Libya remains the teaching moment to the UNSC and other dignitary-rich world bodies that have previously endorsed and embraced the temperish and creepy M. Qaddafi but now find him unacceptable. Lesson from the fresh printing of Dictatorship for Dummies is that you'd best avoid making unscripted remarks in unusual garb while issuing threats against traitors. The takeouts from Richard III come to mind (left, Olivier lite). The media now find fresh ways to humiliate the previously tolerated, lightweight Qaddaffi, such as featuring the exit of his 38-year-old Ukrainian nurse, Galina Kolotnitskaya, who has flown back to Kiev with her memoirs to get started on as fast as she can find a video camera. The recently fresh question is why the international community, which does not much exist, believes it is required conduct to nurse along for four decades such an obviously looney mass-murderer like Qaddaffi?  Because everyone else does? Because he was here when we got to power? Because he wears cheesy clothes and refuses to go to a second floor in a building? The Obama administration is slowly rumbling into action, though it is inhibited by its talent for checking with everyone else first. Reports now are that the US Navy is moving assets to provide flexibility in the ongoing crisis, which is a polite way of saying that a carrier battle group and more are moving into position to enfoce a no-fly zone and to evacuate US personnel who may be hostages. Is Qaddafi leaving Tripoli? No exit. The report from Reza Kahlili that the IRGC has secret bases in Libya along the Chad border is credible and actionable. What kind of bases?

Am told to watch Algeria and Tunisia, but especially Algeria. The Islamists know how to drive the story in Tunis, and will spill the story into Algeria. The Islamists call this rising across the Maghreb, "Intifada of the Starved." It is sophisticated, passionate, well-financed, spiritually rich, bloody-minded and as dangerous as a murder cult. It means to drive the West from the Maghreb and connect all of North Africa with the Levant to reestablish the Caliphate. It is profoundly anti-democratic and anti-American, though the Europeans do not do well, either. It is not murderous like the jihadists such as Bin Laden and Zarqawi. It is understood best as: one man, one vote, one time; the end. It will dominate the tribes in Libya and Algeria and certainly put them at risk of going off-line and staying off-line. And the refugee flight from Libya (below at the Tunisian border) accelerates the deterioration.   The rising is not greedy, not modern, not classic economics.  Michael Vlahos says that it is a search for dignity.  "Intifada of the Starved."

The Obama administration presides over the end of shuttle and manned space for the US for the forseeable future, and this is a blow to engineering and national security. The moon colony is the logical step. The Chinese will go for it, however haphazardly, as long as the Communist Party sees the advantage in chauvinism and government spending. The 111th US Congress spent more than $2 trillion without much to show for prestige or endurance. NASA money creates jobs, opportunity and political advantage. Need another POTUS to start again. The last of shuttle, dismantled by a minor executive will, by dull partisanship and by a lack of imagination in Congress and at NASA.  Big Space needs Big Government.  Bob Zimmerman and I squabble about the details.  We will either win the moon colony (moon mining below) or we will lose the high ground to the rascals.

Two modern states, similar approaches: POTUS speaks of working with the international community; German Foreign MInister Guido Westerwelle speaks of working with the international community. What's wrong with this picture?  There is no international community. There are competing states, waiting for the US to go first.  Pat Lang, ex-DIA, tells me that it is time to mount a full-scale helicopter rescue operation of the American State personnel trapped in Tripoli.  Asked Pat Lang would Gaddafi hesitate to take hostages and cut throats when faced with destruction; and the answer is, of course, he will do these. What is worse than what we see in Tripoli is what it will look like with American hostages in the hands of the mercenaries at Gaddafi's orders.  There is the feel of the end of Act I, with many bloody twists to go.  There is no retreat for the family; and the sons will stand for their crimes alongside their father, if and when; while the mercenaries will not easily escape unless they are quick and lucky. Götterdämmerung. 

