Turkey's Invisible Democratic Revolution

Since Attaturk, the Turkish military has served a the defender of a secular constitution in a country that was dominantly Muslim at the expense of majoritarian democracy. But, it appears that this role has now ended for good as the senior military leadership has been purged by the combination of dozens of arrests of senior military officials by civilian law enforcement authorities and the mass resignation of the remaining top military officers. It isn't entirely clear from half the world away to what extent the charges that have led to the arrests of military officers are valid and to what extent they are cover for a political purge.

It also isn't clear what made it possible for the arrests to be successfully carried out this time when in the past civilian authorities have seemed unable to carry out these kinds of arrests, although the generalized influences of the Arab Spring in the region could be a factor.

Turkey's days of military supremacy over civilian rule has ended, bringing it out of the classic newly emerging democracy phase of development. But, it isn't yet clear if the civilians who now have unquestioned supremacy will be able to avoid the temptations to engage in unconstitutional conduct or establish a religion in governmental affairs, which could be worse.

The example is a worthwhile one for American political scientists to examine because a similar strategy of civilian arrests of military leaders is essentially the only recourse in the U.S. Constitution should there ever be a threat of a coup in the United States and a coup is by far the most plausible end of regime scenario for the American system of government.

READ MORE - Turkey's Invisible Democratic Revolution

Life Sucks In Much Of The World

Much of Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Yemen, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, North Korea, Nepal and East Timor all made the 2011 top sixty failed states list of Foreign Policy magazine. A nation generally finds it way onto this list with dire poverty, political violence, and poor public health.

READ MORE - Life Sucks In Much Of The World

African and Near East Update

* South Sudan less than two weeks from becoming a new nation. There is still unfinished business and conflict, however. Nuba, which is geographically in North Sudan, but ethnically and politically more like South Sudan has seen continuing violent conflict within the last month and sees itself as stranded on the wrong side of the border. Ethiopian peacekeepers have moved into an oil rich contested border region that has seen recent clashes (also on the wrong side of the proposed border). Darfur (essentially all of Western rump Sudan) remains a powder-keg of disaffected people, if not the full fledged genocide in progress that it was - but independence won't necessarily help because the oppressed populations there are a minority. South Sudan also faces the challenges involved in having a tremendously uneducated people with an economy left in tatters by decades of war.

* Morocco has passed a new constitution that in theory turns the nearly absolute monarchy into a constitutional monarchy a bit like that of the British monarch in the period between that when the monarch was absolute and the one when the monarch was purely symbolic. The military and foreign affairs remain royal perogatives, but the elected legislature has a greater say in domestic affairs and the courts are supposed to be more independent. The Moroccan king is fairly popular at the moment, so in the short term it may not matter much.

* In Yemen, the beginning of the end of the dictatorship seems near as the ruling dictator is in exile, but violent unrest in the divided country continues as a new regime takes shape.

* The civil war in Libya, in which the Western powers have united against the outgoing regime is not at a stalemate, but the outgoing regime is seeing its power slip away slowly and domestic politics in the U.S. aren't strongly mobilized in favor of our halfway involvement.

* Sudan's reform protesters have been among the least successful of the Arab spring who were facing mere dictators rather than monarchs. They regime has not hestitated to kill many hundreds of protestors and to apprehend every able bodied man and boy in some villages. Refugees have poured into Turkey and Lebanon. In some cases, refugees first fled Iraq and now must flee again. Reform proposals have been half-hearted and not won popular support.

* Dissent was crushed in Saudi Arabia and in Bahrain (with Saudi support). There is discontent in these places, but it is only the usual boil, not of Arab spring proportions.

* Egypt seems to be struggling to consolidate the revolution. The old regime is gone, but the successor is not entirely clear. There were riots when police were acquitted for actions taken during the uprising.

* In Palestine, even elections for posts such as medical society board of directors have partisan contestants.  The Israeli imposed embargo of Gaza also increasingly appears to be counterproductive overkill as a relatively educated and healthy population is denied the means to import basic building supplies for civilian projects which must instead be smuggled into the area.  Greek forces headed off a high profile publicity boat mission there by human rights activists, but situation remains, as ever, unstable.

 * Vile suicide bombings continue in Afghanistan.  Iraq has been comparatively quite lately as the U.S. prepares its departure from the region.  Related to Afghanistan, militant leaks in the Pakistani security complex have been released and an apparently military linked hit killed a reporter who revealed those leaks.

READ MORE - African and Near East Update

Uganda Lets Anti-Gay Bill Die

Uganda is a country in East Africa at between mass violence torn Rwanda, Burundi, Congo, and Sudan that has itself experienced mass political violence (the best known being massacres by Ida Admin in the 1970s) in its recent history. Its purchased ties to Gaddafi have made it a pivotal in efforts to find a resolution of the situation in Libya, and it has plaed in active and mixed role in addressing regional conflicts.

Uganda is also remarkable for being a nation in Africa where the dominant political forces, sometimes violent, are the local brands of evangelical Christianity. This political wave has manifested itself in major social issue overhauls of its statutes, after long periods of legislative stagnation under less than democratic rule.

One recent wave of legislative change that received widespread praise was one of the most dramatic legislative reforms to establish women's equality and give women's rights that force of law in all of history in a given country as the direction of its constitutional court on April 4, 2007.

Another, which secured widespread international condemnation and massive popular support locally, was a virtulently anti-gay bill that has been considered by its parliament for the last eighteen months:

The Anti-Homosexuality Bill sought to impose the death penalty for a number of reasons, including being a “serial offender” of the “offense of homosexuality.” The bill also called for Ugandans to alert the government to known cases of homosexual behavior within 24 hours.

Religious leaders said they had obtained more than two million signatures in support of the measure[.] . . .

Since the bill was introduced, gay-rights advocates have gone into hiding in Uganda; a vitriolic newspaper published the names and addresses of gay men and lesbians and told readers to kill them; and one prominent activist for gay rights, David Kato, was bludgeoned to death with a hammer in his neighborhood outside Kampala.

The bill expired with Uganda's current legislative session on Friday, in a major victory for gay rights defenders and the international community. The far away legislative debate has made its way to American shores because missions of prominent American evangelical churches have been financial backers of the churches and political organizations that have been pivotal in backing the anti-gay legislation in Uganda. Pressure from gay rights activists on these churches, which often aren't known for their anti-gay stances in their U.S. activities, may be one important behind the scenes reason that the legislation has faltered in Uganda.

READ MORE - Uganda Lets Anti-Gay Bill Die

College Graduates Usually Live With Parents After Graduating

When I graduated from college, I went straight to law school, and from law school, straight to a home that my wife and I shared with no one else but our cat.  I've never moved back in with my parents and neither did my brother after he graduated from college, nor did either of our spouses.  But, this pattern is increasingly rare. 

A new survey discussed by Time Magazine finds that 85% of college graduates move back in with their parents after graduating from college.  The iconic modern American twentysomething is comic strip character Dustin, who spends days looking for jobs and nights at home with his parents, and his undead television comedy counterpart "George" (played by Ellen Muth) in the series "Dead Like Me," both of which presciently debuted before the current economy made their protagonists' experiences so routine.  What is driving the trend?

Times are undeniably tough. Reports have placed the unemployment rate for the under-25 group as high as 54%. Many of these unemployed graduates are choosing to go into higher education in an attempt to wait out the job market, while others are going anywhere — and doing anything — for work. Meanwhile, moving back home helps with expenses and paying off student loans.

Failure to launch, is no longer the exception.  It is the norm in the current economy.  This also helps to explain why more and more young twenty-somethings are deferring getting married and having kids.  Household formation rates are at record lows.  We are experience the baby boom in reverse.

The particularly troubling part is that missteps at the beginning of a career often have a disproportionate impact on a person's entire work life.  If this is really just a temporary bump in the road, it isn't that big a deal in the greater scheme of things, but this may be a far more serious case of a nascent lost generation.  When the economy picks up again, that big businesses and professional firms that would have hired people from the last few crops of college graduates to entry level jobs that put those hires on a path to high end careers are likely to hire almost entirely from the most recent crop of new graduates, rather than trying to locate promising talent that was missed in the prior years when hiring was stopped or slowed.  Even for those new graduates who wash out of their plum first jobs a few years later as firms winow out all but the most talented prospects whom they promote, not starting off at a plum job may make the difference between being able to pay off students loans in five years and being able to pay off student loans in twenty years.

For bright new college graduates, their prospects are not totally crushed.  The current bought of unemployment is probably cyclic.  When the economy comes back, there will be jobs and it is always better to be in the job market with a college degree than to be without one.  But, jobless new graduates are left in a particularly frustrating position.  While commentators like David Brooks wants to call them lazy, what can they do?

It’s difficult to argue that they need to go to college, because they did. It’s difficult to argue that they can’t move to new jobs (unlikely to be homeowners) or suffer high health care costs (doesn’t health care reform allow employers to push their health costs onto their parents’ employer?). Unless we think that the graduating class of 2008 is fundamentally worse than the graduate class of 2006 I don’t see a technology problem.

Also for fun, the graduating classes post-Recession have increasingly large student debt loans, which should lower the reservation wage they’ll accept due to liquidity pressures. So the idea that everyone 20-24 is on vacation is harder to accept compared to earlier years.

New college graduates emerging out into the world this year are no more, and no less than unlucky.  They should have been born a few years earlier or later than the year that I graduated from high school, but they weren't.

