Mona Eltahaway, a journalist for Al Jazeera, has been referring to the crisis in Egypt as the Berlin Wall moment of the Middle East. She is predicting that once Mubarak is gone, this will see the beginning of democratic reforms much like what happened in Eastern Europe in the 1990s. She might be right - she's certainly more knowledgeable about this sort of thing than I am and has done a lot of the heavy lifting. This could send reverberations throughout the region. Already Jordan has done a government shuffle, just like Mubarak did a few days before admitting that his time was coming to an end. Yemen's leader has opted not to run for re-election. That could in turn spur on even more change.
There are two prominent organizations that are fucked by this development though. One is Al Qaeda. The other is the United States.
Osama bin Laden and his people must be shitting their pants right about now. If the situation in Egypt does actually develop the way Eastern Europe did then his worst fear will be realized - he will have been rendered irrelevant. Think about it - his entire methodology is about installing fear and instead of fear it's hope that is bringing about the change. It isn't his tactics, it's Gandhi's - and that's a great thing for the region. That said, people like him tend to react badly to being put in a position like this, so things could get dicey for a bit.
And us? Well, look at the root causes of these riots that started it all off. It's about the price of food. The price of food is controlled by commodities these days, not by supply and demand. This means speculation - and that means Wall Street (click on the link and check it out yourself). It's no real secret that for the past decade or so virtually every price spike in everything out there has been driven by the greed of Wall Street. Even some of the biggies like Goldman/Sachs have admitted it in court filings and congressional hearings. Yes, the Russians no longer supply grain and other food staples to the region - because we asked them not to. Well, unlike us, people in the rest of the world pay attention to what happens outside of their borders.
Eventually, blame is going to come back to the United States. And if these people decide to gang up on us - to band together to fight the terrible things we have done to them - we're in trouble. The Russians or the Chinese could easily pick up the slack if the Middle Eastern countries decide not to buy from us anymore. And once they realize that we're controlling prices in other countries they could do us some serious economic damage. After all, we still buy a lot of oil from that part of the world and if they decide they don't need us then they don't.
Cheap shots:
I have to admit, Michael Steele was downright awesome last night. Where the hellbibble was this guy for the last two years?
Well now, that's a shock (set phasers on heavy sarcasm, Mr. Spock).
Vote by mail in California?
Here's a tip: If you're modeling your "journalism" after Andrew Breitbart or that O'Keefe moron, you might wind up in federal prison.
To those of you facing the climate clusterfuck of winter 2011 (I'm not - it's sunny and warm here) at least you're not trying to put shrimp on the barbie. Or in Japan.
And of course, THUNDERSNOW!!!!
And because I love you, Joni Mitchell
I liked the Michael Steel interview as well (and his appearance on Bill Maher). Reminds me a bit of what I was like before I realized that the Republican party had been co-opted by right wing fanatic religious wing-nuts and greedy assholes. I suppose more power to him that he knows it as well (after all, that's who kept him under their thumb for two years), and maybe there's some hope for the party if more people like him can do something about it.
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