Tunisia’s former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali found a safe haven in Saudi Arabia on Friday, he was prevented from landing in Paris by President Sarkozy, while Tunisia has devolved into near chaos. Ben Ali, the 74 year old president, took power after a bloodless coup in ’87 as a Social Democrat. In an all too typical scenario of Marxist leaders, he established an authoritarian police state: while the country was mired in poverty, he and the Elites established a system of government based on nepotism and corruption, while living in opulent luxury.
Last month, a 26 year old college graduate, who could not find work and was selling fruits and vegetables without a permit had his produce impounded, in despair over his inability to support his family, he doused himself with gasoline and struck a match as a measure of protest. The social networks of twitter and Facebook were used to generate public anger and disgust over the events and causes of the self-immolation and the man’s feelings of hopelessness, thus they served as an impetus for revolution.
There were Wikileaks cables describing the corruption and graft of the Ben Ali Presidency and speculation that they contributed to the unrest that deposed the former government: the Obama Administration was quick to deny that their allegations of corruption concerning the Marxist government exposed in the Wikileaks cables precipitated the revolution in Tunisia, the administration was adamant in maintaining that the people of Tunisia were well aware of the corruption within the government.
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Sunday that Tunisians were well aware of the graft, nepotism and lavish lifestyles led by ex-President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his family long before the WikiLeaks website published the diplomatic cables.
The Obama regime has been quick to absolve itself of any blame for all unpleasant incidents; consequently, their claims of being innocent of any unpleasantries have become rhetorical and thus they have lost meaning in this age of state sponsored propaganda. That is a sad result of automatic absolution of guilt by leadership: the public no longer listens and routinely regards all such proclamations as suspect, even if they are truthful in nature. There remains the nagging question of why would it matter to the Obama Administration that the Wikileaks cables had a part in starting the revolution, why the vehement denial? To whom do they proclaim their innocence?
In Tunis, Tunisia, authorities are struggling to end the violence. Fire fights have broken out around the capital and around the former president’s palace on the shore of the Mediterranean and the headquarters of the primary opposition party. Looting, arson, and violence has been the result of a vacuum of leadership and control since Ben Ali left the country on Friday as factions struggle to gain control. The violence seems to be between Tunisians who are emboldened by the abdication of Ben Ali and by loyalists who aren’t anxious to give up their prestige and perks they enjoyed under the totalitarian police state of Ben Ali.
Neighboring countries are now feeling a loss of confidence in the markets as people sell their commercial paper, while wondering if the political turmoil of Tunisia will spread into other dictatorships in the Middle East.
Commercial International Bank Egypt SAE, the country’s biggest publicly traded lender, closed at the lowest level in more than a month. EFG-Hermes Holding SAE, Egypt’s biggest publicly traded investment bank, declined 2.4 percent. The EGX30 Index lost 1 percent, the biggest drop since Nov. 30, to 7,082.09 at the 2:30 p.m. close in Cairo. Tunisia’s benchmark Tunindex tumbled 13 percent last week as increasing violence lead to the toppling of the country’s leader on Jan. 14.
The Tunisian protests may embolden demonstrators who have recently taken to the streets in other North African and Middle Eastern countries, including Egypt, Morocco and Jordan, all of which have experienced demonstrations about economic conditions, said Marina Ottaway, director of the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
“People are selling because they think the same might happen here” given unemployment and inflationary pressure, Alia Khalil, senior equity trader at Cairo-based Pharos Holding for Financial Investments, said by telephone.
Egypt’s Unemployment Is Similar To America’s
Former European Commission President Romano Prodi said Egypt may be vulnerable to an uprising similar to Tunisia as “the fragility of the political situation makes it extremely vulnerable to youth unemployment and the increase in the price of bread,” according to an editorial in il Messaggero.
Unemployment in Egypt stands at 8.9 percent according to the Cairo-based Central Agency for Mobilization and Public Statistics. The government says it needs to maintain a growth rate of about 7 percent to create enough jobs for the 750,000 people who enter the workforce every year. Egypt’s central bank said last week core inflation, the benchmark it uses to make interest rate decisions, increased to 9.65 percent in December from 8.93 in the previous month.
No other Arab leaders have been forced out of power by public pressure since 1985, when public unrest led to a coup that unseated President Gaafar al-Nimeri.
Ben Ali’s 23 year reign has been noted for corruption and graft that has recently been characterized by even more of his wife’s and her family’sgreed:
The French government suspects that former Tunisian president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and his family may have fled the country with 1.5 tons of gold, French daily Le Monde reported Monday.
