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Egyptian Math
With Hosni Mubarak gone, let’s do a little Egyptian math on the Mubarak years.
According to experts, the fortune amassed by Egypt’s former president and his two sons (both billionaires) could reach $70 billion. That includes funds in secret offshore bank accounts and investments in residences and real-estate properties reaching from Rodeo Drive in Beverley Hills to Wilton Place in central London and Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheik tourist resort. Since Mubarak has been president for 30 years, he’s put that little fortune together at a record clip -- something like $2 billion or more a year. He and his family are now worth approximately four times the gross domestic product (GDP) of Paraguay, five times the GDP of embattled Afghanistan, and more than ten times the GDP of Laos. He may be the richest man and they the richest family on Earth. All this happened, by the way, in the years when millions of Egyptians -- at least one in every 10 -- lost their farms, while more than 40% of Egyptians live on less than $2 a day.
And let’s just mention a few others in the cast of characters who let the good times roll and made a few bucks off the reign of the Mubarak family: steel magnate and ruling party insider Ahmed Ezz, for instance, managed to eke out a $3 billion fortune, while former Interior Minister Habib Ibrahim El-Adly scraped by with a near-rock-bottom $1.2 billion. And they are just two of at least five much-loathed Mubarak cronies who reportedly crossed the billion-dollar mark in these years.
As for a trio of Washington lobbyists -- former Republican representative Bob Livingston, former Democratic representative Toby Moffett, and mover-and-shaker Tony Podesta -- who bravely hired themselves out to the Mubarak regime, they made chump change: reportedly a mere $1 million a year for their efforts. Who knows what Frank Wisner, the former ambassador sent to Cairo by the Obama administration to give Mubarak the boot, made working for Patton, Boggs, a company which proudly boasts of the litigation work it’s done for Mubarak and company? Conflict of interest anyone?
Meanwhile, don’t forget the Egyptian military. It didn’t do so badly in the Mubarak years either. After all, according to one expert, it owns "virtually every industry in the country," and it still managed to take in a handy $35 billion in “aid” from Washington since 1978.
As for ordinary Egyptians who protested the devolving state of their country? Estimates of the number of political prisoners in Egypt’s grim jails have varied over the years from 6,000 to 17,000. Their well-being was overseen by former head of intelligence Omar Suleiman. Since Egypt was a “torture destination of choice” for the Bush administration’s Global War on Terror, Suleiman happily oversaw that program, too, as Mubarak’s torturer-in-chief. Appointed vice president by his pal, Suleiman was the “democrat” the Obama administration seemed ready to back until recently to manage the “transition to democracy.”
All in all, should we wonder that such a torturing kleptocracy on the Nile is now being shaken to its foundations and that another spirit, a spirit of democracy, freedom, and justice, is rising in the region? Sometimes such a spirit can be caught in the story of a single ordinary, yet remarkable, life. Jen Marlowe has done so in her essay “From an Israeli Prison to Tahrir Square” and her just-published book The Hour of Sunlight: One Palestinian’s Journey from Prisoner to Peacemaker. She tells a remarkable story about how even prison can prepare the way for another world and her is particularly appropriate for this stereotype-breaking Middle Eastern moment.
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book, co-authored with Nick Turse, is Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050. His other most recent book is The United States of Fear (Haymarket Books). Previous books include: The End of Victory Culture: a History of the Cold War and Beyond, The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here.
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13 Comments so far
Show AllWill any of the members of the pusillanimous corporate media ever ask Obama how he can claim that he is in support of the Egyptian pro-democracy protesters while the United States government including Obama has supplied the dictator of Egypt with enough money to not only make life miserable for the Egyptian people but to also ensure that Mubarak will never have any financial worries for the rest of his life.
" He may have been a bastard, but he was our bastard, (and a friend of the family)." He was probably secretly admired by everyone in our Golman-Sachs-ocracy. The MSM won't point out the contradictory behavior of supporting tyrants while speaking out in support of popular movements by our own officials. That's why we have Noam Chomsky, I suppose. Wouldn't it be great if the people of Egypt could get that money back? Unprecedented, I believe.
