Epstein Secrets

ften used soccer as a means of diverting the attention of the masses or controlling them. No Egyptian president has been as attached to the game as Hosni Mubarak was. He always attended the national team's matches and was often seen yelling advice to the players. His sons, Alaa and Gamal, fraternized with Eg

the national team's matches and was often seen yelling advice to the players. His sons, Alaa and Gamal, fraternized with Egypt's top players. Mr. Mubarak's propaganda machine made sure that before a match, supporters were treated to patriotic songs and sloganeering. These displays were useful for def

lagrantly ignored German wishes and interests. This is how we treated Russia in the 1990s. The West provided economic aid to the "Weimar Russia" of Boris Yeltsin much as the Young and the Dawes plans helped Germany relaunch its economy in the 1920s. But in the 1990s as in the 1920s the West was uninterested

ican political scientist, saw it as proof that democracy cannot put down roots in stony ground. A third serious setback was Egypt. The collapse of Hosni Mubarak's regime in 2011, amid giant protests, raised hopes that democracy would spread in the Middle East. But the euphoria soon turned to despair. Egypt's

serious setback was Egypt. The collapse of Hosni Mubarak's regime in 2011, amid giant protests, raised ho

in Wall in 1989 the democratisation of the old Soviet Union seemed inevitable. In the 1990s Russia took a few drunken steps in that direction under Boris Yeltsin. But at the end of 1999 he resigned and handed power to Vladimir Putin, a former KGB operative who has since been both prime minister and president

, while Mubarak fils is prisoner No. 23 at Tora Farm, the country's most notorious prison. The wheel of fortune has turned so dramatically for the Mubaraks, in part because the provisional military government found it necessary to mollify protesters -- who continue to challenge its reform bona fides -

the United States. But they did not begin with Libya, or with the surprise uprising in Tunisia in January or the stunning fall of Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak in February. They were evident from Year 1 of the Obama presidency in his excruciating deliberations over the Afghan surge, in the hand extended in

be too destabilizing for the country. When Vladimir Putin became president of Russia, he offered an even more extensive pardon to his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, as well as to Yeltsin's family, citing similar considerations. Perhaps an even more relevant example to the Egyptian case was the fate of South A

Sawiris, won about 14 percent of the vote. The secular but hardly liberal Wafd Party, which thrived as a corrupt, sanctioned opposition party under Mubarak, won about another 10 percent. So, at a stretch, a quarter of the voters in round one went for secular parties -- and this in Cairo, Alexandria, an

ss compared to what Russia watchers call the "super" presidency enshrined in the 1993 constitution that was hastily written by Putin's predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, Russia's first elected president. Between the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and 1993, Yeltsin faced a recalcitrant parliament (then called