Egypt: tear gas and hotels

[ cross-posted from Brainstormers on the Web ]

Here are two data-points to drop into the mind-pool as we think about current events in Egypt, the Middle East in general, and the way the world turns.

DoubleQuotes is my name for the format I’m using here, which I came up with a few years back on Brainstorms. The idea is simply to generate fresh insights by juxtaposing two thoughts – be they images, quotes, or even equations (I don’t have the technical chops for music or film clips yet) — in condensed, haiku-like form.

Think of them as pebbles dropped in a pond, watch the ripples…

[ note to ChicagoBoyz readers: I’ll say more about Brainstorms and Brainstormers on the Web in a week or two, once the “on the Web” blog gets under way ]

Update: NEXT CHICAGO TEA PARTY MEETING: Wednesday, February 9, 2011

[Note: The date has been changed from February 2 to February 9, due to the predicted Biblical-scale blizzard.]

The next Chicago Tea Party meeting will be held on Wednesday, February 9 at 7:00 PM at Blackie’s, 755 S. Clark, Chicago.

“If you’re outraged over the 67% income tax increase and the 46% corporate income tax increase in Illinois, then please join us at our next meeting. Our featured speaker will be John Tillman, CEO of the Illinois Policy Institute. We will discuss our efforts to repeal the tax hike and reform out of control government spending. Find out what you can do to help make a difference.”

Register here.

Wisconsin Makes A Move On Illinois Business

Our new Governor (Wisconsin) Scott Walker has signed legislation giving businesses that relocate to Wisconsin two years “free” – no corporate OR personal income taxes:

MADISON (WKOW) — Governor Scott Walker has signed a bill that gives income tax breaks for companies that relocate to Wisconsin.

The bill will forgive corporate and personal taxes for two years for companies that move to the state. The company could not have been located in Wisconsin for at least two years in order to qualify

I think they mean personal income taxes such as if you were running the company as a pass through like an LLC. I assume that is what they are talking about. Any way you slice it, this is fantastic news.

This got through the legislature with lightning speed, helped out by the fact that all three of our branches are Republican controlled now up here behind the cheddar curtain. I also read today that the public employee unions are getting ready for some very bad news for them in the near future.

We have just begun with the Walker administration, but I am very hopeful and happy by this stroke. Walker also sent back the Obama buck$ that would have started out the sham “high speed” rail network that would have been a boondoggle for the ages.

We may as well pick off what is left of the Illinois corpse before other states do.

Hopefully Walker will end up being a star like some other up and comers such as Mitch Daniels of Indiana.

The End of the Tai-ping Rebellion

In an earlier post, I mentioned the excellent old book The “Ever Victorious Army”: A History of the Chinese Campaign under Lt.-Col. C.G. Gordon, C.B., R.E., and of the Suppression of the Tai-Ping Rebellion by Andrew Wilson (1868). The author, Wilson, at key points in the book, reaches an almost poetic intensity in his prose.

The tragic story of the Tai-ping Rebellion is little known in the USA. Yet the wholesale devastation it inflicted on China, killing over 20 million people during 14 years of internal warfare and anarchy, makes it the largest military event of the 19th Century.

The founder and ruler of the Tai-ping movement, Hung Sew-tsuen, was exposed to foreign missionaries who showed him a Chinese translation of the Bible. After failing to pass the examination to enter the Mandarinate, he went into a trance, had a vision, and believed himself to be the younger brother of Jesus. Conditions in China were disorderly, and he believed himself to be Heaven’s instrument to rectify the wrongs and bring peace and justice and prosperity back to China. He convinced others of his status and mission. He raised an army and overran many provinces and cities. But instead of restoring harmony in the Flowery Land, he and his rampaging subordinates (called wangs, or kings) brought only death, famine, destruction and chaos. In the closing years of the rebellion Hung Sew-tsuen was besieged in Nanjing by the Imperialist forces of the Manchu Emperor.

