Watch them sissy-up America's Military

Read any article or script having to do with the American military or any military in the world for that matter, and you'll not – except for one occasion – encounter the notion that an army can be terrorized by someone, let alone someone that is disarmed or very lightly armed. Now brace yourself for the turning of your stomach as you read what follows: “The Taliban is still conducting terrorist operations against our forces.”

To complain that the number one military force in modern times is being terrorized by a barefooted ragtag band from a primitive society; one that is armed with weapons barely more effective than the bows and arrows of ancient times, is to make you sick to the stomach. Yet, this is what you see these days in articles written by people so imbued with the Jewish culture of moral syphilism, they are incapable of seeing the damage they inflict on the image of the American military.

And that is the passage you encounter in Andrew C. McCarthy's blog of May 5, 2014 which came under the title: “The Taliban/Bergdahl Swap, Gitmo, and the Revenge of the Lawyer Left'” published in National Review Online. It is an echo of what the Jewish lobby injected into the American culture when it brought to it the syphilitic notion that the American public should sympathize with (even weep for) the Israeli soldiers of occupation who patrol the Palestinian territories armed to the teeth.

They told the American people with a straight Jewish face and the sincerity of a Christian Mother Theresa that they should sympathize with those soldiers, even weep for them because they are, after all, only kids barely over the age of 18 that must put up with Palestinian mothers so evil at their core, they throw stones at them for no better reason – get this now – than to protect their Palestinian babies. Imagine that.

This is when it occurred to the Jews that they should call the Palestinians a bunch of terrorists. And this is why they came to describe the Palestinian responses to the military occupation of their motherland as acts that terrorize the Israeli military. From there, the idea was imported into America and grafted into its culture. And this horrendous mutilation of reality caught fire among those of the Andrew McCarthy mentality who – with a straight “Jewish face” – now say that the Afghans who fight the invading armies of the Western coalition terrorize the American soldiers of that coalition ... but not the other soldiers who are not sissied up by their countrymen.

Now contrast this with the way that things used to be. It used to be that the world had an image of the American soldier as being a tall gentleman in uniform who helped everyone and feared no one. Look at him now ... described by his own people as a sissy little thing who trembles in his boots at the thought of encountering an enemy that exists as a ragtag army equipped with little more than bows and arrows. Still, the people who seek to protect this American “sissy boy soldier” ask that his potential opponents be caught and placed behind bars in a place called Guantanamo lest they intercept the fragile little thing on the battlefield, and make him feel terrorized like the sissies of the Israeli army.

Having that in the background, you may now go over the McCarthy article, and the first thing you will encounter is the author quoting the Jewish Michael Mukassey who has argued previously that Obama's release of five Taliban ragtag fighters is part of an insidious calculation to close the Guantanamo detention camp despite the fact that: “The Taliban is still conducting terrorist operations against our forces.”

Now my friend, all you can do is weep for what used to be the tall American gentleman in uniform, for he has been reduced to a sissy little thing. It happened not by an enemy he encountered on the battlefield but a stealthy demon that came equipped with a crooked mouth, a pen and a keyboard. He infiltrated the American family under false pretenses, and spread his brand of moral syphilis among its children.

You can weep, my friend, or you can pull up your sleeves and get to work telling the Congress of traitors in no uncertain terms that enough is enough. The demon must be exorcised for America to regain its freedom – and this must be done before the house is consumed by the hellish fires of Jewish absurdities now growing all around it.

The Reasons why America is in a Mess

The Wall Street Journal is one of the most powerful actors capable of demonstrating in concrete terms why America has become the mess that it is today. Of course, the Journal – which is American, and having a European edition as well as an Asian one – can outdo itself when, on the same day, two editions if not all three, deliver the same message, each delivering it from a different angle.

