|
the second. the bring it up by way of a really bad joke.
Q. why do the french have tree-lined streets?
A. so the germans can march in in the shade.
they musta forgot about napoleon.
but that was pre-germany.
ace...look. it's not obvious how things are going to play out in egypt. the situation is at an interesting impasse, but that impasse is political.
the economic situation is self-evident.
the problem that economic situation creates for the united states is that the united states bankrolled mubarak for a very long time as a payment---in effect (there's a bunch of evidence about this in the thread)----for signing onto the camp david accords.
the wsj line is basically to argue for some imaginary separation between mubarak and capitalism. now the bad state---which the united states supported fully in all its oppressive glory because it suited geo-political interests (typically as parsed by neo-cons) was the problem. and some imaginary capitalism--associated for the editorial writers of wsj (and no-one else) with the united states---is about to somehow rescue folk.
all of which is a therapeutic story told to people who don't know anything about what's happening on the ground.
it has no bearing on the political situation.
in that political situation---as the guardian article i posted earlier points out---and as i've been saying for days----the military could very easily----*very* easily---hijack the revolution. they've given some commission 10 days to write a new constitution.
10 days to start from scratch.
something strange is afoot.
some folk say that it's theater, it's about showing seriousness in getting away from military rule.
but it's the fucking constitution in 10 days.
rehearsing the economic situation right now is basically repeating some of the major, underlying causes of the actions of the last 19 days. **some** of them. it says nothing about where things stand now in egypt because the revolt is in another place. and there's no way to know from here how things are going to shake out.
parallel movements are happening all over the region, some more advanced, some less. they're not **all** about access to a better standard of living, but that's certainly part of it. access to a better standard of living is a **political** matter. it's only amongst the most orthodox free-markety set that the economy is somehow not political.
but no-one believes that. certainly people in egypt don't. no-one does except maybe people who watch too much american tv and read ibd and wsj editorial pages and like simplicity at the expense of reality.
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
|