The riots in Tunisia
 

I had to laugh when I heard the reason for the people rioting is because they're unemployed. Surely the simple solution for the government in dealing with the problem is to threaten to stop the benefits of the people rioting if they continue. Plus it wouldn't look very good on their CV if they went for a job. :D

if the government stopped the peoples benefits what would they have left to do but tear down the government with a fervour and rage that would make what they are doing now seem like a my little pony tea party.

you didn't think this through.

do they even get benefits in tunisia?

go look that up and get back to me.

plus i can see that this post comes from a position of great anxiety since you are so obviously having to suppress the knowledge that the same thing may very well happen to your beloved cameronian regime in the uk.

ill-informed and plain silly.
as GD would say : Kill yourself.
You could do it right now actually.

exactly

Just another colossally idiotic post by Keeping it Simple.

Please go to Tunisia.

your not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed are you? African countries in particular have heavy government subsidization of employment and social services and even everyday goods like food and fuel, which is the case in most developing countries, and the absolute worst thing these governments can do in these kinds of crises is cut funding to the upset poor, whether we are talking about Tunisia, South Africa, or recently in Iran and Bolivia..

The western capitalist model is bogus anyways, its just that the only primary recipients of the welfare state benefits of tax breaks, cash infusions, and subsidies in the western world are big businesses, not the everyday poor whose backs the system is built upon, and whose exploitation of fuels homeostasis and the status quo.

By Jeffrey Fleishman and Amro Hassan, Los Angeles Times January 16, 2011

Reporting from Cairo —

Hours after riots forced Tunisian President Zine el Abidine ben Ali to flee his country, hundreds of Egyptians poured into the streets of Cairo with a warning to their own authoritarian president, Hosni Mubarak.
"Ben Ali, tell Mubarak a plane is waiting for him too!" they chanted late Friday night. "We are next. Listen to the Tunisians; it's your turn, Egyptians!"
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The slogans were a burst of envy and elation in a country where people have protested for years but have never ignited a mass movement to threaten Mubarak's nearly 30-year-old police state. Dissidents were finally daring to contemplate the possibility that public anger really could explode and bring dramatic change.
But the euphoria was mixed with sobering concern that the popular revolt in Tunisia, which, for the first time in modern Arab history, toppled a dictator, cannot be easily replicated. Across the region, bickering opposition parties and religious differences between Islamists and moderates have fueled mistrust and allowed repressive governments to splinter dissent.
"I believe we can do here what happened in Tunisia," said Ahmed Maher, leader of the April 6 youth movement in Egypt. "But activists need to gather large numbers of people without any interference from opposition politicians with their own agendas."
Camaraderie among protesters has swept cyberspace, creating lively tableaux of opinions and strategies on Internet social networks. It's almost as if for a fleeting moment, Egyptians, Jordanians, Moroccans and others have vicariously become Tunisian. Facebook users changed their profile pictures to the Tunisian flag and uploaded riot videos from the North African country.
In Jordan, thousands of demonstrators marched Friday in several cities against rising food prices and unemployment. As regional leaders fret over the events in Tunisia and recent protests in Algeria, Arab news reports said that King Abdullah II has set up a military and intelligence task force to contain any unrest.
The question is, can protests relying on street passion and Twitter bytes overthrow other regimes that for years have consolidated their power and, perhaps more cannily than Ben Ali, conjured at least the facade of democracy.
Despite widespread public disillusionment and the excitement over what has unfolded, the Arab world is not Eastern Europe of 1989, when protesters stormed boulevards and communist governments tumbled.
The region is consumed with Iraq, Islamic extremism, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the influence of Iran. These issues have tended to overshadow poverty and human rights abuses, making the chances smaller for the kind of grass-roots Velvet Revolution that overthrew the government in what was then Czechoslovakia.
Some have suggested, though, that images of the fleeing Tunisian president amid tear-gas-shrouded streets being broadcast nonstop on Al Jazeera could be the seeds of rebellion for a new era.
"Tunis today may well go down in history as the Arab equivalent of the Solidarity movement in the Gdansk shipyard in Poland in 1980 that sparked wider protests that a decade later ultimately led to the collapse of the Soviet Union and its empire," wrote Rami Khouri, director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut.
There was a magical quality to Tunisia's uprising, which transcended religious and political divides and united a population — young and old, educated and not — resentful of years of unemployment, hopelessness and oppression. A similar sense of wonder filled the Middle East during months of violent street protests in 2009 against the reelection of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
But singular, galvanizing events in those countries provided the spirit of revolt that has been absent in Egypt and other nations. In Tunisia, street rallies broke out in December after Mohammad Bouazizi, a distraught university graduate, set himself on fire after police closed his fruit stand. In Iran, a video of the death of Neda Agha-Soltan, who was shot near clashes between government militias and demonstrators in Tehran, energized demonstrators there.
Ben Ali's fate is evidence of the dangers that autocrats such as Mubarak face by clinging to hollow ideologies and losing touch with the aspirations of their citizens. It also points to the entrenched mechanisms of power in the region, and how aging leaders want to keep their offices in the family. Like Ben Ali, the presidents in Egypt, Libya and Yemen are grooming sons to inherit their posts.
The Tunisian regime's unraveling came during a visit to Qatar last week by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who criticized the region's "corrupt institutions" and stagnant political order. Many Arabs regard the United States with skepticism, but Clinton's pointed language suggested that Washington was intensifying pressure on Ben Ali, Mubarak and other allies over a lack of civil and economic freedoms.
"Tunisia and Egypt are very similar," said Ayman Nour, who was jailed after running against Mubarak in the 2005 presidential election. "We are talking about two police states ruled by tyrannical regimes that have presented themselves to their own people and to the West as the only possible choice for financial development, maintaining security and fighting terrorism.
"I don't think that we need nationwide protests to reach the same results as in Tunisia. We only need demonstrations to erupt in a few main cities like they did in the 1919 revolution against the British."
Such turmoil hasn't erupted because, in part, Egypt is more tolerant than Tunisia, allowing a robust independent news media and an air of democracy. The Egyptian government's most potent threat comes from millions of disgruntled workers, but they have not aligned with disparate opposition groups. Even Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Prize laureate and the former head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency, could not rally the country with a new protest movement.
"Tunisia was in a state of complete and full dictatorship, with no outlets for expression," wrote Abdel Rahman Mansour, a journalist and blogger. "This is not the case in Egypt, because Mubarak is smart and he can hold things in the middle."
Holding the middle in the Arab world is getting more difficult these days. Al Jazeera beams national transgressions into living rooms and cyberspace activists outflank police and intelligence networks. The young are restless, and many, like the fruit vendor who set himself on fire, are angry and bereft of hope.
Maher, the Egyptian protest leader, put it simply: "We need a starting point that will trigger people's anger."

