Month: March 2011

Blood and Treasure on who dreamt up the idea of importing the ‘jasmine revolution’ into China:

The messages are being circulated on

Boxun once more, the overseas Chinese website which is something of a clearing house for anti-regime news, views and propaganda

. This points to some individual or group from the exiled dissident community. The question then becomes why they haven’t identified themselves. There are all sorts of fractious, mutually competitive groups out there who would like to take the credit for starting something within China.

[yes, my procrastination time today is being spent paging through the Blood and Treasure archives. Can you tell?]

As I seem to be spending my Saturday compiling Blood and Treasure’s Greatest Hits:

The actual military weapons we sell to the the Middle East aren’t meant to be used, unlike the paramilitary ones. They’re there partly to provide manufacturers with opportunities for selling training and spares, partly as a kind of military Harrods – prestige goods for regimes that depend on such things – but mainly as a form of political insurance for the governments concerned, which are buying lobbying power. You buy the fancy goods so that you get a pass on using the pepper spray and water cannon…which of course we’ll also be very happy to provide you with at reasonable rates.

…

In fairness I should add something about Douglas Alexander’s weaselly contribution, but that’s the point where words fail me. I will say that the idea that “Labour made us do it” is generally the founding big lie of the current government, but in foreign policy – Middle eastern policy especially – Cameron and co were dropped right in it

The Joy of Censorship:

It must be an immensely satisfying job being a Chinese net censor, at least in an oversight role. 450 million people surging hither and yon across multiple platforms intent on a dizzying variety of satisfactions. Squeeze this. Promote that. Block the other. Occasionally, a call comes down for a real work of art: carving a Namibia shaped hole in the Chinese internet after a company associated with the president’s son gets itself in a little difficulty down there, for instance.

It’s a genuine problem that the devil has so many of the best technical jobs. Not just censorship, but data-mining, surveillance, military technology — many, many jobs which are technically fascinating and morally repulsive.

It’s entirely possible nothing will happen in Saudi Arabia today. A few hundred protesters on the streets, the ringleaders arrested, and the country will continue as before.

Until this afternoon, though, nobody knows. Demonstrations have been called, and now is as auspicious a time for them as we’re likely to see. But one downside of banning political expression is that you can never tell how large demonstrations will be. That, in fact, is why they matter more than under democracy — they’re about the closest you get to a vox pop.

Here are a few guesses as to how things will pan out today.

Hugh Miles on the LRB blog expects something fairly large:

Both Sunni and Shia Saudi opposition groups say they are under intense pressure to make a move before 11 March, but are trying to hold the line so as to garner as much media exposure as possible and secure a large turnout. ‘We didn’t want to go quickly, but the people took the initiative and issued a date,’ one of the organisers told me. ‘Now the momentum is there and there is an avalanche of calls for revolt. The speed with which things are happening is beyond our ability to keep up.’

One reason to expect a noticeable protest is because of how strongly the Saudi authorities have reacted to the prospect. After all, they presumably know more than anybody about public opinion. Then again, a strong reaction could just mark paranoia or deliberate overkill. According to Mohammad Taqi in the Daily Times (Pakistan):

The Saudi state machinery has subsequently gone into overdrive to prevent any prominent demonstrations. The regime has resorted to both appeasement through a $ 37 billion ‘aid package’ to the Saudi people and a series of stern warnings. The Saudi interior ministry said last week that the “laws and regulations in the kingdom totally prohibit all kinds of demonstrations

There’s also much more global attention than there has been previously:

The brutal crackdown by the security forces on the Saudi Shia pilgrims in Madinah in February 2009 had largely gone unnoticed by the world. Subsequently, when a Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr in his March 13, 2009 Friday sermon in Awwamiyya called for the Shia to consider secession from Saudi Arabia if their rights were not respected, the state suppression was swift but did not make the headlines. But now, with the full glare of media turned on to the Middle East, the last thing the regime wants is an uprising that it may have to put down brutally.

