Kobojunkie:

But NO Egyptian needed to set his/herself ablaze for Egyptians to take to the streets. I am not certain why we now need to suggest that ONE PERSON needs to make some sacrifice for us to see something similar to what has happened and is happening in Egypt, happen in Nigeria.

Google Abdou Abdel-Moneim Jaafar

When people are pushed to the wall, u know there is going back ANYMORE.

What starting a revolution against the pdp that has held power for 12 years in Nigeria without any meaningful corresponding development and they want another 4 years - recycling same same same

enof!

dayokanu:

Google Abdou Abdel-Moneim Jaafar

This happened so many months ago. This revolt was not about him, if anything, there seems to be indications that a murder in Alexandria, and people seeing that Tunisians had taken back their land, spurred it all.

The man should have gone down with some Glory. I would have prefered they come take me out.

See now Switzerlnd has frozen his assests. This is why he didn't want to leave. All the sharks smell blood

AND THEY ARE COMING FOR HIM!

It's been long coming, Obama was right about history in the making in Egypt afterall.

By last night when the dude came on air after His first three sentences my Spirit sank because I knew He wasn't ready to leave the scene. When He started addressing the entire nation like a father to His kids I said, "that's it I'm done watching"

These sort of Pressure for a man 82 would have killed him if He hung on a few more days so I say, smart move from him  and may be a good negociation for soft exit/landing too

@kobo It appears it will b impossible 4 u 2 give ANYBODY his/her due. U mean D man who set himself ablaze has no credit?

Bouazizi's Final Message


Final Facebook Message
Original Facebook message written in Araby:
MSAFER YAMI MA IFID MLAM THAYE3 FI TRI9 MAHOU BIDIA SAME7NI KAN 3SIT KLAM LOUMI 3LA ZMEN MA TLOUMI 3LIA RAYE7 MIN 8IR RJOU3 YEZI MA BKIT W MA SALETECH MIN 3INI DMOU3 MA 3AD YFID MLAM 3LA ZMEN 8ADAR FI BLED ENES ENA 3YIT W MCHA MEN BELI KOL ELI RA7 MSAFER W NES2EL ZA3MA ESFAR BECH YNAS
Tunsi:
‎ مسافر يا أمي، سامحيني، ما يفيد ملام، ضايع في طريق ماهو بإيديا، سامحيني إن كان عصيت كلام لأمي، لومي على الزمان ما تلومي عليّ، رايح من غير رجوع, يزي ما بكيت و ما سالت من عيني دموع، ما عاد يفيد ملام على زمان غدّار في بلاد الناس، أنا عييت و مشى من بالي كل اللي راح، مسافر و نسأل زعمة السفر باش ينسّي ‎ محمد بو عزيزي
(English translation):I’m travelling, mother. Forgive me. Reproach and blame is not going to be helpful. I’m lost and it’s out of my hands. Forgive me if I didn’t do as you told me and disobeyed you. Blame our time. Don’t blame me. I am now going and I will not be coming back. Notice I haven’t cried and no tears have fallen from my eyes. There is no more room for reproach or blame in the age of treachery in the People’s land. I’m not feeling normal and not in my right state. I’m travelling and I ask who leads the travel to forget.
—Mohamed Bouazizi

ping pong:

@kobo It appears it will b impossible 4 u 2 give ANYBODY his/her due. U mean D man who set himself ablaze has no credit?

I suggest you focus on actually making points to BACK UP whatever stance you take rather than jumping to making baseless assumptions of my person.

The man @DayoKanu asked me to google set himself ablaze sometime last october. This protest started in January, if you have any information linking his setting himself ablaze to the recent protest, SHOW IT.

The other person was not an Egyptian but a Tunisian who set himself ablaze almost a month before the Egyptian protest started in Egypt, almost right after the Tunisian protests. If you have any information directly linking his sacrifice to the awakening of the Egyptian people, SHOW IT or let it lie.