Spoke Joseph Brusuelas, David Kotok, Pat Lang, Larry Johnson, re the threats by Muammar Gaddafi that he will wreck his country and murder Libyans and burn the wells. A critical detail is what the Libyan anarchy does to the markets. Kotok is very bearish on the markets and said he was longer on cash than at any time since September 2008, and he wished he had more of the energy sector. Kotok believes oil is a one-way trade to $120 on Brent crude, and it can go much higher.  Pat Lang listened to Gaddafi's speech in Arabic and says that it was even crazier than the English version.  We also spoke of the sudden return of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, returning to Riyadh from Morocco at least nine months early.  Trouble in the kingdom, with a protest movement planned for after prayers on Friday.  Pat Lang says the Saudis will crush the Bahraini opposition.  At evening's end, Joe Brusuelas mentioned that he was surprised and spooked by how bearish Kotok is, how grim and certain of worse he found Lang and Johnson.  The market has not priced in the worst-case scenario of the Arab revolt.  The worst case of worst cases is that Gaddafi survives, and the EU is forced to make deals with a monster.  See the bottom video, from Al Jazeera, of the screams of horror of women watching Gaddafi goons wondering the streets with clubs.

Reports from Tripoli describe anarchy and mayhem, with the crowds thinned by random violence and the atmosphere of 28 Days or I, Vampire. Am told that Muammar Gaddafi is at a deep desert oasis after failing to convince his 1969 revolutionary comrade Abd-al-Salam Jalud to join him and lead the army. Reports of mercenaries from Egypt/Sudan, Muslims from central/west Africa (see below from Al Jazeera site of an unconfirmed photo from Tripoli on Monday 21); and special forces/bodyguards from Zimbabwe (presidential guards at the Gaddafi compounds).  Am told that Caracas is long prepared as a sanctuary, with plenty of cash in Caracas for the Gaddafi clan.  The oil fields are unsecured.  Libya produces the light sweet crude that is most desired as feedstock for the streams, and 90% of the Libyan fields of 1.8 million  Bbl a day goes to Europe.  The clear civil war, with reports of many cities already fallen to the insurgents and police and army units in flight, suggests that the fields cannot be secured any time soon. Spoke Peter Zeihan, Stratfor.com, re the threat to the oil fields.  The oil workers are evacuating now, and as of yet the production output is not affected, but it is only a matter of time without the oil workers.  Italy's ENI at major risk.  Only Saudi Arabia has unused capacity to call upon in the event that Libya goes offline.   Embassies are evacuating in Tripoli.  There is no best-case scenario at this point.  Gold goes through $1400; Brent goes to $109, and WTI goes to $95. All looking higher. Cannot manage anarchy; can survive anarchy.  Fill the SUV tonight.

There is no obvious governance as an alternative to the Gadaffi clan.  Am told that the pre-revolutionary regime of the al-Sanussi royal family is credible.  Early reports of spreading unrest in Morocco, in Algeria, in Mauritania, suggest the whole of the five states of the Maghreb will follow Tunis.  Libya is clearly the most violent, and the failure of Gaddafi to crush the revolt warns other regimes to run when it gets tough, not fight.  Am guessing that major cash transfers are under way throughout the Maghreb.  No heroes without thick wallets.  Mention that Gaddafi will not find sanctuary anywhere after these reports of random mass murder.  The shooting of doctors is especially likely to bring the UN, the ICC and arrest.  Gadaffi may very well (if he is lucky) end his days on trial in The Hague, a cellmate of his sons and Charles Taylor.  Note: time to locate the Lockerbie bomber, the sinister fraud Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, and review his premature release from judicial doom.

Spectacular and chilling phone call from Al Jazeera reporter to an unnamed man who is listening the the constant firing of weapons in the Green Square of Tripoli. Says he can hear chanting and screams. The heavy weapons including machine gun. In Benghazi, the report is of street fighting between the government forces and the insurgens. The town is in no one's control. The incoherent and panicky speech by Seif Gaddafi, the youngest son of M. Gaddafi, triggered more violence and thuggery. "There is a plot against Libya. People want to create a government in Benghazi and others want to have an Islamic emirate in Bayda. All these [people] have their own plots. Of course Arab media hyped this. The fault of the Libyan media is that it did not cover this. Libya is not like Egypt, it is tribes and clans, it is not a society with parties. Everyone knows their duties and this may cause civil wars. Libya is not Tunisia and Egypt. Libya has oil - that has united the whole of Libya....The Libyans who live in Europe and USA, their children go to school and they want you to fight. They are comfortable. They then want to come and rule us and Libya. They want us to kill each other then come, like in Iraq."  Spoke Pat Lang, Larry Johnson, who told me that Gadaffi was in his last days, and that he may not last the week. Reports that the Libya ambassadors to India and China resigned. Confirm the reportt hat Gadaffi communicated to Hugo Chavez of Venezuela to prepare an exit. Confirm that Gadaffi is surrounded by Zimbabwe mercenary bodyguards.  The oil fields remain at severe risk.  Am told that the old kingship of Al-Sanussi is preparing for swift re-emergence. Live by terror, fail by terror.  Game Over Gadaffi.

