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Playing along with deep corruption

“I have a lot of things to say, but I am not allowed to say them,” Faqiryar said from behind the door. “This government is so corrupt, and it is run by a small number of individuals who are very powerful. They don’t like intruders, and don’t want people putting their noses in their business. These people are very evil.”

Dexter Filkins walks us through the streets of Kabul and into the heart of corruption in Afghanistan at Kabulbank. 

America collaborates with a high level of corruption. At best our government turns a blind eye for its own political purposes. We have made official noises about it in the past, but no longer.  Witness Filkins' description of two meetings Joe Biden held with Afghan president Hamid Kharzai tells the tale.

In February, 2008, Joe Biden, then a senator, arrived with two colleagues at the presidential palace for a dinner with Karzai. Biden got right to the point, people with knowledge of the meeting said, pressing Karzai to address the hideous level of corruption in his government. In a fashion later described as bordering on the surreal, Karzai denied that graft was a serious issue in Afghanistan and changed the subject. Biden persisted. Karzai offered Biden plates of lamb and rice; Biden pressed about corruption. Finally, Biden threw his napkin on the table and stood up. “This dinner is over,” he said, and he walked out of the room.

Earlier this month, Vice-President Biden returned to Kabul. But, according to Afghans with knowledge of the visit, this time the two leaders got along splendidly. The two men had talked on the phone before Biden’s arrival to smooth the way. Biden thanked Karzai for his efforts. Their meeting, originally scheduled to be brief, went on for more than an hour, officials at the American Embassy said.

When the meeting ended, Biden and Karzai stood before a group of American and Afghan reporters. They took no questions. Instead, Biden read a prepared statement making clear what America intended to do in Afghanistan and, more important, not do. He turned and faced President Karzai.

“Let me say it plainly, Mr. President, it is not our intention to govern or to nation-build,” Biden said.

“Wonderful,” Karzai said.

And the two men walked out of the room.

That's Joe Biden before the Obama Era -- and Joe Biden during the Obama Era.

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More details about the investigation into Kabulbank and its relationship(s) with top officials in the Karzai government can be found in this report in the Washington Post.

Who's in control

With pro-democracy demonstrators demanding the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak for a sixth day, the military sent conflicting signals about where its loyalties lie. On the streets, soldiers curried favor with demonstrators. But F-16 fighter jets streaked through the sky, and in images on state-run television, the nation's military brass appeared alongside the embattled president.

We don't like to think of it this way, but governments in Egypt and the US are not that different.  Here, too, our politics are largely determined by a huge interlocking network of money and the defense industry.  How do we really feel about this?  We are ambivalent, edging towards cowardly and submissive.  We are increasingly prone to nasty niceties like "thank you for your service" which, translated, becomes "why am I thanking you for fighting wars I don't want against people with whom I have no beef." Egyptians are in a similar pickle as its army tries to decide who to put in power even as the protesters are thanking them for not cracking down.

Egypt has a military also made up for the most part of young people who just needed a job and directed by people at the top who have power and just want to keep it.  The young political protesters, at least for the moment, have more courage than ours do.  Right now they're engaged in fighting for more than they'll get. Ironically, much of the money supporting the "security establishment" that runs their lives comes from us.  It's bittersweet for many Americans watching events in Cairo, particularly for those of us who suspect that our government and the powerful in Egypt are allied in bringing a convenient, if not righteous, end to protests. 

Egyptians, no less than Americans, are likely to wind up with the status quo ante, albeit with a cosmetic fix.

All across Egypt, troops in tanks fanned out to work with residents in chasing down marauding bands of knife-wielding thugs and to impose some semblance of order after the nearly complete disappearance of uniformed Egyptian police.

Egyptians of all political persuasions accused the much-maligned police of being behind a campaign to terrorize the country - either by perpetrating the violence themselves or by standing aside and allowing it to occur.

As hatred toward the police grew, so did admiration for the army - which may be the intent of Egypt's security establishment as it struggles to find a way out of the crisis. The apparently contradictory signals from the army suggested that the question of who will rule Egypt remains very much in doubt, nearly a week after protesters turned this country's political universe upside down with a mass mobilization that appears to be growing stronger. ...WaPo

Even as the show winds down in north Africa, we are faced with our own battles.  The powerful here are getting restive again.

