Egypt Goes Dark As Last ISP Pulls Plug 323
CWmike writes "Egypt is now off the grid. Four days after the Egyptian government ordered Internet service providers to disconnect from the Internet, the country's last working Internet company has abruptly vanished from cyberspace. Noor Group, a small service provider that hosted Internet connections for the country's stock exchange and other businesses, became completely unreachable at around 10:46 p.m. Cairo time (Eastern European Time), according to Earl Zmijewski, general manager with Internet monitoring company Renesys. 'It looks like they're completely lights-out now,' he told IDG News' Robert McMillan. Thought to handle only about 8 percent of the country's Internet connections, Noor had served as a critical lifeline to Egypt since the government had ordered service cut early Friday morning. Nobody is sure how Noor was able to keep operating, even as larger ISPs such as Vodafone and Telecom Egypt voluntarily cut their Egyptian networks off from the rest of the world."
To help with this, engineers from Google, Twitter and SayNow have rolled out a "speak-to-tweet" service, which lets people dial in to an international phone number, leave a voice mail, and have the audio file made available online via an automated Twitter update.
And yet ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
The internet in Egypt is still easier to read than slashdot 3.0.
I wonder what the slashdot Rosetta Stone would look like? My guess is ASCII porn and ASCII wiring diagrams, but mostly ASCII porn.
Text to speech (Score:2)
It's a really clever idea to have a speech-to-tweet service setup, since its circumventing the block, but I don't think it's all that practical for several reasons:
1. Does it transcribe Arabic?
2. If you can't get online in Egypt, how will Egyptian people follow the twitter feeds? Broadcasting to the outside world is important, but what's somewhat more important to the Egyptians right now is reaching each other, since they're trying to coordinate a massive million-person protest in Cairo and can't do it via
it doesn't transcribe (Score:2)
But the audio files are posted and some people are listening to them and hand-transcribing interesting ones, including Arabic ones and retweeting them with the same hash tag.
They cannot be read inside the country, but it still works for getting messages out.
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The only way #2 would work right now would be a speech-to-speech mailbox. You call up and leave a message in a mailbox, and 'subscribers' to that messagebox get an automated call replaying the message.
Viva la Revelution (Score:2)
Re:Viva la Revelution (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope. The Muslim brotherhood explicitly has been saying for the last week how they're staying out of this one. Mubarak would LOVE to blame this on terrorists or outsiders, as a way of delegitimizing the protests, so they're not going to try helping him out on that. Egypt is not really known for their extremism, and democracy would likely moderate any factions that try it, especially since there is a very large secular crowd in the country as well as millions of Christians.
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Which just like Iran we can thank the western world for. When you prop up dictators this is what you get.
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A lot of the unrest for the protests is being backed by Muslim extremists behind the scenes.
Well, or so the dictator being toppled says.
Summary answers itself (Score:2)
Nobody is sure how Noor was able to keep operating
Noor Group, a small service provider that hosted Internet connections for the country's stock exchange
A couple people in government trying to get their money out while they can?
Not sure how they were still operating? (Score:5, Insightful)
That third link provided analysis as to how the government shut down most of the internet:
...a government that licenses a mobile authority can threaten violence to individual cell towers or backhaul networks, or to employees working for the carrier. Future license renewals can also be threatened for non-compliance, analysts noted.
I'm going to suggest that maybe Noor figured Mubarak was weak enough to defy. Maybe they figured his security forces were too busy trying to control the country to shut Noor down, and there wasn't much risk of being denied a license renewal because there wasn't much risk of Mubarak being in power a month from now. It appears to have at least partially worked: they lasted longer than anyone else... though I guess that assumes the forced shutdown involved turning off the power and not, say, destroying their equipment and/or executing their employees.
A more cynical take would be that it's good PR for if the revolution succeeded. "We were the only ones supporting the revolution. Customers: you really want to stay with Vodafone after they left you when you needed them the most? New government, you really want to let them back in? We helped you, now how about an exclusive license to operate in, say, everywhere?"
