Tag Archives: Middle East

Egypt, Middle East, Politics

Obama Stumbles On The World Stage

If anyone thought that President Obama had his finger on the pulse on the happenings in Egypt, his performance today should put that notion to rest.

I just saw the media waiting for over six hours for Egypt’s President Mubarak to announce that he is ‘stepping down’ today. While this was going on, people at The White House were saying that President Obama was going to have a statement on Egypt. The presumption was that it would be a response to President Mubarak’s stepping down.

Well, I guess the President must have had something better to do than to wait and see what Mubarak had to say, because Obama beat Mubarak to the cameras. Boy, talk about a diplomatic blunder. Obama showed, in case there was any doubt remaining, that the United States, at least under this president, can not be a trusted ally to anyone.

It’s bad enough that, to this date, Washington is still sending out mixed messages on Egypt’s troubles.  It is painfully obvious that voting ‘present’ on Egypt has not worked. And now President Obama again sticks his nose into Egypt’s business before he even knows what Egypt’s business is. One can only speculate whether Mubarak set up the whole drama which Obama fell for, hook, line, and sinker.

In his statement, which came after Obama’s, Mubarak chastised countries ‘abroad’ for not being helpful in the matter. Saying that he would never “accept diktats from abroad.”

Yesterday, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Abu Al-Gheit said in an interview with Al-Arabiya TV . . .

“The question is not whether or not the latest American position pleases me. Ultimately, they have realized the need to conduct these major transformations gradually and on the basis of a roadmap with clear goals, guarantees, and phases. They were using the word ‘now.’ They said: You must do it now! But they changed their position… When someone says to me ‘now,’ ‘immediately,’ and whatever, I say to him: ‘Boy, go play somewhere else.’ We will do everything according to the interests of our people and country.”

So how is that whole improving our ‘image around the world’ thing going?

Economy, Egypt, Energy, Media, Middle East, Politics

Should The President Resign?

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Why did tens of thousands of Egyptians take to the streets and demand regime change? High food and energy prices, high unemployment, economic stagnation, and a government un-responsive to the people. That’s why they, and President Obama, are demanding and asking for President Mubarak to resign. So when we see hundreds of thousands, cumulatively millions, of people take to the streets in America for much the same reason, and then some, shouldn’t we (the media included) be asking the same question?

While our nation languishes amidst record food and energy prices, unprecedented underemployment (including those excluded from the workforce) and economic stagnation, crippling regulations, and an administration in contempt of two court decisions, . . . . there is one salient question that we should excogitate from Obama’s handling of the Egyptian insurgency. If Obama is willing to listen to the protesters of a foreign country due to their grievances from high food and energy prices and an unresponsive government, shouldn’t he accede to the similar demands of his own citizens and resign immediately?

I’m just saying.

Link: Hey Barack, Resign Now, and Now Means Yesterday

Economy, Egypt, Energy, Media, Middle East, Organized Labor, Politics, United Nations

Fed Policy, Govt. Policy, Egypt Burns

Here’s a little ditty that the mainstream media won’t touch with a ten foot pole. That’s because the Obama administration, environmentists, and the Federal Reserve are not insignificant players in the rioting and unrest we are seeing in the Middle East, and in the rise in prices of foodstuffs around the world. WHAT you say?

For years now, the United Nations has been complaining that they can’t continue to feed all they need to for a lack of money caused by the rising food cost. This is a direct consequence of bio-fuel nonsense where the United States is using food (corn) to put in our gas tank. This causes all kinds of food to be more expensive. Not just for foodstuffs made from corn, but meat and poultry products because it is also food for the livestock.

Compounding that is the enormous spending of the Federal Reserve. The effect of that has contributed to the increase in food prices not only here but everywhere else in the world.

Chriss W. Street at Big Government writes . . .

QE2 money quickly drove up commodity food prices around the world. This price rise is barely noticeable to Americans who only spend 10% of their personal income on food for three meals a day; but the impact of food inflation is devastating the over half the world that spends approximately 50% of personal income on food for two meals a day. The 15% QE2 induced commodity food price increase has reduced the amount of food poor people can purchase by almost 1/3.

The riots and revolutionary activity burning down Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt are about gut-level economics. Do you think Americans would riot and throwing out our government if we were forced to cut back to eating 1 1/3 meals a day? Once riots start people in cities hoard food to survive and becomes dangerous for farmers to transport food. This is exacerbates food shortages and drives prices even higher.

When you consider how lucky we are to live in the United States, where 10% of our income goes for food for three meals a day,  a rise in food prices is not as much of an issue as it is in other parts of the world like Egypt, where food consumes 50% of their income for two meals a day. Couple that with outrageously high unemployment while the ruling class lives the high life, and you have a powder keg in the making.

UPDATE 06:50:

As if there isn’t enough evidence of how government policies were accomplices in Egypt’s revolution, new evidence points to the role of labor unions and the American Left in orchestrating it:

For all the lack of clarity on where the Obama administration stands, one thing is becoming more and more clear: Signs are beginning to point more toward the likelihood that President Obama’s State Department, unions, as well as Left-leaning media corporations are more directly involved in helping to ignite the Mid-East turmoil than they are publicly admitting.

Egypt, Middle East, Politics

Caught By Surprise, Flat-footed, Mixed Message

That is how CNN described the Obama administration’s reaction to the upheavel in Egypt today on the Wolf Blitzer show. By now, it should become painfully obvious to the administration that the media can no longer carry their water when there are such big holes in the buckets. It is quite a shift from just two days ago when Obama adviser David Axelrod told ABC’s Jake Tapper how the president has been engaged with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak from the beginning. Not to worry, that he has been on top of things for the last two years.

If the administration has been so engaged for the last two years, how could this event have caught them by surprise? They didn’t see the clues? Obama voting PRESENT on Egypt isn’t working.  The media is not yet calling the administration incompetent, although I am, but the fact that they can not longer ignore the contradiction shows they are looking out for their own survival now, instead of his.

He was on the wrong side of the fence when Iran had their political uprising. Now he has to play catch up in Egypt, and the Egyptian people are not fooled.

Another story that has not been reported in the U.S. media, if you want to connect some dots, is the unrest in other poor and mostly Muslim countries like Yemen, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Jordan. Andrew McCarthy has a pretty good idea for why we are seeing what we are seeing.

Al-Qaeda seeks to spread Islam by brute force. The Muslim Brotherhood and its American confederates – CAIR, the Muslim American Society, the Islamic Society of North America, etc. – agree with al-Qaeda on the endgame but part company on methodology.

Links: Analysis: Egypt crisis a fresh dilemma for Obama team

Middle East, Religion, Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia, ‘No Complaints On Religious Freedoms’

Was checking to see what Saudi Arabia’s take on what is happening in Egypt when this headline caught my eye. You will find this article in their digital version of the Saudi Gazette dated 1/31/2011 on page 4. See screen grab below. Couldn’t find it in the regular online version.

For a country that won’t let you bring a bible into the country or wear a crucifix or have a Christian church within their borders, you have to wonder just what kind of complaints they might have?

I guess it depends on what they mean by complaint? Maybe it means that no one who has complained has lived long enough to fill out the paperwork?

If building a trophy Mosque within yards of where 3,000 people were murdered in New York City is within the laws in the United States, then I have an idea. What is the procedure in Saudi Arabia to get a building permit in Mecca. I propose building a religious mall there. Complete with places of worship for Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Jainism. No mall is complete without a food court. How about an AYCE rib joint?