On Tuesday, January 25, 2011, the leaders of the Egyptian protest group, April 6 Youth Movement (A6Y), led hundreds of thousands of protesters chanting, "Bread, Freedom, Human Rights" into Cairo's Tahrir Square. The events that followed completely surprised the economic elites gathering for the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland. Few put much stock in the importance of the actions of young people in Egypt until the protests overturned that country's entrenched power structure in a matter of weeks…….
Tag: rioting
There Are No Easy Choices in Libya
LOS ANGELES — Adam Zyglis, the editorial cartoonist of The Buffalo News, did a portrait of President Obama sitting on an oil drum in the classic chin-on-hand pose of Auguste Rodin's "The Thinker." Behind him, war raged in the Middle East and "Freedom" was under a tank and rubble. Zyglis' caption was "The Overthinker." Well, although Obama may be a touch too thoughtful to be a president in the decisive mold of a Harry Truman, he does have a lot to think about. I count at least 11 options in Libya, all of them risky…….
From Concord to Cairo: Freedom
BOSTON — As I remember my American history, our revolution began on April 19, 1775, when 700 British regulars, the Redcoats, left here to march west to the small villages of Lexington and Concord to destroy weapons caches they knew were hidden there by American rebels. The British column encountered 80 or so members of the local militia on Lexington Green and routed them, killing eight locals. The Redcoats reached Concord and found some buried cannon and balls, but most of the rebel weaponry had been hidden again farther away. They marched through the village to the Old North Bridge……
Schell in New Yorker – Egypt
Senior Fellow Orville Schell's book Mandate of Heaven was cited in an article in The New Yorker for the strong parallels present in the China uprising in Tienanmen Square in 1989 and the recent civil riots taking place in Egypt. "It was bracing to be reminded in vivid, emotional detail of just how murderous the People's Liberation Army was when ordered to clear the protest," says author of the article Steve Coll. "The students and the urban workers who had persuaded themselves that they were near victory were also stunned by the Army's indiscriminate, decisive violence. They seemed to expect……
Seib in HuffPo – Egypt
Faculty Fellow Philip Seib posted a blog on the Huffington Post responding to the protests and riots currently occurring in Tunisia. "In Tunisia, the uprising was triggered by the self-immolation of a young man who was overwhelmed by the hopelessness of life under oppressive rule," wrote Seib. "His sacrifice galvanized thousands more whose patience was at an end."……