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(undoing unintentional moderation)
Re:Not sure how they were still operating? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's just as likely that because Noor hosts the Egyptian stock exchange and several large companies, and otherwise serves a relatively small percentage of Egypt's internet connections, the government actually *wanted* to leave them on for as long as possible. Staying in the good graces of the business and financial community in the country and the world is an important part of staying in power, so it's no wonder they would hesitate to disconnect the ISP serving much of the business community through the stock exchange and such.
Now the government is in panic mode, so they're pulling out all the stops, including shutting down a nerve center of their economy.
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Noor was also the smallest ISP which provided redundancy for the Egyptian stock exchange - it's possible the govt deliberately left it on in order to keep the stock exchange functioning while providing the least amount of additional service to anyone else. They may no longer care if the exchange is up (or may even prefer to have trading 'suspended' until things stabilize one way or another).
Good luck Egypt (Score:2)
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Unlikely, more likely you get a democratic state. Even if it does happen do not blame those who witnessed it happen, blame the decades worth of folks who set the it in motion.
Idea (Score:3, Funny)
Now we can take their IPv4 addresses back and postpone the depletion.
http://www.apnic.net/publications/news/2011/delegation
They just allocated the last two /8s to APNIC, the remaining five /8s will be delegated to each one of the five regional registries. Goodbye IPv4! Nice to meet you and your brother called NAT.
Egypt Goes Dark (Score:5, Interesting)
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Ironically, Noor means light in Arabic.
Not ironic at all....lights (noor) out....
YOU ARE A WINNER! (Score:2)
Or a meat popsicle. Or both.
Meh... (Score:2)
All solutions I've heard so far require people calling international numbers. But do we know whether people have access to international numbers? And how are they going to learn about this service? And their whole problem is that they cannot coordinate their activities, being able to send tweets but not read them will not help much...
Yeah, I can set up a dialup for Egyptian revolutionaries at my home. I can even post to twitter (ok, I have to make an account first, I'm not a twit myself) what they want to s
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>All solutions I've heard so far require people calling international numbers. But do we know whether people have access to international numbers?
well, every time the people put up papercups and wet string, the military keeps shooting the strings down.
other ideas??
Ad Hoc networking. (Score:2)
I hope one thing that comes out of this is some work on ad-hoc networking.
Example: a self-orgainzing, ad-hoc, robust re-routing and load balancing network using WiFi enabled machines. To join you'd bring up your machine and sniff for WiFi access points identifying as the net you're after. You'd connect to the strongest one, and if you didn't already have the software you'd bring up a browser and the neighbor would serve you a copy of the routing-and-configuring software. Accept and load it and you're no
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Supporting the revolution - only when it's safe (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks for nothing Google. What about hosting a Wikileaks mirror or allowing donations to Wikileaks via Google Checkout?
It's so easy to be a revolutionary when you are thousands of miles away from any danger. Twitter is full of Internet revolutionaries sipping coffee at a Starbucks in San Francisco.
google did something and is involved. (Score:4, Informative)
Dude... seriously?
At least they SOMETHING to help the people in egypt. What do you want? a full scale google invasion?
And by the way a google employ (exec) was kidnapped [cnn.com] by plain clothed security forces in cairo [bit.ly] and is missing since several days. The arrest was caught on video [vimeo.com]. See around 1:11
Not quite so cushy after all.
Who is compensating the ISPs? (Score:2)
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Of course not. Corporations exist only at the blessing of the government. They have no expectation to be paid in this sort of case. These companies could just as easily have had their charters revoked and told to get the fuck out of Dodge.
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lol. Sovereign Risk.
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dialup and wifi cantennas (Score:3)
I heard a NPR report today on this which mentioned some Egyptians are using dialup modems now and connecting to international numbers for an access point. Not sure how widespread this is.
I also wonder if a site-to-site wi-fi system using the infamous cantenna could be used to daisy chain net access from across the border. I know the Burmese Tiger rebels used this tactic pretty successfully.
Turning off the Internet is a bad idea (Score:3)
Re:Egypt's got bigger problems (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Egypt's got bigger problems (Score:4, Funny)
this isn't about getting information. It's about keeping army's hands busy with porn ... they loose porn, they eventually get off the barracks and pacify people.
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We should send them our porn.
