Foreign . . . policy?

Vulcan mind meld?

 

Can Tr*mp even find Qatar on a map?  Pretty clearly, "his" generals neglected to mention the two enormous American military bases there before he launched the tweetstorm that created his latest international dumpster fire.

To anyone who has been paying attention, the Saudi problem with Qatar is clear: Qatar maintains lines of communication with Iran.  Saudi accusations that the Qataris "support terrorists," including IS and al-Qaeda, are the height of hypocrisy.  Al-Sisi may be more justified in his dislike of Qatar, based on Qatari support for the Muslim Brotherhood: after brutally overthrowing the Brotherhood's democratically elected government in Egypt, al-Sisi might not feel much confidence in the organization's renunciation of violence back in the 1970s.

So, Tr*mp's profound geopolitical ignorance has left America's military and foreign policy establishments scrambling to clean up his mess, even as they scramble to close the rifts he created with NATO allies on his recent European trip, and his alienation of the British arising from his responses to the terrorist assault on London.  He's already antagonized Mexico and Canada — even Australia!  Who's next?  (Probably not Russia.)

It helps to remember what "America First" meant the last time it was a popular political slogan: isolationism — and "peaceful co-existence" with the Nazis.

Yemen

Is the enemy of my enemy, etc. etc... ?  Apparently not.

We have heard Yemen described as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and I suppose that's accurate enough a description.  We've also heard it described as an outgrowth of the classic Middle Eastern conflict between Sunni and Shi'a Islam.  That, I'm pretty sure, it is not.

The Houthi are adherents of the Zaydi sect, which is an offshoot of Shi'a Islam, but not nearly orthodox enough to satisfy the clerics who hold power in Iran.  Iranian Muslims supporting the Houthi because they're, sort of, Shiite, would be kind of like the Roman Catholic Church supporting Seventh Day Adventists because they're sort of...  well, you get it.

Move over to Iraq, and you find Sunni clients of the USofA fighting the Sunni zealots of Daesh, aka all those other names and acronyms tirelessly repeated in the American press.  Why are Sunni fighting Sunni?  Not because IS (aka etc. etc.) is especially naughty what with the beheadings and whatnot.  No, it's all about the usual, just as it was from the time of the Cheney invasions or even the CIA's 1953 overthrow of the democratically elected Mosaddegh government in Iran and installation of the Shah.

It's about the oil.

That's why Saleh could be fighting the Houthi one minute and supporting them the next.  That's why the Egyptian military, an equal opportunity oppressor of Islamists no matter what branch of Islam they spring from, is out there trying to restore Hadi to power.  That's why Americans, even some in government, are having such a hard time figuring out how and why anybody is putatively allied with anybody out there around the Persian Gulf.

Don't be confused.  Just follow the money.  Follow the oil.

Mubarak acquitted

It should come as no surprise to anybody that murder charges against Hosni Mubarak were dropped.  After all, Abdul Fattah al-Sisi is considerably more murderous than Mubarak was, and one wouldn't want to set a bad precedent — would one?

Fucking Egypt

A couple of days ago, John Kerry was in Cairo "reconfirming" America's "relationship" with Egypt.  Yesterday, the al-Sisi courts sentenced three al-Jazeera journalists to seven years in prison on trumped up charges without even bothering to trump up any evidence.

So, what's up?  Well, as we all know, we have to maintain our "relationship" with fucking Egypt to maintain our "relationship" with fucking Israel.  Israel, at the moment, is using the matter of its three missing teenagers to destroy the remaining Hamas presence in the West Bank.  We're told that the "evidence" of Hamas responsibility will be produced later this week, but it seems it has not been thoroughly "trumped" yet.

Elections

It is kind of pathetic how Abdel Fatteh el-Sisi (aka Abdul Fattah al-Sisi and some other transliterations from the Arabic) extended the voting period because hardly anybody was bothering to vote for him.  Well, that's what happens when everybody knows the outcome in advance.  (Hell, I could be hanging out at the souq with my homies, drinking qasab.  Why bother?)

Chocolate King Petro Olekseyevich Poroshenko seems to be the new leader of Ukraine.  Okay, he's just another oligarch, but he seems to be pro-EU and his main factory is in Russia.  Go figure.

Europeans don't much bother to vote in elections for the European Parliament, but the populist anti-EU crew seems to have been more active than in the past.  Except for Hungary, I don't see the right-wing crazies winning any governments in Europe — albeit, adopting the Euro so early was a total screw-up.  It is easy to understand why, say, the UK and Germany don't want their labor markets overrun by Romanians and such like, but when you make your bed, you have to lie in it.