January 15, 2011 | 9:04 am

 

In an unprecedented development in Jordan, protests similar to those that have rocked Tunisia and Algeria in recent weeks erupted in the Arab kingdom Friday.
Thousands of people took to the streets of the capital, Amman, and several other cities to protest rising food prices and unemployment, media reports say.
Aside from complaints, they also pointed rare and stinging criticism toward the Jordanian government, headed by Prime Minister Samir Rifai.

"Down with Rifai's government," protestors chanted as they marched through Amman's city center, according to Agence France-Presse. "Unify yourselves because the government wants to eat your flesh. Raise fuel prices to fill their pockets with millions."
Similar protest marches were held in the cities of Maan, Karak, Slat and Irbid, where demonstrators shouted that Jordan was "too big" for Rifai, the report added. All in all, around 8,000 people turned out for the marches -- despite previous measures by the Jordanian government to create more jobs and control rising commodity prices.

 

According to a report by Egypt's state-run Al Ahram news agency, tanks surrounded the Arab kingdom's major cities and checkpoints and barriers had been set up.
The report, headlined "Jordan fears another Tunisia", claimed that Jordan's King Abdullah II had set up a special task force in his palace that included military and intelligence officials to try to prevent the unrest from escalating further.
It said the country's main opposition group -- the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood -- had not participated in Friday's demonstrations, but the group will reportedly join a sit-in outside parliament Sunday, along with the the country's 14 trade unions, a move that would probably increase the pressure on the Jordanian authorities.
-- Alexandra Sandels in Beirut

As The Joker says in The Dark Knight: "Why so serious?"

"Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moon light?"

You are retarded.

as the joker also says, 'your a cunt'.

Uhmm... are you serious?

I'm sure The Joker would also say: How dumb is Jon boy? Crazy bitch can't even spell "you're".

yr wrong. yawn.

Why so stupid?

