America needs to kick its addiction to imported oil. That was true when T. Boone Pickens started lobbying for the development of wind farms after spending life as an oil and gas developer. It is still true even though Pickens suspended his idea for a Texas wind farm in 2009, no doubt because he couldn’t find enough investors to take away his risk. Officially Pickens said that he lost interest when the price of natural gas went down--kinda like the oil and gas exploration companies in Mesa County.

There is a more altruistic reason to kick the addiction to imported oil. Our friends aren’t friends of either democracy or our way of life. Take the House of Saud, as an example. Saudi Arabia is a monarchy, with a lot to lose if democratic ideals take hold in the country. Saudi women don’t enjoy anything approaching equality—they can’t even get a driver’s license. Yet, we’ve been arming the Saudis with our leading edge technologies for years.

We also armed the Egyptians. An argument can be made that Egypt it didn’t turn out badly, mostly because the Egyptian Army heard from our State Department that they wouldn’t continue to have unlimited access to military toys if they used arms on the citizens of Egypt. The House of Saud was apoplectic when the US called for Mubarak to step down.

The Saudi army isn’t as likely to be loyal to the people of Saudia Arabia. They are bought and paid for by the Saudi Princes who have no desire to institute any democratic reforms. In fact, they are so aghast at the idea of democracy taking over the Mid-East that they have sent their U.S. supplied military into bordering nations to squash protestors.

The House of Saud is also paranoid about Iran. In fact, they are convinced that the democracy movement is something that has been concocted by Iranian spies. They are so paranoid that they have agreed to allow Israel access to their air space if an attack on Iran is the purpose.

Friendship with Saudi Arabia may become increasingly expensive and questionable since the two nations do not share political agendas. As the House of Saud digs in its heels, refusing to consider any reforms, they may become more enemy than friend, and what will happen to our access to Mid-East oil then?

Homework

The House of Saud Won't Wake Up

Pickens Puts Windfarm on Hold

We just witnessed our first revolution where it was people power, not a bloody civil war that toppled a government. Despots everywhere have got to be taking note of how a determined people can stop a nation in its tracks without resorting to violence. I wonder what the NRA has to say about this?

Of course, what finally caused Mubarak to throw in the towel was a military that turned against him. I heard various reports yesterday that senior military officials were supporting Mubarak until it became apparent that junior officers were with the people, and there was danger of a military split. Given that the U.S. gives the Egyptian military $1.3-billion annually, there is good reason to believe that the Egyptian military leaders were talking to their U.S. counterparts. That $1.3 billion is ear marked for purchasing goods and services from the U.S. military/industrial complex. No doubt the senior military leaders didn’t want to lose access to all those toys.

Yesterday was a day of joy. Today is a bit more sober; as we remember that Egypt is an important strategic partner, and how it will be governed going forward is a big question mark. The old government is gone, but nobody knows what the new government will look like, or what pains it will go through in its birth. Western economies depend on goods, especially oil that passes through the Suez Canal and Egyptian pipelines. The US also depends on the Suez Canal for the transport of military supplies for the war in Afghanistan.

More oil rich governments may well fall also. Jubilant crowds yesterday celebrated in capitals all across the Middle East. Their leaders were eerily silent. Demonstrations were permitted all over the Arab world, with no response from government officials. Rumor has it that those officials, all across the Middle East, have been meeting with their cabinets, trying to devise strategies that keep mobs away from their palaces and keep them in their lucrative government jobs.

Power to the People, but be careful what you wish for!

Homework

Analysis of Events in Egypt With Links to Other Sources

NRA Head Says Events in Egypt Prove the Importance of 2nd Amendment

Ripple Effect With Other Arab Leaders

Energy Prices Went Down

Afghanistan War, What's It Good For?

2004 Report on the Economic Impact of US Military Moving Goods Thru Suez Canal

El Baradei was quoted yesterday as saying that Mubarak is aDead Man Walking. He may be. The streets of Cairo have changed dramaticallyovernight. What was once a relatively peaceful protest, has degenerated intorock and bottle throwing between his opponents and his supporters. The supportersare new on the scene.