Religion

This morning I read that Pope Francis has taken the brakes off the the beatification of Oscar Romero. I'm not entirely sure what the requirements are for martyrdom, but Romero certainly met my requirements.  Perhaps you are old enough to remember Pope John XXIII, and the Second Vatican Council.  Perhaps you are old enough to remember Liberation Theology.

Perhaps not, but every once in a while the Catholics remember what Jesus and Christianity once were all about.  Francis seems to have remembered it was about helping the poor, but  the rest of Christianity may take a long time to catch up.

In the meanwhile, Coptic Christians in Egypt are being exterminated by Salafists; Sunnis in Lebanon are being suicide-bombed by by Shi'ia; Muslims in India and Cambodia are being exterminated by Hindus; (who knows what kinds of) Christians and (who knows what kinds of) Muslims are exterminating each other in various former colonial fiefdoms of Africa; and the Sunni-Shi'ia conflict is playing itself out all over the Middle East.

One nice thing about the USofA is that we atheists are far less likely to be suicide bombed than in other parts of the world (unless we work at abortion clinics.)  Maybe it feels good to feel so fucking sure of yourself, but that's no excuse.

Tell your god to go fuck himself.  Take care of all those orphaned children, and all those refugees.  Probably there's no reward after you're dead, but that shouldn't matter.  Do it for now.

Egypt

Egypt is a mess, but what should the USofA do about it?

A better question would be, what can the USofA do about it?

I suspect the answer to both questions is, nothing.  I suppose we could, shall we say, postpone our planned joint military exercises with the Egyptian army.  We could call a coup a coup, and discontinue military aid.  Whatever we do, though, we lose.

There is a perception in the Muslim world that the USofA might even have had a hand in instigating the coup, and who knows? — that perception might be right.  It's always been easier for us to deal with autocrats and military dictatorships than with the messiness of emerging democracies.  Kings and Shahs and Generalissimos are better for business.

Anyway, I'm sure we'll "support" whoever comes out on top, although it's likely to take a while before we find out just who that will be.

Odds and Ends

Lac Megantic

For those of you who like conspiracy theories, here's a sweet one:  the oil/rail "accident" at Lac Megantic, Quebec, was engineered by supporters of the Keystone XL pipeline.  Transporting crude oil by rail, some will start saying pretty soon, is just too dangerous.  We have to have that pipeline!

How did an experienced railroad engineer and his staff happen to walk away from a train stopped at the top of a hill while leaving the brakes unlocked?  Well, maybe they all were drunk.  Or, maybe, not.  Needless to say, the oil companies will claim "mechanical failures."

I have no evidence to support this conjecture, of course, but you conspiracy theorists usually don't need what they call "evidence."  You understand (believe) that "evidence" is easily suppressed.

Weiner and Spitzer

I have not lived in New York City since 1970, but I try to stay in touch.  I am entertained by the Weiner campaign, and don't think his election would make things any worse than they would be under Christine Quinn, John Liu, Bill Thompson, or even Bill DiBlasio (who is a pretty good guy.)

On the other hand, I think Eliot Spitzer is a hell of a good candidate for Comptroller.  He's totally overqualified, and just might dig out the corruption that everybody assumes is part and parcel of City government.  Who cares about a few hookers, as long as they weren't paid on the public dime?

Egypt

Of course, it was a coup!

I don't agree with McCain too often, but this time he's right.  It was a coup, and all that military aid — the vast majority of the aid the USofA sends to Egypt — should be cut off.  Hell, they've already got most of this year's aid, so "officially" cutting it off won't make a difference until next year.

Maybe, next year, the military will restore something resembling  "democracy," and we can go back to bribing Egypt to continue maintaining the alleged "peace" with Israel.  In reality, the so-called "peace" between Egypt and Israel is not likely to be broached by either party, even without USofA funding.

War is too damned expensive, unless you're the official military protector of the multinational corporate establishment.

Obama

Maybe, someday, we'll have a black president.  Some say Clinton was "the first black president," but black Americans haven't had a real champion since Lyndon Johnson — and our last noticeably liberal president was Richard Nixon.

Morsi

Well, at the moment, it appears that Mohamed Morsi's gone.  Yes, it was another military coup, and we still can't be sure how it will turn out.  Since it's the Middle East, there's a high probability that it will turn out badly.

Look at the component parts.  Up there on the podium with General Abdul Fatah al-Sisi were a bunch on non-Brotherhood Muslim clerics, some Coptic Christians, and the ever ambitious Nobel laureate, Mohamed el-Baradei.   I suppose there may have been a couple of populist secularists up there too, but I'm betting they were way off in the wings.

