So is it late enough to declare the results of the "Arab spring"

Cause to me it mostly looks like most places are saying meet the new boss.

Like all revolutions.

C'mon, its not that bad- *link click* oh.

By and large the Arab Spring has been an abysmal failure. Tunisia is unstable, Libya remains in low-level civil war and a massive identity crisis, Egypt went from Mubarak military dictatorship to Islamic Brotherhood theocratic dictatorship, Syria is in a stalemate civil war, Yemen is once again lawless, and things are not looking good on the whole.

Incorrigible optimist coming through:

One positive aspect about the Arab spring is that it showed the population that they can topple a tyrannical government if they are unhappy about it. Yes, Morsi is worse than Mubarak; but still, in the long view perhaps things might improve. After all, the immediate aftereffects of the French Revolution were not terribly good either.

However, I'll grant that this long view is not much consolation to the people who are getting tortured right now...

Oh look, turns out someone predicted this...I knew I should have gone into journalism...

The page image for that page marks the first instance of Jack Chick being absolutely right about something. Woah.

Random thought: Also, never trust anyone hoisting an AK into the air. We as a species should've learned that by now.

edited 30th Mar '13 10:03:22 PM by Wheezy

Not taking part in this, even though the topic interests me. I like being on the site, and what I have to say on the matter would (probably) stop that in a big big hurry.

Ditto. Although this does remind me of being in my local theater's production of Animal Farm, when our director kept trying to tell us what a great thing all this was.

edited 30th Mar '13 10:59:38 PM by Mort08

Oh, how bad could it be? No worse than anything actually happening in West Asia or North Africa (or East Asia or Middle Africa or Eastern Europe) I am sure. I suppose you could send someone some personal messages or find a website dedicated to the topic if you must get something off your chest?

I'm not sure if I trust Fox News.

You are from USA I bet. Okay, how about

Assyrian news from people in West Asia then. How about Egypt's own government officials?

Maybe we are beating up on poor "Kemet" a little too much though. Any request from news from any other "spring nation"? Anyone?

Edit: Okay one more just because I am finding this stuff without even looking for it.]] I might have found it funny if this was a work of fiction and not the actual crushing of hope I had for the region.

edited 31st Mar '13 6:58:39 PM by Cider

That's better.

And no, I'm not from US. I just know how bad Fox News can get at times. Hence I don't trust anything it says until confirmed by another source (which I do for all news outlets anyway, but especially Fox).

edited 31st Mar '13 6:45:04 PM by IraTheSquire

You'll be waiting for a while on some US stories. The other networks actively ignore most things that make the liberal/leftist side of US politics look bad, especially if said things that make them look bad are true.

Like the Acorn controversy over voter fraud in 2009. It took 2 months and an increasing number of concerned Congressmen before any of the other networks reported on it.

International news is practically verbatim on Fox like all the others. Droll, drivel and boring quite often.

Hum. I didn't quite know that. Have to bear that in mind.

I suppose Fox only reported it because it thinks Barak Obama is a Muslim. (For the record he was in the sense the faith is considered to pass from father to son. In Sharia countries they hate Barak Obama more than they hated George Bush because he is a traitorous "apostate") and are trying to show all the warts of Muslim brotherhood rule as reason to repeal the president or something.

But yes, American news is painfully Eurocentric when it comes to "international" topics unless it has ulterior motives. That I will admit. But then whose news is not horribly flawed? Is it worth it for Fox to slander one man who will be gone in four years if it risks upsetting their traditional "ally" in the region? I would say no unless they were interested informing us to a truth.

No one news outlet is not flawed, thus I need more sources, especially something from outside US.

Just that Fox News to me stands out in that regard (same goes for CNN after the shenanigans it pulled when reporting the Stubenville rape trials).

edited 31st Mar '13 7:53:44 PM by IraTheSquire

Nope. They reported on it because they got a tip about the stings made by the guy exposing the voter registration fraud at Acorn and the videos he posted.