The fire in the Maghreb spread quickly to Cairo and, thanks to Al Jazeera, it lit up the Gulf like a forest fire skipping from valley to valley. The struggle in Manama in Bahrain is fierce and unresolved. The fresh flare-up, just like an LA wildfire burning willy-nilly, is at Kuwait, where the Arabist adventure started in 1990. Spoke Seb Gorka, Michael Vlahos, Victor Hanson, Malcolm Hoenlein, Niall Ferguson, and several comentators from the US and from Israel -- Tony Badran FDD; Andrew Apostolou, Freedom House; Hillel Frisch, Bar-Ilan University; Eyal Zisser, Tel Aviv University -- who all look to the fire burning out of control for some time.  The pattern of revolutions is not positive, not ever.  From Niall Ferguson's observation, the turmoil of 1848 is the fair analogy of where we are in the cycle.  The old regime tumbles quickly and anarchy follows, many voices, many stopgaps; then the enterprise that prevails is the one that is most violent and most resolute, such as the Jacobins, the Bolsheviks, the Twelvers. Is there a possibility of a break in the pattern?  Yes.  However, what we see now is a pattern than attracts the predators.  The one predator who gains most from the bottomlessness in the Gulf is Tehran.  Mention that it is never wrong to look for Moscow Center, to look for PLA ops, to look for the rogues.  Anarchy is not manageable.  It is survivable.  What of POTUS Obama and the serene pacifism and passivity of the NSC?  Unknown, and that is a grown-up nightmare.  What happens next is consistently predictable and at the same time random.  The reversals will warm the confidence of the region; then the defeats will wear the patience of the allies.  The Gulf returns toward where it came from in 1950: silence and intrigue and a traditional violence. And how did 1848 turn?  Alexis De Tocqueville:  "society was cut in two: those who had nothing united in common envy, and those who had anything united in common terror."

John Fund, WSJ, writes that the rallying Gilbert & Sullivan Opera company we see in Madison, Wisconsin, is a variety of the social media scream and video tactics now practiced by the municipal union geniuses and their SEIU and AFSCME and NEA ground troops. The several hundred boisterous SEIU members who appeared outside John Boehner's Capitol Hill townhouse at 7:30 Am Thursday 17 follows a similar strike against a Bank of American banker and a J.P. Morgan Chase banker last spring. Fund cites a colleague, Nina Easton of Fortune, who calls it "the politics of personal intimidation." The Wisconsin demonstrators were organized with the same social media tools we see in the ummah. It is a confused narrative. The demos get into the news by screaming and chanting and holding up signage to video for YouTube and Vimeo, but then what? No need to crack down. No need to back down. The theme is that the demos can harass, yet the decisions are in train as part of the democratic process (or the rule of law) and not because of the perceived whim of an autocrat. The same for Wisconsin. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is pushing back against the tactics and against POTUS interference, and this gives Madison a national stage. "I think we're focused on balancing our budget. It would be wise for the president and others in Washington to focus on balancing their budget, which they are a long ways from doing."

The Gilbert & Sullivan light opera in Madison, Wisconsin, is a choice example of the conflicts ahead as the new governors seek to close deficits by closing municipal union perquisites and advantages from the 20th century business model of AFSCME and SEIU and so forth. The terms of the brouhaha are that the GOP holds a 19-14 edge in the Wisconsin State Senate, the body that is slated to vote on the governor's proposal to end collective bargaining with the usual municipal geniuses.  A quorum is 20 senators.  Ergo, the 14 Democrats fled the state, and are now said to be in an Illinois resort, doing media without revealing the location.  The idea of hiding from the media while using social media is silly and futile.  American temper does not welcome runaways, no matter the cause, and runaway Democrats now damage the battle in DC over the national deficit.  Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan, chair of Budget in the House, has an unforced error just handed to him for comment.  Rookie Wisconsin GOP Governor Scott Walker remark about the runaway Democrats is plush understatement and boosts Walker as short-listed for folk hero of the Tea Party (his speaking fees are climbing by the hour): 

