politics in Egypt

[Ben]

Just thought I'd pass this info along. Quoting from an Amy Goodman article: 'Mubarak’s regime has received roughly $2 billion per year since coming to power, overwhelmingly for the military. Where has the money gone? Mostly to U.S. corporations. I asked William Hartung of the New America Foundation to explain:
“It’s a form of corporate welfare for companies like Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics, because it goes to Egypt, then it comes back for F-16 aircraft, for M-1 tanks, for aircraft engines, for all kinds of missiles, for guns, for tear-gas canisters [from] a company called Combined Systems International, which actually has its name on the side of the canisters that have been found on the streets there.”'
Plus Mubarak keeps $300 million for himself. All monies courtesy of the American taxpayer. Ahhh... gotta love the absolute corruption... ha! ha! ha!

[notdrunk]

Epic fail in that video clip. She blatantly ignores why we give aid to Egypt. For those who don't know, the reason why we give 1.3 billion in military aid to Egypt each year is due to the Camp David Accords. It was one of the agreements that allowed peace between Egypt and Israel. But, hey, lets shit on the United States!

IMO, Russia Today is worse than Fox News.

[Ben]

Epic fail in that video clip. She blatantly ignores why we give aid to Egypt. For those who don't know, the reason why we give 1.3 billion in military aid to Egypt each year is due to the Camp David Accords. It was one of the agreements that allowed peace between Egypt and Israel. But, hey, lets shit on the United States!

IMO, Russia Today is worse than Fox News.

I happen to think that Fox News is great comedy -- ha! ha! (What's interesting about Faux News is that Glenn Beck is apolitical. He does not care about politics. He's a businessman. Like Murdoch. Beck cares about Beck Inc. He cares about his brand, his empire. But he's also a great stand up comedian. I'd rank him up there with the greats: Pryor, Carlin etc...)

[notdrunk]

Just thought I'd pass this info along. Quoting from an Amy Goodman article: 'Mubarak’s regime has received roughly $2 billion per year since coming to power, overwhelmingly for the military. Where has the money gone? Mostly to U.S. corporations. I asked William Hartung of the New America Foundation to explain:
“It’s a form of corporate welfare for companies like Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics, because it goes to Egypt, then it comes back for F-16 aircraft, for M-1 tanks, for aircraft engines, for all kinds of missiles, for guns, for tear-gas canisters [from] a company called Combined Systems International, which actually has its name on the side of the canisters that have been found on the streets there.”'
Plus Mubarak keeps $300 million for himself. All monies courtesy of the American taxpayer. Ahhh... gotta love the absolute corruption... ha! ha! ha!

Egypt is going to keep getting that military aid even if Mubarak is replaced. We basically bribed Egypt not to start anymore wars with Israel (vice versa). Great idea by Jimmy Carter! The World doesn't need another war in the Middle East involving Israel and Egypt on opposite sides.

I guess Amy wants more war...

[Brandi Boots]

Egypt is going to keep getting that military aid even if Mubarak is replaced. We basically bribed Egypt not to start anymore wars with Israel (vice versa). Great idea by Jimmy Carter! The World doesn't need another war in the Middle East involving Israel and Egypt on opposite sides.

More thanks we can give to ol Jimmy .....Its just a shame the he dosent get to take the heat for this kind of stuff!

[trish]

We basically bribed Egypt not to start anymore wars with Israel (vice versa). Great idea by Jimmy Carter!

Actually that sounds like it was a pretty good idea. We keep a military base in Egypt, make it sound like it's financial aid and in return Egypt becomes Israel's ally...win, win. Do I have to mention it's in our strategic interest to have a few military bases in and near the Middle East while we're carrying out our undeclared wars there? Not only that, Egypt helps us monitor the terrorist networks in the Middle East & Northern Africa and with their aid, according to Dick Cheney, we've thwarted dozens of potential attacks on U.S. commercial airliners. This last is one of the reasons the situation in Egypt right now is so tricky for us. What other countries in the region besides Israel and Egypt have helped as much in this regard? Will we be able to rely on the new Egyptian government (and I do sincerely hope there will be one very, very soon that is representative of the people of Egypt) to do the same?

[Stavros]

At the time in the late 1970s, the US had or was in the process of losing its regional allies in Iran and Ethiopia, while further south the southern African cone was also being radicalised after the end of Portguese colonial rule with implications for what at the time was seen as the major prize -South Africa. Egypt was a soft option with strong stategic credentials -Suez Canal, inter-Arab relations etc, but if you look it up, and you will need a calculator, every time the parties to the 'Arab-Israel conflict' agreed to something, the US taxpayer had to pay for it, and the Arabs always failed to negotiate as big a deal as the Israeli's who usually got twice or three times as much as the Arabs; also they used a lot of their 'yankee dollars' to spend and save in...the USA....or sell on to other countries the hardware they got from the US in violation of the agreements etc -don't forget Israel is also deeply corrupt, its probably the old adage about the corrupting influence of power, rather than a regional thing. Israel was a strong supporter of Milosovic in Serbia, after all, there are contradictions everywhere you look...

Mubarak, by organising the anti-freedom sabotage has effectively ruled himself and his cronies out of the equation, they can only rule now through overt oppression of the Saddam Hussein kind, there might be a stalemate for a while, but if the military are up to it, another group of 'Young Officers' will clear out the old guard, preside over new elections and a new constitution, and hope their gravy train doesn't stop at Tel-Aviv. The irony of all that investment in the military is that the Egyptian army is still under-equipped and useless on the battlefield...

[notdrunk]

Actually that sounds like it was a pretty good idea. We keep a military base in Egypt, make it sound like it's financial aid and in return Egypt becomes Israel's ally...win, win. Do I have to mention it's in our strategic interest to have a few military bases in and near the Middle East while we're carrying out our undeclared wars there? Not only that, Egypt helps us monitor the terrorist networks in the Middle East & Northern Africa and with their aid, according to Dick Cheney, we've thwarted dozens of potential attacks on U.S. commercial airliners. This last is one of the reasons the situation in Egypt right now is so tricky for us. What other countries in the region besides Israel and Egypt have helped as much in this regard? Will we be able to rely on the new Egyptian government (and I do sincerely hope there will be one very, very soon that is representative of the people of Egypt) to do the same?

It was one of few achievements during his presidency. I really don't think we can't rely on an Egyptian government that includes the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood is now saying that the peace treaty needs to be rewritten when a provisional government is formed (Brotherhood included in the provisional government). That will open a big can of worms. The only reason I am paying attention to them is that they are the largest organized political group in Egypt at the moment. The Muslim Brotherhood needs to be marginalized or there will be another Iran-type government.

[hippifried]

The Muslim Brotherhood is already marginalized. They're outlawed in Egypt. But then again, everybody else has been marginalized too. The reality is that we don't know who's organized. All we've ever known is who's in charge & who the bad guys are supposed to be. Everybody else has been ignored since Nasser.

As for aid: We've been shelling out since the early '70s. It wasn't a bribe to make peace with Israel. It was a bribe to shift influence to the US instead of the Soviets. The peace process started right after the Yom Kippur war, while Nixon was in office. The term "shuttle diplomacy" was coined while Kissenger was brokering the deal to have Sadat visit Israel. Camp David was just the final treaty.

[russtafa]

The international media are now being targeted by the secret police