Proof Rothschild/Soros' MSM are funding North African Genocide-ALL HEADLINES PROMOTE INVASIONS
bigron:
Amnesty urges Egypt to stop torture
Thu Feb 17, 2011 4:46PM
Egyptian soldiers force protesters to leave Liberation Square in Cairo.
Rights group Amnesty International has called on Egypt's military to stop the use of torture on detained protesters, saying it has found new evidence of prisoners' abuse.
"The military authorities must intervene to end torture and other abuse of detainees, which we now know to have been taking place in military custody," AFP quoted Amnesty International's regional director Malcolm Smart as saying.
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http://www.presstv.ir/detail/165721.html
Dig:
Quote from: bigron on February 18, 2011, 06:25:13 AM
Amnesty urges Egypt to stop torture
Thu Feb 17, 2011 4:46PM
Egyptian soldiers force protesters to leave Liberation Square in Cairo.
Rights group Amnesty International has called on Egypt's military to stop the use of torture on detained protesters, saying it has found new evidence of prisoners' abuse.
"The military authorities must intervene to end torture and other abuse of detainees, which we now know to have been taking place in military custody," AFP quoted Amnesty International's regional director Malcolm Smart as saying.
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http://www.presstv.ir/detail/165721.html
Amnesty International is targeting Egypt's puppets who work for MI6/CIA?
They get funded by the Queen Bitches to go after the Queen Bitches' puppets.
bigron:
MI6's Hezbollah's Opinion:
Egypt's Workers Revolt; This isn't about Mubarak
By Mike Whitney
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27504.htm
"The revolution in Egypt is an expression of the will of the people, the determination of the people, the commitment of the people.... Muslims and Christians have worked together in this revolution, as have the Islamic groups, secular parties, nationalist parties, and intellectuals....In fact every sector has played part in this revolution: the young, the old, women, men, clerics, artists, intellectuals, workers, and farmers." Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General of Hezbollah
February 17, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- The real story about what's going on in Egypt is being suppressed in the US because it doesn't jibe with the "ain't capitalism great" theme that the media loves to reiterate ad nauseam. The truth is that the economic policies that Washington exports to the rest of the world, have ignited massive labor unrest which has set the Middle East ablaze. Mubarak is the first casualty in this war against neoliberalism, but there will be many more to come. In fact, Mubarak's resignation is probably just a sop to Egyptian workers, hoping that they'll follow the military's advice and sheepishly return to their sweatshops so fatcat CEOs in Berlin and Chicago can extract a few more farthings from their labor. But that probably won't happen, because the 18 days in Tahrir Square has had a transformative affect on the consciousness of 80 million Egyptians who've suddenly "had enough". The people have awaken from their slumber and now they're ready to rumble.
The revolution started long before the demonstrations in Tahrir Square, and it will continue for a long time to come. Workers everywhere have been rebelling against the miserable conditions, slave wages and "privatization", the crown jewel of neoliberalism. The privatization of state industries in Egypt is the proximate cause of the current uprising. It's led to a general slide in living standards to the point where people would rather face the policeman's truncheon than endure more-of-the-same. Here's an excerpt from Foreign Policy which helps to explain what's going on:
"In the sprawling factories of El-Mahalla el-Kubra, a gritty, industrial town a few hours' drive north of Cairo, lies what many say is the heart of the Egyptian revolution. "This is our Sidi Bouzid," says Muhammad Marai, a labor activist, referring to the town in Tunisia where a frustrated street vendor set himself on fire, sparking the revolution there.
Indeed, the roots of the mass uprising that swept dictator Hosni Mubarak from power lie in the central role this dust-swept company town played years ago in sparking workers' strikes and grassroots movements countrywide. And it is the symbolic core of the latest shift in the revolution: a wave of strikes meant to tackle social and economic inequities, which has brought parts of Egypt to a standstill.
More than 24,000 workers at dozens of state-owned and private textile mills, in particular the mammoth Egypt Spinning and Weaving plant, went on strike and occupied factories for six days in 2006, winning a pay raise and some health benefits. Similar actions took place in 2007....
