Could a Nobel Peace Prize injure the sphincter muscle?

David Seaton's News Links

"None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available pursuant to this act shall be obligated or expended to finance directly any assistance to any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup or decree." - Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2006

Obamachev

It is getting harder and harder to write about all of this stuff nowadays, every time I start, the old gag reflex kicks in.

This would all be simpler if we conceded that gradually after WWII and picking up speed dramatically after 9-11, the United States has evolved into a corporate-military-security state... in short a "regime".

And like our fellow old Cold Warriors, the Soviet Union, (which also was a corporate-military-security state-regime), we need to wrap our realpolitik in millenarian ideology... "We are building global democratic capitalism comrades".

The "end of history" and all that... while we force-feed political prisoners in our Guantanamo gulag, kill American citizens without trial, etc, etc.

The present news cycle: with the absurd "where's Wally?" of the Snowden affair... and the Egyptian coup d'etat that is not a coup d'etat, where an army that literally lives off American aid (in exchange for not troubling Israel) massacres the supporters of a legitimate, democratically elected government that they have overthrown manu militari, without the White House even giving them a sharp tug on their leash... impossible for anyone, anywhere to believe that the USA has not colluded in all of this... all of this brings us face to face with our hypocrisy... rubs our noses in it really.

Perhaps hypocrisy is to be preferred to cynicism, because as La Rochefoucauld famously said, "Hypocrisy is the homage which vice pays to virtue", which means that if good didn't exist, bad people wouldn't have to pretend to be good... Which is probably the best you can say about America's present performance on the world stage.

America’s post-September 11th national-security state has become so well financed, so divided into secret compartments, so technically capable, so self-perpetuating, and so captured by profit-seeking contractors bidding on the next big idea about big-data mining that intelligence leaders seem to have lost their facility to think independently. Who is deciding what spying projects matter most and why? The New Yorker

These days, President Obama reminds me a bit of Mikhail Gorbachev, more by the hopes that so many people around the world misplaced in both men and their Nobel Peace Prizes, rather than any personal resemblance between them. 

Gorbachev, when he was in power, was infinitely more experienced, not only politically, but though his life trajectory and with a much deeper understanding of the system he wanted to reform and also a much more sincere commitment to reforming that system and not just making beautiful speeches filled with "soaring rhetoric" about how nice "change" and "hope" were.

Gorbachev, unlike Obama, didn't just "talk the talk", he "walked the walk" and in so doing proved that intervening in huge, complex and corrupted systems, is likely to end in disaster. Obama has proved that talking is much more personally productive than walking. But like a great African American said, many years ago, "he can run, but he can't hide".

Another wise old fellow once said something to the effect that the present cannot judge itself anymore than we can judge a person by what he thinks of himself, that time alone will be the judge of our present affairs, but that old man also said that the present is always pregnant with the future and in time it will be clear that everything that is to come tomorrow was present in some form today, right now, under our noses waiting to come to fruition. Sobering thought that... nu? DS

Egypt

David Seaton's News Leaks

The first round of voting in Egypt shows a strong showing for the Islamic parties, both the Muslim Brotherhood and the more extreme Salifist party Al-Nour. At this point the Islamists appear to have taken two thirds of the vote. 

This first round took place in urban districts where more western oriented parties were expected to make a good showing. The next round of voting will take place in rural areas, which are more traditional and conservative, so the final result will probably have the Islamists with clear, governing majorities. In the west there is now much wailing and gnashing of teeth at this turn of events. In my opinion, whether this is bad news or good news for the west depends much more on us than on the Egyptians.

The first task of a democratically elected government is to deliver the goods to the voters. As Egypt's tourist industry is probably its biggest source of foreign exchange, I would imagine that a stable, democratically elected government of any ideological color would try to create an environment where tourists feel safe. In my opinion a democratically elected Islamic government might be the most efficient bulwark imaginable against terrorist groups aiming to disrupt tourism, thereby emptying that government's coffers. Starting a war with Israel would also be a distraction from eliminating corruption and bringing better social services to the population, which have always been the hallmark issues of the Muslim Brotherhood.

It is likely that in the medium to long term the most important result of the Egyptian revolution will be Egypt's return to being the intellectual and cultural center of the Arab world...  Without Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are only poor substitutes. A democratic Egypt (Islamic or not) will dynamize the entire region... neutralizing that soft power was Washington's aim in supporting Mubarak.

Probably the greatest danger to Israel from the new Egypt would come from Egypt's soft power, not its military forces. More than tanks and rockets, Egypt means movies and books and the Al-Azhar university (founded in 970AD). This renewed cultural projection and prestige will change the entire texture of Arab culture and Sunni Islam in the coming years.

The biggest error hand wringers are making is to confuse Egypt with Iran. Shiite Islam is a minority in the Muslim world and Iranians are not Arabs. The religion of Egypt is Sunni Islam and Egypt is the largest and most important Arabic speaking, Sunni Muslim country, so whatever the effect of an Islamist Egypt will be, it will be bigger than the effect of an Islamist Iran, because it will occur within the dominant religious current and in the principal language of the Middle East and in its most important nation.  It will be most interesting to see if Egypt joins Saudi Arabia in opposing Iran or whether they will extend their hand to the Ayatollahs.

