Tunesia, Egyt and now Yemen: a domino effect in the Middle East?

On top of their high unemployment, that makes them struggling to feed themselves and their families.

my friend and her family came back from Cairo yesterday. almost all of her comments in the last 12 - 24 hours have been in regard to the media and her feeling that this is primarily a media $ event. I definitely want to talk to her more about this tomorrow.

Egypt wasn't on many people's radar before these events tickled our sentimentalities.

almost all of her comments in the last 12 - 24 hours have been in regard to the media and her feeling that this is primarily a media $ event.

spendi, Looking at the tv at your local pub about the people in Egypt is not evidence of "pretty well fed."

According to the Korea Institute for National Unification's annual White Paper on Human Rights in North Korea, 2004, North Korea operates a rations system, under which all citizens receive food, clothing, medical care, housing, education, and pensions directly from the government. The thinking behind the system is that it will instill gratitude in the people, yet, because of the small amount of goods they receive, they are being kept from becoming lazy and frivolous. The grain distribution system had collapsed by the 1990s, with citizens receiving less than one-third the amount they needed to survive. In late 1996 grain rations were stopped altogether, leaving people to acquire their own food, mostly from the black market. Those who lacked the resources to buy food off the black market faced starvation. In fact, from 1996 to 1999 millions did starve to death in one of the largest famines in modern history. Exact figures are unknown because of the North Korean government's strict control of all information entering and leaving the country, but as many as three million people are believed to have starved to death, mostly children.

Read more: Poverty in the Developing World - North Korea - Country, Food, Government, Korean, Aid, and Nuclear http://www.libraryindex.com/pages/2678/Poverty-in-Developing-World-NORTH-KOREA.html#ixzz1DDJMAic3

Overview

Egypt is a low-income, food-deficit country, with 19.6 percent of the population – almost 14.2 million people – living below the lower poverty line, on less than US$1/day.

Stark geographical disparities exist between the region of Upper Egypt, desert areas in Sinai and the Red Sea – which are some of the country’s poorest areas with high levels of food insecurity and malnutrition; and between the more developed Lower Egypt region -- where Egypt’s manufacturing, construction and trading take place.

6 February 2011 Last updated at 19:00 GMT
Egypt opposition wary after talks

VIDEO:The BBC's Jim Muir: "Protesters blocked the army from advancing into Tahrir Square and spent the night sleeping under the tracks of tanks"
Continue reading the main story

Egypt's opposition groups say government proposals on how to end the political crisis are not enough.

The banned Muslim Brotherhood and other groups took part in landmark talks with the government after 13 days of street protests aimed at forcing President Hosni Mubarak to resign.

The government has proposed a review body to amend the constitution.

The opposition says the talks are only a first step and the government's offer is insufficient.

President Mubarak has refused to resign immediately, saying that to do so would cause chaos and has said instead that he will not stand for re-election in September.

The government offered to set up a couple of committees: a committee to look at redrafting the constitution, which is very restrictive about who can stand for president; and another committee to look at implementation of these measures.

The opposition members and the so-called "wise men" who were there were saying to me afterwards they were very sceptical about the government's good faith. So they demanded a series of confidence-building measures.

Those include ending immediately the state of emergency which has been in force for 29 years and enables the government to do whatever it likes to supersede the constitution; and other measures, including an end to the incitement to intimidation which they believe is going on on state media.

I don't think they got a clear response from the government; I think everyone's going away to think about their position.

Tens of thousands have again joined demonstrations in Cairo and other cities, calling for him to quit.

Meanwhile, many banks opened for the first time in a week, drawing long queues as people waited to withdraw money.

In all, six groups were represented at the talks hosted by Vice-President Omar Suleiman, including a coalition of youth organisations, and a group of "wise men".

Egyptian state TV said the participants had agreed to form a joint committee of judicial and political figures tasked with suggesting constitutional amendments.

It was the first time the government and the long-banned Brotherhood have held talks.