There were a few major problems with Morsi, the foremost of which was that he is incompetent.  Another was that he moved entirely too fast to implement Islamist ideology, and cuddled up way too close to the Salafists.  Moreover, I don't recall that he ever had an economic policy.

So we're back to two years ago, waiting to see what the military will do.  They've cancelled the Islamist Constitution the Brotherhood pushed through, put a Mubarak era judge in charge of the executive, and are telling us they plan for early presidential elections.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Morsi and the media

Mohammed Morsi is in a difficult situation right now, but no more so than the American media.  Okay, it is tempting just to go along with Mohammed el Baradei, traditional "friend of the West," and accuse Morsi of aspiring to be a new "Pharaoh," but it's a lot more complicated.  What we have to remember is that the Egyptian revolution against Mubarak is far from complete, and the American media still is trying to figure out which side "we're" on.

Yes, Morsi's assumption of pretty much autocratic powers is kind of out of synch with American values, but I think we still must take into account that the real struggle in Egypt is between Morsi and the Mubarak judiciary, still hanging on with firmly clenched teeth as a surrogate for the Egyptian Army.  That judiciary, in case you forgot, was the power center that dissolved the popularly elected parliament and the first assembly charged with re-writing Egypt's Constitution.  In recent days, it has been moving towards dissolving the current constitutional assembly as well.  That judiciary wants nothing better than an opportunity to put the army back in charge of everything.

Oh, pathetic American media, forced to choose!  You can slant your coverage towards the Mubarak judiciary, which would be easier because it's not "Islamist," or you can slant your coverage towards Morsi because, at least, he was popularly elected — and the favoritism shown by the courts to the Mubarak thugs was hard to miss.

 In the long run, though, Egypt will have to work things out for itself.

Election Day!

Egypt, Greece, and France held elections yesterday, with mixed results.

In Egypt, needless to say, the Supreme Military Council (aka military junta) stripped the soon to be elected president of all his powers even before the first vote was cast, so nobody really cared what happened.  What will Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi do with his empty title?  Beats me.  Is it time to to heat things up again in Tahrir Square?  Maybe — but Egypt could make Syria look like Luxembourg.

In Greece, fear triumphed, mildly, over hope (or anger) with the "victory" of the New Democrats — who really are not all that different from the Clinton-Gore New Democrats of the USofA.  Obama may be thinking about genuinely joining a religion so he might more effectively pray for a financial turnaround in Europe.  So far, New Democracy has not managed to form a government.  I suppose Pasak will join in by tomorrow or the next day, provided the alleged "socialists" are offered enough graft — but that coalition will be very fragile.

Greece could be facing new elections in a matter of months, unless the Germans get the steel rods out of their asses and let Greece ease up on its current austerity program, which has driven the country into depression.  In case you hadn't noticed, Germany is the country that has profited most from the euro — the euro is worth a lot less than a deutschmark would have been worth at this point, and that has been the primary factor driving Germany's export oriented economy for many years.  The losers were the net importing Eurozone countries of the south.  As I suggested last November, the best way to save the euro would be to kick out the Germans and generate some healthy inflation.

The good news is that Hollande and his Socialists have solidified their political control in France, creating a counterweight to Merkel and the Germans with regard to austerity.  If it's not too late, the Greeks, Spaniards, and Portuguese will appreciate Hollande's efforts.  It might even cheer the sad, suffering Irish a bit.  Countries cannot afford to watch their best and brightest young people emigrate because there is no work at home.

Short Subjects

Banking Committee kisses Dimon's ass

Is anybody surprised?  The JPM PAC hands out a load of money to members of the banking committee, and Congress really is not interested in banking reform or they'd have brought back Glass-Steagall instead of farting around with the Volcker Rule.


Egyptians notice it was a military coup all along

Hell, even the American press has noticed, at last.   To me, it seemed pretty obvious in February 2011.

When the Mubarak appointed Supreme Court voided the results of the Parliamentary elections and confirmed the right of Mubarak apparatchik Ahmed Shafik to run for the presidency, it became harder to ignore.  That same court gets to supervise counting the votes, so let's try to guess who's going to win.  (Was the US in on it all along?  Well, maybe.)


Obama and his Drones

The rest of the world has had a pretty good idea of the impact of Obama's greatly increased use of Predator Drones for quite a while — especially the people in their target areas — but the American press finally seems to be waking up to the fact that we've been killing a lot more civilians than the Pentagon reports.  I'm willing to bet that a large majority of the American people don't even know we've been using them in Yemen, and that an even larger majority can't find Yemen on a map.

