Oh, How We Love Our Oriental Rulers!

"If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria.  If you want someone to disappear—never to see them again—you send them to Egypt", Robert Baer once said.

Now, the West loves brutal dictators - as long as they keep their cruelties secret and as long they play by the rules - OUR rules, or - to be more precise - the rules of big business. We loved when crazy Gaddafi  resided in a tent on Donald Trump's property in New York and was eager to supply oil, we loved when the Trabelsi Clan provided us with cheap labor slaves and hotels to serve us Western tourists on Tunesia's golden beaches; we loved the outsourcing, the money laundering and the weapon deals with the Mubarak Clan in Egypt, we loved Yemen's Saleh and offered him refuge just as we liked the Shah of Persia and Saddam, and we still love the Gulf states - especially Saudi Arabia - because we can make such a good business with them and they really manage to keep their fellow citizens down and torture in the dark. And we all know: Syria is next. Assad was good, but he couldn't keep his people effectively under control. So don't wonder why "Obama authorized covert support for Syrian rebels"! This is just the "Syrian war of lies and hypocrisy" as one of the last remaining journalists said. Don't you worry, we'll find another dictator for Syria and then we apply democracy there!

Egypt: Revolution in progress - Empire - Al Jazeera English

In addition to the previous posting, this Aljazeera discussion gives you further insights into the ongoing efforts to establish a socially balanced society in Egypt after the overthrow of Mubarak:
Egypt: Revolution in progress - Empire - Al Jazeera English
(Click here for a transcript)

It's also highly recommendable to compare the current situation with the times shortly before the revolution started. Here's a report on the elections in Egypt in 2010 illustrating the typical absurdities of a fake democracy:

News from Egypt

Do you remember the Egyptian Revolution? Shouldn't the elections already been held in September? And what about the emergency law (since 1981), has it been already abolished? What happened after the first televised day of the trial against Mubarak? Is it going on? How did some people storm the Israeli embassy in Cairo? You might be surprised ...

Other posts concerning Egypt on base2014:

A Must See Chomsky Interview

Chomsky On the Ongoing Arab Spring

Mubarak Steps Down From His Throne

Friends of a Dictator

Egypt Uprising - Standard Routine for an Unusual Event

Smart Villages and the City of the Dead

Egypt's Cyber Dissidents

Mubarak Steps Down From His Throne

Shortly after 17:00 CET, Omar Suleiman - the CIA's man in Cairo – announced in a one-minute speech that Hosni Mubarak has resigned from office and "instructed the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to run the affairs of the country".

base 2014 congratulates the people of Egypt to have succeeded in chasing away the long time oppressor and wishes good luck on the way to social freedom and fairness! Congrats especially to Egypt's Cyber Dissidents!

Just for the record, the following screenshot shows how Austrian television viewers came to know of the historical news of this day:

At exactly 17:02:31 CET, Karim El-Gawhary reporting live from

 Cairo for the Austrian ORF realizes that Mubarak has resigned.

The fate of other countries has shown that getting rid of the dictator himself - as the symbol of oppression - might lead to a balanced prosperous development - as long as his vasalls are banished, too. But Mubarak's henchmen are still in charge. His own party - the NDP -  is still in place.  

On January 28, base2014 suggested Mubarak's NDP to be the next member of the Socialist International to be expelled.

This was eventually done silently on January 31: the farewell-letter to the Secretary General of the National Democratic Party Egypt was published on the SI-website. A member of the Dutch Labour commented: "the SI’s  late calling of democratic sensibility is shameful and opportunistic. This behaviour of the SI represents part of the ideological and moral crisis of the Left, being so much a non-critical part of the global establishment.  Since the heydays of Olaf Palme, Willy Brandt and Bruno Kreisky within the SI, we have never heard anything substantial from this on paper mega-organisation any more."

The SI did not name any of the massive crimes committed and/or tolerated by the dictator's party.

Friends of a Dictator

„The U.S. has an overwhelmingly powerful role there. Egypt is the second-largest recipient over a long period of U.S. military and economic aid. Israel is first. Obama himself has been highly supportive of Mubarak. It’s worth remembering that on his way to that famous speech in Cairo, which was supposed to be a conciliatory speech towards the Arab world, he was asked by the press—I think it was the BBC—whether he was going to say anything about what they called Mubarak’s authoritarian government. And Obama said, no, he wouldn’t. He said, "I don’t like to use labels for folks. Mubarak is a good man. He has done good things. He has maintained stability. We will continue to support him. He is a friend." And so on. This is one of the most brutal dictators of the region, and how anyone could have taken Obama’s comments about human rights seriously after that is a bit of a mystery. But the support has been very powerful in diplomatic dimensions. Military—the planes flying over Tahrir Square are, of course, U.S. planes. The U.S. is the—has been the strongest, most solid, most important supporter of the regime. It’s not like Tunisia, where the main supporter was France. They’re the primary guilty party there. But in Egypt, it’s clearly the United States, and of course Israel. Israel is—of all the countries in the region, Israel, and I suppose Saudi Arabia, have been the most outspoken and supportive of the Mubarak regime. In fact, Israeli leaders were angry, at least expressed anger, that Obama hadn’t taken a stronger stand in support of their friend Mubarak.“

From an interview with Noam Chomsky on Democracy Now!

http://www.zcommunications.org/this-is-the-most-remarkable-regional-uprising-that-i-can-remember-by-noam-chomsky