According to the French secret service, Leila Trabelsi, the wife of the ex-president, went to the Central Bank of Tunisia to fetch the gold bars, the paper reported.
The governor of the bank is reported to have refused to give them to her, so Trabelsi rang her husband who first also refused to help, before giving in, according to Le Monde.
“It seems that the wife of Ben Ali left with some gold, 1.5 tons or 45 million euros worth,” a French politician told the paper.
In one of the iconic ironies of Marxist and totalitarian forms of Social Democratic governments, rulers must gauge how much corruption the public will endure for the Elites to live in opulent luxury at the expense of the workers in their Utopian dream state of eternal poverty. Now many of these Arab leaders are wondering if perhaps they have taken too much from the people in order to live as Elites.
Men who are willing to self-immolate are stepping forward to sacrifice themselves in protest of governments that offer few freedoms and little opportunity:
A Mauritanian man set himself on fire, the third self-immolation attempt apparently influenced by a man in Tunisia.
Local journalists say 43-year-old Yacoub Ould Dahoud said he was unhappy with the government. Witnesses say he drove to a government building in the capital and torched himself in his car.
Foreign ministry official Adbou Ould Sidi says police rushed him to the hospital.
The attempt follows similar incidents, including one in Algeria. Also Monday, an Egyptian man set himself on fire in an apparent protest.
The utter desperation of men who are willing to set themselves on fire will possibly be enough to set more than one government on fire in the Middle East. There is no doubt that many Arabs are dissatisfied with living in poverty, in order to enable their elites to live in splendor, there is a real possibility that more totalitarian governments may fall in the Middle East; unfortunately, the Islamic fundamentalists will be waiting in the shadows to offer their own form of Marxist dystopia to the unsuspecting innocent who has only known despotism.
Normally, revolution with the goal of a free society and government is to celebrated, but the Islamo Fascist is well funded and organized throughout the Middle East and with our own president increasing our dependence on foreign oil with the closing of vast oil fields, oil fields that could allow us to be independent of foreign oil, the possibility of Islamo Fascists gaining control of oil resources and causing havoc in our supplies and the world market in general is an ominous possibility.
The idea of forcing America to be a Green Society before the technology is available is a pipe dream of an idealist who is ignoring the fact that we are an oil based society and that relying on energy technologies that don’t yet exist, at the expense of cutting off our own oil supplies is a template for the destruction of this country. Technologies develop at their own rate, not because a bureaucrat determines that we need them at a specific time. Alternative energy will develop, it is inevitable, a natural result of free market enterprise.
Ben Ali was successful in keeping the Islamo Fascists under control with his totalitarian police state and that may be his only real accomplishment for 23 years in office. Now we and the rest of the world are wondering whether the emerging Democratic Revolution, a result of 23 years as a police state, will produce new fundamentalist dictators. The previous revolutions to establish democratic governments produced Islamo Fascists in Tehran and Algiers, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and Islamo Fascist-wannabes running Turkey.
And while the Islamic world is watching these events unfold with a degree of trepidation, we must have faith that our president has read of solutions on the teleprompter between golf games, so that we are ready to meet these new and important challenges that are like a fuse on the powder keg that is the Middle East.
A professional horseman for over 50 years, Skook continues to work with horses. Skook has finished an historical novel, Fifty Thousand Years, that traces a mitochondrial line of DNA from 50,000 years ago to the present. The story follows a line of courageous women, from the Ice Ages to the present, as they meet the challenges of survival with grit and creativity. These are not women who whimper of being victims, they meet the challenges of survival as women who use their abilities without excuses or remorse, these women are winners, they are our ancestors.
Fifty Thousand Years is available in paperback and e-book, it is getting great reviews. You can purchase a copy here; Visit me on Facebook.
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I forget who it was who coined the term ”kleptocracy,” for these Arab rulers who suck their nation’s wealth off while living behind high walled palaces among people who are kept poor by the Islamic Sharia dictat that they may never borrow money because it is usury.
These poor people resort to selling sons into militant madrassas and daughters into early marriges where they are akin to slave girls who will be raped and impregnated later.
The normal Islamic state is a kleptocracy.
The normal Muslim under Sharia has less than one of America’s poorest.
But look to the Left to try to make some moral equivalence out of our two poor communities.
Civilization if fragile and you hardly ever get it back once it’s gone.
