All Egypt, all the time....our media this week has been obsessed with 1/ Egypt and 2/ snow.....anyway here are some interesting Egyptian stories....not the riots, but the background....
1/ The first is about the military aid we have given Egypt for the last decades so Mubarek could equip his military.....but most of the money ended up being given to US corporations. This is the way the US has kept the world safe for the corporate oligarchs for years.....throw money at dictators, who then feed it back to the military industrial complex....
But even as the political situation unfolds on the streets of Cairo, the question of U.S. support for Mubarak's 30-year rule looms large. And much of that support has come in the form of military aid, $1.3 billion per year like clockwork throughout that entire period. And as Middle East expert Juan Cole noted in a recent appearance on Democracy Now!, most of that aid has been simply a pass through that goes to Egypt and then right back into the coffers of U.S. corporations.
According to lists of arms sales notifications compiled by the Pentagon's Defense Security Assistance Agency, in the last decade alone, the Department of Defense has brokered over $11 billion in U.S. arms offers to the Egyptian regime on behalf of weapons makers like Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Boeing, Raytheon, and General Electric. Aside from some leftover Soviet equipment from the pre-Camp David era (before 1979), the Egyptian military is virtually made in the USA.
Now that the Obama administration has at least suggested that U.S. aid may be reconsidered based on how harshly the Mubarak regime continues to crack down on democracy protesters, it is possible that this gravy train for contractors could come to an end. Post-Mubarak, the question will arise as to whether a new government wants to keep such close military ties to the U.S., and even if it does, whether it wants to maintain Mubarak's bloated, made-in-the-U.S.A. arsenal. But there will no doubt be efforts by Washington to use its ties to the military in Egypt to shape the potential outcome there, and dangling more weapons deals while selling support services and spare parts to maintain Egypt's existing weapons might become part of that strategy.
2/ If you thought my comments were a little paranoid about the first story, read this.....
WASHINGTON — If the United States is, as so many presidents have said in so many speeches, the world’s pre-eminent champion of democracy, then why does the drama unfolding in Cairo seem so familiar?
A Washington-friendly dictator, propped up for decades by lavish American aid as he oversees a regime noted for brutality, corruption and stagnation, finally faces the wrath of his people. An American administration struggles over what to say, what to do and what to expect if the strongman is toppled.
The agony of Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt raises again the question of whether such a pattern can ever be broken. More than mere misjudgment or duplicity is behind it; the embrace of dictators has been so frequent over the last half-century that it obviously results from hard-headed calculation.
Supporting Egypt’s military-led regime over four decades, first under Anwar el-Sadat and then Mr. Mubarak, offered strategic benefits to seven American presidents. They got a staunch ally against Soviet expansionism, a critical peace with Israel, a bulwark against Islamic radicalism, and a trade- and tourist-friendly Egypt. What they did not get was a functioning Egyptian democracy. The apocryphal comment about a foreign strongman often attributed to Franklin Delano Roosevelt sums it up nicely: he may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.
History is rich with precedents. In 1959, there was Fulgencio Batista of Cuba, darling of American corporations and organized crime, fleeing with an ill-gotten fortune of $300 million as Fidel Castro’s troops reached Havana.
3/ Two Western journalists were detained by the Egyptian secret police during the demonstrations in Cairo......not a nice bunch of lads....
CAIRO — We had been detained by Egyptian authorities, handed over to the country’s dreaded Mukhabarat, the secret police, and interrogated. They left us all night in a cold room, on hard orange plastic stools, under fluorescent lights.
But our discomfort paled in comparison to the dull whacks and the screams of pain by Egyptian people that broke the stillness of the night. In one instance, between the cries of suffering, an officer said in Arabic, “You are talking to journalists? You are talking badly about your country?”
A voice, also in Arabic, answered: “You are committing a sin. You are committing a sin.”
We — Souad Mekhennet, Nicholas Kulish and a driver, who is not a journalist and was not involved in the demonstrations — were detained Thursday afternoon while driving into Cairo. We were stopped at a checkpoint and thus began a 24-hour journey through Egyptian detention, ending with — we were told by the soldiers who delivered us there — the secret police. When asked, they declined to identify themselves.
