Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen – is the West next?

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Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen – is the West next?

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Jan 28, 2011 11:29 am

In the shuffling madness
Of the locomotive breath
Runs the all time loser
Headlong to his death






The Revolutionary Wave
Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen – is the West next?

by Justin Raimondo, January 28, 2011

It started, of all places, in Tunisia, a land of sunny beaches and sleepy walled cities – the first stirrings of a revolutionary wave that, before it’s crested, may reach American shores.
The spark flared first in the small town of Sidi Bouzid, in central Tunisia, where Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old graduate student, was accosted by the authorities for selling produce in the souk – the equivalent of a farmer’s market – without a license. Bouazizi, like many in emerging economies, could not find a job in his field – or any other field – and so was forced to resort to hawking olives and oranges to support his family of eight. The officials reportedly humiliated him, and when he went to city hall to try to go "legal," they wouldn’t even let him in the door. These are the circumstances that led to his now famous act of self immolation: in protest, and in full view of passersby, he stood in front of city hall, poured lighter fluid on himself – and struck a match.
This spark set off a prairie fire still burning its way across the Middle East, a conflagration born of boiling resentment and red-hot anger directed at the authorities that has already spread to Egypt and Yemen, and shows every sign of flaring up well beyond the region. As a global economic downturn punctures the delusions of economic planners and technocrats worldwide, the bursting of the bubble brought on by unrestrained bank credit expansion is generating a political tsunami that promises to topple governments from North Africa to North America.
Egypt is the perfect candidate for what we might call the Bouazizian revolution – a US-supported kleptocracy ruled by a coalition of the military, the technocrats, and Washington, with the overarching figure of Hosni Mubarak – now 82 – presiding over it all. As in Tunisia, one of the key issues is the succession: rumors that the Egyptian dictator was planning to pass power on to his son, Gamal, fueled popular fury against this latter-day Pharoah. In both cases, the state is controlled by a single party – in Egypt, it is the National Democratic Party — still resting on the long-ago laurels of an anti-colonialist uprising, and since reified into a bureaucratic incrustation on the body politic.
Another similarity – which, somehow, most commentators have failed to note – is that all these upsurges are against regimes that have enjoyed practically unqualified US military and political support. Tunisia’s Ben Ali was a favorite of George W. Bush’s, and the Tunisian tyrant continued to enjoy support from the Obama administration. US aid to the regime hovered in the $20 million range, all of it in military, "anti-terrorist," and anti-narcotics detection sectors, and was slated for an increase in FY 2010. Egypt, of course, is the linchpin of US-friendly countries in the region, and Yemen is the latest battleground in our never-ending "war on terrorism."
Just follow the money. The American taxpayers have shelled out an average $2 billion-plus per year to our Egyptian sock puppets since 1979. As for Yemen, as Warren Strobel points out, "U.S. aid to Yemen increased significantly in fiscal year 2010 to about $67 million, and is due to increase in the current fiscal year to $106 million." That’s not counting $170 million in military aid. This gravy train is undoubtedly the single largest income stream flowing into the country: Yemen, in short, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the US government. The same can fairly be said about Egypt.
On her January surprise visit to Yemen, Hillary Clinton is said to have "gently chided" Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh to loosen his tenacious grip on the country’s political life, but as she got on the plane to depart she stumbled and took quite a fall – prefiguring the probable fate of Saleh, and, indeed, the various US puppet regimes in the region. The US is taking the same approach to Egypt, where demonstrators are demanding the resignation of Mubarak and being murdered in the streets: oh, but don’t worry, says White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, the Mubarak regime is "stable" in spite of it all.
This is arrant nonsense: Mubarak will follow Ben Ali into exile soon enough. Gamal has already packed up and fled to London with his family – and, reportedly, 100 pieces of luggage! The Egyptian authorities deny it, and the Guardian reports news of the son’s flight "appears to be wishful thinking."
In any case, the geniuses in charge of the US government are quite wrong if they think Mubarak can withstand the rising tide of protest, and the reason for their blindness isn’t hard to see. This administration seems to have forgotten the catchphrase popularized by its Clintonian predecessor: "It’s the economy, stupid." In this case, it’s the world economy, stupid: the global economic downturn that economist Nouriel Roubini – who predicted the 2008 implosion of the financial markets – says "can topple regimes." Commodity inflation means skyrocketing food prices – around two thirds of the consumer price index for emerging economies, as Roubini points out.
Roubini – and nearly every libertarian economist of the "Austrian" school – has long warned about the coming financial crisis of the West, the first seismic tremors of which we have been experiencing here in America since November 2008. But this is just the beginning: in the short term, unfunded liabilities and the interest on the national debt will account for a whopping 60 percent of GDP, and it won’t be long before it’s 100 percent. When that day comes – or, perhaps, long before it – the worldwide economic meltdown will be paying us a rather unwelcome visit, with consequences that are likely to make Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Greece look like romps in the park.
Our rulers can’t see the locomotive coming down the tracks, even though they’re standing right in its way: they still insist on the myth of "American exceptionalism," which supposedly anoints us with a special destiny and gives us the right to order the world according to our uniquely acquired position of preeminence. Yet that preeminence is increasingly being called into question by the economic facts of reality – and our own refusal to get our financial house in order. Blinded by hubris, and the habit of authority, the political class in America is no different, in essence, from its counterparts in Tunisia and Egypt: corrupt, arrogant, and used to commanding obedience, the Best and the Brightest are prisoners of their own complacency. Unable to comprehend, or sympathize with, the plight of the world’s miserable masses, encased in a bubble where the worst crisis they have to personally face is a broken chair lift at Davos, these preening Louis XIVs and Marie Antoinettes are in for a rude shock.
The nature of these populist revolts against authority will take on a different character according to where and when they occur, naturally enough: in Tunisia and Egypt, we see protests sparked by petty humiliations such as Mr. Bouazizi had to endure. In Greece and Great Britain, mass upsurges are the result of austerity budgets that cut ordinary people off at the knees while the banksters get bailed out. In America, we see the Tea Party rising against the tyranny of indebtedness and economic strangulation of the ordinary citizen – but this is just a prelude to the rising chorus of discontent and outright rebellion that will threaten American society in the years to come.
The revolutionary wave now sweeping the world will not exempt America, in spite of the myth of "American exceptionalism." We cannot and will not be excepted from the iron laws of economics, which mandate that you can’t consume more than you produce – no matter how many Federal Reserve notes (otherwise known as "money") you print.