Re:Egypt's got bigger problems (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah. The point is that now a critical avenue by which the world at large could see those problems from a non-State-Approved point of view has been cut off.
Re:Egypt's got bigger problems (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
The protesters are using the Internet to organize. They're protesting to fix those "bigger problems" like a lack of free speech, corruption in government, and police brutality. Preserving their Internet access is preserving their ability to fight for what they want. I believe that's important.
Problem: their issues aren't ones you listed. The reasons for protests are:
1. Unemployment and poverty.
2. Government's policy towards Israel.
Everything else is secondary at best. The main reason why US and EU (Western Europe before that) supported Mubarak rather openly for about 30 years was because he is a very safe choice for a leader. He reigns in all anti-western majority-supported policies, defends the all-important Suez channel and as one of US diplomats put it "it's generally a lot easier to call the
Re:Egypt's got bigger problems (Score:5, Informative)
While related, apparently one of the largest problems facing Egypt is that unfortunately for the Egyptian people much of the food is imported.... and purchased with dollar-denominated funds when purchased on the international markets.
The U.S. Federal Reserve, due to loose spending of the U.S. Dollar and essentially "running the printing presses" (mainly sending credits to various banks in America buying up "toxic assets" to be owned directly by The Fed) has been devaluing the dollar sending the price of this food up so wheat in particular is about double the price as it was about a year ago or more.
To really make things ugly here, American farmers have been switching from wheat to other crops, most especially corn which is increasingly being used to make ethanol and other synthetic materials including plastic substitutes that used to be made with petroleum. Since corn isn't even being used for food in these situations, that in turn drives up the price of other grains like wheat when it still is grown by those few remaining farmers who still plant that grain. Thanks to U.S. federal ethanol subsidies, poor people in Egypt have to pay even more for a loaf of bread (made from wheat usually) and are in effect taking the brunt end of the problems caused by the housing collapse in America.
Wheat farmers in other countries are also seeing the dollar lose value in relation to their own currency, yet they are struggling with things like higher petroleum prices that are wiping out any profits they may have experienced from higher wheat prices.
In other words, this is a perfect storm of converging events that essentially is making it impossible for ordinary people in Egypt to be able to eat food anymore. It is also a dangerous feed-back loop given their location next to many major oil reserves in the world, especially sitting on a major international trade route that is going to make this a vicious feedback cycle to drive up food prices even more that will in turn stop international trade in food. When you can't eat, you get desperate and usually don't give a damn about who is in charge.... you'll eat their hide and certainly would be willing to go to desperate ends to simply live until tomorrow or not care if you don't.
The situation is really bad, and unfortunately American policies over the years including domestic America policies are really screwing with the Egyptian people right now... much of it as unintended consequences originally intended to help.
Even somebody like Chavez isn't going to help much in this situation, and Mubarak seems to be making some particularly stupid moves in this explosive situation. I don't think Obama is necessarily doing anything worthwhile either, and IMHO should be doing something like shipping millions of tons of wheat to Egypt at least to calm the situation down a bit. Bread and circuses can make a difference, but right now Egypt has neither and the people are really pissed as a result. Cutting off the internet gets rid of the circus, so they are making their own with the protests. Way to go there.
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The USD hasn't really changed much in value vs the Egyptian Pound over the last year (it's down about 5% or so [google.com]) - historically it's pretty much business as usual. In fact, the great weakening of the dollar due to the bailout is pretty mythical - vs GBP and EUR it's pretty average right now (actually pretty strong against GBP), the exception being JPY which is strong at the moment. Look at the 10y charts and it's really doing fine (unlike 2008!).
I agree about the screwed up farming subsidies re: ethanol, an
Re:Egypt's got bigger problems (Score:5, Insightful)
The food shortage isn't something "America caused". Egypt did this to themselves. Nassar just HAD to have a dam, to prove that Egypt was a "modern" country, but it destroyed the Nile-based ecology and economy -- before the Aswan Dam was built, Egypt was a net food EXPORTER.