Last Saturday, reported The Financial Times, some of the world’s most powerful financial executives were going to hold a private meeting with finance ministers in Davos, the site of the World Economic Forum. The principal demand of the executives, the newspaper suggested, would be that governments “stop banker-bashing.” Apparently bailing bankers out after they precipitated the worst slump since the Great Depression isn’t enough — politicians have to stop hurting their feelings, too.

But the bankers also had a more substantive demand: they want higher interest rates, despite the persistence of very high unemployment in the United States and Europe, because they say that low rates are feeding inflation. And what worries me is the possibility that policy makers might actually take their advice. ...Paul Krugman

Oh, and bankers want to be more popular, more officially popular.  Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan/Chase rose to new heights of chutzpah in Davos.

Mr. Dimon said at the World Economic Forum that he was sick of “this constant refrain — bankers, bankers, bankers.”

“We try to do the best we can every day,” Mr. Dimon said during a panel discussion.

Later, Mr. Dimon urged Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France, not to let bank regulation be driven by anger toward bankers, and he warned that bad policy-making would impede growth.

Mr. Sarkozy, in turn, reminded Mr. Dimon of the severe pain inflicted by the financial crisis. “Let’s not forget what happened,” he said. “The world has paid for it with tens of millions of unemployed who had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with it and yet paid for everything. It created a lot of anger.”

Referring to the enormous leverage used by banks before the crisis, Mr. Sarkozy said, “We have to ask ourselves, are we in a market economy or a madhouse?” ...NYT

Poor Jamie.  He just wants us to to back to telling bankers, "Thank you for your service!"

Tweets from Cairo

The excitment grows as El Baradei speaks to the protesters.

You have taken back your rights and what we have begun can not go back.... We have one main demand: the end of the regime and the beginning of a new stage, a new Egypt.... I bow to the people of Egypt in respect. I ask of you patience, change is coming in the next few days.

Nicholas Kristof is in Cairo and on Twitter. 

 

The New York Times also has a nice (uncredited) photo of relaxed troops and a child getting a boost.

So, who is this Suleiman?

Jane Mayer has a troubling answer about the newly appointed vice president of Egypt and possible new leader of that country.

Suleiman is a well-known quantity in Washington. Suave, sophisticated, and fluent in English, he has served for years as the main conduit between the United States and Mubarak. While he has a reputation for loyalty and effectiveness, he also carries some controversial baggage from the standpoint of those looking for a clean slate on human rights. As I described in my book “The Dark Side,” since 1993 Suleiman has headed the feared Egyptian general intelligence service. In that capacity, he was the C.I.A.’s point man in Egypt for renditions—the covert program in which the C.I.A. snatched terror suspects from around the world and returned them to Egypt and elsewhere for interrogation, often under brutal circumstances.

I don't suppose, if he were in power, he'd let the protesters go unpunished.

The New York Times has a much more benign, not to say blandly deceptive, description of Mr. Suleiman.

Koch brothers' direct influence on elections

Karl Crow, a Koch-funded operative, will unveil a new voter-targeting system to help Republicans win back the White House in 2012. Last summer, Crow published a memo arguing that corporations should take advantage of the Citizens United decision to flood money into the midterm elections. His memo also claimed that the decision could give corporations unlimited power to coerce their employees into supporting particular pieces of legislation or candidates. ...Think Progress

Mitch McConnell cosy with White House?

...For McConnell - who has some of the best tactical instincts in modern Washington - the choices ahead are pivotal.

So it seems.  According to the Washington Post,  the Senate Minority Leader is giving up obstructionism and embracing statesmanship.  Well, sort of.  He may have accepted the fragility of power in a country that doesn't exactly embrace either party.

Having a new Republican majority in the House and six new GOP senators, his hand is stronger. But with more power comes higher expectations. The Republicans' political gains are fragile, and voters - who have tossed a party out in each of the past three elections - have shown they will not tolerate politicians who don't produce results.

That means working with the White House.

The potential for doing business with the Obama administration is there, however, as evidenced by the deal-making last month between McConnell and Vice President Biden. It produced a tax cut - and McConnell's first-ever invitation to a bill-signing ceremony at the Obama White House, where the president lauded their "extraordinary work." ...

The vice president and the GOP leader now speak frequently on the phone. It's a new relationship for a Republican leader who didn't have a one-on-one meeting with the president until more than a year and a half into Obama's term.

McConnell is oddly optimistic that things will move his way.

"I have a lot of discussions with the White House that I didn't used to have. I think we'll have a lot more interaction," McConnell said. "They have obviously decided they are going in a different direction. When they basically adopt our positions, I expect we'll have a lot of interaction."...WaPo