"After Mahalla in 2008, the first weaknesses in the regime appeared," says Gamal Eid of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information. "Nothing was the same in Egypt after that." ("Egypt's Cauldron of Revolt", Anand Gopal, Foreign Policy)
Compare this story to the narrative that appears in the US media, that the revolution was triggered by Twitter-happy "twenty somethings" text messaging their friends while buzzing around Cairo. It's utter nonsense. This revolution has working class roots, which is why the establishment press refuses to explain what's really going on. Any talk about "class" is Verboten in US media because it tends to reflect poorly on the robber barons who created the greatest extremes in inequality in the history of the world. Here's more from Michael Collins at The Economic populist:
"Egypt began a series of reforms in the 1990's that stacked the deck against workers and farmers. The government sold off the large state enterprises. New owners had little incentive to keep people in jobs or jobs in Egypt. The government enacted new measures to protect large farmers, with peasant farmers left on their own.
When conservative Prime Minister, Ahmed Nafiz, took power in 2004, the situation became desperate. With the help of a new anti labor law, pressure mounted on Egypt's industrial workers. The ETUF had little to offer in support and frequently overruled the votes to strike of local chapters....
The same labor movement that staged the 2006 strike and a follow up in 2007, called for a national strike on April 6, 2008 to raise the nation's minimum wage and protest high food prices. Mubarak's government sent in police who took over the factory in hopes of preventing the strike. Conflict broke out with violence on the part of police toward the union members calling for the strike. Police arrested workers. Trials, convictions and prison sentences followed quickly. Other members continued to protest.
An Egyptian writer noted, "In the 6 April uprising, the demands of the workers and the general population overlapped. People called for lower food prices as workers called for a minimum wage."
In addition, the April 6 Youth Movement emerged as a key player advancing the aims of the national strike. This is the same organization that has been central to rallying crowds throughout the country." ("Forces Behind the Egyptian Revolution", Michael Collins, The Economic Populist)
See? This isn't about removing a despot. It's about class warfare, of which no one will speak in western media.
The revolution signals the rise of organized labor, a frontal assault on the Washington Consensus, and the race-to-the-bottom regime that has pushed Egyptian workers to the breaking point. This didn't happen overnight; these forces have been coalescing for a long time and now the tinder has been lit.
This is a struggle for workers rights and political power as much as it is about wages and conditions. Mubarak's resignation has emboldened the people and strengthened their resolve to affect real structural change. This is their chance to shape the future, which is why Washington is so worried. This is also why US-backed NGOs and their agents were actively trying to depose Mubarak, because they believed that by removing the tyrant, they could appease the masses and send them merrily back to their factories and sweatshops with a pat on the head. But that's not the way it's playing out. Workers seem to know intuitively that Mubarak is just replaceable cog in the imperial mechanism. So far, they have not been placated, subdued or co-opted, although the Obama crew and their favorite junta-leader, Field Marshal Mohammed Tantawi, will undoubtedly keep trying. Here's an excerpt from an interview Mona El-Ghobashy, assistant professor of political science at Barnard College, on Democracy Now which adds some context to what's happening in Cairo:
"Egyptian politics didn’t begin on January 25th. In fact,....Egypt has actually been gripped by a rather extraordinary wave of social protest since at least 2000. This is by no means new... This is something that’s been happening and peaked in 2006 and 2007, which lends the protest that broke out among civil servants, police officers and other state employees yesterday—it lends it an extra weight. ... What this shows is a convergence of the old style of protest with a completely changed political environment....
So, for us to be able to really understand the significance of what’s happening today, we have to link it to the fabric of Egyptian politics starting in 2000....
But again, the point I want to emphasize is, we are entering ... a real revolutionary moment in Egyptian politics where... every sector of the population is taking to the streets, grasping the political opportunity afforded by the change of the regime. But they are doing this because they already know how to do that. They know how to encamp on the streets. They know how to negotiate with the government ministers. They know how many people to put on a street corner to make sure that the government minister comes and talks to them on the street corner. That’s why this is significant, not because this is a rebirth of Egyptian politics after February 13th." ( Mona El-Ghobashy, Democracy Now)
The Obama administration isn't "pulling the strings" in this revolution, in fact, they're hanging on for dear life. The US has very little control over events on the ground and all of their efforts are focused on damage control. That's why Obama continues to make his silly pronouncements every day, cautioning protesters to remain peaceful and invoking the words of Martin Luther King to calm the waters. But no one's paying any attention to Obama. He's completely irrelevant. Nor do they care that Hillary Clinton wants Congress to allocate more money for “to bolster the rise of secular political parties”. Whatever for?? The horse has already left the barn.
The Egyptian military isn't in control either, which is why they keep issuing conflicting communiques--one minute celebrating the triumph of Tahrir Square and the next minute threatening a crackdown if people don't return to work. Once the military commits to a given-strategy and starts mowing down striking workers en masse, then the real revolution will begin and a new political reality will start to emerge. Nothing galvanizes the attention or stirs one's class roots more than blood in the streets.