I remembered 1993, IBB must go.

Mobinga:

Bouazizi's Final Message


Final Facebook Message
Original Facebook message written in Araby:
(English translation):I’m travelling, mother. Forgive me. Reproach and blame is not going to be helpful. I’m lost and it’s out of my hands. Forgive me if I didn’t do as you told me and disobeyed you. Blame our time. Don’t blame me. I am now going and I will not be coming back. Notice I haven’t cried and no tears have fallen from my eyes. There is no more room for reproach or blame in the age of treachery in the People’s land. I’m not feeling normal and not in my right state. I’m travelling and I ask who leads the travel to forget.
—Mohamed Bouazizi

^^^ That is very touching,
I'm still skeptical about this whole thing,  Sure they are free and have succeeded in their protest but is power in the hands of the military a good thing?

WackyJ1:

^^^ That is very touching,
I'm still skeptical about this whole thing, Sure they are free and have succeeded in their protest but is power in the hands of the military a good thing?

^^^ you mean after more than 50 years of power in the hands of the military?

Mobinga:

Why don't you burn yourself and "see" how you look?

very touching and generous request but i shall decline at this point in time.

I see that you expected the man to declare "I set myself ablaze and hope it will lead to freedom for mankind" abi?

buzugee:

very touching and generous request but i shall decline at this point in time.  

Kobojunkie:

I suggest you focus on actually making points to BACK UP whatever stance you take rather than jumping to making baseless assumptions of my person.

The man @DayoKanu asked me to google set himself ablaze sometime last october. This protest started in January, if you have any information linking his setting himself ablaze to the recent protest, SHOW IT.

The other person was not an Egyptian but a Tunisian who set himself ablaze almost a month before the Egyptian protest started in Egypt, almost right after the Tunisian protests. If you have any information directly linking his sacrifice to the awakening of the Egyptian people, SHOW IT or let it lie.

Christ!!?? Is this how dull you are? You are very very dull!! wtf?!! Its outrageous.

Do you really want to argue about that? or you just trying to be daft? huh?!
wow!!

what is next 4 egypt  

ping pong:

I see that you expected the man to declare "I set myself ablaze and hope it will lead to freedom for mankind" abi?

Did you think this one through before you posted it? Cause I cannot imagine how anyone would pretend the above even makes remote sense.  What in the world has the inner workings of your mind to do with what I asked you to focus on or impress us with instead?

I'm skeptical about this being the genesis of democracy in egypt. that's not to say it's not a breath of fresh air.
it smirks more like IBB stepping aside to me.

Carlosein:

I'm skeptical about this being the genesis of democracy in egypt. that's not to say it's not a breath of fresh air.
it smirks more like IBB stepping aside to me.

the difference is that the people of egypt are not like the people of nigeria,i rem going out during the june 12 riots and being around fadeyi on ikorodu road and how intense it was but it was violent and also,after a few days people gave up but the egyptians stuck to their guns,us after 3 killed we wll all run myself included and it is surprising that egypt has been under emergency rule for 30yrs? wow

This is not good at all for the Egyptian people. Why hand over to the military?
They have others that are next in line to Mubarak, why the military?

It's all fvck up now!

Kobojunkie:

^^^ you mean after more than 50 years of power in the hands of the military?

Anything can happen,

Well, i wouldn't be so quick to initiate an applause for the man who set himself ablaze hoping it will lead to some end result, . .whatever happened to staying alive and fighting for your beloved country?

Let's not be brash with our emotions here, suicide is never an answer, whatever the question!

WackyJ1:

Anything can happen,

True as it happened over the last 50 or more years. I think with the world now watching, Egyptians have a better chance of choosing for themselves a better future. Only, Now the real fight for democracy begins . . . who gets control. I am sure the world wants it all to turn out well for them but would still rather prefer the military continues to rule than have Egypt turn into some Taliban-like state.

