The Arab Spring

Nitpick, but it's a pet issue for me : World country/government/state you mean, right? Nation is a different thing...

Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken. Unrelated ME1 Fanfic

Back on topic, people.

Any news from Syria, Libya, Egypt, or other current Mideast hotspots?

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Or Tunisia? I'd like to hear some good news, for once.

Proud member of the IAA What's the point of being grown up if you can't act childish?

Good news isn't news enough for this thread.

It seems that Saleh's attempts to subvert the new president are starting to once again destabilize the central government. Saleh's loyalists and the Hashid tribal militia are arming up and recruiting for an eventual civil war. Al Qaeda just did another raid, this time in the Hadhramaut, and the people are back in the streets calling for military reform. Air strikes continue as usual from the US.

Final Fantasy, Foreign Policy, and Bollywood. Helluva combo, that...

Here you go: Relations between Tunisia and the US are normalizing.

Also, Tunisian youth continue to protect their right to free expression. Take it as a sign of an increasingly healthy democracy.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

Right. Of all the successful Arab Spring revolutions, Tunisia is making out the best. Egypt is in for elections, at least; Libya is trying to pull together the tribes, and Yemen and Syria are both hellholes.

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

Syria has not yet been successful. :P

Hence "hellhole". To be honest, Assad has a good chance of riding out this wave; there's another chance that Syria is going to slip into a sectarian civil war, a la Yugoslavia or Lebanon. Yemen's already there.

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

There was an article on BBC today that I only saw the title of. I can't find it right now, but it was some Syrian defector from pretty deep in the government saying Assad "can't survive" the crisis.

So I found it . Seems I didn't remember it right: it was Assad's exiled (not defected) uncle (not government official) that said that the regime (not Assad) can't survive.

I fail.

Oh, yeah, the link. Here you go...

edited 3rd Apr '12 2:52:08 PM by BestOf

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

I like to think that the rebellion in Syria has been going on for so long and has been burning so hot that, indeed, Assad cannot ride it out. Too many people have risen up against him and they cannot back down without losing everything to the regime and its death squads.

Unlike, say, how Russia dealt with Chechnya, Assad doesn't have an overwhelming force that can sweep in and crush all resistance, or else he would already have done so. The opposition are becoming more of a solid presence in the area and internationally. Unless Assad carried out a crushing attack and inflicted naked genocide (again he doesn't seem to have enough manpower to merely pacify the rebellion) he'll just keep fighting until the war destroys Syria's economy.

More news from the BBC on Rifaat al-Assad here - lol! Essentially he seems to say, "People really trust the Assad family far more than the meaningless figures of the Syrian National Council. You know, they trust people like me. They'd still like someone in the Assad family to be president. For example: me. You know what has a nice trustworthy ring to it? President Rifaat. That sounds good, don't you think? President Rifaat. Mmmmm... rolls right off the tongue. President. Rifaaaaaaat".

If the regime won't survive, then obviously Assad won't either, so you weren't actually wrong in the first place.

He's got a point. The Arabic word for "President" is al-Ra'iis, which shares its first letter (ignoring the definitive article al-) with Rifaat's name. al-Ra'iis Rifaat.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Assad cant lose, but he probably cant win either...

In happier news, in Egypt it appears to be the Muslim Brotherhood against the Military. The MB wants the Military to reveal their economic holdings. “The army must be made aware that there was a revolution, and that things have to and will change,” said Karim Radwan, a member of the FJP’s executive committee in Cairo. “The army must go back to its normal role as defender of the nation, and it should not have this kind of economic control. It should not be a state within a state.”

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

Assad himself probably can't survive, but it will likely remain under the control of his family. The longer this goes, the more its looking worse to change than it is for the status quo...

Final Fantasy, Foreign Policy, and Bollywood. Helluva combo, that...

http://www.magharebia.com/cocoon/awi/xhtml1/en_GB/features/awi/features/2012/04/03/feature-03 Don't know if it has been posted, but this is some good news.

Also known as Achillesforever6 of Lordkat.com fame

Aye. Though under normal Muslim interpretation of Sharia what they did actually makes sense. But yes, its a good signal that they're sending to convince the others of the same.

Final Fantasy, Foreign Policy, and Bollywood. Helluva combo, that...

I'd replace "normal" with "moderate" there, as the former is rather relative/subjective depending on the society. "Normal" in Saudi Arabia is considerably more fundamentalist than pretty much anywhere else in the Muslim world, for example.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

I think I'll still keep it as normal, since it is normal for most.

Final Fantasy, Foreign Policy, and Bollywood. Helluva combo, that...

The real question is whether or not Islam will be enshrined as the official state religion, or whether the statement they adopted: "Article 1 stipulates that Tunisia is a free, sovereign and independent republic, where Islam is the official faith and Arabic the official language." is just a generic statement with no force of law, like "In God We Trust" in the US.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

a bit off-topic

http://tinyurl.com/6swxcln

Nice Comic about history of Syria.

edited 4th Apr '12 9:55:51 PM by PhilippeO

Nice, thanks for that.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

The Salafist president candidate in Egypt has run into some trouble, since it appears now his mother has US-Egyptian dual citizenship, which would bar him from running according to the constitution. A really stupid law, I must say, but since it hits this islamist caricature of a human being my Schadenfreude dominates over my facepalming over the law...

Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken. Unrelated ME1 Fanfic

I want to thank you and all other German speakers for coming up with the word schadenfreude. It's a fantastic term, very useful.

What's the word on Jordan? The king there seems to have ridden this storm out without a lot of trouble.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

There's a similar law for U.S. Presidential candidacy, though. It makes sense, since you would want to ensure that your leader isn't liable to have conflict of national loyalties or some similar problem.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

It's an extension of the same principle, yes, but with the USA the requirement it's just "natural born". The Egyptian constitution says you must be natural born and your parents must be natural born, too. Or more general: Neither you nor your parents must ever have had any citizenship ever. Already in the USA the law is stupid, it's discriminating. It should be either you are a citizen, or you aren't. Ideally IMO would be making getting a citizenship very difficult (e.g., no Ius Soli), but once you have it there shouldn't be further restrictions.

But as I've said, OTOH it hits just the right person in this case, so, meh.

Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken. Unrelated ME1 Fanfic

Jordan appears to have ridden out the storm fairly well for a few reasons. It's ahead of most Middle East countries in human rights, with a Parliament that (I understand) actually has more than rubber-stamp authority. Also, the King is fairly popular, and the general standard of living is decent. 141 out of 197 in Press Freedom sounds bad, but it's ahead of a lot of Middle Eastern countries in that regard, and revolutions are all about expectations. In Jordan the general expectation seems to be "as long as we keep doing what we're doing, things will turn out okay", which is not conducive for a revolution.

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.