Egypt, again

As embarrassed as I may be (not much) by saying "I told you so," well, I told you so. Here was my prediction for the Egyptian revolution. Fuck it. I told you so.

Yes, the Egyptian military has no desire to give up the power it has exercised since Nasser replaced Farouk. Would you? Hell, they have all the money and all the power. Who the fuck needs democracy when you have the army?

....

Not entirely related, I heard on the BBC today that the number of Israeli settler attacks on West Bank Palestinians has tripled over the past two years. The UN official in the area — some guy from India — says the settlers are largely responsible. Okay, the Palestinians are far from perfect — but the Israeli settlers seem to be total pieces of shit. Why burn a guy's olive trees, trees that his great-grandfather planted?

(Answer: if he's still around when and if a Palestinian state comes into being, he actually may get to keep his land.)

...

As you may have noticed, I do my best to stay away from mideastern bullshit, as best I can. My avoidance, however, does nothing to stop the carnage.

Assholes.

The Imperial Presence

I was just reviewing the Defense Department's Base Structure Report for FY2010, an interesting document that provides information on US military bases, both domestic and overseas. It lists 4,337 military bases within the United States and its territories, shedding some light on why our military budget is what it is. It divides out to over 80 bases per state, excluding the territories, although some states are more blessed than others. North Dakota, for example, has one base for every 2,800 inhabitants.

In addition, there are 662 bases in foreign countries, a number that does not include bases in Iraq or Afghanistan. Many are located in Germany, Japan, and Italy — a legacy of WWII. (Hmm... just how long ago did that war end?) In Japan, the bulk of US forces are located on Okinawa, where the locals have been agitating for their removal for years. (They'd prefer their young women not be raped quite so often.) There also is a substantial military presence in South Korea, where, one supposes, our soldiers are supposed to deter a missile launched nuclear attack from the North. (Go figure.)

More interesting, at the moment, is the US presence in the Middle East. Not only do we have troops all over the northernmost third of Kuwait to support our activities in Iraq, but we are present in other Gulf nations, including some currently undergoing anti-authoritarian political movements. We have no official base in Yemen, where there is a popular movement to oust Ali Abdullah Saleh, but it no longer is a secret that the Saleh regime authorized US air strikes in Yemeni territory against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula — with particular emphasis on killing radical cleric and American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki. Not too far away is the 3000 acre, $11.4 million base in Oman, a country where ongoing protests against endemic corruption continue.

Bahrain hosts the headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet, which protects the revenues of multinational oil companies throughout the Persian Gulf area. Bahrain also is the site of growing protests by the long suffering Shi'a majority against the autocratic al-Khalifa dynasty, a Sunni monarchy with close ties to Saudi Arabia. The Obama administration, of course, is calling for the Shi'a to "compromise" with the monarchy in ways extremely reminiscent of the way Obama "compromises" with Republicans, Wall Street, and Corporate America in general — that is, by kissing ruling class ass and settling for a few token concessions.

So far, there is little sign of democracy in Egypt or Tunisia, and the State Department is showing no enthusiasm for helping it along. Stability — especially for the sake of maintaining the US Imperial Presence abroad and keeping the Palestinians in their place — must necessarily take precedence over popular sovereignty.

Anyway, the success of democracy abroad (or even the appearance of its success) might have an uncomfortable tendency to encourage democratic yearnings at home. Some say the protests in Egypt helped to inspire the protests in Wisconsin. Personally, I think the overreaching hubris of Scott Walker did far more to arouse American workers than anything done by unemployed Egyptian college graduates (or the AFL-CIO), but I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

We need all the help we can get.

Told you so!

I was planning to post about Fannie and Freddy today, but, instead, I'll take a few minutes to point out that my post of one week ago, in which I predicted a military coup in Egypt, was right on the mark.

Yes, I know, the media and the President and damned near everybody else is saying that the "democratic revolution" was a success. Well, I suppose it is possible that the Egyptian military will replace Mubarak's corrupt, authoritarian plutocracy with a corrupt, democratic plutocracy (like the United States), but it hasn't happened yet — all that's happened so far is a military coup.

Frankly, nobody really knows what the military elite will do in the coming months. What it has to accomplish, though, is not political, but economic reform. The wealth has to be spread at least a little bit further, so that the educated children of the middle class can find jobs that will enable them to live middle class lifestyles, and the members of the labor syndicates see some improvement in their standards of living.

Unfortunately, the Egyptian military has not shown a great deal of economic creativity, despite the fact that it is involved in a wide range of businesses and industries. It is sure to need help. Hopefully, the generals will know enough to hold the line against the army of free marketeers certain to descend on them momentarily. (If Obama really wants stability in Egypt, he'd better put Jeffrey Sachs on the no-fly list.)