Kobojunkie:

True as it happened over the last 50 or more years. I think with the world now watching, Egyptians have a better chance of choosing for themselves a better future. Only, Now the real fight for democracy begins . . . who gets control. I am sure the world wants it all to turn out well for them but would still rather prefer the military continues to rule than have Egypt turn into some Taliban-like state.

very noble sentiments but very far from the truth

Finally !! 30 Years is a long time these African leaders need help !! Why must they always wait for people to shed blood before they know their time is up?? Who is next?? Mr.Mugabe I think

Thoughts on this article

http://sultanknish..com/2011/02/what-if-problem-really-is-people.html
What if the Problem Really is the People?
A thousand talking heads and neo-conservative experts on the region assure us that a bright future stretches out before Egypt like a magic carpet. "Democracy," "Freedom", "Representative Government" are the buzzwords that trickle wetly out of their printers. All cynicism is disdained and skepticism swept into the dustbin. History is being made here. But the tricky thing about history is that it isn't a point on a map, but a continuous wave. Like the tide, history is made and remade over and over again, formed and repeated, washed and beached on the shores of time.


Mubarak is the problem, we are told. And he certainly is their problem. The pesky 82 year old air force officer standing in the way of their dreams of a new Egypt. If not for him, Egypt would be a liberal model for the region. Just like Gaza, Lebanon and Iraq. But is it the dictator or the people who are the problem? The protesters are unified by a desire to push out Mubarak. But what do they actually stand for, besides open elections.

59 percent of Egyptian Muslims want democracy and 95 percent want Islam to play a large part in politics. 84 percent believe apostates should face the death penalty. That is what Egyptian democracy will look like. A unanimous majority that wants an Islamic state and a bare majority that wants democracy. Which one do you think will win out? A democratic majority of the country supports murdering people in the name of Islam. Mubarak's government does not execute apostates or adulterers. But a democratic Egypt will. Why? Because it's the will of the people.

The cheerleaders shaking their pom poms for Egyptian democracy don't seem to grasp that the outcome could be anything other than positive. It's an article of faith for them that freedom leads to freedom. That open elections give rise to human rights. That the problem can only be the dictator, not the people. Never the people. That is their ideology and they will stick to it.

Ever since World War II, we have been working off the "Hitler Paradigm". The "Hitler Paradigm" says that there are no bad nations, only bad governments. The people themselves are perfectly fine, but occasionally a tiny minority of extremists seize power. This allows the liberally minded to reconcile the need for occasional wars with their faith in mankind. Instead of fighting wars against nations, they fight wars to liberate nations from their despotic regimes. And ever since we have been fighting these "Wars of Liberation."

We fought to free Korea and Vietnam from Communism, but we lacked one basic thing. Ground level support from the people we were fighting to protect. Today South Koreans like Kim Jong Il more than they like us. We fought to free the tyrants of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia from Saddam Hussein. As a reward, they financed the terrorists who have been killing us ever since. We fought to free Iraq from Saddam, and the entire country imploded into armed camps. Our "Victory in Iraq" came about because we cut a deal with the Baathists against the Shiites and Al Qaeda, essentially restoring a broken version of Saddam's old status quo. We fought to liberate Afghanistan, and now we find ourselves allied with some Muslim warlords who abuse women and rape little boys-- against the other Muslim warlords who abuse women and rape little boys.

Handing out democracy like candy does not fix existing cultural problems. It does not end bigotry, free women or stop murder in the name of Allah. Open elections are only as good as the people participating in them. And the 84 percent of Egyptians who want to murder apostates have issues that democracy will not solve. The problem with Egypt is not Mubarak-- but the Egyptians.

Let's take another example. In Jordan, the next target on the freedom tour, King Hussein passed a bill to criminalize the honor killings of women. And their democratically elected parliament voted 60 to 25 to strike the bill down. It took them only 3 minutes. That's what democracy would mean for the Jordanian girls murdered by their husbands, brothers and fathers. The right of the people and their duly elected representatives to legalize the murder of women.

