Yesterday's violence has not deterred, but energized the movement.
Tahrir Square is filling, masses of people bringing bedding, food, et
al; a large medical brigade has organized and arrived, with supplies,
5 European countries have asked Mubarek to step down immediately.
The online group Anonymous said it brought down the sites of the
Ministry of Information and President Hosni Mubarak's National
Democratic Party in support of the antigovernment protests. His
thugs may attack again, but the goals blunted and future, cloudy.
The NY Times reports the attackers were bussed in, en masse, and
Democratic forces have displayed 120 undercover police and security
ID's from captured thugs.
Two, seemingly contradictory reports are that the new prime minister
will meet with ElBaradai and other oppositional leaders, the other that
the opposition will not meet until Mubarack resigns. I'd bet he is being
pressured by Obama, Clinton and others, as is the wholly U.S. supplied
military. At the same time, the high command of the military ordered
raids on the media and are apparently positioning for a Tienamin Sq.
solution. Whatever happens, short of mass murder, followed by his own
execution, he has to go, almost certainly very soon.
Ed
.
The Middle East's freedom train has just left the station
News Source: February 2, 2011
Christopher Dickey spoke with Nawal El Saadawi, an 80-year-old protester,
about her refusal to go home when the protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square
turned violent. "They have a strategy to frighten us and to starve us,"
she said.
by Rami G. Khouri
To appreciate what is taking place in the Arab world today you have to
grasp the historical significance of the events that have started changing
rulers and regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, with others sure to follow. What
we are witnessing is the unraveling of the post-colonial order that the
British and French created in the Arab world in the 1920s and 1930s and
then sustained - with American and Soviet assistance - for most of the
last half-century.
It is fascinating, if insular, to focus attention, as much Western media
are doing, on whether Facebook drove these revolts; or to ask what will
happen if the Muslim Brotherhood plays a role in any new Egyptian
government. The Arabs are like a bride emerging on her wedding day to face
people commenting on whether her shoes match her gloves, when the real
issue is how beautiful and happy she is.
The events unfolding before our eyes in Egypt, after Tunisia, are the
third most important historical development in the Arab region in the past
century, and to miss that point is to perpetuate a tradition of Western
Orientalist romanticism and racism that have been a large cause of our
pain for all these years. This is the most important of the three major
historical markers because it is the first one that marks a process of
genuine self-determination by Arab citizens who can speak and act for
themselves for the first time in their modern history.
Macdonald Stainsby
Co-ordinator,
_______________________________________________
Rad-Green mailing list
Rad-Green@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu
***
http://www.laprogressive.com/the-middle-east/aid-egypt-money-goand-decides-spent/
U.S. Aid to Egypt: Where Does the Money Go-And Who Decides How It's Spent?
by Marian Wang
Pro Publica: Wednesday, 2 February 2011
The protests in Egypt have prompted renewed questions about the U.S.'s aid
to the country-an issue that the U.S. government has also pledged to
reconsider. We've taken a step back and tried to answer some basic
questions, such as how as much the U.S. has given, who has benefitted, and
who gets to decide how its all spent.
How much does the U.S. spend on Egypt?
Egypt gets the most U.S. foreign aid of any country except for Israel. (This
doesn't include the money spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.) The
amount varies each year and there are many different funding streams, but
U.S. foreign assistance to Egypt has averaged just over $2 billion every
year since 1979, when Egypt struck a peace treaty with Israel following the
Camp David Peace Accords, according to a Congressional Research Service
report from 2009.
That average includes both military and economic assistance, though the
latter has been in decline since 1998, according to CRS.
What about military aid-how much is it, and what does it buy?
According to the State Department, U.S. military aid to Egypt totals over
$1.3 billion annually in a stream of funding known as Foreign Military
Financing.
U.S. officials have long argued that the funding promotes strong ties
between the two countries' militaries, which in turn has all sorts of
benefits. For example, U.S. Navy warships get "expedited processing" through
the Suez Canal.
