I'm obsessed with the protests in Egypt. I've been following them on the BBC World News Service, Al Jazeera and the NY Times. The Beeb is my favorite, though I read that the Tories plan to slash its budget. That would be a shame since it's the best news service in the world, but slash and burn seems to be the philosophy these days. Slash and burn in Egypt, for sure. I'm all for getting rid of Mubarak, but if the uprisings succeed, I worry about the chaos that might follow. Or who will take his place, though surely you couldn't do worse than him. Famous last words -- Remember Iran and the Shah.
I'm amused, though, at how the media outlets and western governments refer to Egypt as the largest "Arab" nation because it isn't. It may be the largest Middle Eastern country in terms of its population, but it's not Arab. It was Nasser who started that idea with his pan-Arabism crap. This ideology aimed to kick out the Western powers (and to make him the ruler), but it was also racist in nature. It discriminated against the many other people living in Egypt: Copts, Turks, Lebanese, and Jews, just to name a few, all who had been living there for thousands of years.
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