Spoke Arif Rafiq the last three weeks since Raymond David used his Glock 17 with hollow-point bullets in order to shoot to death two Pakistani ISI agents who were tasked with following him in Lahore, the second largest city in Pakistan. Since then, the dispute between Washington and Islamabad has accelerated to a stand-off. Arif Rafiq holds that Pakistan will release Davis to a US investigation, but not soon.  The facts do not support the conclusion of either side; and there are missing clues in all directions.  This becomes a scandal and rallying point in Pakistan's fierce politics.  I have not heard anything that tells me that there is an advantage to the US or Pakistan or the ISI or the militants to back down from the positions of intransigence.   This may be noise, but it also may be another crack in the Obama administration's armor.  Managing the exit from Afghanistan in such a way that it turns into a flight from Pakistan.  POTUS does not concern himself with foreign entanglements, but he is served by counselors such as Susan Rice, Stephanie Power, Valerie Jarrett, Dennis McDonough, Tom Donilon, who see the conflict zones as map pieces in World of Peace Craft; and the result so far is more and more confusion to us and advantage to the enemy.

Speaking Melik Kaylan, WSJ, re how the Tehran regime bans Valentine's day and anything else it can figure to ban -- cheeseburgers, rock and rap music, holding hands in public, lipstick -- and has lost credibility to the youth of the nation, fully 70% of the population.  Spoke Reza Kahlili, author, re the protests, and he describes the ongoing event in many cities and growing, with protesters' camping out overnight in squares.  Melik Kaylan mentioned the sense of self-sacrifice that Iranians have, and that the regime cannot easily intimidate boys and girls who value martyrdom.  No report as of yet of a comment from POTUS Obama with regard the protests; however, POTUS silence in June 2009 remains a mark on his record.  Reza Kahlili recommends linking to his site for the many new videos that are coming in from YouTube of the protests in the coming days.  From Tehran, Farnaz Fassihi, WSJ, reports that the Facebook page that is presenting details of the protest, 25 Bahman, will list more events in coming hours.  For now, the Basij are using bully-boy tactics of beatings and sadism, and the young protesters are not backing off.   Ahmadinejad was humiliated today when PM Abdullah Gul of Turkey spoke in favor of recognizing protesters.  The chant in the street, "Mubarak, Ben Ali; Now it's time for Sayyid Ali!" refers to the Supreme Leader Mohamed Ali Khamenei.  There were routine shouts (and Tweets) of "Death to the dictator!" as well.  There will be blood, and this time there are no Al Jazeera cameras to illustrate the brutality, just the videos.

Note from translator Banafshe Zand-Bonazzi:  "Azadi, azadi, azadi..." and in this case, it does mean freedom from the Islamic regime and for the separation of mosque and state. 

Algeria, with 35 million plus, is four times the size of Tunisia and far more critical to the EU than the rest of the Maghreb, Morocco, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Mauritania.  The fire in Tunis spread quickly to Cairo and Amman, but now, after several weeks of smouldering, it has caught flame.  The big boss president Abdelaziz Boutefilka understands that the mob is coming for him.  The authorities shut down the protest on Friday 11 that was called in sympathy with Cairo; now the police have started random arrests.  The pattern is protest, police, Al Jazeera cameras and blogs, sympathetic imams associated with al-Ikhwan, then the reaction.  The end of the Cairo stand-off with Mubarak is the start of the stand-off in Algiers, Amman.  The Maghreb is a powder keg, and the fuse is burning.

Mubarak is reported to have blasted the White House before his departure to Sharm el-Sheikh when he called MK Ben-Eliezer in Israel

"Heart of Steel"  

The White House does not see this formula; or, if it sees it, the interpretation is that the fire can be contained to a happy ending.  There may be some time left, three years, perhaps five years; but not much.  Sarkozy, Merkel, Cameron see what is coming from the Maghreb.  Mubarak sees the fire spreading across the Red Sea to the House of Saud.  The Islamist uses street anarchy to crack the regimes, then use terror to make the army share power, then use the vote.  Al-Ikhwan is far more comprehensive than the homicidal thrill artist Batman Osama bin Laden and his Egyptian Robin, Ayman al-Zawahiri, living in medieval Pashtunistan without an exit plan.  Below find a British op, Michael Binyon, who remarks that Algeria has emergency laws similar to Egypt, and yet he pitches the theory that Algeria will not melt down like Egypt, because the army fought and won a ten-year civil war.  "...it was the Army that won the civil war, against the Islamists; and it has a heart of steel, that Army...."  The irony is the sound of  the last days of Pompeii.