As dangers gathered round him, Hung Sew-tsuen, the Heavenly Monarch, became more cruel in his edicts, and ordered any of his people who might be found communicating with the enemy to be flayed alive or pounded to death; but even he could no longer conceal from himself the fact that the days of his reign and of his life had drawn to a close. It would be interesting to know what were the last thoughts of this extraordinary man when he found himself in these circumstances. Did he still believe that he was a favourite of heaven, and authorised representative of Deity on earth, or had he in his last hours some glimpse of the true nature of the terrible and cruel destiny which he had had to fulfil? Surely as his thoughts reverted to the simple Hakka village of his youth, he must have known that his path over the once peaceful and happy Flowery Land could be traced by flames and rapine and bloodshed, involving a sum of human wretchedness such as had never before lain to the account of the most ferocious scourge of mankind. Where there had been busy cities, he had left ruinous heaps; where fruitful fields, a desolate wilderness; “wild beasts, descending from their fastnesses in the mountains, roamed at large over the land, and made their dens in the ruins of deserted towns; the cry of the pheasant usurped the place of the hum of busy populations; no hands were left to till the soil, and noxious weeds covered the ground once tilled with patient industry.” Even, as has been remarked, the very physical features of the country, owing to neglect of the embankment of great rivers, had been largely changed by his destructive career. And, after all this ruin and misery, what had the Tai-ping movement come to at last but the restoration of Imperial rule in China, while a cloud of fear and wrath hung over the doomed city in which the king and priest and prophet of the Great Peace anticipated death in the midst of his trembling women and the remnant of his ferocious soldiery.

Read more

Recommended Reading

I had intended to write an analytical post about the tumultuous events in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world and then I recalled that a) I do not speak or read Arabic b) am not versed in contemporary Egyptian politics c) am not an Arabist by academic training d) have never visited the Middle East and e) even those who are all of these things are often doing more news updating on twitter than deep analysis.

Egypt is the demographic and geographic center of the Arab Sunni world – but without the economic resources to make Egypt the power that Nasser once aspired that it would be in the heady era of postcolonial, nationalist, Pan-Arabism. So Nasser became a client of the Soviets, who could fund his ambitions and Egypt was a quasi- Soviet satellite until Sadat kicked the Soviets out for trying to undermine him in favor of a more pliant stooge, and accepted American patronage. Sadat’s assassination gave us Mubarak and his hated familial-military-party oligarchy (Ok, the military and party were largely there, but Mubarak’s rule has discredited them).

So, instead of my projecting what will happen next, I’ll devote this recommended reading to other bloggers and news sources who are freer with their conjecture:

Top Billing! Thomas P.M. Barnett Preliminary scenario voting results at Wikistrat’s Egyptian war room (updated 1630 EST Sun) and First ever Virtual Strategic War-Room Launched following Egyptian Chaos and the Wikistrat Virtual Strategic War Room site.

No Tom is not an Arabist either, but he does have experience with designing and participating in professional war games and futurism sessions inside the USG and out. The war room, to my casual observation, seems like an IT effort to synthesize expert analysis and crowdsourcing a primitive/structured prediction market. Interesting.

Abu MuqawamaAn Open Letter to the Egyptian People, Egypt: A Humble Request.

Arabist.net The who’s who of the has-beens

Marc Lynch –Washington eyes a fateful day in Egypt and Obama’s handling Egypt pretty well

Col. Pat Lang-The Outlook for Egypt and the Middle East Is Grim By – Robert K. Lifton , More sensible attitudes on Egypt today, Omar Suleiman sworn in as VP

SWJ Blog Days of Unrest (Update)

STRATFOR – The Egypt Crisis in a Global Context: A Special Report | STRATFOR

Fabius Maximus –Important information about the riots in Egypt and Why do we fear the rioters in Egypt?

HNN (Haider Khan)Egypt, What Next?

Global Guerrillas – EGYPT: How to Lead and Open Source Protest , EGYPT: Mubarak’s Survival Strategy and EGYPT: Looting as Counter-Insurgency

Juan Cole –Egypt’s Class Conflict

Outside the Beltway –Egyptians Upset With U.S. Response To Crisis and Egypt and the Limits of US Power

That’s it.