As far as the USA is concerned the problem of the Middle East is a problem of domestic American politics. Israel is the measure of all things and Israel is a society in crisis and just as a person with a toothache, when tiny Israel twinges, the US political establishment can think of little else. And just as a person with a toothache has problems thinking straight. American policy in the Middle East is wallowing in incoherency and has been for years.

Israel is not in a happy situation, all the tides in the region are running against them and with all their eggs  in the American basket they watch uneasily  as the USA  pulls back from its military involvement in the Middle East.  Certainly any democratic regime in Egypt or any other Arab country is not going to be friendly to Israel, certainly while the Palestinians are being treated as they are...  As it stands today, I cannot image any revitalization and empowerment of the Arab masses could ever benefit Israel, I think it is way too late for that. The Israelis had a real chance for peace after Bush the First won the opening round of the Iraq war, they passed it up, too bad for them, ... Like Bessie Smith once put it, if they make their own bed hard, that's the way it lies. DS

Globalization and its discontents: a new paradigm

I have an "impossibility theorem" for the global economy (...). It says that democracy, national sovereignty and global economic integration are mutually incompatible: we can combine any two of the three, but never have all three simultaneously and in full.  Dani Rodrik - Kennedy School Harvard

David Seaton's News Links

In the Middle East -- and who knows where else next -- the masses are on the march and the mystery and the mystique of revolution unfolds once again.

There is a mixture of things, like a chemical formula, that leads to revolutions, here is a sample of  the mixture that is brewing up in the Middle East right now:

• Generally people are tired of being intimidated and resentful at being tortured and oppressed. 

• Then, thanks to modern medical advances and the lowering of infant mortality, there are huge numbers of young people and very few jobs for them.

• Thanks to advances in education, many of these young people are vastly overqualified for any jobs they might ever manage to get: the revolutionary leaven of dissatisfied intellectuals is well known. 

• Globalization (seen as neocolonialism) is offering growing opportunities for ruling cliques to get obscenely rich by privatizing the local economy in benefit of foreign multinationals. This causes discontent among mid-ranking army cadres, who are nationalist and among much of the local business community, who don't share in the pillage (remember the role of the bazaar of Tehran in the fall of the Shah). And to all this, 

•  Add food inflation, which brings the sans culotte into the street.

• Remember that the rising price of oil brought on by these disturbances adds exponentially to that food inflation.

Everybody has their own spin on Egypt's revolution and the word "freedom" is being thrown about a lot as if it were an end in itself instead of simply being a means, a precondition of action. Who is free? Free to do what? Free from whom? The question might be better expressed as: now that they are free, what are they going to express with that freedom?

Of course the American media inventively associates "freedom" with "free market capitalism" and as we saw in the previous post on the BBC video, "The Century of Self", this was an idea that cost American business a huge amount of money and time to sell to its first victims, the American people, and is not that deeply rooted in countries that were heavily exploited former colonies at the mercy for centuries of foreign interests and not their own..  I think that many commentators are neglecting the anti-imperialist angle in all of this: once free from the local "foreign client" dictator, the desire all these countries have for national independence and sovereignty and how that contradicts with America's brand of multinational corporate globalization.

Again, most commentators read the role of Islam in this struggle for freedom from foreign tutelage in a shallow manner. If American dominated globalization is seen as a dissolvent of this new freedom to "be themselves", then what ideology is robust enough to be indigestible by globalization. What set of ideas and customs can bullet proof these newly free societies from what the Chinese call "America's candy bullets"? Obviously Islam is well suited for that role, both nationally and internationally.

Sheik Qaradawi, a popular television cleric whose program reaches an audience of tens of millions worldwide, addressed a rapt audience of more than a million Egyptians gathered in Tahrir Square to celebrate the uprising and honor those who died. On Friday, he struck themes of democracy and pluralism, long hallmarks of his writing and preaching. He began his sermon by saying that he was discarding the customary opening “Oh Muslims,” in favor of “Oh Muslims and Copts,” referring to Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority. He praised Muslims and Christians for standing together in Egypt’s revolution and even lauded the Coptic Christian “martyrs” who once fought the Romans and Byzantines. “I invite you to bow down in prayer together,” he said. He urged the military officers governing Egypt to deliver on their promises of turning over power to “a civil government” founded on principles of pluralism, democracy and freedom. And he called on the army to immediately release all political prisoners and rid the cabinet of its dominance by officials of the old Mubarak government.“We demand from the Egyptian Army to free us from the government that was appointed by Mubarak,” Sheik Qaradawi declared. “We want a new government without any of these faces whom people can no longer stand.” And he urged the young people who led the uprising to continue their revolution. “Protect it,” he said. “Don’t you dare let anyone steal it from you.”(...)  Scholars who have studied his work say Sheik Qaradawi has long argued that Islamic law supports the idea of a pluralistic, multiparty, civil democracy. But he has made exceptions for violence against Israel or the American forces in Iraq. “You call it violence; I call it resistance,” said Prof. Emad Shahin of the University of Notre Dame, an Egyptian scholar who has studied Sheik Qaradawi’s work and was in Tahrir Square for his speech Friday. New York Times

And speaking of the Chinese and what  they call, "America's candy bullets". Quite a few people seem to think that China is a loser in all this business because it isn't a liberal democracy on the western model.  They miss a very important point: China does not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries and does not lecture them on "values" or export revolution. America is guilty of all these sins and is an inveterate and unrepentant sinner. For any former colony of the west, be it a democracy or a dictatorship, China is a more comfortable business partner than the USA. I think China is finally going to be one of the biggest winners of the upheaval in the Middle East.

