RED EYE 3/02/11

U.S. backs dictators — at least 36

NYT — A Washington-friendly dictator, propped up for decades by lavish American aid as he oversees a regime noted for brutality, corruption and stagnation, finally faces the wrath of his people….The embrace of dictators has been so frequent over the last half-century that it obviously results from hardheaded calculation….

Supporting Egypt’s military-led regime over four decades, first under Anwar el-Sadat and then Mr. Mubarak, offered strategic benefits to seven American presidents. They got a staunch ally against Soviet expansionism, a critical peace with Israel, a bulwark against Islamic radicalism, and a trade- and tourist-friendly Egypt…

History is rich with precedents. In 1959, there was Fulgencio Batista of Cuba, darling of American corporations and organized crime….In 1979, it was Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the shah of Iran, abandoning the throne in the face of a revolt two years after President Jimmy Carter toasted his country as “an island of stability.”

In 1986, the turn came for Ferdinand Marcos, ousted by the Philippines’ People Power movement five years after Vice President George H. W. Bush told him at a luncheon: “We love your adherence to democratic principles and to the democratic process.”

The list could be extended. Since World War II, the White House, under the managements of both parties, has smiled on at least a couple of dozen despots. (“Friendly Dictators Trading Cards” marketed by a California publisher in the 1990s, featured “36 of America’s most embarrassing allies.”)

Youth sparked revolt, but it’s broader

GW, 2/6 — Most of the people in the Arab world are aged 25 or younger. They have known no other leaders than those dictators who grew older and richer as the young saw their opportunities — political and economic — dwindle. The Internet didn’t invent courage; activists in Egypt have exposed Mubarak’s police state of torture and jailings for years. And we’ve seen that even when the dictator shuts the Internet down protesters can still organize…Youth kickstarted the revolt, but they’ve been joined by old and young.

Dark side to Internet ‘freedom’

NYT, 2/6 — As Evgeny Morozov demonstrates in “The Net Delusion,” the Internet’s contradictions and confusions are just becoming visible through the fading mist of Internet euphoria. Morozov is interested in the Internet’s political ramifications. “What if the liberating potential of the Internet also contains the seeds of depoliticization and thus dedemocratization?”…Morozov convincingly argues that, in freedom’s name, the Internet more often than not constricts or even abolishes freedom.

The Iranian regime used the web to identify photographs of protesters; to find out their personal information and whereabouts...;To distribute propagandistic videos; and to text the population into counterrevolutionary paranoia….This sort of backlash of Internet “freedom” is routine. Polygamy may be illegal in Turkey, but that doesn’t stop Turkish villagers from using the Internet to find multiple wives. Mexican crime gangs use social networking sites to gather information about their victims. Russian neofascists employ the Internet to fix the positions of minorities in order to organize pogroms.…Don’t expect corporations like Google to liberate anyone anytime soon. Morozov urges the cyberutopians to open their eyes to the fact that the asocial pursuit of profit is what drives social media.

Job data: Reports block vital facts

NYT, 2/5 — You won’t hear policy makers acknowledging that the unemployment numbers would be much worse if not for the millions of people who have left the work force over the past few years. What happened to those folks? How are they and their families  faring?

The policy makers don’t tell us that most of the new jobs being created in such meager numbers are, in fact, poor ones, with lousy pay and few or no benefits. What we hear is…that businesses are sitting on mountains of cash. So all must be right with the world.

Jobs? Well, the less said the better.

What’s really happening, of course, is the same thing that’s been happening in this country for the longest time — the folks at the top are doing fabulously well and they are not interested in the least in spreading the wealth around…Both the Obama administration and the Republican Party are down on their knees slavishly kissing the rings of the financial and corporate kingpins.

Best investment: Buy politicians

MinutemanMedia.org, 12/21 — Perhaps Wall Street’s most profitable investment ever has been to pay off politicians. Candidate campaign treasuries swell with contributions from bankers….These doggie treats for the Watchdogs had paid a handsome return. No regulator moved to pull the plug on the subprime mortgage scam; no regulator is overseeing derivatives; and no regulator is yet putting the clamps on the latest life-insurance packaging scheme.

Nor, in this era of “anything goes,” when the public is clamoring for action, has President Barack Obama shown any fervor for such a course…In fact, all of Obama’s financial appointees have been good old boys. The “Change You Can Believe In” turned out to be mostly fairies and leprechauns.

Praise for new book on Marxism

GW, 2/11 — Eric Hobsbawm is often referred to as a “Marxist historian.”…But he is less often seen as a historian of Marxism…The publication of How To Change the World may help to set the record straight….Part One contains diverse studies of aspects of the thought of Marx and Engels….Part Two…comes close to providing an overview of the fortunes of Marxism in the…130 years since Marx’s death…[He does a] detailed justice to the history of major Marxist political movements….He commends the history of Marxism to our attention because “for the past 130 years it has been a major theme in the intellectual music of the modern world, and, through its capacity to mobilize social forces, a crucial, at some periods a decisive, presence in the history of the 20th century.”

But…since Marx’s death there have been regular announcements of the “crisis of capitalism”…Each time the patient has somehow recovered…Perhaps even Hobsbawm is not wholly immune to this fever when he speculates that the financial collapse of 2008 may signal the beginning of the end of capitalism as we have known it.

Budget-crisis laws tilt to rich

NYT, 1/22 — Public services are being dismantled throughout the U.S. in the name of austerity — school systems, libraries…transportation services, and so on. Any talk of raising taxes on the rich is verboten. Shared sacrifice? Not if you’re wealthy.

Egypt: old gang OK with U.S.

NYT, 2/8 — The United States…in Egypt…is relying on the existing government to make changes that it has steadfastly resisted for years, and even now does not seem impatient to carry out….The result has been to feed a perception, on the streets of Cairo and elsewhere, that the United States…is…leaving hopes of…change in large part in the hands of Egyptian officials — starting with Mr. Suleiman — who have every reason to slow the process.

Egypt key: army’s lower ranks

NYT, 2/6 — Whoever becomes the new president after elections in September, American officials say that the rich and secretive Egyptian military holds the key to the governing of Egypt, the country’s future and by extension to the stability of the Arab world.

American officials are unsure about the thinking of the midlevel military leadership, which is considered sympathetic to the protesters, and whether it could split with the generals tied to Mr. Mubarak. “Behind the scenes, the military is making possible the various forms of assault on the protesters,” an expert said on the Egyptian military said. “It’s trying to secure a transition for itself. There’s lots of evidence that the military is complicit, but for the most part Egyptians don’t even want to admit that to themselves.” Over all, the army rank-and-file has shown sympathy with the protesters and the leadership has been either unwilling or unable to order its troops to fire on the demonstrators. The military would make a cold-blooded decision about Mr. Mubarak. “They are a rational, calculating institution. The moment they see it is not in their interest to retain him, they will usher him out.”

Census: New Orleans devasted

NYT, 2/11 — The scale of the long-term devastation inflicted on New Orleans inflicted on New Orleans has been revealed by the 2010 U.S. Census, which found that the city’s population has collapsed by almost a third…since hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005. The number of African Americans in the city has also fallen, to 60% from 67%.