Protests and Unions

Protesters took to the streets of Cairo about a month ago, and the protests did not end when President Hosni Mubarak stepped down on February 11 and handed power to the military. The revolution in Egypt followed on the heels of protests in Tunisia, and revolutions are cascading across the Middle East, Africa, and the Far East. "Days of rage" have taken place in Yemen, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Oman, and China. There are reports that two vice presidents of Google as well as union members were behind the unrest in Egypt.

Unlike in Egypt where the military refused to fire on their citizens, civilians and anti-government protesters in Libya are being gunned down by troops and mercenaries. Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi is clinging to power even though his diplomats at United Nations headquarters in New York and other embassies worldwide are calling on him to resign for shooting his own people. An influential Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, has issued a fatwa instructing Libyan soldiers to shoot Gaddafi if they have an opportunity.

Arabs are fleeing to Europe, and European leaders are concerned that their countries will have protests. Gadhafi is threatening that a flood of immigrants from Africa will go to Europe if his regime falls.

Oil prices are surging because of the unrest in the Middle East. The price of oil jumped 8.5 percent in one day, and gasoline prices are already over $4.00 in California. To add to these problems, Gadhafi has ordered his security services to start blowing up oil pipelines and cutting off the flow of oil to Mediterranean ports. Chaos reigns in Libya and may cascade into Saudi Arabia, causing even more problems with the oil.

The United States is seeing protesters in the streets of Madison, Wisconsin, as Governor Scott Walker and Republican state legislators attempt to solve the financial problems of the state. Governor Walker recognizes that his state does not have enough money to meet its obligations, and he wants to make some changes in order to balance his budget. He wants a budget repair bill that would limit the power of unions and require union members to help pay for their health insurance and pensions. Teachers called in "sick" last week in order to spend their time protesting the Governor's plan and were joined by members of other unions.

The state of Wisconsin faces an immediate deficit of $137 million for the fiscal year ending on July 1, plus another $225 million for other back debts. The budget repair bill would require state employees to pay about 5.8 percent toward their pensions, an amount about the same as the private sector national average. The bill would also require state employees to pay about 12 percent of their healthcare benefits, an amount about half the private sector national average. The Wisconsin bill would also limit the ability of government workers' unions to collectively bargain. Without this ability, union dues will not be taken out of paychecks, employees can choose whether or not to join unions, and unions lose power and money to help elect more Democrats to state and federal offices.

Democratic state legislators in Wisconsin left the state in an effort to stop the bill, but Walker and the Republican legislators are standing firm. If the bill does not soon pass, about 6,000 state employees will be laid off their jobs. The majority of people in Wisconsin seem to be siding with the Governor because they understand that government employees generally receive higher pay and better benefits than their private sector counterparts.

President Obama added to the problems in Wisconsin when he sided with the protesters and called the new bill an "assault" on the unions. This is not the first time that Obama has sided with protesters against governments. He openly supported the protesters in the Middle East - except those protesting in Iran and Libya. Obama knows that he will need the support of the unions in order to be reelected in 2012.

The political fight over unions is escalating as labor leaders are planning new protests in dozens of other capital cities. These protests have brought the role of labor unions into the national debate as well as who should make the necessary sacrifices in order that states can balance their budgets. Yesterday thousands of steelworkers, autoworkers, and other labor activists started protesting in Indiana against a bill there that would weaken the power of unions in the private sector. Public unions in Indiana have already lost their collective bargaining rights. Yesterday a House committee approved a new bill that would free private-sector employees from the requirement to belong to unions and to pay union dues. Employees would then have the right to work without union influence if they so choose. Democratic legislators in Indiana also fled to Illinois in order to avoid a vote.

A protest took place in Columbus, Ohio, today to oppose a bill to strip collective-bargaining rights from about 400,000 public employees. Tennessee is also considering a bill that would dissolve the collective bargaining rights of the state's teachers. Hundreds of police are marching in the streets of Hartford, Connecticut, in opposition to proposed police layoffs. Across the state of Idaho, teachers are walking picket lines to oppose proposals to lay off hundreds of teachers and restrict collective bargaining rights. Union leaders in Michigan are calling for protests against proposals giving emergency financial managers power to break union contracts in schools and cities as well as remove elected officials.

