For those of you who may not know, Egypt has shut down just about all the internet in the whole nation. There was a video put up of a protester being killed and then the internet was turned off. President Obama had a press conference calling for Egypt to turn everything back on with and interesting universal rights arguement.

“I also call upon the Egyptian government to reverse the actions that they’ve taken to interfere with access to the Internet, with cellphone service and to social networks that do so much to connect people in the 21st century.”

Yes, that is a simplified recap;). But what is this going to mean to the whole area? With Tunisia overthrowing their dictator, revolution is in the air!

Some hope for more than just a governmental revolution. My friend Andrea, GreenBacksGal, tweeted for liberation for the women of the area.

#Egypt – the oppression you are protesting against is nothing compared to the oppression your women face every day. You MUST free your women

I am glad to see some reach so high but I am cynical as to this having such far reaching effects. What do I really hope for? That this has a rolling effect. First Tunisia, then Egypt and maybe this will get all the way to the students in Iran.

NerdDad and I were talking about what it would really take to exact the political/governmental change we hope to see. And what I came up with is something that went out of style/became illegal in the 1980’s. These revolutionaries need arms! When they have enough weapons to protect themselves from the tyrants that rule over them then and only then will we see the people of the Middle East have true self determination!

I am not saying that we should pick out who we want to win and arm them. But there has to be something we can do as a nation and international super power to help these people to determine their own fate. And I mean something other than going in and actually policing these nations. When we armed the Mujahideen to prevent Russia from just rolling their tanks over all of Afghanistan and the desires of the Afghani people in the 1980’s it seemed to help. And it wasn’t that we were just empowering a government that we wanted, or it would have been a democracy, but trying to enable them to be self determined.

I don’t know if that is the magic answer but there must be something that we can do without taking control. What would you propose?

I pray for the rebels in Egypt and Iran for their safety and for them to possibly see that everyone in their society desires the rights they are so desperately fighting for!