The unpredictable forces behind oil prices

WP
By Steven Mufson, Published: July 1

For people who believe that oil markets are rigged or broken, the first week of May offered Exhibit A.

That week, the price of crude oil plunged more than $16 a barrel, erasing about $32 billion of the market value of Exxon Mobil and presaging an easing of prices at the pump, where the cost of a gallon of gas had hit record levels.

On that Thursday alone, the price of oil fell off a cliff, tumbling more than $10 a barrel.

Yet the physical amount of oil in the market didn’t change that week. Libya’s oil exports had been offline for more than two months. In the oil world, the surface was relatively calm. But a couple of signs of economic weakness spooked traders, who suddenly worried that demand would be less than they had expected. Goldman Sachs, a believer in rising crude oil prices, predicted a temporary pullback. Poof! More than a tenth of the value of a barrel of oil disappeared.

For consumers, oil prices are like a bad case of malaria — feverish one month and tolerable another. Such wild fluctuation makes it nearly impossible to discern: What is the right price for oil?

Today’s crude oil prices are nearly 10 times as high as they were in 1998, and twice as high as in 2005. They hit a record of $147 a barrel in July 2008, only to sink to less than $40 a barrel by the end of that year.

In March, amid intense fighting in Libya, President Obama said that there wasn’t a serious supply shortage and that rising oil prices weren’t reason enough to tap the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Then on June 23, he suddenly said that turmoil in Libya justified the largest-ever release of reserves.It was more of an economic stimulus than a national security measure.

Because oil prices fluctuate so much, however, it will be impossible to measure Obama’s success or failure. If prices continue to drop, as they were doing before his move, will he deserve credit? If they rise, will he deserve blame? If it works, will we want him to do it again?

That will come down to the question of price.


In a competitive market, the price of oil would be linked to the marginal cost of the next barrel. In other words, the price for the first 88 barrels would be affected by the cost of producing the 89th barrel, in effect the cost of replacing each barrel used.

But in the world of oil, it’s hard to say what that replacement cost is. Producing oil is not like churning out computer chips, where costs are similar everywhere.

In Canada, it costs somewhere between $40 and $60 a barrel to mine and melt the viscous goo known as tar sands that environmentalists would rather leave in the ground. Yet in the Gulf of Mexico, where giant drilling rigs plumb deep waters, the cost of finding and developing oilfields can be relatively modest. Chevron, for example, has a $7.5 billion platform that will tap into a half-billion-barrel field at an average cost of about $15 a barrel. In Iraq, it’s even cheaper. The country has giant, shallow fields as good as almost anything in Saudi Arabia. In some places, you could practically stick a spear in the ground and come up with oil. Those neglected fields are being rehabilitated — if fighting can stop long enough.

And that’s the thing: There is no free market. There are obstacles everywhere. Pipelines. Politics. Oil spills. Warfare. They make it hard to figure out a marginal price for the next barrel of oil because it’s not clear whether the cheapest barrel can get anywhere near a tanker, refinery or consumer.

Then there’s the demand side, where needs and habits are so ingrained that we don’t respond quickly to rising prices. Buying oil isn’t like buying fruit: If an apple costs too much, buy an orange. If your gas costs too much, there isn’t much choice for most Americans who need to get to work. As a result, a relatively small percentage change in world supplies can upend the whole balance — and price.

Obama, often faulted for not having an energy policy, took care of the most crucial energy policy item back in early 2009, when he raised fuel-efficiency standards for American cars, which consume one out of every nine barrels of oil produced worldwide. More recently, he’s been touting electric cars, which he says should number 1 million by 2016. Saving a barrel is even better than discovering one; it’s tidier, and more money stays at home. But with General Motors selling only about 450 of its Volt plug-in cars a month, I don’t think OPEC is quaking in its boots.


The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is devoted to the idea of managing — or manipulating — oil markets.

Though Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi emerged from the cartel’s cantankerous June meeting and declared it the worst one ever, when it comes to oil prices, OPEC is having its best year ever.

So far this year, the price for a basket of different OPEC crude oils has averaged $106 a barrel, 38 percent higher than last year and higher so far than the previous record in 2008. OPEC’s “hawks,” led by Iran and Venezuela, want higher prices. OPEC’s “doves,” led by Saudi Arabia, want prices just high enough to keep consumers on the hook without driving them to alternatives.

Meanwhile, money has been sloshing around the world. Just as oil consumers are clawing back from two years of recession, they are suddenly paying $2.5 billion a day more than last year for petroleum products. About $1.8 billionof that flows into the coffers of the three biggest oil-exporting nations — Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran — while more than $1 billion is draining out of the United States to pay for imports.

Higher prices reflect a political risk premium. If you think there is a 30 percent chance that some disruption — say a bomb or a civil war or a NATO attack — will soon drive prices up by $50 a barrel, it might make sense to pay an extra $15 for oil now and stockpile it or buy for future delivery.

The windfall for Saudi Arabia has enabled King Abdullahto spread around a $40 billion spending plan to help avoid a Cairo-style uprising.

Meanwhile, at the local filling station in the United States, a tank of gas is about $15 more expensive than last year, bringing the U.S. economic recovery to a crawl and creating a combustible political issue.


That’s intensified the Washington blame game.

The big oil companies, which once dictated prices to the world, now say that they are just “price takers” at the mercy of the market, like the rest of us. Yet they reap benefits when OPEC does. Only a dozen countries produce more crude oil than Exxon Mobil. Big Oil bargains over access, taxes and its share of output, but it checks the computer terminals for price.

The increase in crude prices this year was magnified by the nation’s refiners, whose margins were at least 17 to 23 cents a gallon higher than last year, according to government figures. The Federal Trade Commission is investigating the concentration of ownership in gas stations. In the District, for example, about half of the stations are owned by a single firm. It sounds like a question from the final exam of an antitrust course.

Republicans, big business and oil industry groups have slammed Obama for the one-year pause in drilling permits after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Citing a study paid for by the American Petroleum Institute, oil executives say crude oil output fell by more than 100,000 barrels a day. Yet Severin Borenstein, co-director of the University of California’s Energy Institute, observes that “Obama’s actions have had virtually no impact on ‘current’ production, and the entire scope for changing U.S. production is tiny in the context of the world oil market and will have no noticeable impact on prices.”

Democrats usually blame “speculators” for soaring gas prices. And Goldman Sachs is usually high on the list. The investment bank runs some of the biggest commodity investment funds and has a widely used commodity benchmark composed largely of oil. Its influential analysts move markets.