The Hitler Paradigm says that all you have to do is take away the dictator and his staffers to usher in democracy, freedom and mutual amity. But what if the dictator is not the problem, but the symptom of a larger cultural problem?

Take the Cold War. We defeated Communism without a massive war. The Berlin Wall came down. Democracy came to Russia. Except here we are back to square one. The situation in the region has been reset back to before WW2, with a chaotic Eastern Europe and a predatory Russia. Economic liberalization and even the end of Communism did not change the underlying pattern. Despite a brief period of democracy, Russia reverted to a totalitarian regime with designs on the rest of the region. And that should have shocked no one, because it is exactly what happened after the fall of the Czars culminating in the Bolshevik takeover. All the reforms and liberalization did not give the average Russian what he wanted most-- stability, order and a strong nation.

Freedom is culturally determined. It is not the same thing as democracy. Nor is democracy as ubiquitous and universal as its advocates would like us to believe. Like all forms of power, it can only be exercised by those who are ready for it. Much of the world is not ready for it, no more than 12th century Europe was ready for the Constitution. Given the power to choose, they will choose tyranny. They will choose the known over the unknown, the stable over the unstable, and order over freedom.

A society with a social hierarchy embedded in its culture will preserve that hierarchy even with democratic elections  Such elections will not give women freedom or rights to religious minorities or freedom of expression to unpopular views. These are things which stem from legal guarantees such as the Constitution, they do not arise out of the natural course of open elections. And the pundits who are busy pretending that this is how it works in the columns of every major newspaper are playing the fool.

The United States has freedom due primarily to its culture. Those freedoms were an outgrowth of the rights of Englishmen and the Enlightenment. They cannot be exported to another country-- without also exporting the cultural assumptions that produced them.

Egypt's period of greatest liberalization was under British rule. Since then its cosmopolitan nightspots have been torched and it has drifted closer to Islamization. Even Egypt's current level of human rights under Mubarak is above that of most of its neighbors. And the reason for that is Mubarak's ties to America. The more democratic Egypt becomes, the more its civil rights will diminish. Its rulers will see social issues as an easy way to compromise with the Muslim Brotherhood. As Egypt's cultural ties to the West diminish, so will its freedoms.

The Islamists understand this far better than the neo-conservatives. That is why they campaign so ruthlessly against Western culture. They understand that it is cultural assumptions that dictate behavior, more than any law. While we try to export institutions to the Muslim world, they export Muslim culture to us. And they have had far more luck changing us, than we have had changing them. Institutions are shaped by culture, but cultures are not shaped by institutions. Export every aspect of American government to Egypt, and it will run along Egyptian lines, not American ones. And within a year, Egypt's government will run the same way it does today. Only the window dressing will be different.


Mubarak is one of the last of the Janissaries, the Western trained army officers who seized power across the Arab world in order to implement some twisted semblance of a modern system of government. When the army's grip on power fails, then Egypt will fall even further. The loss of power by the Turkish military meant a descent into Islamism and terrorism. It will mean the same thing in Egypt.

The "Hitler Paradigm" is the ideological blindspot of so many liberals and the liberally minded who insist that an entire nation cannot be bad, only a dictator, just as a religion cannot be bad, only a tiny minority of extremists. Their knee jerk response to every crisis is to insist that a change of government will change everything, that opening up the system will inherently and inevitably mean freedom. As is so often the case, a single bad idea can lead to tremendous folly.

A people who do not believe in the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness will not be free no matter how many times they go to the polls. You can place voting booths outside every home and run elections every week, and it will still do no good. Freedom may be the birthright of every man, woman and child on earth-- but it cannot be theirs until they claim it. As long as they believe in the right of the majority to oppress the minority, in the value of order over liberty, and the supremacy of the mosque over any and all civil and legal rights-- then they will never be free. Never. Their elections will either give rise to chaos or tyranny. That is how it is in the Middle East. That is how it will always be until they claim their birthright by closing the Koran and opening their minds.