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27504.htm
bigron:
The Arab Revolutions and Us: Start Quaking in Your Boots!
By Grégoire Lalieu
Global Research, February 18, 2011
Investig'Action - 2011-02-16
In his latest debate on the France 2 TV channel, discussion show anchor Yves Calvi expressed alarm about the possible rise of Islamism in Egypt and Tunisia. However, here we will consider how, if we leave the emotionally-charged media coverage to one side and attempt to analyse the contradictions between the West and the Arab world rationally, these revolutions are less of a threat than an example for us Westerners to follow. We have the opportunity to create a fairer world. Why be afraid?
Astonishing. On Monday 7th February, the title of the discussion programme Mots croisés, ('Cross words'), presented by Yves Calvi on France 2, was "The Arab revolutions and us". While no-one dared challenge the legitimacy of the popular moments setting Tunisia, Egypt and other countries in the region alight, the presenter and some of his guests nevertheless raised the Islamist spectre, a sure-fire way to send a shiver down viewers' spines. There was talk of "fears of an Iranian scenario", "enthusiasm for freedom but also a sense of anxiety" or indeed "prudent rather than unconditional support". With great subtlety, Calvi also asked whether democracy was "playing into the hands of the fundamentalists". Special praise also goes to prominent 'intellectual' Alain Finkielkraut who, true to form, managed to slip in his view of "a phenomenon heading more towards a clash of civilisations than the establishment of a democracy looking to provide its people with a dignified and decent life."
Should Westerners be afraid then of the Arab revolutions ? Is the Near and Middle East, indeed the whole world, at risk of plunging into chaos ? Are we about to be overrun by bearded burqa-wielding fanatics, in an assault on civilised Europe ? To answer these questions, we need first to analyse the profound contradictions between the West and the Arab world. As we shall see, the differences have very little to do with a heated clash of civilisations, and are very much linked to a system based on the quest for maximum profit which has led the West to pillage and oppress the Arab peoples. Naturally, Calvi and his guests refrained from analysing these systems, preferring rather to base their discussions on irrational fears — so much better for viewing ratings. It also means we can seek to subjugate the savages and the fundamentalists without once calling ourselves into question.
The Iranian scenario
The possibility of an Iranian scenario was mentioned several times during the programme, the constant subtext being that this would be the worst possible outcome for the Egyptian revolution. Such is the magic of televised democratic debate : no need to spell out the fact that Iran is evil incarnate — everyone is already well aware of this. The debate can therefore take place within an accepted framework based on tacit consensus.
But why exactly would an Iranian scenario be the worst of all possible worlds ? Is Iran a dangerous country ? Has it attacked any country anywhere in the world ? Never. In fact, Calvi could just as easily have asked if the United States were a dangerous country. The response would have been yes and no. Yes, for Uncle Sam has carried out more military offensives than any other country on the planet.
Statistically, there is therefore far more risk of being attacked one day by the US than by Iran. Having said that, Uncle Sam is not really that dangerous, as since World War II, it has emerged victorious from precisely none of its armed conflicts apart from the invasion of Grenada in 1983.
So how to explain this demonisation of Iran ? Perhaps because it's an Islamic dictatorship and its President Ahmedinejad is a ferocious anti-Semite.
The only snag with these arguments is that they are false.
First of all, is Iran a dictatorship ? Clearly, within the consensual framework of televised debate, it is common knowledge that Ahmedinejad fixed the last elections. But any mildly serious analysis of the situation in Iran, or indeed the opinion polls carried out by the Rockefeller family think tank (who can hardly be accused of unconditional support for Ahmadinejad) undermine this received truth. While the Islamic state is no haven of civil liberties, it is hardly the terrible dictatorship one would have us believe.
Is Iran not nevertheless a bastion of anti-Semitism ? Feel free to travel to this Middle Eastern country and discuss the issue with the sizeable Jewish community there, in order to see how false this assertion is. The Jewish community even has parliamentary representatives. As anti-Semitic dictatorships go, it could be worse. The trick is to avoid confusing opposition to the Israeli government with hatred of Jews.
Granted, Iran is an Islamic state. But is this really a problem for Westerners ? The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is also an Islamic state, but this has never bothered us too much. Quite the contrary — just a few months ago the United States announced it was about to sign a record arms deal with the country, totalling some $60 billion. If Islamism represented a real danger for the West, would the administration of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Barack Obama be seeking to sell the Saudis F-15 jets and combat helicopters with a price tag capable of eradicating hunger world-wide ?
