Escalation in Egypt

[GRG55]

Re: Escalation in Egypt

I don't see a difference...

well anyway, maybe it will work first it was Somalia then Yemen and now Egypt


The Oil chokepoint and other oily affairs
The strategic significance of the region between Yemen and Somalia becomes the point of geopolitical interest. It is the site of Bab el-Mandab, one of what the US Government lists as seven strategic world oil shipping chokepoints. The US Government Energy Information Agency states that "closure of the Bab el-Mandab could keep tankers from the Persian Gulf from reaching the Suez Canal/Sumed pipeline complex, diverting them around the southern tip of Africa. The Strait of Bab el-Mandab is a chokepoint between the horn of Africa and the Middle East, and a strategic link between the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean." [9]
Bab el-Mandab, between Yemen, Djibouti, and Eritrea connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. Oil and other exports from the Persian Gulf must pass through Bab el-Mandab before entering the Suez Canal. In 2006, the Energy Department in Washington reported that an estimated 3.3 million barrels a day of oil flowed through this narrow waterway to Europe, the United States, and Asia. Most oil, or some 2.1 million barrels a day, goes north through the Bab el-Mandab to the Suez/Sumed complex into the Mediterranean.
An excuse for a US or NATO militarization of the waters around Bab el-Mandab would give Washington another major link in its pursuit of control of the seven most critical oil chokepoints around the world, a major part of any future US strategy aimed at denying oil flows to China, the EU or any region or country that opposes US policy. Given that significant flows of Saudi oil pass through Bab el-Mandab, a US military control there would serve to deter the Saudi Kingdom from becoming serious about transacting future oil sales with China or others no longer in dollars, as was recently reported by UK Independent journalist Robert Fisk.
It would also be in a position to threaten China’s oil transport from Port Sudan on the Red Sea just north of Bab el-Mandab, a major lifeline in China’s national energy needs.
In addition to its geopolitical position as a major global oil transit chokepoint, Yemen is reported to hold some of the world’s greatest untapped oil reserves. Yemen’s Masila Basin and Shabwa Basin are reported by international oil companies to contain "world class discoveries."[10] France’s Total and several smaller international oil companies are engaged in developing Yemen’s oil production. Some fifteen years ago I was told in a private meeting with a well-informed Washington insider that Yemen contained "enough undeveloped oil to fill the oil demand of the entire world for the next fifty years." Perhaps there is more to Washington’s recent Yemen concern than a rag-tag al Qaeda whose very existence as a global terror organization has been doubted by seasoned Islamic experts.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.p...786&context=va

A bit off the topic of this thread, but I really do wish that iTulipers who, let's face it are a pretty bright bunch, would take a moment to think about some of the stuff that gets posted here.

This, for example, is a completely nonsensical statement:

"...In addition to its geopolitical position as a major global oil transit chokepoint, Yemen is reported to hold some of the world’s greatest untapped oil reserves. Yemen’s Masila Basin and Shabwa Basin are reported by international oil companies to contain "world class discoveries."[10] France’s Total and several smaller international oil companies are engaged in developing Yemen’s oil production. Some fifteen years ago I was told in a private meeting with a well-informed Washington insider that Yemen contained "enough undeveloped oil to fill the oil demand of the entire world for the next fifty years."..."

At present the "entire world" burns up well over 80 million barrels per day of petroleum liquids. Let's be conservative and assume over the "next fifty years" the world consumes 75 million barrels per day. That's a total of 1.36 Trillion barrels. Saudi Aramco estimates its remaining recoverable reserves at 260 Billion barrels - and that estimate has been repeatedly questioned as unrealistically high. So the utterly ridiculous assertion above implies that Yemen is somehow going to supply RECOVERABLE reserves that are more than five times Saudi Arabia's. I'll take the other side of that bet...