However, the Muslim Brotherhood said the talks would only continue if the government makes progress on meeting its demands:

* the immediate resignation of President Mubarak
* lifting emergency laws
* dissolving parliament
* releasing all political prisoners

"Our demands are still the same," senior Brotherhood figure Essam el-Erian told reporters in Cairo. "They didn't respond to most of our demands. They only responded to some of our demands, but in a superficial way."

The BBC's Jon Leyne, in Cairo, says opposition members and the "wise men" who were also there told him they were sceptical of the government's moves.

Leading opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei was not at the talks but one of his representatives met Vice-President Suleiman separately.

Speaking to NBC's Meet the Press, he described the process as "opaque".

He said he was proposing a one-year transitional period where Egypt would be run by a three-member presidential council as it prepared for free and fair elections.

The Brotherhood had previously said it would not take part in the negotiations.

The Islamist group is Egypt's most influential and well-organised opposition but it remains officially banned and its members and leaders have been subject to frequent repression.

Mr Mubarak has blamed it for the unrest and said that if he leaves, the group will exploit the ensuing political chaos.

The Muslim Brotherhood denies accusations that it is seeking to create an Islamist state in Egypt.

The government is seeking to revive an economy said to be losing at least $310m (£192m) a day.

Many shops, factories and the stock exchange have been closed for days, and basic goods have been running short.

Correspondents say many Egyptians have been wondering how quickly daily life will return to normal regardless of the outcome of the struggle for power.

But they also say there is no let-up in the magnitude of the protests in Tahrir Square, and the mood is almost back to the festival atmosphere of the first few days, with many families and young children in attendance.

Analysis
Jon Leyne BBC News, Cairo

The government offered to set up a couple of committees: a committee to look at redrafting the constitution, which is very restrictive about who can stand for president; and another committee to look at implementation of these measures.

The opposition members and the so-called "wise men" who were there were saying to me afterwards they were very sceptical about the government's good faith. So they demanded a series of confidence-building measures.

Those include ending immediately the state of emergency which has been in force for 29 years and enables the government to do whatever it likes to supersede the constitution; and other measures, including an end to the incitement to intimidation which they believe is going on on state media.

I don't think they got a clear response from the government

Sunday, 6 February 2011

Robert Fisk: The wrong Mubarak quits. Soon the right one will go

Protesters in Tahrir Square are right to be sceptical despite the apparent shake-up in Egypt's ruling party


A demonstrator praying before soldiers yesterday
-Reuters

The old man is going. The resignation last night of the leadership of the ruling Egyptian National Democratic Party – including Hosni Mubarak's son Gamal – will not appease those who want to claw the President down. But they will get their blood. The whole vast edifice of power which the NDP represented in Egypt is now a mere shell, a propaganda poster with nothing behind it.

The sight of Mubarak's delusory new Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq telling Egyptians yesterday that things were "returning to normal" was enough to prove to the protesters in Tahrir Square – 12 days into their mass demand for the exile of the man who has ruled the country for 30 years – that the regime was made of cardboard. When the head of the army's central command personally pleaded with the tens of thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators in the square to go home, they simply howled him down.

In his novel The Autumn of the Patriarch, Gabriel Garcia Marquez outlines the behaviour of a dictator under threat and his psychology of total denial. In his glory days, the autocrat believes he is a national hero. Faced with rebellion, he blames "foreign hands" and "hidden agendas" for this inexplicable revolt against his benevolent but absolute rule. Those fomenting the insurrection are "used and manipulated by foreign powers who hate our country". Then – and here I use a precis of Marquez by the great Egyptian author Alaa Al-Aswany – "the dictator tries to test the limits of the engine, by doing everything except what he should do. He becomes dangerous. After that, he agrees to do anything they want him to do. Then he goes away".

Hosni Mubarak of Egypt appears to be on the cusp of stage four – the final departure. For 30 years he was the "national hero" – participant in the 1973 war, former head of the Egyptian air force, natural successor to Gamal Abdel Nasser as well as Anwar Sadat – and then, faced with his people's increasing fury at his dictatorial rule, his police state and his torturers and the corruption of his regime, he blamed the dark shadow of the country's fictional enemies (al-Qa'ida, the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Jazeera, CNN, America). We may just have passed the dangerous phase. ...<cont>