This is what happened on June 5, 2014 when the American edition came up with an editorial under the title “The Bergdahl Fiasco” and the subtitle: “For Obama, foreign policy is mainly about domestic politics.” And the European edition came up with an editorial under the title: “U.S. Funding for Hamas?” and the subtitle: “The State Department winks at the Palestinian merger with the terror group.”

What you find in these two editorials is evidence to the effect that the Jewish philosophy of ambiguity, confusion and the quest for having it both ways, has blanketed America from end to end like a cloud of nerve gas that has paralyzed what used to be a functioning nation into a beast of burden carrying water for Israel and for all the Jewish causes in the country and around the world.

After taking control of the Congress, the Jewish lobby started implementing its agenda by passing the sort of laws which end up paralyzing the business of America to make the resulting hulk function solely upon Jewish command for the benefit of Israel and all the Jewish causes. You see, for example, in the piece aimed at America how the editors of the Journal are going about disciplining the Obama Administration for ignoring to follow the path set for it by the Jewish laws of paralysis. Here is that passage: “This line was used to explain why the President had ignored a statute demanding that Congress be consulted 30 days in advance of any prisoner release from Guatanamo Bay.”

The idea of having this statute is to give the traitors inside the Congress enough time to run to their Jewish masters in New York and Tel Aviv where they usually get instructions on how to handle what the Administration is planning to do. But knowing that different Presidents have different temperaments, and wanting to have it both ways, the editors of the Journal followed their scolding of the Administration with this: “We think the President has the power to undertake the swap [of prisoners] without telling Congress.”

Senator Dianne Feinstein who supports the Administration on everything except when it does something that embarrasses Israel or hurts another Jewish cause, did it again. The last time she scolded the Administration is when the Vice President revealed the truth about the Israelis who clumsily blew the lid off the hacking of the Iranian nuclear computers they were doing in collaboration with the Americans. This time, she complained: “There was time to pick up the phone and say 'we want you to know we have reviewed these negotiations.'” That's all she needed to know to consult with New York and Tel Aviv, and fashion a new way to benefit Israel and the other Jewish causes.

And so, the Journal ends this editorial by remarking: “the larger problem is that Mr. Obama treats all of foreign policy as if it's merely part of his domestic political calculus … Is it too much to ask that the President act as if more is at stake than his domestic approval rating?” This is the Journal's bastardization of the way they used to say things. To point out that Mr. Obama was not giving enough attention to Israel's needs, they used to scold him for favoring to serve the American people by prioritizing his domestic agenda. When this did not work too well for them, they started saying that the President was after domestic approval rating. They say this even though he is not running for any office, being in his second and final term.

As to the piece in the European edition of the Journal (reprinted in America,) the editors remind the Obama Administration that “U.S. law prohibits dispensing money to any Palestinian entity over which Hamas exercises influence.” That will remain the Jewish law applicable in America till such time that the Israelis have a change of heart and decide that doing business with the Arab countries will net them more than they get from sucking American blood. They will then drop their opposition to Hamas, an act that will green light America to free itself from that oppressive Jewish statute.

What a way to govern a superpower!

Time to validate presidential civil disobedience

Andrew C. McCarthy wrote an article that should be praised. Under the title: “The Taliban Swap and 'High Crimes and Misdemeanors,'" the article of June 3, 2014 in National Review Online basically demonstrates that from the legal point of view, President Obama did the right thing in exchanging prisoners of war between America and the Taliban of Afghanistan – with a small caveat that is open to interpretation.

We shall come to that caveat in a moment. Meanwhile, it is worth noting that McCarthy could very well have been inspired by a Wall Street Journal editorial written a day before … or maybe not. The important point, however, is that strong arguments have come from several sources as to the legality of what President Obama has done in this case.

Moreover, several times in the article, McCarthy makes the point that the President of the American Republic can be impeached only for violating the Constitution and not for violating a statute, especially when the constitutional validity of the statute in question is dubious. And this has led the author to conclude that: “the chitter-chatter about a 30-day notice requirement is a sideshow … in the greater scheme of things, that's a footnote to the real travesty.”