I just finished a book like 2 days before this happened about what the first US "covert operation" when we invaded the Tunisian city of Derne in 1804. Amazingly it sounds like Iraq and the Kurds, we used the opposition when it was useful and then abandoned them. (Richard Zacks. The Pirate Coast: Thomas Jefferson, the First Marines, and the Secret Mission of 1805).

Had a feeling the Yanks interfered in Tunisian politics in the past. No wonder they're still rioting.

sieg heil! You and i will succeed, if we have the PURE STRENGTH OF WILL!

fuck mafucka

"..fuck it I'll go up against a tank with a shank for what I believe in.."

by the way, for the haterz to take note, this has had an immeasurable ripple effect across the Arab and Muslim world, there are revolutions brewing in Jordan, Egypt, Algeria, Syria, Lebanon, and even Albania, all directly influenced by the recent developments in Tunisia. Get up Stand up, stand up for your rights, do ya hear?

so.... the people in Eygpt have taken to the steets. the governments tried to cut them off from internet, but to no avail. the last things that i heard were thatmubarak has declared a curfew in cairo, that the people have taken of some square, and that some of the police people dont want to fight the people but would rather like to join them.
yesterday the people of yemen also started to riot.

I don't think its going to turn out well for the Egyptian people. Their miliatary and security services were trained by actual Nazi's after WW2 with of course US backup. The Tunisian revolts were backed by western powers, and that is not going to happen in Egypt. Jordan will just give some tokens to their citizens that the US will probably fund. As bad as these governments are, I don't see the inevitable muslim brotherhood successors to be any improvement. But from what I hear, we in the west can't even fathom the poverty in Cairo. But its great to hear how the govt cut off the internet once things got crazy, you know they'll do the same here in the US if any similar situation arose.

with what happened in Jordan and Egypt I hope (bet) KeepingItSimple is feeling a bit naive or even stupid ;)

I heard the C.I.A are behind the unrest in Tunisia and Egypt. No doubt to replace whoever has been forced out with a puppet of theirs. Which country is next, I wonder? Libya? Morocco?

"Skorzeny had also been spending time in Egypt. In 1952 the country had been taken over by the CIA-backed General Mohammed Naguib, who was effectively a puppet of Egyptian Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser. Skorzeny was sent to Egypt the following year by former Nazi General Reinhard Gehlen, who was now working for the CIA, to act as Naguib's military advisor. Skorzeny recruited a staff made up of former SS officers to train the Egyptian army. Among these die-hard Nazis were General Oskar Dirlewanger, the "Butcher of Warsaw," and Adolf Eichmann, the man who engineered the Final Solution.
Many other Nazis joined Skorzeny in Egypt, attracted to the Naguib/Nasser government's tolerance for fascism and their shared hatred for the newly created state of Israel. The Nazis further fueled Arab antisemitism with translated copies of Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
In addition to training the army, Skorzeny also trained Arab volunteers in commando tactics for possible use against British troops stationed in the Suez Canal zone. Several Palestinian refugees also received commando training, and Skorzeny planned their initial strikes into Israel via the Gaza Strip in 1953-1954. One of these Palestinians was a young Yasser Arafat, who formed a long-lasting friendship with the Nazi commando."

there were demonstrations in syria against assad and today king abdullah of jordan fired his government in an attempt to initiate some reforms.
quite the exciting times

this is a new revolution, I never expected it, but its like 1960 in Africa all over again, lets just hope we get better results this time around.

sadly I have to expect these will be reactionary religious "revolutions" - the Muslim Brotherhood is not a group you want to see taking power. Such mass movements are exciting though! I'm sure the secret police in the US use the same tactic below in bold.

"Afterwards, security forces evacuated from all the cities. Chaos and confusion ensued. ... The secret police opened all police stations and prisons releasing all criminals in a scorched-earth attempt to spread fear and chaos. The regime hoped to regain the upper hand by proving its worth to the people as their source of security."
http://www.counterpunch.org/

All of this is political theater, be it here in the US or there. In watching the movie, we are not the writers, so we can only hope for the best, and roll with the punches. In regards the the religious extremists, they will never succeed in taking over anything, that kind of mentality is for dinosaurs, and dinosaurs are either extinct or at the least evolved into chickens, which common people alike eat for dinner.