It's quite unfortunate; however I think now is a good time for the Egyptian.

Freesia:

Finally !! 30 Years is a long time these African leaders need help !! Why must they always wait for people to shed blood before they know their time is up?? Who is next?? Mr.Mugabe I think

African presidents are ridden with greed, no way is he stepping aside.

and this,

http://sultanknish..com/2011/01/fall-of-strongmen.html



The Fall of the Strongmen
The attempt to establish a post-colonial order of kings and strongmen to replace the British and French colonial rule over the Arab Muslim world was doomed from the start. Some of the kings were overthrown by native officers who had been trained by the British and the French to fight their wars. The officers who overthrew them became strongmen themselves.


The recently deposed Ben Ali was a Tunisian officer trained in French and American schools, who had helped push out the French and his predecessor. Egypt's Mubarak was an Air Force officer who replaced Sadat, who replaced Nasser-- all members of the Free Officers Movement which overthrew the Egyptian monarchy. Saddam Hussein took power in a coup against the coup led by army officers which had deposed the King of Iraq. Syria's Assad was an Air Force officer who took power after a long series of coups by army officers that it would take too long to list. If you're seeing a pattern here, congratulations and welcome to the Middle East.

The only Middle-Eastern Arab countries which held onto their monarchies, were either oil rich enough to spread the wealth to the important families and retain only a weak military to avoid the risk of being overthrown by their own army while relying on US protection (e.g. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE) or so small and deliberately apolitical to avoid attention (Jordan, Morocco). The rest ended up with military strongmen, some backed by the US, some backed by the Soviet Union. The Soviet backed strongmen usually unveiled some poorly thought out version of Arab Socialism. The US backed strongmen just stuck to taking a cut of everything and packing it away in foreign banks.

But there was a ticking time bomb underneath these pyramids of wealth and misery. Islam. The kings had been nothing more than British puppets. The strongmen that replaced them were the apex of a new praetorian guard. Despite whatever philosophies they brought to the table, sooner or later they tried to become kings as well. Syria's Assad passed power on to his son. Saddam was preparing his sons to oversee his own dynasty. In Egypt, Mubarak is trying to do the same thing. But they have no tradition and no history on their side. Their rule is a farce in which they call themselves presidents and prime ministers, and go through the pretense of holding elections, but function like absolute monarchs. An unbalanced situation that eventually implodes.

The strongmen depend on army backing, but the armies of the Arab world are split drastically between an elite officer corps and the soldier who is treated like sheep dung. The officers and the secret police run the country, but when a mob gathers, it's up to the soldiers to hold them back. If the soldiers choose not to, then it's time for the strongman to get on a plane and escape the country. (This is essentially what also brought down the Soviet Union.) As an alternative, the strongman will leverage support from tribal structures, appointing loyalists to top positions in the bureaucracy and the military. (This is what kicked off the initial insurgency in Iraq.) But that too is a balance. Elevating one family, alienates another family. The tribal power structure has its own enemies built in. Those maneuvers for power can cause the incredible chaos so common after the fall of a strongman.

The Arab world may hold elections, but it is a long way from accepting notions such as equality, open access or guaranteed freedoms. Its rulers will occasionally sign on to UN covenants on women's rights or religious rights, without ever taking them seriously. The idea that one man is just as good as another, regardless of his family or religion, is a completely alien one to them. A woman being just as good as a man is not even a conversation starter. The Middle East still mostly consists of peasants from feudal backgrounds lorded over by a small elite. Bring democracy and human rights to the Middle East? You might as well walk into 12th century Europe with a copy of the Constitution and expect not to be beheaded.