We can hope, at least, that this will be merely a temporary circumstance.  But, it isn't impossible that this trend will endure.  For example, one of the major forces driving Islamic terrorism in the world is the existence of an immense class of unemployed college graduates across the oil rich states of the Middle East and North Africa.  Indeed, the suicide of a once too often discouraged college graduate in Tunisia was the spark the set off the wave of revolutions that have dislodged or tried to remove authoritarian regimes across tthe regime.  Similarly, this phenomena has been the norm in Japan ever since it experienced its housing bubble collapse triggered lost decade, long before the financial crisis, and it has defined a whole generation since then.  There is not obvious end to that trend on the horizon in Japan.

READ MORE - College Graduates Usually Live With Parents After Graduating

Canadian election produces sea change in partisan landscape

Election results from the 2011 election in Canada for its 308 seat federal parliament dramatically changed the partisan landscape there.

Voters in ridings previously held by the Bloc Québécois defected en masse to the New Democratic Party, while about half the seats previously held by the Liberal party were split between the Conservative Party and the NDP.

The Conservative Party led by Stephen Harper increased its number of seats from 143 to 167, giving its a majority (which required 155 seats) with a certain amount of cushion against intraparty dissent. In the most recent parliament, the Conservative party has led parliament with a minority government in the absence of a firm multi-party coalition after both the 2006 and 2008 elections, and has been forced to seek support from other parties for legislation on a case by case basis. It won 39.6% of the popular vote. It picked up 26 seats from Liberal MPs, 2 from NDP MPs and one from an independent MP. The Conservative Party is dominant in the Prairie provinces of Alberta (27/28 seats), Saskatchewan (13/14 seats) and Manitoba (11/14 seats) where it commanded popular vote majorities. It also won 73/106 seats in Ontario, 21/36 seats in British Columbia, and 8/10 seats in New Brunswick, as well as the only seat for the Yukon and the only seat for Nunavut.

The modern Conservative Party in Canada is the product of a merger of the Canadian Alliance (formerly the Reform Party), which was stronger in the West, and Progressive Conservative party, which was stronger in the East, in 2003. While the Conservative Party is the farthest political party to the political right in Canada, and favors favours lower taxes, smaller government, more decentralization of federal government powers to the provinces, a tougher stand on "law and order" issues, and a more active role in foreign military operations than the other parties, it is still considerably more socially liberal than the American Republican party, for example, supporting civil unions for same sex couples, even though it does not support gay marriage. It might be compared to New England's Republicans in the American political spectrum.

The New Democrat party led by Jack Layton, a party of the left that previously held just 36 seats in parliament, became the leading opposition party with 102 seats and 30.6% of the popular vote. The NDP surrender two seats to the Conservative Party, while picking up six seats from the Conservative Party and one from an independent MP. Before the election, the center of mass in the NDP was in Ontario, now it is Francophone with a majority of its MPs hailing from Quebec. The NDP is a social-democratic successor to the Labour party in Canada and roughly corresponds in its political views to that of the progressive caucus of the Democratic Party in the United States.

The Liberal party led by Michael Ignatieff (who was defeated in his riding and resigned as party leader), a center-left party that has either governed (for 69 years of the 20th century) or been the leading opposition party in Canada for as long as anyone can remember went from holding 77 seats as the second largest political party to just 34, garnering 18.9% of the popular vote. Twenty-three of the seats it lost were picked up by the Conservative Party, while 17 were picked up by the New Democrats. Politically, the Liberal party roughly corresponds to the Democratic Party in the United States without its progressive caucus. Generally speaking, the Liberals are stronger relative to the NDP in the Maritimes, while the NDP is stronger relative to the Liverals in the West, and the two are evenly matched in Ontario.

The New Democrats and Liberals put forward a candidate in every seat, and the Conservative put forward a candidate in all but one of the ridings.

The nationalist Bloc Québécois under the leadership of Gilles Duceppe (who was defeated in his riding and resigned as party leader) was crushed, going from holding 49 seats following the 2008 election to holding just 4 seats (it contested 75 seats) and winning 6.0% of the popular vote (and less than a quarter of the popular vote in Quebec). At least 44 of the seats lost by the Bloc were picked up by the New Democrats. Quebec is now represented in Canada's federal parliament by 58 NDP representatives, 7 Liberals, 6 Conservatives, and 4 Bloc members (who no longer hold official party status). Historically, the Bloc has been a big tent on the liberal-conservative spectrum within the general boundaries of mainstream political stances in Canada. It isn't clear from where I stand if the mass defection of Bloc voters to the NDP is a one time blip over some recent political misstep, or a long run death knell for the federal wing of the Quebec nationalist movement.

The Green Party, whose party leader is Elizabeth May, which held no seats after the 2008 election (or in any prior one) won one seat in parliament (Elizabeth May in the riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands, in British Columbia) and garnered 3.9% of the popular vote (a decline from 6.8% in 2008). The Green Party contested all but four of the seats. The seat won by the Green Party was previously held by a Conservative Party MP. It's agenda is similar to that of the American Green Party.

Independents and unaffiliated candiates held two seats after the 2008 election, but won none in 2011. Sixty-one independent and unaffiliated candidates and thirteen minor parties also sought seats in the Canadian federal parliament without success. None of the minor parties won more than 0.1% of the popular vote.

Canada is to the left politically of the United States. About sixty percent of Canadians vote for political parties to the left of the Canadian Conservative Party, despite is majority victory due to the partisan divisions on the Canadian left, and it is itself to the left of the American Republican party. The median MP in the Canadian parliament is roughly comparable in politics to a Blue Dog Democrat.

Note that while parties of the left and center-left won a majority of the popular vote, that the conservative party was able to win a majority of the seats in parliament, because the political left split the vote among multiple candidates while the political right did not to nearly the same extent. This was particularly a factor in Ontario where the NDP and Liberal Party received almost equal shares of the popular vote, and combined received a majority of the popular vote, but received only about a quarter of the total number of MP seats contested in the election.

After many decades of having multiple viable political parties, the 2011 election seems to portend a shift to what might become a two party system in Canada, similar to that of the United States with a similar electoral system. The NDP and Liberal party will be under strong pressure in the wake of the 2011 to follow the lead of the parties of the right in Canada in 2003 and merge. A merged NDP and Liberal party would have easily won a majority of the seats in parliament in the 2011 election.

READ MORE - Canadian election produces sea change in partisan landscape

Monarchies and Theocracies

There are only ten self-styled monarchies in the world that are national, hereditary, and have genuine political power. There are seventeen more monarchs who are national hereditary monarchs, who have an overwhelmingly symbolic role with real power vested in a democratic government. The Pope, the Supreme Leader of Iran, and one of the co-princes of Andorra arguably fit the model of theocracy. The only women in this group are Queen Elizabeth II, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.

Many of the places with monarchies, with or without genuine power, and two of the three arguable theocracies, are mere city-states or postage stamp countries with little more territory that a decent sized U.S. county, small populations, and dependent relationships on nearby sovereign states.

All but one of the monarchies where the monarch has genuine political power, and Iran, the only significant sized theocracy, are Islamic. Most of these monarchies rely on oil wealth to maintain their supremacy. Swaziland is the only non-Islamic monarchy with genuine political power.

The shrinkage is notable, given the fact that less than two hundred years ago monarchs with genuine political power were the modal for of government in the world, and less than five hundred years ago you could count the number of democracies in the world on your fingers.

Yet, there is a case to be made that nations with constitutional monarchies have fared better than purely republican governments, by providing a unifying symbol and smoothing over moments of constitutional crisis. It is notable that none of the absolutist regimes to fall in North Africa and the Middle East in the last few months have been monarchies, which suggests that the legitimacy conferred by a monarchy may have practical value to a regime. Some of these monarchies, such as Jordan's King, have, however, taken steps to liberalize democratic components of their regimes. The West has pushed for decades, mostly to deaf ears, for the few remaining monarchies in which a monarch has genuine political power to cede more power to democratic forces via constitutional monarchy. There are other non-democratic governments in the world, of course, but most of pure dictators.

Hereditary Constitutional Monarchs

There are seventeen purely symbolic constitutional monarchs who a monarchs of thirty-two countries and their dependent territories, excluding the three countries discussed under theocracy in this post, and excluding some subnational constitutional monarchs of Africa and Asia (these exist or have existed in relatively recent times, in parts of Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Malaysia, Nigeria, Uganda, South Africa). There were also, in recent history, territorial leaders who amounted to monarchs in parts of Northwestern Pakistan who are not considered.

Queen Elizabeth II, whose second in line to the throne grandson William is scheduled to marry Kate Middleton this Friday is the constitutional monarch of sixteen different countries, some outside Europe, an almost entirely symbolic role. The nine other almost purely symbolic constitutional monarchs of Europe are King Albert II of Belgium, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein (population 34,761; 62 square miles), Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg (population 491,775; 998 square miles), Prince Albert II of Monaco (population 32,965; 1 square mile), Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands (population 16,715,999; 16,033 square miles), King Harald of Norway, King Juan Carlos I of Spain (population 40,525,002; 194,897 square miles), and King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden.

These monarchs have a presence in the Americas in Canada, Greenland, Belize, and a number of Caribbean island dependencies of European countries.

