Last week, the daily newspaper al-Shorouk reported that important figures in Egypt's ruling National Democratic Party (N.D.P.) are meeting to decide the name of the party's 2011 presidential candidate. The article didn't cite any sources, and the N.D.P. issued a flood of statements denying the occurrence of such a meeting. However, the rumor has caused the issue of succession in Egypt to resurface. It doesn't matter how hard the N.D.P. denies the speculation and conjecture, it is going to have to name a candidate in the near future.
Although President Hosni Mubarak's son, Gamal, managed to make a quiet, backroom entry into the political scene, his emergence as the N.D.P.'s next candidate is clear. He gives major speeches, tours poor villages and has a say in all the economic, social and political issues. As Egypt has always been run as a one-man show, the elite usually reflect the ruler's ideology, identity and beliefs. Egypt's economic, political and social trends indicate that Gamal Mubarak already has a wide breadth of influence.
The rise of Gamal Mubarak started in 2002 when he was appointed head of the policy committee in the ruling N.D.P. Two years later, a new cabinet was appointed, headed by the Western-educated technocrat Dr. Ahmed Nazif. Vital ministries were given to unfamiliar young neo-liberalist faces who spoke perfect English, were roughly Gamal Mubarak's age and received some, if not all, of their education in the West. This cabal is currently known in Egypt as the "businessmen's cabinet."
Posted by: ed ||
07/04/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
The US-China relationship will only get more complicated, and none of the "experts" on either side has a grasp of the issues. I went shopping for a wooden closet rod at the Home Depot and was astounded to find they were all imported from China and cost $3.87 for 3 feet. I'll take a spokeshave to a 2 x 4 before I buy something like that.
#2
AH, do you have access to a lathe? It would have taken me about 10 minutes to turn your 2x4 into two 8-foot curtain rods you could cut to the length you wanted (a minute to rip it in half, 2 minutes to get the lathe extension out and hook it up, two minutes to turn it, and a few minutes to sand out the splinters). If you don't maybe some of your friends do?
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
07/04/2009 13:43 Comments ||
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#3
Good point OldSpook. Some people are not as dependant as others.
#4
A lot of the stuff made in China could be made in Mexico with cheaper shipping. The fact that Mexico hasn't stepped up (start with wood and work your way into more advanced plastics) says alot about our failed neighbor.
#5
I'll proudly call myself a "Country Boy" even though I don't like most "Country" music, that one hit home"
I can hunt, farm, fish and clean/cook whatever I kill, but I'm just as comfortable with a Computer as a Rifle.
I'm a technical git, and can repair/rebuild/make whatever I want. and overall I'm just as happy with air conditionong as a big fan.
I'm doin' OK.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
07/04/2009 18:46 Comments ||
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#6
Finding a 2x4 straight enough to mount on a lathe at HD would be quite the challenge.
In states far from the national spotlight, politics still attracts normal people. You're a mayor or a state senator or even the governor, but you lead a normal life. The local media are tough on you, but they know you, they live where you live, they're tough on the real you, not on some caricature cooked up by a malign alliance of late-night comics who'd never heard of you a week earlier and media grandees supposedly on your own side who pronounce you a "cancer".
Then suddenly you get the call from Washington. You know it'll mean Secret Service, and speechwriters, and minders vetting your wardrobe. But nobody said it would mean a mainstream network comedy host doing statutory rape gags about your 14-year old daughter. You've got a special-needs kid and a son in Iraq and a daughter who's given you your first grandchild in less than ideal circumstances. That would be enough for most of us. But the special-needs kid and the daughter and most everyone else you love are a national joke, and the PC enforcers are entirely cool with it.
Most of those who sneer at Sarah Palin have no desire to live her life. But why not try to - what's the word? - "empathize"? If you like Wasilla and hunting and snowmachining and moose stew and politics, is the last worth giving up everything else in the hopes that one day David Letterman and Maureen Dowd might decide Trig and Bristol and the rest are sufficiently non-risible to enable you to prosper in their world? And, putting aside the odds, would you really like to be the person you'd have to turn into under that scenario?
National office will dwindle down to the unhealthily singleminded (Clinton, Obama), the timeserving emirs of Incumbistan (Biden, McCain) and dynastic heirs (Bush). Our loss.
Our defective press. Before we start hanging politicians, we would be wist to start shooting editors and reporters first. THey have done the most damage to the republic, along with our leftist indoctrination education system and those who have steered it into a union dominated ditch.
#3
I confess I dont understand the point of the McCain staffers in the Vanity Fair hit piece on Palin (and thats what it is, a hit piece) if the staffers were so brilliant, why arent we addressing President McCain today?
