Egypt

[Flashermac]

So you've never heard of the Biafran War? I remember it going on. The Biafrans - an ancient kingdom - had enough of the rest and sought to resume their independence. The rest of Africa would not allow that to happen, since all sorts of groups in other countries would be wanting it too.

 

 

 

<< The causes of the Nigerian civil war were diverse. [color:red]More than fifty years earlier, Great Britain carved an area out of West Africa containing hundreds of different ethnic groups and unified it, calling it Nigeria.[/color] Although the area contained many different groups, the three predominant groups were the Igbo, which formed between 60-70% of the population in the southeast, the Hausa-Fulani, which formed about 65% of the peoples in the northern part of the territory; the Yoruba, which formed about 75% of the population in the southwestern part.[citation needed]

 

The semi-feudal and Islamic Hausa-Fulani in the North were traditionally ruled by an autocratic, conservative Islamic hierarchy consisting of Emirs who, in turn, owed their allegiance to a supreme Sultan. This Sultan was regarded as the source of all political power and religious authority.

 

The Yoruba political system in the southwest, like that of the Hausa-Fulani, also consisted of a series of monarchs being the Oba. The Yoruba monarchs, however, were less autocratic than those in the North, and the political and social system of the Yoruba accordingly allowed for greater upward mobility based on acquired rather than inherited wealth and title.

 

The Igbo in the southeast, in contrast to the two other groups, lived mostly in mostly autonomous, democratically-organized communities although there were monarchs in many of these ancient cities such as the Kingdom of Nri, which in its zenith controlled most of Igbo land, including influence on the Anioma people, Arochukwu which controlled slavery in Igbo land and Onitsha. Unlike the other two regions, decisions among the Igbo were made by a general assembly in which men could participate.

 

The differing political systems among these three peoples reflected and produced divergent customs and values. The Hausa-Fulani commoners, having contact with the political system only through their village head who was designated by the Emir or one of his subordinates, did not view political leaders as amenable to influence. Political decisions were to be submitted to. [color:red]As in every highly authoritarian religious and political system leadership positions were taken by persons willing to be subservient and loyal to superiors. A chief function of this political system was to maintain Islamic and conservative values, which caused many Hausa-Fulani to view economic and social innovation as subversive or sacrilegious.[/color]

 

In contrast to the Hausa-Fulani, the Igbo often participated directly in the decisions which affected their lives. They had a lively awareness of the political system and regarded it as an instrument for achieving their own personal goals. Status was acquired through the ability to arbitrate disputes that might arise in the village, and through acquiring rather than inheriting wealth. With their emphasis upon social achievement and political participation, the Igbo adapted to and challenged colonial rule in innovative ways. >>

 

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigerian_Civil_War

[Steve]

Nigeria could be a melting pot. Based on a 2009 World Religious survey (Mapping out the Global Muslim Population) 50.4% of Nigeria's population were Muslims,[95] 48.2% were Christian (15% Protestant, 13.7% Catholic, and 19.6% other Christian), and followers of other religions were 1.4%.[96]

 

The core north is largely Muslim, there are large numbers of both Muslims and Christians in the Middle Belt, including the Federal Capital Territory.

 

In the southwest, Christians and Muslims reside unequally, southern regions are predominantly Christian with widespread traditional beliefs, in the east, Catholics, Anglicans, and Methodists are the majority with few traditional beliefs, while the Niger Delta region is mainly Christian.

 

Personally, I think this so called Jasmine revolution will dissipate within a few months, but don't take my word on it

Nigeria is a complete mess. For a nation so rich in oil and most don't realize they are an OPEC country, they are a mess...sadly like a lot of African nations.

It wouldn't surprise me to see an all out civil war at some point. If Nigeria catch the attention of islamic countries and they incite them and then there is the payoff...all that oil to the winner. Its religious but its also tribal, like most of Africa. You have the Ibo, Yoruba and other tribes. The religious factions are as much tribal as they are religious.

