looking for opportunities. In terms of the ‘big society’ it does not help Google in any way to be part of the global email spam industry that plagues us all. However, if you are lonely…
If you put your email address in the box that says name (either on comments or when registering) this is the name that will be displayed on the site. I cannot change the username that has been entered. If you only put your email address in the box that says ’email’ it will be hidden. I will ask our web developers to ammend the instructions to include this information as it seems to have been causing confusion.
Thank you! When the name boxed is parsed for duplicates it would make sense to reject any entry with a ‘@’ character or forming part of a public domain suffix:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Suffix_List
such as ‘.com’ although this might prove challenging to implement?
You know, its an odd way we developed. Not only does Egypt have to be Democratic, but must also be Secular. We often at as if only a Democracy can produce freedom, and then only if its Secular. However, in my experience, the Secularism often transmutes way from a neutrality on Religious Issues, and into a Religion in its own right, and I’ve said as much here before, which of course has me seen as a Nutter. Still, what good is a Secularism if it is defined as a Philosophy in and of itself complete with its own Moral Codes and Ethical Standards? It’d be imposed just as readily as any Religious Moral Code would, an what’s the real difference? As to Democracy, what f the Voters do not want a Democracy like we know it? Would we consider it a Democracy if thy don’t embrace Liberal Secular Western Values, informed by pour Cultures Love Affair with Humanism?
What I’d like to see is a Stable Government that serves its people well with Just Laws and Fair Treatment, that grants them basic rights, and that enables them to freely live as they like. I really don’t care if the Government is Secular or not, provided it does this, nor do I concern myself with its Democratic Bona Fides.
But in the end we really don’t know what will happen either ay, and we may get that Secular Democracy, if it Embraces Stalinism, or example, in a way we really don’t like.
I don’t want to come off as a Doom Monger but, I do worry given the situation, past Revolutions, and current cultural trends in the Middle East, and can only pray for True Freedom (Whether Democratic and Secular or not) can prevail in the end.
This morning there is news that the women of Italy are to demonstrate against Berlusconi!
There is probably nothing that he would enjoy more; working towards it for sometime, perhaps?
Loathsome man. His confused thinking tells him that he must entertain as well as lead, like the impeached president of Ecuador 3-4 years ago.
Ecuador has been followed by as wise a President as the band leader was a clown, so perhaps the Italians will get a worthwhile leader before long, likewise the Egyptians.
Ecuador has the most powerful and objective world view I have ever heard from a world leader, including you know who.
Beccy and Senex re both securely and easily managing one’s registration details and operating and login details:
thank you;
my local govt-appointed ‘affordable’ technician ((I am a low-income ex=serviceman and now octogenarian state-pensioner)) has turned out to be neither adequately-competent nor affordable.
Further, the ‘free’ govt-computer-training online called http://www.myguide.gov.uk fails in two major requirements
(1) showing how their various standard-answers are actually worked out (such as in the Literacy and Numeracy test the ‘number of words per line and in total’ question) and
(2) providing a referral-directory to local affordable home-computer support technicians, and to affordable online expertise and help, especially of course for us impecunious and isolated would-be-lifesupportive-democratic-citizens.
[[[ Where’s the human-development, democratic, and eke-o-nomic sense ? in providing 6000 ‘free’ MyGuide.gov.uk computer-training centres all over the UK, limited to keyboard-guidance through the website, when we can’t keep our home-computers up and running, and can’t find out how the standard right answers are arrived at, effectively and affordably ? ]]]
Luckily a new and clued-up young technician is coming to help me at £20 per hour which, since I am a non-smoker,non-drinker, non-car-owner, non-gambler, non-holidaymaker, I can budget as £20 per week (for one hour)for the first three months; thereafter one hopes that necessity can drop to a more sustain-worthy £20 per month, by that time becoming more keyboard-learning help than technically repairing and maintaining the home-and laptop computers.
