The success of the most likely winner of the Egyptian presidential election, Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, will in the medium- and long- run depend on his ability to revive the Egyptian economy. It's already clear that the Army wishes to crush all internal opposition--not just from the Muslim Brotherhood, but from the liberal, secular, moderate, and democratic forces within the society. So the Army does not plan to win popularity through respecting citizens' rights and their dignity. Does it plan to win popularity through rapid economic growth?
If that's the plan, there is thus far no evidence of it. As Deutsche Welle suggested yesterday,
While privately owned companies struggle under the burden of overall chaos and political insecurity, the army appears to have been unaffected. According to some observers, the army is indeed profiting from the crisis. Over the past months, the government in Cairo has commissioned construction companies operated by the military to carry out several large infrastructure projects. In November, Interim President Adly Mansour had issued a decree allowing the government to skip the tender process when placing an order -- companies run by the army have largely profited from that moveâŚ.
Estimates differ on how much of Egypt's economy is controlled by the army -- figures range from 5 to 60 percent. The country's defense budget, and other figures that could shed light on the army's true power, are kept secret. What is clear, however, is that the army has its hands in every single important sector -- from pasta production, to manufacture of furniture and television sets, to oil production and infrastructure projects. The army owns hospitals and Red Sea tourist resorts, and has taken a leading role in agriculture. These army-owned companies are usually headed by retired military personnel, who earn well privately in addition to collecting their public pensionsâŚ.However, army personnel in suits generally lack business expertise. In order to stay competitive, the army had to resort to other measures: Their companies usually don't have to pay taxes, they profit from massive subsidies and can turn to enlisted personnel as cheap labor.
This is no formula for economic growth, but it's easy to see how difficult Sisi would find it to curtail the military privileges that so greatly enrich the officer corps and the Army as an institution. Perhaps he'll surprise us all after his inauguration, but I wouldn't bet on it. He has already talked about an austerity program, but note who is being asked for austerity:
Egypt's youth is its hope; they need to give and not expect to take anything nowâŚ.Egypt needs a lot from us. Egypt's youth should not be thinking about when will they be able to get married or when will they 'live', they need to build the country first. Our economic situation is extremely difficult, right now we can't 'want' anything, we should only 'give' to EgyptâŚ.Before breakfast, before you put a piece of bread in your mouth, think what you have done for Egypt today.
This is general, broad appeal, and an appeal to Egypt's youth. Nowhere is there an appeal to the army to prepare for austerity and prepare to lose some of its many economic privileges.
And this is what separates Egypt from the cases where an authoritarian government--Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew, Pinochet's Chile, Taiwan and South Korea under military regimes--produced considerable economic growth. They did not have armies that controlled huge chunks of the economy, and the military had no reason to fight off real economic reform.
Egypt's case is different, and considerably worse. If Sisi takes on the military's economic empire, he will have a tough battle on his hands--and one in which the United States and other friends of Egypt should back him. But there are few indications that, after a career in the army and as the beneficiary of its economic role, he is willing to undertake this task.
The economy will fail even more so than it has so far. Sisi will respond by trotting out the usual suspects, starting with the Muslim BröderbĂźnd and ending with the Juice. He'll blame America too along the way despite all the aid Uncle Sugar has provided and continues to provide (we're stupid that way). When the situation is desperate enough he'll start a war, walking the fine line between distracting the rubes in Cairo and getting thrashed to the point that he's overthrown.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/08/2014 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
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Top|| File under: Arab Spring
#1
Uncle Sugar has provided Egypt approximately $2 billion a year to keep the peace with Israel and neutralize the Sinai. The first succeeded. The second is now under review. The question is whether the Multinational Force and Observers that has patrolled the Sinai since 1983 and which the US finances is still relevant.
#2
But Papa Barack is unhappy that the army has taken Egypt put of the hands of his friends, the Muslim Brotherhood. How will that impact his use of phone and pen?
#6
'How Putin is Reinventing Warfare'
By not doing it stupidly; use proxies, let them take the risks, don't announce your plans, use disorganization as a shield, above all, tell the press how smart they are. If you tell the press that they're smart, followed by a lie, they'll believe both lies.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
05/08/2014 7:48 Comments ||
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#7
Putin's playing the great game.
Emperor Zero's playing hand-shandy.
If he's not careful, he's liable to take back huge chunks of the Soviet empire. Any reason management would be any better this time around?
It doesn't have to be better for the aggregate of its members; he can do a different pattern, based on 17th century Venice, where the Party is geographically concentrated in one country and the 'prole' role is done by the colonies. As I pointed out earlier, they've got five or so colonies here in _this_ hemisphere, not counting the ones on the edge or 'sympathetic' like Argentina.