Memo to Steve Schmidt: when you run a losing campaign, shut up afterwards.
I generally like Ms. Palin; shes a political natural and an engaging figure who connects with a lot of people, and if shes a welterweight, that was clearly good enough for Alaska. If she made a mistake, it was the very first one she agreed to sign on to the McCain campaign even though her family life was some stressed, she clearly hadnt done enough to be ready at a national level (to be a heavyweight) and, most importantly for a politician, she didnt understand that the McCain campaign was incompetent. It wasnt clear that McCain was a loser at that point; indeed he was only a point or two behind Obama in August. But a savvy pol would have looked at the internal dynamics and would have predicted that the campaign would falter in the stretch. A lot of non-savvy commenters saw it, and she should have seen it.
Sarah didnt see it, and she didnt do her homework. Thats her mistake and Ill bet she sees it now.
Now that she has the experience she has (an experience Id like to avoid for my own family), I wonder if what she might do in the future is, in part, start to deal with the nasty MSM and pols who think that going after family is just fine. She stared down Letterman and made him look a fool; perhaps she can do that to the rest of the MSM. That would be a worthwhile legacy.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/04/2009 12:21 Comments ||
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#4
Palin can now take up fundraising in a major way and also take on the MSM at the same time. She's young & could well forge a new identity in the process.
#5
Personally, I'm all for taking the entire McCain staff (and McCain) out behind the woodshed for a little character-building. I don't like McCain. I've never liked McCain. Palin was the reason I voted, instead of sitting this one out. It's time for McCain to fold the tent and slip back to Arizona, permanently. His "staff" should be unemployed and unemployable.
As for the title, it's wrong. We get the political candidates whose ego is so large they're willing to do anything, even murder, to gain power. We'd be better off picking names randomly from the telephone book every two years.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
07/04/2009 13:58 Comments ||
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#6
would you hire Steve Schmidt or any other backstabbing little McCain toadie? Cut their own throats.
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/04/2009 14:05 Comments ||
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#7
If Palin waits until she is just a bit younger than Hillary, that will be the 2024 elections.
#8
think of 4 years from now, when that Yahoo Dem who won because the the Stevens fiasco will be up fo r the senate... Palin will be a shoo-in for the senate. Then in 2020 she looks to be 11 years away form this with several years in the senate behind her, and all her kids except Trig are adults...
She's not done yet, not if she doesn't want to be.
#9
McCain lost my respect when he sat out the Abu Ghraib "panties on the head torture" routine. The one sitting senator who could have shut that cr@p down, decided to let GW stew in it for old times sake - piss off old man - once a hero, now a zero.
#11
Sara's a tribute to the real meaning of independent minded American woman. Politically savvy - no, honorable - yes. F*ck the MSM and the east coast elite weenies, I'll take the Air Alaska flight attendant any day.
Anyone who acts like a doormat when he visits one foreign ruler should not be surprised when other rulers come along and act as arrogantly as the first. From day one we have let the world understand that we are a country with no self-respect, that we can be insulted and punched and will respond, if at all, with restraint and meekness. French President Nicolas Sarkozy was able to say what he said about Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman because for years Israel has been getting across the message: You can treat us arrogantly.
It isn't the Americans who formulated the belittling and trivializing formula "natural growth" at which the Obama administration is now chipping away in an arrogant and bullying manner. An Israeli government, headed by Ariel Sharon, was responsible for the trivializing. And instead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declaring, here at home, that no independent nation can agree to have "natural growth" dictate its rate of construction, Defense Minister Ehud Barak has gone off to the United States to plead for this poor little lamb.
And to whom has he gone? To the president? To the vice president? To the secretary of state? No. To an envoy, who holds the mere rank of ambassador. The State of Israel's defense minister has tried to extract an agreement to build kindergartens in Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria. And since George Mitchell has apparently sent the defense minister away empty-handed, the prime minister himself is about to go to him hat in hand. Maybe he'll change his mind.
The British government is on the brink of collapse. And with what is the British foreign minister busy? He "completely deplores" an Israeli decision to build 50 housing units in the settlement Adam in Judea and Samaria. Foreign diplomats in Israel are speaking in a lordly way to Israeli statesmen, and foreign journalists are asking them questions that are often biased, intrusive and insolent. These correspondents would never allow themselves to behave so crudely in their own countries. And why shouldn't they? Here, after all, everyone including prime ministers feels obligated to justify himself to them and gratify them. Only rarely does someone put them in their place.
The scorn for Israeli sovereignty and dignity runs from the lowest to the highest. Israelis, in contact with foreigners, tend to be self-abasing and massively critical of their country and its leaders. Those who excel at this in particular are people from Israeli organizations who get their funding from foreign governments and foreign NGOs, and in return, wittingly or not, serve their interests.