Best regards.
0515F18Feb11. 469 words.
Meanwhile, the ‘Middle-East’ ferments in street smoke and blood, whilst the rich, powerful, and yea even governancial, sit back and enjoy it all on wall-sized sensational-HD colout TV screens.
Who imagines, or rather phantasmagoriates, that even an organised minority of the Arab peoples surrounding that tiny speck of mostly desertified land Israel, exists to protest in the face of the huge Arab majorities still hellbent upon invading Israel, chopping up every Israeli, and tossing the bits into the Mediterranean Sea ?
?
————–
0533F. 83 words.
Johnsdmiles: I think your view on the Arab states and Isreal is a little one sided.
Palestine, as you are aware, was invaded by European Zionists and the British, who had the adminisrtration of the area at the time, or, the mandate, handed the land over to them via, The Balfour Declaration, on November 1917.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration_of_1917
The Zionists continued to strive against the British administration, which resulted in that same admin being blown up, terrorist fashion, by the leader of the Irgun Zionists, Menachiem Begin, at The King David Hotel, on July 18, 1922, with those same British admin people inside.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZHHTjuv5jc
The Balfour Declaration decided the fate of the unhappy Arab population and voila, Israel sprung up from the desert land you wrote of, without one of the indigenous population voting for it. With the newly installed Begin as PM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing
Not very democratic was it? How would you feel if it was Cornwall our government had decided to hand over to some terrorist organization, without getting a vote from the residents beforehand? I think you may feel quite burned by it.
Maude, quite a velvet-gloved pyrotechnic-display you put up there !
Address the point I made, please, not the person ‘ad hominem’ I may or may not be.
That is a fact; not a mere “little one-sided view” (of Johnsdmiles’s).
—————-
Incidentally, I was in the regular army back in 1948, and one of my regiment’s British (and possibly UN) duties was to dig-in on the Transjordan border at Aqaba, to as it were ‘keep the old Arabs and new Israelis from each other throats’.
‘Off-duty’, a few of us were ‘entertained’ by ‘locals’.
Firstly, a small group of ‘bedouin’ shepherds up in the wadi-aqaba mountains, hosted us, squat around a small brushwood fire, to small cups of tea.
Secondly, on a Sunday when a few of our troops gathered in a tent under the Padre were heard to be singing “Jerusalem” (my platoon was dug-in forward about halfway between our HQ and two newly-arrived Israeli armoured cars at the then dangerously be-coralled wilderness spot called Eilat) faint strains of “The Holy City” could be heard coming from that handful of Israelis now ‘wedged’ as it were between Transjordan and Egypt.
————–
I doubt many ‘active’ servicemen have been so well-hosted by two ( or should this be ‘three’, ‘four’, or ‘more’) potentially and unluckily warring nation-states.
———
The evil undercurrents of potential micro or macro genocide still have to be wrestled with, Maude; so how answer you now ?
JSDM
0851Th240211
@milesjsd: What a remarkable and exciting description you posted. I am in sincere humble pie mode. Quite the TE Lawrence of you.
And, I was just about to add the massacres that followed. Which many would say, have not stopped to this day.
Really, I wanted to shine the light on how such an ill thought out Foreign Office judgment can cause havoc and heartbreak for a very long time.
Which leads us to present day Libya and how that will be handled. Fragile. But already the arsenal pushers are waiting with baited breath.
Whilst I hold mine.
Berlusconi: I don’t think he cares one iota.
http://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=navclient-ff#q=berlusconi&hl=en&site=webhp&prmd=ivnsul&source=univ&tbs=nws:1&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=ActfTYqdLMnAswa_hZG2CA&sqi=2&ved=0CD4QqAI&fp=5afa546098c79759
However, he’s said to be linked to the Mafia, and, by the way, isn’t he an old friend of Blair, ex Prime Minister of the UK?
And don’t they say birds of a feather flock together? Mmm.