There are six Asian symbolic constitutional monarchs: King Jigme Khesar Namgyel of Bhutan, King Norodom Sihamoni of Cambodia, Emperor Akihito of Japan, King Mizan Zainal Abidin of Malyasia (elected for a limited term as premier king out of pool of regional hereditary monarchies of Malaysia), King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand (population 65,905,410; 198,457 square miles) and King Siaosi Tupou V of Tonga (population 120,898; 289 square miles).

There is one African symbolic constitutional monarch, King Letsie III of Lesotho (population 2,130,819; 1,720 square miles), a small landlocked state surrounded entirely by South Africa.

In practice, all of the symbolic constitutional monarchies are republics with elected officials who hold real political power. In each of these, the elected government, if supported by a popular referendum, could in practice, become monarchies in a bloodless or near bloodless change of form of government.

Genuine Monarchs

There are ten monarchs in the world (excluding six subnational monarchs in these monarchies) with genuine political power, many of which rule only tiny states.

There are two African monarchs with genuine political power: King Mswati III of Swaziland (population 1,123,913; 6,704 square miles) carved out of South Africa on its border with Mozambique, and King Mohammed VI of Morocco (population 34,859,364; 172,414 square miles).

There is one East Asian monarch with genuine political power: Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei, a tiny nation that is basically a city-state (population 388,190; 2,228 square miles) on the island of Borneo that is entirely surround by Malaysia and also shares the island with Indonesia.

The remaining seven monarchs with genuine political power are found on the Arabian Pennisula: King Hamad ibn Isa of Bahrain (population 727,785; 257 square miles), King Abdullah II of Jordan (population 6,342,948; 35,637 square miles), Emir Sabah al-Ahmad of Kuwait (population 2,691,158; 6,880 square miles), Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman (population 3,418,085; 82,031 square miles), Emir Hamad bin Khalifa of Qatar (population 833,285; 4416 square miels), King Abdullah bin Abdul‘aziz of Saudi Arabia (population 28,686,633; area 830,000 square miles), and President Khalifa bin Zayed of the United Arab Emirates (population 4,798,491; 32,278 square miles). The United Arab Emirates also has six other subnational Emirs, but the post of leading Emir does not rotate as it does the premier kingship in Malaysia.

The territory ruled by these seven Arabian monarchs in contiguous. Saudi Arabia, is by far the largest geographically, has by far the largest population of this group, has the most powerful military of the group, has shown that at least one of the others (Bahrain) is dependent upon it by militarily propping it up earlier this year, has the most aggregate wealth, and is home to the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Collectively, they control all of the Arabian Pennisula except Yemen. Sucession in Saudi Arabia is not strictly hereditary - a monarch is chosen by the royal family collectively from a group of men closely related to the King, rather than by automatic succession to a particular individual. This may be the case in some of the other monarchies of the region.

All of the monarchs with genuine political power are men.

In addition, North Korea, by virtue of an imminent second successive father to son transfer of power as an absolute dictatorship, comes close to being a monarchy where the monarch has genuine political power in practice, despite the fact that this has not been how the regime has chosen to characterize itself so far.

Theocracies

Vatican City (population 826, 0.17 square miles) under the rule of Pope Benedict XVI, and Iran under Shi'ite cleric and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, are the only theocracies in the world, defined as states in which significant sovereign temporal power resides in a non-hereditary religious leadership. Both of them are men.

The Pope has absolute power when living although he is expected to stay within the boundaries of a nearly two thousand year old religious tradition and under a collective church leadership between the death of one Pope and the election of another by a college of Cardinals. The Pope's authority over Vatican City is a minor part of his overall responsibilities as leader of the Roman Catholic Church, and Vatican City, in practice, exists only with the consent and cooperation of the government of the Italian Republic that surrounds it.

Iran has an elected unicameral legislature and an elected President and parliament, selected in elections that are not free and fair, and are subject to significant religious and political interference through limitations on those who are eligible to be candidates, restrictions on speech and debate, and tampering with election results. But, Iran's elections are also not those of an absolutely dictatorial state in which there is only a single choice that is a foregone conclusion for every political office. The Supreme Leader controls the military, the police, the judiciary, the state owned media, war and peace level foreign affairs, and half of a Council of Guardians that controls ballot access and acts of a constitutional court with a constitution that incorporates Islamic law. The Supreme Leader also appoints an Assembly of Experts made up of clerics who theoretically are a check on the Supreme Leaders authority with the power to remove him from office and direct his decisions, and in fact are little more than a Shi'ite College of Cardinals or a corporate board of directors. Arguably, Iran's Supreme Leader who has held power since the Islamic Revolution in 1979 that deposed the Shah is simply a dictator or elective monarch in the mold of a President for Life who has devolved some political power. The Supreme Leader does not clearly seem to have a hereditary successor in mind.

There are other states with established religions that have significant power, but in all of the others there is a secular leadership with far more predominant power than in Vatican City and Iran.

Arguably Andorra (population 83,888; 181 square miles) which is ruled in name by Archbishop Joan Enric Vives Sicília and French President Nicolas Sarkozy as Co-Princes, neither hereditary and symbolically only, fits the bill of a theocracy as well, but it is really a unique arrangement, that is closest to a constitutional monarchy in practice.

Other Non-Democratically Ruled Areas

There are many dictators in the world, some of whom are relatives of the prior dictators, who do not claim monarch status and are not as close to a de facto monarchy as North Korea.

There are also many countries which formally have some form of Republic that are neither entirely democratic with free and fair elections and a secure rule of law, nor entirely dicatorial and authoritarian. These flawed democracies rule much of the world's territory and population. Some like China, are one party states where power is not totally concentrated in a supreme leader and there is non-hereditary succession, but there are strong restrictions on political activity. Others are democracies acting in the shadow of military authority that poses a genuine check and influence on the elected officials who formally rule, countries in the process of transitioning to new democratic regimes (e.g. South Sudan and Egypt), and countries organized on a republican basis with elections but not free and fair ones.

There are also many colonies and dependencies and territories of otherwise democratic regimes that lack democratic self-government or full democratic self-government.

Finally, there are a few pockets of the world, such as parts of Somolia today, and parts of Afghanistan prior to 2002, that are effectively stateless, because no governmental arrangement, other than illegitimate petty warlords, has authority in a particular area.

READ MORE - Monarchies and Theocracies

Libya As A Blood Sport

Gaddafi and the rebels are gladiators in a blood contest confined to a Libyan arena whose terms are controlled by the international community. In this contest Gaddafi has already received the thumbs down from a modern Casear.

Four months ago, Gaddafi was the unquestioned absolute ruler of his country, as he had been for forty years, and there was not even an organized political opposition. Now, the writing is on the wall.

With that kind of reality to face, perhaps it isn't surprising that most of the assertions that Gaddafi's regime have been lies so bald faced that they appear delusional.

The inevitabilty of the outcome boils down to one key fact: Libya is not a viable autarky.

Libya runs on oil wealth (with imports make up more than 28% of its domestic consumption) and without export revenues, mostly oil, it would swiftly collapse. It is not food self-sufficient. It does not have a significant domestic arms industry. It can't make its own cars or medicines, and certainly can't do so with domestic materials. It can only use its $60 billion in international financial reserves and 4.62 million troy ounces of gold reserves if the international financial community recognizes the authority of someone to use those resources, which Gaddafi's regime is not at the moment. A brief NATO intervention has already rendered its air force, its navy, its tanks and its heavy artillery useless.

Until now, the international community has respect Gaddafi's legitimacy and Libya's sovereignty, allowing the nation to keep oil wealth that the outside world was perfectly capable of taking by force. With international recognition of his legitimate authority as head of state lost, his days are numbered.

Libya has already lost the support of the international community. The UN authorized international coalitions to impose a no-fly zone, embargo it from arms, and freeze the nations assets (and the assets of Gaddafi and his inner circle). New regimes in Tunisia and Egypt are no longer allies. Convoys of resources brought across the Sahara from Algeria, Niger, Chad or Sudan would be obvious to spy satellites and reconnaisance aircraft, and could be stopped by NATO airplanes if they wished.

Chad is not friend, it had to drive out Libya forces in an international war that just ended in 1987. Italy, whose prime minister Berlusconi had pleaded $5 billion in aid a reparations for Italy's 32 years of colonial rule in 2008 is not going to honor its promise through a Gaddafi lead regime. Sudan has its own discontented masses, international sanctions (including a war crimes indictment for its sitting head of state), the loss of its Southern provinces in an independence referrendum, and ongoing insurgency in Darfur, and more to worry about. Niger's totalitarian dictator has to worry about escaping the North African revolutionary trend, is one of the poorest nations in the world, and has a Tuareg insurgency (one that probably draws considerable succor from Libyan benefactors as Saharan tribal groups are at the heart of the Libyan state apparatus) to try to keep from reinvigorating itself. Gaddafi has always bought himself friends in the past, but the only country still willing to stick its neck out for him now is Uganda, which is ill suited to be a capable ally. Moreover, strong reliance on predominantly Christian Ugandan support would turn Islamist forces against Gaddafi in a way that might impair his own coalition.

Most of Libya's oil comes from oil fields in the East and leaves via ports near rebel controlled Benghazi, and the international community has a special military interest in preventing Gaddafi from gaining control of those resources.

International forces aren't getting their hands dirty by putting troops on the ground in Libya, where rebels and forces loyal to Gaddafi fight each other. But, Libya is so dependent upon resources that they control and is so weak itself, that NATO can control the terms of the battle. If NATO decides that it is unhappy with the way that the battle is playing out in this arena, it has the power to change the rules.