Captivity was terrible. We felt powerless — uncertain about where and how long we would be held. But the worst part had nothing to do with our treatment. It was seeing — and in particular hearing through the walls of this dreadful facility — the abuse of Egyptians at the hands of their own government.
For one day, we were trapped in the brutal maze where Egyptians are lost for months or even years. Our detainment threw into haunting relief the abuses of security services, the police, the secret police and the intelligence service, and explained why they were at the forefront of complaints made by the protesters.
4/ This story is on the recurring theme of how the US Government's aims and the aims of powerful US corporations are identical.....our government wants control of foreign regimes like Egypt's, and our corporations want profits......
This blog jumps around a bit, but you will get the overall theme....
The illusion of 'benevolence' and the reality of foreign 'aid'
In Confessions, Perkins, himself a self-described former "Economic Hit Man" (EHM) reveals how he, and other EHMs, persuade corrupt foreign "leaders" to accept "loans to develop infrastructure --- electric generating plants, highways, ports, airports, or industry parks. In essence, most of the money never leaves the United States; it is simply transferred from banking offices in Washington to engineering offices.":
Among the beneficiaries of foreign aid, as identified by Perkins, is the San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp., the largest engineering firm in the U.S, whose corporate executives include former U.S. Secretary of State George P. Schultz. In 2010, Bechtel, with $30.8 billion in revenue, was working on projects in some 50 countries.
Bechtel, which maintains an office in Cairo, has been involved in the construction of numerous Egyptian power plants. In 2002, it was awarded a $900 million contract for a liquid natural gas project.
In Confessions, Perkins, himself a self-described former "Economic Hit Man" (EHM) reveals how he, and other EHMs, persuade corrupt foreign "leaders" to accept "loans to develop infrastructure --- electric generating plants, highways, ports, airports, or industry parks. In essence, most of the money never leaves the United States; it is simply transferred from banking offices in Washington to engineering offices.":
Despite the fact that the money is returned almost immediately to corporations that are members of the corporatocracy (the creditor), the recipient country is required to pay it all back, principal plus interest. If an EHM is completely successful, the loans are so large that the debtor is forced to default on its payments after a few years. When this happens, then like the Mafia we demand our pound of flesh. This often includes one or more of the following: control over United Nations votes, the installation of military bases, or access to precious resources such as oil…Of course, the debtor still owes us the money and another country is added to our global empire…
In Secret History, Perkins explains that the key to the U.S. corporate Empire's success is its invisibility. "Most of its own citizens are not aware of its existence; however, those exploited by it are, and many of them suffer extreme poverty. On average twenty-four thousand people die of hunger and hunger-related diseases every day. More than half the planet's population lives on less than two dollars a day..."Among the beneficiaries of foreign aid, as identified by Perkins, is the San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp., the largest engineering firm in the U.S, whose corporate executives include former U.S. Secretary of State George P. Schultz. In 2010, Bechtel, with $30.8 billion in revenue, was working on projects in some 50 countries.
Bechtel, which maintains an office in Cairo, has been involved in the construction of numerous Egyptian power plants. In 2002, it was awarded a $900 million contract for a liquid natural gas project.
5/ Funny Superbowl commercial.....Star Wars fans will love it....last night they showed the 30 second version, this is one minute and far funnier.....
6/ Well the unemployment figures were in, and they were a little baffling - unemployment fell from 9.4% to 9%, but only 36,000 jobs were created. The bloviators yammered away, but missed the point - the middle class is still in big trouble, but the wealthy and the corporate oligarchs are doing just fine.....Bob Herbert takes them to task.....
The policy makers who rely on the data zealots are just as detached from the real world of real people. They’re always promising in the most earnest tones imaginable to do something about employment, to ease the awful squeeze on the middle class (policy makers never talk about the poor), to reform education, and so on.
They say those things because they have to. But they are far more obsessed with the numbers than they are with the struggles and suffering of real people. You won’t hear policy makers acknowledging that the unemployment numbers would be much worse if not for the millions of people who have left the work force over the past few years. What happened to those folks? How are they and their families faring?
The policy makers don’t tell us that most of the new jobs being created in such meager numbers are, in fact, poor ones, with lousy pay and few or no benefits. What we hear is what the data zealots pump out week after week, that the market is up, retail sales are strong, Wall Street salaries and bonuses are streaking, as always, to the moon, and that businesses are sitting on mountains of cash. So all must be right with the world.