Africa like parts of the middle east (Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, etc.) is about tribes and clans.

[Steve]

Also to show you how hypocritical some of these Islamic fundamentalists are, they go on and on about how the west treats them. Yet, nary a word about the ongong, underground (and sometmes not so underground) slave trade going on in northern Africa.

My belief is that the middle east will only stabalze and modernize when the west leaves it poltically and economically and they get the theocracy they want and see how things only change for the worse. They (usually the young folks) will rebel want a more secular culture.

Iran was the blueprint. They had their theocracy and saw how free others were and they weren't and were moving in that direction until we gave them the hardliners the boogeyman they needed to stay in power.

[unit731]

ETHANOL

 

All can be directly related back to US farm policy of creating ethanol based fuels. Wheat, sobybean, etc. crops being changed to corn. As a result - all food prices rise as less wheat, soybean, etc. on global markets and prices rise for such. Causing global instability.

 

 

"Rising oil prices have prompted an increased demand for food-based fuels. Many say these have the potential to wean developed nations off of their oil addictions. However, as Lester Brown writes, the increasing production of food-based fuels could cause more people to suffer from hunger and add to global political instability."

 

LINK

 

When people are hungry - they riot.

[Flashermac]

Revolution is in the air but US sticks to same old script

 

 

Events in the Middle East are moving too fast for the Obama administration to think it can get away with Plan A and Plan B reaction strategies according to the regimes or leaders it wants to keep in and out of power.

 

Consider the response of the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, to Hezbollah tightening its grip on power in Lebanon this week - Washington might have to pull its funding worth hundreds of millions for Lebanon, her office warned.

 

But as democracy demonstrators were confronted by thousands of baton-wielding policemen in the streets in Cairo, there was no mention of pulling the $US2 billion-plus cheque that Washington writes for the octogenarian President, Hosni Mubarak, each year.

 

Instead, a rhetorical nugget that Mubarak's mouthpieces would use in their defence - ''our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable'' and then some namby-pamby words about how Mubarak was ''looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people''.

 

That response came on Wednesday - more thugs in and out of uniform in the streets, more tear-gas and 860 more young Egyptians banged up in prison because, Oliver-like, they had the audacity to stand in the streets and to ask for more. Such is stability.

 

Undaunted, Clinton tried again on Wednesday, when she called on the Egyptian authorities to cease blocking the communications on which the demonstrators relied. But on Thursday the Twitter and Facebook websites were inaccessible and mobile-phone users in Cairo said that it was difficult or impossible to sent text messages.

 

Clinton uttered the ''stability'' line early in the week - before the seriousness of what is unfolding in the streets of Cairo and Alexandria came in to focus. Consider how it might be interpreted by ordinary Egyptians - the human rights of 80 million people have been trampled for 30 years but what the US Secretary of State is most concerned about is the stability of the state.

 

And, even as the focus sharpened, the administration refused to tell the truth about the despot upon whom Washington relies - ''Egypt is a strong ally,'' the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, replied when asked if the administration still supported Mubarak.

 

And, in a week in which the Middle East's historic self-started wave of democracy protests came to a head, Barack Obama might have used his State of the Union address to cheer along all the protesters; and perhaps to warn all the leaders, country by country, of the fate that awaits them.

 

Instead he confined his specific remarks to Tunisia, saying: ''The United States of America stands with the people of Tunisia and supports the democratic aspirations of all people.'' So, in a region of 333 million people, where to varying degrees a good 325 million are under the heel of unelected leaders, the US President addressed only little Tunisia.

 

The lame excuse offered to reporters was that Cairo erupted late in the drafting process of the speech but that last ''aspirations of all people'' phrase was a recognition that ''what happens in Tunisia resonates around the world''.

 

By current American thinking it would never do to have Islamists in power in the Palestinian Occupied Territories or in Lebanon and therefore they heed every despot's warning that the Islamists are waiting in the wings across North Africa and the Middle East.