Noam Chomsky

„Die Rolle der USA ist unglaublich gewichtig. Ägypten ist das Land, das - nach Israel - die meiste amerikanische Militär- und Wirtschaftshilfe erhält und zwar schon sehr lange. Obama hat Mubarak auch persönlich massiv unterstützt. Man sollte nicht vergessen, dass Obama auf dem Weg nach Kairo, wo er seine berühmte angebliche "Versöhnungsrede" an die arabische Welt hielt, von der Presse gefragt wurde (ich glaube, es war die BBC), ob er auch etwas über die 'autoritäre Regierung Mubarak' (so deren Worte) sagen werde. Obama verneinte dies. Er sagte: "Ich mag es nicht, wenn man Leuten Etiketten verpasst. Mubarak ist ein guter Mann. Er hat gute Dinge getan.  Er hat die Stabilität aufrechterhalten. Wir werden ihn weiter unterstützen. Er ist ein Freund." Und so weiter. Dabei ist er (Mubarak) einer der brutalsten Diktatoren in der Region. Es wirkte schon ein wenig seltsam, wie manche Leute Obamas Kommentare zum Thema Menschenrechte danach noch ernstnehmen konnten. In diplomatischer Hinsicht war die Unterstützung (für Mubarak) sehr wirkungsvoll. Zum militärischen Bereich ist zu sagen, dass es sich bei den Flugzeugen, die über den Tahrir-Platz (in Kairo) fliegen, natürlich um amerikanische Flugzeuge handelt. Die USA sind - und waren - der mächtigste, konstanteste und wichtigste Unterstützer dieses Regimes. Mit Tunesien kann man das nicht vergleichen. Hauptunterstützer Tunesiens war Frankreich. Es trägt in diesem Fall die Hauptschuld. Im Falle Ägyptens allerdings ist Amerika, ganz klar, der Hauptschuldige - und natürlich Israel. Von allen Ländern in der Region hat Israel - und ich glaube Saudi-Arabien - das Mubarak-Regime am unverbrämtesten unterstützt. Die Führer Israels waren wütend - zumindest gaben sie sich wütend -, weil Obama sich nicht stärker für ihren Freund Mubarak eingesetzt hat.“

Noam Chomsky in an interview with Democracy Now! Translation by Andrea Noll in ZMAG.

Smart Villages and the City of the Dead

There is a reason why Western governments remain silent during the ongoing uprising of the Egyptian people. Under Mubarak's police-state labor was cheap, Egypt a land of wage slaves, an outsourcing paradise, an offshore haven and a money laundering base - in other words, an excellent place for business.

Smart Village Office Building

"Egypt's minimum wage has been 35 Egyptian pounds (6.50 dollars) per month since 1984. When bonuses, incentives and annual increases are included, the minimum monthly salary of government employees and public sector workers reaches 289 Egyptian pounds (53 dollars). Some private sector employees earn much less."

How precarious the economic situation for the majority of the Egyptians really was and is, can be estimated by recognizing that even if both parents working in textile manufactories could not raise their income above the poverty line:

Smart Village Think Tank Lounge

"Wages of most Egyptian workers are inadequate to pay for food, clothing, shelter, and education. Even with two wage earners, the typical monthly wage of textile workers, which ranges from $45-$107 a month, is below the World Bank's poverty line of $2 a day for the average Egyptian family of 3.7 people. According to the World Bank, nearly 44 percent of Egyptians are "extremely poor" (unable to meet minimum food needs), "poor" (unable to meet basic food needs), or "near-poor" (able to meet some basic food needs)."

Not three years ago Egypt received the rather questionable title of

Outsourcing Destination of the Year at the National Outsourcing Association (NOA)’s 2008 Awards held in London, beating rivals the Philippines and Romania. Hence, call centre advertisers heap praise on this business location, since "compared [...] with other call centre locations [...] Egypt is much cheaper than other outsourced locations such as Canada, Mexico and Poland, it is marginally more expensive than India".

Since 2001, the Smart Villages Company, 80 % owned by the private sector and 20% by Mubarak's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, offers a wide range of decent facilities for foreign groups providing considerably more comfort and elegance than Cairo's City of the Dead.

If you've ever visited Egypt, you know that tourist busses usually pass by the City of the Dead, leaving sun burned guests from all over the world in a short moment of horror after catching a glimpse of the poor shapes between the shadows. (click here for Tourist Info)

Egypt's Cyber Dissidents

German GEO 08/2010 reports about Egyptian bloggers. The Report entitled "Cyber Dissidenten. Demokratie 2.0" tells stories of various internet publishers bullied and/or tortured  by Mubarak's henchmen - the Egyptian police. (German mp3 coverage here)
Various Egyption bloggers - men and women - are introduced and their sufferings, fights and achievements briefly touched:

Wael Abbas - blogger - http://misrdigital.blogspirit.com

Karim el-Beheiry -  blogger - http://egyworkers.blogspot.com/

Ahmad Gharbeia - programmer and blogger from Cairo coaching other bloggers, often in internet security - http://ahmad.gharbeia.org/

Gamal Eid - Egyptian lawyer frequently defending bloggers, director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) - www.anhri.net; Gamal Eid is mentioned in this Amnesty International report: EGYPT MUST DROP CHARGES AGAINST THREE ACTIVISTS

Noha Atef - concentrates on (in her own words) " the daily experiences of citizens [..] with the Egyptian ministry of interior [...] which continues to protect the perpetrators and to deny victims access to justice" - http://www.tortureinegypt.net

Nora Younis - blogger, the hero of the "Black Wednesday, 25-05-2005" - http://norayounis.com/

Hossam el-Hamalawys - Marxist, reports of the miserable working conditions in Egypt - http://www.arabawy.org/

and others. If only 5 of these mentioned would meet offline in some Cairo café, bazar or some other public place, they could be arrested by the police due to the fact that Mubarak rules the country under emergency law since 1981. "If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear—never to see them again—you send them to Egypt" Robert Baer once said. The US financially and militarily support the Mubarak regime as the US Departement of State eagerly and proudly admits on its website (see section "U.S.-EGYPTIAN RELATIONS").