And that travesty, according to McCarthy, happens to be the caveat that was mentioned earlier. What is it really? It is this: “The vital point is that the president has returned commanders to the Taliban and Haqqani while those organizations are still conducting attacks against American troops … [they] were not exchanged in connection with a final settlement in which it would be appropriate to exchange detainees … the war effort has not been fully abandoned yet.” This is what is bothering the author of the article; what he says President Obama should be held accountable for.

So then, what can be said about that situation? Well, there is no doubt that the war is winding down already. If this exchange of prisoners will speed up the process and save more lives along the way, the better it is for both sides. There is no good reason why people should continue to die on either side just because the official date for declaring the end of the war has not yet arrived. Having a lull in the fighting between now and then is something that should be welcomed, not one to be angry about.

All of this aside, however, there is something monumental that President Obama can and should do; something that will fundamentally transform the way that politics is conducted in America at this time. In fact, it is not something that is really new to the system of governance, but one that will signal a return to how America used to be run before the paralysis that has set in, and that is killing the country.

What has come to light as a result of this latest brouhaha is that the President of the Republic can do something that an ordinary person cannot do. He can commit an act which – if committed by someone ordinary – would be regarded as civil disobedience and punished under the law. But the President, being a co-equal branch of the government, can violate a statute by disregarding it, and get away with it.

Consequently, what Mr. Obama needs to do now is take advantage of the current situation and formalize his apparent act of civil disobedience by writing a letter to Congress telling it he regards as null and void every statute enacted to serve the purposes of Israel and World Jewry. And he should urge the Congress to repeal them all or sue him.

That is, the President should challenge the Congress to try and impeach him so that America gets a chance to go through the process of cleansing itself, and wipe away the political filth that has been accumulating over its system of governance for more than half a century.

There is no doubt that the Courts and the American public will side with the President if the Congress takes up the challenge … and America will come out of the experience reinvigorated to be, once again, like it was right after the Second World War.

Who would say no to that?

Treating America like a Jewish Plantation

If you like vacationing in the banana republics of South America, rejoice because, if things pan out as planned, you'll soon be living permanently in the banana republic of North America. Not only will the American Republic come to resemble a banana republic, it will come to feel like a banana plantation – a Jewish banana plantation, that is. John Bolton is working hard to pull off this feat, and he has the backing of World Jewry in this endeavor, one of these being Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal. Look what Bolton writes:

“Obama stressed that US forces will leave Afghanistan by the end of 2016. If the terrorists had doubt they needed patience to regain control of Kabul, Obama has eliminate[d] that … Second, it is despicable for an American to equate a US service member with terrorist. This is the worst form of moral equivalence, the mistake of equating two radically different kinds of people.”

That was a condensed passage from Bolton's article which came under the title: “The high cost of Obama's reckless Taliban swap” published on June 2, 2014 in the New York Post. To explain what is hidden in that passage, allow me to go off on a tangent for a moment. I lived in Africa as a child, and one of the things that left an impression on me was the fact that troops from one French colony were brought to maintain order in another French colony. I asked my father why the French did not maintain order in the colony using their own troops, or using troops of the colony itself. And so he told me of a reality I never forgot.

He said the French do not have enough troops to maintain order in all the colonies, especially that they were involved in a prolonged war not long ago when many of their young were killed. And so they use recruits from the colonies to maintain order in the colonies, but because they do not trust any of the recruits to watch over their own people, they get the recruits of one colony to watch over the population of another colony.

And then, as I matured many years later, I understood why this policy succeeded in maintaining order in all the colonies. It dawned on me, for example, that the Senegalese troops patrolling the streets of Djibouti – which is of Somali ethnicity – did not patrol alone. They were led by French captains with whom they stood shoulder to shoulder looking down at a Somali population about which they must have felt a sense of superiority. By the same token, the Somali troops patrolling the cities and towns of Senegal were watching over what they must have sensed was a lesser Senegalese population, and they too must have felt a sense of superiority. And it was this psychological adaptation that guaranteed the two ethnic groups did not conspire against the French who were, after all, their common oppressor.