Public employees at the federal, state, and local levels are generally paid higher wages and better benefits than the private sector. As thousands of people have lost their jobs in the private sector in the past two years, federal government employees have increased by 200,000. There is no requirement for the federal government to have a balanced budget - yet, but many of the state constitutions include a requirement for a balanced budget. Governors are wise to attempt to reign in the unions and expenses in order to balance their budgets. If Obamacare is declared to be constitutional, states will be required to pay more of the expenses in Medicaid in their states as well as other requirements.

I expect that protesters will march in more of our states, probably starting in the Northeast, as state and local governments attempt to balance their budgets. Anchorage has been making cuts for over a year in an effort to keep expenses within the income of our city. As Republicans in the US Congress attempt to cut costs and bring the federal expenses down, conservatives in state and local governments are trying to do the same on their level. I certainly hope that conservatives are successful in reigning in government expenses, but I also expect much more chaos in our nation as we work through these problems.

I

Egypt

As I write this post, the unrest in Egypt with street protests against the rule of President Hosni Mubarak is nearing the two week mark. Protesters numbering nearly a million are still occupying the central Tahrir Square in Cairo as well as several million others rallying in towns and cities across the nation. Banks reopened for a few hours on Sunday after being closed for more than a week. Opposition groups want new government proposals on how to end the political crisis. The Obama Administration has been pushing for a regime change, but Mubarak insists that he must stay in order to prevent a larger crisis.

As I read the reports and saw the pictures of destruction and standoffs between the protesters and the military, the entire scene took on new meaning for me. I suddenly remembered that my friends Linda and Dave were in Egypt, and I wanted to know where they were and if they were safe. After several days of questioning people, I was finally able to learn that Linda was in Germany and Dave was safe. Imagine my joy to walk into Church on Sunday and come face to face with my friend Linda. She shared some of her experiences in Egypt and indicated that it was a scary situation. She even wondered if she would ever be able to return to Egypt.

Media sources are reporting that the protesters want democracy, but cries for democracy might be a front. There are many questions about the future of Egypt and what kind of government will eventually take control. Egypt is not a third world country; it is a star in the Middle East. Egypt or at least Mubarak has been an important ally for the United States as well as a friend to Israel. Whatever happens in Egypt will impact all the nations in the Middle East and the United States.

I found a very interesting article written by Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, former head of Romania's Presidential House, on americanthinker.com. Lt. Gen. Pacepa was once a top figure in the KGB intelligence community before coming to the United States for safety and has written of his experiences in a book entitled Red Horizons. He indicated the crisis in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East looks like "an updated version of the Kremlin's highly secret Cold War effort to turn the Islamic world into an enemy of the United States.
"It is noteworthy that the current Middle East rebellion is taking place only in Islamic countries that are pro-American and that the people demanding democracy there are burning the flag of the … United States. It is remarkable that these `mass uprisings' were so secretly planned that the entire U.S. intelligence community was taken completely by surprise….
"Even more significant is that the Hezb'allah representatives demonstrating on the first day of the Cairo uprising were carrying flags displaying the hammer and sickle. That was evidently a mistake caused by overzealousness…. In Cairo, the error was quickly rectified, and now the hammer and sickle is nowhere to be seen."

Lt. Gen. Pacepa explained how he can no longer document the involvement of the Soviets, but he knew from past experience working within the KGB how Russians "went to great lengths to transform an Egyptian-born Marxist, Mohammed Abd al-Rahman Abd al-Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini, nom de guerre Abu Ammar, into a Palestinian-born Yasser Arafat. It took us years to credibly falsify his birth certificate and other IDs, to build him a new past, and to train him at the KGB Balashikha special-operations training school east of Moscow." It took even more years and the help of "former Egyptian ruler Gamal Abdel Nasser, another Soviet puppet, to catapult the newly-created Arafat into his position as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (also created and financed by the KGB)."

