Arab Spring Backfires In Egypt

Democracy in flames: protesters in Alexandria ransack the offices of President Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood movement

The "Arab Spring" in 2011 swept across the Arab part of the world and resulted in the overthrowing of a number of long standing dictators and powerful families that ruled Middle Eastern countries. The western media praised this uprising as a democratic revolution, and the US government widely supported the large-scale demonstrations and even militia groups that went to war with their governments in areas where a more peaceful resolution did not happen (ie. Syria, which is still locked in deadly violent civil war). The media praised the revolts against long standing governments as a new modern democratic wave, one that would pull these countries into the direction of freedom, civil rights, accountable government, and overall social progress. Egypt was the biggest and most notable country where these protests against a long-standing dictatorship rose up.

However, while the mainstream media was falling all over itself praising the wave of government toppling protests across the Middle East, many conservative writers were warning that this was looking all to familiar to what happened in Iran decades ago. Iran turned into a theocratic nightmare where extremist Islamists took over from a generally moderate leadership in massive social protests that the United States supported under President Jimmy Carter. Iran has been one of the most repressive and backwards Middle Eastern countries ever since. Instead of freedom, government accountability, civil rights and social progress, Iran stepped farther and farther back into heavy-handed government repression of the general populace. Iran traded bad and suppressive leadership for evil and cruel leadership. It traded generally stable dictators for radical terrorists. The same thing happened in the Gaza Strip when democratic protests broke out years ago there, also supported by the Western Media and many governments. The result? The terrorist organization Hamas won elections and slaughtered all opposition and has ruled with an iron fist ever since.

But that wouldn't happen THIS time, the mainstream media assured everyone. Egypt was going to be the beacon of new Middle Eastern freedom, a new wave of liberty and modernity... The former government was thrown out and protestors celebrated in the streets! Democratic elections were held all across the country and for the first time in decades, political parties other than the ruling dictator had a real chance of winning! Signs indicated before the elections that the Muslim Brotherhood, a large group of Islamic opposition to the former President of Egypt and heavily suppressed under his rule, would become the bulk of the new Egyptian government. Again, conservative writers warned that this was starting to look more and more like Iran, Lebanon and Gaza. But the media told everyone in the west that this was not the case, that the Muslim Brotherhood was these days a much more moderate, secular and progressive group, not at all similar to the hardlined religious leaders that had taken over Iran decades before. Anyone who's done any research into the Muslim Brotherhood and that was not blinded by starry-eyed dreams would know that this was mostly garbage. The Muslim Brotherhood very clearly wants the return of a powerful Muslim Caliphate like what existed centuries ago throughout the Middle East when Islamic government reigned supreme. The Muslim Brotherhood also has ties to Hamas, Al Qaida and other well known Islamic terrorist groups. Only the progress of time would tell which side in this debate was actually right.

So far, things do not look good.

The Muslim Brotherhood won the elections quite handily, easily taking the majority of the national vote. Minority groups such as the Coptic Christians and secularists barely made any splash at all, despite the mainstream media claiming that the Arab Spring was largely secular (non-religious) in nature and intent. President Morsi, of The Muslim Brotherhood, has recently been a beacon of terror, repression, religious intolerance, and government domination over its citizenry. Minorities such as the Coptic Christians have been fleeing Egypt in record numbers. Morsi recently passed government legislation that effectively makes him and whatever he does untouchable by the new law and justice systems of Egypt.

[Daily Beast (Dec 3, 2012)]:  Egypt To President Morsi: No Dictators Allowed

On Nov. 22, as Americans sat down to Thanksgiving dinner, Egypt’s first post-revolution president, Mohamed Morsi, issued a decree exempting all of his decisions from legal challenge. The move was a stunning power grab that quickly earned him the nickname “Egypt’s new pharaoh”—a title once bestowed upon his defunct predecessor. Hundreds of thousands of disbelieving Egyptians flooded city streets from Alexandria to Aswan with a familiar cry: “The people want the fall of the regime!” Tahrir Square came alive once again with tents and bullhorns and a howl so loud—so impassioned—that it was dubbed the “19th Day” of last year’s revolution. Angry female protesters returned in masses to Tahrir, resilient after months of deteriorating security that included repeated incidents of harassment and sexual assault.