Now, my friend, go over Bolton's passage again, and see if there is not an echo of that. First, he says: “If the terrorists had doubt they needed patience to regain control of Kabul, Obama has eliminate[d] that.” Well, these people live there, and they don't need an artificial dose of patience to remain in their own homeland. If anything, it was the American people who lost patience sending their children to fight in a far away war that was not ending. So the question: What could Bolton have done to maintain a high interest at keeping American troops in Afghanistan? He did it by playing on the sense of American superiority. Here it is: “Second, it is despicable for an American to equate a US service member with terrorist. This is the worst form of moral equivalence, the mistake of equating two radically different kinds of people.”

The other thing that is striking about this article is that the author did not wait a few days before writing it. He would have looked much wiser had he waited to find out a little more about the obscure circumstances surrounding the release of the American serviceman by the Taliban. If it turns out that the American deserted the army or betrayed his country, Bolton's assertion that: “we were right to exchange spies with Soviets, like for like. But to exchange soldiers for criminals is moral equivalence that should be rejected” – will cement the idea that he means to say the Afghans are an inferior race.

That's what it means because even if the detainees were criminals in the sense of the dictionary, they would not be inferior to someone that betrayed his own country. Moreover, these people are true soldiers fighting an invading army that happens to be the American military. Except for one of the five that is said (but not proved) to have murdered Shiites in cold blood, the others committed no more a crime than did Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld. They are warriors and, being held by the Americans, makes them prisoners of war in the same way that the American held by them is a prisoner of war.

So how did America get on the road to becoming the Jewish banana plantation that it is today? Well, John Bolton tells us how, and Bret Stephens explains in detail. Here is Bolton: “it has been America's unwavering policy not to negotiate with terrorists, especially for the exchange of hostages.” This means someone made it a matter of American honor not to negotiate with what they mean are inferior people they habitually call terrorists.

As to the Bret Stephens article, it came under the title: “The Bergdahl Dishonor” and the subtitle: “The sergeant should request that every file about him be published.” The Stephens piece was published in the Wall Street Journal on June 3, 2014.” Now, given that both John Bolton and Bret Stephens are staunch supporters of Israel because they say that entity does everything right, you would think they will want to see America, which they say is their country, emulate Israel – at least when it comes to a matter as important as honor.

Well, this would be true if you mean that America can presume to be equal to Israel. But, if in the back of your head, you hold it to be self evident that the Israelis are created superior to the Americans, you must accept the premise that Israel can violate principles for which America would be crucified if it violated them. Thus, Israel can exchange more than a thousand Palestinians – said to have Israeli blood on their hands – for one Israeli soldier, but America cannot exchange five Afghan detainees with no American blood on their hands for one American soldier. When you are superior, you don't say do as I do; you say do as I say – and ask no questions.

Is this enough of a put-down to make America feel like sh–t? Yes it is but America must be made to feel worse than that if it is to become the moral equivalent of a Jewish banana plantation. What to do? Well, the colonial powers had a very effective way to make the people of the colonies feel worse than sh–t. They would look at them in the face and accuse them of being worse than the tribe in the next village they hate the most. And boy, that made the blood boil!

Of course, America has no rival tribe to be compared with, but Stephens found a way to get around that. Look what he did: “Think of what it says about the administration's concept of honor … Consider what that says to enemies who care about honor, and … we have none.” Ouch!

Banana anyone?

Intellectual Prostitution cum self-Delusion

The human condition is such that when you work for someone, you owe your loyalty to them whether or not you know who the ultimate pied piper is. In general, if you live in a so-called autocratic state where power is centralized, you know who that is because the honcho of honchos is the head of government. And so, you view your immediate boss as being the first link in the chain of command standing between you and the ultimate holder of power. If it happens that you transfer to another department, the faces you see everyday may change but the face of the ultimate boss remains the same.

