printFormer Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak suffered a heart attack in the course of an inquisition “investigating graft and abuse allegations.” Also on the public prosecutor’s docket: “violence against protesters.” (Link)
Expect Egyptian freedom fighters, many of whom are of the once-thwarted Muslim Brotherhood, to grow more restive as it becomes clear that “freedom” will not make manna fall from the heavens—especially since most Egyptians are not, as far as I know, demanding a liberalization of their economy.
The Egyptian court judging Mubarak will oblige the masses. It’ll masquerade as a court of law, but I suspect that this tribunal will more closely resemble the French Revolutionary Tribunal, meting justice by popular demand.
UPDATE: A “Day of Cleansing” is what the rebels are, ominously, calling the next stage of the Egyptian revolution.
During “the early days of the movement … Egyptians showered the Army with flowers and saw them as defenders of the people after tanks rolled into the streets to restore order after violent clashes with police.” It was not as though “hundreds to thousands of people have [not] been detained by the Army and tried in military courts without access to civilian lawyers. Yet until recently, such criticism of the Army had not been widespread.”
The people, it would seem, have changed their fickle minds.
The blood will flow, and still something will be amiss.
Why do you think that, bar the likes of the tea party, is it never real liberty that the majority wants?
Here’s why: Radicals, libertarians among them, believe that because all people seek safety and sustenance for themselves, they’ll allow those they dislike to peacefully pursue the same. These radicals are oblivious to reality. People are not naturally good. They want what is not theirs. Free up the Egyptian economy. Some will rise, others will fall.
A cry will then go out for a third party (the new government) to take from those who rose and give to those who fell.
Egypt, Syria, Libya, etc,etc, ad nauseum. Who knows what is going to happen? If we think the Middle East has been hard to deal with in past years just think what it’s going to be like now. An aroused Muslim world linked with unsettled, possibly revolutionary governments, weak Europe and stupid America portends nothing but confusion. Boy, am I glad we have our foreign policy being implemented by those two cagey veterans Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Where are Abbott and Costello when we need them?
Those who used to suck up to the lion can’t wait to kick him in the groin now that he is defanged. (Credit Mencken making this very observation about Porfirio Diaz 1910 – now Mubarak 100 years later)
Here is what the French did (great old movie with a dynamite Madame Defarge):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Wn1EfrbqCs&feature=related
Meanwhile, our own bloated multi-trillion dollar Washington Leviathan may be a bit like 1780’s France before people find that their savings and “Social Security” were blown away on ethanol subsidies and bombs for Pushtuns.
Here is la Revolution:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln58d-K17XY&playnext=1&list=PLA50118381FBE96A1
What is truly remarkable about the American founders is that they understood human nature. They knew that majority rule in its basest form was mob rule. I’ve heard it said that pure democracy is much like two wolves and a lamb voting on what’s for supper. Of course the wolves want lamb!
Socialist claim to understand the condition of man, but seem to have no understanding of his true nature.
Maybe it is because I grew up during the cold war era when many Revolutionary Tribunals were communist but, the words Revolutionary Tribunal almost always have an ominus sound to me. The reference to Kangaroo Courts seems entirely appropriate.