Jobs? Well, the less said the better.
What’s really happening, of course, is the same thing that’s been happening in this country for the longest time — the folks at the top are doing fabulously well and they are not interested in the least in spreading the wealth around.
The people running the country — the ones with the real clout, whether Democrats or Republicans — are all part of this power elite. Ordinary people may be struggling, but both the Obama administration and the Republican Party leadership are down on their knees slavishly kissing the rings of the financial and corporate kingpins.
7/ Here we are with a new Republican Congress, and are they interested in jobs? Nope, their focus is and always will be the wedge issues that fire up the right wing base, like abortion. Gail Collins with an excellent and unusually serious [for her] column, and points out the hypocrisy of the anti-abortion movement - the foetus is sacred, but once the child is born it and the mother are on their own......
Planned Parenthood doesn’t use government money to provide abortions; Congress already prohibits that, except in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother. (Another anti-abortion bill that’s coming up for hearing originally proposed changing the wording to “forcible rape,” presumably under the theory that there was a problem with volunteer rape victims. On that matter at least, cooler heads prevailed.)
Planned Parenthood does pay for its own abortion services, though, and that’s what makes them a target. Pence has 154 co-sponsors for his bill. He was helped this week by an anti-abortion group called Live Action, which conducted a sting operation at 12 Planned Parenthood clinics in six states, in an effort to connect the clinic staff to child prostitution.
“Planned Parenthood aids and abets the sexual abuse and prostitution of minors,” announced Lila Rose, the beautiful anti-abortion activist who led the project. The right wing is currently chock-full of stunning women who want to end their gender’s right to control their own bodies. Homely middle-aged men are just going to have to find another sex to push around.
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The people trying to put Planned Parenthood out of business do not seem concerned about what would happen to the 1.85 million low-income women who get family-planning help and medical care at the clinics each year. It just doesn’t come up. There’s not even a vague contingency plan.
“I haven’t seen that they want to propose an alternative,” said Richards.
There are tens of millions Americans who oppose abortion because of deeply held moral principles. But they’re attached to a political movement that sometimes seems to have come unmoored from any concern for life after birth.
There is no comparable organization to Planned Parenthood, providing the same kind of services on a national basis.
8/ The deficit - the Treasury announced this week the nations gold reserves were being turned into cash......Timothy Geithner saw a commercial for Cash4Gold and made the decision immediately - Onion Financial News reports....2 minutes....
9/ The Chinese wheat crop has failed due to a nasty drought in northern China......think food prices are bad? Wait till a billion Chinese start bidding on the world supplies of grain.....
HONG KONG — A severe drought in northern China has badly damaged the winter wheat crop and left the ground very dry for the spring planting, fueling inflation and alarming China’s leaders.
President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao separately toured drought-stricken regions this week and have called for “all-out efforts” to address the effects of water shortages on agriculture, state media reported on Thursday. Mr. Wen made a similar trip just 10 days ago and called for long-term improvements in water management.
Rising food prices were a problem last autumn, even before the drought began, prompting the government to impose a wide range of price controls in mid-November. The winter wheat crop has been parched since then in northern China while unusually widespread frost has hurt the vegetable crop in southern China. State media began warning a week ago that price controls on food might not be effective.
And on this theme - global food prices are rising according to a UN report, and this is one of the flash points to watch in the coming years, along with energy costs and water supplies.......part of the problem with food is that the diets of India and China are changing as their middle class broadens and gets richer - they all want to eat like Westerners, more meat and grains......this is of course at the same time our scum in Congress have extended subsidies for ethanol from grain in the US, so instead of feeding the world we're filling our SUV's.....smart, huh?
UNITED NATIONS — Global food prices are moving ever higher, hitting record levels last month as a jittery market reacted to unpredictable weather and tight supplies, according to a United Nations report released Thursday.
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Riots and demonstrations erupting across the Middle East are not directly inspired by rising food prices alone, experts noted, but that is one factor fueling the anger directed toward governments in the region. Egypt was among more than a dozen countries that experienced food riots in 2008.
The F.A.O. price index, which tracks 55 food commodities for export, rose 3.4 percent in January, hitting its highest level since tracking began in 1990, the report said. Countries not dependent on food imports are less affected by global volatility. Still, food prices are expected to rise 2 percent to 3 percent in the United States this year.