By contrast, if you live in a so-called liberal-democracy where power is decentralized, you know that the person who hired you to work for the organization is your immediate boss but you also know that other departments exist, each of which is run by another boss. At first, you pledge your loyalty to the one who gave you the job because it is how you get to keep it. However, the longer you work for the organization, the more people from the other departments you get to befriend, including other bosses who will hint there might be a better position for you in their department if you're willing to switch loyalties. This is when you start developing dual and multiple loyalties, and when you get sucked into office intrigues that never end.

Whether you live in a state that is autocratic or one that is liberal-democratic, there are daily dogmas and semi-permanent ones to which you must adhere because to violate them can cost you the job or worse. The dogmas of the autocracies are simple to understand because they invariably relate to the system that is governing the state. What is required there is the continued acknowledgment that the existing system is the best one ever devised. As to the dogmas of the liberal-democracies, they can be ambiguous, confusing and contradictory; and they often relate to how bad things are over there as much as they relate to how good they are over here.

But something new happened in America, and you can see the effect of it in the editorial of the Wall Street Journal that came under the title: “Europe's Syria-Trained Jihadists” and the subtitle: “A French 'returnee' is arrested for the attack on a Jewish museum.” It was published in the Journal on June 1, 2014.

After telling the story of a French returnee that mounted an attacked in France having returned home; and after telling the story of an American that did not return home because he ended his life in a suicide attack in Syria, the editors of the Journal end their piece this way: “The conceit of the anti-interventionists is that if we avoid the world's conflicts, those conflicts will leave us alone. Syria's won't.” The dogma here being that America must poke its nose in everyone else's affair, the fact that one “jihadist” returned home and the other did not, represent the same lesson to these editors – it is that America must poke its nose everywhere.

How do they come to this conclusion? Very simple, they make the convenient statement that leads to the sought after conclusion. Here it is: “Our 'realist' friends have opposed any Western help for the Syrian opposition on grounds that it would prolong the war and assist jihadists. Yet doing nothing to help the nonradical opposition has prolonged the war and helped the extremists recruit jihadists world-wide.”

Well, the realists, as they call them based their assessment on the premise that everywhere America has intervened – such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya – the war took a turn for the worse, attracted jihadists from everywhere, and promised no end in sight. So the question: On what premise do the editors of the Journal base their own assessment? And the answer is: Nothing “realistic” as they pointed out. Their motivation is a fundamental belief in a dogma that says what the Jews wish for is what God wants. Do it and everything will turn out all right because God will come to the rescue in the end.

He hasn't in thousands of years and He won't now. Believe it, America, because the pool of intellectual prostitution in which you are invited to swim will prove to be the cesspool that eats at your soul the way that the flesh eating disease eats at human flesh.

Get off the train of self-delusion, America, before it is too late. The Jew is not your God; he is no more than an autocratic ruler with a super-sized appetite to rule the world. And he wants your powers to fulfill his dream.

Separating Content from the Form of Speech

Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas, has done something useful. He wrote an article that makes it possible to explore the subject of speech, and to allow for the drawing of a distinction between the content and the form of a speech. Once we do this, we can then explore to what extent it is appropriate to limit the content of someone's speech and, more importantly, to what extent it is appropriate to use or abuse one's own form to limit someone else's content.

The Cruz article comes under the title: “The Democratic Assault on the First Amendment” and the subtitle: “Congress has too much power already; it should not have the power to silence citizens.” It was published in the Wall Street Journal on June 2, 2014. In it, the author gives a number of examples where he says free speech will be curtailed if the Democrats have it their way and “expressly repeal the free-speech protections of the First Amendment” of the Constitution. But none of the examples he gives makes sense because his arguments are not sharp enough to distinguish between the content of someone's speech and its form.

