When someone keeps talking and keeps repeating what they say over and over but you do not believe a word of what they say or respect anything they opine, you may get to a point where you finally judge it necessary that you find out what they are after because they could be dangerous in what they peddle or even dangerous despite of it. And so you listen to them carefully or you read what they write to find out what role they may play to upset the existing order. And so, from ignoring them and ignoring what they do, you make a turn and start to paint a picture not of the narrative they stitch together or the philosophy they express with the opinions they put out but you paint a picture of the fantasies they espouse. And you know that these fantasies are what makes these people tick and makes them insist on pushing a point of view so strange that it makes them look like a bunch possessed by an alien life form or by the devil himself. Well, this has been my attitude toward the editors of the Washington Post for decades but I thought lately that I should read some of what they write to see if there is something they are after that will hurt America -- a pastime that has lately been the preoccupation of many traitors in that country -- and warn the good people who live there about those who would harm them.
Without assigning weight to the veracity of what the writers at the Post are saying, let us take two of their ideas and juxtapose them. On the one hand they say that Hamas is a terrorist organization that should be bombed into the stone age, and all its members killed despite the collateral damage that this will cause to the civilian population of Gaza where Hamas rules and the damage it will cause to the West Bank of the Jordan river where some members of the movement live as well. On the other hand, those same writers at the Post say they want to see the parent of Hamas -- which they assert is the Egyptian religious party calling itself the Muslim Brotherhood – come to power in Egypt or at least win big in that land. And you ask why they want this to happen unless they like the work of terrorists and promote them when they can by putting pressure on the American government to put pressure on America's allies such as Egypt to let the terrorist organizations flourish and turn Egypt and perhaps the entire Middle East into a chaotic situation such as that in Gaza. In other words, the Washington Post is now presenting itself as a terrorist organization without apologizing.
But why do the terrorists of the Washington Post want to see bad things happen to Egypt? For one thing, Egypt has been an island of peace and stability in the Middle East and this is driving the Jewish organizations crazy because they find it difficult during these hard times to divert any amount of ill gotten money to Israel the way they have been doing things for decades. But they know of a trick they have used in the past when they were able to collect money despite the hard times and send it to Israel. What they did then was to cause a serious conflagration in the Middle East and bellyache that if financial aid was not forthcoming in a hurry, the Jews of Israel will all die in a holocaust. But to be able to duplicate this feat nowadays, they must destabilize the Middle East which can only happen if Egypt is destabilized, having been the solid bulwark in the service of peace and stability in that part of the world for decades. And so the Jewish organizations have determined that they must destabilize Egypt by empowering the movement that calls itself the Muslim Brotherhood. Whether or not this fantasy has any chance at succeeding is beside the point. The main thing is that this is what they fantasize about, and they will try to implement their plan as long as they will find running dogs such as the editorial board of the Washington Post to do the barking for them.
What excuse do they use to get the conversation going and make their point? The answer is that they use the same excuse which is used by characters who are powered by a big dose of Yiddish chutzpah and the shamelessness of a dog urinating on your lawn. They say that America is giving Egypt financial aid to the tune of a 1.5 billion dollar package every year. Actually, the figure breaks down into 1.3 billion dollars in military hardware and 0.2 billion or 200 million dollars in educational services for toddlers. There will be more later with regard to the 200 million but for now let us look at the military hardware part of the package.
No one doubts that there is an unwritten military alliance between Egypt and America. The two countries exercise together on a yearly basis and when necessary they fight together as they did during the first Gulf war. In fact, America projects its power in that part of the world in the same way that it does in Europe, Asia and elsewhere. The difference is that instead of spending hundreds of billions of dollars stationing its own troops on ships and perhaps on land too the way it does everywhere else, America relies on Egypt to maintain peace and stability in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Red Sea for which it contributes not cash but a measly 1.3 billion dollars in military hardware. The cost to Egypt is several times that much but what is happening now is that being made sick and tired by the garbage that is constantly pouring out of the Jewish propaganda machine, the Egyptians are beginning to listen to the voices among them that counsel the country to diversify its procurement of military hardware as a prelude to breaking off the military alliance with America.
