● Egypt: Egypt seems to be on the verge of revolution. What’s upset them? Believe it or not, they’re upset about the lack of checks and balances on the government. What started things was President Morsi’s declaration (discussed here LINK), which gave him dictator-like powers. . . which he took under a declaration of “trust me, I’m doing it for Islam.” People freaked out and started protesting. Morsi recently responded by imposing a curfew and a state of emergency. This turned into a running battle between the police and the public. The Army has decided to stay out of this so far.
What interests me here are three things. First, the Army’s decision to warn both sides and then to stand back tells me that the Muslim Brotherhood has no control whatsoever over the Army and that the Army is probably hoping the public overthrows the government. This suggests Egypt will be a lot more like Turkey than people expected. That’s a good thing.
Secondly, the fact the public is upset about a lack of checks and balances is a pretty advanced “Western” thought about democracy. This is something most people didn’t expect as democracy generally takes a long time to build the institutions it needs to thrive, yet here are the people demanding the core stabilizing element of democracy. That’s a great sign and again suggests a Turkey-like Islamic model.
Third, during the protests, the public has chanted “the Guide needs to go.” The “Supreme Guide” is the name given to the head of the Muslim Brotherhood, who is seen on the street as the real power behind Morsi. This is interesting because it represents a serious blow to the MB and their belief that Muslim populations are ready to impose unchecked Sharia law when given a choice. This again gives me hope that Egypt is trending toward Turkey.
● France: France is “totally bankrupt.” So admitted their Labor Minister Michael Sapin. Yeah, big surprise there. But don’t worry, it was Nicolas Sarkozy’s fault, which means there’s no problem, right? As an aside, since Hollande took over, unemployment rose to 10.7% (a rise of 15% in one year). That must be le Bush’s fault.
This won’t surprise you either, though it’s come as a big shock to the French, but Hollande’s massive tax hike on the rich hasn’t exactly worked out as planned. Instead, data from the Bank of France shows that capital has been fleeing the country and continues to flee. Imagine that. Hollande is not deterred and he plans to jack up taxes another $30 billion over the next five years. Good luck with that, mon frere!
Anyway, don’t worry about the bankruptcy thing, the government assures us they can in fact pay their employees. And Hollande plans to cut $75 billion from their budget to get things into shape.
Hmm. Wait a minute. Hasn’t the left everywhere in the world been telling us that spending boosts the economy? Why would France cut spending at a time when their growth is close to 0%? Shouldn’t they spend their way out of bankruptcy? I think they should build a Death Star.
● Mali-bien-phu: All is going “well” in Mali. The French and their African chums have “defeated” the al Qaeda backed rebels and driven them from a couple of “key” cities. Nothing to see here. Move along. These are not the droids you’re looking for.
As an aside, from what has been reported, they’ve killed almost no rebels. Indeed, they were bragging about possibly killing 12 the other day. The reason is either the totality of the French victory turned them all to dust or the rebels have done what they always do... they disappeared into the population and plan to conduct terrorist attacks. Now le Froggies are sending more troops, including British advisors and French combat troops from other nearby countries. This kind of reeks of Vietnam.
So far, Obama has refused to get involved (except for some mid-air refueling) because the Pentagon thinks France has no exit strategy. Personally, I’m thinking their best strategy would just be to raise the tax rates in Mali to 75% and watch al Qaeda flee.
You know, speaking of using government in its most effective form, why did it take the Pentagon so long to find Osama bin Laden? Why didn’t they just call the student loan people. Those people can find anyone, even people who’ve fled to caves on Mars.
54 comments:
re French taxes.
The British pulled this same thing in the 60s with a 95% income tax on higher-earners. Which meant that 95% of every pound you earned went to the government. So, since the UK was on the shilling system which meant 20 shillings per pound, out of every 20 shillings 19 went to the government.
The result was pretty much the same we see in France today. Rich people leaving the UK.
But it wasn't all bad. You see, when Beatles' performer George Harrison saw his taxes he was shocked. So he wrote a song: Taxman!
Also, I mentioned above the Shilling system. Thats where the "1 for you, 19 for me."
"I think they should build a Death Star."
They could use it on Al-Qaeda in Mali!
"This kind of reeks of Vietnam."
And who did Vietnam belong to before we went there? Crap, now I feel even more miserable. Thank you, Andy Price!
Do you know what a French Death Star would smell like? Have you been in their metro system?
