Metal Reviews

Has the Arab Spring been a failure in terms of creating a more democratic Middle East?

Even though it's still early days, it appears that for the most part the revolutions are spiraling into civil war or have been effectively neutralised.

Egypt - now run by the military with no true democracy in sight.

Syria - close to civil war, if not already there.

Libya - civil war, TNC is unstable and there are appears to be significant internal struggles that have already spilled into violence between the various factions.

Bahrain - uprising quashed with help from Saudi Arabia and UAE.

Yemen - unstable, violent and potentially sliding back to civil war.

There has been no further democratisation in any of the other Arab countries ranging from Morocco to the heavily oppresive Saudi Arabia.


The only bright spot is Tunisia, where they're actually getting ready for elections.

But then Tunisia was always more stable and less oppressive than the other countries mentioned above.

As much as I'd like to say I applaud the efforts in Egypt and Syria, this seems like little more than another upheaval- that momentarily will place a "democratic republic" or whatever have you, until the usual tyrant, Islamic ruler, or whatever have you kind of autocrat reemerges. These people are naturally savages so whatever type of example of Western rule they seek to emulate, it inevitably devolves into the usual revolution bullshit that Trapt wets his blanket for everynight. These people are hopeless and are better left blowing each other up in the name of their "Allah".

Prick. To expect these things to have resulted in any thing but increased oppression would have required a lot of different circumstances. The military in these countries were too strong and the people lacked community institutions to maintain democratic practices. Online social networks helped fill that role for a time but the govt was able to crack down on it possibly easier than if they had been local community groups in basements.

It's always some grander social planning that has to be pristinely orchestrated or else your grander ideal doesn't pan out does it? Why can't you just accept the fact that these bastards are backward religious towelheads, that were once illustrious thinkers, surgeons, and artisans until they embraced the bastardizing curse of fundamentalism. Obviously they have all the social settings to train suicide bombers, conduct massive anti-Western protests, and train their students in the art of Jihad. It's always some shitty excuse you have to justify these primitive towelhead's lack of humanity.

Fuck the middle east

Better networking throughout communities and the lack of an oppressive authoritarian military doesn't seem like some pristine, orchestrated plan. It just means that people would need ways of being able to communicate without being imprisoned or murdered by the authorities as was quite often with Egypt and was a factor in inciting the dissent.

lol, you talk about how barbaric they are yet your solution is to blow them all up.

I never said I'd blow them up you retard, I said they're better off blowing themselves up.

But elsewhere you've made the distinction between Muslims and Islamicists, no? They don't all resort to violence given that distinction so why should we not show concern for the innocent bystanders, the non-Islamicists?

This has been an issue in prior threads and one that gets sticky as they do nothing to quell the Islamists in their ranks. As far as I'm concerned they can all blow themselves to bits in their own jihads, Sunni's, Shiites, stinking like camelshit while the mushroom cloud envelopes them all silencing the middle east "conflict" for eternity.

What do you do to quell White power groups, the KKK and countless other extremist Right groups? Why didn't you stop the assassin that shot the representative lady in the Southwest from misrepresenting your views and resorting to extremism?

I'm not white pal, nor am I right wing, I call them like I see em, and if you are too politically correct to entertain the notion that not everyone fits your incoherent postulation of everyone being inherently "nice" then you're fucked.

Silly mistake dammit. I'm sorry, boss. Every nationality as problematic currents within it that I could point to. The example fails but the broader arguments stands.

I don't know how my assumption of people being generally decent has anything to do with this. I question your claim that people are responsible for the actions of those around them. It's a very reductive account to reduce all Muslims to some homogenous group and then ascribe to the entire group of vastly diverse views and backgrounds collective responsibility for the actions of such a minute number of individuals within this overly broad group. 1.57 billion Muslims are responsible for the actions of how many Islamicist terrorists?

The would be assassin that shot Giffords was not "right wing"... are you going to continue spreading misinformation?

Seems a bit early to be pronouncing any victory for the revolutionaries, yet. And expecting the results of said revolutions to be friendly liberal democracies a la the west is probably a bit much. I sympathise with the democrats over there, but don't think we should be getting involved. Certainly don't agree with Steve's semi-racist fuck 'em all attitude - new middle eastern markets will be great for trade, apart from anything.

So, when did regime change suddenly become ok?

I said that?

Yeah, they've got a lot of camels, Qurans, and AK-47'S to flood the market here with.