Note also that on the dictatorship and anti-Semitism fronts, Iran need take no lessons from Saudi Arabia — a feudal, anachronistic kingdom reigned by an absolute monarchy — where ; the royal family monopolises the country's wealth, political demonstrations are strictly forbidden and Jews have no right to practise their faith.
If he really wanted to frighten us, Yves Calvi could evoke the Saudi scenario. But the fact is that questions of democracy, anti-Semitism and Islamism are not really the heart of the matter. The reason Iran is the devil incarnate is because it conducts its policy independent of the Western powers. And if we never hear talk of Saudi Arabia, it is because this country is one of Washington's special partners.
Explaining the anger
Now we are getting to the core issues. If democratic governments were to emerge in the Arab world, truly representing the aspirations of their peoples, we Westerners might have reason to fear that these governments would feel a certain resentment towards us. Not because we would come face to face with religious fanatics but rather with lucid people who might just resent the fact that we have imposed corrupt and violent dictators on them for many years.
If Westerners therefore want to build equitable and peaceful relationships with the Arab world, we should not expect its peoples to go on accepting the dictators we choose for them. We have to attack the root of the problem, here in the West, by asking : why must we impose dictatorships on the Third World to defend our interests ?
In fact, the answer is found in our economic system, based as it is on the headlong pursuit of maximum profits. In neo-liberal capitalism, companies are subject to merciless competition. A pitiless world, in which you have to make maximum profit to avoid being eliminated or swallowed up by your competitors. Such is the fate of the weakest, who disappear, leaving monopolies or oligopolies to pick up the pieces. These economic behemoths hold the real power in our societies and are engaged in a no-holds-barred competition on a global scale. In the context of this struggle, the great capitalist powers need their multinationals to guarantee easy access to raw materials, exploit cheap labour, find outlets for the capital they accumulate and finally to control strategic zones for the development of trade.
Dominating Third World countries has always allowed Western powers to attain these objectives. It also explains why they set off in centuries past to colonise the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. And why they continue today to subjugate these countries in a less crude but equally despicable manner, thanks mostly to the shadowy principles of the neo-liberal Holy Trinity : the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO. Amen. The West reigns supreme.
But the problem is that the savages and fundamentalists are not always inclined to gives us free access to their petrol, minerals, gas and anything else we can use to make money. Some are even reluctant to work in execrable conditions for $2 a day and have the audacity to grumble when they find the products we sell them too expensive.
Which is where dictators come in. Logically speaking, a democratic government, which represented the interests of its population, would not accept multinationals pillaging its country and subjugating its citizens. It has thus been necessary to place corrupt leaders at the head of these Third World countries, ready to give our multinationals free rein, as long as their palms are greased. To maintain this system in place and pre-empt any form of opposition, Western powers have been happy to finance the repressive apparatus of the dictators, making it easier to understand why Foreign Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie offered her support to Ben Ali as his forces were shooting at protesters.
If you find this difficult to believe, look around at what has happened these past few years. The US and Europe have replaced Lumumba with Mobuto in Africa, Allende with Pinochet in Latin America, Mossadegh with Shah Mohamed Reza in the Middle East. The list is long, but that's not all.
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http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23270
bigron:
Egypt's Economy in Crisis
By Dr. Ali Kadri
Global Research, February 18, 2011
Just a week after the Tunisian revolution, at a conference in Beirut, an astute Egyptian social scientist was asked, would the Tunisian contagion spread to Egypt? And his answer was a categorical, ‘it is not likely, Egyptians are religious, conservative and the security apparatus has a good grip on the country.’ Not long after, of course, the Egyptian popular uprising had proven once more that not only cultural explanations of revolutions were inapposite tools of analysis, but it has also shown that when the time comes for people to rise up, they just do so unexpectedly. Suddenly, all the facts on the grounds explain the revolution. They fall into place like a two piece puzzle. It would thereafter be said that the revolution was historically overdetermined despite the most recognisable fact, which is, no one could have predicted it and the social seismic metre did not even record any serious pre-traumatic tremors. All the conditions for the revolution were there last year and the year before. So why now?