Mubarak was defiant in his speech yesterday, according topeople who could listen to it in Arabic, rather than the translation that mostof us heard. He described a scene that started as a legitimate expression ofopinion and degenerated into lawless criminality. He promised an investigation,a comment that was barely noted on U.S. reporting. I imagine the threat of aninvestigation irritated some of the protesters; I know it would have made meeven more determined. If you are going to do the time, you might as well do the“crime.”

One organizer of these protests is a single Mom who isdirecting the activities via cell phone and living on cigarettes and coffee,according to a report on NBC. This may be why Mubarak isn’t listening—arrogantmen rarely listen to women. Okay, I mostly made that part up, but people inpower do get isolated from the “rabble” and are prone to thinking that theyhave the last living brain cells on the planet.

Despite my silly speculation, it is becoming clear thatMubarak is not listening, and as a result there will be blood on his hands asthe situation escalates. Evidently organizers are calling for Friday to beD-Day, short for departure day. They are encouraging protesters to show out inlarge numbers on that day and march to Mubarak’s home.

At the same time, the military has asked protesters to gohome. Although I could not find confirmation, internet rumors are that theyalso told Mubarak that he had to step down. Evidently El Baradei has also beenscolding Mubarak for a very long time—since before the start of the Iraq war.Some analysts have suggested that the U.S. has been asking him to deliver morefreedoms to his people for as long as he has been in office.

I’m not sure how all of this will resolve itself, but I doknow that the refusal of one stubborn man to listen to his advisers is going toend badly for him and possibly for his country.

Homework

Text ofMubarak's Speech

Textof Obama's Remarks About Egyptian Situation

9Years of Scolding By ElBaradei

EgyptianMilitary Tells Protesters to Go Home

As much as I want to turn my thinking back to what is happening in the Colorado State legislature, I’m still stuck on the Middle East. Two recent developments are indicative of how much of a powder keg this area of the world really is.

First there are reports that the Jordanian King dissolved his government and appointed a new prime minister. Despite his liberal western education, and his American born mother, he seems to be true to form. Instead of appointing a new government that would increase democratic reforms, he appointed a military leader. I’m assuming, although I have no supporting evidence, that his choice to head his government was because he anticipates having to respond to rioting the the streets of Amman. Jordan is in a precarious geographic position, bordering Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.

Second, ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and an Egyptian has returned to Egypt from Europe. He has been speaking at press conferences, and has declared that Mubarak must go. Today a million people have pledged to march on the Egyptian government and demand that Mubarak step down.

ElBaradei is the former head of the International Atomic Energy Commission, so there is no doubt in my mind that he is very aware of the implications of governments in the Middle East falling. He knows that Iran has nuclear ambitions, and that Israel is a nuclear power—although Israel continues to implausibly deny that they have developed an atomic weapon. ElBaradei was so disliked by the Bush administration that they attempted to have him removed from his position with the IAEC.

Complicating the whole picture is the Israeli leadership, which is the most hawkish in a very long time. Peace in the Middle East has been fostered primarily by the 50 agreements between Israel and Egypt, who share in interest in holding down Muslim extremists and Iran’s desire for nuclear weapons. It seems to me that ElBaradei could be an acceptable replacement for Mubarak in the eyes of Israel.

Homework

Jordanian King Appoints New Prime Minister

Jordanians Have Been Protesting

Who is ElBaradei?

Israeli Fears

When I last wrote about the crisis in Egypt, I mused that it was different from Tiananmen Square in that the media being used to organize protestors in China was fax, but in Egypt the internet, specifically Facebook and Twitter were being used. Well, it turns out that I was optimistic about the ability of social media to thwart the information crack-down of governments. Egypt turned off the internet. And people went back to the old technologies of fax and ham radio. Where there’s a will, there is a way.

Some of the faxes going into Egypt are copies of Wikileaks documents about Egypt. In another story in the news today, Hillary Clinton has called for a summit of U.S. ambassadors. Reports suggest that between 180 and 260 (different reports, different numbers) ambassadors have been summoned to Washington by Clinton for a first ever meeting of its kind. The agenda is reported to be a discussion of Wilikeaks impacts on foreign policy, events in Egypt, and ways to cut foreign aid in the budget.