The Russian government's claims that the March 16 referendum in Crimea resulted in a 96.7% vote in favor of annexation were always extremely dubious. But now, as Paul Roderick Gregory of Forbes points out, a report by Russia's official Presidential Council on Civil Society and Human Rights suggests that the real numbers were far different from those previously claimed:
The website of the "President of Russia's Council on Civil Society and Human Rights" posted a blog that was quickly taken down as if it were toxic radioactive waste. According to the Council's report about the March referendum to annex Crimea, the turnout was a maximum 30%. And of these, only half voted for annexation -- meaning only 15 percent of Crimean citizens voted for annexation.
#5
Bright Pebbles:
I agree, but the turnout was disproportionately pro-annexing. A large part of the anti-annexation block boycotted the referendum, putting the pro-Putin group in the minority.
P.S. The fact the 50% of the voters walked past armed spetsnazski and drunken thugs to cast a no vote means the Crimeans must realy HATE annexation.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
05/08/2014 13:04 Comments ||
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#2
Remember when the Left's narrative about chaos in Iraq was "you didn't have a plan for after you got rid of Saddam?" So, about that plan you had about Libya after you got rid of Gaddafi?
#3
The truth is bigger than either side is admitting
Indeed. The Obama Administration has never been held to account as to how protecting Islamic cut throats in Dernaa constituted a R2P mission. Now the Presidents critics and defenders alike have primarily focused only on the first portion of Ben Rhodes email statement. to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video and not a broader failure or policy. The O-Team was adept at placating their supporters by referencing Rhodes language as used in the plural these protests. However, its likely the second portion of that statement was the true cause for redaction. Now its clear that a video didnt motivate the Benghazi attack therefor it was in response to a broader failed policy. That, Madam Secretary, is what difference it makes at this point.
A U-2 spy plane is being blamed for a software glitch at a Californian air traffic control center which led to delays earlier this week.
According to NBC News, the U-2 was flying at 60,000 feet, but air traffic control computers were attempting to keep it from colliding with planes that were actually miles beneath it.
The computers at the L.A. Center are programmed to keep commercial airliners and other aircraft from colliding with each other.
The spy plane's altitude and route apparently overloaded a computer system called ERAM, which generates display data for air-traffic controllers. Back-up computer systems also failed
But within days of the original report, disseminated across broadcast networks all over America, the Air Force officially denied that it was a U-2 spy plane, claiming they found the glitch but provided no reason for what caused it:
With the revelation this week that Russia has deployed strategic bomber fleets for fly-by's along our West Coast to gather intelligence and test their capabilities, is it possible that someone flipped a switch to see what would happen?
The Air Force likely knows what caused the outage but refuses to share details, which suggests that either the United States was engaged in a military exercise and they want to keep it under wraps, or, it was the Russians and going public could further inflame the already heated geo-political climate.
Both the United States and Russia have advanced stealth and jamming systems, either of which may have been responsible for the LAX outage. But one particular technology stands out, especially considering that Airforce technicians had to step in to resolve the issue.
#2
It turns out that ADS-B signals look a lot like little bits of computer code. But unlike traffic on the Internet, these signals are unencrypted and unauthenticated. And for computer security geeks like Haines, these are huge red flags. He soon realized he could spoof these signals and create fake "ghost planes" in the sky.
"The threats can be things like, if I can inject 50 extra flights onto an air traffic controller's screen, they are not going to know what is going on," he says.
Brad "RenderMan" Haines was able to spoof the signals used in the NextGen system and create fake planes in the sky.i
Brad "RenderMan" Haines was able to spoof the signals used in the NextGen system and create fake planes in the sky.
Courtesy of Brad Haines
Now, this hack won't make planes fall out of the air, but it could be dangerous. A fake plane could cause a real pilot to swerve or a series of ghost planes could shut down an airport.
"If you could introduce enough chaos into the system for even an hour that hour will ripple though the entire world's air traffic control," Haines says.
Haines and a partner, Nick Foster, were not only able to create a radio capable of broadcasting spoofed signals, they were also able to hook a radio to a free online flight simulator game called Flight Gear. They used the game to create a ghost plane a plane that would appear to be real to air traffic controllers using ADS-B and then they buzzed San Francisco International Airport.LINK
This is exactly what happened at LAX. A spy plane U2 or Russian is NOT going to respond with exact GPS coordinates. It is going to respond with false coordinates, not caring if those false coordinates make the air traffic controllers see a (ghost) plane about to crash into another (real) plane, or make the controllers think the system has just went haywire thus shutting down the system immediately.
