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Suddenly, says Friedman, the Arab world has a truly free space, a space that Egyptians themselves created, and the truth keeps gushing out like a torrent from a broken hydrant. The hopes and aspirations bottled up for 50 years keep gushing out, like this bearded man Friedman sees in Tahrir Square, going back and forth screaming all the time that he feels free, that he feels free.

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Friedman suggests a 2009 book "Generation in Waiting," edited by Navtej Dhillon and Tarik Yousef, as giving a real insight into what is happening in Egypt. It says that the great change that is occurring in Arab society is not about political Islam, but about a "generational game" in which over 100 million young Arabs are fighting stifling economic and political strucutres that have taken away their freedoms, provide the poorest education systems, the highest unemployment rates and the biggest income gaps of any society in the the world. ElBaradei tells Friedman that the Arab states of today are nothing but a collection of failed states who give nothing to humanity or science, and this because the people are not taught to think or act and are given an inferior education, in a part of the world that experienced in the past a high level of learning and made contributions in the arts, humanities and science.

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Efforts by Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates to influence or slow the transition to democracy in Egypt.

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The stark differences in the policy positions of the two major parties in the U.S. seen emerging in the television debates. Trump vocal on immigration calling for large deportations. Sanders and Clinton vocal on the struggles of the middle class and white working class.

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Some of the crude rhetoric at Donald Trump rallies, and use of coarse language, according to the NYT. Working class and older Americans show their anger at a system that appears to have left them behind with slogans, stickers, T-Shirts. The idea of the wall figures in much of this and shows that the wall has become not jut about Mexico but a metaphor that captures this anger, that reflects this anger. Another aspect of the 2016 campaign is that those most vulnerable and most in need of help have not sought the comfort of knowing about programs to improve middle class and working class wages, incomes, to build infrastructure, create jobs, stop companies from shifting jobs overseas, plans for improving accesss to health care and education, to ask for specifics and delivery. This is the supreme irony of the 2016 election campaign that not enough attention is going to what will be done for the middle and working class, and what specifics will be delivered, in what time frame- which is essential for restoring the condition of the American middle and working class to where it was in the 2 decades after the Second World War. ...

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Elliott Abrams quotes former President George Bush from November 2003 when he asked the question: "Are the peoples of the Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty? Are millions of men and women and children condemned by history or culture to live in despotism? Are they alone never to know freedom and never even to have a choice in the matter?" Abrams, former deputy natonal security advisor for President Bush, says the autocratic regimes and dictators of the Middle East have offered a false choice to the US- its us or the Islamists. Roger Cohen also points this out in a recent article in the New York Times. For Tunisia he says this was never defensible. It is a largely secular nation with a literacy rate of 75% and per capita GDP of $9,500, and Ben Ali, the dictator of Tunisia, jailed moderates, human rights advocates, editors, anyone who represented hope and change. Abrams says Mubarak has done the same in Egypt. And he warns that if you make moderate politics impossible as Mubarak in Egypt and Ben Ali in Tunisia have done, then you make extremism more likely. Ruling by emergency decree for decades creates a real emergency, as has happened in Egypt. Bush made that speech at the 20th anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy, and he reminded Americans that "sixty years of Western nations excusing and accomodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe- because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty." He admits that the Bush administration did not always conduct US diplomacy in this vein, but the President took the lead and the Obama administration's abandonment of that mindset is nothing short of a tragedy. Obama's policy of "engagement" actually endangers the US position as a supporter of liberty and freedom wherever it is stifled or muffled, because it turned a blind eye to the people themselves as it engaged with the dictatorial regimes in the Arab world and other countries. When the elections in Iran were stolen the Obama administration hesitated, waffled in its committment to liberty, fearing that it would affect nuclear negotiations. Obama did not -as of late Friday night Jan 28, 2011- call for free elections or clearly demand democracy. The law school analytical processes that Obama brings to the presidency and the demands of geopolitical diplomacy are impervious to the loud voices demanding freedom in countries denied liberty. Obama has forgotten the very same voices he passionately heard when he wrote in his first book that in the words "we hold these truths to be self-evident" he could hear the spirit of Douglas and Delaney, as well as Jefferson and Lincoln, the struggles of Martin and Malcolm and unheralded marchers to bring the words to life. He could hear the words of interned Japanese families, the voices of Russian Jews in lower East side sweatshops, of dust bowl farmers during the depression, all these voices clamoring for recognition and asking the question about what is community and how it can be reconciled with freedom. This failure to recognize these voices clamoring for freedom and economic opportunity is all the more striking because it was vision and a bold sense of purpose that energized the Obama campaign and both the vision and the bold sense have eluded the administration. Abrams calls for a clear unequivocal committment by the US government in favor of freedom and peaceful efforts to achieve it in the Middle East, because he says that as the demonstrators are telling the world outside supporting freedom is the best policy of all. ...