This sort of uninformed stupidity from "a well-informed Washington insider" and the like seems especially prevalent when it comes to oil for some reason, and ranks up there with other nonsense that's been spouted in recent years by so-called "experts" and various national Ministry officials around the world - and I have seen posted over time on this site:

• The Western Desert of Iraq is largely "unexplored" and contains massive reserves;
• The Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia is largely "unexplored" and contains massive reserves;
• Brazil's offshore potential is so massive that it will soon become the next member of OPEC;
• Chevron's 2006 Jack-2 well discovered 15 billion barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico...

...and on, and on, and on.

If there was a "barf" emoticon I'd be inserting it here...

[Fiat Currency]

Re: Escalation in Egypt

If there was a "barf" emoticon I'd be inserting it here...

At your service ...

[Dave Stratman]

Re: Escalation in Egypt

Having started this thread, I must apologize for not commenting recently. I have a habit of collecting information and then breaking it down into Important or peripheral. It is my way. I was aghast that EJ has responded and I give a big nod to Karim for providing so much detailed information.GRG55 and Shakespeare have, as always lifted the eyes. Don prods thought in his own way. The link is at the start of the thread and I chose it carefully because it is the heart beat
Ladies and Gentleman we are in a few hours to see if the people win.
I am proud to see that the people of that ancient land, love their Country, they have NOT chosen Anarchy over respect for themselves and I am surprised, for that is the easy action. They have shown restraint beyond what I would have expected.
Mubarak is finished but a snake cornered can be a dangerous thing. This is not a fight for power, this is a fight for control over power. He has an arsenal to kill this.
He can cut power, food, water, medicine can be made scarce, internet and social sites can be feed misinformation. Fuel can be shut off, terrorism can be made reality, harrasement and fear of anarchy can be made real to peace loving people but the Army has kissed him good bye.
My belief is he will use all or some off these things, but he will not win. I think the Army will take over but a vacuous need will arise. The Army will not surfice except to keep the anarchy at bay until it (the Army)cannot be everywhere at once. There needs to be a credible alternative and no matter what I have read or seen, there is none except more puppets and say what you want these people are aware of that. You have only a fearless state desire to rid yourself of this past but the future appears to me a blood bath, a complete disaster for the stability of the most stable of Muselem countries. It has implications for every one and I can say without fear some in power in America and Israel are having to look at possible alternative to what they thought 'was' the status quo. Some have asked if this is a "black swan" that will change the World as we know it. Well I don't know. It is certainly a very large Butterfly Flapping its wings in what was once rainforest. Do the people fold, does the Army take hold, does Mabarak leave... it is just the movement of air from static to release as the 'wings of change' struggle to get up and away.
They the people will win - what they win, I fear most.

I don't think it is at all clear that the people will prevail over the state apparatus. They can only do so by taking certain actions:

1. The demonstrators need to arm themselves. On Friday, 1/28, demonstrators captured the police stations in Suez, Alexandria, and at least some of them in Cairo, and I would suppose in other towns and cities as well. I've seen no reporting on this question, but I hope the demonstrators seized all the weapons they could.

2. Why do they need arms? Because in spite of all the happy, excited words and brave deeds and the huge throngs of people, this could all disappear in the face of a police/military crackdown. Remember China in 1989? Though most of the Western reporting focused on the students in Tiananmen Square to the exclusion of huge workers' demonstrations in Shanghai and numerous cities, the Chinese uprising was on a scale as great as what is happening in Egypt. Remember the pictures of vast numbers of people emerging from their homes in Beijing to embrace and fraternize with the soldiers a week before the crackdown? Remember the rumors that the top rulers had fled the country or at least had packed their bags? Then came the massacre at Tiananmen (and at other places around the country, but the massacres of mere workers went unreported in the West) and a ferocious country-wide repression. The celebratory, happy, exciting feelings of those weeks became but a distant memory. The Chinese movement of workers and students challenged the power of the Communist ruling power. Only one of them could survive. The only way forward for the popular movement was the violent overthrow of the Communist ruling power. This overthrow could only have succeeded if they had declared revolution to be their intent; only on this basis--that is, that they were serious about overthrowing the government--could the great many sympathetic soldiers have risked everything to join them. The students seemed to be unclear about the stark choices. The workers were clearer but had no weapons and insufficient organization.

