imra-usa.org

(A general view shows the Swiss mountain resort of Davos December 28, 2011. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann)

Leaders of the Arab Spring sought to assure the world’s elite in Davos that the rise of political Islam is not a threat to democracy, and pleaded for help creating jobs and satisfying the hunger of their people for a better life. Politicians, activists and entrepreneurs from countries that have cast off dictators and held free elections in the last 12 months were prized guests at the World Economic Forum, where they asked for patience, understanding and investment.

The new prime ministers of Tunisia and Morocco, both chosen from Islamic parties, dismissed Western worries about a surge of political Islam across North Africa and sought to dispel the notion that the promise of last year’s protests had faded.

“I do not believe the new regimes should be called political Islamist regimes. We must be careful with our terminology… For the first time in the Arab world, we have free and honest elections that led to democratic regimes,” Tunisian Prime Minister Hammadi Jebali told a Davos panel.

Twelve months ago, stunned Davos delegates watched live television images of crowds surging into Cairo’s Tahrir Square in a political earthquake few had anticipated. Arab officials and civil society activists urged Western executives and commentators not to demonize the Islamic movements that have gone from prison to parliament and the corridors of power in a year of stunning transformation.

“I would like to ask the businessmen in the room. Have you suffered from the victory of the Islamists? You supported the dictatorships in the past,” Moroccan Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane said.

“Today we can guarantee your interests more than they did in the past.”

Read the full story by Warren Strobel and Paul Taylor here.
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FaithWorld

Arab Spring into a Nuclear Winter?
Photo Credit: A Game of Roles

I warned readers in my article of June 2008, that if Obama became President he would be such an incompetent moron that his actions would drive the price of gold to ,000 an ounce.

When I wrote that article gold was trading at 883.50 per ounce. How close did gold get to that prediction? Just a few months ago it was a hundred dollars shy of the mark.

I say give the idiot another four years and gold should surpass the ,000 mark.

Here’s something that should help the gold price peak:

Haaretz Daily Newspaper,
22 Nov 2011,
Arab Spring will just bring upon Islamist dictatorships

The United Nations Development Programme’s 2002 Arab Human Development Report stated that “deeply rooted shortcomings” existed in Arab countries. In other other words, Arab societies were sick. According to the report, this sickness was reflected in the lack of “respect for human rights and freedoms,” the status of Arab women, and the poor state of “knowledge acquisition and its effective utilization.”

The follow-up report in 2003 stated: “True democracy is absent and desperately needed. The educational system is severely retarded; schools produce ignorant young men and women. Most of the [Arab] intellectuals] realize, even if they deny it, that most of what was said in the most recent Arab Human Development Report is true.

So if you were thinking that the so-called Arab Spring was going to fix all that, well, you’d better think again. It looks like the Arab Spring will be followed by an Arab Winter. On second thought, this is a development that was entirely predictable: The Islamists are going to inherit the mantle of the dictators.

Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Muammar Gadhafi in Libya were corrupt dictators who outlived their days. They all suppressed the Islamic movements in their respective countries, and were all thus on the side of the seculars in their own perverse way. The same holds true for Syria’s Bashar Assad, whose father, Hafez, killed some 20,000 people in the city of Hama in 1982, quelling a rebellion by the Moslem Brothers. Now, his son, Bashar, no less ruthless, seems to be about to go the way of Ben Ali, Mubarak and Gadhafi.

…

But who is going to win the elections when they take place – in Egypt, in Libya and eventually in Syria?

We already have a preview: In Tunisia, the country that had been the most secular and westernized of the Arab states, the election was won by Ennahda, the Islamic party, with the advocates of a secular Tunisia left far behind.

The western media, in an attempt to put a good face on what has clearly been a disappointing outcome, insists on calling Ennahda a “mildly Islamic party.” But the facts are there for all to see: Tunisia is coming under Islamic rule. And there is no reason to expect a different outcome in Egypt, Libya or Syria, when elections are held there.

A wave of Islamic rule, with all it entails, is sweeping across the Arab world. It will replace secular dictatorships with Islamic ones. We should have expected nothing else.

…

Observers may fool themselves into believing that the Islamic parties contesting the elections in the Arab countries are “mildly” Islamic, or “moderate” Islamists, but their leaders are neither mild nor moderate.

Soon Islamist extremists running these new Arab governments will be seeking nuclear weapons. Will Obama handle them as he handled Ahmadinejad and Iran? Will he commit America to the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons as he pledged in Prague in April of 2009?

Planck’s Constant

Egyptians protest outside the Israeli embassy in Cairo after tearing down a concrete protection wall nearby

Here, in the photo above, we see the fruits of President Obama’s efforts to bring much-needed change to the Middle East.

Al Jazeera English, Egyptians break into Israeli embassy in Cairo

Israel’s embassy in Cairo has been stormed by protesters who tore down one of the outer embassy walls and threw thousands of documents from the embassy’s windows.

The angry Egyptians also replaced the neighbouring country’s flag with their own after breaking in on Friday night.

The group had left a mass rally at nearby Tahrir Square, where organised protesters called for reforms by the military, which now governs Egypt.

“Thousands of documents were being thrown out of the windows, but it’s unclear which floor they were coming from,” our correspondent Sherine Tadros said.

“Indications are that it’s pretty much a chaotic situation. Protesters set on fire two police vehicles.”

Sources at the Egyptian interior ministry told Al Jazeera that up to 300 people had been injured as the result of clashes around the embassy, and one died of a heart attack.

I would like to point out that while Al Jazeera reports that the military now governs Egypt, it is obvious that the military did not interfere; the military police nearby did nothing to stop the attack.

I wonder if this will be the modus operandi by the military when Muslim mobs begin destroying the ancient artifacts of the country, see Did the New Rulers of Egypt Read My Article?

If the military is simply allowing anti-Israeli sentiment to vent, they may well jeopardize not only the uneasy peace with Israel but with US largesse as well:

Commentary Magazine, Egypt’s Rulers Are Letting the Mob Rule

Egypt’s military knows very well the price of abandoning the peace with Israel would be disastrous. It would not only put their untested forces in harm’s way, but also take away the government’s pipeline of U.S. aid that the military prizes. They may believe allowing Islamist and nationalist agitators to besiege Israel’s embassy gives these haters a meaningless victory without doing any real damage to the country’s strategic needs. But as Mubarak learned to his cost, Cairo mobs sometimes take on a life of their own. Fueled by the hate that is part of the country’s popular culture, the impulse to demonize Israel and Jews can’t be quarantined. If left unchallenged, it will only grow and lead to worse things than a torn flag or a demolished security wall.

Egypt’s leaders need to counteract this trend before it gets even further out of control. And they need to be told bluntly by Washington that if they don’t, the flow of baksheesh into their coffers will soon end.

I do not want to mislead any of my readers, the destruction of Egyptian antiquities, a new war with Israel, and economic collapse in Egypt if the US stops sending aid would drive up the price of gold higher than it is now (it hit 83 this morning) and make me mucho money. But this is precisely why I voted for Obama: I knew he wouldn’t know how to handle crises like these.

I expected him to screw up royally and send gold into the stratosphere. So far he’s doing great. When I announced back in June of 2008 that voting for Barack H. Obama will make me Rich gold was trading for a thousand dollars an ounce less.

I love this guy.

Planck’s Constant