And, as this article points out, there’s a certain irony to protests in a major oil-exporting country:

the more violent the unrest, and the closer it is to the oil wells, the higher that it sends prices. As prices rise, so do the contested autocrats’ paychecks. Meanwhile, their bank accounts swell and they are enabled to pacify their citizens by loosening the strings on public spending. It is like brainwashing citizens into oblivion by keeping their stomachs full and their minds numb.

After protesters stormed Egyptian State Security, the fallout is gradually building. Once-secret documents are slowly being made public, laying bare not just the activities of Amn Dawla, but their connections with the outside world.

With Germany, that started with claims that a German firm had been marketing its Trojan software to SS. There’s also video from Saturday, in which a man shows the equipment with which he was tortured. This was made in Germany, although to be honest it looks more like repurposed generic technology than anything designed specifically for torture.

The New York Times gives a glimpse of the revelations within Egypt:

The file on Ms. Shazly, the most influential late-night television host in Egypt, accused her of harboring the socialist sympathies that had landed her father in jail and “made her adopt an incendiary approach in discussing issues related to the Ministry of the Interior.”

The report called her talk show “imbalanced” and said that she ha

But more is surely on its way. As this blog speculates:

We are also likely to find out lots of juicy details about which Western companies profited from Mubarak’s authoritarian regime, especially those who collaborated in spying on and suppressing the Egyptian people. There may also yet be details about people who were given or loaned to the Egyptian government by the US in order to be tortured. M G3Such documents may give us the names of contacts in the US government (including the CIA) who are responsible for such heinous acts. If we are very lucky, Egypt may follow Italy’s lead and prosecute US employees in absentia for these crimes.

Two groups, Amn Dawla Leaks and SS Leaks, are rapidly bringing out documents — albeit with constant debates over authenticity.

Beyond the fakes, there’s also the question of how demonstrators were able to get into the buildings. One argument is that the army and police were simply acting tactically — they realised they wouldn’t be able to get rid of the protesters without violence, and decided to accept the lesser evil. But there’s also the

conspiracy view

:

these documents may have been left behind on purpose to give people something to sift through when they were finally allowed to break in. It’s certain that the most sensitive documents were destroyed or transported to secure locations weeks ago.

I would not use the word “hoax,” however. We shouldn’t diminish the significance of what happened. It means a lot that citizens took over SS offices, and it means a lot that they found and publicized documents that show the massive, systemic, petty interference of the “security” apparatus in everyday life. But we need to recognize that there is a very deep game being played here, and that the SS shadow state may be undermined and on the defensive, but still operational.

More suspicions of the ‘deep game’ here

The question of authenticity also affects the kind of social impact these documents will have, especially outside Egypt. I could imagine newspapers realising there are fakes circulating among the genuine documents, and thus being squeamish about publishing anything on an SS leak. So we could end up with documents circulating (unverified) in activist and academic circles, but rarely getting into the mainstream media.

Meanwhile there’s a rumour going round that Robert Gates’ has been sent to Cairo for damage-control following the leaks. There doesn’t seem to be any source for this more authoritative than Debka, so I wouldn’t count on it.

Nice CT thread on (in effect) post-scarcity economics. Won by Hidari:

Much work has already been done to deal with the problem of the employment prospects of the over-educated. For example, what about “self-important newspaper columnist”, regurgitating semi-understood gobbets of semi-digested factoids gained via skimming through (and then quickly googling) whatever happens to be ‘trending’ on Twitter? This is a job that didn’t exist 50 years ago, and which no one asked to be created, for the good reason that the ‘product’ of this trade was something no one wants or needs. Nor does it require any skills or abilities to be a ‘columnist’ which hasn’t stopped it being almost exclusively the preserve of the white middle classes.