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Russia experts Robert Nurick of the Atlantic Council, and Graham Allison of the Belfer Center of International Affairs at Harvard, see a sea change in attitudes to Russia following the interventionist policies of president Putin. The Obama administration will now focus on limiting Russian influence for the remaining two years of Obama's second term. There is a loss of faith in Putin on the part of Obama and close advisors. Russia is seen as a regional power, and the Ukraine crisis is seen as having a serious impact on the Russian economy through decline in trade, foreign investment and capital outflows. Russia is a regional power because it is not the same as the old Soviet Union, it is much smaller, with a declining population, and dependent on oil revenues, and in this sense not the Russia U,S, president Truman and Kennan faced during the Cold War. Obama advisors see Putin's actions as counterproductive for Russia, as the economy is now seen as contracting in 2014, making its actions in Syria, and in Ukraine, unwise foreign policy moves that hurts Russia's economy and future prosperity. Democratically elected leaders in Turkey and Russia with control over the media and shutting down the opposition using control of the judicial process, have shortchanged democratic ideals, and in the process concentrated powers in one leader. This creates risks of arbitrary exercize of power without the checks and balances that are built into a truly functioning democracy, with foreign policy errors eventually leading to a resolution of the conflicts created as these policies are increasingly called into question. Putin and Erdogan were reelected because of economic growth- a contractionary economy or steep declines in growth put everything at risk. A footnote on Kennan, American diplomat and linguist, is appropriate. A quick reading of Wikipedia's excellent account of Kennan will show that Kennan was in favor of a nuanced approach to Russia based on changing conditions. He observed that policies that were seen as anti-Russian actually helped Russian leaders throughout history solidify autocratic type rule, which actually hurts Russia's normal evolution and development. Normal development and evolution similiar to ways Germany and other nations left behind Prussian history and traditions for a open, free society, and in the ways even the U.S. left behind older practices such as slavery in the south and limited representation democracy. In fairness to Kennan it should be said that containment of the Cold War was more a Truman-Acheson doctrine- continued under Eisenhower by Dulles-Nitze, and under Kennedy by Rusk-McNamara- which has roots in Soviet intentions of destabilizing war ravaged western Europe starting with Greece, following similiar efforts in Eastern Europe. Truman was right in aiding Greece, but the U.S. needed to be aware of changing conditions and not take a rigid stance, and get locked into supporting client states just because they were "our guys," a lesson Kennan emphasized throughout his life. Putin and Erdogan use appeals to Russian and Turkish nationalism to improve electoral support and stifle free expression of ideas necessary for growth in any society. This also provides a way to have a discussion with our German friends on engagement and economic relationships, without the rigid outlook of a Wilsonian or Acheson-Dulles kind. ...

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In this essay in Der Spiegel, Charles Hawley says that the Trump movement has become a movement of patriotic downtrodden whites, with a whole range of interests-of extreme right talk show hosts, Tea Party politicians, white power supremacists, those left out by globalization in the working class especially in the midwestern states. The danger he says is that this movement of which Trump has become a part, rejects the narrative on which America is based of the Constitution and the Founding Fathers establishing a country based on principles of "the inalienable rights of man," that have evolved through the years to include black people, women, and minorities.  To put this in perspective, president Obama writing for The Economist magazine in October 2016, puts this movement in a different context- that of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, Know Nothing Movement of the 1800's, the anti-Asian sentiment in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, periods when anti-immigrant or anti-foreign sentiment gained prominence. Obama's view is that it is not fundamentally economic. In this he is right in that some of the forces on the far right do not stem from globalization. Yet he would be missing a great deal if he did not address the economic problems for the middle and working class that have given such views the support of a broad segment of the population, especially in some midwestern and older industrial states compared to say the economy of California or New York. Obama is aware of the problems in his essay as he points to the problems of workers trying to get a decent wage, of job losses through globalization, and the aggravation of these problems by the financial crisis of 2008 when some of the potential physicists and engineers as he calls them went into the financial sector to create faulty mortgages. Yet he goes back to the free trade and global networks of supply chains as having reduced global poverty, without showing a keen awareness of how it has through a combination of events and decades of policy indifference to manufacturing communities in the U.S.- as documented by experts and shown in Lyrarc, with David Autor and Gordon Hansen in the WSJ, 2016- 08-16. A Gallup Study, WSJ, 2016-05-16, supports Obama's assertion by showing that many of Trump supporters are actually self-employed and not in economic distress. Yet the movement would not have taken its proportions without the merging of different groups particularly largely disadvantaged working class voters, and fortunately Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, have a better sense of this than the president. It is by their efforts that income and wealth disparities can be tackled in a way that restores the social fusion of all parts of society- in Hillary Clinton's emphatic words in the final debate by "growing the middle," growing the middle class. This is the task of the next decade, or possibly two decades. (For Gallup study see WSJ, How Economic Anxieties Explain Trump's Appeal- And Where They Fall Short, Nick Timiraos, 08-16-2016. And for Autor, Hanson, see Tallying the Toll of U.S.-China Trade, Justin Lahart, 08-27-2011)   ...