Let me give an example that will help demonstrate the difference between the content and the form. Candidate A stands on a soap box at a street corner and yells his political platform to an adoring audience. What he says is the content of the speech and cannot be abridge by anyone, not even the Congress. He now leaves the soap box, and candidate B stands on it to yell his own political platform but to his chagrin, the audience flees the vicinity as it finds this content unappealing.

The next day, Candidate A returns and yells the same speech, drawing a new adoring crowd. He leaves the soap box whereupon Candidate B stands on it. While the existing audience flees, several buses arrive, out of which people disembark and start cheering the Candidate as he delivers the speech that no other audience wants to hear. Still, a number of passers-by become curious enough to stop and listen to the speech, and this has the effect of drawing still more people. What happened here is that B changed not the content of his speech but the form of its delivery. Is this form protected by some provision or can it be abridged?

It is obvious that in paying for an audience, Candidate B was able to make it look like the content of his speech had a legitimate following, thus drew a legitimate audience that may or may not end up voting for him. Unsure that this will be enough to put him on top when the actual voting is done, B escalates his use of tricks. This time, he brings busloads of hired people to stand as part of the audience the moment that Candidate A stands on the soap box. And when A opens his mouth, the hired audience flees the scene in apparent disgust, an act that conveys a negative message to the legitimate audience standing there.

Seeing that he is not making enough of a dent to get the legitimate audience to flee the scene, B instruct his hired audience to star booing Candidate A, and to make it so that his words can no longer be heard. When A uses a megaphone to deliver his message past the booing of the unwanted audience, Candidate B escalates still further by hiring more people and by equipping them with louder megaphones. With this, he effectively smothers the message of Candidate A.

It is obvious at this point that the Supreme Court will say B's escalation has gone too far and that a limit must be placed on the form of speech that this Candidate is using. In fact, this is what the Courts say with every injunction they issue limiting what can be done on the picket lines. It is also what the Supreme Court has said with regard to the hecklers that pop up at the abortion clinics and the funerals of soldiers.

The question now is this: at what point did the form of Candidate B's speech become too abusive to have infringed on the content of Candidate A's speech? Was it the moment he brought in the fake audience? Or the moment that the audience booed Candidate A? Or was it at the end when B used his superior skill at raising money to hire more people and equip them with more powerful megaphones?

Let's now go further and explore the issue more deeply. To completely defeat Candidate A and make sure he will never rise again, Candidate B goes to city hall and lavishes the councilors with parties, gifts and contributions. He asks them to allow for the possibility of placing two soap boxes at the street corner, and they pass a bylaw to this effect. Now, every time that A goes to his box, someone from B's camp stands on the other box and directs his gang of hired hecklers to smother the message of A. Disheartened, A leaves the street altogether and goes to the audio-visual and print media from where he disseminate his message.

But there too, Candidate B employs his superior ability to raise money, and uses that to smother the content of A's message wherever it is received. This time, he does not even bother formulating a content to be his message; he relies solely on the fashioning of the form which, in this case, translates into the constant negative attacks on his opponent.

Is this as bad as heckling at abortion clinics? Can a limit be placed not on the content which is almost non- existent in this case – but on the form of delivering this sort of speeches?

I say yes, a limit can and must be placed on this form because the way to protect the content of legitimate speeches is to shield them from the abuse of those who rely not on content to refute content but on form to render the content of others incomprehensible. In effect, people like B will kill someone's speech and don't even replace it with their own because they have none. And we are all the poorer for it.

Underlying Strengths of Egypt's Economy

When the rating agencies rate an economy, they look at markers, many of which are evaluated on subjective terms such as the country's political stability, thus can be debated forever without reaching a resolution. But if we leave these notions aside, we can look at other markers that can be measured and assigned a number that means something. These new markers can then be debated on more concrete terms, but because they too need to be interpreted in a context that can lend itself to a certain degree of subjectivity, our debate must be carried on with a sense of humility.