Azerbaijan, a Muslim country, has a dangerous border with Iran. Many of its interests, especially economic interests, inevitably intersect with Iran's. About three weeks ago Iran's chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Hasan Firuzabadi, paid a surprise visit to Baku. The aim: to prevent a visit to the republic by Israeli President Shimon Peres. Although it was made clear to them that Iran would take a dim view should they refuse (and indeed while Peres was there, Iran recalled its ambassador), the Azerbaijanis rejected the demand outright. Azerbaijan is a country with self-respect. They made it clear to the bullying Iranians that no one was going to tell them which guests to receive, or to whom to export goods, or especially from whom to import. Only Israel fired the director general of its Defense Ministry, Amos Yaron, because that's what the Americans dictated.
When the norm is to submit to pressure, the pressures only increase. If right at the start of the pressure campaign Netanyahu has bowed down to the Americans and given up his most basic principle - opposition to a Palestinian state - what is left for him to give when the next wave of pressure comes along? This is weakness and this is its wage.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/04/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Humorous that this article appeared in Haaretz which has Gideon Levy on the editorial board and publishes work of people like Danny Rubenstein. Levy and Rubenstein constantly attack Israel and their work is frequently quoted by the people who villify Israel.
[Beirut Daily Star: Region] The political unrest in Iran over President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election marks a key point in the ideological struggle between ultra-conservatives and reformers, according to analysts. Thirty years after the creation of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the two factions are finding co-habitation increasingly difficult and the show of force in the wake of the disputed elections has unleashed a chain reaction.
The final effect on the nature and orientation of the regime in Iran remains unpredictable with some influential figures yet to take sides.
One key element is that the country's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who "has always tried to play an arbitration role in order to maintain the illusion of being an honest broker came out so quickly in support of Ahmadinejad," said Rouzbeh Parsi, Iran researcher at the Paris-based Institute of Security Studies.
While there are plenty of indications that the opposition supporters who have taken to the streets to cry foul over the election results have a valid grievance, in a place like Iran proof is hard to come by, analysts say.
"Nobody was allowed to follow the ballot boxes, that is why the opposition does not accept the partial recount," said Parsi.
"A lot of things make it [the result] impossible even if we don't have proof," argues Shahram Chubin of the Carnegie Institute.
Thierry Coville, of the Institute of International and Strategic Relations in Paris, has no doubt that massive electoral fraud has been committed.
"There's been an electoral hold-up," he said."They massively rigged it so you have two thirds, one third in order to eliminate the reformists," he added, speaking of a "coup d'etat in disguise."
According to the official results, Ahmadinejad won by a thumping majority of 63 percent against just 34 percent for opposition runner-up Mir Hossein Mousavi, a gap of 11 million votes.
But if the electorate is being cheated then the goal for the "extremist right wing circles" around Ahmadinejad "is to see an Islamic state established once and for all," said Parsi.
"They do not trust the people," he stressed. Chubin sees the emergence of "two very different assumptions of what Iran should be."
On the one hand there are those who want to see "political accountability and institutions that work properly" while the other faction "emphasises the religious legitimacy, lives on crises, on confronting the world".
The hardliners stole the election not just because the reformers were a threat to their candidate, the incumbent president, at the June 12 election but because they were openly challenging the regime's view of what Iran should be, he argued.
What is clear at the moment is that Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, a reformist Iranian leader and also a candidate in the presidential election, are getting worsted because the ultra-conservatives have "the means of repression," he added.
Nevertheless "the regime has been weakened" and its ultimate victory remains uncertain in the medium to long term due to the fissures in their own ranks, he opined.
"The row is not limited to the students and the middle-class. It is very diversified geographically and socially," due to the modernisation of Iranian society over the past 30 years, according to Coville.
The "conservative traditionalists" like parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani and Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser to Khamenei "will have to take sides if the confrontation persists," he added.
According to Tehran press last week, Larijani and over 100 MPs refused to attend a victory party hosted by President Ahmadinejad.
The "conservative modernists" grouped around former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani will similarly have to choose sides.
Rafsanjani, head of state from 1988-1997, remains an influential figure and is chairman of the Assembly of Experts, the only body which can elect, monitor or even dismiss the supreme leader of Iran.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2009 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Beirut Daily Star: Region] The political unrest in Iran over President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election marks a key point in the ideological struggle between ultra-conservatives and reformers, according to analysts. Thirty years after the creation of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the two factions are finding co-habitation increasingly difficult and the show of force in the wake of the disputed elections has unleashed a chain reaction.
