Barry Rubin Interview. Revolution And The Muslim Brotherhood

The Propagandist ^ | Barry Rubin

[ventanax5]

Q: You make two very interesting points in your writings. You argue that people are naïve when they think that a democratic Egypt is just around the corner, and that the size of the opposition may be overstated. Let's start with the latter: Could Mubarak's NDP win in free and fair elections?

Rubin: Nobody knows. Now, it's very doubtful. The question is, will some kind of regime party survive and get a significant amount of votes? No one knows the answer. Mubarak has a base of support. The Communist parties in Europe survived even after falling from power. A regime party wouldn't win but might get 20 or 25 percent of the vote and form the main opposition. Or they might get zero. We are not trying to give the answers but identify the questions.

For me, there are two big questions.

Number one: Will there be a party of the regime which will be a significant factor?

Number two: Will there be an Arab-nationalist ticket, an important opposition party that will also compete with ElBaradei, especially because he is so highly dependent on the Muslim Brotherhood.

[SJackson]

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[ckilmer]

the riots in egypt are essentially food riots.

Therefor the answer to question as to what to do involves food.

So first have a five year plan to subsidize Egyptian grain. During that five years invest in pulling up water from the ancient aquifers in the Egyptian western desert to grow grain. (Libya shares the same giant aquifer and already has huge wheat fields in the desert that can be seen from space) At the end of five years stop the subsidies and rely on the home grown wheat.

Finally an international contest would be drawn up to collapse the cost of water desalination. The contest would to see who could drop the cost of seawater desalination by $100 on three oceans. Then a new contest would be held. Whoever could beat the new price point would win 1 billion dollars. And so on until the price of desalinized water was ~50@acre foot. At Which point it becomes cost competitive to grow crops. Another contest would be held to cut the cost of delivered water by pipeline. The idea would be to bring down the cost of installing, and maintaining the pipeline and lowering the cost of pumping water.

Cheap water and cheap pipline pumping would make it possible to desert farm 1000 mile from any seacoast with desalinized water. Basically you’d be able to turn the deserts green around the world and double the size of the habitable planet and solve the worlds food water and population problem for 100-200 years.

I have read that Mubarak has 40 billion in personal wealth. You might be able to get him to subsidize Egyptian grain imports for 5 years at a cost of 12 billion or so.
You might also be able to get the Saudis to invest in Egyptian agriculture by pulling up water from the ancient aquifers. That might cost another 12 billion. It is in the Saudi interest to have a stable Egypt.
Finally the cost of contests would also be born by international billionaires as proposed by Bill Gates. This program would run ten years for a cost of ~12 billion.

In the end none of the parties that are non islamist will be able to govern unless they have a vision. This is it. Mubarak has actually been playing with the idea of grain independence–but he has not been able to deliver.