Worrying developments in the Middle East

TomTom

"the claim comes at a time when the West would rather concentrate on the economy"

Hogwash. The West has been sabre-rattling for ages and looking for a pretext. First Libya, then Syria, then Iran, then Pakistan

TrevorsDen

Given the criminal behaviour of the Egyptian army then are we surprised. But thats democracy for you. Whats important is that there are further elections. Totalitarianism would be a disaster.

Jeremy

Religious nutjobs with nuclear bombs - that's just what the world needs.

Austin Barry

And probably this afternoon’s bomb outside the British Embassy in Bahrain was the work of Iranian-backed Shia militants.

As Obama’s naive Iranian outreach programme is long since dead, and as the US Sixth Fleet is on station with the USS George HW Bush battle group (70 fighter-bombers and 8 guided missile cruisers and destroyers) and with the Israeli Defense Forces raring to go, why not extract Iran's incipient nuclear teeth now?

It has to be done sometime.

Cogito Ergosum

@Jeremy 4.45pm
Quite so. How do we persuade the world that Thomas was the only disciple with a grain of common sense and indeed moral courage?

daniel maris

I think Trevorsden is right. Unless you are prepared to abandon all democratic principles, there is no alternative. We can live with Turkish-style Islamists as in Egypt. In Iran there is a full blown Caliphate in effect and it is a terrorist-totalitarian state, known to use terrorist proxies. They simply can't be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons.

cg

Thank God that idiots like Austin Barry are not in charge.

strapworld

Trevors Den as you are, now, an International Authority on Democracy. Please define democracy and then explain just what we have in this Country where politicians ignore the public and carry on regardless.

Austin Barry

cg

What makes you think I'm not?

Dimoto

Jeremy - "Religious nut-jobs with nuclear bombs".

Who would that be ? Pakistan ? Israel ? or maybe the USA ?

Nansen

dimoto - from the way you build up your questions, it appears that you already have some idea.

john gerard

And these results from Egypt are from the major cities where all your beloved Google executives and poncy Facebook users live. Wait till you see the results from the parts of the country full of illiterate farm-hands. Let Somalia-on-the-Nile commence. And dimoto, Israel and the USA are not religious nut-jobs with nuclear bombs, and you know it. That's idiotic.

Mudplugger

There is more chance of a camel passing through the eye of a needle than of any democracy developing in the Arab states.

Dictators and military chiefs, you can deal with - religio-nutjobs you can't.

Arab Spring ? Be careful what you wish for.

Jez

"First, the initial Egyptian election results confirm the expectation that Islamist parties would dominate the first round of elections: they've taken more than 50 per cent of the vote."

You guys never thought that. You were all for the fall of Mubarak- thus the inevitable Islamist takeover.

You were under the impression that everyone else was wrong to expect this scenario and that a Facebook blogger would bring in some trendy liberals to run Egypt.

That is what happened.

This is why seemingly Iran has always been behind the Arab Spring and has gleefully watched you lot doing their dirty work for them.

this is purely from reading how you and your colleagues have reported these uprisings and watching snippets of Press TV on my SKY package.

It's an absolutely terrible situation.

joe

Just as the fall of the Shah led to the rise of the mullahs, so the fall of Mubarak and Gaddafi will inevitably lead to the rise of the mullahs in North Africa.

This was always obvious to everyone except the loony left, Obama, and the BBC ( same thing, really ).

TomTom

"We can live with Turkish-style Islamists as in Egypt."

Yes you can, but people in Turkey are finding it very difficult living under the values of Anatolian peasants....

arnoldo87

@ strapworld

One of the parameters of a mature democracy is the the acceptance of defeat in an election by a governing party and its leaders. When Gordon Brown walked his family away from Number 10 last year, it was more than good news for Tories - it was good news for all lovers of democracy.

@ Jez and others

It will probably take years for the Arab world to reach that happy position, but they have to start somewhere. They have to try out democracy. If the Islamist governments preserve free, regular elections, a free press, religious freedom and human rights then that should be fine by us.

We really cannot complain about the Middle East being run by dictatorships and at the same time bemoan the result of fair elections after they have been supplanted.

daniel maris

Mudplugger,

Your policy is no policy, because as the IRA used to say, so with the Islamists, they only need to be successful once. We saw that in Iran. It has now happened in other countries. We see that the previous "hard man" policy did NOT offer security. I note that the liberal/secular parties in Egypt do poll around a quarter of the vote even now. What if we had put serious money into backing democratic movements over the last 50 years is it really so unlikely we would now have a democratic Egypt. Wherever there are genuine democrats we should back them as hard as we can and ensure they have the sort of resources that the Saudis give to our Islamist enemies.