Manipulation does happen. The most spectacular example is in natural gas, where prices dropped 8 percent in 14 seconds in after-hours trading on June 8.The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is investigating.

It happens in oil, too. Earlier this year, the commission charged two veteran oil traders with booking $50 million in profits by manipulating oil markets in 2008. They bought physical cargoes they didn’t need to artificially inflate prices while also buying derivatives so they would profit as prices rose. They bought other derivatives that would pay off later when prices fell — which they did after the pair sold their physical barrels, catching other traders off guard.

But in general, “speculation” is a loaded term for what investors do every day. Cornering a piece of the market can warp prices, but usually for a limited time.


There are gushers of theories to explain the longer-term picture framed by the basics of supply and demand.

Some argue that an era of limits has begun. Yes, there is a peak to world oil production out there somewhere, because we’re gobbling up the plants and plankton that have been simmering for millions of years in the sedimentary cooker faster than the Earth can replace them. But we keep postponing that peak — by finding new fields, getting more oil out of old ones or clamping down on consumption.

Still, supplies could remain tight because of fast consumption growth in China, where every year it’s increasing by more than half a million barrels a day, and in India. The world has about 3 million to 4 million barrels a day of spare capacity right now, but prices edge up when that cushion shrinks.

The only way to restore balance in coming years will be through higher prices — but that could constrain economic growth. Robert McNally, founder and president of the Rapidian Group, estimates that prices will have to rise 13 to 15 percent a year to effectively ration supplies. “You can have 4 percent economic growth or double-digit crude oil prices,” he says, “but you can’t have both.”

That goes back to Obama’s release of strategic reserves. “The administration will be repeatedly tested” on its strategic oil reserves policy, McNally says. “If you believe half of this [scenario], how do you get reelected next year?” he says. “You have to prevent the rationing. So you have to throw the reserves into the market.”

By Wednesday, a week after Obama and the International Energy Agency unveiled their oil reserve plan, petroleum prices had rebounded, recovering nearly all the ground lost immediately after the announcement.

It remains unclear whether the president pays a political price, and what price we’ll all pay for oil.

outlook@washpost.com


Steven Mufson covers energy for The Washington Post.

Census Update: What the World Will Look like in 2050

Time
By Claire Suddath Thursday, June 30, 2011

Here is the world in 2050, as imagined by the U.S. Census Bureau: India will be the most populous nation, surpassing China sometime around 2025. The U.S. will remain exactly where it is now: in third place, with a population of 423 million (up from 308 million in 2010). And declining birth rates in two of the world's most economically and politically influential countries, Japan and Russia, will cause them to fall from their current positions as the 9th and 10th most populous nations, respectively, to 16th and 17th.

The findings are the result of population estimates and projections of 228 countries compiled by the Census Bureau's International Data Base (IDB). They offer a revealing look into the future. "One of the biggest changes we've seen has been the decline in fertility in some developed countries, such as China," says Loraine West, an IDB project manager, "while others are experiencing a slight increase." In other words, China's population boom is finally slowing down, while Western Europe's long-declining birth rate is — in some places, at least — once again rising. Spain and Italy are "on an uptick," says West, "but how high will [the birth rate] rise? Or will it simply fluctuate up and down on some long-term level? We'll have to see." According to Italy's National Institute of Statistics, the country's recent population increase can be largely attributed to its immigrant population.
(See TIME's guide to "intelligent cities.")

The two countries on track to make the biggest population gains are Nigeria and Ethiopia. Nigeria currently boasts 166 million people, but by 2050 its population is expected to jump to 402 million. Ethiopia's population will likely triple, from 91 million to 278 million, making the East African nation one of the top 10 most populous countries in the world for the first time. In fact, according to the U.N. Population Division, although only 18% of the world's population lives in so-called high-fertility countries (places where women have more than 1.5 daughters on average), most of those countries are in Africa; the continent is expected to experience significant population growth in the coming decades, which could compound the already-dire food-supply issues in some African nations.

While the U.S. appears relatively stable — it's the only country in the top 10 whose ranking is not expected to change in the next 40 years — previous reports have highlighted dramatic demographic shifts within the country's borders. Last week, the Census Bureau announced that more than half of children under age 2 in the U.S. are ethnic minorities. Add to that the non-Hispanic white population's increasing age (in California, for example, the median age for non-Hispanic whites is almost 10 years older than that of the state as a whole) and the U.S. in 2050 will look a lot different than the one we know today.
(See TIME's video "10 Questions for Census Director Robert Groves.")

Perhaps the most unfortunate change is the one happening in Russia. The cold, vast country has been undergoing steady depopulation since 1992, and the U.S. Census Bureau expects it to decline further, from 139 million people to 109 million by 2050. That's a 21% drop, even more than what the country suffered during World War II. Like many countries, Russia is experiencing declining birth rates, but it's also suffering from a relatively low life expectancy. According to the World Health Organization, Russian men have a life expectancy of just 62 years, a fact that is often attributed to the country's high rate of alcoholism and poor diet. (By comparison, Japan is also struggling with depopulation, but the World Health Organization puts its life expectancy at 80 for men and 86 for women).

So what does all this mean? The U.S. is not yet experiencing the kind of population decline that Europe experienced in the 1990s and 2000s, although immigration and differing birth rates among races means that the country's ethnic composition is changing. Something similar will be going on in the rest of the world as well: the booms of Africa and India, the decline of Russia and the expected plateau of China (holding steady at about 1.3 billion people between now and 2050) will all change the makeup of the estimated 9.4 billion people who will call Earth home in 2050. The future, it seems, is not as distant as we think.

Top 20 Countries Ranked by Population Size: 2011, 2025, and 2050

U.S. Projected to Remain World's Third Most Populous Country Through 2050, Census Bureau Reports