Realistically, there is no easy to visualize face saving way that the international community could restore access to the resources they control to Gaddafi in the absence of a treaty concluded with the rebels. Gaddafi direct role in the Locherbie, Scotland aircraft bombing has been established by defectors. He will likely be linked to other terorist acts against Western interests by defectors. His conduct of the civil war and his delusional statements during it have forever proven him to be a violent madman. If he managed to crush the rebels militarily, despite NATO involvement, he would be viewed in the international community as an illegitimate butcher and denied access to international trade, military resources and the country's foreign assets apart from some sort of oil for food arrangement.

Without a treaty and if he fails to crush the rebel regime based in Benghazi, the rebels will probably be granted exclusive use of the oil resources they control and Libya's sovereign wealth, the arms embargo and no-fly zone and NATO coalition efforts to stop the use of heavy weapons by Gaddafi will continue, foreign oil companies will not send workers back to Gaddafi controlled oil fields and pipelines, rebels will manage to destroy the pipelines necessary to bring that oil to market, and Libya-Tripoli will lose a war of attrition. The mercenaries loyal to Gaddafi critical to keeping him in power will mutiny sooner or later when it becomes clear that they will not be paid. The standard of living will collapse. The oasis farmers and herders who are loyal to Gaddafi won't be able to produce enough food to feed the Eastern part of the country without outside support. Western rebels, even if forced to go underground, will fester as a resistance force striking whenever the Gaddafi regime can't catch them. Gaddafi has lost the option of transitioning to a constitutional regime that democratizes and liberalizes while leaving him a role as head of state in some capacity.

The exact way that the end game will play out isn't clear, so the spectators can still watch with baited breath. Will the rebels rally and seize the rest of the country? Will international forces increase their involvement and end it? Will covert CIA and other international covert assistance give the rebels a decisive edge? Will Egypt or Tunisia or France intervene more directly to topple Gaddafi? Will Gaddafi's mercenaries, loyal military officers and inner circle stage a coup or defect? Will a stable stalemate be reached and produce a treaty or armistice or enduring cease fire that splits Libya into two or three different countries? Will Gaddafi be killed or die or flee leaving his forces leaderless to surrender? Will Gaddafi crush the rebels and control the entire country, but hold onto only an internationally isolated shambles of a nation until he dies in a prolonged seige? Will pretenders to a monarchy mobilize the rebels with the promise of a constitutional monarchy regime?

In an age where targeted killing is U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan and in the global war on terror, can we doubt that CIA operatives in Libya are authorized to assassinate Gaddafi and his top aides?

The civil war in Libya is still young. The ability of internationally supported forces in Ivory Coast to forcibly remove the incumbent president who lost the Presidential election with French military support offers hope that this struggle need not be a long one. Libya is not a huge country. Gaddafi controls no more than 4 million or so of the country's 6.3 million people, and only a fraction of the 76,000 soldiers the nation had before the civil war began. While Libya's territory is vast, almost of the people the combatants are fighting for control over live close to the coast. There isn't any obvious way that the Gaddafi regime will be decisively ended, but there is no obvious way that it can restore its prior tranquility, wealth and international stature either.

The lesson of post-Cold War conflicts in Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbajain, Bahrain, Bosnia, Georgia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Moldova, and now Libya has been that in a post-Cold War world, international powers often can and will intervene decisively to determine the outcome of military conflicts according to their interests and international norms, and that Third World dictators can't count on not facing consequences for their actions. A new generation of leaders watched Star War I and decided that real world Naboos don't deserve to suffer in the face of international indifference. The world order that the League of Nations tried to bring into being after World War I, and that the United Nations tried to bring into being after World War II has finally arrived.

We aren't all of the way there yet. Letting local forces engage in blood sports to determine who will win control while providing decisively outside influence, as the United States did when it intervened on behalf of the Northern Coalition that was losing a war for control of Afghanistan with the Taliban in 2001 has become a model, while the model of the Iraq War, in which foreign forces occupy and rule a country with their own troops to effect regime change, viewed through the lens of previous failure in Vietnam, has been determined in hindsight to be a model not to be repeated if at all possible. Decisive large scale military intervention not limited in scope would probably end the fighting sooner, but the widespread fear is that local forces who aren't capable of securing territory on the ground by themselves won't be capable of holding onto it either. So, the international community has decided that it can manage to set the rules of engagement, but not to fight the battles within the arena itself.

Western powers aren't the only superpowers in these cases. Bahrain has established that small Arab monarchies can't survive an uprising without ceding power to the masses or relying on Saudi Arabian military support. The Saudi military could put up a fight with the military resources that the United States has provided it for year after year in the arrangements designed to earn Arab acceptance of Israel reached in the Camp David Accords, but Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman would be finished without Saudi Arabian support in the face of foreign or domestic military opposition. Yemen, which as a no monarchy has ceded Saudi backing has proved that to be the case. Morocco and Jordan, while still absolute monarchies, have learned that they must heed public opinion if their regimes wants to remain in power. The King of Swaziland must know that a serious offense to either South Africa or other international parties that make his regime possible could snuff out his regime in a matter of days without serious repurcussions if a genuine domestic uprising took hold. Lesotho's regime is similarly situated.

READ MORE - Libya As A Blood Sport

Yemen Falls Apart Again

For most of my life, Yemen was two countries, North Yemen and South Yemen.  Then it unified.  Then, Tunsia's revolution spread and its generals decided to back the protesters after a massacre by snipers of men, women and children who were protesting for change, forcing the local dictator to make major concessions.  Now, six of its eighteen provinces are no longer under central government control with some Northern and some Southern provinces operating autonomously.

READ MORE - Yemen Falls Apart Again

War

U.S. military involvement in the civil war in Libya began today, as part of a coalition of forces including Britain and France.

More than 110 Tomahawk missiles fired from American and British ships and submarines hit about 20 Libyan air and missile defense targets in western portions of the country, U.S. Vice Adm. William Gortney said at a Pentagon briefing. . . . The salvo, in an operation dubbed "Odyssey Dawn," was meant "to deny the Libyan regime from using force against its own people," said Gortney. . . .

Earlier, French fighter jets deployed over Libya fired at a military vehicle Saturday, the first strike against Gadhafi's military forces, which earlier attacked the rebel stronghold of Benghazi.

Prime Minister David Cameron said late Saturday that British forces also are in action over Libya. . . . British Defense Secretary Liam Fox said the Royal Air Force deployed Tornado GR4 fast jets, which flew 3,000 miles from the United Kingdom and back, "making this the longest-range bombing mission conducted by the RAF since the (1982) Falklands conflict."

While there were no U.S. warplanes flying over Libya late Saturday, the coalition was softening Libyan positions before enforcing a no-fly zone, Gortney said. . . .

Obama is planning for the U.S. portion of the military action in Libya to only last for a few days, according to a senior administration official, who was not authorized to speak about sensitive military matters. "After that we'll take more of a supporting role," the senior official said.

Obama authorized U.S. military force from Brazil on what happened to be the eighth anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq. . . .

Earlier Saturday, incoming artillery rounds landed inside Benghazi, and pro-Gadhafi tanks rolled into the town firing rounds, witnesses said. A flaming fighter jet plummeted from the sky, nose-diving to the ground. Khaled el-Sayeh, the opposition military spokesman, said the plane was an old MiG-23 that belonged to the rebels.

As night fell over Benghazi on Saturday, the city became quiet and calm. While plumes of smoke could be spotted, the pro-Gadhafi tanks seen earlier were not in sight. . . . Gadhafi forces had withdrawn from the city and that they were positioned 50 kilometers (31 miles) outside Benghazi.

The war in Libya joins the ongoing active military operations of the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, although the operation in Iraq is winding down. So far, the Libya operation does not involve significant numbers of U.S. ground troops, who are taxed from other operations, instead relying mostly on U.S. Navy and Air Force resources, which are far less strained.

The prevailing assumption behind the outside intervention, authorized by the United Nations Security Council, is that it will decisively shift the course of the conflict in Libya by denying Gaddafi the one edge he has in hte conflict, superior access to heavy weapontry, such as fighter jets, helicopters, artillery batteries and tanks. Another possible but not certain possibility is that senior Gaddafi supporters, particularly those in the military, will see that their plight is hopeless and abandon his regime.

READ MORE - War

Bullies

Earlier this week, I went to my son's elementary school play. It was a series of skits put together by groups of several kids each in the drama class as part of the bullying prevention program at the school (with vocal and instrumental renditions of "Stand by me" as an intermezzo between each one).

A pattern illustrating the operational lesson that the children had learned from the program quickly emerged. A kid ("the target"), usually alone, gets bullied, sometimes by a bully alone, and sometimes by a ring leader and some henchmen. While alone, that kid can't win. But, another kid or group of kids intervenes on behalf of the kid being bullied and prevail - sometimes by force of numbers and sometimes combined with an appeal to authority (the principal or in a particularly overwhelming situation, a cell phone call to the cops).

The lesson seemed to be that you can't stop a bully alone, and when you are being bullied are often in a poor position to help yourself without assistance. After all, you were singled out when you were alone precisely because you were perceived in the first place, often accurately, as vulnerable. But, the program argues, you as a member of the school community have a moral obligation to help out your fellow students when they are in this kind of bind, because the secret to overcoming a bully is to have allies. The key ingredient that the program seeks to internalize in the kids and drill into their consciousness by repetition is that there is a moral duty to intervene on behalf of kids who are being bullied. Kids need to stand by each other to stay safe.

