Massive crowds of Egyptians opposing Islamist President Mohamed Mursi head to Cairo's Tahrir Square on Friday to mark the second anniversary of the revolution that ousted Hosni Mubarak and brought in an Islamist government, at a time of political tensions and economic woes.
The secular-leaning opposition called for mass street protests against President Mursi and the Muslim Brotherhood from which he hails, using the same slogan that brought Egypt to its feet in 2011: “Bread, freedom, social justice.”
“Go out into the squares to finally achieve the objectives of the revolution,” opposition leader and former head of the U.N.'s atomic agency Mohamed ElBaradei wrote on his Twitter account.
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." Thomas Jefferson
Quote: Palinista wrote in post #1Al Arabiya January 25, 2013
Massive crowds of Egyptians opposing Islamist President Mohamed Mursi head to Cairo's Tahrir Square on Friday to mark the second anniversary of the revolution that ousted Hosni Mubarak and brought in an Islamist government, at a time of political tensions and economic woes.
The secular-leaning opposition called for mass street protests against President Mursi and the Muslim Brotherhood from which he hails, using the same slogan that brought Egypt to its feet in 2011: “Bread, freedom, social justice.”
“Go out into the squares to finally achieve the objectives of the revolution,” opposition leader and former head of the U.N.'s atomic agency Mohamed ElBaradei wrote on his Twitter account.
Here's an interesting interview with Bernard Lewis, (Mid East expert who predicted bad things when everyone else was cheering that the Shah of Iran was taken down)
Historian Bernard Lewis diagnoses the fundamental cause of the region-wide explosion of protest, and dismisses Western notions of a quick fix
" What does “democracy” mean? It’s a word that’s used with very different meanings, even in different parts of the Western world. And it’s a political concept that has no history, no record whatever in the Arab, Islamic world. "
"If there’s a genuinely free election – assuming that such a thing could happen – the religious parties have an immediate advantage. First, they have a network of communication through the preacher and the mosque which no other political tendency can hope to equal. Second, they use familiar language. "
"In genuinely fair and free elections, [the Muslim parties] are very likely to win and I think that would be a disaster "
"You have this traditional system of consultation with groups which are not democratic as we use that word in the Western world, but which have a source of authority other than the state – authority which derives from within the group, whether it be the landed gentry or the civil service, or the scribes or whatever "