Through 2050, the United States is projected to remain in third place behind India and China among the world's most populous countries, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. These findings are derived from the population estimates and projections for 228 countries and areas released today through the Census Bureau's International Data Base. This release includes revisions for 19 countries and provides information on population size and growth, mortality, fertility and net migration.
“The Census Bureau has been preparing individual country population estimates and projections for more than 50 years,” said Loraine West, a demographer in the Census Bureau's Population Division. “Current estimates and projections are provided through 2050 and are routinely updated as new data become available.”
Although the United States will maintain its third place position, the ranking of the countries with the 10 largest populations in the world (see table) is expected to change over the next few decades.
The top 10 countries each currently have at least 125 million inhabitants. Russia and Japan are projected to soon fall out of this group because of persistent low fertility rates, which have already caused their populations to decline. Russia's decline is also due in part to relatively high mortality.
The countries expected to advance in the rankings are those with high fertility. Ethiopia, in particular, with an estimated fertility rate of 6.0 children per woman in 2011, is projected to vault from 13th to seventh on the list of most populous countries by 2050, tripling in total population from 91 million to 278 million. Nigeria also has a relatively high estimated fertility rate of 5.7 and is projected to more than double its population by 2050 from 166 million to 402 million.
Currently seventh on the list of most populous countries, by 2050, Nigeria is projected to climb to fourth.
Other developing countries, such as Bangladesh, Brazil and Indonesia, while continuing to grow, will drop slightly in the rankings given that their fertility already is lower than Ethiopia and Nigeria.
China and India, the only countries with more than a billion people, are expected to continue to occupy the top two positions, although their order is projected to switch by 2025 when India is expected to overtake China as the world's most populous country.
By 2050, the Philippines will round out the world's most populous countries, reaching 10th on the list with a projected population of 172 million.
The 19 countries included in this update are Afghanistan, Angola, Azerbaijan, Comoros, Curacao, French Polynesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Liechtenstein, Moldova, Netherlands, Nigeria, Qatar, Singapore, Sint Maarten, Suriname, United States and the British Virgin Islands.
The Census Bureau's International Data Base includes projections by sex and age for countries and other areas with populations of 5,000 or more. Population projections incorporate assumptions about future trends in fertility, mortality and migration. In general, fertility and mortality are projected based on recent trends and migration for each country typically reflects recent trends but also considers longer-term levels of migration. The level of uncertainty is greater for projections further in the future.



Top 20 Countries Ranked by Population Size: 2011, 2025, and 2050 (in millions)
2011				2025				2050
Rank	Country		Population		Country		Population		Country		Population
1	China		1,337		India		1,396		India		1,657
2	India		1,189		China		1,395		China		1,304
3	United States		311		United States		351		United States		423
4	Indonesia		246		Indonesia		279		Nigeria		402
5	Brazil		203		Nigeria		234		Indonesia		313
6	Pakistan		187		Brazil		232		Pakistan		291
7	Nigeria		166		Pakistan		228		Ethiopia		278
8	Bangladesh		159		Bangladesh		198		Brazil		261
9	Russia		139		Ethiopia		140		Bangladesh		250
10	Japan		127		Mexico		130		Philippines		172
Mexico (11)		114		Philippines (11)		129		Mexico (11)		148
Philippines (12)		102		Russia (12)		128		Russia (16)		109
Ethiopia (13)		91		Japan (13)		123		Japan (17)		107
Note - Table shows all countries projected to be in top 10 during the interval 2011-2050 and their ranking in each year

225,000 Killed, $3.2 - 4 Trillion

6/29/2011
costsofwar.org

 

 

The President of the United States has told the American people and the rest of the world that even as the U.S. withdraws some troops from Afghanistan and continues to withdraw from Iraq, the wars will continue for some years. The debate over why each war was begun and whether either or both should have been fought continues.
What we do know, without debate, is that the wars begun ten years ago have been tremendously painful for millions of people in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, and the United States, and economically costly as well. Each additional month and year of war will add to that toll. To date, however, there has been no comprehensive accounting of the costs of the United States’ wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. The goal of the Costs of War project has been to outline a broad understanding of the domestic and international costs and consequences of those wars. The Eisenhower Research Project based at Brown University assembled a team that includes economists, anthropologists, political scientists, legal experts, and a physician to do this analysis.
We asked:

• What have been the wars’ costs in human and economic terms?
• How have these wars changed the social and political landscape of the United States and the countries where the wars have been waged?
• What will be the long term legacy of these conflicts for veterans?
• What is the long term economic effect of these wars likely to be?
• Were and are there alternative less costly and more effective ways to prevent further terror attacks?

Some of the project’s findings:

• While we know how many US soldiers have died in the wars (just over 6000), what is startling is what we don’t know about the levels of injury and illness in those who have returned from the wars. New disability claims continue to pour into the VA, with 550,000 just through last fall. Many deaths and injuries among US contractors have not been identified.
• At least 137,000 civilians have died and more will die in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan as a result of the fighting at the hands of all parties to the conflict.
• The armed conflict in Pakistan, which the U.S. helps the Pakistani military fight by funding, equipping and training them, has taken as many lives as the conflict in neighboring Afghanistan.
• Putting together the conservative numbers of war dead, in uniform and out, brings the total to 225,000.
• Millions of people have been displaced indefinitely and are living in grossly inadequate conditions. The current number of war refugees and displaced persons -- 7,800,000 -- is equivalent to all of the people of Connecticut and Kentucky fleeing their homes.
• The wars have been accompanied by erosions in civil liberties at home and human rights violations abroad.
• The human and economic costs of these wars will continue for decades, some costs not peaking until mid-century. Many of the wars’ costs are invisible to Americans, buried in a variety of budgets, and so have not been counted or assessed. For example, while most people think the Pentagon war appropriations are equivalent to the wars’ budgetary costs, the true numbers are twice that, and the full economic cost of the wars much larger yet. Conservatively estimated, the war bills already paid and obligated to be paid are $3.2 trillion in constant dollars. A more reasonable estimate puts the number at nearly $4 trillion.
• As with former US wars, the costs of paying for veterans’ care into the future will be a sizable portion of the full costs of the war.
• The ripple effects on the U.S. economy have also been significant, including job loss and interest rate increases, and those effects have been underappreciated.
• While it was promised that the US invasions would bring democracy to both countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, both continue to rank low in global rankings of political freedom, with warlords continuing to hold power in Afghanistan with US support, and Iraqi communities more segregated today than before by gender and ethnicity as a result of the war.
• Serious and compelling alternatives to war were scarcely considered in the aftermath of 9/11 or in the discussion about war against Iraq. Some of those alternatives are still available to the U.S.

There are many costs of these wars that we have not yet been able to quantify and assess. With our limited resources, we focused on U.S. spending, U.S. and allied deaths, and the human toll in the major war zones, Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. There is still much more to know and understand about how all those affected by the wars have had their health, economies, and communities altered by the decade of war, and what solutions exist for the problems they face as a result of the wars’ destruction.