No birther, truther or any other "er" type movement reason behind it. They try to investigate all news, whether or not they present it fairly is a case of Your Mileage May Vary. A lot of the time they come off as far more fair than the other networks. Some of the time they do oversensationalize to the point of the story not being able to be taken seriously.

edited 31st Mar '13 8:06:34 PM by MajorTom

I still remember they put "Obama? Osama? CO-INCIDENCE???" in big letters during the last last election.

Haven't had quite such a laugh from the news since then.

Acorn has what to do with Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood Theocracy and the "back to business as usual" results of the so called Arab spring? Maybe my reasoning is flawed but yours is on a different topic entirely.

This is Yack Fest. Going off-topic is the norm.

For serious discussion, put this to OTC.

And that's part of that oversensationalizing. I couldn't take that story seriously either.

And I voted against Obama in the election.

I would not have voted for either of them. I have yet to see a US politician convince me he knows how to handle being commander of the largest on Earth military.

At least the cold war had a clear target that could potentially be defeated through warfare (that is a group of communist countries). I could spread terror by going to a Buddhist temple, beating up some monks and threatening to do it again. Terrorists run wild in Illinois as the Latin Kings, in California as the Bloods in the whole country as Banditos, Angels, insert gang/just a club here ___. CAIR sponsors terrorists USA claims to be against inside the country's borders.

I would be for another Cold War, against Sharia instead of communists. It is a problematic form of government that turned the Ottoman empire into the "sick man of Europe" one hundred years ago. A form of government whose practitioners have been trying to take over the world long before Lenin and the Bolsheviks. A form of government local rebellion, no matter how widespread, has proven mostly ineffective against and a form of government that just does not work on an economically. India's economy is broken beyond belief and the four richest Indians are still worth more than the entire GPD of Pakistan on its boarder. The recent spring has not changed that. No, it seems to have just increased hostility of Pakis toward the Indians they should be emulating.

I think India would have been better off doing what USA did to the confederates. But hey, it is not too late, Kashmir can still be stopped lest we see another so called "Arab spring"(Hindi spring?).

...Please, don't use the term Paki in a serious sense. It's kind of derogatory?

Is it? I know at least one term for Pakistan that seems worse, Paki is the same contraction as Afghan but fine. India would have been better off dealing with the secession the way USA did. To invade perhaps the only theocracy of love and acceptance ever, make its followers third class citizens in your borders less they convert to a religion that would never have allowed them to build the architecture you kidnapped them to build in your capitol in the first place and then annex their holy land after they shower you with good will and offers of equal status in their society, up to and including making your profit an avatar, simply because they had the audacity to get tired of paying your humility tax and being your colonial cash cow? Now that empire is dead, never to return again, Arabs out, Turks gone, exactly what keeps the Pakistanis from living in harmony with the Indians they have little ethnic distinction from?

Sharia does! The caliphate was a failed form of government and its little brother continues to be yet people continue to have a startling loyalty to these rotten systems. Acts justified by them are ugly enough rule of fascists like Saddam seem almost indistinguishable at a casual glance. The Pakistanis can stay seceded if they must but it is time to leave the Ottoman theocracy behind and the seventh century barbarism with it.

This spring was destined to be a humanitarian failure so long as the best alternative to Assad/Gaddafi/Mubarak was violent Islamic favoritism given government power. Imagine if Europe was still taking action based on the whims of a Pope and the pope said it was perfectly fine to slaughter people as long as they are not Christian. Imagine if the Catholic Church was still being used as a form of Roman imperialism one thousand years after the fall of Rome! Now just change derivative from Christ(anointed)->Christian(anointedans?) to Aslam(submit)->Islam(submission).

I had hope for this "spring" and I was a fool. India should act the USA way when Kashmir inevitably follows Pakistan's example. Ethiopia too, and Nigeria and Bangladesh, these revolutions I will vilify to hell at any hint they may end up like this, long term reform at least looks possible in South Sudan.