The Arab Spring... Cancelled?

A few weeks ago millions of Spaniards took to the streets as Spain followed German orders to wreck the country's public education system in the name of Austerity. And this weekend, even with Spain's right-wing pro-Austerity prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, rejecting, at least temporarily the IMF's insistence that workers' wages be cut even further and sales taxes be increased, there were severe anti-Austerity demonstrations in Madrid, Barcelona and several other Spanish cities. People know Rajoy's in the pockets of the banksters and the Germans and that he'll look to implement more Austerity measures as soon as he can get away with it... as the right-wing Economist cheered Friday More Pain For Spain. "Market pressure [predatory banksters] on Spain seems likely to intensify."

Today Greece voted on whether to stick with a German/bankster-demanded Austerity regime or to go it alone and reject the brutal forces of that have impoverished Greek working families and are leading to national dissolution, anarchy and, inevitably, a military backlash. It was another inconclusive round of voting. New Democracy (their version of the GOP) wound up with 29.66% of the vote and Syriza got 26.89%. The Greek version of the Blue Dogs, PASOK, got 12.28. So it looks like another deadlock. (The Nazi Party, Golden Dawn took 6.92% and will have 18 deputies in Parliament.) Krugman took a stab at what happens next:

So it appears that the governing coalition in Greece has pulled out a narrow victory-- winning only a minority of votes, but getting a narrow majority in the parliament thanks to the 50-seat bonus New Democracy gets for coming in first.

So they will now have the ability to continue pursuing an unworkable policy. Yay!

Joe Wiesenthal tells us that there’s a meme in Greece to the effect that Syriza didn’t really want to win, because it would rather see the current government flail some more. Conversely, establishment types should actually be dismayed by this outcome: if current policies fail completely, which seems almost a given, and Greece exits the euro anyway, which seems highly likely, the entire Greek center will end up discredited; better, in a way, to be able to blame the radicals.

And I gather I’m not the only one thinking along these lines; Business Insider also reports hints that Pasok, which has suffered terribly from its identification with failing policies, might not continue in the coalition unless Syriza is also brought on board-- which then raises the question, why would Syriza do that?

The debacle rolls on.

Egypt already has it's military backlash as the generals have let the kids know that fun and games are over and that everything's going back to normal now (sans the Mubarek family). Let's take a look at Esam Al-Amin's latest writing on what's happening in Egypt, alongside this weekend's presidential election. June 4 he wrote a post called The Charade is Over-- Sacrificing Mubarek to Save His Regime; a week later: Back to Square One In Egypt (about reviving a moribund, once-so-inspiring revolution); and this weekend, with a gaggle of Mubarek-appointed judges, dissolving Parliament, The True Face of Egypt's Military. "The masks," he writes, "dropped. The cards are shown. For over a year, Egyptians have wondered who was leading the efforts to frustrate and obliterate their nascent revolution, or what was dubbed in the local media as the 'third party' or the 'hidden bandit.' But the mystery is no more."

It was none other than the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), the same body that took power from deposed president Hosni Mubarak under the guise of leading the transitional period towards democracy. It was a masterful work of political art.

The final act was on display on Thursday, June 14, 2012, when Egypt's High Constitutional Court (HCC) not only ruled against banning the military's candidate and Mubarak's last Prime Minister, Gen. Ahmad Shafiq, but also dissolved parliament, the only institution that represented the political will of the people in post-revolutionary Egypt. It is important to note that all the justices on the HCC were appointed by Mubarak, and that most if not all are considered regime loyalists.

Incidentally, last March, Parliamentary Speaker and MB leader, Dr. Saad Katatni, said that he was told, in the presence of SCAF's deputy commander, Gen. Sami Anan, by SCAF's appointed Prime Minister Dr. Kamal Ganzouri, that the order to dissolve the parliament was in the drawer but would come at the appropriate time.


This dramatic announcement was therefore followed by the parliament passing a law banning most of the former senior officials of the Mubarak regime (including Shafiq) from politics on the grounds of corrupting Egypt's political life and institutions for decades. Nevertheless, Shafiq was shortly reinstated by the Presidential Elections Commission (PEC) even though it had no jurisdiction on the matter. It is perhaps important to note that the head of the PEC is also the Chief Justice of the HCC. He declared on the same day that the parliamentary elections' law (that resulted in the victory of the Islamic parties, led by the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), winning 75 percent of the seats) was unconstitutional. It was the same law that several of the same justices assured all political parties last summer that it passed constitutional muster.

With this brazen act of thwarting the political will of the Egyptian people, the emerging Islamic and revolutionary parties have now been totally stripped of their political ascendancy, less than five months after their rise to power. This was accomplished simply by utilizing the institutions of the deep state crafted by a regime that was controlled for decades by corrupt officials, senior military officers, and intelligence agencies. Further, a Mubarak-era military man is now on the verge of being "elected" president using the assorted tools of the democratic process.

One of the major demands of the revolution was to end the three-decade old emergency law that allowed the security agencies and the military to arbitrarily arrest and abuse the civil and human rights of any activist at will. But under tremendous public pressure throughout last year, these laws were repealed at the end of last May. But what was kicked out of the door crawled back through the window. Egypt's Justice Minister announced this week, less than two weeks after the repeal went into effect, that he was empowering all military officers and intelligence personnel to arrest indefinitely any person deemed a security threat to public order.

In a transparently coordinated fashion, before parliament could react to this shameless challenge to the essence of the revolution, it was dissolved within 24 hours by the High Court. Further, within minutes of the decision to dissolve the parliament, hundreds of military and security officers occupied its buildings, preventing any member to enter or even clear their offices. In short, Egypt has come a full circle, the transition to democracy was aborted, the process hijacked, and its remarkable revolution put on life support.

The final act of quietly killing the hopes of Egypt's youth and the aspirations of its people is coming this Sunday when the presidential elections end in the declaration of a Shafiq presidency. ... Meanwhile, Shafiq, who does not deny his admiration for Mubarak and considers him a role model, has brazenly declared that his first state visit would be to the U.S. in order to signal that he was its preferred candidate. He also said that he would not only keep the peace treaty with Israel, but would also deepen it.

If you were planning a trip to see the Pyramids this year... I'd switch to the Mayan heartland in Guatemala or the Yucatán. I'm not ready to predict that Egypt is going to go down the road Syria is on, but I wouldn't predict that it won't either. Or how about Wisconsin. It all seems pretty peaceable there now, doesn't it? You bet. Democrats more-or-less accept that voters, no matter how pissed off they are at Scott Walker's Austerity Regime, do NOT like using recalls and Republicans, no matter how outraged they are that the Democrats won control of the state Senate and can now stop that Austerity regime from going any further, more-or-less accept that the days they could ram anything they wanted through the state legislature are gone. So... it's still safe to visit Hayward's National Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame or the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend, or the world's largest six pack in La Crosse or even the monsters of Rhinelander, the seven-feet long, fanged Hodags.