Because of this and the severely deteriorating conditions of safety and law in Egypt under the new government, many people have once again returned to the streets in mass protest of the new government that they just elected into power with a huge democratic majority. Why? Because the promises made are evaporating in almost every single direction. Protesters are saying that at best, absolutely nothing has changed since President Mubarak was ousted. The reality, however, is that freedom and safety has significantly decreased and government repression of the masses has greatly increased. An example of how the government is running things in Egypt now can be summed up in a few very recent news reports.

[Daily Mail (Dec 1, 2012)]: Muslim Brotherhood 'Paying Gangs To Go Out And Rape Women And Beat Men Protesting In Egypt'

Egypt's ruling party is paying gangs of thugs to sexually assault women protesting in Cairo's Tahrir Square against President Mohamed Morsi, activists said.
They also said the Muslim Brotherhood is paying gangs to beat up men who are taking part in the latest round of protests, which followed a decree by President Morsi to give himself sweeping new powers.

[The Blaze ()]: Mob of 300 Reportedly Strips, Assaults 3 Women Near Mosque In Tahrir Square

... it is difficult to ignore the overwhelming number of sexual assaults reported not by lone criminals, but by frantic mobs.  The vicious attack on U.S. journalist Lara Logan during the advent of the so-called “Arab Spring” nearly two years ago has only been followed by a further deterioration of the rights of women and minorities under Muslim Brotherhood leadership, it seems.

[Telegraph (Nov 29, 2012)]: Egyptians Want Democracy, But Is Their Country Turning Into Iran?

Islam and democracy are not natural bedfellows, and Mr Morsi’s insistence, particularly in his meetings with Western politicians, that he has no desire to become Egypt’s “new pharoah” and is fully committed to upholding the country’s new democratic principles, does not square with his recent pronouncements. These assurances have been undermined by Mr Morsi’s blatant power grab, in which he announced that, in future, all presidential decrees will be immune from legal challenge.
The timing of this declaration is troubling, as the country is engaged in drawing up a new constitution which, in normal circumstances, would require the approval of the establishment. By placing himself above the judiciary, Mr Morsi has awarded himself the power to sanction the new constitution irrespective of any objections secularists may raise.

A similar pattern of behaviour was evident in Iran following the overthrow of the Shah, when Ayatollah Khomeini, the founding father of Islamic Republic, succeeded in imposing a new constitution on the Iranian people which was based more on the will of God than the rule of law. At a stroke, the pro-democracy aspirations of ordinary Iranians were crushed by the creation of an Islamic theocracy. As Khomeini himself warned secularists when the new constitution was drawn up: “Revolt against God’s government is a revolt against God, and a revolt against God is blasphemy.”

Essentially, President Morsi's government has made itself immune to any challenges to its power and authority. It gets the final say in everything, no matter what the democratic parliament says. Since people have returned to the streets to protest this, the government has sent in gangs of violent attackers to rape women and beat men in the streets to shut them up and terrify them into silence. On top of all this, Morsi's government is now rushing through Egypt's new constitution which reads like a large scale religious fatwa, based mostly on Islamic Sharia Law and NOT in any way conducive to western principles of liberty, freedom, civil rights, or anything else that the western world has appreciated for the past few centuries and more.

Egypt is very quickly becoming another Iran, exactly as conservative pundits and writers warned from the very beginning. The signs were strongly there from the start. Maybe now the governments and mainstream media will finally wake up to the monster they've gleefully and blindly supported.

[Reuters (Dec 6, 2012)]: Egypt Demonstrators Reject Mursi Call For Dialogue

Thousands of supporters and opponents of Mursi had fought well into Thursday's early hours, using rocks, petrol bombs and guns. Officials said 350 were wounded in the violence. Six of the dead were Mursi supporters, the Muslim Brotherhood said.