Posted at 10:27 AM ET, 06/29/2011

New estimate of U.S. war costs: $4 trillion

By Jason Ukman

WP

 

Amid a growing debate over how to bring down the government’s debt, a new study has concluded that U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan has cost up to $4 trillion over the past decade.
The study, by the nonpartisan Eisenhower Research Project based at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies, also estimates that at least 225,000 people, including civilians, troops and insurgents, have died as a result of the conflicts. Of that number, an estimated 6,000 were uniformed U.S. military personnel.
Pentagon spending accounts for only half of the budgetary costs incurred and represents a fraction of the full economic cost of the wars, according to the study. Among other line items, the study’s contributors — more than 20 economists, political scientists and other experts — estimate federal obligations to care for past and future veterans will eventually total $600 billion to $950 billion.
The estimates are based on reports from the Congressional Budget Office, the Congressional Research Service and myriad other sources.
The $4 trillion estimate could be fodder for lawmakers increasingly concerned that the United States can ill-afford to maintain a large military presence in Afghanistan.
The study’s authors say that’s a debate worth having.
“Some people will say that’s an expensive price tag, but what we’re trying to do makes it worth it. Other people will say we can’t afford it,” Catherine Lutz, co-director of the “Costs of War” project, said in an interview. “That’s the debate.”
Lutz said the group began its research about a year ago, but that it’s fortunate that the findings are being released in the midst of a major debate about government spending.
It “makes no sense” to have that debate without solid data, she said.

‘The Triple Agent’: The final days of the suicide bomber who attacked the CIA

By Joby Warrick, Published: June 28
WP

The CIA believed he was a “golden source,” a top-secret informant who had penetrated al-Qaeda and brought the agency within striking distance of the terrorist group’s senior leadership. But Humam al-Balawi, a Jordanian pediatrician turned spy, was not what he seemed.

In late 2009, several months before the CIA learned of Osama bin Laden’s Pakistani hideout, Balawi appeared to offer the agency the best chance in a decade to find and kill al-Qaeda’s then-No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri. But his stunning reports from inside the terrorists’ camp were part of an elaborate trap that culminated in the deaths of nine intelligence operatives, including seven Americans, at a CIA base in eastern Afghanistan. The strike was the deadliest blow against the agency in a quarter-century.

In this excerpt from his forthcoming book, “The Triple Agent,” Washington Post reporter Joby Warrick traces Balawi’s treacherous final days as he first avoids, and then commits to, the sacrifice of his own life to kill his enemies.

The Pashtun tribesman known as al-Qaeda’s tailor lived in a house near the village of Datta Khel in the Pakistani tribal region of North Waziristan, where he made a living making suicide vests. One morning in mid-December, he sat at his antique sewing machine to fill yet another order, this one very different from the vests he usually made.

The man was celebrated for his ingeniously simple designs that were both reliable and cheap. He started with a sturdy cotton vest, often surplus military gear from the local bazaar, and attached thick straps so it could be secured snugly against the torso. He added fabric pouches and stuffed them with packets of white acetone peroxide powder, an explosive that can be cooked up at home using common ingredients. Next came the shrapnel layer, which consisted of hundreds of nails or other bits of metal glued to sheets of thick, adhesive-backed paper or cloth. Finally, he inserted blasting caps in the powder and attached them to wires that ran to a small nine-volt battery and a cheap detonator switch. The latter item he sewed into a separate pouch that closed with a zipper. That, he explained, was to prevent excitable young martyrs-to-be from blowing themselves up too quickly. An extra second or two of fumbling with the zipper would remind the bomber to move in closer to his target to ensure the maximum possible carnage.

On this day a group of young Pakistani recruits, some of them tapped as future suicide bombers, gathered to admire the vestmaker as he worked. One of them took photos with his cellphone as the man reached into his explosives chest and pulled out a surprise: not the usual bags of powder, but doughy sticks of a far more powerful military explosive called C4. He kneaded the sticks to flatten them and began to pack them into a row of 13 fabric pouches he had sewn onto the outside of the vest. Next he dipped a paintbrush into a bucket of industrial adhesive and slathered the white goo over a large square of sturdy cotton. The man then patiently studded the sheet with metal bits, piece by piece and row by row, alternating marble-size steel ball bearings with nails and scrap and, finally, some children’s jacks.

Among the spectators, there had been lively discussions about the man who was likely to wear the special vest. Most speculation centered on the young Jordanian physician whom the recruits called Abu Leila, using the Arab practice of referring to men by the name of their oldest child and the word abu, or “father of.” But Leila’s father wasn’t nearly so certain. Before he left for Pakistan, Humam al-Balawi imagined himself a mujaheddin, a holy warrior, fighting and maybe even dying in a righteous struggle against the enemies of God. What he hadn’t pictured for himself was a suicide vest.

The one in the tailor’s shop in Datta Khel was coming together, row after metal-studded row, but there was still time. In the coming days Balawi tried his best to make sure that the vest ended up belonging to someone else. Anyone but him.


***

The forces that would compel Balawi’s arrival at the CIA base at Khost, in eastern Afghanistan, had been gathering momentum for months. The crude outlines of Balawi’s course had been set 10 months earlier in Amman, Jordan, when he volunteered to work as a spy, and weeks later, when intelligence officers dispatched him to Pakistan despite his utter lack of experience. The path became clearer when a CIA missile killed Balawi’s Pakistani host, Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud, heightening the militants’ thirst for revenge. On the U.S. side, the pace quickened when Balawi sent the CIA photographic proof that he had cracked al-Qaeda’s inner circle. From its highest levels, the agency was determined to confront Balawi. The only question was where.

Only one location made sense for the meeting, wrote Sharif Ali bin Zeid, a Jordanian intelligence officer who was Balawi’s handler, in an e-mail to his agent. It was the American base at Khost, just across the Afghan border. Balawi could travel there quickly and return to Pakistan before anyone missed him. Khost offered complete security and protection from accidental discovery by Taliban spies.

But Balawi seemed uninterested in coming to the CIA base. As he well knew, going to Khost would be akin to breaking into a prison. There would no chance for an ambush or kidnapping, and no al-Qaeda fighters waiting for the command to attack. Even if he could somehow smuggle a gun onto the base, he would almost certainly be disarmed or killed before he could squeeze off a single round.

Not possible, he wrote back.

A visit to the CIA base did offer one way to strike a blow against Jordanian intelligence and possibly the Americans as well. But this option would be a solo mission and a one-way trip. To succeed, he would have to somehow make it past layer after layer of security, starting with multiple rings of Afghan and American guards, followed by pat-downs, bomb-sniffing dogs and metal detectors. His likeliest victims might well be the low-paid Pashtun wretches who stood sentry outside the base.

Balawi’s feelings about a possible suicide mission can be deduced from the urgency of his efforts to avoid Khost. Through early December 2009, and continuing for weeks after bin Zeid arrived at the American base, he begged the Jordanian intelligence officer to come to him instead, in the town of Miranshah on the Pakistani frontier. Next he offered Ghulam Khan, a checkpoint on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border on the highway that runs from Miranshah to Khost. The answer from bin Zeid was the same: Come to Khost.