While the scenes weren't very realistic, the basic strategy that was proposed is plausible and the virtue of seeing a solution to the problem in terms of social context and personal obligation to others in the community is a refreshing and useful lesson for the kids that can extend far beyond the school yard.

As a practical matter, resorting to authority without peer support is often not very effective, and the old standby of the last generation - learning to box or do karate, reinstated into the debate by a Chinese setting remake of the Karate Kid movie, also doesn't work that well in real life. But, peer support does work, and the intervention of someone else on your behalf can make all the difference and resolve the problem in a stable way.

Moreover, this kind of strategy doesn't have to be completely successful to its full extent to work. As long as a small minority of kids in stronger positions than the target of the bullying are induced to intervene when necessary, and a great majority are induced to be less inclined to encourage or support the bullies, the strategy will work. A community in which a significant minority of kids who are in reasonably secure social positions feel a moral obligation to stand by isolated vulnerable kids who are being bullied and are ready to act on it is a community in which bullying is likely to become an undesirable option for would be bullies.

Bullies and Foreign Affairs

A natural analog to this view is what I see as an emerging conventional wisdom in foreign policy and military affairs. The single most decisive factor in determining the outcome of wars is who each side has as allies are in the conflict, and who watches without getting involved. Similarly, cops almost always win in individual confrontations with criminals because they can resort to the resources of a much larger and more cohesive team. Only when criminals band together into gangs, or organized crime families or cartels do they pose a serious challenge to police authority.

The protesters in Egypt and Tunisia couldn't have prevailed if the armed forces in those countries hadn't refused to back the current dictator. Protesters in Bahrain look doomed to failure because Saudi Arabia and other little Gulf monarchies have sent in troops to back that regime.

Protesters in Libya had a harder go of it because Gaddafi was able to utilize family ties and mercenaries to secure greater loyalty from his troops. The willingness of the French to stick out their neck and recognize the rebels in Libya as the legitimate government of Libya, an international consensus to freeze sovereign wealth and leadership group wealth, and yesterday's UN Security Council vote to authorize military force against Gaddafi (with usually anti-interventionist permanent members of the Security Council abstaining rather than vetoing the action) supported by the Arab League, British and French and American military might, and Qatar has changed that game, forcing Gaddafi to reverse his course of action by declaring a cease fire and probably insuring victory for the rebels, at least in the Eastern Benghazi area.

The Taliban were swiftly removed from power because they too found no international allies in the wake of 9-11. Serbia, in contrast, was able to maintain its control over Kosovo for much longer, with Russian backing, and Russian backing has been key to determining who prevails and who does not in conflicts over control in the Caucasus republics. Iraq's lack of allies against broad international coalitions in both the first Gulf War and the Iraq War, led to its defeat in each. Kuwait's ability to secure allies allowed it to resurface despite the fact that it had been crushed militarily and occupied by Iraq.

Tibet fell because no one inside our outside the Chinese government intervened on its behalf against China in 1959. Hungarian reformers in the 1950s, Czech reformers in the wake of the Prague Spring, and Chinese protesters in Beijing were defeated for the same reasons. Outside support from France was important to the success of the Americans in the American revolution. In World War II, decision of the United States to stop sitting on the sidelines was pivotal to the resolution of the conflict.

Until a couple of generations ago, the basic public policy stance on domestic violence was that "what happens in the home is not anyone else's business." And, the basic public policy stance on foreign affairs was that sovereignty provided local political leaders absolute authority to run their domestic affairs as they saw fit.

The attitude towards domestic violence has changed. Now, we arrest people who beat their wives and kids, and people who know about it feel some moral responsibility to summon outside intervention.

The attitude towards sovereignty has changed too, albeit more slowly. The Holocaust, reinforced by examples like genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda and Cambodia, and the rediscovery of the Armenian genocide in Anatolia, have helped shape that attitude. In U.S. history, something akin to this view (i.e. that the Civil War was justified because it freed the slaves) legitimatizes the U.S. Civil War. We no longer trust that those in political power will show enough restraint to prevent epic catastrophes in the absence of outside intervention. Increasingly, the international community feels that political leaders for show excessive brutality towards their own people forfeit their sovereign immunity from outside intervention. The international community increasingly feels a moral obligation to intervene on behalf of nations that are being bullied by their neighbors and domestic populations that are being bullied by their leaders.

Even Russia and China have reached a point where they are not going to object to international military intervention when a leader who has lost the support of half of his own military and many of his senior civil servants starts attacking his own people with jet fighters, and promising to slaughter whole cities that have risen up against him. And, even now, this support comes only with the implicit understanding that the international community is intervening only to the extent necessary to prevent mass slaughter of civilians and level the playing field.

Sovereignty still trumps a wide panoply of repressions. Apartheid was sanctioned, but direct intervention wasn't taken; the international community waited for it to collapse from within. Isolated unjustified killings of individuals aren't enough to forfeit it. Very repressive regimes, like those of Burma and North Korea are tolerated. Disregard for electoral outcomes or electoral fraud don't provoke international intervention, nor do illegal coups. But, we have at least reached the point where large scale killings of one's own people crosses a line, after which outside intervention is viewed as acceptable if anyone can be found to volunteer to take on the task.

The citizens of nation that is repressed can secure meaningful international intervention only by taking to the streets or taking up arms, and producing a response from the leaders of that nation that crosses the line.

Still, the international community has advanced from a situation where there truly wasn't any authority beyond the sovereign to one a bit like Medieval Iceland, which had courts to adjudicate when someone's misdeeds rose to the level that justified action, because executing that order, once rendered, was a private affair to be organized and financed by those who show an interest in taking action. Similarly, off the coast of Somalia, the international community has reached a consensus that Somali pirates are legitimate targets, but this determination is being enforced by a loose knit collection of national naval assets.

Excessive isolationism and respect for sovereignty sends a message that greater misconduct by national leaders will be tolerated; while an international community in which some kinds of domestic conduct is viewed as unacceptable and likely to provoke international intervention with real consequences discourages this kind of misconduct by national leaders.

READ MORE - Bullies

Friday News Dump

In Colorado

* Colorado's unemployment rate in February, of 9.1%, is the highest the state has experienced since the Great Depression and above the national rate of 8.9%. The oil bust of the early 1980s brought the rate to its previous peak of 8.8%. Also, unemployment estimates for Colorado over the last couple of years turn out to have been greatly understated, since the census revealed that the population figures used in making the original unemployment predictions were too low in high unemployment areas. Colorado's record lowest unemployment, since 1976, was at the turn of the millenium when it dropped to a little under 3%.

State officials have blamed migration to Colorado and the decision of many people who have given up looking for work to return to the workforce. Still, the fact that unemployment is climbing, rather than falling, long after the "recovery" in GDP terms has been underway, is discouraging. Unemployment is alawys a lagging indicator, but the employment situation has been worse and longer lived in the current employment recession than any since the Great Depression.

* Despite an immense state budget deficit, House Republicans in Colorado are still proposing large new tax cuts, in excess of $60 million.

* Colorado's proposed state budget will include more cuts to the Fort Logan psychiatric hospital, continuing a trend of decreasing mental health hospital capacity. The current cuts would close a juvenile ward that current houses an average of a dozen inpatients. The Joint Budget Committee argues that private facilities in the state offer the same services at a lower price and can handle another dozen patients.

In Other State Legislatures

* Both houses of Wisconsin's state legislature has passed a bill ending collective bargaining for public sector workers in Wisconsin's state and local governments. Republican Governor Walker has promised to sign the bill, which he championed. Naturally, the bill received voted only from Republicans, and a few Republicans broke ranks to join with Democrats in opposing it. Protests continue in Madison, with farmers set to encicle the state capitol with tractors next. Public opinion in Wisconsin has shifted decisively away from the Republicans and towards President Obama and the public employees unions in Wisconsin as a result of the union fight. Recall efforts are underway targeting a number of legislative anti-union Republicans, although it isn't clear if these will make the ballot or have a realistic chance at succeeding. Similar efforts are making progress in other Republican controlled states.

* The Governor of Illinois signed a bill abolishing the death penalty in that state, appropriating the funds that would have been used for death penalty litigation to a trust for murder victims, and pardoned the fifteen people on death row there. Illinois is the 16th state in the United States to abolish the death penalty.

* Kentucky has joined the list of states addressing state budget shortfalls with sentencing reforms, particularly with milder sentences for non-violent drug users.

Kentucky . . . became the latest to make the shift when Gov. Steve Beshear signed into law a measure increasing spending on rehabilitation programs and intensive drug testing. The law also reduces penalties for many drug offenses and may allow some traffickers and users of smaller amounts of drugs to avoid prison.

Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania are among those that have pending bills to reduce penalties for drug offenders, in some cases by directing defendants into treatment programs. Similar laws have taken effect in South Carolina, Colorado and New York in recent years. States have maintained stiff penalties for more-serious drug crimes.

While the changes are part of broader belt-tightening efforts, they also reflect a growing belief among state lawmakers that prosecuting drug offenders aggressively often fails to treat their underlying addiction problems and can result in offenders cycling in and out of prisons for years — a critique long voiced by groups that advocate in favor of defendants' rights. . .