The United States has two principal objectives in the Middle East: to control the world's access to its oil reserves and to give political and military cover to the state of Israel, for reasons of purely domestic, American politics.

As to the role of the Israel Lobby in Washington, truly the joker in the deck, they have their work cut out for them, Americans may soon find themselves in the dilemma of being forced to choose between their undying love for Israel and their legendary addiction to cheap gasoline. Israel is a wonderful country, but you can't fill your gas tank with it and drive to a minimum wage job over American distances. This is a dilemma that could leave America's strained domestic peace in tatters. Oil at $200+ a barrel could bring America's sans culottes into the streets... Running, walking, but not driving.  DS

We are all Egyptians now

The Tahrir Square uprising “has nothing to do with left or right,” said Dina Shehata, a researcher at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. “It is about young people rebelling against a regime that has stifled all channels for their upward mobility. They want to shape their own destiny, and they want social justice” from a system in which a few people have gotten fantastically rich, in giant villas, and everyone else has stagnated.  Thomas Friedman - NYT

We have an inequality index that can go head to head with Egypt’s. Of course food’s cheaper here, so no one’s in the streets. Thomas Geoghegan, Chicago labor lawyer - NYT

David Seaton's News Links

No matter how sympathetic we are with their struggle, most of us following the events in Egypt probably see it as something very foreign: an exotically attired, dark skinned people, speaking heavily accented English in a far off land, rebelling against the corrupt regime of an aging dictator, something to which we can only identify with by an intensely imaginative use of our powers of empathy, seeing few similarities with our own lives and condition. Wrong. Thomas Friedman, of all people, brought it all closer to home for me.

I am no a fan of Friedman's, but the insight he gave me today was worth reading through a ton of his previous twaddle: "young people rebelling against a regime that has stifled all channels for their upward mobility" and "a system in which a few people have gotten fantastically rich, in giant villas, and everyone else has stagnated", sounded disturbingly familiar to me. It reminded me of many developed countries, but especially the USA. Reading further in the same online edition of the New York Times, I came upon the next quote by a Chicago labor lawyer, Thomas Geoghegan, "We have an inequality index that can go head to head with Egypt’s. Of course food’s cheaper here, so no one’s in the streets." Suddenly Cairo seemed much closer to home.

There is one of those wonderful Spanish sayings which goes, "when you see your neighbor's beard on fire, put your whiskers to soak". The domestic peace of the the "world's greatest democracy" could be hanging on the price of America's food and gasoline.    I was also struck by another common factor, the similar declining value of a university education:  all these revolts began when a Tunisian university graduate, unable to find work in any profession in consonance with his education and forced to earn his living peddling vegetables from an illegal pushcart, set himself on fire in protest.  His suicide struck a chord in the entire Arab world and maybe, deep down, farther afield as well.

In a globalized economy, everyone is exposed to the same general forces.  We are ruled by the "butterfly effect" and the butterflies are flapping their little hearts out all over the world today. Some countries and some people are much more vulnerable than others and that makes them more immediately and visibly victims to the forces that are also bending millions of people's lives more subtly and more gradually out of shape in more powerful, richer and more dynamic economies.

With every day that passes it seems clearer to me that growing social and economic inequality is the most dangerous wild card in the world's deck and that within a decade, or perhaps much less, what is happening in Egypt today will be seen as more than the beginning of a revolution in the Arab world,or in dictatorships, but a harbinger of even wider disturbances in places you might least suspect. DS

America's future role in the Middle East

"There are forces at work in any society, and particularly one that is facing these kinds of challenges, that will try to derail or overtake the process to pursue their own specific agenda.... [That is] why I think it is important to support the transition process announced by the Egyptian government, actually headed by now Vice-President Omar Suleiman." - Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State

When will Washington learn that you cannot simultaneously proclaim your commitment to democracy and freedom and then insist on dictating who is allowed to win? - Stephen Walt

It's worth remembering what has led to the rise of Islamic extremism and anti-American rage in the Middle East. Arabs see Washington as having supported brutal dictatorships that suppress their people. They believe that it ignored this suppression as long as the regimes toed the line on American foreign policy. If Washington is now perceived as brokering a deal that keeps a military dictatorship in power in Egypt, de jure or de facto, the result will be deep disappointment and frustration on the streets of Cairo. Over time, it will make opposition to the regime and to the United States more hard-line, more religious and more violent. - Fareed Zakaria

"In this world, it is often dangerous to be an enemy of the United States, but to be a friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

David Seaton's News Links

It would appear that not only is Israel the Middle East's sole vibrant democracy, the United States is sparing no effort, leaving no stone unturned, to keep it that way.

Seeing how the US administration is handling the grassroots rebellion in Egypt (it is much too early to call it a "revolution"),  it would appear that except for supporting  the region's necklace of military dictatorships and their mukhabarat state security forces, the USA has no role in the Middle East other than  to assist Israel in killing people and blowing things up.