Here's an excerpt from a letter written in 2008, by a PhD who lived there at the time, was in thick with the higher-ups, and knew the situation firsthand:
=======
The Aswan High Dam (read Miles Copeland's book "The Game of Nations") blocked silt and nutrient transport downriver and into the eastern Mediterranean. Egypt had a thriving coastal sardine fishery, which landed about 18,000 tons of sardines a year. Within two years after completion of the dam, the sardine fishery collapsed, with the yield falling below 500 tons a year. It has stayed down ever since.
It took a bit longer to use up the nutrients in agricultural soils, or for the irrigated soils, deprived of their annual "flush", to become so saline no crops would grow.
Deprived of sediment, the Delta will probably also erode. That's what's happening to New Orleans and vicinity - we've messed around with the river enough that the sediment transport is less and the delta is no longer self-sustaining, but is gradually (well, not so gradually) sinking into the Gulf of Mexico.
Egypt had a lot of very good fisheries and freshwater biologists - some of them among the best in the world. Nasser convened a scientific panel to advise him about building the dam. They told him what would happen. He didn't like ...
hearing that, so all those scientists lost their jobs and had to emigrate. The U.S., for example Texas A&M University, profited greatly by snapping them up.
Well, the reasons for building it were primarily political and had to do with the Cold War. Nasser sucked the Russians and the U.S. into a bidding contest. The Copeland book lays it all out, in a rather amusing way.
And of course Egypt had, as a matter of national pride, to have a gigantic dam. ...
Big dams (well, all dams) eventually silt up - they have a finite lifetime. Once the reservoir is silted up the dam can no longer regulate water flow. Don't remember what the anticipated lifetime of Aswan is - maybe a century or less.
=======
[Undoing a bunch of moderation to post this, but I couldn't let the historical ignorance stand unchallenged.]
Re: (Score:2)
My source [wikipedia.org] makes no mention of the cause priority, so I picked a few at random. I apologize if my statement's in error, but my sentiment remains. Shutting down communication is not a reasonable response to a movement for change.
On a more general scale, I'd actually support the use of the Internet to protest for or against any cause. Want to use the Internet to organize a protest in favor of censorship? I'll help you do it, but I'll mock the irony.
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Egypt's got bigger problems than their Internet access right about now. I'm glad the Slashdot community is so concerned about their bandwidth and all... but really...
Except this government action is not independent from those "bigger problems" you allude to. They want to keep the protesters from being able to communicate; and they want to keep a lid on news getting out to the wider world as much as possible.
I expect things are about to get very brutal in Egypt - at least if you're a protester (or are an unfortunate "civilian" who ends up on the general area of a protest).
Re:Egypt's got bigger problems (Score:4, Insightful)
In reality, though, the internet shutoff is a key part of the ongoing struggle. Call it a catalyst, a symbol of the regime, whatever - the point is that internet-based communications were pivotal in jump-starting starting this whole thing (back to Tunisia), and serve as a stark sign for whom the international community should rally alongside (hint: it's not the one turning off the media). There's more to the revolution than twitter, but it's more of a revolution when communication happens freely.
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If the internet had been gradually degraded over time by a lack of investment in infrastructure and monopolizing the service providers as a government monopoly, the network connections could have been cut on a more gradual process that could have been effectively done the same thing but not even noticed by either the citizens or the international community at large. Unfortunately the Egyptian government didn't have the "foresight" to go that route.
The next shoe to drop is cutting off international telecomm
Re:Egypt's got bigger problems (Score:5, Insightful)
Egypt's problem is multidimensional. The Internet is our dimension.
Re:Good-by financial markets???? (Score:5, Insightful)
> The UN should be let in
By whom?
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So somebody wants the U.S. Army moving into Egypt now that America has finally been able to start walking away from Iraq?
Yeah, that sounds like a plan for me!
I have a better plan: Let's put together a multi-national force from Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia move into Egypt. That will do wonders for world peace, especially when those countries start to move into Gaza as well.
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UN does not mean it needs to be primarily US troops, in fact, based on proximity to Europe and the US being tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan, it makes more sense to use a predominately EU based force.
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So far the Egyptian President has been taking the relative high road for somebody in his position. I'm not sure whether he's worried about war crimes or about being lynched on the way out of town. But as oppressive as things have been, he could have ordered a brutal crack down on the protesters. At this point the armed forces are still trying to avoid unnecessary blood shed.
