The Bygone Tyrant!

Mubarak toppled

Louis XVI

Hosni Mubarak has slunk from the world stage, not as spectacular as Louis XVI or the Ceausescu's. But in a post dramatic fashion that saw him hesitate, then in the face of a massive ground swell of peaceful cries for him to go, he leaves. What is not seen, was the implied tip of the bayonet wielded by the Egyptian Army whose middle and junior officer corp were not beholding to the old guard and if asked in a few years down range, would probably admit that they would never have turned their guns on their fellow citizens with whom they shared the same arrested existence.

Thomas Barnett and his associates at Wikistrat pretty much called this dance during this first round, just as if it were a hoe-down barn dance where the dance caller guides the dancers. In this case it was a collaboration of Barnett and company and their live wikistrat analysis who were subscriber/readers who participated in the decision making process by visiting a Virtual War Room where a reader could vote for the possible outcome based on their own perception of the crisis. The outcome was remarkable achievement in crowdsourcing  as Barnett notes below.

This train keeps rolling!

Elvis, we are now told, has truly "left the building," as Mubarak has handed power to the senior military council.

So the journey along Wikistrat's 1-2-3-4 scenarios is complete: explosive rip of initial protests shakes everything up but triggers no Tunisia-like fall, then the steady drip of protests, strikes, defections, etc, pushes Mubarak into a number of "slips", none of which placate the mob. Eventually, the military steps in (apparently Leon Panetta's prediction was dead-on and just a few hours off) and takes the Turkish path (assuming temporary rule but promising the much-desired free elections).

The table has been run.

Read more:
Mubarak Steps Down

For me the back story is how over the course of a week the judgement of the crowd (Wikistrat readers), picked the scenarios that are as of today proving true. The War Room laid out four choices in several categories and as noted below; after several days a pattern emerged that never wavered.


Unfolding Pathways
■Military's tightening grip (42%) (39%) (36%) (37%) (36%)


■Movement's steady drip (9%) (13%) (16%) (19%) (18%) (24%)


■Protests' explosive rip (33%) (30%) (22%) (21%) (22%) (21%)


■Mubarak's many slips (16%) (19%) (23%) (24%) (19%)


Regime Response
■Big man steps down (40%) (39%) (41%) (38%) (37%) (36%) (37%)


■(Next military) man up! (26%) (22%) (31%) (32%) (34%)


■Systemic crack down (26%) (32%) (19%) (21%) (20%)


■Oppositions leaders hunted down (9%) (7%) (9%) (8%)


US Response
■"Too preliminary to take a stand" (47%) (51%) (54%) (53%) (54%) (44%)


■"I'm with the Band" (of Netizens) (21%) (17%) (20%) (21%) (20%) (36%)


■"Let me be the first to shake your hand!" (24%) (23%) (22%) (21%) (17%)


■Stand by your man! (9%) (7%) (5%) (4%) (3%)


Regional Responses
■Frantic firewalling (35%) (34%) (39%) (36%) (38%) (39%)


■Dominoes keep falling (21%) (22%) (23%) (23%) (22%) (26%) (25%)


■Head-in-sand stalling (23%) (24%) (25%) (23%) (26%) (21%) (22%)


■Tehran comes calling (21%) (20%) (19%) (16%) (15%) (14%)


Global Responses
■"Who lost Egypt?" (42%) (43%) (42%) (39%) (40%)


■"We are all Egyptians now!" (28%) (26%) (28%) (29%) (30%) (32%)


■"Let my people go!" (28%) (26%) (25%) (28%) (26%)


■"Boycott Pharaoh's cotton (2%) (6%) (5%) (4%) (3%)


Tipping Points
■Viennese sausage-making (40%) (45%) (46%) (45%)


■That iconic photo of ElBaradei on a tank (19%) (17%) (21%) (22%) (21%) (25%) (26%)


■"Murderers row" press conference (35%) (31%) (26%) (24%) (26%) (21%)


■First UN sanctions against newest "rogue regime" (7%) (9%) (8%) (9%)


Exit Glidepath

■Think Turkey, now (35%) (39%) (43%) (49%) (53%) (52%) (51%)


■Think Pakistan, anytime (23%) (22%) (32%) (27%) (24%) (25%) (26%)


■Think Iran, 1979 (23%) (24%) (12%) (13%) (14%) (15%)


■Think China, 1989 (19%) (15%) (14%) (11%) (10%) (9%)

Read more
Egypt Coming Together Nicely Enough


Close by, another astute observer of the world scene whose gaze is usually cast out to sea, filed these thoughts on the changes in Egypt today. Galhran of information dissemination  writes;

Credit Connectivity. We are all standing witness to a manifestation of the power of connectivity. Whether it is the internet, cellular technologies, Al Jazeera, or any number of networks and networking tools leveraged for communications and information flows and access - connectivity is the underwriting power that is motivating social changes globally in 2011.

