Assorted Questions on Egypt

Posted: February 3rd, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Foreign Policy, Journalism | Tags: , , , | 2 Comments »

A quick post at Foreign Exchange laying out what I see as outstanding questions as we head into the wee hours, Cairo-time. Here’s hoping one of the intrepid reporters there right now takes some of these on:

…for the last few years, the key value of Egypt’s relationship to Israel has been economic: some $500 million worth of total trade in oil, food crops, consumer products, growing at a remarkable rate-roughly doubled since 2007 alone. If the political peace holds, but relations are frostier post-Mubarak, as Israeli representatives say they will be, and if the borders around Gaza tighten as a result, what happens to that trade? Or, will the dependency of populations in both countries on that trade prevent a political regression?

The reporters themselves seem to have become the story in the last 36 hours in a way that reminds me somewhat of the press crackdown in Pakistan in the waning hours of the Musharraf regime, but even more of the press evangelism of the 1830 revolution in Paris which old readers will know I spent some time mulling over many moons ago. Actually, what we’re witnessing across North Africa and the Middle East is somewhere in between the two, and I’m still working out how they fit together. Stay tuned.

2 Comments on “Assorted Questions on Egypt”

  1. 1 shazia rafi said at 1:50 am on February 4th, 2011:

    excellent, send it to wisner

  2. 2 Phillip Lambert said at 4:51 pm on February 7th, 2011:

    I have to admit to not being able to understand all of your article on Frank G.Wisners role in his recent visit to Egypt.
    Partly because I can’t locate the article in my history search.Sorry!

    My naive view of Wisner jr. and his inheritance from his father, suggests that he learnt the lowest and most cynical common denominator and the use of continuous disinformation at his fathers knee.

    His fathers role in the Mockingbird operation along with Cord Meyer,cited as having a possible role in JFK’s demise,and murky questions as to the nature of the death of his ex-wife Mary(a lover of JFK),plus the crossover into the CIA dealings of Philip Graham & wife Katharine Graham, daughter of financier (non relation of Cord)Eugene Myer,and Ben Bradlee ,a willing /able apparent participant in Mockingbird and bro-in law of Mary (daughter of Eugene), George H. Bushs deals with Eugene Myer,and Bush proposed covert CIA activities in the 1960s,all adds up to a “parcel of rogues”.

    The military industrial complex rolls on like tanks in any square of protest you could name.I can’t see any of the hopeful outcomes for trade and freedom that you suggest,whilst packets of egregiousness such as Wisner are thus dispatched by an impotent under-briefed & compromised Obama…

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