Already the events in Egypt are driving up the price of oil, as markets become nervous about the world-wide distribution networks. On Friday crude oil hit $90/bbl, an increase of 4.3%, suggesting that oil at the pumps will be significantly higher this summer. Politicians in Washington have gone back to their respective corners, with Republicans chanting “Drill, Baby, Drill” and Democrats clamoring for increased investment in alternative fuels. I’m hoping that this crisis doesn’t make us forget the importance of protecting our clean air and clean water while we scramble to react to energy insecurity.

Driving the market jitters is the fact that Egypt is home to two important distribution points, the Suez Canal and the Sumed pipeline. The Suez Canal carries $1.8 million barrels of oil products daily, and the Sumed pipeline carries 1.1 million barrels daily. Adding to market nervousness is the proximity of Egypt to other oil producing nations, which actually produce more oil than Egypt, and could be subject to similar protests because of their repressive regimes.

 The Mid-East is a powder keg, ready to explode in ways we haven’t witnessed in over 30 years. To the credit of both parties, the leaders in both chambers of congress seem to be standing shoulder to shoulder with Obama and Clinton as they find their way through their foreign policy decisions. Hopefully they will be able to calm war mongers, both foreign and domestic, and keep our supplies of fuel secure until we can move toward greater independence from oil imports.

Just as the Egyptians discovered that they needed to find new ways of communicating when the government interfered in freedom of speech, the US needs to stop retreating to comfortable corners of ideology and start talking about energy (and by extension) food security. (Don’t you just love surprise endings?)

Homework

BBC Reports on the Use of Old Technologies in Egypt

Clinton Calls For Ambassador Summit

Egypt Unrest Ignites Oil Market Fears

Carbon Footprints

Food Security

I confess I spent yesterday glued to the TV watching events half a world away in Cairo, Egypt. My view was provided by MSNBC, where Richard Engle was reporting live. Engle had lived in Cairo when he was fresh out of college, so was able to provide insights that may not have been available to a reporter without firsthand knowledge of both the geography and the people of the city.

Our local channel lineup does not include Aljazera, which is being praised by the New York Times, for its live coverage. No doubt they, being native to the region, also have valuable insights. So valuable, in fact, that the first report I viewed on MSNBC this morning featured an interview with an Aljazera bureau chief.

I can’t help but wonder at the difference a decade or two make. When there were protests in China in 1989, the protests were mostly students who, mourning the death of a leader who favored increased freedom for the people, gathered to first demand the ability to honor the deceased leader, then to demand the reforms he had promised.  The iconic image is of a young protestor standing in front of a tank, refusing to be cowed by the obvious show of military force. At that time much of the information available to both the protestors and to viewers in the west was disseminated by fax.

Today we know that facebook and twitter played a role in mobilizing Egyptians, where unemployment is at 40%, to protest their economic realities. The Egyptian government shut down these outlets, just as the Chinese government shut down the ability to send and receive faxes. The U.S. President urged the Egyptian president to restart the information highway.

Now we are seeing tanks again deployed, with protestors walking around the tanks. Protestors are unharmed (so far) by the show of military force in Cairo’s downtown. Yesterday there were running battles with the police, who are said to abuse their powers by demanding constant bribes from the already beleaguered populace. The people won the battle against the police. Today the police stations stand empty. The soldiers are quietly sitting on top of the tanks, without engaging the protestors, while the government’s party headquarters burns adjacent to a museum full of priceless antiquities.

This is an odd triangulation. The people respect the military, in part because of national pride in the performance of the military in battle, and in part because for a poor kid the only access to education and a ticket out of abject poverty is a career with the military. The current government is in place because it was put there and kept there by the military. The people see their kids and their neighbor’s kids wearing the uniform.

So far it appears that the U.S. is reminding the Egyptians that government is only legitimate when it has the consent of the governed. They are using a threat of the removal of $1.5-billion in US Aid to move the government to listen to the demands of the protestors. Aljazera is reporting that the speech Mubarak made yesterday is very similar to the speech made by the Tunisian president before he fled the country. Because there was not a political face to these protestors, there is great uncertainty about who or what will fill the power vacuum that would be the result of Mubarak fleeing.

No matter what the outcome of this protest, it will not be good for stability in this oil rich region.

Homework

Praise for Aljazera Coveragee of Egyptian Protests

Wikileaks Cables Expose Tension between US & Egypt

Tiananmen Square