American pronouncements about democracy, its institutions and the rule of law sound more and more like the following video:

At this point the conflict of interests between America's realpolitik-geopolitical-superpower necessity to dominate and control the world's access to the oil reserves of the Middle East and the purely domestic, but no less  plumbean, imperative to defend à outrance Israel's right to maintain an atomic-apartheid, Club Mediterranee in the midst of such spectacular and oil-soaked misery, seemingly has the United States paralyzed in its hypocrisy. DS

How do you say, "Tienanmen" in Arabic?

Bring on the goons

Omar Suleiman (Arabic: عمر سليمان‎; born July 2, 1936) is an Egyptian politician and military figure who was appointed Vice President of Egypt on January 29, 2011. Previously, he was Minister without Portfolio and Director of the Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate (EGID), the national intelligence agency, from 1993 to 2011. In his role as Director of EGID, the British Daily Telegraph dubbed him as "one of the world's most powerful spy chiefs". Foreign Policy magazine ranked him the Middle East's most powerful intelligence chief, ahead of Mossad chief Meir Dagan.

Dr. Marouf Suleiman al-Bakhit (Arabic: معروف البخيت‎, born 1947) is the current Prime Minister of Jordan. He first served as Prime Minister from November 27, 2005 until November 25, 2007. He was previously the Jordanian ambassador to Israel and the national security chief. Appointed as Prime Minister by King Abdullah II less than three weeks after the 2005 Amman bombings, Bakhit's main priorities were to maintain security and stability in Jordan. He was reappointed as Prime Minister by the King on February 1, 2011, following weeks of protests.

David Seaton's News Links

When an opaque "security state" (name for military and police backed oligarchy) is falling apart, it is much more important to observe what people do, than what they say.  Only a fly on the wall would really know what is happening inside the regime... quick bring me a fly on the wall! In  a military dictatorship even the flies, especially  the flies work for the regime.

If you look at the biographical snippets of the two prime ministers above, one Egyptian the other Jordanian, you will see that the two men have more in common than the name "Suleiman": they are both military intelligence chiefs. This is because the real danger the ruling oligarchy is facing in both countries at this moment is not so much the street, but the young officers in their armies who when they shave in the morning these days, look in the mirror and think how pretty that face would look on a postage stamp.

As I write this, in Cairo the regime has called out its "demonstrators" (read goon squads and agents provocateur) and the Egyptian army command is asking the people to "return to normal life", which of course they won't.  There will be "clashes"... Fights will break out, shots will be fired, blood will flow... some poor army conscript will stop a mysterious bullet (fired by an agent provocateur) and the army will be sent in to restore "order".... and how do you say, "Tienanmen" in Arabic?

This is why you have the military intelligence working overtime, because this is the moment that a young officer who refuses to fire on the people and leads his soldiers to overthrow the tyrant can in an instant become a hero, sung in song and story for generations, with avenues named after him, or be shot down like a dog and his widow and orphans starve without a pension... or lose his nerve and spend the rest of his life regretting it. Knowing who that young officer might be, even before he knows it himself, is what military intelligence in a "security state" specializes in.

So we watch as the tragedy unfolds... they have even turned the Internet back on so everybody gets a good look. DS

Egypt.... the coup ... The bill?

Up until now, President Mubarak has enjoyed the support of the armed forces. He was, after all, a career air force officer suddenly catapulted to the presidency when Anwar Sadat was assassinated in 1981. But if these protests continue and intensify there are bound to be senior voices within the military tempted to urge him to stand down. -  BBC News

David Seaton's News Links

Lieutenant colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser, who overthrew King Farouk, was an Egyptian army officer. Anwar El Sadat, who succeeded Nasser, was a military officer, who earlier had joined Nasser in overthrowing Farouk. Hosni Mubarak, an air force general, succeeded Sadat on his assassination.

Therefore it would be reasonable to suppose that Mubarak's successor will be a military officer too.

The question would be: what kind of a military officer, what rank?

As a general rule of thumb, the higher ranking the officer, the more conservative the coup.

Notice that Nasser was a Lt. Col, when he removed Farouk, so was Lybia's Muammar al-Gaddafi, when he took power from King Idris, and of course Venezuela's Hugo Chávez was a paratroop colonel, when he attempted his coup d'etat.  American backed generals tried unsuccessfully to overthrow Chávez, but were not supported by the lower ranking officers. Lower ranking officer's coups are nationalist revolutionaries, higher ranking officers like Chile's Pinochet tend to act under American supervision.

In the Egyptian case, the higher ranking officers are probably firmly in the US pocket, but among the colonels, majors and captains there may be men that are of the nationalistic mode of Nasser and that are chafing at Egypt's enabling Israel in league with American interests.

The key to this question may very well be something as simple as the wives of colonels and majors whose husbands are not making as good salaries as the husbands of their sisters working in the private sector. These are men who have direct command over the troops... the fat generals sit in their offices raking in the graft. Imagine the bedroom scenes after family dinners... many a coup d'etat has begun there.
 