Frank P

David

Had you ever bothered to read the comments following postings from yourself and those of your colleagues, I'm sure you would have been concerned about 'worrying developments in the Middle East' much earlier - perhaps since the inception of this blog? In fact had you bothered to read the posts of your ex-co-blogger Melanie Phillips, you would by now have been frantic. But your recent diploma course in The Bleeding Obvious now seems to have have been useful.

As it is, Austin Barry's suggestion at 5.05pm yesterday seems to provide a rational solution to your concerns.

Frank P

Btw

Btw I take it that Daniel Korski Is still on that diploma course? He has been testing the waters with his prep work on this blog, also.

Frank P

Just one last thing: this should really worry you:

http://www.melaniephillips.com/hague-shakes-his-puny-fist-in-the-thirty-years-invisible-war

arnoldo87

@ Frank P

It's hard to work out what you prefer in the Arab World, Frank.

Is it the sort of dictatorship that has been the norm for decades, or an unavoidably immature democracy where the victors do not meet with our approval?

I agree with your comments about the election outcomes being "bleeding obvious" before the event, but ANY government elected in a fair and democratic manner, that maintains full democracy thereafter is surely preferable to dictatorship - isn't it?

And I also concede that there is a possibility/probability that a full democracy will NOT be maintained thereafter.

It's all part of a very long process where the populations of the ME will learn that true democracy is the least worst of all govermental methods.

Anne Wotana Kaye 1

cg
December 4th, 2011 5:46pm

Report this comment

Thank God that idiots like Austin Barry are not in charge.
Your eloquence appears to match your intelligence.

Frank P

arnoldo

I just want the staffers to catch up with their customers, that's all. And our politicians to wake up to the dire threat from Islam in all its voracious methodology: from bloody terrorism to cunning deceit and infiltration. How you have the gall to spout about the benefits of democracy by slow osmosis in the ME, in light of what is happening in Europe at the moment - what particular form of 'democracy' do you you hope they will eventually follow? And is our own bastardised government, which nobody voted for and is anyway bereft of any real sovereign power now, likely to become 'democratic' before the Arabs? Do that help you with my mind set?

arnoldo87

Frank,

Yes, it does help me - thanks. You seem to prefer the Middle East to be ruled by secular or quasi-Islamic despots than by democratically elected governments, be they Islamist or otherwise.

As a Blairite, I don't need to be told to worry about the threat of militant Islam, but I do consider the advance of democracy in the Third World as a priority, and indeed see it as one means of defeating that threat. If Iraq can hold on to its fragile democracy long enough to see it benefit from its inherent oil wealth, then it will stand as an example of what can be achieved by democracy.

As for democracy in Europe, ours and the other individual nation states of the EU have perfectly good democratic systems. However I, like you, despise the cavalier manner that the Eurocrats have treated the electorates of Holland, France and Ireland over recent referendums.

Just because that has been a disgrace is no reason to blacken all democracy in Europe.

Kevin

The situation in Italy today implies that democracy as it is popularly understood is not possible. Technocrats are running the country ostensibly because a majority of the people do not know what is good for them.

Frank P

Arnoldo

Democracy - schmocracy! There is a World War in progress and we haven't a hope in hell of winning it as long as gullible useful idiots like you populate this once sceptred, now septic, Isle. If the events of the last ten years haven't told you that, then you're mutton. By 'we' I mean the Western hegemony that won WWII, the current 'leaders' of which have their heads so far up their own arses that an ENT quack could mistake their noses for tonsils.

Perhaps you consider yourself, as a 'Blairite', part of the NWO. Just WTF is a 'Blairite' btw? Don't bother to answer that because I know the answer really - and it has just four letters only one of which is a vowel.

Frank P

Incidentally I have no right to 'prefer' anything in the Arab World as you put it; I just have the right to watch the cunning barbaric bastards with both eyes - and the one in the back of my head and to urge my government to protect us from their worst excesses and save our civilisation from the jihad. A fat chance of that, it appears. But it still is my right at this moment in time. Next week, who the fuck knows?

arnoldo87

Frank,

You're not related to Jonathan Miller, are you?

Or Christopher Hitchens?

Anne Wotana Kaye 1

Frank P
December 6th, 2011 12:35am
Well said, sir!