US Economy, Bush vs Obama (Part 1 of 2)

Who's economy was/is better? Was it the economy of President George W Bush (January 2001-January 2009) or President Barrack Obama (January 2009 to Present [September 2012])?...


The Global Economic Collapse

The financial collapse that happened right before the election of President Obama in 2008 was cataclysmic. The world economy literally imploded in tandem with the USA's economy. This needs to be considered when analyzing the economies of both US presidents (Bush and Obama), because it had (and still has) huge ramifications.

For most of George W Bush's eight year run as America's 43rd President, the economy was actually quite good (even too good), but it ended with one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) financial and economic collapses in modern history. This was in large part thanks to what is often described as an economic bubble of unrealistic prosperity and "boom" (jobs, business expansion, heavy investment, easy money through loans, etc.). The economy was on fire but burning much hotter than it probably should have. And when that economy started to contract, the gigantic holes that had formed in the global economy shredded into a million pieces.

At the beginning of 2007, Bush's 7th year as President, warning signs were starting to go off and the word "Recession" was starting to get batted around. An Economic Recession is when the economy is shrinking and/or stagnating for many months in a row instead of growing. That means employment, investment, manufacturing, bank loans and lots of other things dry up or drop. Though employment was amazingly good right through until the actual collapse, other signs like disappearing manufacturing jobs, a shrinking overall work force, rising debt loads (both in governments and households), and a weakening GDP (national Gross Domestic Production) hinted at potential disaster to come.

The economic Armageddon struck in September and October 2008, causing the greatest financial collapse in US and world markets since The Great Depression of the 1930s. A month later Obama was elected as the 44th President of the United States and took office January 2009 amidst the bottoming out of the US and global economies, which continued for a number of months beyond.

The Global Financial Crises from 2007 to 2012 (on going) has huge ripples that continue to be heavily felt all across the world, especially in the United States which was one of the hardest nations hit.


Important Considerations

It is essential to always keep in mind that George W Bush was President for 8 years during an economic boom whereas Barrack Obama has been President of the US for only 4 years in the midst of the Global Financial Crises. The importance of these two very different time periods cannot be overstated!


Who Caused The Collapse?

There are many fingers to point and almost as many people to point them at if someone wants to play the "blame game".

Generally, it was the banks and investment groups that were the heart and soul of the financial collapse. They created and rode a housing bubble based on horribly shaky investments and terrible reasoning. The whole idea was that the easier it was for everyone to get loans so they could buy houses and live large, the better the economy would be, and it was a win-win for everyone. So banks were handing out huge loans to absolutely EVERYONE who came asking, even advertising and "spreading the word" that ANYONE could get an easy low-rate mortgage for a new house and more with NO down-payment. These "great deals" were flying off the shelves as people snatched them up and dug themselves gigantic debt, many of which had little or no ability to pay the debts back. I mean, there were banks handing out house mortgages to the chronically unemployed! Of COURSE they couldn't pay it back!

Unfortunately it was hard to see just how bad it was getting because of how the banks were trading all these bad (sub-prime) mortgages and investments back and forth between each other to make even more money off of them. The banks and investors basically masked the depth and size of the problem through fancy accounting tricks. But when the booming economy started to contract and slow down, the off the wall projections of big growth evaporated and reality struck hard. As jobs started to bleed away and as it came time to pay up the monthly bills which included all these easy sub-prime loans, people simply could not pay.

"No problem!" thought the banks. They had thought this through beforehand. It's partly why they gave out the loans in the first place! Just kick the loafers out and sell the house and property. We'll make the loan back and more because housing and land prices are always going up anyway. True for the most part, until there's millions upon millions of houses and businesses up for sale at rock bottom "sell it right away" prices... And what happens when millions and millions of home owners aren't paying their mortgage bills for extended periods of time? The banks foreclose and take back all those houses... And ALL those houses go up for sale at the same time because all those bad loans were made right around the same time... Greedy banks, say hello to a bad case of supply and demand.