The state measures mark a sharp retreat from the war on drugs, which gathered steam in the 1980s and '90s with mandatory-minimum and three-strikes prison sentences that resulted in some drug offenders being locked up for decades. Drug arrests nationwide climbed from about 580,000 in 1980 to about 1.6 million in 2009, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Although some states started rethinking drug punishment before the recession, many more states have come on board in the past two years. In 2007, Texas began shifting more drug offenders away from prison, which helped hold down the inmate population. The changes cost $241 million, less than half what the state anticipated it would have spent to build three new prisons.

* Ohio's criminal sentencing commission has released a new report on the causes of that state's prison overcrowding problem. According to the report, "recent growth in Ohio’s prison population — even with mandatory sentences and scores of bills that increase penalties for particular offenses — is not driven primarily by intake (although it is a factor). It’s largely fueled by increases in inmates’ average length-of-stay."

* Connecticut voters in a survey favored the decriminalization of marijuana (79% favor medical marijuana and 65% favor decriminalization), legalizing Sunday liquor sales (65%), and reinstating the death penalty (68% up from 59% in 2005 after a high profile murder). But, majorities there don't favor allowing grocery stores to sell wine or liquor. Connecticut currently has a death penalty but its legislature is considering repealing it.

* Connecticut last year joined a list of states that automatically treat some teens under the age of eighteen as adults in the criminal justice process; New Hampshire changed its law in 2008. Similar proposals are pending in Massachusetts, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. The only other state that automatically tries some teens under the age of eighteen as adults is New York State. Budget savings and increased sensitivity to the distinctiveness of juvenile offenders has prompted the changes. For example, a recent study found that:

[I]nmates in adult facilities (surprisingly) give better reports than youth in juvenile facilities on several measures (including criminal activity and victimization), they also fare much worse on other measures. Importantly, the inmates in adult facilities report substantially and significantly greater rates of PTSD and mental illness symptoms, and are much more likely to be afraid for their safety, compared to those in juvenile facilities.

Colorado never had a law that automatically tried older teens under the age of eighteen as adults, but did give prosecutors the authority to directly file many serious criminal charges against older juveniles as adults without court approval; that authority was recently narrowed by Colorado's General Assembly.

* California is building a new death row prison at a projected cost of $356 million, as a partial response to federal prison overcrowding litigation in the state, in which inmates have been successful on the merits, but not seen many results.

California has 713 inmates awaiting execution. . . . By comparison, Florida ranked second, with 398, and Texas was third at 337. . . About 700 condemned men are confined at San Quentin, north of San Francisco, in facilities built to hold 554, according to the Corrections Department’s website. (Nineteen women face execution and are held in Chowchilla, a prison in the Central Valley.) On average, the men are likely to spend 17 years in the aging cell blocks, according to the prison system. . . . Since 1978, when California reinstated capital punishment, 53 condemned inmates have died from natural causes while on death row. Eighteen committed suicide and 13 were executed. Six died from other causes.

Other Domestic News

* Long Island Republican Congressman King has launched hearings in the House Homeland Security Committee into the radicalization of Islam, over objections that this amounts of a McCarthyistic inquiry that is singling out a single religion that may incite further terrorist sentiment against the United States.

* In Skinner v. Switzer, the U.S. Surpeme Court found, in a narrow 6-3 decision, that a Section 1983 civil rights suit by a death row inmate (as opposed to a habeas corpus suit) was not procedurally barred by prison litigation reform statutes. The inmate challenged an interpretation of a Texas law that prevented him from securing post-conviction access to DNA evidence in his muder case that might implicate another suspect (now dead). The court ruled in his favor because DNA testing itself does not necessarily lead to the setting aside of his conviction, as it could show that he is guilty or be inconclusive (and hence is not duplicative of habeas corpus relief), and does not violate the Rooker-Feldman doctrine because while a "state-court decision is not reviewable by lower federal courts . . . a statute or rule governing the decision may be challenged in a federal action"). The ruling also provided yet another case where heightened pleading standards in federal civil litigation were held not to bar a straightforward lawsuit brought by a prisoner.

* Excessive federal child pornography laws continue to produce absurd results:

In the spring and summer of 2006, Eric Rinehart, at the time a 34-year-old police officer in the small town of Middletown, Indiana, began consensual sexual relationships with two young women, ages 16 and 17. One of the women had contacted Rinehart through his MySpace page. He had known the other one, the daughter of a man who was involved in training police officers, for most of her life. Rinehart was going through a divorce at the time. The relationships came to the attention of local authorities, and then federal authorities, when one of the girls mentioned it to a guidance counselor. Whatever you might think of Rinehart's judgment or ethics, his relationships with the girls weren't illegal. The age of consent in Indiana is 16. . . . Rinehart got into legal trouble because one of the girls mentioned to him that she had posed for sexually provocative photos for a previous boyfriend and offered to do the same for Rinehart. Rinehart lent her his camera, which she returned with the promised photos. Rinehart and both girls then took additional photos and at least one video, which he downloaded to his computer.

In 2007 Rinehart was convicted on two federal charges of producing child pornography. U.S. District Court Judge David Hamilton, who now serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, reluctantly sentenced Rinehart to 15 years in prison. Thanks to mandatory minimum sentences, Hamilton wrote, his hands were tied. There is no parole in the federal prison system. So barring an unlikely grant of clemency from the president, Rinehart, who is serving his time at a medium-security prison in Pennsylvania, will have to complete at least 85 percent of his term (assuming time off for good behavior), or nearly 13 years.

* An NPR executive resigned after remarking in a secretly recorded conversation that the Tea Party was full of racists, despite the fact that this is true.

* Oil prices are rising on Mideast turmoil.

* Blockbuster, the dominant player in the storefront video rental market, reached an agreement with its creditors to be auctioned as a business to the highest bidder, rather than having its assets liquidated. Netflix, video on demand, and kiosk video rentals have destroyed its profitability. The chain, which grew dramatically through acquisition of competitors, also probably simply had too many stores for the market's demand and hasn't been able to shutter them fast enough. For example, in Denver at 6th Avenue and Grant Street, it once had two stores less than a block apart - both are now shuttered.

* Department store H&M has decided to open up stores in greater Denver, with the Saks location at the Cherry Creek Mall which is closing likely to be one of them.

Abroad

* Japan has had two major earthquakes in the last week. One was magnitude 7.2 on the Richter scale, and the last night there was an 8.8 magnitude quake that also gave rise to a Tsunami that reached as far as Hawaiii this morning and will be experienced as far off as Peru. The first Japanese quake produced only minimal damage. The current one killed about a hundred people and led to considerable property damage in a few industrial areas mostly from the tsunami waves rather than the earthquake itself. Similar magnitude earthquakes in Iran, Indonesia and Haiti have produced massive loss of life and long term devistation, but Japan's earthquake conscious building codes and better prepared people prevented the damage from being greater. A smaller earthquake in China this weak produced loss of life and property damage comparable to that experienced by last night's massive quake.

* Civil war continues to rage in Libya and France has recognized the rebels as the legitimate government of the country; NATO nations remain reluctant to intervene militarily there. Egyptians will vote on amendments to military proposed amendments its constitution this month to prepare for prompt democratic elections that will transfer power from a military council to civilians. Protestors in Jordan have complained that a new prime minister is stalling on proposals for political reforms, using the fact that the country's 32 political parties are too fragmented to produce quality elections; the main democratic reform that has been demanded is to shift control of the executive branch from the king to a prime minster selected by parliament. Police in a predominantly Shi'ite part of Saudi Arabia shot five protestors at a small demonstration; protests in the absolute monarchy have been muted compared to elsewhere in the region - in part because Saudi Arabia is more repressive and in part because the current Saudi King is popular with majority Sunnis in the country.

* The Daili Lama in Tibet proposed on the anniversary of the day of Tibet's failed 1959 bid to free itself from China, to transfer political power of the government in exile to elected leaders, leaving himself and his successors as spiritual leaders only. Proposed succession to his position is currently unclear as he has also proposed reforms to the traditional approach rooted in the notion that he is reincarnated. China remains officially outraged at any talk of Tibetan independence, or the notion that Taiwan is not part of China. China is also cracking down in an effort to prevent the Jasmine revolution of the Middle East from spreading to it.

Medicine

* A drug to prevent the spread of M.S. has worked in a mouse model. A mouse model of a drug to treat Alzheimer's disease and damage from minor strokes in the brain has also been successful. A new drug to treat lupus has come on the market. Progress has been made in developing a new class of anti-malaria drugs based on a chemotherapy drug.

READ MORE - Friday News Dump

Liberated Libyans Control Its Oil

As shown on the map above, from here, Tripoli, which is still controlled by Gaddafi's regime for the moment, in not connected to the main oil resources of Libya, which are found in the "Liberated" area of Libya. International asset freezes of the sovereign wealth of Libya in Western investments, and of the assets of Gaddafi and his close associates, further deprives him of financial resources, as does the reality that no international banker in his right mind would lend money to Gaddafi or his rump regime. NPR notes that oil shipments to Chinese tankers out of Benghazi in the East, which is rebel controlled, have already resumed.

Neither the Fezzan oasis societies, which apparently remain loyal to Gaddafi, nor the economic output of Tripoli, are at the heart of the economic lifeblood of Libya. It is a relatively pure version of a petrostate. Indeed, from the perspective of liberated East Libyans, if Tripoli remains under Gaddafi's thumb, this is all the better for them because they don't have to share their oil wealth with as many people.