   

The Google marketing exeuctive based in Dubai, Wael Ghonim, built a Facebook page last summer 2010 based upon the facts of the police murder of a young Egyptian, Khaled Said. Accordingg to reporting, and my conversations with Mike Giglio, Newsweek, the "We Are All Khaled Said" page, administered by Ghonim's pseudonym, "El Shaheedy," was one of two venues used by the promoters of the protests starting January 25th and continuing to the present. The video above presents the mother of Khaled Said, a modest Egyptian matron who is holding a memento of her dead son, a pillow that is used to embrace his memory. The blaring Egyptian rock music, the excitement of the guests, the crowd sounds outside, all suggest this is a glimpse of a Cairene home soon after Omar Suleiman announced Hosni Mubarak's flight from Cairo, late afternoon Friday 11 February. A new favorite mordant witticism going around in Cairo, reported by Al Jazeera, measures the youthful spirit of the moment: "Mubarak dies and meets the late presidents Anwar Sadat and Gamal Abdel Nasser in the afterlife. They ask him: Poisoned or assassinated? He replies: Neither; Facebook!" 

The facts remains that an ex-military dictator, Hosni Mubarak (who replaced an assassinated military dictator, Anwar Sadat, who replaced a military dictator, Gamal Nasser), has departed from his winter palace in Cairo to his summer palace in Sharm el-Sheikh, and has been replaced -- at the dictator's order -- by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, that is, a uniform-wearing junta.  Al Jazeera reports that the junta promises to hold elections and to pass over the reins of governance.

The promise to hold elections and to pass over governance is boilerplate junta talk. There is no evidence in the 58 years since the military coup called the Free Officers Association threw out the sybaritic and loony King Farouk that the military has ever intended to hold free and fair elections and pass over governance to civilian control.  Spoke Friday 11, Sebastian Gorka, FDD; Michael Vlahos, Naval War College; Pat Lang, Sic Semper Tyrannis, and all agreed that the probability of the junta conceding power to non-junta figures, and thereby transferring the 40% of the economy in military control, is low.  An al-Ikhwan?  Mention that Stratfor.com reports that Jordan's al-Ikhwan today describes Mubarak's resignation as historic and says that the big losers are the United States and Israel.  Follow the logic.  Is the DoD SecDef Bob Gates going to pressure Field Marshall Tantawi and the junta to pass over governance to a civilian government shot through with al-Ikhwan?

  

"In the name of Mohammed, the most gracious, the most merciful, my fellow citizens...at these hard circumstances...

our country is experiencing...President Hosni Mohammed Mubarak has decided to waive the office of the presidency of the Republic, and instructed the Supreme Council of the Army Forces to run the affairs of the country... May God guide our steps....." 

No answer from the authorites so far as to how the aged and disgraced Mubarak still has the authority to shuck the constitution and "waive" the office of the presidency in favor of "instruct[ing] a military junta to control the governance of 80 million people.  The BBC asked an Egyptian commentator if the public will accept a military coup as legitimate?  Surprising answer on air to the democracies of Europe:  "...They believe that the army is the outer shield and the final shield of the Republic..."  Mention that the Supreme Council of the Army earlier in the news cycle issued a statement that it supported Hosni Mubarak's decision to remain president.  This means that the army obeyed Mubarak's order that he was staying and then obeyed Mubarak's order that he was instructing them to run the country while he removed to his summer palce at the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.  Puzzling.  Most shaky.  Most unreliable.  Restate what I have been told for some days, that the army and al-Ikhwan will share power going forward into the elections (September?  60 days?  two years?) and that al-Ikhwan will use terror and intimidation to manage the army's reluctances.  There is no political party in Egypt to rival al-Ikhwan.  The NDP was Mubarak, and without him the NDP is an employment bureau controlled by whoever commands the palace in Cairo.  For now, there is no one at the palace, and that will remain in place.  Al-Ikhwan will not seek the presidency.  It will control the parliamentary elections and then rewrite the constitution, which has just been shredded with the cooperation of those "foreign pressures" that Mubarak mentioned in his speech.  POTUS's "foreign pressure" now owns a military coup in Cairo that will bend only to an Islamist coup by al-Ikhwan.  How long before the Egyptian people notice?  They notice now.  Al-Ikhwan is popular in the way Stalin was popular once upon a time.  Better a strong man than a weak horse.