Not that it means it's alright for him to continue without a legitimate election, but lets keep things in context.
Re:Good-by financial markets???? (Score:5, Insightful)
They have been shooting protesters, do they need to rape them too?
Re:Good-by financial markets???? (Score:4, Informative)
- They have been shooting protesters, do they need to rape them too?
No, but they could open fire on mass demonstrations, or other means of crushing dissent.
So, yes, it can get a lot worse without rape.
That is what a genuinely brutal dictatorship looks like. Sadly, too many divert their attention and misdirect their anger at let's pretend "dictators" [michellemalkin.com] instead of the real thing [countrystudies.us].
Of course for mass death, it's hard to beat Mao.
Re:Good-by financial markets???? (Score:4, Informative)
But as oppressive as things have been, he could have ordered a brutal crack down on the protesters.
He did.
The commanders of his military all said "fuck that", and his order went ignored.
All he has left at his command is the regular police force, and he likely won't have that for long.
Things aren't as bad as they could have been not because he showed any degree of restraint or sanity, but because his generals didn't join him on the oblivious power trip.
Re:Good-by financial markets???? (Score:4, Insightful)
High road? He's been on TV crowing about how he is the country's leader of freedom. Nothing but hollow rhetoric.
He fired the entire cabinet of technocrats, in a lame attempt to deflect blame to others, and is only making the crowds angrier. He could have ordered a more brutal crackdown, but he knows that's what caused the Shah of Iran to lose, so he's not willing to make such a suicidal move. The high road would have been for him to announce a peaceful transition to democracy and upcoming elections and a repeal of his emergency powers that he's been using to suppress free speech and jail people without cause. Egypt is known for the most brutal police and prisons in the region.
Worked recently (Score:3)
He could have ordered a more brutal crackdown, but he knows that's what caused the Shah of Iran to lose
Not sure I buy that, since in a more recent example the "brutal crackdown" model worked really well for Ahmadinejad, sad to say.
I'm in agreement with other posters that Mubarak simply doesn't have "brutal crackdown" as an option because the army would not obey it and he would then lose their support (which is also why I don't think he has ordered anything like this).
Re:Good-by financial markets???? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just pointing out...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989 [wikipedia.org]
"Small voluntary civilian gatherings started on 15 April around Monument to the People's Heroes in the middle of the Tiananmen Square in the form of mourning for Hu Yaobang."
"The movement lasted seven weeks after Hu's death on 15 April. In early June, the People's Liberation Army moved into the streets of Beijing with troops and tanks and cleared the square with live fire."
Sometimes brutal crackdowns take a while to get organized.
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Yeah, and for some damn reason we still deal with them, but invade Iraq and hang its leader for using weapons we and our allies sold them, to kill people we help the Turks kill too.. Riddle me that batman.
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His chief problem is the loyalty of the Army. It's hard for folks in Western democracies, where the military is subservient to civilian will, to imagine such a situation where the Army holds the balance of power, but in many regimes in the world that's precisely how it works. That's what got Ben Ali booted out of Tunisia. The Army wouldn't open fire on protesters, and that was it. The police, which traditionally in such regimes, are the real source of terror, do not have the numbers or the weaponry to p
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Yea, thats how the UN works, it just goes in.
Actually the UNSC would hem and haw for weeks about it, someone would threaten a veto or four, probably France just to be a pissed off spoiler because of the Suez Crisis in '56. Then there'd be the decision about the make up of the peacekeeping force, someone would insist on alot of African Union troops, probably France, which would piss off the Egyptians and the Arab League, since some of those AU troops are Christians, and by then the entire place is stable on
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Yea, thats how the UN works, it just goes in.
Actually the UNSC would hem and haw for weeks about it, someone would threaten a veto or four, probably France just to be a pissed off spoiler because of the Suez Crisis in '56. Then there'd be the decision about the make up of the peacekeeping force, someone would insist on alot of African Union troops, probably France, which would piss off the Egyptians and the Arab League, since some of those AU troops are Christians, and by then the entire place is stable on it's own, or a farking war zone like Mogadishu on a Sunday in 1993.
The only folks who just "go in" are the Americans and sometimes NATO.