So what happens when a strongman is overthrown? Either he will be replaced by one of the coup leaders who will become the new strongman. If not he will also be overthrown. Or he will be replaced by an oligarchy which will eventually come to be dominated by its strongest and most ruthless member who will become the new strongman. (That is how Iraq ended up ruled by the House of Saddam.) As you can see there really isn't an alternative here. It's the strongman or nothing.

But there is a seeming alternative. A different power structure than a corrupt dictator and his thugs. One  based not on power, greed and family-- but religion. Islam.

Most of the 'reformers' are usually fighting for either a takeover by the local socialist party or the local Islamist party. The general public will join in the stone throwing and the looting, without necessarily taking sides. Often the socialists and the Islamists will actually cooperate to bring down the dictator. Then one will take power and begin killing the other. Western media rarely bother to report this, either out of ignorance or due to propaganda. They treat most of the crowd scenes as popular uprisings, which they are but not in the sense that the people will get to decide one way or another. Only that they get a chance to take part in the brief spurt of violence before being ordered to go home.

The Islamists promise a system based on Allah's law. Rule by moral clerics instead of greedy officials. Traditional values, benefits for families and teddy bears not named Mohammed for everyone. It's a scam of course. The Islamist takeover means another strongman or oligarchy. Except instead of being named General Saddam Hussein, he'll be known as the Ayatollah Khomeini. The differences are minimal. The ruling families will still sock away money in foreign banks. Loyalists will still be appointed to top positions. The bureaucracy will go on abusing and blackmailing the public. The police will still be vicious thugs. And law will be promulgated by Imams or Muftis or Mullahs, but it will still be the law that those at the top want.

Despite all that, or maybe because of it, the Islamists are still inevitable. Islam manufactures a group identity that may be paper thin, but it still more solid than recently manufactured national identities for regional Arabs who are expected to see themselves as Egyptians, Syrians, Jordanians or Iraqis. Islam bridges tribal identities better than strongmen do. Its rulers will ultimately still reward their own families and favor their own tribes, but the process will take place under the guise of Islam.

When Mohammed invented Islam, he took existing beliefs and laced them up into a grand tribal identity. Islam is the meta-tribe, less a religion than a makeshift political system based on tribal alliances with the convenient sanction of a deity. Islam expands by creating a two-tier system that puts non-Muslims on the bottom, and encourages Muslims to wage constant war against them. None of this makes for a stable system, but it does make for a very volatile and expansionistic one. Arabs who will not die for Saddam or Ben Ali or Mubarak, will die for Islam.


The Islamists may not take over in Tunisia this time, but they will take over sooner or later. There and all across the Muslim world. (If it happened in militantly secularist Turkey with its army, then it really can happen anywhere.) Dictators will come and go, and eventually the local Islamists with funding from Saudi Arabia or Iran will put together a proper show and take over. And eventually the people will get tired and try to throw them out, as is happening in Iran. It's the natural political cycle of a region with no true national identities, no real principles of government, no law and no commitment to anyone outside the family.

We could slow down or even avert the process, by pushing Westernization and cutting the legs off Saudi Arabia and Iran. But we aren't about to do it. We could at least stop sending them money by the barrel, but we aren't about to do that either. And that's the real problem, not Ben Ali or Mubarak. Calling for the regimes to respect democracy and human rights just undermines whoever is in power. It does not lead to them being replaced by anything better. To do that, the entire culture would have to change. And that isn't happening.

The strongmen will fall. And the media will act like it's Romania in 1989, rather than just part of the cycle of coups in a system that cannot have anything better than tyrants of one sort or another. Eventually Islamists will come to power and wage war against us. It's up to us whether they win or not.

Mugabe :: "Hosni Mubarak is a Womanliness"

Mobinga:

Mugabe :: "Hosni Mubarak is a Womanliness"

How?

Hosni mubarak has finally stepped down, Obama's statement is due in less than an hour time from now (3pm ET) live on cnn

This is surely a victory for the people, i hope this lasts anyway coz u can never trust african leaders.Power corrupts, did i hear a witness say absolute power corrupts absolutely