The Egyptian movement needs to move beyond calling for the ouster of Mubarak and declare that they are going to overthrow the state power of the rich and create a new society. This is the only basis on which they can win, because it is the only path to meaningful change and the only basis on which large numbers of soldiers can join the revolution. Anything less and the movement will either be drowned in blood, as in China, or it will be co-opted with elections or phony changes. Of course, elements of the demonstrators may have done all these things already--I simply don't know.

3. The Muslim Brotherhood are enemies of the people and secret allies of the US and the ruling elite. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood was created in 1928 by a young Islamic scholar by the name of by Hassan al-Banna "with a grant from the British-owned Suez Canal Company, and over the next quarter century British diplomats, the intelligence service MI6, and Cairo's Anglophilic King Farouq would use the Muslim Brotherhood as a cudgel against Egypt's communists and nationalists...." (Robert Dreyfuss, Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, p. 46) The point that the MB now talks nice and comes off as moderate is immaterial. It is still a weapon in the hands of Empire.

The origins of the Muslim Brotherhood should come as no surprise. The US and political Islam have been close allies since 1947, when the US installed the House of Saud to rule over Saudi Arabia's vast oil reserves; the House of Saud is loyal to Wahabism, one of the most reactionary of Islamic sects. Since then the US has used political Islam to lure disaffected young workers and farmers away from democratic, anti-capitalist revolutionary ideas towards reactionary religious ideas and leaders. The US alliance with political Islam is sometimes overt, sometimes secret. The secret US and Israeli alliance with TIME's 1979 Man of the Year, the Ayatollah Khomeini, was brought to light during the Iran/Contra hearings, when it became known that Israel had been supplying Iran with weapons in return for cash which it sent to fund the US-backed Contras in Central America. In the same year as the Iranian revolution, the US openly recruited, organized, trained, and armed over 100,000 mujahadeen--Islamic fundamentalists--to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, using one Osama bin Laden as an intermediary and money man. Political Islam has replaced the Soviet Union as the enemy with which the US government frightens Americans while it secretly works with Islamic fundamentalists to control workers in all the lands touched by Islam.

There are two great dangers from the presence of the Islamic Brotherhood in Egypt. One is that, either in reality or as a media fiction, the Egyptian revolution becomes characterized as an Islamic revolution. This would dramatically undercut support for the revolution in the West and would undermine its ability to spread the revolutionary idea to all the many countries which are in desperate need of revolution, from Greece to the US. A second is the awful possibility that the Muslim Brotherhood, in the event of a revolution, gains the use of police power, and does as Khomeini did in June-July of 1980: liquidate all the leftist elements, the workers and students, involved in the revolution. This is the great service that Khomeini performed for US and international capital. It is a service which the US will, I am sure, seek to be performed by the Muslim Brotherhood should it come to that.

[don]

Re: Escalation in Egypt

a bit on the subject (from the front lines)

Every revolution, sooner or later, has to stand on the barricades and fight a counter-revolution. The scenes today at the Tahrir Square are nothing short of a scene that we imagine from the French revolution: the people holding ground against hordes of militiamen of a dying regime. Young and old, women and men, Muslims and Christians, women in hijab and women in jeans, all are there. Some are throwing stones, women gathering stones and passing them to young men; others are building barricades. Doctors are attending to the wounded. Committees are being organized and arresting thugs. . . . A people on the march.

My fear, and that of many, was that confused and divided, starved and scared, the people would back down and the revolution would die. But Mubarak committed a large mistake sending his militias against the people. In a surrealistic scene, thugs on horses and camels attacked the Tahrir Square with swords, in a move coming from another time and another planet. But the image speaks for it self: the thug on a horse attacking the young man with a blackberry -- this is the contrast between the Egypt of Mubarak and the new Egypt that the revolution is claiming. Thousands upon thousands of thugs and regime troopers in civilian clothing stormed the Tahrir square, but in vain: the people stood its ground and fought on every entrance of the square. The battle was live on Al Jazeera, and the people, after seven hours of fighting for every inch, finally got the militias on the run.