Here's a 2009 U.S. embassy cable recently released by WikiLeaks that makes
essentially the same point:
President Mubarak and military leaders view our military assistance program
as the cornerstone of our mil-mil relationship and consider the USD 1.3
billion in annual FMF as "untouchable compensation" for making and
maintaining peace with Israel. The tangible benefits to our mil-mil
relationship are clear: Egypt remains at peace with Israel, and the U.S.
military enjoys priority access to the Suez Canal and Egyptian airspace.
The military funding also enables Egypt to purchase U.S.-manufactured
military goods and services, a 2006 report from the Government
Accountability Office explained [PDF]. The report criticized both the State
Department and the Defense Department for failing to measure how the funding
actually contributes to U.S. goals.
Does this aid require Egypt to meet any specific conditions regarding human
rights?
No. Defense Secretary Gates stated in 2009 that foreign military financing
"should be without conditions."
Gates prefaced that comment by saying that the Obama administration, like
other U.S. administrations, is "always supportive of human rights."
The administration of former president George W. Bush had threatened to
link military assistance to Egypt's human rights progress, but it didn't
follow through. When exiled Egyptian dissident, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, called
on the U.S. government to attach conditions to aid to Egypt, U.S. officials
dismissed the idea as unrealistic.
Who benefits from the military aid?
Obviously the aid benefits Egypt's military and whatever government it
supports, which has so far been Mubarak's. Foreign military financing is a
great deal for Egypt-it gets billions in no-strings-attached funding to
modernize its armed forces and replace old Soviet weapons with advanced U.S.
weaponry and military equipment.
According to the State Department, that equipment has includedfighter jets,
tanks, armored personnel carriers, Apache helicopters, anti-aircraft missile
batteries and aerial surveillance aircraft.
Egypt can purchase this equipment either through the U.S. military or
directly from U.S. defense contractors, and it can do so on credit. In 2006,
the GAO noted that Egypt had entered some defense contracts in advance
of-and in excess of-its military assistance appropriations. Some of those
payments wouldn't be due in full until 2011, the GAO said.
The other group that benefits from this aid arrangement is U.S. defense
contractors. As we reported with Sunlight Foundation, contractors including
BAE Systems, General Dynamics, General Electric, Raytheon and Lockheed
Martin have all done businesswith the Egyptian government through
relationships facilitated by high-powered DC lobbyists.
What about economic aid?
U.S. economic aid to Egypt has declined over the years, but is generally in
the hundreds of millions annually.
Some of this aid also comes back to benefit the U.S. through programs such
as the Commodity Import Program. Under that program, the U.S. gives Egypt
millions in economic aid to import U.S. goods. The State Department, on its
website, describes it as "one of the largest and most popular USAID
programs."
Others were not as successful. A 2006 inspector general's audit of a 4-year,
$57-million project to increase jobs and rural household incomes found that
the U.S. investment "has not increased the number of jobs as planned" among
participants [PDF]. A 2009 audit of a $151 million project to modernize
Egypt's financial sector found that while the country's real estate finance
market experienced significant growth throughout the project's duration,
USAID's efforts were "not clearly measurable" [PDF] and the growth could be
due to market forces or the Egyptian government's actions.
Critics of the Obama administration's economic aid to Egypt have noted that
in 2007, for instance, such aid only amounted to $6 per capita, compared
with the $40.80 per capita spent on Jordan that same year. Ahmad El-Naggar,
economic researcher at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies,
criticized the U.S. in 2009 for focusing on "programs valued for strict
ideological reasons," and not on the country's growing poverty and
unemployment rate-two issues fueling the current protests.
What about funding for democracy promotion and civil society?
Funding for programs that promote democracy and good governance through
direct funding to NGOs in Egypt averaged about $24 million from fiscal year
1999 to 2009. But these, too, had "limited impact," due to " a lack of
Egyptian government cooperation," according to an October 2009 inspector
general audit:
The Government of Egypt has resisted USAID/Egypt's democracy and governance
program and has suspended the activities of many U.S. NGOs because Egyptian
officials thought these organizations were too aggressive.
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