And if the Americans did that they would be "evil empire builders!!11!!" and only "there for the (oil|canal|unobtanium)!!!!1! "
Re:Good-by financial markets???? (Score:4, Interesting)
Egypt's military has been the source of power for decades, so this is not like Tunisia where the military will just stand idly by.
Ironically in another Middle East Country -Turkey the military has often intervened when the governments have gone off track, so they have actually helped keep that country from going radical at times -although they are currently a little nervous about the moderate islamist government currently in power there.
Cries for Western Style Democracy seem to go unheeded in parts of the world where rigid power structures and theocracies reside. Not that Western Style democracy seems to be working that well in the US these days...
I'm just sayin'
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If that is what the people want it is their right to have such a government.
Re:Good-by financial markets???? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think the Muslim Brotherhood will take over. Egypt actually has many political Opposition parties and alternative leaders, like Ayman Nour, the Wasat party, etc. They'd be far more likely to win than the Brotherhood. Keep in mind they've been sitting this one out for various strategic reasons. Even so, if they had to run for elections, they'd run towards the center like many other groups. Banning a party, as Mubarak did, will only make it more hardline. Whenever a far right party wins seats, they either are forced to moderate their ideas or they usually lose the next election.
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Apparently you haven't been paying attention to egypt. Nearly 80% of the 'common' people there support them in some fashion, including sharia law. They've been inciting people there for weeks, and they also have been driving the various opposition groups to overthrow the government. Whenever whatever happens, you can bet that the muslim brotherhood will have a hand in it, besides that they're already ratcheting up the 'time to exterminate israel' speeches.
Yep interesting times, wouldn't surprise me to se
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If that is what the people of Egypt want, they have every right to it.
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And when they lose again, and this time Israel says "Fuck you, we're keeping Sinai", then all the anti-Israelis will moan and groan about how mean and nasty Israel is.
I'm not sure how repeating history will get the Arab countries out of their current troubles.
Re:Good-by financial markets???? (Score:4, Interesting)
Nearly 80% of the 'common' people there support them in some fashion
Source? I can see that in 2005 elections [wikipedia.org], MB candidates running as Independents got 88 seats in parliament out of 454 - that's less than 20%, and a far cry from 80%.
Re:Good-by financial markets???? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're going to have to show me some citations there. Do you actually trust opinion polls in a police state that lacks free speech?
When you ban all other political parties, they get together, moderates and radicals alike. It's because they have a common goal to get rid of the existing regime and are being persecuted together. That's why the Brotherhood is seen as popular because they are the !=Mubarak party. When you remove that block, the supporters fragment once more. Look at Iraq for example; all the formerly-banned opposition groups have divided into their respective parties; Communist, Salafi, secularist, Velayat, etc. They were all opposed to Saddam, and he painted them all as Muslim extremists, traitors, puppets of Iran, Israel, and the US, etc. Most of them weren't.
If you remove Mubarak and allow the formation of political parties once again, you won't see religious extremism take over. Jeffersonian democracy is not like that, instead you get competing factions that will cancel each other's votes out. You'd get a spectrum of political parties from right to left; the Muslim Brotherhood, the Wasat, the National Democratic Party (Mubarak's regime), Socialist party, Communist party, etc. Egypt is not the same as Iran or Saudi etc. You have a large urban class, Cairo is like the Hollywood of the Arab world, and there are tens of millions of non-Muslims living in the land. This revolution is not over religion, it's over political freedom, poverty, and against police repression.
Re:Good-by financial markets???? (Score:5, Insightful)
Egypt's military has been the source of power for decades, so this is not like Tunisia where the military will just stand idly by.
This just in: the military is standing by while the people exercise their right to revolution.
Re:Good-by financial markets???? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Muslim Brotherhood aren't an islamic hardline fascist group. They are in favour of a secular state. And in any case they are no where near having majority support.
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http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=11146
the Muslim brotherhood has ties to fascism that predate WW2 and has active ties to Europe and the US in addition to the Middle East.
-I'm just sayin'
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Wow, quiet the fair and balanced news source you picked there. Might as well link to something on stormfront while you are at it. These are the same assholes who tend to make their man of the year torturers and murders. So long as they tortured or murdered brown people.