A modern day emirate of Tripoli, without Libya's sovereign wealth, without oil money, and without political allies in either Benghazi or Tunisia, would rapidly deteriorate into something more like Somolia than an equal part-successor to Libya, perhaps even reverting to Somolian style piracy of the Mediterranean sea trade (as it did in the era of the Barbary pirates) until put down by regional navies. Indeed, Libya's last monarch, King Idris, ruled an emirate centered around Bengazi before he joined it in a personal union to the one centered around Tripoli. The two have been united only since the 1920s, about a decade before oil was discovered.

Possibilities

As suburban Tripoli encircling the central city appears to have already escaped Gaddafi's control, and his apparently delusion public front about the degree of control he has over his nation, one plausible outcome of the situation in Libya might be for Gaddafi to retreat to loyal territory in the Fezzan, perhaps anchored to the Mediterrean by the city of Sirt between Tripoli and Benghazi, in a rump Libya.

Historically, the area now known as Libya was regarded as three separate regions: Tripolitania in the northwest, centered on Tripoli; Cyrenaica in the northeast, focused on Benghazi; and Fezzan in the southwest, anchored by a few scattered oases.

Given the opportunity, I suspect that the people of Mediterranean Libya would willingly cede the name "Libya," the territory of the Gaddafi loyalist Fezzan, and even a hefty share of the nation's $30 billion sovereign wealth and the personal wealth of Gaddafi and his associates, in order to avoid a prolonged and bloody civil war. The Fezzan might even declare Gaddafi to be their King, an absolute one, which is a prize he would probably value more than riches, and confirm his son as Crown Prince. Without the ongoing source of funds to maintain a potent military form oil or a modern urban hub, the Fezzan would fade into obscurity as minor agricultural state of North Africa on a par with Chad or the Central African Republic, sustainable only by virtue of its sovereign wealth. Then again, perhaps he can succeed where the Egyptians in their similar Toshka scheme to grow crops in the desert have thus far only stuggled.

The Libyans on the coast might rechristen themselves the Federated Republics of Tripoli and Cyrenaica and might even reinstate a constitutional monarch who can trace roots to King Idris. There are currently two pretenders to that abrogated throne, so perhaps one could be a monarch of a Federal Republic of Tripoli, while the other could be a monarch of a Federal Republic of Cryenaica, bound together in a federation and defusing conflicts over succession in the fragile new regimes. Were one thinking expansively, one could even imagine that federation expanding to include the new post-dicatorship Tunisian Republic as well.

READ MORE - Liberated Libyans Control Its Oil

Intervention. Why not?

I am watching Aljazeera Arabic, which is calling people in Tripoli on the telephone and asking them what is going on in the capital. The replies are poignant in their raw emotion, bordering on hysteria. The residents are alleging that the Qaddafi regime has scrambled fighter jets to strafe civilian crowds, has deployed heavy artillery against them, and has occupied the streets with armored vehicles and strategically-placed snipers. One man is shouting that “the gates of Hell have opened” in the capital and that “this is Halabja!” (where Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein ordered helicopter gunships to hit a Kurdish city with sarin gas, killing 5000 in 1988).

Two defecting Libyan pilots who flew to Malta confirmed the orders to strafe the crowds from the air and said that they declined to obey the order. Other pilots appear to have been more loyal.

From here.

The U.S. has the capability to deploy fighter aircraft in the region and stop this from happening. It also has a deep history of disrespect for Libyan sovereignty from the Marines sent to Tripolli in the Revolutionary era to the bombing of a Libyan chemical plant in mine. Does Ghadaffi deserve sovereign respect vis-a-vis democratic protesters from a nation like the United States that was founded on revolutionary overthrow of tyrrany? Would a single show of force in this instance establish a credible threat that would influence the behavior of dicators elsewhere even without its actual exercise? We could tell nervous monarches that we distinguish between legitimate monarchies and dicatorships.

Why not? Unlike leaders of regimes in Egypt and Bahrain, we have no history of Libyan cooperation with the U.S. We wouldn't necessarily have to take down the entire regime. There are locals on the ground who could do that. We could simply shut down one military tactic of the regime in order to show disrespect and emasculate that regime in a case where it is clearly engaging in a gross, mass violation of human rights of the worse magnitude. Perhaps we could bomb Ghadaffi's house while we were at it.

It isn't as if the U.S. has some long tradition of non-intervention in Middle Eastern affairs to defend after two U.S. initiated wars in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. Also, the extingency of an unfolding situation could justify not seeking a broad diplomatic coalition. The War Powers Act permits U.S. Presidents to make brief military interventions without Congressional approval.

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Monarchy Still Popular

In Libya:

Security forces in Benghazi opened fire on Sunday on protesters storming police stations and government buildings. But in several instances, units of the military turned against them and sided with protesters.

By Monday, protesters had claimed control of the city, overrunning its main security headquarters, called the Katiba.

Celebrating protesters raised the flag of the country's old monarchy, toppled in 1969 by a Gadhafi-led military coup, over Benghazi's main courthouse and on tanks around the city.

"Gadhafi needs one more push and he is gone," said Amal Roqaqie, a lawyer at the Benghazi court, saying protesters are "imposing a new reality. ... Tripoli will be our capital. We are imposing a new order and new state, a civil constitutional and with transitional government."

From here.

The possibility of a restored monarchy in Libya is not hypothetical. There are monarchist factions who favor that approach and men who have claims to be the legitimate heir to the throne of Libya. The man who was the King of Libya when the monarchy was ended in 1969 (King Idris I), and his son, the then crown prince, his nephew Hasan as-Senussi, have died. Idris abdicated the thrown, but the deal in which he did so was not honored by the successor government of Libya. There are two living claimants to the Libyan throne, should the Libyan people want to reinstate the dynasty that was in place before the 1969 revolution: Muhammad as-Senussi, a son of Hasan as-Senussi whom was named as heir by his father shortly before his father's death in 1992, and Prince Idris al-Senussi, a relative of the late King Idris who took up arms against the regime in 1991 with U.S. backing and is an investment banker.

The Senussi royal family is the same one that produced the Mahdi who became a model for Frank Herbert's Dune series. King Idris I took formal power as Emir of Cyrenaica at the behest of the British in 1917, and was in exile presiding over insurgents from 1922 until 1951.

In Morocco, protests have been relatively muted as a result of reforms relative to his predecessor from the nation's king. Protesters in Jordan want governmental reforms, but don't want to oust the king, who has been seens as a reformer who advocated for the average person.

The coming royal wedding in Britain still attracts interest.

And, in Bahrain, a monarchy that has had a violent attack on protesters. It may be possible to convince the the people that there was a power struggle:

The situation in Bahrain is further complicated by a palace feud between the country's prime minister and his nephew, the country's king.

The police involved in Thursday's violence are answerable to the prime minister, and the force's reliance on Pakistanis and other foreign recruits has long been a source of tension in the country.

What remains unknown is whether King Hamad agreed to the action - he had apologized publicly for earlier police violence - and whether the crackdown would continue.

One possible resolution in Bahrain would be for the young king to overrule the country's prime minister of forty-one years in favor of the people and the Crown Prince appears to be positioning himself to step into that role:

On Saturday, it was Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the son of the king and deputy commander of the military, who ordered troops to leave the square.

"I stress, once more, that our duty is to preserve security and stability, to ensure that there is no discord and that the situation does not worsen," the prince said in a statement on Bahrain's national news agency. "Join us to calm the situation, so that we can announce a day of mourning for our lost sons."

(Although the apparent injection of Saudi Arabian forces into the situation casts doubt on this scenario). The tiny Arab island nation has a population and land area similar to Denver, and a large U.S. Navy presence. The U.S. has so far not involved itself on ongoing events there. The Crown Prince has been designated as the King's liason with Shiite opposition leaders.

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A New Era In Egypt

"President Hosni Mubarak has decided to step down as president of the republic and has assigned the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to run the affairs of the country," Suleiman said. "May God help everybody."

While Egyptians applauded themselves for toppling Mubarak, his fate was sealed by the military, whose leaders had promised not to use deadly force to put down the rebellion.

Earlier in the day, Egypt's military chiefs said they would guarantee a transition toward "free and honest" elections. But Suleiman's statement left unsaid how that would work, and who precisely would take charge in the interim.

In a televised statement Friday night, the military pledged that it would not act as a substitute for a "legitimate government" following Mubarak's resignation and would take steps to meet the people's aspirations. Reading the statement, a military spokesman praised Mubarak for his contributions to Egypt and hailed protesters who have died in the anti-Mubarak demonstrations.

Egypt's Supreme Council of the Armed Forces includes the top service commanders led by Lt. Gen. Sami Enan, the armed forces chief of staff.

From here.

Thursday night, Mubarak, the 82 year old man who had been dictator of Egypt for thirty-one years pledged to stay in office until regularly scheduled elections in September, something that the Egyptian military had reaffirmed that he would do Friday morning. But, when this, along with Mubarak's appointment of a Vice President after leaving himself without a successor for years, and Mubarak's pledge that his son would not run for President after him fell flat, the military apparently intervened, got the newly appointed Vice President to announce a "resignation," and shipped Mubarak and his wife to a resort as close to the Saudi Arabian border as one can get without leaving the country. Eighteen days of street protests, triggered by the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia, had secured a new regime. With Mubarak finally gone, the crowds were pleased for once.

Mubarak is gone, not only because the people rose up, but because the Army refused to back him up any longer. When the protests began, police killed several hundred protesters. But, the Army refused to fire on its own people and got the police to back off as well.