 

But lost in the lunge to protect US strategic and commercial interests by propping up the region's dictator class is any realisation that that support is what leaves the youth of the region under-educated and under-employed and, thereby, ripe for the picking by Islamist and other underground movements.

 

In Tunisia the revolutionaries are still searching for a leader who can articulate their demands. And this week a leader flew in to Cairo - searching for a revolution. That was the former International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, whose return to Egypt underscores a challenge brought on across the region as much by the local community as the international community - the grooming of those who might form a half-decent opposition.

 

[color:red]Tracing an arc through Obama's approach to the Middle East, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies professor Fouad Ajami described the President's foreign policy pragmatism as ''a break of faith with democracy''.[/color]

 

Alluding to the suppression of demonstrations in Tehran after the contested 2009 presidential election, he wrote in Lebanon's Daily Star: ''American diplomacy was not likely to alter the raw balance of power between the regime and its democratic oppositionists. But the timidity of American power and the refusal of the Obama administration to embrace the cause of the opposition must be reckoned one of American foreign policy's great moral embarrassments.''

 

The Mubarak machine's contempt for popular aspirations and whatever the US might think of them was on full display yesterday when Safwat el-Sherif, the head of the ruling National Democratic Party, feigned obliviousness to the reality of political power in Egypt as he lectured the protesters - ''democracy has its rules and process - the minority does not force its will on the majority''.

 

Abdel Moneim Said, a stooge government-appointed publisher, echoed Hillary Clinton's midweek ''stability'' comment when he told reporters: ''I can't think of anybody that I know that has any concern about the stability of the regime.''

 

Finding the right policy mix to influence events without being accused of interfering is a fine balance that some observers have concluded eludes the Obama administration.

 

''It's about identifying the US too closely with these changes and thereby undermining them; and not finding ways to nurture them enough,'' Aaron David Miller, of the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, told The New York Times.

 

[color:red]Meanwhile, observers on the ground in the region shake their heads. ''People want moral support,'' said Shadi Hamid, of the Brookings Doha Centre. ''They want to hear words of encouragement - right now they don't have that. They feel the world doesn't care and is working against them.''

 

His point seems to be this: it is time Washington thought in terms of investing in people in the region, not in dictators.[/color]

 

 

 

 

Link

[chuckwoww]

What happened to American optimism Steve? Why are you so sure fundamentalists would take over? Seems to me most of the protesters want a fair election....no suggestion that the Muslim Brotherhood would win. Why not let them have some freedom and human dignity? Isn't that what the US is supposed to stand for? Of course the Palestinian problem will still be there. Israel wants to get rid of them all some how. The real test will come if a new government in Egypt opens the Rafah crossing to Gaza.

[Flashermac]

Looters destroy mummies in Egyptian Museum

 

 

 

CAIRO (Reuters) – Looters broke into the Egyptian Museum during anti-government protests late Friday and destroyed two Pharaonic mummies, Egypt's top archaeologist told state television.

 

The museum in central Cairo, which has the world's biggest collection of Pharaonic antiquities, is adjacent to the headquarters of the ruling National Democratic Party that protesters had earlier set ablaze. Flames were seen still pouring out of the party headquarters early Saturday.

 

"I felt deeply sorry today when I came this morning to the Egyptian Museum and found that some had tried to raid the museum by force last night," Zahi Hawass, chairman of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said Saturday.

 

"Egyptian citizens tried to prevent them and were joined by the tourism police, but some (looters) managed to enter from above and they destroyed two of the mummies," he said.

 

He added looters had also ransacked the ticket office.

 

The two-storey museum, built in 1902, houses tens of thousands of objects in its galleries and storerooms, including most of the King Tutankhamen collection.

 

 

 

Link

[Guest lazyphil]

grim news-WHY DO THAT!!!

[chuckwoww]

Er because the cops were busy and they saw an opportunity to nick some stuff?

[Guest lazyphil]

oh....bit hard to sell on....ipads easier

 

hang on they destroyed them, no nick them