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What are you basing your assumption on that the regime will be replaced by extremists? The protesters seem to be of every walk of life and from every ideological point of view. Even the Muslim Brotherhood recognizes the secular Nobel Peace Price laureate ElBaradai as the main opposition spokesperson now [wsj.com].
If anything, this could very well mean a good thing for the west, with a more secular and broader government of this huge power in the middle east. Of course, uncertainty doesn't make everyone in the differe
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Even more sad is that the last time America tried to get involved more directly with Egypt, it very nearly resulted in World War III starting.
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur_War [wikipedia.org]
Stated in the article is how the Soviet Union decided that it had enough and wanted to conquer Israel with Syrian & Egyptian assistance. The only thing that stopped Russia? The fact that Nixon put the USAF at DEFCON three and opened up all of the missile silos in North Dakota with the promise they would be us
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Why start WW3 over a tiny little apartheid state?
I just do not understand how a nation that does that, then uses its intelligence agencies to commit murders all over the world and hides/lies about its nuclear weapons is somebody we should be risking our necks for.
Re:Good-by financial markets???? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a novel idea: How about we stay the fuck out. The last thing the US needs is to get involved in "nation building" where we weren't invited. Our track record over the last several decades isn't that good when it comes to nation building anyway. Just not our forte.
Oh, don't get me wrong, when you need people killed or stuff broken, our American military is seriously second to none. Perhaps that is what we should stick to, when it is appropriate.
At this point, it would seem the Egyptian citizens have taken responsibility for their own destinies, and unless we are clearly and unambiguously invited, we should stay out. And even if invited, if we can't help them according their own wished, for any reason, then we still stay out. The LAST thing we need is sticking our noses in the middle east when it isn't wanted. From what I can tell, what the citizens want from the US is only VERBAL support anyway. They don't want us there, for good reasons.
Again, this is from a vet, so is a son of a retired Korea/Vietnam vet. If you have no experience in the military or have no family members to risk, you are welcome to disagree.
Re: (Score:3)
Finally some common sense.
I mean, be honest, people. Imagine your country is in turmoil and you overthrow your government for insane corruption. You finally get rid of them. Now suddenly some foreign soldiers come in, declare that they are going to "help" you (whether you like that or not) and they suddenly decide how your country should be rebuilt, because what's good for them at home is good for you there too.
Let's even imagine their intentions are good and they're not just there to open your country to s
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
> Down with the dictators! ... what?
And up with
Re: (Score:2)
Democratically elected governments.
Re: (Score:2)
Great answer. But in Egypt today all there is are crowds demanding Mubarak leave, and if that happens, there is no "democratically elected government" waiting to fill that vacuum.
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That takes time. That does not mean letting a brutal dictator stay in place is a good idea. If he was smart he would have already announced when elections would be held and withdrawn his bullshit emergency powers.
Re: (Score:2)
> Down with the dictators! ... what?
And up with
Ponies. Preferably of the OMG! variety.
Duh.
Re:Yup (Score:5, Informative)
Despite many claims that dialup is worthless, it's actually quite useful - just slower
If all you used was some specific programs that made use of API calls... dial up might be indistinguishable from broadband. Last I checked standard dial up could deliver about 4-5 Kb/s. 2 Kb/s with a crappy connection to the CO.
A tiny program written specifically for tweeting or IM with a bare bones interface (like IRC) could easily work on dial up. I should know.... for years my connection at home was 2.8 Kb/s with THREE bonded modems. If I could do IRC on *that* it's absolutely possible to just do IM and tweets.
A Roman-style Senate which had NO leaders. No caesars or presidents or anybody else who might become sick with power.
Really? How did a Roman-style Senate prevent corruption and nepotism? Sincerely curious.
Re: (Score:3)
Really? How did a Roman-style Senate prevent corruption and nepotism? Sincerely curious.
I'm trying to see how any incarnation of a Senate is anything but the very definition of corruption and nepotism. Yeah, I'd be curious as well.
It is important to note that Rome was a Republic, not a democracy. The Senate was essentially a lifetime appointment originally and turned into an inherited office over time. Arguably the U.S. Senate is heading that way too.