For a long time, the Egyptian government, in cahoots with the World Bank and the IMF, had concealed the deteriorating social conditions by reporting a rosy economic picture. Until of late, only around five percent of Egyptians were reported to be living in abject poverty at below one dollar a day or so.[2] Egyptian real GDP growth was on average six percent a year over the past six years.[3] The long term story of economic growth is just as glowing; Egypt’s GDP grew yearly on average by about five percent in real terms since 1980. Few other developing countries can boast a growth record, which is nearly three percentage points above the population growth rate.[4]For several years back, Egypt was exporting five hundred thousand barrels of oil a day, worth nearly 15 billion dollars a year and, to boot, huge quantities of gas.[5]
Over the last five years, average workers’ remittances were high as high 6 per cent of GDP and tourism provided an even higher rate.[6] Egypt attracted more than 40 billion dollars in FDI between the years 2005 and 2009, which is incidentally high relative to the African continent.[7] It also recorded huge market capitalization growth rates and, over the last five years, the average yearly value of the stock market was anywhere between 80 to 100 billion dollars. Public debt as a percentage of GDP went down from one hundred percent in 2005 to around 75 percent in 2010.[8] The Current account deficit relative to nominal GDP was also insignificant at just one per cent last year. Egypt’s reserves could cover nearly a year of imports and the inflation rate went from around 18 percent, three years ago, to 10 per cent at the end of 2009. Unemployment was around nine percent.[9] Egypt has steadily liberalised investment, ownership restrictions and trade and capital flows barriers. It further literalised trade by doing away with quantitative controls and high tariff levels. And to top it all, its monetary policy successfully targeted inflation, which is the ultimate goal of the neoliberal arsenal. What more could an Egyptian citizen want from his or her government.
Despite its apparently crystalline economic performance, Egypt could not be flaunted as the golden boy of free markets as was Tunisia. For the millions of tourists who visit Egypt each year, absolute poverty was too stark not to miss. The country’s poverty levels can be easily spotted. No control over news agencies could have covered up the brawls before the Cairo bakeries that led to the death of many when bread prices rose in 2008.[10]It is one of the few countries in the world where rising food prices resulted in immediate casualties. While growth was proceeding steadily, income inequality as could be gleaned from the few measures that were reported, was growing at a faster rate than the growth in incomes.[11] A recent article, which appeared in Arabic in AlQuds newspaper, warned that Egypt is becoming a two percent economy, as it was during king Farooq days, when two percent of the population owned 98 percent of the economy. Furthermore, its monetary policy, which was to reduce inflation in line with IMF recommendations, implied less spending on projects that would expand employment (fiscal contraction), and debt creation to expand the money supply available to the banks and rich. When disguised, hidden and under-employment are considered, the real unemployment rate in Egypt would easily surpass fifty percent.
The mainstay of the labour market was not a market where labour services would be exchanged for a wage, but a market in which cronyism and consent were reproduced by a combination of clientelism, coercion or repression. The big news item that broke the silence over the cover up came at the end of 2009, when the UNDP says that despite a number of positive economic indicators, Egypt has a hunger problem: nearly a third of all children are malnourished, (As reported IRIN).[12]
Egypt’s recent economic and social history could be split in two phases. A golden phase of high equitable growth, which ended in the mid seventies, and a leaden period of lower inequitable growth- it was lower but still high growth relative to other developing countries as mentioned earlier.[13]The first phase represented a tightly controlled economy with immense spending on social projects financed by local means. The second phase represented a period of social restructuring, openness and a reliance on the free market. It was Sadat’s Infitah (openness), which caused the prices of basic necessities to rise while wages remained stagnant in the mid seventies. The wrath of the Infitah, which had an immediate impact on the poor, was blamed on Nasser and the war fatigue. Sadat’s Infitah however, was more than just about letting prices and trade go free. It was about privatising what was socialised, restructuring social classes and turning back the clock of history. Nasser’s social reforms, land reforms, universal health and free education, in a country that ranked poorly on the development scale under King Farooq, catapulted the nation into the modern age.
The rate of literacy, life expectancy and real incomes soared in the first fifteen years pursuant to the Nasser revolution. The salary of a professional in those days, which was about ten Egyptian pounds, in socialised Egypt went a long way. One pound was paid for the monthly rent and around three pennies for public transport (a pound was a thousand pennies). A nationally produced soap bar would cost just few pennies. But after the Infitah, the national soap factories, as was the case for much of the nationally owned industry, were allowed to become rundown, and more expensive imported soap became available. In all areas, the national industry was coming under assault and dollar remittances from the Gulf exchanged on the black market created a model of earning without effort. Although by all accounts, the socialised anti-imperialist war economy delivered much more in terms of welfare and economic dynamism, the woes of the transition paved the way to reinstitute the dark past of King Farooq.