All of this is political theater, be it here in the US or there. In watching the movie, we are not the writers, so we can only hope for the best, and roll with the punches. In regards the the religious extremists, they will never succeed in taking over anything, that kind of mentality is for dinosaurs, and dinosaurs are either extinct or at the least evolved into chickens, which common people alike eat for dinner.

I dunno man, they're doing a pretty good job here in the States of making their agenda happen.

I'm watching the Al Jazeera feed of Cairo, its incredible to see this live. The eye of God available to all of us. The counter revolution is now in effect.

EDIT: powerful photos, I'm not seeing in us media
http://totallycoolpix.com/2011/01/the-egypt-protests/

Religion by its very definitions is contrary to politics, when pseudo-religious movements become political parties or worse yet acting governments, they tend to abandon their religious sincerity for a raw power trip. Religion is a spiritual movement which causes people to look internally where as politics by definition make you look outward so fundamentalist/militant religious groups are only using religion as a pretext, a subterfuge even, but the reality is it is a grab for power having little to do with religion. The truly religious leaders tend to resign in the long run, and those who grip power tend not to be very sincerely religious. That being said, I highly doubt sharia will be coming to Egypt, but the Brotherhood just may rekindle their beef with Israel, after all, the Israelis have been punking Mubarek for decades now, most Egyptians feel utterly humiliated by the circumstances..

again, I wonder how stupid KeepingItSimple is feeling..

"Al Jazeera's Cairo bureau chief Ayman Mohyeldin said Monday that he was blindfolded, handcuffed and taken in to custody by Egyptian military police the previous day.
He was released after nine hours in detention.
Mohyeldin told the network Monday that he and other detainees were treated like "prisoners of war.""

Well what do they expect, it is a war, primarily being fought in the international media. It is Information War. The corruptocrats will never give up power, IT MUST BE TAKEN BY FORCE.

And a good point is that the US elite doesn't treat its dissidents any better. I personally have walked the pig gaunlet for no reason other than intimidation.

hadn't heard this story from today's counterpunch.org...this goes on the US too

On June 6, 2010, soft-spoken businessman Khaled Said, 28, had his dinner before retreating to his room and embarking on his daily routine of surfing the Internet, blogging, and chatting with his friends on different social websites. Several days earlier, he had posted a seven-minute online video of Alexandria police officers dividing up confiscated drugs among themselves.
When his Internet service suddenly was disrupted that evening, he left his middle class apartment in the coastal city of Alexandria and headed to his neighborhood Internet café. As he resumed blogging, two plain-clothes secret police officers demanded that he be searched. When he inquired as to why or on whose authority, they scoffed at him while blurting out: emergency law. He refused to be touched and demanded to see a uniformed officer or be taken to a police station.
According to eyewitnesses, within minutes they dragged him to a nearby vacant building and began to severely beat up his tiny body, eventually smashing his head on a marble tabletop. His body was subsequently dumped in the street to be retrieved later by an ambulance that declared him dead. According to his mother, Leila Marzouq, his body was totally bruised, teeth broken, and skull fractured.
Immediately, the Interior Ministry started the cover-up campaign. The official report claimed that Said was a drug dealer who tried to escape arrest. They claimed that when he was busted he died by asphyxia as he tried to swallow the narcotics. The authorities backed up this incredible account with two medical reports from the state’s medical examiner. The government print and TV media recycled the official version by painting the reclusive and shy blogger as a reckless drug addict and dealer.
However, when graphic images of Said’s body began to circulate online, other political bloggers and human rights activists were enraged and the nascent youth movement to rescind the 29-year old emergency law started to transform itself from online group discussions to popular protests in the streets of Alexandria, which were predictably met with more police repression and brutality.

e.g.,
Days before Mayor Nutter's ethics reform announcement, the City of Philadelphia also settled a wrongful police shooting lawsuit for $500,000. A policeman had fatally shot the female victim twice in the back and in three other places, claiming he feared the woman was going to stab him.
An attorney for the victim's family, called that shooting "an assassination." The Philadelphia DA's Office and Police Internal Affairs, however, had called the murderous action "justified," and took neither criminal nor disciplinary actions against the officer involved.
http://www.counterpunch.org/washington02082011.html

and yet I can't help wondering what would be the US government reaction if we Americans took the streets of the Capitol and besieged it for three weeks, burning down several government buildings in the process? Shit we couldn't even pull of the UK student fees protests ;)

Thanks a lot for the link, powerful indeed!

Roll on Tehran