Four main factors are seen as driving prices higher: weather, higher demand, smaller yields and crops diverted to biofuels. Volatile weather patterns often attributed to climate change are wreaking havoc with some harvests. Heavy rains in Australia damaged wheat to the extent that much of its usually high-quality crop has been downgraded to feed, experts noted.
This has pushed the demand and prices for American wheat much higher, with the best grades selling at 100 percent more than they were a year ago, Mr. Abbassian said. The autumn soybean harvest in the United States was poor, so strong demand means stocks are at their lowest level in 50 years, he said.
Brokers are waiting to see how acreage in the United States will be divided between soybeans, corn and cotton, with cotton fetching record prices, Mr. Abbassian said.
Sugar prices are also at a 30-year high, he said. Prices for cereals are rising but still below their April 2008 peak. Oils and fats are up and close to their 2008 level, and dairy is higher but still below its 2007 peak, the report said. Even positive news, like good rains in Argentina and a strong harvest in Africa, has failed to keep prices from rising.
10/ Well if you like sheepherding at night with the sheep wearing lights to help the border collies, this video is for you..... quite interesting, if ultimately pointless.....but hey, it's just a cool video......
11/ The Supreme Court is supposed to be fair and above the fray, superior to the politicians below them braying their BS and vying for power....but the Court we have now isn't fair or balanced......the conservative majority is as political as Congress and don't care who knows it.....this is a New York Times editorial....
When it comes to pushing the line between law and politics, Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas each had a banner month in January.
Justice Scalia, who is sometimes called “the Justice from the Tea Party,” met behind closed doors on Capitol Hill to talk about the Constitution with a group of representatives led by Representative Michele Bachmann of the House Tea Party Caucus.
Justice Thomas, confirming his scorn for concern about conflicts of interest and rules designed to help prevent them, acknowledged that he has failed to comply with the law for the past six years by not disclosing his wife’s income from conservative groups.
In Supreme Court opinions, they showed how their impatience for goals promoted in conservative politics is infecting their legal actions. They joined in an unusual dissent from a court decision not to take a case about the commerce clause that turned into polemic in favor of limited government. In an important privacy case, NASA v. Nelson, they insisted the court should settle a constitutional issue it didn’t need to.
Constitutional law is political. It results from choices about concerns of government that political philosophers ponder, like liberty and property. When the court deals with major issues of social policy, the law it shapes is the most inescapably political.
And the worst of them all is Justice Clarence Thomas, who should be impeached for being blatantly corrupt and an all-around asshole.....but here's the prediction - nothing will be done, folks.....
Virginia Thomas, the justice’s wife, said on libertyinc.co, a Web site for her new political consulting business, that she saw herself as an advocate for “liberty-loving citizens” who favored limited government, free enterprise and other core conservative issues. She promised to use her “experience and connections” to help clients raise money and increase their political impact.
Ms. Thomas’s effort to take a more operational role on conservative issues could intensify questions about her husband’s ability to remain independent on issues like campaign finance and health care, legal ethicists said.
Justice Thomas “should not be sitting on a case or reviewing a statute that his wife has lobbied for,”
12/ TV Monday [tonight]..."Chicago Code", 9pm on Fox. What gives me hope for this one is that it's produced by Shawn Ryan, who did "The Shield", one of the best cop shows ever.....
Two years later that curiosity has given birth to “The Chicago Code,” an hourlong drama that is to have its premiere on Monday at 9 p.m. on Fox. And true both to Mr. Ryan’s initial creative impulse and his childhood impressions of the city, the series has a story line set right at the intersection of politics and crime, derived from the notorious maxim attributed to an alderman and saloon keeper named Paddy Bauler, “Chicago ain’t ready for reform.”
“The Chicago Code,” shot on location, has three main characters. Teresa Colvin, played by Jennifer Beals, is the city’s first female police superintendent. Her efforts to bring down the corrupt, Mafia-friendly alderman Ronin Gibbons (Delroy Lindo) lead her to grant her former patrol car partner, Detective Jarek Wysocki (Jason Clarke), license to combat wrongdoing wherever he finds it.
Todays video - A man in the kitchen.....
Todays Viagra joke
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Todays Old Jewish Comedian jokes
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Todays philosophical sort of joke
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