There were two historical agents at work here that helped Sadat and his class roll back development. One was inherent in the half hearted nature of the Nasser revolution, since Egyptian workers did not fully partake in the political process of social reform to later safeguard their achievements. Harry Braverman was somewhat prophetic in 1959 when he stated that:
‘Nasser’s regime is certainly a dictatorship masquerading as a revolution, but it is also a dictatorship fulfilling some of the obligations of a revolution, and initiating the trends and processes which will make for more revolution in Egypt . So long as the military can effectively substitute itself for the social struggle, keep the pot boiling, and give at least the impression of forward motion, it can hold sway. If it falters, the dispossessed nobles and landowners are on hand to take over again, with imperialist help, unless the Egyptian working class and peasantry have in the meantime so matured as to be able to make the Nile Valley the scene of Africa’s first experiment in socialism.’[14] To be fair to the Egyptian working class, at the first sign of Infitah, in 1977, working people in Cairo rose up in a bread revolution, but the rebellion was brutally crushed by the army. The revolt centred in Cairo and was not all encompassing, meaning the conditions of maturity, as was hoped by Braverman, and the revolutionary moment did not yet dawn.
The second agent to help Sadat and his class roll back history was of course no other than ‘imperialist help,’ which, after Egypt’s two military defeats against Israel in 1967 and 1973, was waiting just around the corner. The 1979 Camp David accord culminated the surrender terms of the Egyptian people. Camp David was to offer a ‘peace dividend’ that would allegedly alleviate Egypt’s economic problems. And, it did produce a dividend, but for Sadat and his class. For more than thirty years, income grew, but it grew along with class restructuring that stripped the working class from its earned rights and shifted resources to the top two percent. Everything was up to being privatised beginning with land reforms. The Camp David accord also made Egypt the second largest recipient of US aid, receiving around two billion dollars a year, two thirds of which went to the army, and the remaining one third went to buttress regime security and monitor the social conditions that might lead to rebellion. Little did the money spent on security inform of the rebellion. The revolution of today cannot be ascribed to a sudden fall in capital or portfolio flows. Central bank reserves and portfolio flows are still positive and high at this very moment.[15]
Revolutionary conditions took years in the making. Losing two wars to Israel compromised the security of the labouring classes in a good part of Africa and the Arab world, which for the last thirty years were exposed to imperialist plunder. A process of accumulation by dispossession and, de-development took hold of much of Africa and the Arab world. The US, by direct military intervention or the threat thereof, purposefully stripped peoples of the right to own and control their resources. The process was carried out by brute force and slaughter, especially in Iraq. Class cross-border alliance between ruling Arab autocracies and the US elite, became so well entrenched, that there is not a single Arab ruler who could retire in his own country, unless protected by tanks as the case of Moubarak is now. The Arab state was a subject of the security apparatus and the head of the state was simply the head of the security setup. In personalised institutions of this sort, economic growth that generates wealth does not trickle down; it trickles up. The Washington institutions, were themselves institutions, which knew that Arab states, were anything but formal institutions. They also knew very well that under these distributional and institutional arrangements, their policies would lead to this disaster.
When the recent global financial crisis arrived to the Arab world, I was taken aback by the banality of the word crisis in an Arab context. In the preface to one report that remained unpublished, I wrote:
There is a euro-centric tone to the word crisis in an underdeveloped region that has had the highest rates of conflicts globally. In the totality of existence, which is called underdevelopment, where wars and displacement rage in countries like Iraq, Sudan, Yemenand Palestine, and where after some three decades of high positive growth rates nearly a third of Egyptian children suffer from malnutrition, the word crisis has little or no meaning for it is an every day occurrence. This is rather reminiscent of Chekhov's words: ‘even an imbecile can cope with a crisis. It’s the everyday life that exhausts us.’ But, the case may be that if economic wealth for the more developed world can be created by non-economic factors, by dispossession and dislocation of peripheral formations, then that could mean that the creation of wealth in the centre is positively related to pauperisation of the periphery. If even remotely or partially true, then the road to peace should begin here.
In an attempt to capture the developing conditions and reflect a real image of the situation, in the Summary of the unpublished report, which was incidentally published last year by the United Nations, Economic and Social Council, I tried to explain in the short space that I had the graveness of the deteriorating conditions and the relationships that were driving them, I noted for the summary:[16]
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