While much of the recent headline news has continued to highlight the recent assassination and death of Osama bin Laden -- which I now accept as fact,
due to a lot more information being made available to the general public -- there are other issues occurring in the Middle East which merit our
attention.

As you will no doubt already know, Syrian "president" Bashar al-Assad
continues to make the same foolish mistake as a number of other Middle
Eastern leaders. That is, he continues to brutally oppress and suppress his
own people. According to various news reports, since unrest began in Syria, hundreds of Syrian citizens have been killed, and scores more have been threatened, attacked, injured, or imprisoned.

Mr. Assad has obviously fallen under the delusion that, like his father -- Hafez al-Assad -- he can continue to rule the Syrian people through fear and intimidation. If that means killed hundreds or thousands in order to make
his point -- as his father did with the 1982 Hama Massacre in which 10,000
to 40,000 civilians were killed -- so be it; at least Mr. Assad so seems to think. He may be in for a shocking surprise one of these days soon.

In Yemen, the government forces of longtime "president" Ali Abdullah Saleh continue to oppress and kill protesters throughout the Middle Eastern
nation. Despite the protests -- which have been ongoing for several months
now -- as well as defections by certain politicians, army officers and
tribal leaders who were formerly loyal to him, Mr. Saleh has still managed
to cling to power. In fact, last month he refused to sign a power-transfer
deal that was negotiated by members of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

In Libya, the government of Colonel Moammar el-Gaddafi likewise continues to rely upon force in order to maintain control over the country; at least the western half of the North African nation. It is also still engaged in its public relations game with the mass media, as it tries to convince the world that Gaddafi continues to be well-loved by his people, that the rebels are nothing more than a bunch of drugged, al-Qaeda-inspired troublemakers, and
that NATO forces are killing many innocent Libyan civilians. Despite
continued -- albeit, fractured -- assistance and support from the NATO alliance, the rebels' endeavors to defeat Gaddafi and take control of the country have been slow and difficult.

There are also interesting -- and in my view, sinister -- developments occurring in Egypt as well. As I have noted before, since the early days of
the January 25th Revolution in Egypt, I have felt a sense of mistrust
towards the Egyptian military; particularly after they chose to not attack
the civilian protesters, and then even seemed to side with them, which ultimately resulted in the departure of Egyptian "president" Hosni Mubarak,
who slunk away to his mansion at Sharm el Sheikh on the Red Sea coast.

As you may know, because of the subtlety and deception of the Egyptian military, many -- although not all -- of the Egyptian people came to trust their good intentions, and believed that they truly wanted to steer Egypt towards a civilian-led democratic government.

However, several months after the January 25th Revolution began, the
situation in Egypt is a lot more dismal than what many people had expected
it would be by this time. If the sensationalistic mass media is to believed,
it appears that Egypt may be on the verge of total anarchy. Crime and
sectarian violence are on the rise, while the civil authorities -- such as
the police -- appear to be taking little interest in quelling it.

While a variety of reasons have been set forth regarding why the civil authorities have taken such an aloof attitude -- such as the police being demoralized due to recent events in Egypt which saw the tables turned on
them -- upon reading the news, I immediately suspected that there was a
darker force at work here.

In other words, my inclination is to believe that the Egyptian military and civil authorities are purposely allowing the crime and violence to continue
for now. As I have mentioned before, it is my belief that national
governments will sometimes intentionally create a problem, so that when the people eventually become exasperated with it, the government can step in and offer an unpopular solution which it had planned all along. The people just need to be made desperate enough so that they will be willing to accept it, even if they do grumble about it, and perhaps even lose some of their civil rights in the process.

In short, my sense is that the Egyptian military is trying to teach the Egyptian people a lesson; and that lesson is that democracy is not good for them, and that they need a strong, central, military government which can
keep the situation under control.

Obviously, this is the same old "stability and security" card that Hosni Mubarak played for some thirty years, and it worked quite well for him.
Mubarak stayed in power, Egypt received billions of dollars from the
American government, and the Egyptian military enjoyed power, prestige and
vast wealth.

This is the only form of government that the powers-that-be in Egypt
understand and want. What the people want doesn't really matter. The people must simply be made to come to their senses, and realize that "papa
government" knows what is best for them; at least so thinks the Egyptian military.

If I am right about this, it won't be long before we see the end result of
this devious plan. The situation in Egypt will deteriorate to such a degree, that the people will just about beg the military to intervene and restore
peace and safety to the nation.

And to be honest, I still really wonder about Hosni Mubarak's true, current status. Is he really out of the picture entirely?



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