Sale prices tanked because the market was over saturated. There were WAY too many houses suddenly up for sale and no where near enough people to buy them. So the housing market completely imploded with the value of land and new houses dropping as much as 50% or more in many places. This means that the banks were overloaded with houses and businesses that they had paid out big money for, but that couldn't possibly return their investment. If they'd handed out a $300,000 loan for a house, the house was now worth half that! Where did all the money disappear to? It never really existed in the first place! It was "invisible" money based on severely overly valued debt (all over the place, but especially the housing market).

The easy answer to who caused the collapse is that the banks and investors (the Wall Street types) caused it. They dramatically over-invested, envisioning big things in a dream world that did not exist. They created an economic bubble (an empty air-filled dream) and it popped.


How Did The Banks Not Get Caught!?

How did they get away with it!? Now THAT is the root of the problem. Liberals (Democrats) will tell you that it was George Bush's fault for allowing it to get so out of hand in the first place. He was President. His advisers should have seen it coming and he should have stopped it before it ever got so bad. Unfortunately, a lot of people were quite blinded by the booming economy, and banking tricks hid the "empty" massive debt load very well. You'll note, however, that countries that DID NOT join in the "free easy money" lending spree by and large survived the economic collapse amazingly well (Canada, for example). Basically, it all came down to regulation. Governments that clamped down on what banks and financial institutions could do when it came to debt and lending fared well while the countries that didn't better regulate the banks fared badly.

So it's the government's fault!... Partly, yes. It's the banks (and investors) faults for doing all this when they really should have known better, but it's "the system's" fault (the government and the lack of financial smarts by every day people) that allowed them to get away with it in the first place. Then it WAS George Bush's fault!... Partly, but not entirely.

For the United States, where the bulk of all this originated, BOTH government parties are to blame! The Republicans are big on capitalism run wild to be free and do what it likes (de-regulation and all that). "The free market will keep things in check." It obviously didn't. Democrats were to blame because they were big on the "everyone needs a house and access to easy money" push. They had it in their heads that debt money is almost always better than no money, so they pushed for banks to lend, lend, lend! The Democrats were in control of Congress as of January 2007 and went on a huge spending spree as well as de-regulated what little restrictions there were on bank loans and trading so that poor people could own a nice home too. BOTH parties screwed up big time!


Yes, The Democrats Too!

Am I being unfair to the Democrats? After all, Bush was a Republican President! Didn't he and the Republicans have all the power to enact legislation to stop the banks from doing this?

The US government is set up with two major legislative branches, an executive branch, and the judicial branch. The Legislative Branch (Congress) consists of The House of Representatives and The Senate. The Executive Branch is made up of the "ruling party", the political party that won the last federal election and have their President in power. This means that the Republicans ran the Executive Branch of the US government during Bush's 2 terms. Congress, however, is made up of DIFFERENT elected officials, and it has the power to veto (over-ride) the Executive Branch if it can get a 2/3rds majority vote on a bill (law, government expenses, etc.). This is exactly what happened at the end of 2006. The Democrats gained a big majority in Congress and because of this, they heavily controlled what the overall government could do with regards to federal money and the economy. So it's no lie that both political parties were heavily involved in the financial collapse one way or another. The entire US government is set up in such a way that it's quite hard for either the Executive Branch or the Legislative Branch to do much without the approval of the other.

To make matters worse, a lot of people didn't see this coming until it was too late. As I already said. The banks were doing an impressive job at masking just how big the problem was, so even as it was burning them alive, a lot of people still had no idea just how bad it was until it all finally came crashing down.


Coming Soon...

US Economy? Bush vs Obama?  (Part 2)   (link not yet available)

Now that we've covered The Global Financial Crises of 2007-2012, next we'll look into the actual numbers of both Presidents' economies and see how they compare.