Probably the first move to oust Mubarak would come from senior officers, eager to execute a Lampedusian, "change everything in order to change nothing" maneuver and thus keep American military aid in place. If this doesn't satisfy the masses in the street, than a group of younger officers, more in touch with popular feeling, might make their move. The question then would be if those younger officers would be interested in some sort of "national reconciliation" with the Muslim Brotherhood, in which case America's whole foreign policy in the Middle East gets flushed down the Nile.

The colonel becomes a general, the major becomes a colonel and their wives are happy, they are now the stars of the family dinners, the ones who can fix fat state contracts. They have to cut out wine and wear a hijab and pray five times a day? Paris vaut bien une messe. DS

Erdogan and the future of... Egypt

 "For too long, many nations, including my own, tolerated, even excused, oppression in the Middle East in the name of stability. Oppression became common, but stability never arrived. We must take a different approach. We must help the reformers of the Middle East as they work for freedom, and strive to build a community of peaceful, democratic nations." George W. Bush, Speech to UN General Assembly, September 21, 2004

David Seaton's News Links

Bush was actually right when he said that democracy would change the Muslim world, he just muffed the details a bit.

I'm surprised that the son of the only president of the USA to have ever headed the CIA could have been so naive about how American foreign policy actually works. I guess this was just another one of Dubya's many oedipal issues.

I'm in the midst of reading a very interesting book that came into my hands; "For the President's Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush (Dad)", from way back in 1996, written by British historian, Christopher Andrew. It contains the following priceless quote, "The most powerful government ever to fall as a result of covert action was the administration of Richard Nixon." Not for want of trying all around the world, he might have added, (he does actually and in great and fascinating detail).

During the Cold War military dictatorships that were convincingly anticommunist, like Franco's  in Spain, had a blank check from the USA  to repress their populations and regimes that voted the way they weren't supposed to, like Chile, or looked like moving to the left, like Indonesia, got military dictatorships in short order: the list of these countries is very long.  Summing up, the USA has a long and varied tradition of supporting military establishments in repressing any democratic, civilian dissent, if it didn't jibe with what Washington perceived as US interests.

This is part of what is extraordinary about Erdogan moving as far as he has, at the same time confronting Israel over Gaza, and, with Brazil (another Cold War, ex-military dictatorship), voting against US sponsored Iran sanctions in the UN, he is also apparently being allowed to bring the Turkish armed forces, which have always been seen in Washington as the guarantor of Turkey's modern (read pro-American and pro-Israeli) foreign policy under civilian control.

In short. the United States has always supported the Turkish army's ultimate control of Turkish life and now the generals are being hung out to dry.

Now, it must be said that the Turkish army has in no way hindered Turkey's modernization, quite the contrary. That has never been the issue. The Turkish army has been the guardians of the legacy of modern Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, a secular nationalist bent on turning Turkey into a modern European country, despite the continuing traditionalist piety of Turkey's masses. The irony is that the culminating of  Atatürk's ambition of European-ization, joining the European Union, is helping an Islamist-traditionalist political party to disassemble the Kemalist, pro-western, power structure.

Here is a little light reading on Erdogan's referendum:

The referendum result is a triumph for Erdogan's ideology. It's hard to imagine the heads of Turkey's army plotting another coup, given that the reforms now allow them to be tried in civilian court, or the country's high court banning certain political parties as it has in the past.(...) Erdogan will remain hated by the Turkish secular elite, which is concentrated in the army, universities and business community. But he is beloved by Turkey's poorer, devout periphery. The prime minister has straightened the backbone of the marginalized, and in return has received their undying loyalty. Haaretz

In a largely Muslim country that sits at the crossroads of East and West, Turks who treasure secular rule are again warning about a “creeping coup” of political Islam. (...) In truth, the constitutional changes conform to democratic norms. They strengthen individual rights, privacy, and unions. They bring the military – which ousted four governments in the last 50 years – further under civilian control. But the abstract truth is not the same as the political reality in Turkey. The reality is that this is a polarized country, with a large segment of the population increasingly mistrusting of the government. Editorial - Christian Science Monitor

Logically one could suppose that, either the American leopard has changed its spots, has had a massive change of heart and has become willing to let the democratic chips of the world fall where they may, or that perhaps, the US feet are slipping off the pedals of the world's bicycle... (How's that for assaulting and battering a couple of helpless metaphors?).

Now, as important a client as the Turkish army is, there are much more important ones, if money is the measure. Of course, it goes without saying that Israel is the number one recipient of America's military aid, but number two is Egypt and according to the New York Times, Egypt's military consider Israel their "primary threat". Now it would seem obvious to me that the US has not given the Egyptian armed forces some $40 billion dollars over thirty years just to protect them from the Israelis, when it could have been done much more cheaply by simply giving less money to the Israelis.  So it stands to reason that the Egyptian armed forces are receiving the money in order to make it easier for them to control Egypt. Here is how it all works:

