Some people - or just one person - have/has kind of recently razzed me about never posting on here, and I'll totally admit - I haven't written anything recently. It's kind of obvious.
DESPITE all the fantastic topics worth talking about (that I swear, I'll end up covering);
Wikileaks
DADT
Anonymous as a "vigilante group"
Pressure the school system puts you under
North Korea in general
Obama's State of the Union
The common man's opinion
and MOST recently:
EGYPT.
It's a crazy story to tell! I won't really forget me going onto my Facebook and reading my friend's post on "holy shit, check out this news," which led me to Al Jazeera news. Sitting on the school media lab (watching video render) I left it on in the background. British reporters essentially WTF'ing over what's going on in Egypt.
I'll give some slight insight as to what's going on over there, in case you're unaware.
Egypt is a joke of a "Republic," it's got one major person in power that was "elected" by the people of Egypt. Problem?
It's been the same dude for the past 30 years.
Maybe I forgot to mention.
(Oh it's been so long since I've typed that)
Before the rioting officially started, the "vigilante group" known as "anonymous" (rule no. 1) began to cause some relative unrest within the people. A few denial of service attacks on the Egyptian gov't website later, our favourite leader, Muhammad Hosani Mumbarak decided that ya know what, I've had enough of this interenet stuff and cut off every single Egyptian from the internet. So what happened?
You must have seen it on the news. Riots galore. Hundreds of thousands of people rioting against the same common enemy - the many they thought was the best choice. They went so far as to near;y burn down the most important museum in human history; the Museum in Cairo. You know, what the King Tutankhamen guy? People were flooding the streets, lighting everything they could on fire, knowing out buildings, flipping cars (and when that didn't work, they just lit the car on fire instead) and just causing a shitstorm.
So what does out favourite leader do?
Well shit, if that's what the people want...
I'll just elect people I would chose!
This is all ignoring the fact that the Egyptian military, though while officially on Mumbarak's side, never once made an aggressive move towards the people. In fact, for three tanks to move across a .5 kilometre square, it took them 45 minutes due to the fact they had to get out of their tanks to shake peoples' hands. The people were chanting "long live Egypt," while essentially parading the military.
So we have the immediate problem - a ruler who has overstayed his welcome. We have the cause of the rioting - shutting down internet and making matters essentially worse. But what's the real issue?
Leadership.
Egypt lacked true leadership.
Follow along with me on this one, because I'm gonna back-track a bit here.
I was going for one of my routinely night strolls and decided I'd stop in at the corner store, down the street. It's jokingly known as the Arab store, since everyone that works there is, though incredibly nice, middle-eastern. While I was buying my Doritos - of the Cool Ranch variety -I couldn't help but ask;
"So what do you think of all this stuff goin' on in Egypt?"
The old man scoffed, he brought his thin-wire glasses a bit lower down his nose. "People doing what they need to do!" As if I asked the dumbest question in the world. "People are rebelling against the people that held them accountable for things they didn't do, and refused to give them what they deserved."
"What about the government?"
He scoffed again. "Government? What government? Over there? There is no democracy, no real voting. In the middle-east, I bet you couldn't find one single 'democracy' that works."
And you know what? He's right. He's totally right. There is no government, there is no leader, there is no power to each citizen. There are laws, laws that are enforced - in many cases unfairly.
Egypt lacks a true leadership. That's the problem here. That's the real root of the issue. Egypt has had a fake, untrue and flat-out wrong form of "government" for too long, and they snapped. This is something that anyone could have seen coming, but no one wanted to.
If he was a real leader, then two things would have happened:
1) He would have left office long ago
2) There never would have been rebelling.
They lost sight of what true leadership is. Leadership is making the tough choices that sometimes the consensus cannot agree on, good leadership is looking out for the well-being of the people you're leading.
Leadership is, and will never stop being, in the eye of the follower.
Until Egypt finds a real leader, until Egypt has someone true, right, and looks out for the people, then these riots?
They're only the beginning.