OR a Russian plane along the coast spoofed ghost planes into the system to cause a few skipped heart beats for pilots and controllers.
The reason the cause was not released was just as this article said. The new NextGen system at LAX can be compromised and the FAA is probably freaking out at this moment about what just happened and have NO answers now that the new non-radar spoof-able system is now THE system at LAX.
It turns out that ADS-B signals look a lot like little bits of computer code.
WTF? This doesn't make any sense. Does it mean they're digital signals? Why do people spew gibberish and think it makes them sound intelligent? Is it because of Star Trek?
I suspect it was a bad update (or original issue) that had a data conversion problem when dealing with a flight at extreme altitudes. Extremely easy error to make, hard to catch, and can generate exceptions or other failure conditions.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
05/08/2014 21:12 Comments ||
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#5
From a post on the subject over at Slashdot:
It was a NASA owned U-2. They do atmospheric testing. They basically fly a pattern in the sky over and over. The problem with the flight plan was that the U-2 was assigned VFR-on-Top. What that mean is the plane was flying using VFR(Visual) flight rules on top of clouds. This normally occurs below 18000 feet. As such, I think the VFR-on-Top system was only designed for below 18000 feet. As the U-2 was above 60000 feet, the system was processing it for conflicts at every altitude, causing a buffer overflow. They are working on a patch to fix that problem, and in the meantime have implemented a workaround for us. That's what our memo told us at work. Source: I'm an air traffic controller at Denver En-route ARTCC.
[Ynet] If we maintain our Arab identity and integrate into the State of Israel as proud citizens, we will create a better future for ourselves.
Senior Israeli government members recently made a proposal to annex settlement blocs to Israel in exchange for transferring Israeli lands in the Triangle area to the future Paleostinian state. According to this proposal, the Arab citizens in this areas will stop being Israeli citizens and will become citizens of the Paleostinian state.
The only bright side in this mad idea, which is unconstitutional and illegal, is that it provoked a public debate, which is important in itself, about the status of Israel's Arab citizens. I believe in balancing between the complex identities of State of Israel's Arab citizens.
Since 1948, the future and fate of the Arab minority have become intertwined with those of the State of Israel, and the question raised since then is how to define ourselves as Arabs inside the state. On the one hand, there is the Arab national identity with the Paleostinian roots, and on the other hand there is the civil identity, which is Israeli in theory and in practice.
How does one balance between the two identities? One can preserve the Arab national identity and be proud of the Arab heritage, language, culture, literature, folklore and tradition; and at the same time preserve the civil identity expressed in being an Israeli citizen who enjoys rights and is subject to duties, like the rest of the citizens.
The issue was also raised in a dialogue I held recently with my uncle, who has been living in Canada since 1968. He stressed the importance of his Canadian civil identity, which complements his Arab national identity, and also argued that in order to integrate into the Canadian society he must implement his citizenship in the optimal manner.
So, unlike those who argue that there is a contradiction between the two identities, I believe that one complements the other: As an Arab and as an Israeli citizen I can maintain my Arab national identity and my Israeli civil identity, and balance between them. Just like the Paleostinian Arab living in the United States, in Canada or in any other country.
As Arab citizens we must aspire to integrate into the state, contribute to its development and design, live in it in dignity and fight for the many rights we deserve democratically.
The way to integrate properly and build healthy coexistence between Israel's Jewish citizens and Arab citizens must be based on the following foundations: Education towards a culture of dialogue and a democratic discourse between us, with mutual respect and appreciation; reducing the raging violence and crime in our society; building a good ethical educational system; providing young Arabs with higher education; creating employment opportunities for young people; housing solutions for young couples; and giving the Arab youth hope by opening frameworks and programs for teenagers and young people.
We must demand from the state full integration into society and opportunities to close the gaps in all areas. And at the same time, we must educate our young people towards good citizenship and contribution to the state.
We live in a democratic regime based on the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and one of the foundations of this regime is equality between all citizens regardless of religion, race and gender, alongside freedom of expression and tolerance.
I call on my fellow Arab citizens of the state: Let's proudly maintain our Arab identity while being proud of our Israeli citizenship. If we know how to respect ourselves and our identity and integrate into the state as proud citizens, we will create a better future for ourselves. Let's turn on lights, instead of cursing the darkness.
Jalal Safadi is the director of Society and Youth Administration -- the Arab Society at the Education Ministry.
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.
by Elliott Abrams 
A U-2 spy plane is being blamed for a software glitch at a Californian air traffic control center which led to delays earlier this week.