If and when this happens, Egypt will gain more financially because the Americans will spend 1.3 billion dollars or more not every year as they do now but every month to maintain their troops on ships in the area, ships that will include aircraft carriers. These ships and the aircrafts they carry will have to be supplied with fuel and they will need to cross the Suez Canal back and forth. They will also carry thousands of soldiers, marines and airmen who will need to be supplied with food and the other amenities of life, most of which will be bought and paid for in Egypt. And of course, there will also be the personnel that will want to take shore leave and see beautiful Egypt. Some of these people may even call on their loved ones in America to go meet them in there. Thus, financially speaking, this deal would be more costly for America and more lucrative for Egypt.
It will also be in the interest of the Egyptians to opt for this alternative because they have been running a trade deficit with the Americans, one that is striking in the coincidences that have come with it. First, the deficit has been running for as long as Israel has been running a trade surplus with America. Second, the amount of the Egyptian deficit has almost exactly matched the surplus of Israel with America. In other words, Egypt has been offsetting the damage to the American economy that Israel has been causing. In anybody's book, this amounts to Egypt giving America a financial aid to help it overcome the calamity that is Israel. And calamity it is because Israel does not even produce what it sells to America, it reexports to America what it buys from Europe and Asia, something that the Americans could do directly and save the money that is pocketed by Israel. But this is not happening because all the transactions are controlled by Jewish businessmen who are more loyal to Israel than to America and who divert to Israel the profits and the taxes that should be kept in America.
Now, a word about the 200 million dollars that the Egyptians are said to receive from America. To put this thing in perspective, if you divide that number by the population of Egypt which is slightly over 80 million, it turns out that every Egyptian receives less than two and a half dollars a year or just about two thirds of a cent a day. So why do the Egyptians accept this money? Because it is part of the deal that was worked out at Camp David concerning the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. It was negotiated that Israel which produces close to nothing was to be given enough to live on, and Egypt was to be compensated for the loss in trade and commerce it will incur as a result of the neighbors boycotting it for accepting a deal while Palestine was still under occupation. Thus, it is a matter of principle for the government of Egypt to insist that a negotiated deal must be honored until both sides agree to nullify it. And what the Egyptian government has agreed to do so far is to scale down that portion of the package from the 700 million dollars where it was to the 200 million dollars where it is today. And the reason to have it at this level now is that the Egyptians have been doing what everyone does which is to borrow money on the international markets to finance their purchases. It so happens that the payments they are making on these borrowings come to 200 million dollars, most of which they send to American banks.
Consequently, the way things work at this juncture is that Egypt buys 7 or 8 billion dollars worth of goods from America every year to offset the deficit that America runs with Israel. Egypt pays for the purchases in cash but borrows some money to cover a small shortfall. It sends to America 200 million dollars a year to pay back the borrowed money which America then gives to American volunteers at the rate of two thirds of a cent per day per person living in Egypt to go and teach Egyptian toddlers all about the beauty and grandeur of America. All I can say is: too bad for somebody – I am not sure who – that Egypt will have paid the entire loan in two or three years and this arrangement will come to an end. But the folks at the Washington Post are still hollering and barking that America is giving financial aid to Egypt -- aid that should come with strings attached, they say. And while the Egyptian government is accepting this part of the package as a matter of principle, the people of Egypt are saying to America: Take those dollars and shove them, baby.
But there is more juicy stuff in this saga. Going bankrupt and no longer able to pay for Israel's energy needs, the Americans have called on the Egyptians to revive the spirit of the Camp David accord but they did it with an ironic twist. They asked the Egyptians to supply Israel with natural gas that gives the latter at least a 500 million dollar discount every year for the next 20 years (baksheesh as they call it in the Middle East and South Asia.) And this is a hell of a lot more than the 200 million dollars which Egypt supposedly receives from America. All in all then, Egypt has agreed to what is clearly a raw deal which put it in a situation where it is now; giving aid to both America and Israel. This is so mind boggling that the Egyptian people who are by nature a generous lot never cease to write letters to the editors of their newspapers asking that the contract with Israel be abrogated whatever it may cost legally to do so.
And now this very important question: Do they have the brains at the Washington Post to assess how much damage will be done to America if everything wished for and fantasized about by the Jewish organizations concerning the relation with Egypt and the Arab world in general came to pass? I do not know the answer to this question but what I find discouraging is that instead of backing off, the folks at the newspaper had an editorial on December 4, 2010 in which they repeated much the same thing as they always said but have escalated to now pretend that they have a mandate to speak in the name of the Egyptian people and groups.
Lunacy has no limit.