Recent Political History In Egypt

Egypt's recent political history can be summed up as follows: Egypt, then a tributary state of England under King Farouk (England became its colonial ruler in 1882 and granted increased independence in stages in 1914, 1922 and 1936) declared independence in 1951. King Farouk was ousted in an uprising in 1952 that left Lt. Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser in charge, a position that was ratified in a democratic process thereafter. Under Nasser, from 1958 to 1961, Syria and Egypt were joined in the short lived United Arab Republic from which Syria seceded. Nasser's Vice President, Anwar Sedat replaced him when he died in 1970. Sadat was assassinated from Muslim extremists in the Army in 1981 when he was replaced by Hosni Mubarak who was in turn replaced today. No Egyptian leader in living memory has ever left office voluntarily or via a democratic election.

But, there is good reason to be optimistic and believe that the military junta in Egypt will promptly hold free and fair multi-party elections, that democratically elected representatives will form a civilian government in Egypt, and that Egypt will start to have a Western style parliamentary republic with an Islamic flavor. There is also good reason to expect that in the short term, that the new civilian Egyptian government will be too preoccupied with domestic affairs to consider international military adventures such as threats to Israel.

Eygpt is not the country that it was when Mubarak seized power three decades ago. It has a military more interested in running its business ventures than fighting foreign wars, so long as domestic tranquility can be maintained. Like many nations in the developing world, it has not been so closed that its people are unaware of what kinds of governments and political developments prevail in the larger world, its businesses are actively engaged in foreign trade and millions of Egyptians work abroad where they have experiences that they can relate to friends and family when they come home. Unlike some countries in the region, Egypt has a genuine middle class that gives it economic clout apart from oil revenues. Egypt has lacked free and fair elections, and it has faced strict state of emergency restrictions on political activity for a very long time, but despite those limits, a vigorous civil society has developed. Many of Egypt's senior military officers, through exchanges begun after the Camp David accords in 1979, have spent time in the United States mingling with American military officers. The protests that brought down the regime were facilitated, in part, via Facebook and were triggered by widely available news coverage on networks like Al-Jazzeria, of the uprising in Tunisia.

One party rule may have seemed like a pretty good idea at the time when it became the norm in Syria, Egypt, Iraq and elsewhere across the non-monarchies of the region. It may even be that truly democratic parliamentary democracy was an unrealistic expectation at that point. One party rule was working in the Soviet Union and China, and it wasn't yet clear that the leaders of the one party states would themselves be entrenched indefinitely. But, by the time that Tunisia set off the current round of democratic uprisings, this form of government had been discredited after decades of experience in newly independent nations around the world. Muslims in Turkey, Albania, Iraq (and before that, Iraqi Kurdistan), Palestine, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Jordan and Iran were all trying to conduct at least partially democratic government with at least intermittent success. Certainly, the notion of a Muslim nation with a parliamentary democracy was no longer considered an oxymoron.

What Next?

The Egyptian Army's best model may be Turkey, where the military sees itself as the guarantor of a secular, democratic state and has been successful more often than not.

I expect that the civilian constitutional order that comes into being in Egypt won't be a very creative one. The Army and civil service will probably continue uninterrupted. The restrictions on civil liberties imposed via "emergency rule" during Mubarak's regime will end. The existing non-democratically selected President and parliament of Egypt will probably remain, but with multi-party democratic elections (modeled on the proportional representation systems found in most of the world rather than the two party single member ditrict system of the United States) and somewhat different respective powers.

What About Israel?

Egypt and Jordan have both committed to making democratic reforms, although the extent of these reforms in each nation is still in flux. This may make the time ripe for rethinking the relationship between the Israel, the Palestinian territory of Gaza, and the Palestinian territory of the West Bank, each of which have weak civilian elected self-government.

Revelations from Wikileaks show that Israel is not really interested in a peace deal with the Palestinians, rather than the other way around as conventional wisdom had long held. What Israel does need is a guarantor that the Palestinian territories won't be used as based of operations for attacks against it. Prior to the latest reforms, Israel has relied on Jordan and Egypt to be neutral towards it and prevent undue smuggling across the border, and the monarchy and dictatorship in these nations respectively have not made them very attractive regimes to the Palestinians. But, should Jordan and Egypt become successful functioning democracies, there may be room for a win-win-win solution if the West Bank merges with Jordan and the Gaza Strip merges with Egypt.

Jordan and Egypt both have regimes that are more competent than either of the Palestinian territories, and hence more able to suppress attacks against Israel from those territories than the current regimes in Palestine, and Jordan and Egypt both have more of an interest in doing so than the Palestinian territories standing alone. As democracies that actually work, Palestinians may now find their neighbors more desirable political entities to be a part of than their own marginally democratic and incompetent locally elected governments. Links to these nations would make possible the levels of trade that would allow the West Bank and Gaza to have functioning economies; something that is impossible in embargoed international aid supported states. Also, Jordan may be better able to negotiate Israeli withdrawal from its West Bank settlements and better able to protect that territory from further Israeli encroachment than a semi-sovereign autonomous Palestinian government within Israel. Jordan and Egypt would each gain territory and people, the classic measures of sovereign clout. Also, from an Israeli perspective, while Middle Eastern historical memory may be long, an end to a distinct Palestinian political entity recognized on the international scene may eventually defuse Palestinian nationalism - a generation from now, the children of today's Palestinians may seem themselves as Jordanians and Egyptians respectively.

Some Recent History of Coups

Military coups, which is what the events in Egypt amount to so far, however, characterized, are neck and neck with elections as the most common means by which countries secure new leaders in most of the world. Sometimes they support popular uprisings against dicators, sometimes they suppress democratic governments.

Coups have been the norm for Egypt's neighbors not fortunate enough to have monarchies. Libya's current leader, Muammar al-Qaddafi seized power in a coup in 1969 and is still in power there. Syria's Baath party took power in a 1963 coup, in a regime that installed Hafez al-Assad as President in 1971, a post he continued to hold until his death in 2000 when his son Bashar al-Assad succeeded him and remains in power today. In Sudan, a revolutionary council declared independence and installed Gaafar al-Mimeiry as President until he was replaced in a 1985 coup, followed by a 1986 democratic election, followed by the 1989 coup that installed its current leader General Omar Hassan Ahmad Al-Bashir. Algeria won independence in 1962 with a democracy that lasted until a coup in 1965 that installed Houari Boumedienne who ruled until his death in 1978. Demonstrators with Army support backed a coup in Ethiopia that deposed Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974, with succession handled via coups and uprisings until Ethiopia's first multi-party general elections in 1995. Iraq's King Kaisal was killed in a 1958 coup, after which the Baath party gradually gained control' Saddam Hussein became President as the Baath party leader and ruled Iraq as a dicator from 1979 until 2003 when he was deposed in the U.S. invasion.

Coups aren't so far in the past even in Europe and the developed countries of Asia.

Portugal has a military coup in 1974. Spain has had continous democratic government only since 1977 and had a coup attempt that was put down by King Juan Carlos in 1981. Greece had a coup in 1967 and Cyprus had one in 1974. Turkey had coups in 1960 and 1980 and the military remains a powerful political force there, primarily as a guarantor of secular government. The military attempted to remove Mikhail Gorbachev in a coup in 1991, which was foiled with the help of Boris Yeltsin.

South Korea's initial authoritarian leader, Dr. Sygnman Rhee, installed in 1948 was forced out by an uprising in 1960 which was followed by a 1961 coup that installed General Park Chung Hee who retained power until he was assassinated by the chief of the Korean CIA in 1979 when a military coup installed General Chun Doo Hwan, the head of military intelligence, and he ruled until pro-democracy demonstrations in 1987 pushed him to conduct democratic elections that installed his ally Roh Tae Wood. Chun and Roh were convicted of mutiney, treason and corruption in 1996, after Roh was replaced in a new election in 1993, but were pardoned in 1997.

Indonesia won independence in late 1949 and elected President Sukarno in 1950; he suspended parliament in 1960, made himself President for life in 1963, thwarted an attempted coup in 1965 and was forced out by the Army in 1967 when General Suharto took power and ruled for the next thirty one years. Protestors ousted him in 1998, and his Vice President ran democratic elections that installed a successor in 1999. The new President was impeached for corruption and incompetence in 2001 when Megawati Sukranoputri, the daughter of Sukarno became Indonesia's President. She was replaced by a retired general, Susilo bamabang Yudhoyono in a democratic election in 2004. Indonesia's two successive democratic elections makes it arguably one of the most democratic predominantly Muslim nations in the world.

Bangladesh, after securing independence from Pakistan in 1971 had a coupl in 1975, an unsuccessful coup that caused the death of the incumbent President in 1981, and a military backed caretaker government in 2007, interspersed with democratic elections.

After being separated from India in 1947, Pakistan had a coups in 1977 and 2001 which put president Musharraf in place, after which he ruled until a threat of impeachment by parliament led by his assassinated political opponent's widower (who herself was the daughter of the President who was outsted in the 1977 coup and executed by that regime in 1979) ousted him in 2008.

Of course, the historical record makes clear that many coups, even when fueled by popular uprisings, do end up evolving into new dicatorships, even if ratified in genuine democratic elections the first time around. But, given that the alternative had been a likely transfer of power to Mubarak's son in an emerging monarchy, it is a risk that it is worth Egyptian's effort to take.

READ MORE - A New Era In Egypt