But the moral of the story is: don’t discount the

capacity of capitalism to simply create whole new swathes of meaningless employment for the sons and daughters of the bourgeoisie

, and then creating equally meaningless ‘qualifications’ which price these (pointless, but well paid) jobs out of the grasp of the proletarian hordes. Cf, advertising, management consultancy, most ‘research’, most work in ‘think tanks’ etc. etc. etc. In a de-industrialised country like the UK,

most work is already simply the intellectual equivalent of digging a hole and then filling it in again

.

Juan Cole has a rundown of Top Ten Achievements of Mideast Democracy Protests this Weekend. I’m in a state of perpetual astonishment at how fast things are changing. I keep on realising I’ve not read about a country for a couple of days, and it’s had another wave of protest or resignations.

My personal favourite of the weekend is Number 4:

4. Egyptian protesters stormed the HQs in Cairo and Alexandria of the State Security Police, the dreaded secret police who used arbitrary arrest and torture to keep strong man Hosni Mubarak in power for decades. They said they had been afraid that security officials would shred documents implicating them in crimes, and they carried off many documents. Some were former prisoners who had been tortured in the cells of the building they invaded.

This is the about the point where you

know

the system is going to fundamentally change, not just continue with different men at the top.

The best historical comparison (this side of 1789, at least), is perhaps the raiding of the stasi headquarters in 1990. It’s not just that they broke through a barrier of fear and collected evidence of torture. They also halted the wholesale destruction of files that was in progress. That’s going to form the basis for some kind of reconciliation with the past, and/or prosecution of those involved in crimes.

It’s also pretty important for the world beyond Egypt. Over the coming weeks, we’re going to see a flood of information coming from these seized documents. We’ve already had German technology being used for torture and for bugging Skype communications. It seems fairly likely we’ll get something about extraordinary renditions. Maybe information from Egypt will tell us here and the US some of the secrets we couldn’t get from our own politicians.

And that’s just one of ten.

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Here is the Egyptian blogger/tweeter @sandmonkey, tweeting about the relationship between parents and their activist children.

this story more than anything highlights the generational rift in egyptian society over the #Jan25 revolution. 
It also is a prime example of how people could live in the same house & have totally different backgrounds. Sumthin all JAN25's can relate 2
This revolution not only facilitated the peaceful transition of power from government to people, but from our parents generation to ours.
This transition is based on both guilt & regret, because they never did anything similar & they allowed the mafia regime to continue.
And it was a Mafia Regime. It was always better to be with the Don than against the Don, for those against him were crushed or killed.
So, they allowed the thugs to rule, allowed corruption to spread, & learned to adapt to the system, cause that's all they had.
And not only did they enable the regime, they tried to stop us from doing anything to stop, believing that it can't be stopped.
And we defied them, despite the threats & the yelling & the guilt trips & emotional blackmail, & we proved them wrong. #jan25
This naturally came as a shock to them, cause they never thought it could be possible. They truly believed they were protecting us. 
So now they feel sad & guilty, cause their lives were wasted accepting evil & they even tried to stop us from eradicating it. #jan25
So, our parents are now divided into 3 types: 1) The "we don't know what's going on, so we will depend on u to inform us" type #jan25
2) The "I will suddenly be proud & brag of ur revolutionary nature to all my friends, coz I need to jump on the bandwagon now" #jan25
3) The Angry " y'all dunno what u r talkin about, u r destroying this country, democracy will never work, human rights meen" type. 

You can imagine that, can’t you, in the UK or anywhere else once protests finally get somewhere? [he’s also getting an encouraging about of backchat from young egyptian activists, saying their parents were with them all along [NadaPrudence @Sandmonkey my mom was there with me from day 1 ! she’s my tear gas buddy !!]

[insert boilerplate rant, viz: if only we had a medium where I could forward this without copy-pasting a dozen segments into an email. *sigh*]

Here’s a nice comment from Condi Rice about Gaddafi:

“When he can laugh talking to international journalists, when he is slaughtering his own people, only underscores how unfit he is to lead,” she said, referring to his interview with international news organisations today.

I want to combine that with some footage of, say, Bush talking to the White House Correspondents’ Association. Fat chance, but I like to believe