 (T)he rules that apply to the rest of Egypt do not apply to the military, still the single most powerful institution in an autocratic state facing its toughest test in decades, an imminent presidential succession.(...)Technically, Egyptian voters will determine their next leader in the 2011 elections, but in practice the governing party’s candidate is almost certain to win. The real succession struggle will take place behind closed doors, and that is where the military would try to assure its continued status or even try to block Mr. Mubarak’s son Gamal.(...) The military has much to lose in the transition, these officers and analysts say. Over the years, one-man rule eviscerated Egypt’s civilian institutions, creating a vacuum at the highest levels of government that the military willingly filled. “There aren’t any civilian institutions to fall back on,” said Michael Hanna, a fellow at the Century Foundation who has written about the Egyptian military.(...) The beneficiary of nearly $40 billion in American aid over the last 30 years, the Egyptian military has turned into a behemoth that controls not only security and a burgeoning defense industry, but has also branched into civilian businesses like road and housing construction, consumer goods and resort management.  New York Times

Egypt, like Turkey, is a large and important country. Culturally Egypt is by far the most important Arab state and significantly, the Muslim Brotherhood has its origins there. Quite a few knowledgeable observers think that, if free and fair elections were ever held in Egypt the Brotherhood would win them. That would explain this further snippet from the New York Times:

The military interprets its writ broadly. A retired army general, Hosam Sowilam, recently said the army would step in “with force if necessary” to stop the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group, from ascending to power.

In fact elections are to be held in Egypt next year, because the ancient dictator, Hosni Mubarak, is ailing, but it would be a miracle if the coming elections turned out to be "free and fair".

(Nobel Laureate and) Former UN nuclear weapons chief and prominent Egyptian dissident Mohamed ElBaradei (...) warned that the (Egyptian) poll would be marred by fraud, and that "anyone who participates in the vote either as a candidate or a voter goes against the national will". He went on to claim that the three-decade rule of president Hosni Mubarak was a "decaying, nearly collapsing temple", and promised activists that regime change was possible in the coming year. Guardian

Sufficient to say that if a process similar to Turkey's were to take place in Egypt -- and although it is a vastly different country from Turkey, the human resources exist in Egypt to make it happen -- all bets would be off in the Middle East.

I have no idea what form a free and democratic Egyptian government would take, only that a country of the size and cultural power of Egypt following the desires of its people would change the entire region in days.

It will be interesting to hear Secretary of State Clinton's comments on Turkey and even more interesting to hear her comments on Egypt and its democratic process... if she makes any. DS

No world for old men... or young ones either

A lesson in how dangerous problems should be handled

David Seaton's News Links
It's time to take off from Obama baiting and rolling in the dust with his supporters and talk about something of real importance.

We earthlings are at present facing the sort of conjunction of intersecting disasters that America's war fighters colorfully call a "cluster fuck" and which William Butler Yeats more poetically described in his famous, "The Second Coming".

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned

Whoever takes the US presidency next January is going to be facing a world which we little understand and less control... and neither will he.

As Professor Immanuel Wallerstein writes about a more than probable Obama victory:

His election will mark - mark, not cause - the end of the counterrevolution of the world right of the 1980s. He has rekindled hope, and created space for a more progressive world. But this space is structurally cramped by the constraints of an ever more anarchic world-system. The basic question is not whether he will transform the world and/or restore U.S. leadership in the world-system - he will do neither - but whether he will do as much as it is possible to do in allowing us all to push our way forward. Even if this is less than the world might wish he could do.

I don't think that either the creaky, cranky Senator McCain, or even the winsome Senator Obama, the "latte Lincoln," or "macchiato Mussolini" is really up to the job, but perhaps no one is. Things will be exploding before, during and after the US elections and the Inauguration ceremony.

Let us look at just one coming disaster that would change the world we live in almost beyond recognition: hunger driven "regime change" in Egypt.

Today I'm clipping a piece by Thomas Friedman from Sunday's NYT.

I'm not a huge fan of Friedman's ... (massive understatement) ... but he is a guru for many and he gets around a lot and talks to a lot of people, tardo-capitalism's cheerful chipmunk, a cheerleader for globalization. It is important that precisely Thomas Friedman and not Naomi Klein or Noam Chomsky is writing the following:

The current global energy-food crisis is, understandably, a pocketbook issue in America. But when you come to Egypt, you see how, in a society where so many more people live close to the edge, food and fuel prices could become enormously destabilizing. If these prices keep soaring, food and fuel could reshape politics around the developing world as much as nationalism or Communism did in their days.

Here it is essential to remember that Egypt is the most populated and culturally most the important country in the Middle East. It is also the home of the Muslim Brotherhood, it is potentially the most revolutionary, even more than Iran: if Egypt ever destabilizes, then poof, there goes the Middle East.

For Egypt’s poor, who make up 40 percent of the population, food makes up 60 percent of their household budget. When wheat prices double, because more U.S. farmers plant corn for biofuels, it is devastating for Egyptians, who depend on imported American wheat for their pita bread. Bread riots are now a daily occurrence here.