I am not persuaded that Ben Ali was a Social Democrat. Wikipedia entries seem to suggest that he was heavily influenced by French and US military more than marxism as he was taught at the Senior Intelligence School (Maryland) as well as the School for Anti-Aircraft Field artillery in TX as well as at least 2 elite military institutions in France including at St Cyr. Tunisia was always well regarded by the USA and the western european countries because as corrupt as he was, and he was very corrupt, he kept control of the muslim extremists. And as long as you do that AND keep the hydocarbons going west than pretty much anything can be accepted.
By Skookum:
“Ben Ali, the 74 year old president, took power after a bloodless coup in ’87 as a Social Democrat. In an all too typical scenario of Marxist leaders, he established an authoritarian police state: while the country was mired in poverty, he and the Elites established a system of government based on nepotism and corruption, while living in opulent luxury.”
————————————————————————————–
This is what the Right is fighting against and what the Left just doesn’t get.
In a ‘social democratic’ society ” ALL ” will be lowered to the lowest common denominator while the ELITES and their “CHOSEN CRONIES” will be those who will be living FAR BETTER THAN THE REST.
To the LEFTY Kool Aid drinkers – I say be careful what you wish for…
Tunisia is a minor oil exporter. Ben Ali declared himself a Social Democrat while consolidating power in much the same manner as Castro. His departure merely encourages the Islamo Fascists and they will be much better organized, armed, and led than any of the pro-Democracy parties. It is hard to imagine real pro-Democracy groups sending in advisors and money. The struggle for the faux democracy will probably be between Islamic Fundamentalist factions, unless there are some real leaders among the students. That isn’t likely and if there are, they will probably have a short lease on life.
The Arabs have a proverb, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” It is a tricky deal over there and I think we have picked the wrong era to shut down our drilling off the coast and to shut down exploration in the interior. The year of 2011, may well have more ‘man caused’ disasters in store for us.
I firmly believe that Green Energies are in our future; however, I think the market and technology will bring them to the forefront as soon as possible and that legislating them into existence is a fool’s game that gambles our economic future on someone’s whims and dreams. If there is money to be made, someone will “capitalize” on the opportunity, but with government subsidies, we are guaranteed to have inferior products being forced on us prematurely. I am thinking of that popular car the Volt.
When oil goes over 100$ a barrel all hell breaks loose. Not to sound like a spoiled child but skyrocketing prices puts federal, provincial, and civic governments in tax overdrive. Yes, skyrocketing prices grows government. When prices recede government suffers a huge hangover and the poorer taxpayer gets clobbered. That’s what happens in Alberta!
Let’s hope the people of Tunisia establish a proper democracy rather than the corrupt pr0-western dictatorship that’s just been kicked out or going for the even worst option of a fundamentalist Islamic Regime.
Amazing that out of around 50 mainland countries in Africa – there are only two which feature in the top 50 countries in the world the Democracy Index – South Africa and Botswana – both labelled as flawed democracies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
@Skook
I firmly believe that Green Energies are in our future; however, I think the market and technology will bring them to the forefront as soon as possible and that legislating them into existence is a fool’s game that gambles our economic future on someone’s whims and dreams. If there is money to be made, someone will “capitalize” on the opportunity, but with government subsidies, we are guaranteed to have inferior products being forced on us prematurely. I am thinking of that popular car the Volt”
How would a pro-Democracy group (probably bereft of funding or weapons) get a foothold or struggle against Loyalist and Fundamentalist groups that are well funded and well armed. I have been trying to visualize how this could happen and I haven’t been able to imagine a possibility that is remotely practical.
@Skook
Correct me if I’m wrong but doesn’t the US have a long history of invested public money into roads, railroads, air travel, space exploration, nuclear power etc etc including using incentives, subisides and legislation? Do you think the US would be better or worse off now if it didn’t publically invest and ‘only’ left it to the market and entrepreneurs? Why should clean energy be treated any differently?
Well now, Gaffa… why don’t you ask Spain that?
Oil Guy, that is an interesting perspective that I have not considered. We know all too well that Canadian governments don’t believe that Canadian companies need to share in the untold wealth that is happening to other oil producing countries; therefore it must be taxed so that all Canadians can share in the wealth. Sounds Utopian in theory, but in reality, very little of that tax money is fed back to the average Canadian. Healthcare will consume a huge piece, but if you aren’t perpetually ill or a hypochondriac what good is it to enrich doctors and nurses who see patients who need someone to act like they care. Unfortunately, a large percentage of Canadians waiting in doctors’ offices have nothing wrong with them other than loneliness and a fascination with the medical profession. It will take a lot more than $100/barrel oil to bring that situation into the black. I had several customers and friends who were doctors in Canada and freely discussed the hypochondriacs and the disgusting but money generating cash cows they represent.