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The Tunisian revollution was middle class, un-Islamic and pro-western. The people in the streets of Cairo are young, connected, non-ideological and pragmatic. They are looking for an end to despotic regimes. This is the way Cohen describes the demonstrators after his visit to Tunis. Egypt's opposition leader El-Baradei tells Cohen's colleagues Kirkpatrick and Slackman that he is pretty sure that an elected government in Egypt woulld be a moderate one. The policies of a community activist from the south side of Chicago, who as US President fails to take a clear stand in favor of freedom from repression and economic freedom for people in the Arab world.

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This article in the NYT explains why the loss of jobs particularly in the auto industry to Mexico, with the experience of NAFTA passed by president Bill Clinton, has caused widespread opposition to the TPP trade agreement proposed by president Obama. Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in 2016 oppose the TPP.

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Since 2011 democracy protests Tunisia's unemployment rate has increased from 13% to 18%, with an estimated 750,000 people unemployed. About one third of the unemployed are college graduates. By 2015 about 100,000 new college graduates will be looking for jobs each year. Tunisia's economy contracted 1.8% in 2011 with a 30% drop in tourists, according to the World Bank, which predicts 2.2% growth in GDP in 2012 and 4.6% by 2014. The democracy struggle in the Middle East started in Tunisia and demographics in Tunisia are similiar to that of the rest of the Middle East, with a surging number of young people and college graduates looking for jobs.

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The foreign policy establishment and the Obama administration is caught completely by surprise by the protests in Egypt against the 30 year rule of Mubarak. Secretary of State Clinton makes shifting statements on the protests. The WSJ editorial reminds the state department that support for democratic government worked in the Philippines and S. Korea. The Journal points to the state department realists who opposed President Bush's efforts to reach out to civil society groups inside Egypt. And refers to US Ambassador Frank Ricciardone's admiration for President Mubarak and his downplaying of US support to democracy for Egypt. The Wall Street Journal in this editorial concludes by saying it can't see how the US can walk away from supporting those who favor more pluralism in politics.

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Stephen Hadley, national security advisor to President George W. Bush, says there is every likelihood that the new government in Egypt after the departure of Mubarak will be non-Islamist and committed to a free and democratic Egypt. Such an Egypt would he says become a leader of a movement toward freedom ad democracy in the Arab world. Reports from Egypt in the New York Times and Washington Post show that the protests are led by younger people, many of them under 30 years of age, educated and middle class, interested mainly in moving Egypt to a democratic government and economic opportunity for all.

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The author is a resident scholar of the American Enterprise Institute. He says conservatism and the Republican Party have failed to recognize the problems of the American working class, leading to the rise of Trump. He adds that it will take more than one election cycle for Republicans to change this, it will take a lot more effort lasting many years. Speaker Ryan arranged a forum on working class problems, poverty and lack of opportunity, but only after Trump had made appeals to older white working class Americans who have done poorly in the last decade, making him the front runner in the race, and relegated Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio to single digit support.

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Rosa Ines Rivera, a cook at the cafeteria for the Y.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University, with 2 small children, describes the protests over the increase by Harvard administration of the premiums charged on health insurance that now take up over 10% of the income. She says she lives in public housing with her parents as she lost her apartment because she is behind on the rent, and now cannot afford to pay the increase in premiums. About 750 workers at Harvard are on strike on this issue. She says dining hall workers want the current pay of $31,193  a year increased to $35,000 to provide a living wage that helps them afford medical care, because of the high cost of living in Boston.  To get some idea of the plight of workers who provide the kind of nutritious meals that a lot of students depend on for healthy living- Rivera says she takes in about $450 a week after taxes, or about $1800, rent is $1150, which leaves $650 for herself and two children for all food, and expenses in Boston. The $4000 in premiums for health insurance would be about 330 per month, leaving her about $320 for food and living expenses with 2 children. Why the need to bring up children in poverty in America, for generation after generation, after putting in a full day of work? ...