His options dwindling as December neared its end, Balawi sat down one evening to write, as though he could somehow exorcise his doubts by putting them on paper.

“I have often wished to know what is going on in the head of a martyr before the martyrdom-seeking operation,” he wrote. “It is now my turn today to fulfill the wishes of others.”

He began to list his private fears, pausing to admit deep misgivings about the value of suicide attacks. The problem, he acknowledged, is that one could “only do it once in your life,” and there was a real chance that he would fail and squander his life for nothing. A harder question was whether he could go through with it. How would he feel in those final seconds, with only a slight twitch of his finger separating him from annihilation?

“Do you not fear to be cowardly at the last moment,” he asked himself, “and be unable to press the button?”

On Dec. 28, Balawi e-mailed a brief note to his countryman bin Zeid. You win, he wrote. I’ll meet your driver in Miranshah.

Afterward Balawi and two al-Qaeda associates drove to a field to record some video footage of the Jordanian firing a few rounds from an AK-47, the gun jerking upward as bullets kicked up dust spouts in the distance. Then he went to his room to put on the suicide vest. He tightened straps that bore the weight of 30 pounds of explosive and metal. He put on his khameez shirt and gray patou, the shawl-like blanket that doubles as a cloak and mobile prayer mat, and walked back outside, where his friend with the video camera was waiting beside a white hatchback.

Balawi sat in the driver’s seat as the camera rolled. He had decided that his martyr’s message should be in English, to ensure the widest audience if the video made its way to the Internet, and he had chosen lines intended to project a kind of cinematic, bad-guy toughness, as though he were a Hollywood mobster delivering an ultimatum.

“We will get you, CIA team. Insha’Allah — God willing — we will bring you down,” he said. “Don’t think that just by pressing a button and killing mujaheddin, you are safe,” a reference to missile strikes from CIA drones. “Insha’Allah, we’ll come to you in an unexpected way.”

Balawi raised his left hand to reveal what appeared to be a wristwatch beneath his sleeve. “Look, this is for you: It’s not a watch, it’s a detonator,” he said.

But the tough-guy routine was falling short. Balawi seemed agitated and bitter, and he turned his head from the camera whenever he finished a thought. His eyes were red as he spit out his last words.

“This is my goal: to kill you, and to kill your Jordanian partner, and Insha’Allah, I will go to al-Firdaws — paradise,” he said. “And you will be sent to hell.”

With the final phrase his voice cracked, as though he were straining to fight back tears. Balawi looked away, and the image went dark.

***

Balawi scanned the line of cars and taxis, holding the crutch he used in the aftermath of a leg injury, looking for his ride. It was mid-afternoon on Dec. 30 when he finally arrived at Ghulam Khan, the only border crossing between Pakistan’s North Waziristan province and Afghanistan. The checkpoint, a cluster of mud-brick buildings on the Pakistani side, was manned by a handful of guards with rifles and one antique machine gun with its barrel pointed toward Afghanistan.

Balawi found his contact, a tall, solidly built Afghan gesturing to him from the cluster of taxis. Greeting Balawi in Pashtun-accented English, the Afghan officer, called Arghawan, opened the door of a small sedan to let Balawi inside. The driver mumbled a few words into his cellphone, and the two men began an hour-long trek down the mountains and into a dry plateau on the Afghan side of the border.

Sometime after 4:30 p.m., a large airfield appeared in the distance.Khost. Balawi used the driver’s cellphone to dial a number, and in a moment a voice in familiar Arabic came on the line.

“Salam alekum,” said bin Zeid. Peace be with you.

Balawi apologized for the delay and repeated his concerns about being poked and prodded by Afghan guards who might well be spies. “You’ll treat me like a friend, right?” he asked.

Bin Zeid was reassuring.

The car slowed at the approach to the main gate of the Khost base and passed through a canyon of high walls that narrowed at one end, channeling vehicles into the kill zone of a 50-caliber machine gun. Balawi sat low in his seat, the weight of the heavy vest pressing against his gut, but as bin Zeid had promised, there was no search. Arghawan turned left into the main entrance, and the car barely slowed as it zigzagged around a final series of barriers and into the open expanse of the Khost airfield.

The car turned left again to travel along the edge of the runway, past tanker trucks and dun-colored armored troop carriers.

Balawi, in his writings, had imagined the djinn — devils — and their whispered doubts.

“Are you going to perform jihad and get yourself killed, and let your wife remarry and your children become orphans?

“To whom are you leaving your pretty wife? Who will be dutiful to your frail mother?

“How can you abandon your wonderful work?”

There was an opening in a wall, and Arghawan steered the car through a second open checkpoint and then turned left through a third. Balawi was now inside a fortified compound with walls of stacked barriers 10 feet high and topped with razor wire. On the side of the compound opposite the gate were five newly constructed buildings with metal roofs and a few smaller ones. The next-to-last building in the row had a wide awning. Balawi could see a large cluster of people scattered in front of it, a welcome party that included CIA officers and security contractors.

***

Arghawan stopped the vehicle in the middle of a gravel lot in front of the building, parallel to the awning but several car lengths away from it. From his spot in the back seat behind the driver, Balawi could see bin Zeid, wearing a camouflage hat and standing next to a larger man in jeans and a baseball cap.

Balawi was staring blankly at the group when the car door opened and he was suddenly face to face with a bear of a man with a close-cropped beard and piercing blue eyes. One gloved hand reached for Balawi, and the other clutched an assault rifle, its barrel pointed down. Balawi froze. Then, slowly, he began backing away, pushing himself along the seat’s edge away from the figure with the gun.

Balawi squeezed the door handle on the opposite side and climbed out of the car, swinging his injured leg onto the gravel lot, and then the good one. Painfully he pulled himself erect, leaning on his metal crutch for support. Bin Zeid called out to him, but Balawi would not look up.

He began walking in a slow-motion hobble as his right hand felt for the detonator.

Just at the brink, the djinn would pose the most awful questions, he had written.

“Who will take care of your little child? And your elderly father?”

Men were shouting at him now, agitated, guns drawn.

“It is said in the Hadith that he who says, ‘There is no God but God alone and praise be to Him,’ he is protected by God from Satan on that day,” Balawi had written. “On the day of the martyrdom-seeking operation, the enemy of God will not reach you.”

Now Balawi mouthed the words softly in Arabic. “La ilaha illa Allah!” There is no god but God.

Men were shouting loudly, yelling about his hand, but still Balawi walked. He could hear his own voice growing more distinct.