Dyab Abou Jahjah 2 February 2011

[touchring]

Re: Escalation in Egypt

Remember China in 1989?

China is different from Egypt. The communist party is above religion and god, let alone mere mortals. They will vanquish the gods anytime.

[iyamwutiam]

Re: Escalation in Egypt

China is different from Egypt. The communist party is above religion and god, let alone mere mortals. They will vanquish the gods anytime.

I actually think the opposite. There is a stunningly devout quality about this revolution. Reports of literally thousands of protesters 'STOPPING" everything and even amidst pitched battle -praying. The fact that Egypt is overwhelmingly Muslim/Islamic has been a unifying bond and has created tremendous cohesion. In fact -you can infer that the commonality of all these 'uprising' or soon to be -Yemen, Jordan, etc is their overwhelming unity in religion.

Since political oppression was extremely successful- many sought the province of religion which was tolerated by many despotic rulers. In essence it was the only sanctuary where 'western' thought -freedom/expression- were repressed in the guise of moral corruption by the state. They can not make such a claim on fundamentalist (or fundamentalist looking) people and in essence they would be cracking down on their own 'message' which was nothing more than a cynical ploy to disguise political repression in a cloak of extreme religiosity. The Saudi's have perfected this apparently Orwellian society and yet -even the wealthy Saudi citizen may at some point be lured by the life less convoluted.

[oddlots]

Re: Escalation in Egypt

Yikes. Listened to Suleiman. Pure torture. These creeps can torture logic and language like no-one else. I shudder to think what they could do to some helpless prisoner.

[oddlots]

Re: Escalation in Egypt

Couple of good sources to my mind for those who can't turn away from this:

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist:

http://twitter.com/#!/NickKristof/

A senior producer at Democracy Now who returned home to cover the movement:

http://twitter.com/#!/sharifkouddous

[Dave Stratman]

Re: Escalation in Egypt

China is different from Egypt. The communist party is above religion and god, let alone mere mortals. They will vanquish the gods anytime.

I guess I don't understand your comment. Do you mean that the Mubarak government is too moral to drown the uprising in blood, or too weak?

[touchring]

Re: Escalation in Egypt

I guess I don't understand your comment. Do you mean that the Mubarak government is too moral to drown the uprising in blood, or too weak?

Mubarak is a despot, no doubt about that, but a comparison between the CCP and his government is really not appropriate. For example, if the MB decide to revolt against him, is he and his people willing to destroy them and their institution? He can't do that of course, as he doesn't have that power. He is not that powerful yet. The CCP on the other hand is all powerful, above all institutions, all religions and above morality itself. With that kind of power, they can squash any rebellion or protests because there is no way rocks or molotov cocktails can fight with barrages of machine gun fire.

Did you see how the uprising in Tibet and Xinjiang were suppressed? Troops with automatic weapons were sent in to deal with the protesters, there was no need even to use riot police, batons or tear gas. The order is shoot to kill.

[karim0028]

Re: Escalation in Egypt

I actually think the opposite. There is a stunningly devout quality about this revolution. Reports of literally thousands of protesters 'STOPPING" everything and even amidst pitched battle -praying. The fact that Egypt is overwhelmingly Muslim/Islamic has been a unifying bond and has created tremendous cohesion. In fact -you can infer that the commonality of all these 'uprising' or soon to be -Yemen, Jordan, etc is their overwhelming unity in religion.