So, good luck to the Egyptians. I now return to "no prediction" mode, and will emerge from it only if I perceive another chance to shoot fish in a barrel.

Coup time?

There is a straightforward way out of the mess in Egypt: a military coup.

A coup would work. Egyptians like and admire their military, and would probably stand behind it if it tossed out Mubarak and crew. The United States would be totally cool with a coup as well. Traditionally, we get on well with military leaders of developing countries, and our arms merchants would be happy because their lucrative contracts supplying the Egyptian armed forces would not be interrupted. (By the way, foreign aid from the U.S. pays more than 80% of the cost.)

The leaders of the coup, of course, would be portrayed in the western press as a "transitional" government. Democracy could wait a while — maybe another thirty or forty years — and the arms shipments to keep the military in power would continue. Israel could breathe easy, since Egypt would continue to be bought.

The chief responsibility of the coup leaders would be to put an end to Mubarak era patronage and corruption, and create a new system of patronage and corruption that would better serve angry middle class youth. The peasantry must continue to receive its subsidized wheat, and a few more NGOs could be invited to drill wells and provide schooling for little girls, but not much else need be done for the poor. As long as they're eating, they'll stay quiet.

Yes, there will be elections — typical Arab world elections to put in place very cooperative legislators with very limited powers. Some members of Parliament can even represent the Muslim Brotherhood, which already is planning its own cooption. There will be no reason to find a place for Mohammed El Baradei. He's been in the news lately mostly because the western press already knows who he is, but he has no real power base in Egypt.

I know I swore off making predictions a while back but, frankly, I don't see a real alternative to a coup. It's vaguely conceivable that new Vice President Omar Suleiman could run a caretaker government until September, when the next elections are scheduled, but there are significant problems with that scenario.

• While many seem to prefer Suleiman to Mubarak, he is part of the old regime.
• There is not enough time for any of the anti-Mubarak forces to organize viable parties and candidates in time for the next election, with the single exception of the Muslim Brotherhood.
• Neither Egypt not other potentially unstable Arab countries would be stabilized.
  

Given that the Egyptian military is the single most important component of the Egyptian economy, and that military leaders require stability to maintain profitability, it is hard to see how a military coup could be avoided, even if anybody (other than Mubarak's inner circle) actually wanted to avoid one.

So here comes the coup.

Cairo, Illinois?

I know that nobody reads Karl Marx anymore, but just in case you happened to glance at the Cliff Notes, let me point out something interesting: the bourgeois revolution finally has arrived in Egypt.

Like almost all the Middle East, Egypt never quite managed to emerge from the Middle Ages. It was kept marking time by a series of native born and colonial rulers who hogged up all the wealth and power, and distributed it to their families, friends, and toadies with little regard for the country as a whole. Granted, Egypt's last king (Farouk I) and his British enablers were deposed by the military in 1952, but new strongman Gamal Abdel Nasser merely transferred the graft and related goodies to new favorites, while distracting the populace with pan-Arab nationalism and military campaigns against Israel. His successor, Anwar El-Sadat, figured out that there was more money to be had by cooperating with the United States and making peace with Israel than in remaining recalcitrant.

Anyway, Mubarak has followed in Sadat's footsteps for almost thirty years. Presumably, it was the uprising in Tunisia that inspired the current uprising in Egypt, and both Tunisia and Egypt seem to be following the same pattern — the middle class, tired of being cut out of the loop for acquisition of the really big bucks, has finally had enough.

Egypt's is not a revolution arising from political discontents; the young people in the streets couldn't care less about creating a "democracy." It also has nothing to do with Islamism; the Muslim Brotherhood may be hitching a ride, but the movement, at its roots, is secular.

The problem, as always, is economic — unemployed and underemployed Egyptian youth, mostly children of the middle class, want a chance to make lives for themselves. If the resurrected zombie of King Farouk could guarantee them decent jobs and a chance to move out of their parents' basements, they'd follow him. They've been joined by many older workers who have gone years without opportunities to use their skills, and even some of the poor — although most of those abandoned all hope years ago. (Popular revolutions always begin with the middle class.)

So, that got me to thinking about this other country with an entrenched plutocracy; large numbers of young people unable to move out of their parents' basements; middle class college graduates working in temp jobs and unpaid internships; and older workers apparently doomed to structural unemployment for the rest of their lives. Is it time for a popular uprising?

Probably not, unless you're willing to count the Tea Party. Just the same — in case any of you are interested and connected to the social media — allow me to suggest Cairo, Illinois as an initial rally site. It just might help get the point across.