“La ilaha illa Allah!”

Balawi’s path was now blocked. He looked up to see that he was surrounded on two sides by men with guns drawn. The bearded man who had opened the car door had circled around him and was shouting at him from his left, and two other heavily armed officers stood directly in front of Balawi, trapping him against the car with no way forward or back. One of the men, blond and younger than the others, was crouching as though preparing to lunge.

Balawi turned slightly, finger locked on the detonator, and looked across the top of the car. The smiles had vanished, and bin Zeid was starting to move toward him. As he did, the tall man beside him grabbed his shoulder to pull him back.

Balawi closed his eyes. His finger made the slightest twitch.

Egypt unprepared for September elections

By Leila Fadel, Updated: Wednesday, June 29, 5:50 AM
WP

CAIRO — Egypt’s first post-revolution parliamentary elections are due to take place in three months. But a near-total lack of preparation is prompting fears that the vote will be flawed, undermining its legitimacy and marring a revolution that empowered the people.

The vote is slated for September, but a new election law has not been finalized, no electoral system has been announced, no districts have been drawn and no specific date has been set. Egyptians who had hoped to see democracy after three decades of Hosni Mubarak’s autocratic rule worry that a troubled election in the Arab world’s most populous country could instead endanger reform efforts in their country and beyond.

“What happens as a result of the elections will define the features of Egypt and the region,” said Farid Zahran, a member of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, which has pushed for the elections to be postponed. “Now is the time when the revolution ends in success or failure.”

Amid a growing debate about postponing the vote, the Muslim Brotherhood and other established political groups point to a March referendum on constitutional changes as evidence that the transitional military council governing the country can move quickly. The ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces organized the March vote in just a few weeks, but it was hardly perfect. There were allegations that people voted multiple times and reports of voter intimidation. In most polling places, election monitors were not to be seen.

As uprisings continue across the Middle East, many in the region are looking to Egypt as a bellwether for what happens when a dictator is deposed. That attention means a marred September vote would not be just an Egyptian failure, Zahran said.

“If Egypt builds a modern, civil state, that will color the whole region, and if it goes into a dark tunnel, it will take the region there with it,” he said.

Tunisia’s interim government faced a similar dilemma. Leaders there announced in June that the first election since the January ouster of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali would be postponed from July 24 to Oct. 23.

In Egypt on Monday, the English-language version of the state-owned al-Ahram newspaper reported that the military had no plans to postpone the elections.

The problem, said a Western diplomat in Cairo with firsthand knowledge of the military council’s workings, is that the ruling generals “haven’t done anything yet” to prepare. The council’s secretive nature, however, makes it difficult to rule out the possibility that some preparations have been made but are not public.

Unsecured polling stations, organizational problems that keep large numbers from voting or general perceptions of fraud due to a lack of independent supervision could lead Egyptians to reject the September results as illegitimate, the diplomat warned.

‘Most opaque process’

In the past, Egypt’s feared Interior Ministry ran elections. But many voters stayed away because they expected that the results would be rigged in favor of Mubarak’s now-disbanded National Democratic Party.

Now Egyptians appear excited to choose a truly representative body. Seventy-six percent of people want the elections on time or sooner, according to an International Republican Institute poll released this month, and 72 percent said they plan to vote.

Despite that enthusiasm, candidates have not been announced because no election rules are in place and parties are still in the process of getting licensed. Judges, who under the draft election law are supposed to oversee the voting, have not met. No one knows how the elections will work, so poll workers have not been trained and voter education campaigns have not been launched.

The military council issued the draft election law in May, saying it was seeking input from the public. Legal experts who studied the law found it muddled, filled with gaps and favorable to groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood that have been around for decades.

“This is the most opaque process we’ve seen,” said Andrew Reynolds, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who studies electoral systems in new democracies. “No one, not the political parties, the United Nations” or nongovernmental organizations “knows who’s even writing the law,” he said.

Under the system proposed in May, one-third of the seats in parliament would be apportioned based on the number of votes a party receives in each governorate. The other two-thirds would be distributed based on votes for individual candidates in a district, a system that works against smaller parties because they don’t have enough reach to campaign in every district, Reynolds said.

“The bottom line is that this system advantages the old parties,” he said. “The people who are going to lose out are the Tahrir Square groups and the liberal movements.”

The military rulers have not reached out to international experts to help ensure a transparent election, according to Western observers. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Sunday during a visit to Egypt that he and Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) urged the head of the Egyptian military council, Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, to consider inviting international observers and that Tantawi was open to the idea.

A security vacuum

As the country debates whether to postpone the elections, newer parties — largely secular and liberal — are calling for a delay because they need time to prepare and introduce themselves to the public.

But groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which has an established grass-roots following, are pushing for the elections to be held on time. The call for postponing the vote is “basically a minority exercising dictatorship and forcing its opinion on the majority,” said Mamdouh Ismail, a lawyer and member of the Brotherhood.

Although a precise date for the elections has not been set, the military announced March 28 that the vote would be held within six months, and many here expect it by the end of September.

Between now and then, the month of Ramadan, during which Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset and government bodies grind to a halt, will further stall preparations.

“I’m 100 percent sure the elections will be postponed,” Zahran said. “The criticism is accumulating, and something has to be done.”


Special correspondent Sulafeh Munzir al-Shami in Cairo contributed to this report.

Tax rates and job creation in one graph

Posted at 08:49 AM ET, 06/28/2011

By Ezra Klein

WP

In theory, the GOP is so committed to resisting tax hikes because it’s so committed to creating jobs. “The fact is you can’t tax the very people that we expect to invest in the economy and create jobs,” says Speaker John Boehner. But Michael Linden’s chart comparing average annual job creation at different marginal tax rates begs to differ:

Martial law provision secretly passed in Congress Committee

By Deborah Dupre, Human Rights Examiner
June 25, 2011 10:12 am ET
examiner.com

Martial Law provision goes to Senate

A noted human rights group spokesperson has stated that the mandatory military detention provision that the Senate Armed Services Committee secretly discussed and passed this week, is what martial-law states, not democracies do.

The Senate Armed Services Committee's vote this week redefined rules for detaining terrorism suspects, including giving power to military judges to review cases of prisoners in Afghanistan and mandating military detention for important Qaeda suspects even captured on United States soil according to The New York Times.

The Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program senior counsel for Human Rights Watch, Andrea Prasow said “mandatory military detention is what martial-law states do, not democracies” reported The Times.

Human Rights Watch is one of the world’s leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights.

The Times reported Friday that "the vote took place in a closed session and the text of the legislation has not been made public."