I believe that I had read that the Swiss had frozen the bulk of Mubarak's assets If this is true then perhaps there could be a legal way for that money to be returned to Egypt in order to benefit the Egyptian people.
Don't bank on it (pun intended). Remember the Swiss are part of the club as well. They all look after each other.
is it halftime yet?
one cannot collect winnings on one's bet before the game is over...
Where are we going to send our terror suspects to be "interrogated"?
I hear Uzbekastan has some interesting methods of getting information.
Not to worry. There are plenty of repressive dictators around who share our values.
Please don't forget that on the same day Biden was pressuring Mubarak to lift the 50 year imposition of emergency law, Obama's aides were pressuring Congress to extend all provisions of the Patriot Act for 3 more years.
got this information from democracy now! today.
~♦~
The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces issued the following decrees.
One: suspend the constitution.
Two: the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces will run the country for a temporary period of six months, or until legislative and presidential elections are held.
Three: The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces will represent the council internally and externally.
Four: dissolution of the People’s Assembly and the Shura Council.
Five: the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces is empowered to issue decrees that have the force of law during the transitory time.
Six: form a committee to amend some clauses of the constitution and determine the rules for a popular referendum about them.
Seven, mandate the cabinet of Dr. Ahmed Mohamed Shafik to continue its work until a new government is formed.
Eight, organize elections for the People’s Assembly and the Shura Council, as well as presidential elections.
Nine: the state commits itself to implementing international treaties and commitments to which it is a party.
...and...
"two things to watch about the military"
"The optimistic route would be that the military would prove itself actually quite open to hearing what the protesters have to say, and they would surprise us by being pro-democracy and doing something that militaries rarely do, which is to really lead the transition to democracy and then go back to the barracks. I don’t quite rule that out just yet.
The pessimistic, or maybe the realistic, view is that the military will be very keen not just to preserve its privileges, but to make sure that Egyptian politics remains the politics of the elite, that it isn’t lots of representation for viable interests. That’s—going forward, I think those are the two paths that we have to watch very carefully.
Hard to tell right now where it’s going to go, but equally plausible."--Monael-Ghobashy
These numbers are hard to believe. Where did all this money come from? Even if Mubarak had stolen the entire US foreign aid to Egypt, for example, it wouldn't come to $80 billion. Are these staggering sums really true?
It wasn't just the US he was scamming, I'm sure. Also, I read some place that under his rule, he passed a law that forced all business owners to pay 50% of all profits to the government. You can just about guess where that was going. Mubarak also had extensive investments in real estate, retail and other ventures, mostly in the UK and US. Go figure, eh? Won't be long now before we find out that he had interests in Blackwater, Lockheed Martin and/or Halliburton.
Erroll wrote eariler here:
"I believe that I had read that the Swiss had frozen the bulk of Mubarak's assets If this is true then perhaps there could be a legal way for that money to be returned to Egypt in order to benefit the Egyptian people."
Actually, most likely a goodly portion of Mubarack's sequestered wealth is American taxpayer money.
-30-
Will the Military help bring more power to the people?
Will a much larger % of the Egyptian people get a fair deal?
Will life be better for most of these brave Pro democracy people?
I actually think life will improve over the next couple of years;
but sorry to say; 'Just a little bit', but every little bit is important.
This from an 'article' on the corporate media where the oligarchs were shedding a tear for the deposed member of their exclusive club:
"Egypt's Mubarak: a survivor comes undone"
http://tinyurl.com/4n6k6bz
"He survived assassination attempts and wave after wave of Mideast crises, a solid ally of the West whose stable image reassured many Egyptians. Hosni Mubarak ended his presidency Friday as a symbol of what was wrong with Egypt: the repression, the corruption, the lost hopes of a swelling, impoverished class."
The article both praised Mubarak as a friend of the West while criticizing his wrongdoing, all in the same paragraph. This was either sheer audacity knowing the mental challenges faced by the Amerikan readership or an honest brain fart, one of those candid moments were the Matrix has a glitch and one can peak at the ugly reality hidden behind the screen. I wonder how many people caught the utter hypocrisy of the statement.