Wait, the French can't be bankrupt. That's the one place where socialism works, right?
Obama has refused to get involved because the Pentagon thinks France has no exit strategy.
In other words, we have to know exactly how we're going to lose and by what date before we get involved?
I've actually reached a tipping-point with NPR and am actually quite amused by it. They were reporting on the events in Mali yesterday, touting the Frenchies' mode of "constrained" warfare. This is very smart, you see, because collateral casualties are always (rightly) blamed on the defending forces/sarc. So holding back prevents the "creation" of additional insurgents.
BTW, according to NPR, the terrorists have fled to the dessert where they can be hunted down with impunity. Isn't that convenient?
Well, our own economy shrunk in the 4th quarter according to the headline on Drudge. A big chunk of this is the cut in defense spending. I like the fact the Egyptians are in favor of checks and balances. Too bad, Democrats aren't as interested, as they prefer to see unbridled executive powers from the Obama shogunate to carry out his "good" vision for fundamental change.
Andrew....I believe we have a "domestic-centered" president. they know that foreign policy is boring and most Americans don't care about it, except for the "experts" and pundits. so he will focus on domestic affairs and let the chips fall where they may in foreign affairs. witness Benghazi, Egypt, Syria, Iran. The only "foreign policy" he's even remotely concerned about is big, bad Israel. the cause of all the unrest in the middle east. I actually agree with his just stated approach of focusing on the Asian sphere of influence. China is going to be much more impactful to his domestic policies than any mid-east country. We will borrow more money for his domestic experiments from china so he needs to cozy up to them.
As we slowly wean our way off middle eastern energy, i think we'll see more of our energy coming from our neighbors to the north and south. it still won't affect our gas pump prices, as it is in Zero's best "green" interests to keep them high and keep demand down. the higher the prices, the less the man on the street can afford. of course, he knows that it will raise the cost of just about everything else, but that too doesn't seem to bother him.
So, less foreign involvement in the second term and more domestic tinkering and transforming.
"BTW, according to NPR, the terrorists have fled to the dessert where they can be hunted down with impunity. Isn't that convenient?"
Just like how convenient it was that the Taliban fled into the mountains following our arrival in Afghanistan!
tryanmax, it was awfully sweet of those bad ole insurgents to go somewhere they could be hunted down with impunity.
French Death Star: it'd probably just shoot down tourists who go to France and mispronounce 'bidet'.
Kit, The British are actually raising taxes all over the place. It looks like their plan is to wipe out their middle class for some reason.
DUQ, I have indeed been in the Metro. Yeah, I can't imagine the Death Star would smell all that great.
K, We'll always have Scandinavia! Trust me, socialism will work if only "the right people" tried it.
tryanmax, NPR is a joke. They live in a fantasy world that is akin to the liberals who get mocked on film... "if we only surrender, then they won't attack us!"
Actually, I think the need for an exit strategy is essential and it's something we don't have in the war on terror. Because of that, we have no idea how to fight it because we don't know what the goal is. "Kill all terrorists" just doesn't work because there will always be more terrorists.
I think France will appear to retake the whole country. They'll eat wine and cheese and slap each other on the back. Then the bombings will begin and everyone will stop paying attention for a few years. Finally, they'll face the question: "we've been here 10 years and achieve nothing... should we leave?"
And the morons at NPR will be wrong the entire way.
By the way, there is nothing "restrained" about the French operation... there are simply no defenders to kill because they are vanishing.
As for killing them in the desert, good luck. For one thing, I doubt that's where they are hiding. For another, NPR thinks that means they can be blown up from the air. That doesn't work. Air power only works against regular armies.
Jed, The thing I find interesting in Egypt is that the people clearly are more advanced in their thinking on democracy than anyone gives them credit for. Frankly, Obama should get involved and support he public's demands.
But then, as you note, checks and balances aren't really an idea he likes.
Yeah, our economy is crap.
Patriot, I agree with Obama's refocus on China. That's the future for us -- both militarily and as an economy. Europe is the past and the Middle East is a never-was.
We already get most of our oil from Mexico and Canada and I expect that figure to grow. We are also becoming a huge producer, though Obama is slowing that. Hopefully, we will one day not need to worry about Middle Eastern oil.