The secretly discussed and approved package passed with a 25 to 1 vote as part of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. Only a brief summary of the act as a whole has been released.

The mandatory detention provision was drafted by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the committee chairman, and Republicans John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

The Committee on Armed Services is the United States Senate committee that is empowered with legislative oversight of the United States military, including: the Department of Defense, military research and development, nuclear energy (related to national security), members of the military benefits, the Selective Service System and other defense policy matters. (Wikipedia)


The Senate now decides whether to pass the bill.

Human rights defender Andrea Prasow called mandatory detention provision an “outrageous” undermining of prosecutorial discretion.

Before joining Human Rights Watch, Prasow was a defense attorney with the Office of Military Commissions. She served as assistant counsel for Salim Hamdan in the only contested military commission trial to date.

As an associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP in New York, Prasow served as habeas counsel for ten Saudi detainees at Guantanamo that took her to Bahrain, Yemen and Afghanistan.

She is a leading advocate for urging Washington executive branch and congress to implement counterterrorism policies that respect internationally recognized human rights.

Having recently returned from Kabul, today, from the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York where she will be on panels after films screened Sunday at 4:00 and 6:30pm, Prasow wrote the following message on Twitter:

"Lots of great questions at [Human Rights Watch] film fest tonight re why Obama terrorism prosecutions as bad as under Bush. Wish I had great answers."

Judge Sends Conrad Black Back to Prison

June 24, 2011, 4:57 pm
By DEALBOOK
The New York Times

John Gress/ReutersConrad Black and his wife, Barbara Amiel, leave federal court in Chicago.

After nearly a year of fighting to remain free, Conrad M. Black is going back to prison.

Mr. Black, the onetime newspaper baron, received a new jail sentence on Friday from a federal judge in Chicago for his remaining convictions on charges that he defrauded his investors. Judge Amy St. Eve imposed a three-and-a-half-year sentence on Mr. Black, although prosecutors say he will get credit for the more than two years that he has already served in federal prison.

The resentencing of Mr. Black stems from a federal appeals court decision in October that upheld two of Mr. Black’s 2007 convictions, for mail fraud and obstruction of justice, even though it reversed two other convictions for fraud. Mr. Black had been out on bail since last summer pending the appeal.

Mr. Black’s wife, Barbara Amiel Black, appeared to faint in the courtroom after the prison sentence was announced on Friday, according to news reports.

Prior to his sentencing, Mr. Black addressed Judge St. Eve for about 20 minutes but did not concede any guilt. “I never ask for mercy,” he said, according to The Associated Press, “but I do ask for avoidance of injustice.”


In his 2007 trial, Mr. Black and three other executives from his company, Hollinger International, were convicted of defrauding Hollinger shareholders out of $6.1 million. At the time, Judge St. Eve sentenced Mr. Black to six and a half years in prison.

The convictions were appealed, however, after the Supreme Court ruled last year that the broad interpretation of the “honest services” law used to prosecute Mr. Black and Jeffrey K. Skilling, the former chief executive of Enron, was unconstitutionally vague.

In their unanimous ruling on Oct. 29, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago threw out two fraud charges tied to the honest-services law. But the appeals court affirmed the two other convictions, which it concluded were not rooted in the honest-services law, and returned Mr. Black to Judge St. Eve’s courtroom for resentencing.

The date of Mr. Black’s return to prison has not yet been set.

PNAC-Reborn: Calling for Greater Libyan War

Saturday, June 25, 2011

By Tony Cartalucci - BLN Contributing Writer

For those that want a list of who is responsible for what ails America and the world, one could get a good start by examining the signatories of the Foreign Policy Initiative's latest signed confession. Titled, "An Open Letter to the House Republicans" they implore House Republicans to not only support the un-Constitutional war being waged in America's name on the Fortune 500's behalf, but to "achieve the goal of removing Qaddafi from power." Apparently we were all lied to when we were told the goal of our intervention in Libya was to "protect civilians." As reported in May, Libya will be won at any cost, and the initial lies used to tip-toe us into the conflict were but a temporary pretense for a war of total domination.

Recycled PNAC sleaze: Now calling themselves the Foreign Policy Initiative, they constitute a full-time corporate and government subsidized war lobbying organization. Many of the signatories of FPI's latest letter include members of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

....

Not only has the slaughter of those very civilians at the hands of NATO contradicted NATO's stated purpose for intervening, so has the fact that the US and NATO are supporting rebels who are admittedly terrorists, who are photographed on a daily basis using the same indiscriminate weapons such as grad rockets the West has accused Qaddafi of using, and committing on record the same atrocities Qaddafi is baselessly accused of committing. Now apparently the real architects behind the operation, fearing that their bloodbath may be coming to a premature end, have revealed themselves and the true "finish line" for the war in Libya.


The letter exclaims, "We should be doing more to help the Libyan opposition, which deserves our support. We should not be allowing ourselves to be held hostage to U.N. Security Council resolutions and irresolute allies." Utterly unfazed by not only casting aside the very international law they claim is giving them the right to murder Libyans in the first place, and having already cast to the wayside the US Constitution they are all accountable to, they reveal that indeed, they see themselves as accountable to no one. Such is the very despotic barbarism the corporatocracy, through their feckless puppet politicians and media organizations, have convinced thousands of brave Americans to go overseas and fight.

The letter concludes, "The United States must see this effort in Libya through to its conclusion. Success is profoundly in our interests and in keeping with our principles as a nation. The success of NATO’s operations will influence how other Middle Eastern regimes respond to the demands of their people for more political rights and freedoms. For the United States and NATO to be defeated by Muammar al-Qaddafi would suggest that American leadership and resolution were now gravely in doubt—a conclusion that would undermine American influence and embolden our nation’s enemies." In reality, Libya is meant to serve as an example to other nations targeted by these meddling, thuggish, unaccountable global despots. Failure in Libya would not "embolden our nation's enemies," but rather embolden those seeking justice against the signatories and architects of the current engineered unrest festering worldwide.

The following names represent not only Libya's real enemies, but America's as well. These traitors need to be watched, reported on, arrested by law enforcement, and put on trial for their crimes. Additionally, the corporations they do business with and represent need to be brought to their knees through a merciless full-spectrum boycott, and every sentator or representative that shakes their hands, deals with them, or heeds their calls (Lieberman, McCain, Graham, to name a few), voted out of office forever. Look at these names; each one has a story of treason and betrayal against the great American Republic that could fill a book. After reading each name, please contact your representatives in Congress and politely tell them that should they heed this letter from these degenerate, treasonous war mongers, they will be unemployed next election.