I said, "poof". What goes "poof" first? The Camp David Accords. Here is how Wikipedia describes their significance:

The agreement also resulted in the United States committing to several billion dollars worth of annual subsidies to the governments of both Israel and Egypt, subsidies which continue to this day, and are given as a mixture of grants and aid packages committed to purchasing U.S. materiel. From 1979 (the year of the peace agreement) to 1997, Egypt received $1.3 billion annually, which also helped modernize the Egyptian military, turning it into the largest in the Middle East. Soviet-supplied until 1979, Egypt now received American weaponry such as the M1A1 Abrams Tank, AH-64 Apache gunship and the F-16 fighter jet. In comparison, Israel has received $3 billion annually since 1985 in grants and military aid packages.(....) The time that has elapsed since the Camp David Accords has left no doubt as to their enormous ramifications on Middle Eastern politics. Most notably, the perception of Egypt within the Arab world changed. With the most powerful of the Arab militaries and a history of leadership in the Arab world under Nasser, Egypt had more leverage than any of the other Arab states to advance Arab interests. Sadat's alacrity at concluding a peace treaty without demanding greater concessions for Israeli recognition of the Palestinians' right to self-determination incited enough hatred in the Arab world to bring about Sadat's assassination in 1981. Egypt was also suspended from the Arab League from 1979 until 1989. The Camp David Accords also prompted the disintegration of a united Arab front in opposition to Israel. Egypt's realignment created a power vacuum that Saddam Hussein of Iraq, at one time only a secondary power, hoped to fill. Because of the vague language concerning the implementation of Resolution 242, the Palestinian problem became the primary issue in the Arab-Israeli conflict immediately following the Camp David Accords (and arguably, until today). Many of the Arab nations blamed Egypt for not putting enough pressure on Israel to deal with the Palestinian problem in a way that would be satisfactory to them.

Neutralizing Egypt was probably the greatest triumph of American diplomacy since the Marshall Plan and will ensure that history grants Jimmy Carter much more admiration than his contemporaries ever have.

Not much has been heard from the Egyptians since then (that was the whole idea) and those readers who have no memory of Gamal Abdel Nasser may think I am exaggerating Egypt's keystone quality in the Arab and Muslim world. Rest assured I am not.

An Islamic Egypt in these times would electrify the entire Muslim world... The entire world.

Friedman continues to describe the situation that is developing:

What’s happening is that the basic bargain between the Egyptian regime and its people — which said, “We will guarantee you cheap food, a job, education and health care, and you will stay out of politics” — is fraying. Even with the growth of the last three years, government subsidies and wages can’t keep up with today’s food and fuel price rises. The only part of the bargain that’s left is: “and you will stay out of politics.”

Fuel and food, fuel and food... and the gap between the few and the many, the rich and the poor... more Friedman:

From Shubra we drive into the desert toward Alexandria. The highway is full of cars. How can all these Egyptians afford to be driving, I wonder? Answer: The government will spend almost $11 billion this year to subsidize gasoline and cooking fuel; gas here is only about $1.30 a gallon. Sounds like a good deal for the poor — only the poor have no cars, and the fuel subsidies mean less money for mass transit. Think about these numbers: This year Egypt will spend $6 billion on education and $3 billion on health care, far less than the subsidies for fuel. This is a terrible trap. The subsidies should have been phased out when food and fuel prices were lower. Now that they have soared, the pain of removing the subsidies would be politically suicidal. So education and health care get killed instead.

Now, if I ever saw a recipe for an Islamic revolution, that is it.

Egypt is a much more technologically advanced country than Iran and I have been told they could have an atomic bomb in the twinkling of an eye.

And if I ever saw the recipe for a general war in the Middle East that could collapse the world economy, that is it.

It might be that most of America's troubles stem from trying to control and to dominate forces that are too powerful and too chaotic to be controlled. Instead of steering a course through the debris, disaster is multiplied by trying clumsily to "take the bull by the horns", instead of caping the bull artfully... Too many irons in too many fires, too many cooks, too many broths. DS

Every so often something beautiful happens

David Seaton's News Links
Every so often something beautiful happens that makes your heart swell with human feelings of empathy and solidarity.

A wall falling and people behind it flowing out just to buy ice cream, to see their friends they haven't seem for years, or to get married and start a family like the couple in the story below.

The down side? This could blow Egypt apart. American aid has neutralized Egypt, but Egypt is the most important country in the Middle East.

If the Mubarak regime is seen collaborating with the Israelis to put the Palestinians back in their cage it might bring the Egyptian people out into the streets. If the Israeli army enters Gaza and Hamas puts up a real fight then the Egyptian army (captains, majors and colonels) might stage a coup d'etat and a general war might break out in the Middle East. Something much bigger and harder to control than the Yom Kippur war of 1973. Because when people's hearts swell with human feelings of empathy and solidarity it generates an amazing force that politicians oppose at their peril. DS

Wedding bells to ring after fall of Rafah wall - Reuters
While other Palestinians lugged food and fuel from Egypt into the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, Omran Lubbab took advantage of the fall of Gaza's Rafah wall to bring his future bride home.

"No more delays," said Lubbab, a 34-year-old Gaza cameraman, vowing to marry fiance Heba al-Qadi in two weeks' time.

Lubbab was reunited with Qadi, a Palestinian who lives on the Egyptian side of the divided town of Rafah, after stepping through one of the gaps Hamas fighters blew in the border wall dividing the town.

"We have been engaged for two years but our wedding has been delayed because of the closure of the border crossing," said Qadi, who carried two suitcases filled with new dresses into the Gaza Strip to begin her new life.

Israel and Egypt have largely kept the Rafah passage sealed since Hamas Islamists violently took over the Gaza Strip from forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in June.