Since political oppression was extremely successful- many sought the province of religion which was tolerated by many despotic rulers. In essence it was the only sanctuary where 'western' thought -freedom/expression- were repressed in the guise of moral corruption by the state. They can not make such a claim on fundamentalist (or fundamentalist looking) people and in essence they would be cracking down on their own 'message' which was nothing more than a cynical ploy to disguise political repression in a cloak of extreme religiosity. The Saudi's have perfected this apparently Orwellian society and yet -even the wealthy Saudi citizen may at some point be lured by the life less convoluted.

Egypt has since the 60's/70's been a religious country, but not fanatic, just religious and sometimes even just culturally religious... Its a deep part of the cultural conversation. Egypt went through a very secular/western era in the 40's/50's/60's; even though religion was still part of the culture....

[D-Mack]

Re: Escalation in Egypt

A bit off the topic of this thread, but I really do wish that iTulipers who, let's face it are a pretty bright bunch, would take a moment to think about some of the stuff that gets posted here.

This, for example, is a completely nonsensical statement:

"...In addition to its geopolitical position as a major global oil transit chokepoint, Yemen is reported to hold some of the world’s greatest untapped oil reserves. Yemen’s Masila Basin and Shabwa Basin are reported by international oil companies to contain "world class discoveries."[10] France’s Total and several smaller international oil companies are engaged in developing Yemen’s oil production. Some fifteen years ago I was told in a private meeting with a well-informed Washington insider that Yemen contained "enough undeveloped oil to fill the oil demand of the entire world for the next fifty years."..."

At present the "entire world" burns up well over 80 million barrels per day of petroleum liquids. Let's be conservative and assume over the "next fifty years" the world consumes 75 million barrels per day. That's a total of 1.36 Trillion barrels. Saudi Aramco estimates its remaining recoverable reserves at 260 Billion barrels - and that estimate has been repeatedly questioned as unrealistically high. So the utterly ridiculous assertion above implies that Yemen is somehow going to supply RECOVERABLE reserves that are more than five times Saudi Arabia's. I'll take the other side of that bet...



This sort of uninformed stupidity from "a well-informed Washington insider" and the like seems especially prevalent when it comes to oil for some reason, and ranks up there with other nonsense that's been spouted in recent years by so-called "experts" and various national Ministry officials around the world - and I have seen posted over time on this site:

• The Western Desert of Iraq is largely "unexplored" and contains massive reserves;
• The Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia is largely "unexplored" and contains massive reserves;
• Brazil's offshore potential is so massive that it will soon become the next member of OPEC;
• Chevron's 2006 Jack-2 well discovered 15 billion barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico...

...and on, and on, and on.

If there was a "barf" emoticon I'd be inserting it here...

I wasn't really concentrating on the oil, maybe it's just internal propaganda to encourage intervention into Yemen. You can probably get a lot more support if your friends can make a bit of money on the way.

I doubt that it was a mistake that Awlaki was dining at the Pentagon
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...1-attacks.html

[Dave Stratman]

Re: Escalation in Egypt

Mubarak is a despot, no doubt about that, but a comparison between the CCP and his government is really not appropriate. For example, if the MB decide to revolt against him, is he and his people willing to destroy them and their institution? He can't do that of course, as he doesn't have that power. He is not that powerful yet. The CCP on the other hand is all powerful, above all institutions, all religions and above morality itself. With that kind of power, they can squash any rebellion or protests because there is no way rocks or molotov cocktails can fight with barrages of machine gun fire.

Did you see how the uprising in Tibet and Xinjiang were suppressed? Troops with automatic weapons were sent in to deal with the protesters, there was no need even to use riot police, batons or tear gas. The order is shoot to kill.

The conduct of troops against protesters they do not see as their own people is not to be compared--at least not automatically--with their conduct against their own.

I agree with your general assessment of the relative strength and ruthlessness of the CCP compared with the Mubarak regime. Yet during the Chinese Spring of 1989 the CCP itself appeared to be losing its grip. Workers burned down government buildings in several cities; many of the students in Tiananmen Square were sons and daughters of high-level cadre; there were mass defections from the Party; some Party organs came out in support of the movement; and there were big questions about whether the PLA (People's Liberation Army) would fire on the people. Many people in China and abroad had high hopes for the outcome.