He explained that this Mohamed Mustafa ElBaradei, who has recently appeared on the scene, seems to be the new Soviet-anointed leader for Egypt. He described how he had a part in trying to convince the late Anwar Sadat to become one of the Soviet puppets, but Sadat "got religion" and refused to work with the Soviets. In fact, he "expelled the Soviet advisers from Egypt" in 1972, "visited the U.S." in 1975, and "became the first Eyptian president to visit Israel" in 1976. "In 1981, Sadat paid with his life for his courageous decision to break with the Kremlin…."

In addition to the Soviet influence in the Middle East (including Iran's dictator, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad), we also have the Muslim Brotherhood taking a large role in the talks in Egypt as well as other organizations such as Hamas, Hezb'allah, and ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) ("an offspring of the Workers World Party [WWP], an organization created by the KGB community while I was still living in Romania") operating among the protesters in Egypt. None of these groups are pro-America or pro-Israel.

Lt. Gen. Pacepa is not the only one who is concerned about the fate of Egypt. Columnist Jeffrey T. Kuhner wrote the following quote that appeared in patriotpost.us on February 7, 2011: "Years ago, Washington should have encouraged civil society and political reform. America could have fostered a secular democratic opposition. Instead, by blindly backing Mr. Mubarak, the United States enabled the most militant, unified and organized Islamist party to take advantage of the growing discontent: the Muslim Brotherhood. It is the Brotherhood's supporters who fill the ranks of the protesters. The Muslim Brotherhood very likely will join a national unity government and eventually seize control. Its goal is to erect a Sunni version of Iran's Shiite theocracy. It champions the hatred of America, war with Israel and a global jihad against the West. It supports Hamas in the Gaza Strip and other terrorist groups. In short, the post-Mubarak regime most probably not only will be anti-Western but will have ties to al-Qa'ida and Iran's mullahs. Egypt is not some strategic backwater; it is not Yemen, Tunisia or Jordan. Rather, it is the cultural linchpin of the Arab world.... If the land of the pharaohs should go Islamic, it will reverberate across the entire region."

I have done a little study about the Muslim Brotherhood and am very concerned about this organization. Its slogan is "Islam is the solution" and its stated goal is to instill the Qur'an and Sunnah as the "sole reference point for … ordering the life of the Muslim family, individual, community … and state" (wikipedia.org). It seeks an Islamic state in Egypt and has already called for Egyptians to "prepare for war with Israel."

Israel and the United States both need Egypt on our side! There is much concern about what action the United States should take now, but maybe Lt. Gen. Pacepa has the right answer: "Rather than crucifying Mubarak for refusing to become a Moscow puppet -- as other Arab leaders did -- the government of the United States would do well to thank him for thirty years of loyal cooperation, and to work with him toward preparing Egypt for a smooth transition to an Egyptian version of democracy. Otherwise, Egypt may become another long-term nightmare in the Middle East…."


UPDATE: President Mubarak resigned on February 11, 2011, and turned the government over to the military. I think that this is probably the best way out of the chaos in Egypt, but I wonder how the military will handle the power that has been handed to it. Will the military commander be like George Washington and hand power over to a person chosen by the people, or will he be like Napoleon? Egypt is now under martial control, but Egyptians are dancing in the streets of Cairo and saying, "Egypt is free."

What happens in Egypt now is anyone's guess, but the well-planned revolution was supported by communists, socialists, extreme Islamists, and community organizers. More days of "rage" are being planned for the following week. Will revolutions "cascade" over Jordan, Yemen, and other Middle Eastern countries and then move into European countries? People on the left are calling for revolution in America. Even President Obama said that the Egyptian unrest was caused mainly by young people and that the "change in Egypt will change the world." Are his words "code" for the young people in America to rise up? Only time will tell what happens, but democracy, liberty, and freedom are being strengthened worldwide!

Leaders of Germany, Great Britain, and France have all made statements about multiculturalism being bad for their countries, and yet leaders in America continue to support and defend people and religions that are calling for the downfall of democracy, capitalism, and the United States.