On Obama's focus, I think he stopped caring about the world when the world stopped loving him. He's learned that important foreign countries don't swoon like the Europeans and he doesn't want to deal with that. BUT make no mistake that he will happily go to war with any soft target he can find because he seems to think that buys him credibility.
That said, I do agree with his decision to stay out of Mali though. France needs a real plan, not "drop some bombs", something something, paradise.
Kit and tryanmax, NPR are fools. They have no grasp of human nature or history because all the know is what the other fools in their newsroom tell each other.
rlaWTX, Yeah, I'm not sure we can actually trust the French with a Death Star. Who knows what they would do with it?
"NPR are fools. They have no grasp of human nature or history because all the know is what the other fools in their newsroom tell each other."
Besides, praising the French is probably a subtle way of jabbing Bush.
Let's be honest, the fact that the French in Mali haven't surrendered yet is kind of a win for them.
Also, France should not have a Death Star because they would immediately use it on competitive snail markets. And also anyone who uses anglicized French.
Kit, I doubt it. I think NPR is just stupid. For on thing, they are Europhiles. They love everything about socialist Europe and it thrills them that a socialist PM of France is showing that France can lead the world by killing a few Africans.
Secondly, liberals really are shortsighted. They see the French advance and simply assume that means the French are winning because once there were terrorist in location A and not there are not... hence a win.
T-Rav, LOL! Yes, the fact France hasn't surrendered yet could be considered a win for them. But give then time. Maybe the paperwork is stuck in le mail?
Good point on the Death Star. They do seem to be obsessed with protecting their language. Still, keep in mind that the Death Star is actually pretty useless as a weapon unless you want to blow up a planet. It's exactly the kind of weapon a bureaucrat would build.
Andrew - for those readers interested in reading more about the whole "Scandinavian" model for the modern welfare state, there are a couple of essays I might recommend. In the January 29, 2013 issue od National Review, one of my favorite conservative scholars, William Voegeli addresses that issue of weather "Swedenization" is always bad or if it matters where it takes place.
Author Per Bylund contributed the "The Modern Welfare State: Leading the Way on the Road to Serfdom" to a collection of essays published in 2010 under the title "Back on the Road to Serfdom."
Jed, Thanks for the reference. I've never read anything in-depth on Sweden, but what I've read tells me that they've survived by devaluing their currency over and over and by the fact they have a tiny, totally homogenous population who are happy with less and less. And apparently, the ones who make money leave the country.
Andrew: It looks like their plan is to wipe out their middle class for some reason.
Kulaks are always inconvenient for leftists. The lower classes get the idea they could someday succeed without the nanny state and that's just crazy talk. Plus, the middle class is where all the money is.
K, the middle class is where all the money is
I think that's the key. And from what I'm reading they are really putting the boot to their middle class right now.
The middle class: Not rich enough to attend cocktail parties and donate millions to a campaign but not poor enough to be pitied.
Andrew and rlaWTX, Yeah, I'm not sure we can actually trust the French with a Death Star. Who knows what they would do with it?
They would figure out how to grow wine grapes and make cheese...and it will be pretty darn good too! And then they'd destroy Napa Valley...
It will be interesting to see how all of this adjusted with our new as yet unknown Defense Sec't and the recently approved new Sec't of State Kerry who starts on Friday.
Andrew, I suppose I am assuming the liberal approach to an exit strategy which is "pick an end-date first, then try to sort out how to make it work."
Kit, The middle class is an easy target because they are also busy earning a living and don't have time to pay attention to the machinations of the government.
Bev, LOL! Everyone in France felt a great disturbance in the force when you typed out that comment... as if a thousand years of French smugness just cried out in anguish and then had to shut the heck up because California makes better products. :)
On Kerry, I expect no change actually.
tryanmax, Nope, I'm talking about a legitimate exit strategy... how do we achieve our goal and get back out. Not the liberal version of how do we make ourselves feel superior and then run away after we mucked things up.
So which one do you suppose the Pentagon talking about? There's not exactly a stellar record to go on. You might forgive me for thinking of an exit strategy as something everyone can name but no one can describe.
Not that I think a legit exit strategy is a bad idea. I'm just skeptical of the folks using the term.
tryanmax, I'm not sure. I suspect the Pentagon, like the State Department, like the two parties' foreign policy teams, are all neocons. So they love nation building... which means there is no exit.
I suspect what the Pentagon is really saying is that France has no plan other than to drop some bombs, shoot some bad guys... and then it gets hazy.