With $200/barrel oil, and 80% tax rate, Canada could take care of entitlements and health care. Can’t you see the Libs and the conservatives salivating at the possibilities. The NDP would be having a coronary at the thought if they weren’t already DOA.
Correction: You forgot the military.
Do we invest in the future technology of roads, air travel, space exploration?
President Obama demanded an Electric Car and now we have one that can travel 40 miles and requires a 12 hour recharge. I have a 5 year old golf cart that charges in 2 hours and can travel about 8 miles. GM can’t give away the Volts, but I can sell my golf cart tomorrow.
That is the result of forcing manufacturers to have an electric car before the technology is ready. You have the car that no one wants. Whooppee! And if the government didn’t buy them by the tens of thousands, we would be dumping them on foreign countries and we probably will be dumping them after the government employees refuse to drive them. They have taken the merger of golf cart technology and made it a little better and instead of charging you 5 thousand, you now pay thirty thousand for a golf cart with a roof that will go 40 miles, but don’t expect to take it upon the golf course, we do have rules of etiquette, at least in golf. (I am not a golfer, I have a cart to drive around my farm.)
The technology will come; especially when it is ready, feeding the sharks and pigs from the public trough wont make it happen any sooner, but there will be millions to be made, parading high dollar golf carts as transportation.
@Skookum:
You wrote:
You know, don’t you, that the Chevy Volt was first shown as a concept car in 2007, during the Bush Administration. And you say that GM “can’t give away the Volts”, though it just went on sale. Hmm . . . seems to me that before you call the car a failure, it needs to actually be on the market for more than a month . . . just sayin.’
Then there is the reputation of the car. Car of the Year by Motor Trend and Car of the Year at the Detroit Auto Show, the most important show in the country. U.S. News and World Report ranks it as the number 3 car in its catagory, behind the BMW 3 series and the Buick LaCrosse.
This is another situation where cons make themselves look silly. Yeah, yeah, I know you opposed the Bush/Obama auto bailout and the fact that it was successful and saved millions of jobs does nothing to reduce your hostility to this quite successful undertaking. And I know the earnings reports, showing GM back in the saddle, only make you guys angrier that Obama’s bet was correct. And I know the fact that “Government Motors” out of a Blue State has produced a really stellar car frosts you cons. But to resort to out and out falsehoods . . . rather unseemly, cons.
I heard somewhere that the first person to order a (COAL-Fueled) Chevy Volt was getting rid of his Toyota Prius to make way for it.
LOL!
Recycle that!
What have the numbers shown?
Even with taxpayer subsidies, green-vehicle sales dropped half-a-percent to just 2.4 percent of the market for 2010 while light trucks made up a majority of vehicle sales
The Chevy Volt is yet another in a long stream of meaningless status symbols for rich greenies.
It shouldn’t have even qualified for Obama’s $7,500 txpayer handout/subsidy.
It has a ”planetary ring gear” that supposedly uses the gasoline engine to either/both drive the wheels and/or drive the generator.
Had Obama not designed the $7,500 rebate around the Chevy Volt to begin with, it would NEVER have qualified for it.
I didn’t realize Motor Trend was such a partisan rag; none the less, I found this response from a cynic to be enlightening and funny:
Read more: http://blogs.motortrend.com/rush-judgment-5957.html#ixzz1BWnjTU1v
Concept cars are often nothing more than a copy of a clay model. Working parts may still be in the concept stages. Bizarre shapes and futuristic ideas are meant to be attention grabbers, since most concept cars never go into production.
Yes the Vega was one of the GM masterpieces that failed, many new models fail despite their eloquent boasts of performance and those of partisan rags. Some failures are partially the result of poor market research, another element that is often ignored when the government demands that certain quotas ad mandates be met. The Vega was partially doomed by the name, for not many Hispanics wanted to drive a car named the Fart.
SKOOKS Well written and informative piece.Really didn’t need the last paragraph though which may I say is at best snarky and at worst Bull Shit. Wanna guess how many times Speaker “never met a lobbyist I didn’t like” Boehner hit the links 1n 2010? How many hours in the salon to keep that year round tan?The American tax payer wants to know.