The names are as follows:

Elliott Abrams, Bruce Pitcairn Jackson, John Podhoretz, Gary Bauer, Ash Jain, Stephen G. Rademaker, Max Boot, Frederick Kagan, Karl Rove, Ellen Bork, Robert Kagan, Randy Scheunemann, Scott Carpenter, Lawrence Kaplan, Gary Schmitt, Liz Cheney, William Kristol, Dan Senor, Seth Cropsey, Robert Lieber, Michael Singh, Thomas Donnelly, Tod Lindberg, Henry D. Sokolski, Colin Dueck, Michael Makovsky, Marc Thiessen, Eric Edelman, Ann Marlowe, Kurt Volker, Jamie Fly, Clifford D. May, Kenneth Weinstein, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Joshua Muravchik, Paul Wolfowitz, John Hannah, Martin Peretz, R. James Woolsey, William Inboden, and Danielle Pletka.

 

U.S. fares poorly in first modern polling of Egyptian views

Hannah Allam | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: June 25, 2011 05:53:08 PM

CAIRO — Egyptians largely reject U.S. involvement in Egypt and appear split on whether to extend the longstanding peace treaty with neighboring Israel. They overwhelmingly support the revolution and are eager to vote without delay, but haven't yet identified a trusted party or politician to steer the nation toward their vision of an Islam-compatible democracy.

That's the portrait emerging of Egypt's millions-strong electorate as the country prepares for the first vote since the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, according to survey results released in recent weeks by U.S. polling firms. With no single group garnering more than 15 percent of public support and the majority of voters still undecided, the poll results augur a closely contested parliamentary election this fall.

Until this year, such detailed polling was unheard of here — the government strictly controlled what questions outside pollsters could ask. Anything that might have exposed Mubarak's deep unpopularity and Egyptians' pent-up rage over rampant corruption, police brutality and poverty was strictly off limits.

Now, however, polling firms have a mostly free hand to ask what they will — though they apparently still aren't allowed to probe whether the Egyptian military, which runs the country, should continue receiving billions of dollars in aid from the United States. Surveyors have rushed in to take advantage, some even setting up permanent offices in Cairo. Poll workers are crisscrossing the country, popping up in urban slums and rural villages with questions on once-taboo topics.

The result is an unprecedented look at voter attitudes in the Arab world's most populous country.

"Confidence in the military, confidence in the judicial system, corruption in government — all of that used to be out," said Dalia Mogahed, director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies and a member of U.S. President Barack Obama's faith-based partnerships advisory council. "We really have seen an opening and a dramatic improvement that allows us to ask, basically, whatever we want."

Results already are out from three major scientific surveys — the Pew Research Center, Gallup and International Republican Institute — as well as from a rash of informal polls conducted by nonprofit groups, local newspaper websites and blogs.



Even Egypt's interim military rulers have jumped on the poll bandwagon, posting a survey last week on their official Facebook page that asked Egyptians to choose their favorite presidential candidate from a list of leading contenders. Professional pollsters dismissed the military's survey as unscientific and limited only to the estimated one-fifth of Egyptians with Internet access; activists complained that the generals were trying to influence elections.

Egyptian web users, however, appeared eager to participate. As of Saturday, more than 185,000 had "voted," with Nobel laureate and former U.N. atomic energy chief Mohamed ElBaradei in the lead. (None of the scientific polls showed ElBaradei with comparable popular support.)

"We have more than 40 million eligible voters and such polls could never reflect the opinions of people living in the countryside who are sometimes illiterate or have no access to the Internet," complained a skeptical Amr Darrag, a senior officer in the Muslim Brotherhood's new Freedom and Justice Party.



Across the board, the more scientific polls' findings reveal a cautiously hopeful Egypt where citizens are happy Mubarak is gone and half as likely now to seek opportunities in another country. Residents express high support for democracy and civil liberties, but are more concerned with the immediate struggles of finding jobs, improving security and feeding their families.



The results also challenge some widely held notions about Egyptian participation and awareness of the anti-Mubarak uprising. Contrary to the narrative of a "Facebook revolution," for example, the vast majority of Egyptians followed the rebellion through television or word of mouth. Twitter, one poll found, "barely registered."



In a result that startled some secular politicians, Egyptians said they were in favor of religious figures playing an advisory role in a democratic government that's "informed by religious values," according to survey results. But for all the fears over Islamists filling the political void, poll findings showed that the Muslim Brotherhood and other religious groups face stiff competition from moderates and liberals.



"This shows us that the coming government most probably will be a coalition government and not controlled by one trend," said Wael Nawara, a senior member of the liberal Democratic Front Party, who's studied the results to better understand constituents. "But it also tells us we need a presidential government, not a parliamentary one, or we might suffer coalition-government problems and start facing the challenges of instability."

Mogahed said Gallup has polled in Egypt for the past decade, albeit with severe restrictions on questioning. Egypt's poll-monitoring body, the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, used to strike 30 or more questions from Gallup surveys, she said, and that was even after the firm self-censored to avoid broaching presidential succession, government corruption and other red lines.



For the latest Gallup poll, "Egypt from Tahrir to Transition," the government agency banned only a couple of questions, including one about whether Egyptians support U.S. military aid, Mogahed said. The matter is an especially prickly one for the typically reclusive generals who, as the interim rulers of Egypt, are forced to respond to the revolutionaries' demand to wean the nation from a longtime reliance on foreign aid. Egypt receives an annual U.S. aid package of up to $2 billion, the second highest after Israel.

The Gallup poll found that 75 percent of Egyptians oppose U.S. aid to political groups, and 68 percent think the United States will try to exert direct influence over Egypt's political future. Two-thirds of Egyptians disagreed that the United States is serious about encouraging democracy in the Middle East and North Africa, according to Gallup, perhaps an indication of public frustration over the U.S. government's perceived muted or belated support for Arab Spring uprisings.

"Our scorecard wasn't too good on the polling. It certainly gives us something to work on," said a diplomat based in the region, referring to the suspicion Egyptian respondents expressed toward the United States.



Some of the savviest Egyptian politicians — including presidential contender and former Arab League chief Amr Moussa and advisers to his rival, ElBaradei — have received private briefings on the poll results, presumably to ensure their platforms are in line with voter priorities.

Less seasoned politicians, however, are still unfamiliar with scientific polls and can't grasp how the methodology works in surveying a country as big and diverse as Egypt. Mogahed reassured them that the same approach is used in elections in the United States for more than 300 million people.

Getting politicians to understand and buy into the process is "the hardest thing," she said, adding, "To explain how 1,000 people represent 87 million would require, literally, a class in statistics."