My problem with Neocons is that they are very naive.
Nation building can occur, sort of, but it takes many, many years and a good bit of old-style 19th-century imperialism. They just never admit it, especially the second part.
They also believe that everyone, in their heart of hearts, believes that a functioning, modern, western-style democracy can sprout up anywhere.
I remember them pointing to Japan, forgetting that for about 60 yrs after WW2 the country was under de facto 2-party rule.
South Korea, probably the Cold War's greatest success story, spent almost the entire cold war under the rule of one dictator or another. In fact, it could only be called a "democracy" from 1950 to 1979 if you considered rigged and stolen elections a major part of the democratic process as just about every election they had until 1987 was either rigged, bought, stolen, or some combination of the three.
By the way, this also brings me to Obama's silly "no support for governments in power through coups even if they are fighting a group hostile to our interests". Kennedy had a similar policy but at least he was realistic enough to accept a rigged election like the ones in Korea and Vietnam, unlike Obama's bizarre refusal to accept a legitimate election in Honduras.
Correction: The Obama state department did recognize the Honduran elections despite previously stating they might not recognize an election unless the power-grabbing Zaleya was not returned to power.
So some credit given to the State Department for seeing common sense.
Kit, I think neocons are blinded by arrogance. They believe that the world wants to be like them and they think that with the use of government money and some military intervention people everywhere will suddenly spring up and recreate the US. But at the same time, they have no framework for how that would happen, and the things they support hurt our image badly enough that we not an attractive example anymore.
BTW, I don't know if anybody saw this, but Zimbabwe has all of $217 in the bank. So I feel safe in saying that everyone who visits this blog is richer than Zimbabwe.
Random thought: How many NPR listeners, do you suppose, were surprised to learn that Timbuktu is a real place?
Follow up: How many will admit it?
Andrew,
Exactly.
When the Korean War ended the South Korea was an economic and political backwater. It took 4 decades of oligarchical and authoritarian rule before it could become a thriving democratic state. And it still has major corruption scandals.
As I pointed out earlier, Japan was under 1-party rule for most of the Cold War.
If you judge a democracy's success by the ability of the opposition party to overthrow, through the democratic process of national elections, then Germany was a much better post-war success. . . because, despite the previous 12 years, it had had years of democratic (or pseudo-democratic) experimentation.
And even then it wasn't until 1969 that the opposition party, SDP, won the chancellorship.
Hell, how many years did the Democratic-Republicans run things during the early days of the US Republic? Between 1800 and 1824 the Democratic-Republicans pretty much ran the federal government.
You have elections where the split between DR and the Federalists is is 160-26 in the House (1818) and the Senate is 30-6 (1811).
It wasn't until the collapse of the end of the "Era of Good Feelings" (8 years of total DR control) in 1824 with the first Jackson-Adams election that things began to change.
Tryanmax: My reading of NPR-pers is they are smug college grads with government jobs looking for intellectual validation. They'd know that Timbuktu is real, but not who Dale Ernhardt was.
tryanmax, Probably most were surprised, none will admit it though.
Kit, I think the problem is more fundamental. There is an assumption that everybody wants to be exactly like us, and that's wrong.
You can't force change on people, you can however, get them to change themselves. But that needs to be done with carrots and sticks, not occupation and then lavish spending on infrastructure and training from Western advisors.
K, I suspect NPR listeners are actually doctoral degree holders. College grads actually tend to support the Republicans -- post grad students are heavily left-leaning though.
Cosmos Nationale, Mort étoile L'Emmerdeur!
Uh... my universal translator (which I got on the cheap) translates that as: "The universe never opens a door without killing a window."
Sorry, a play on the (hypothetical) French interstellar fleet (cosmos Nationale) and their flagship death star, L'Emmerdeur (the pain in the a**)
So far, Obama has refused to get involved
Well he does not yet need to wag the dog.....
maybe if a South American Hooker accuses him on welching payment for her services then he may think about bombing Mali
As to France.. same thing I say to OBama.. it's the spending stupid!
As to Morsi.... I hope this goes south on him now. If it does not and he is given time then the Muslim brotherhood will concentrate on getting soldiers into the army and getting them promoted.
Either that or Morsi will start an SS style private army that answers to him.
The pain in the a**... nice. That sounds about right for a French spaceship name! :)
Indi, Spending is good though... government spending is all that make economies run, right?
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