It does not take a CCP to crush or at least derail such an uprising if it is unarmed, insufficiently organized, and not perfectly clear on who are its friends and who are its enemies. The relevant example here is Iran. Who of us knew anything about the Ayatollah Khomeini before he swept to power in the 1979 revolution? The mullahs and the fundamentalist Islam they represented were only a fraction--exactly how large a fraction, I do not know--of a huge revolutionary movement against the Shah that had been building for years. The movement included unionized oil workers and workers from many sectors of Iranian society plus a huge student movement. The character of the revolution--would it be religious and authoritarian? socialist? democratic and anti-capitalist?--was in some doubt for more than a year, as different forces contended for power. The contest was brought to a bloody end in June-July 1980, when Khomeini's faction finally gained the upper hand and executed tens of thousands of workers and students who had been involved in the revolution.

My fear is not so much that Mubarak will attempt or succeed in a bloody crackdown, though that is possible. More likely, I fear, is that a revolution of sorts succeeds and that it comes under the sway of the Muslim Brotherhood, backed by the military (and covertly by the US). While I am sure the US would protest such a development loudly, an Islamic Egypt would serve US interests. It would deeply undermine any sympathy in the US and western Europe with the revolution. It would dramatically stoke Americans' fears of the "Islamic menace," thus justifying all sorts of US military muscle-flexing abroad and police-state measures at home. And it would place the Egyptian people under one more authoritarian, anti-democratic regime.

[FRED]

Cash-starved Egyptians turn on each other

Cash-starved Egyptians turn on each other

Cash, food worries pit Egyptian against Egyptian as chaos hammers the economy

CAIRO (AP) -- For more than a week, Zaki Abdel-Aziz had been out of work and nearly out of money, joining millions of Egyptians living more on hope than cash as the capital plunged into chaos and the economy ground to a virtual halt.
His wife and three children were hungry, tired and tense. There was just over $17 (100 pounds) in their apartment, and no way to borrow more. Then a chilling call came Tuesday night.

"The guy asked me, 'Zaki, you haven't worked for a week, right? You don't have money?'" Abdel-Aziz, 45, recalled. "He said, 'Come out tomorrow and you'll get 100 pounds and a bag of food. All you have to do is join us against those traitors in Tahrir."

Abdel-Aziz, who works in a government records office, angrily rebuffed the offer. "I'm hungry, but I won't sell my soul to eat," he said. On Wednesday, supporters of President Hosni Mubarak converged on Tahrir Square in central Cairo, fighting deadly battles with protesters who seek the Egyptian leader's ouster. more...

__

This is right out of the "How to start a civil war" manual.

[chr5648]

Re: Cash-starved Egyptians turn on each other

Cash-starved Egyptians turn on each other

Cash, food worries pit Egyptian against Egyptian as chaos hammers the economy

CAIRO (AP) -- For more than a week, Zaki Abdel-Aziz had been out of work and nearly out of money, joining millions of Egyptians living more on hope than cash as the capital plunged into chaos and the economy ground to a virtual halt.
His wife and three children were hungry, tired and tense. There was just over $17 (100 pounds) in their apartment, and no way to borrow more. Then a chilling call came Tuesday night.

"The guy asked me, 'Zaki, you haven't worked for a week, right? You don't have money?'" Abdel-Aziz, 45, recalled. "He said, 'Come out tomorrow and you'll get 100 pounds and a bag of food. All you have to do is join us against those traitors in Tahrir."

Abdel-Aziz, who works in a government records office, angrily rebuffed the offer. "I'm hungry, but I won't sell my soul to eat," he said. On Wednesday, supporters of President Hosni Mubarak converged on Tahrir Square in central Cairo, fighting deadly battles with protesters who seek the Egyptian leader's ouster. more...

__

This is right out of the "How to start a civil war" manual.

This reminds me of the pay check to pay check lifestyle of Americans. Scary isn't it?