Re:Yup (Score:5, Informative)
First, the Roman Senate most definitely had leaders, and they had amazing powers to manipulate it. It was these powers that allowed it to be subverted eventually by military men like Pompei, Caesar and Crassus, and then be swept aside as Octavian did. And Octavian wasn't even a caesar, just a mere first citizen :)
Second, the Senate was a consultative body, which had no actual power, legislative or otherwise. All it could do was issue advice decrees. Unless those were made into laws by other Roman institutions that actually had legislative powers, Senate proclamations remained just that - proclamations. Of course, the main reason those proclamations had some influence, and were largely implemented as laws once adopted was the fact that the Senate was comprised of the richest, most influential and sick with power Roman citizens.
Third, read some history before you post funny things on slashdot.
Re: (Score:2)
Who's next...? Down with the dictators!
Silvio "Pimp" Berlusconi
Re: (Score:2)
No sadly it isn't
Mubarak hasn't lost any palaces or military bases. He still is in control with the military backing him.
The reason they are not firing is because they simply don't have to. The protesters are poor living hand to mouth before the protests and will eventually have to stop just to get food and survive.
It is a waiting game. The protesters don't have enough support and the leaders will be ruthlessly found, beaten tortured and murdered once things calm down. You don't put the head of your Int
Re: (Score:3)
Which in the long term will ensure Egypt would have the same sort of revolution Iran had. I wish our leaders had the stones to admit he needs to go and that we have been propping this asshole up.
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Plausilble Deniability (Score:2)
[okay, I snatched that from Independence Day]
No news in; no news out; if they attain 'peace' within a week or so, they allow 'journalists' to print how the uprising was caused by a few malcontents. Eventually they go all China and control internet accessibility... all in the name of peace. And the worst part is, they could come out looking squeaky clean, like, "Ah, Mubarak handled business, saved monuments, etc."
(I doubt that will happen, of course, but I think that's Mubarak's thinking/hoping/wishing/pra
Re: (Score:2)
Makes it harder for the protesters to organize. If they organize they might actually start doing real damage. Also while it doesn't stop the press it does make messes (read atrocities, beatings, mass graves) easier to hide. Though Egypt bodies have a tendency to stick around.
Re:Yup (Score:5, Informative)
He is already a real dictator.
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- He is already a real dictator.
So, you're thinking they couldn't do worse [historyplace.com]?
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You know, Saudi Arabia is also next door. I wonder if they are next?
Re:How could this happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
If they even ask. They are just as liable to blow up your building on the spot and not worry about 'asking'.
Actually, you are both wrong... (Score:2)
You don't need to send men with guns when you can do the same much easier by sending one man (perhaps two) with a piece of paper.
Comply or be arrested, have your equipment confiscated as evidence, your premises padlocked and your bank accounts frozen while you wait for any and all licenses you have to be examined by court.
They'll probably even let you defend yourself from "outside" - your trial won't be up for a couple of months/years anyway.
Have fun feeding yourself and your family with no money, no job an
Re: (Score:2)
This is the Patriot Act with AT&T and others acting in collusion with the gov't, if it happens in the USA.
Re:How could this happen? (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe it's my residual American chauvinism, but I just can't imagine any patriotic person anywhere blindly shutting his country totally off of the international computer network, Regardless of what any corrupt 82-year-old man tells them to do. I'd just hem and haw and techno-babble them blind about how it just couldn't be done.
You're not a corporation. I'm guessing Telecom Egypt's board members all gave little speeches about how they wanted to uphold the rights of their customers, but they had obligations to their employees to make sure they weren't punished, and an obligation to the shareholders not to put their equipment and future business at risk, and besides there are other internet providers to choose from, and they aren't actually preventing from people speaking so it's not really violating their free speech, and the terms of service had either explicit or implicit terms about how in times of mass protest, the service could be suspended.
And then they unanimously voted to shut down for a few days, while they all went on holiday to a more stable country to look at real estate. Just in case.
There was probably a bit of disagreement over whether or not they should and could stop paying their employees (aside from the security guards) during the shutdown.
Re: (Score:2)
Or use RFC1149 [wikipedia.org] updated with wicker packets [bible.cc].