Topao Prijem.

I try to practice a bit of Serbian; topao prijem apparently means warm welcome in Serbian. You can thank google and recnik.krstarica.com for that. Ah, technology!

Welcome to my blog; I am the Dragon of San Marcos. I can at least say I am a dragon who lives in San Marcos... and having lived there for more than a decade, I have some attachment to the region!

I didn't know what to start off with for my first post, but apparently being an article sifter for current world events from a particular country in the Middle East must suffice.

I am talking in particular about Egypt, the bonfire set off by the crackling sparks of Tunisia. How many elements went into making this perfect storm I'm not sure of, but Egyptian protestors do cite Tunisian pride and bravery as cause for their revolution. (Uprising in Egypt)

Professor Juan Cole gives a good primer on the last few decades of Egyptian leadership, starting from 1952 and progressing through Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar El Sadat through to the current Hosni Mubarak, "president" for thirty years. (Egypt's Class Conflict)

A British journalist, Jack Shenker of the Guardian, was arrested while covering the protest, and subjected to the same treatment as the Egyptian protestors. He managed to record the situation live on his dictaphone. (Egyptian Protestors Beaten) He has also reported on his perception of the current conflict, that a "fear barrier" of the regime has been breached, where the protestors are no longer afraid of the government. (Guardian Reporter on Break of Fear Barrier)

What happens in Egypt will depend on the military. Unlike Tunisia, where the military stood to the side, and only personal government thugs were available to Ben Ali, Hosni Mubarak and his officials are all derived from the military and thus much more likely to receive its support. This is not certain, though. The military has been deployed while the police force has been withdrawn (whether for reasons of sympathy with the protestors among the police, or Mubarak attempting to break up the protest by introducing lawless elements, is not certain). There have been no major clashes yet.

If you are looking to gain some type of understanding about the Egyptian revolution, these articles should give you an introduction. I believe this is worth bringing to the attention of United States citizens, because the struggles of the Egyptian citizenry is not so far from our own in essential nature. Mubarak sold out his people just like our government is selling us out. In fact, while it may seem like Mubarak has been selling his people out to the United States, what he, and our government, has done is sell us out to the corporations. Mubarak and Sadat's methods of increasing the economy was by selling out state companies to those who could afford them... the moneyed elite or foreign investors.

With the extensive outsourcing nearly every giant corporation does, you could hardly call them American companies any more. They're just cancerous growths that infect perhaps almost every country in the world. Their CEOs store as much money as they can out of country, in places where tax loopholes let them keep millions and billions more. If the United States went down, they'd just flee to the next place that would harbor them... probably China and India. They don't give a shit about us, nor do they give a shit about our country!

What happens in Egypt will have ripples here in the United States. We should learn from these people's struggles, because they mirror our own. Thank god that we have the chance to learn from the mistakes of others, so that perhaps we will not tread upon history's pitfalls time after time.

I begin this blog with this post, so that the above wish may come true.
The Dragon of San Marcos