Hosni Mubarak disappoints the protesters of Tahrir Square by holding fast to his palace and his office. Am told that the critical decision is that the military will share power with al-Ikhwan. Mubarak's fate is sealed. The conflict is between the military that controls 40% of the economy and the al-Ihkwan that controls the devotion of a bloody-minded elite. Spoke Cliff May, FDD, who reminds that the Supreme Guide of al-Ikhwan, Mohamed Badi, calls for "a jihadi generation that pursues death, just as the enemies pursue life." All my guests, Rob Satloff, Washington Institute; Ambassador Marc Ginsberg, Saban; Cliff May, FDD, were puzzled by DNI James Clapper's remark to Congress this day that al-Ikhwan are "largely secular," and that it has "eschewed violence." We have no explanation for DNI Clapper using such bizarre language. Later, POTUS Obama continued to speak about Mubarak's departure as if it were imminent. Observers conclude that POTUS has limited-to-no influence in Cairo.  Riding the whirlwind after Friday prayers to be preached by al-Ikhwan iman.  POTUS Obama risks "the long reproaches of the after time" with his random, unwelcome, scolding, shapeless generalities:

Yes, I will buy the new iPad so that I can observe as my colleagues in talk radio struggle with the digital age. Talk radio is not quite ready for change, but change is here anyway. Include the John Avlon piece in the Daily Beast re the long goodbye to the talk superstars of the age of Clinton and Bush, who are now in their happy-ever-after sunset. These are facts and trends that are underreported. I have known them for some time but, then again, I do a talk show and have much more demanding subjects than my colleagues and so forth.

Spoke Larry Kudlow, CNBC; Mark Gongloff, WSJ; Joe Brusuelas, Bloomberg; David Weidner, WSJ; re the inflation in the BRICs as well as in the UK and Europe. There are signals for inflation in the US bond market that are not uniformly clear, as it could be growth. Larry Kudlow points to inflationary expansion that would fuel the stock market into new highs, through the 14K-plus that was set in October 2007.  David Weidner remarks that it is commonly agreed that there is too much cash sloshing around world markets.  The commodities prices show inflation, especially food and fuel.  What is the debate?  That the Fed's Quantitative Easing 2 must continue or not for job growth.  The consensus this eve was that Bernanke is behind the curve, as is China, and as are all the BRICs.  We may have a good run for six months to a year.  The Fed may well move by June 2012, and the markets will respond.  The disorder in China is the larger story, because it will include unemployment and the collapse of the housing bubble.  Sloshing is the last sound that the central bankers hear before they are asked to leave the room.

The US Navy answers the flimsy, impudent and stealthy China J-20 with a joy to behold, an aircraft carrier-launched stealthy drone, X-47B. This is heaven sent to wreck the sunny day of a PLA Navy cadre looking to win air superiority over the South China Sea by 2025. A stealthy carrier drone can easily launch from a stealthy carrier. Not much profile, minimum manpower, full of robots, the 21st century Enterprise.  The PLA Navy is not ready for prime time in the face of the X-47B.  Everything about this prototype release suggests that Robert Gates ordered Mullen to go ahead and release the video.   Even if it happened by accident, the paranoid knuckleheads in Beijing can only think of their retirements and shopping privileges at the Party PX in jeopardy now that they have been outfoxed by the Crusaders.  Look to the scrap in 2033.