In a declared bid to stop Palestinian rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip, Israel shut the territory's other crossing points on Friday but eased restrictions on Tuesday after an international outcry over shortages of fuel and other goods.

Qadi will be staying with relatives in Gaza until the wedding.

Her mother, Buthaina al-Qadi, was all smiles as she watched the couple chatting about their wedding reception.

"I am very happy. My daughter is finally going to start a new life and a family," she said.

Palestinian police estimated that more than 100,000 people had crossed into the Egyptian side of Rafah.

"People need to breathe. People need to bring food to their children. It is the revolution of hunger," said one policemen who declined to give his name.

Sunnies plus Israel: the ulimate Persian Gambit

Sunni governments - like the Egyptians, the Saudis and the Jordanians - watched with horror as their fears of a new Shia ascendancy appeared to be coming true. Such fears have prompted the beginnings of a re-alignment. "Something is happening that could have a strategic potential," says Dennis Ross, the US peace envoy to the Middle East during the Clinton years. Ambassador Ross dates the genesis of this to Saudi Arabia's criticism of Hezbollah during last summer's Lebanon war. "Iran," he said, was perceived by many Arab states "as trying to seize control of the Israel-Palestine issue and was using Hezbollah and Hamas as tools". This the Saudis and the other Sunni states saw as a threat because, as Ambassador Ross put it, "if the Iranians were in a position in which they could control the most evocative symbols in the region they could use it against these regimes". Add in the widespread unease at Iran's nuclear activities and you have a potential new alignment where the moderate Arab states and Israel all share common interests. BBC News

David Seaton's News Links
If the Iranians are able to force the Egyptian dictatorship and the Sunni Arab monarchies into an alliance with Israel and the USA against Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah, who are the only ones to have carried out effective resistance to Israel, it will totally deligitimize those regimes in the eyes of their masses and open the door for the Islamists. What looks a very clever, "divide and conquer", tactic is in fact, suicidally superficial. DS

Bush is not going quietly

The Return of the Sheik
Ussi Stefano - 1822 -1901

David Seaton's News Links
Continuing today's leitmotif, Bush is not going to go quietly, he is going to escalate. He is going to dig his hole deeper and deeper, in exactly the same way his predecessors did in Vietnam. Again, I repeat, Bush is looking at a level of failure magnitudes beyond LBJ's. He is looking at disgrace far beyond the most paranoid nightmares of Richard Nixon. The world is literally crashing down around his ears. He is still the Commander and Chief of history's most mastodontic military establishment... And yes dear readers, in fact, he is still the decider. I don't think somebody who conspired to steal the presidency and who lied the country into a criminal war, would stop at killing a few thousand more people just to save his tattered reputation. Tell me, do you? DS
Arnaud De Borchgrave: Arabian Medicis - UPI
Abstract: There is a growing convergence of opinion among the leaders of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt that only an aerial bombardment of 17 known nuclear sites could retard Iran`s nuclear ambitions by five to 10 years. One U.S. intel topsider remarked (not for attribution), 'If we can gain five years that way, it`s worth considering.' He speculated Iran`s moderate reformers could gain power in the interim, Royal hawks remembered how Iranian pasdaran (Revolutionary Guard) agitators had joined the annual pilgrimage to Mecca to stir up the masses of worshippers and provoke a coup against the ruling Saudi family. In the early 1980s, several hundred were killed in clashes with Saudi law enforcement. The Saudis can also see Iran becoming the big winner in the wake of a U.S. disaster in Iraq. And unless the U.S. ceased pampering Iraq`s Shiites at the expense of the Sunnis, or precipitously withdrew from Iraq, the kingdom would have to openly side with the Sunni insurgency, supplying both arms and funding to Iraq`s Sunni minority. This, in turn, could agitate Saudi minority Shiites that live and work in the eastern oil fields.(...) Since the 1973-74 oil embargo and skyrocketing oil prices, the Saudi-led, six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on the latest defense hardware from the U.S., U.K. and France. Saudi Arabia alone, with a population of 21 million and oil revenue of $500 million a day, bought $268.6 billion worth of armaments since 1990, proportionally more than India or China, each with populations of more than one billion, writes Youssef Ibrahim, a prominent Arab American journalist. But the 'Gulfies' know they`re no match for the Iranian military with eight years of war fighting experience following Iraq`s 1980 invasion. A nuclear-tipped Iran, undeterred by the U.N. Security Council`s slap-on-the-wrist sanctions vote, has alarmed all six countries, from Oman to Kuwait. They, too, are now planning a 'peaceful' nuclear power program. The GCC Arabs are also planning their largest ever joint exercise -- Peninsula Shield -- to test interoperability. By reinforcing their naval presence inside and outside the Gulf, the U.S., Britain, and Gulf navies keep demonstrating that the military option is very much on the table. A second U.S. carrier task force will be on station in early 2007. Gulf countries possess over half the world`s oil reserves. Conversely, Iran is honing its retaliatory capabilities. Several hundred Hamas operatives recently left Gaza for Iran for special training by Revolutionary Guards, according to Israeli intelligence. Iran has also re-equipped Hezbollah in Lebanon with thousands of missiles and rockets to replace those fired at Israeli targets for 34 days last summer. READ IT ALL