The most telling of the numbers in the eyes of the rating agencies are the twin deficits, as they have come to be called. These are the trade deficit that the nation registers with the rest of the world, and the budgetary deficit that the government incurs. Of course, an accumulated deficit of either kind – called foreign debt and domestic debt respectively – will also become a concern when it goes too high due to a deficit that would have recurred for several years in a row. And this is precisely the twin problem that the rating agencies say is plaguing the Egyptian economy at this time. It is also a refrain that those who write about Egypt keep repeating even when they do not know what they are talking about.

The total debt of Egypt is now close to 80 percent of the GDP which is high but not a killer when compared to say, the USA whose debt has reached 100 percent, and Japan whose debt has reached 200 percent. But that's not the full story because a debt becomes the responsibility of future generations; a consideration that forces us to ask why Egypt incurred its debt in the first place, and what the demographic outlook of the country will be like when the future will be here.

Well, the situation with the Egyptian budget is such that two big items are causing the deficit. The first comes under the rubric of investment; the second under the rubric of subsidies. Having gone too far with the program of privatization, the people of Egypt have asked the government to stop selling public companies, invest money to expand the ones remaining in its possession, and establish new labor intensive companies that will hire some of the unemployed, many of whom are young people.

In addition to that, the nation whose population keeps increasing, is building new cities in the desert to ease the pressure on the agricultural land where the old cities were built long ago and where they keep getting larger by encroaching on arable land. Thus, investment in this area is without a doubt of the kind that will benefit future generations. It all boils down to the current generation doing the work and paying for it by borrowing from the future. This is the right thing to do because it is required; it is reasonable and it is absolutely fair.

How does that compare with the situation in America or Japan? Well, Japan has a population that is shrinking which means that an ever smaller number of people will be asked to pay for a debt that keeps getting larger. As to America, while the population may still be growing, a smaller number of people are participating in the workforce. In addition, the pay scales keep shrinking which means that the money borrowed by today's relatively well to do population will be paid for by tomorrow's poorer workforce; one that also keeps shrinking. This is required; it may even be reasonable but it is absolutely unfair.

Returning to Egypt, some of the money allocated to subsidies goes to reduce the price of food, and some goes to reduce the price of energy. That which goes towards food is infinitely small compared to that which goes towards energy. The problem the government is addressing is being solved in a way not done anywhere in the world. Having studied similar programs, including the Brazilian, the Indian and America's own food stamp program, the Egyptians have devised their own solution. It relies on the smart card through which the execution of the program is monitored with a high degree of reliability thus insuring that everyone in the program is served properly, and that no fraud is committed without leaving an electronic trace somewhere.

When it comes to energy subsidies, we have another story altogether. The truth is that Egypt has vast reserves of oil and natural gas in the ground that can solve the problem through market forces if the energy is extracted and marketed. However, as it happens everywhere in the world, including here in Canada, a tug of war has erupted between the foreign companies and the Egyptian government. It is that the companies took advantage of the political situation in the country to ask for a share of the revenues in the upcoming contracts larger than what they get now, and what they ever got before. Negotiations ensued, and the differences are on their way to be resolved as they always do.

In the meantime, however, the quarrel has alarmed not only the Egyptians but also the Arab Gulf States because of their closeness to their Egyptian “brothers and sisters” as they say, and also because the indications are all around to the effect that Egypt may have not only vast reserves of energy, but that it is floating on humongous pools of oil and natural gas beneath it.

What this means is that if, under the duress of the moment, the country is forced to sell its resources at a fire sale price, everyone in the region will be forced to reduce their prices so as to be in line with those of Egypt … or lose market share. And so, to save their own skins, the Gulf States rushed to support Egypt in its hour of need. Yes, they do it for brotherly love, as they say, but they also do it for self-interest.