'Democracy' Egyptian style

Moreover, rapacious Anglo-Saxon capitalism, ostensibly based on the law of the jungle, survival of the fittest, and natural selection did not provide the panacea it promised to all ills, social and economic. Instead, prone to systemic crises, it repeatedly seemed to threaten the very architecture and fabric of the global order: market and regulatory failures forced the hand of even the most fervent laissez-faire regimes to nationalize, bailout, and implement Keynesian stimulatory measures. By comparison, the economic systems of etatist-authoritarian polities seemed to provide the private sector with a smoother trajectory of development.

This is the paradox: unbridled capitalism always leads to state intervention and ownership (as the crisis of the financial system in the USA in 2008 has proven yet again) - while state ownership and intervention seem to give rise to flourishing forms of capitalism (for instance, in China and Russia).

The backlash was, thus, inevitable.

The traditional mercantilist roles of colonizer and colonies were inverted over the last few decades. For millennia, colonial empires consisted of a center which consumed raw materials and produced and sold finished goods to the periphery whose role was to extract minerals and cultivate commodities, edible and not.

in the wake of the Second World War (a failed German colonial experiment in the heartland of Europe) and as a result of escalating scarcity, caused by a variety of economic and geopolitical factors, the center of geopolitical-military gravity shifted to the producers and owners of mineral and agricultural wealth.

These countries have outsourced and offshored the manufacturing of semi-finished and finished products to the poorest corners of the Earth. Thus, in stark contrast to the past, nowadays, "colonies" spew out a stream of consumer goods and consume raw materials imported from their colonial masters.

Colonial relationships are no longer based on bayonets and are mostly commercial in nature. Still, it is not difficult to discern 19th century patterns in these 21st century exchanges with one of the parties dominant and supreme and the other obsequious and subservient and with the economic benefits flowing and accruing inexorably in one direction.

The unraveling of the financial system of the United States in 2007-8 only served to speed up the process as American prime assets were snatched up at bargain basement prices by Asian and Middle-Eastern powerhouses and sovereign wealth funds.