revolution!

[kerravon]

1. I don't call HAMAS a terrorist organisation.

Well this is at odds with both the US and European definition of the word. Mine too. Is this a definition of terms issue?

They have been voted into power. As such they are now a government.

Seems you have set up a false dichtomy here? I specifically said that they are terrorists that have been elected.

2. It is easy to tell you're thinking of Left/Right in American terms

English is defined by common usage. The left/right economic split is the most common one.

Europeans have a different take on what is Left and what is Right.

So the Christian Democrats in Germany are called what, then? And the Tories in the UK are what?

Similarly for the Palestinians. You may not recognize it easily, because they are in such a drastically different state of affairs, but I assure you that there is *always* a Left and Right in any system, no exceptions at any time.

Surely under Saddam there was only one. God only knows whether you call it left or right though.

3. Disputing your observation of what currently exists. I mean, a country could go to war, murder lots of people in the fashion of the Nazis, this doesn't necessarily mean that democracy stopped existing.

Sure. That's my EXACT CONCERN over Egypt. Are we talking cross-purposes? The reason I want to debate this with sensible people (ie people who aren't going to claim that everything's controlled by the evil Dick Cheney ordering up 9/11s) is because I wanted to say I did my best to prevent a Nazi Egypt, when it was a very real possibility. When I see 8 million Copt refugees unable to find asylum anywhere in the world, I'll at least know that culpability is shared.

It's more unlikely under a democracy, but it's certainly too far to go to think that it's impossible to occur under a democracy. It's not a cure for all mankind’s ills.

That's my exact sentiments!!!

Note. I'm not anti-Israel, but you have to notice that blocking trade into ports isn't exactly a free market principal.

I completely disagree with this. They merely want to inspect the goods for weapons. The goods can flow freely and are no barrier to Gazan capitalism. Do you dispute this? We might want to move this debate if you wish to now discuss Gazan economics. Can you check the existing forums and tell me if there should be another one? I only had a vague idea of what forums should exist.

They are unwilling to give autonomy

I totally disagree with this. They exactly have autonomy. There's not even any Israeli troops in there to do anything else. Hell - they can get goods in via Egypt too. They have so much autonomy that they can freely elect Israel's sworn enemies into power!!!

and restrict economic freedoms of the people in Gaza.

Totally disagree. The problems in Gaza have nothing to do with lack of economic freedom.

From my point of view, either trade crosses borders, or soldiers do, it's literally that simple.

I don't understand this - you would rather what soldiers cross the border? In which direction? Or in general? ie anywhere that capitalism doesn't exist, there should be an invasion?

First economic freedom, then political freedom, in that order.

If that is a precondition to get your support for political freedom, I have no problem with rolling over dictators (militarily) with a promise to install capitalism as part of the deal, since that is my end goal too. So long as we don't end up with a worse situation (long term) than pre-invasion, I'm in. I wouldn't have thought it was strategic to be forcing capitalism on anyone though. There's very little in the way of ideological challenge to that, so people will naturally adopt it anyway. The few that don't adopt it can serve as constant reminders of the hellish alternatives.

[kerravon]

I'm far more concerned about the economics than the politics. To me, the system is a stack of layers, with the economic system being a substrate to the political one.

I would have thought that education - and specifically the scientific method was the required substrate. Combined with humanism. But I certainly don't have a problem with getting the economic underpinnings in there too.

We *cannot* say: oh, you are welcome Egypt, BUT you must not dislike Israel,

Why not? At some level I see attacking innocent people as an Act of War. This even applies to my own country. If one day America starts carpet-bombing Australia, I'd have to honestly admit that I wouldn't hold it against them after all the anti-American invective from the Australian left, that may well have helped culminate in 9/11.

BUT you must not support HAMAS.

A clear Act of War there in my opinion. Also I'm not sure what you mean by "must not". The Egyptian democracy will likely have the ability to outright declare war on Israel. When Israel or whoever responds to that (with bombs), is that a violation of the "must not" principle?

Their version of government is unlikely to be identical to ours, and we should just accept that. They are not at puppet to be given direction.