The implications for US foreign policy are radical, and unsettling. While the decline and fall of the Roman Empire occurred over centuries of decay and degeneration, the process as it unfolds in America is likely to occur with what, in terms of human history, appears to be lightning speed. As our allies and satraps fall, one by one, across the Middle East and Europe, their fate prefigures our own.
Before we start cheering this world revolution as the salvation of us all, however, it ought to be remembered that revolutionary regimes often turn out to be worse than the tyrannies they’ve overthrown. There’s no telling what direction these political insurgencies will take, either in the Middle East or in America. As a negative example, recall the ideologies that arose in the 1930s in the wake of the Great Depression — German National Socialism, Italian Fascism, and Eurasian Bolshevism – and be forewarned. On a more positive note, here in the United States, at least, the possibilities are more balanced, although the dangers should not be underestimated.
What we are in for, finally, is a radical realignment of power, a vast shift that will break up the political landscape of every country on earth and shatter all the old assumptions. That old Chinese fortune-cookie curse, "May you live in interesting times," is about to come true.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen – is the West next?

Postby anothershamus » Fri Jan 28, 2011 12:36 pm

With Egypt exploding and Suez following close behind who knows what is next!

I don't know how much is getting through on regular news sources in the west so it's hard to say what influence it will have to spark protests here.

If the unemployment and foreclosures continue like they are, maybe someday?

But with the Superbowl coming up and beer to drink it might be a while.
)'(
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Re: Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen – is the West next?

Postby Jeff » Fri Jan 28, 2011 2:21 pm

"There is the risk of an infectious momentum" - German Defense Minister today
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Re: Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen – is the West next?

Postby hava1 » Fri Jan 28, 2011 2:36 pm

how typically german of him to identify the "infection"....god forbid, freedom to people...
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Re: Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen – is the West next?

Postby cptmarginal » Fri Jan 28, 2011 2:55 pm

Last edited by cptmarginal on Fri Jan 28, 2011 3:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen – is the West next?

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Jan 28, 2011 2:59 pm

Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen – is the West next?

Postby vanlose kid » Fri Jan 28, 2011 3:03 pm

seemslikeadream wrote:Clooney's satellite project shows troops near Sudan's border


Sudan National Referendum Monitoring
Image


was talking about the sit in Egypt with a somali interpreter working for the RC yesterday and she called civil war, said that's where this is heading.

*
"Teach them to think. Work against the government." – Wittgenstein.
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Re: Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen – is the West next?