The early report is that natural gas delivery is shut down to Israel and other locations after sabotage in the Sinai.  We can guess that whoever did this has a daily opportunity to share cigarettes with the Hamas in Gaza.    Hamas, a wing of the Ikhwan, declared all week that it was not the same as the Ikhwan.  This is known by wits as a distinction without a difference.   Aaron Klein, WABC, reported several times that his well-established senior sources in the Hamas, including the Foreign Minister and the Chief Political Advisor to the PM, refused to comment on the Cairo turmoil.  This gas pipeline sabotage is an effective marker for the potential of much worse ahead.  What's the price of insurance for the Suez Canal shutting for a few days?   Also learn that Nicholas Kulish, NYT, with whom I spoke in Alexandria last week, was detained by State Security for 24 hours as he arrived at a checkpoint going into Cairo: the report indicates that the State Security apparatus is not organized as of yet in how to respond to the crisis.  Critical to weigh that the man whom the White House wants to assume control of the government in a so-called transition, VP Omar Suleiman, is mostly the longtime head of State Security, the sinister Mukhabarat; and that turning over the NDP as well as the preparations for elections to a Chekhist stooge is not a promising beginning for liberal democracy.  Again, I repeat what I have been told the last two weeks: this is Islamist-driven, and the Ikhwan are maneuvering to assume power with the military junta and to use terrorism (e.g., the Sinai blast) as a way of undermining the military over time so that they can take full Constitutional control of the apparatus.  Same plan in Tunis, in Yemen, in Jordan, in Sudan, in the Land of the Two Mosques.  The Ikhwan play for time, because time is on their side. 

There is deep wit in the usual suspects' explaining how they were caught by surprise by the Tunis uprising and how quickly it spread to Cairo, Amman, Sa'ana, Khartoum.  My certainty is that JBS has followed this story from the first days in Tunis.  My certainty is that Malcolm Hoenlein and I presented the full outline of events when we sat for an hour in front of a live audience at the 92nd Y in NYC on January 24, the night before the first big rally.  Perhaps the intelligence apparatus in Washington should tune in to a certain modest radio program on WMAL in DC?  POTUS Obama is said to be most aggrieved at the surprise.  My opening remarks to the 10 PM Eastern Time hour on Thursday 27, the night before the gigantic demo on Tahrir Square, is matter of fact, and Malcolm Hoenlein and I spent the next ninety minutes filling in the outline.  We were not being prescient: we were passing along intelligence reports we  had both been getting since Ben Ali fled Tunis and the imams declared that self-immolation was an approved way for a Moslem to protest the regimes in Tunis, Cairo, Amman. 

A breezy, pleasant moment admiring the new Lawrence O'Donnell Show on MSNBC, comparing it to how I approach my show.  I do not use partisanship much.  Neither does O'Donnell.  We are both obtuse speakers, and neither of us breathes fire.  Perhaps I emphasize somewhat more loudly than O'Donnell now and again, but I am all voice, and he gets to mumble into a very good mic.  A major distinction between the shows is the mode, in that O'Donnell must show his performance like a slideshow, or flash cards, and talk over the jarring, discordant, inconsistent, and peculiar images, often of ordinary, slight people sitting with a stare at the camera lens, as if trapped, while I am able to use the radio/stream/podcast entirely as a theater of the mind -- the once-upon-a-time style and landscape of the storyteller.  

The JBS mode is far more suited for the Cairo story than is the camera, because the camera must comment on what it can see, and it cannot see the depth of the despair and the savvy of the opposition and the cunning of the government -- nor can the camera go back and forth in time in an instant to provide context.  My measure is also able to be scary, edgy, shadowy, grotesque in a snap.  Spoke Thursday 3 Pat Lang, ex-DIA senior executive overseeing the Middle East from Carter to early Clinton, who indicates that a hasty Mubarak departure will not calm the waters, and that the military remains loyal to the apparatus.  The camera cannot explicate any of this detail even if it could somehow show it with a longshot.  Only Pat Lang's clear, bass, veteran voice can communicate the breadth of experience that drives this observation.  When Pat Lang says he is "disappointed" in Omar Suleiman for declaring that the protesters were outside agitators, he also adds that he knows Suleiman well for many years.  This has weight.  Perhaps if O'Donnell got Pat Lang on camera, he could reproduce the gravity of the declarations about Suleiman, Mubarak, and President Salah of Sa'ana, but then again, perhaps not, since ths would be too great a landscape to cover with unfamiliar names to use.  Radio, audio, the theater of the mind, translates very great detail into tone, and so even when you cannot be certain of the meaning or facts of the events, you can hear that the speaker measures the events keenly and philosophically.  When Pat Lang tells me he is "disappointed" in the new vice president and long-time State Security chief of Egypt, I know there is trouble in the land of the pharoahs. The camera is stuck showing the same stage set at Tahrir Square again and again, which is not Egypt, not the poor who live on $2 a day and do not travel to central Cairo ever, not the facts of the risk for quick elections.  The camera is no more the crisis than the opening act of an opera like La Bohème (below) is Parisian history.