Credit the Egyptian Army. The initial decision to not engage the protesters directly in protection of the regime has proven the Egyptian Army as a remarkably professional organization at time of extreme pressure. Internal revolutions can stir many emotions, but the professionalism demonstrated in Egyptian Army's character, methods, spirit, and conduct at the street level day after day is the single greatest contributing factor that led to today's result.

Credit the US military. For the tens of thousands of US Marines who have deployed on MEUs over the last many, many years and worked along side the Egyptian military training them to be professional soldiers, take pride in your efforts this day. You cannot be credited as a primary cause of the professionalism demonstrated by the Egyptian Army, but by any measurement you can be credited as a significant contributing influence towards that professionalism.

There is more and is well worth the read
A Few Thoughts on Egypt

HG's Saturday Night Gazette

Saturday Even Post 1949

Egypt in turmoil, 2011

Years ago, a famous magazine was the Saturday Evening Post which was a staple in millions of American homes offering up short stories and serials on pre-television evenings. The Post eventually faded from the coffee tables to now re-appear six times a year and  now on line. The blogs have taken over from the post and even the Main Stream Media in being source for stories and information. Keeping with the tradition started first by Benjamin Franklin when he ran the fore-runner of the post the Pennsylvania Gazette, this blog offers up reads of the week or for a Saturday evening.

Egypt continues to dominant the attention of most of the world less China where fear of similar protests has brought censorship of non-official new about Egypt.

As the popular uprising ends it's second week, attention already begins to turn to ask how the signals were missed. The New York Times reports that President Obama is already faulting our spy agencies for not reading the tea leaves.
Obama Said to Fault Spy Agencies

This post from Small Wars Journal points to information first published in 2004 that posed that question.

With the recent turmoil in North Africa and unrest in the Middle East, we decided to dust off and revisit several previously published articles by friends of Small Wars Journal. The intent is two-fold: 1. To determine if some of these events were predictable given open source research and analysis and 2. To better understand the causal factors leading towards small wars. In the Middle East, some of these factors are self-evident: oppressive regimes, lack of personal and religious freedoms, lack of jobs, and lack of hope in the future; however, scarcity of resources remains an understudied area.

Read more:
Revolt in North Africa, Was it Predicted?

This article seems to mirror much of what geo-strategist Thomas Barnett has been writing about since publication of the best selling The Pentagon's New Map that growing discontent in places like North Africa would occur as the youth bulge, begins to fray against the suppression of decades of suppressive didictatorship's. The past few weeks has seen Barnett on top of the developments as he share his experience in a series of posts and video links. Barnett called the root of the recent uprisings an outgrowth of the Big Bang theory.

For an up to date source of news about Egypt and other political boils, blisters and scrapes worldwide, I recommend Small Wars Journal's Roundup where major news stories are cataloged and linked at one source.

Finally, if watching the events in Egypt unfold didn't make you feel like a cast member of Sanctum , then read this next and final piece.

Gerry Garibaldi worked in Hollywood as a screenwriter and executive before becoming a high school teacher at an inner city high school. His story in City Journal.org  is depressing, and a mirror held up to society that reveals the bounty of a over indulgent society.

In my short time as a teacher in Connecticut, I have muddled through President Bush’s No Child Left Behind act, which tied federal funding of schools to various reforms, and through President Obama’s Race to the Top initiative, which does much the same thing, though with different benchmarks. Thanks to the feds, urban schools like mine—already entitled to substantial federal largesse under Title I, which provides funds to public schools with large low-income populations—are swimming in money. At my school, we pay five teachers to tutor kids after school and on Saturdays. They sit in classrooms waiting for kids who never show up. We don’t want for books—or for any of the cutting-edge gizmos that non–Title I schools can’t afford: computerized whiteboards, Elmo projectors, the works. Our facility is state-of-the-art, thanks to a recent $40 million face-lift, with gleaming new hallways and bathrooms and a fully computerized library.

Read on as the article drills into the reason that after all the above effort, it appears to be for naught.

Here’s my prediction: the money, the reforms, the gleaming porcelain, the hopeful rhetoric about saving our children—all of it will have a limited impact, at best, on most city schoolchildren. Urban teachers face an intractable problem, one that we cannot spend or even teach our way out of: teen pregnancy. This year, all of my favorite girls are pregnant, four in all, future unwed mothers every one. There will be no innovation in this quarter, no race to the top. Personal moral accountability is the electrified rail that no politician wants to touch.

Garibaldi pulls no punches in describing why this has become such a problem.

Within my lifetime, single parenthood has been transformed from shame to saintliness. In our society, perversely, we celebrate the unwed mother as a heroic figure, like a fireman or a police officer. During the last presidential election, much was made of Obama’s mother, who was a single parent. Movie stars and pop singers flaunt their daddy-less babies like fishing trophies.

Read on:

From the FBI: 63 percent of all suicides are individuals from single-parent households. From the Centers for Disease Control: 75 percent of adolescents in chemical-dependency hospitals come from single-parent households. From the Children’s Defense Fund: more than half of all youths incarcerated for criminal acts come from single-parent households. And so on.

And now if you have not run out of breath, read the whole story.
“Nobody Gets Married Any More, Mister”