Postby cptmarginal » Fri Jan 28, 2011 3:11 pm

Though we're sort of getting away from the topic of protest uprisings, here's another one for the "unrest" list:

Mediator sees time run out for Côte d'Ivoire
Ghana Aims to Avoid `Bloodbath' in Neighboring Ivory Coast, Minister Says
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Re: Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen – is the West next?

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Jan 28, 2011 3:27 pm

vanlose kid wrote:
was talking about the sit in Egypt with a somali interpreter working for the RC yesterday and she called civil war, said that's where this is heading.

*



Is it civil when the war is fueled by outsiders?


November 16, 2004
Posted to the web November 16, 2004

Alex Kiprotich
Nairobi

Amnesty International has implicated four permanent members of the UN Security Council in the supply of arms to Sudan.

In a report released yesterday at a Nairobi hotel, the organisation accused the Security Council of doing little to stop the sale of arms to the war-torn country.


Countries breaking the arms embargo are France, China, USSR, United Kingdom and United States among others.

Arms brokers in Ireland and UK, the report says, were involved in negotiations to supply £2.25 million worth of arms to Sudan in September.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen – is the West next?

Postby vanlose kid » Fri Jan 28, 2011 3:30 pm

seemslikeadream wrote:
vanlose kid wrote:
was talking about the sit in Egypt with a somali interpreter working for the RC yesterday and she called civil war, said that's where this is heading.

*



Is it civil when the war is fueled by outsiders?


...


sorry, wasn't making myself clear, she thought that civil war would break out in Egypt and i understood your post to be stating that sudanese forces had amassed on the border with Egypt.

*
"Teach them to think. Work against the government." – Wittgenstein.
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Re: Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen – is the West next?

Postby 8bitagent » Fri Jan 28, 2011 6:42 pm

as we head toward 2012 it appears things are on schedule for transformation, chaos and interesting times.

vanlose kid wrote:
seemslikeadream wrote:Clooney's satellite project shows troops near Sudan's border


Sudan National Referendum Monitoring
Image


was talking about the sit in Egypt with a somali interpreter working for the RC yesterday and she called civil war, said that's where this is heading.

*


Uh Oh, China is going to have to get their pocket book out if Khartoum decides to pull out the massacre card again on its people.

I'd personally love to see the Sudanese government toppled and for the citizens of Somalia kick out the UN and fight of Al Shabaab.
"Do you know who I am? I am the arm, and I sound like this..."-man from another place, twin peaks fire walk with me
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Re: Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen – is the West next?

Postby Allegro » Wed Feb 02, 2011 1:58 am

.
You know, Swans is a personally favored group of essayists, and the editor, Gilles d’Aymery, has submitted two overviews so far wrt the current Egyptian happenings. Below is the second essay, and the first essay is linked in the following introductory paragraph.

    Blips #103 | From The Martian Desk
    by Gilles d’Aymery | Swans Commentary, Swans dot com
    January 31, 2011
      first paragraph only; original essay wc=758

      Le goût de la liberté est amer.
      (“The taste of freedom is bitter.”)
      —Mikis Théodorakis

      (Swans - January 31, 2011) EXTRAORDINARY TIMES: Two weeks ago I concluded my last Blips regarding the mostly peaceful revolution in Tunisia, “all that is called for is a more just and equitable world.” I also suggested, “the leaders of Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Jordan, Egypt, and beyond —all corrupted autocrats— [might] be worrying sick about these events.” The masters of the world presently assembled in Davos, Switzerland, pondering how to keep political and economical matters under their control, must have changed the conversation. Egypt has erupted. Jordan, Yemen, and Algeria can follow. No pinstripe suit, Hermes tie, and Rolex watch-wearing chieftain grasps the extent of the situation. They beg that order prevail —their order— but hedge their bets as Obama did in his January 28 remarks on the Egyptian upheaval.

This material is copyrighted, © Gilles d'Aymery 2011. All rights reserved.

Resume.
_________________

      Gilles d’Aymery, Swans publisher and co-editor wrote: The author [d’Aymery] worked in Tunisia circa 1990. He managed the administrative, financial, and organizational issues of a University of Toronto project at the museum of Carthage, Tunisia, under the direction of Dr. Vanda Vitali. [Refer.]
Art will be the last bastion when all else fades away.
~ Timothy White (b 1952), American rock music journalist
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Re: Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen – is the West next?

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Feb 02, 2011 1:37 pm

Poland warns Belarus leader: Change or risk coup

By MONIKA SCISLOWSKA
The Associated Press

WARSAW, Poland — Poland's foreign minister warned Belarus' autocratic president on Wednesday that he risks being overthrown by his own people if they decide to follow the example of protesters in Tunisia and Egypt.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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