Am told of genuine frustration and doubt at White House with regard the decision by Hosni Mubarak to make a fight of the transition. The Robert Gibbs recommendation that Mubarak depart immediately is regarded as gesture. The militia units, hired by State Security's Omar Suleiman, now dominate the story in Cairo and other cities -- and the demonstrators constructed a makeshift tin wall these last hours to hold off what will come again, vigilante justice. There will be blood. POTUS gave Mubarak no exit route. The message was go or else. Mubarak chooses else. Reporting that the vigilantes will sweep the demonstrators apparently surprises the White House. 

New chief of staff Bill Daley is quoted in the WSJ saying that the situation is "now totally out of our control." This is the talk of an outgeneraled and fatalistic White House. America is never outgunned, cannot let itself be outgunned. And yet, now it arrives that the White House is asking for new ideas from Brookings and Carnegie. What about the DoD? CENTCOM announces it is developing contingency plans for losing the Suez Canal. The USS Kearsarge arrives off Egypt in prepation for evacuation of US citizens and personnel. The US embassy is reinforced by Marines. There is nothing inevitable. The Obama administration displays little energy and no fresh leverage. Talking does not move the entrenched. The US is seen as abandoning an ally of 30 years' standing.   The White House emissary Frank Wisner has now left Cairo after Mubarak broke off talks.  There is no Plan B.  The flimsy White House remark that it would review the US aid to Egypt of $1.5 billion is a charade.  Cairo holds the high ground of the Suez Canal.  The flimsy Washington talk of appealing to the military to oust Mubarak is laughable.  Mubarak and Suleiman and Tantawi are the military: they came from the military.  And off in the shadows is the Ihkwan.  The White House is reported talking with the Ihkwan.  Why?  To what end?  To underline to Mubarak that he has no exit but resistance?  Instead, America takes the exit of an air rescue, risking another photo of the last helicopter leaving the embassy compound in an abandoned capital, this time Cairo.

Hosni Mubarak meeting with US former diplomat (and ex-AIG vice chair) Frank Wisner signals that the Cairo regime is a slave to the US, and this reinforced the Ikhwan message that the only way forward is to capture the state and make war on the crusaders and the Jews. The Ikhwan are a shadow version of Hamas, dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the proselytizing of a global caliphate. Mubarak is a decrepit strongman who commands the loyalty of the Army and State security, chiefly because the officer class controls 40% of the Egyptian economy and does not readily trade in its patron for an unknown radical shakedown artist who preaches stoning and shariah and other anti-modern habits.  

Henry Kissinger recommends sensibly that the Obama administration is wise to stay out of the Cairo brouhaha (this is what a succession struggle looks like on Al Jazeera in English); however, the Obama team is vain and exuberant and just has to jump into the fray like some cheerleading 1960s liberation theology do-gooder.  Am told that the fury in Arab capitals at the White House abandoning a 30-year client is now being replaced by the laughter in Arab capitals at Obama the Slow Smarmy.  Caroline Glick, JPost, writes that the Bush narcissism of the freedom agenda has been replaced by the Obama narcissism of deciding to side with the Arab aggressors against Israel.  Either way, the Arabs figure the US is a reckless child with airpower.  Am told that the conversation between the king of the Saudis and POTUS Obama yesterday (Obama called Abdallah) was not happy.  As in: shoe-throwing not happy.

Army holds firm., and it is under orders from Mubarak and Tantawi to avoid confrontation.  Just show the flag and the equipment and the discipline.  The officer class are the owner class  Same for State Security.  Same for Interior,.  Same for police.  Mubarak ordered the police off the street to avoid conflict and casualties.  The middle class shop-owners begging for the police to return.  Everyone wants to go back to work to get paid.  Al Jazeera given to hope and change rhetoric in the fading glow of rallies in the cold air of Tahrir Square.  Come the Revolution dress warmly.  We are in transition mode to a new coalition of elite rascals, likely with a September election.  A majority of the Egyptian voters support all sorts of unusual beliefs.  Right now the dullards of the well known and long since co-opted Al Wafd party are pressing for their TV time.  More stage management.  Mubarak announcing through leaks that he will not run again for president.  Surprise!  Recall, if it speaks English, it is not the future.