Nobody is asking for their government to be identical. And there are no puppets of any country anywhere in the world. The last of them were run by the Soviets.

As far as I'm concerned, that guy from the Nuclear Energy UN thing is no good, he's just a pawn of our governments.

Evidence for being a pawn? Were the Canadians pawns of Osama Bin Laden when they chose to oppose the Iraq war?

A lot of Egyptians are similarly wary of him for the same reason.

A lot of Egyptians (and the rest of the world for that matter) are willing to accept many assertions without any underlying scientific evidence.

I'm on board with you as far as human rights concerns go, I just think that human rights are more likely to be violated on a mass scale if you have a collectivist central government in power, that's why my concern for the openness of the market economy.

I'm certainly not a fan of collectivist central government! I wonder if we are talking cross-purposes? So you're saying that we should insist on Egypt adopting capitalism, but anything else they may wish to do (gas Jews, whatever) is fine for now? That's certainly an arch-capitalist opinion I haven't seen before!!! If you're going to start forcing economic policy on a people, may as well do the other stuff at the same time, surely???

Regardless, surely it's impractical to be discussing forcing economic systems on anyone, given that they're almost certainly going to go for capitalism anyway, and the cost of forcing that externally would be too high. Or are you suggesting the Egyptian military force this, but allow the anti-Semitism? If the anti-Semitism and general religious bigotry remains at Mubarak levels, I guess we're no worse off. The trouble is that I have a suspicion that they will be at even more extreme levels and Israel will be forced to start bombing (ala Lebanon) and it is all a pointless war. They can't beat Israel, and Israel has no interest in wasting money on pointless wars either.

[kerravon]

If the anti-Semitism and general religious bigotry remains at Mubarak levels, I guess we're no worse off. The trouble is that I have a suspicion that they will be at even more extreme levels and Israel will be forced to start bombing (ala Lebanon) and it is all a pointless war. They can't beat Israel, and Israel has no interest in wasting money on pointless wars either.

Just a clarifiction on this. Ultimately I don't care if Egypt declares war on Israel, because I know that Israel can't be defeated at the moment.

It's more the thought of 8 million Copts being completely undefended by anyone in the world. Think southern Sudan. Quite literally millions dead. Darfur was a minor skirmish compared to that.

[LanceBlade]

Technically those Copts should be defended by the Egyptian society - and they are, hence why it's basically that church bombing that was the real driver for the uprising (Tunisia was just the trigger). Lots of positive imagery coming out now, of muslims and copts working together and protecting each other.

In my opinion, our main goal should be to keep all information channels open, and information flooding in. There is a huge demand in Egypt for new ideas. If we [liberal democracy proponents] don't fill that void, someone like Iran will. But if we keep channels open, go and help out in Egypt in terms of humanitarian aid, this should all create the right impressions. Largely the country appears to be on the right track to liberal democracy - people are airing economic grievances, they're not really chanting "death to Israel!", or "death to the West!", there's more signs of inter-faith unity than inter-faith anger... we just have to make sure this doesn't get hijacked by radicals. And this generally involves free flow of ideas (since in a free information exchange, totalitarian ideologies usually lose badly). The only reason a place like Palestine votes for terrorists is because the country's a massive dump, hugely restricted, violent, and people are cynical and will vote anyone who acts tough and offers to clean up corruption. Same thing happened in the Orange Revolution - there was a nationalist solution to drive out corruption. They made the mistake of voting these people in, and 5 years later the movement failed so badly that the same candidate got 5% of the vote. Moral: nationalism does not work as a solution to economic problems or corruption.

[kerravon]

Technically those Copts should be defended by the Egyptian society - and they are, hence why it's basically that church bombing that was the real driver for the uprising (Tunisia was just the trigger). Lots of positive imagery coming out now, of muslims and copts working together and protecting each other.

You don't need to wait long for this false picture to be exposed:

9th March, 2011:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... 9132.story

"Reporting from Cairo Egypt suffered the deadliest unrest since President Hosni Mubarak's ouster when clashes Wednesday between Muslims and Coptic Christians left 13 dead and 140 injured."

It was like that before Mubarak, too - I just didn't spend the time to collect some links when it's easy enough to just wait.