Clueless in Cairo

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This is the headline on a great column by Nicholas Kristof in the NYT. What was obvious from the beginning was that the Egyptian popular uprising posed terrible problems for the US, which has spent 30 years cosying up to Mubarak and his thugs (who, among other things, have been very obliging in providing torture services in circumstances where the CIA has been too squeamish). It seems only yesterday that Hilary Clinton was describing the Mubarak regime as “stable”. Kristof points out that not only are the Obama crowd way behind the Egyptian curve, but by making a big deal of their success in persuading the old brute not to run for election they have actually made a bad situation worse for US interests in the longer run. It’s astonishing to watch a powerful and supposedly intelligent Administration make such idiotic decisions. First their response to WikiLeaks. Now this. But let’s hear Kristof on the matter:

I’m afraid that too many Egyptian and American officials have been spending their time talking to each other, and not enough time talking to grassroots Egyptians in Tahrir Square and elsewhere. Everybody I’ve interviewed in Tahrir has said that as a starting point, Mubarak has to resign. Now! People aren’t going to be placated by him saying that he won’t run again – especially since it was never clear that he planned to do so anyway.

Fundamentally, what Egyptians want is not just a change in the individual at the top – although they want that – but also a change in the system. They want a democracy. They want a voice. They want an end to corruption. And now that they’ve found their voices, I don’t think they’re going to be easily silenced.

I’m also struck that the anger at Mubarak is growing. At first, the demands were simply that he leave office. But today on Tahrir, I heard people say and saw signs saying that he should be exiled, put on trial, or even executed. One dramatic sign showed Mubarak in a hangman’s noose.

The point is that there is zero confidence in Mubarak. So the idea that Egyptians would trust him to rule for months more, and possibly engineer a succession to a Mubarak clone, is preposterous.

I also fear that this choreography – sending former diplomat Frank Wisner (whom I admire) to get Mubarak to say he won’t run for reelection — will further harm America’s image. This will come across in Egypt as collusion between Obama and Mubarak to distract the public with a half step; it will be interpreted as dissing the democracy movement once again. This will feed the narrative that it’s the United States that calls the shots in the Mubarak regime, and that it’s the United States that is trying to outmaneuver the democracy movement. In effect, we have confirmed to a suspicious Egyptian public that we are in bed with Mubarak and trying to perpetuate his regime (even without him at the top) in defiance of a popular democratic movement.

Great stuff.

LATER: This interesting piece by Craig Scott in openDemocracy:

On the Egypt front, Luke Johnson in the American Independent reminded us of Secretary of State Clinton’s interview with Al Arabiya TV in Egypt in March 2009.2 Clinton engaged in downplaying to the point of virtual dismissal the relevance of the annual Department of State’s country report on the human rights situation in Egypt. That 2008 report (published in early 2009) discusses in considerable detail the extensive and systemic use of torture by the police and security services in Egypt. That apparatus has been instrumental to sustaining Mubarak in power for the past 30 years (not to mention to the US’ outsourcing of torture-for-intelligence). In response to a journalist’s question, Clinton commented, “We issue these reports on every country. We consider Egypt to be a friend and we engage in very forthright conversations with our friends. And so we hope that it will be taken in the spirit in which it is offered, that we all have room for improvement.”

Quote of the day

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“If two speeches and a social-media site was all we needed to spread democracy, why did we invade Iraq? Why didn’t we just, I don’t know, poke them?”

Jon Stewart

Why the BBC’s old guard called time on the Wibbly Wobbly Web

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This morning’s Observer column.

So the BBC is slimming down, in response to government pressure. The World Service is to lose five of its foreign-language services, and a quarter of its staff. And BBC Online’s budget will be cut by a quarter to £103m and the unit will lose 360 staff, at the same time as it embarks upon a radical “redesign” of the website and its navigation. Introducing these developments, the corporation’s director general explained that the hatchet-work was part of a broader strategy to do “fewer things better”. The changes to BBC Online would, he maintained, make the corporation’s web services “more focused and more valuable”.

What links these two victims of corporate surgery? Answer: they’re not television. And that’s highly significant. What the cuts to BBC Online signify is that the internal battle within the corporation between the few who understood that push media represent the past, and the many who think that the Wibbly Wobbly Web (as Terry Wogan used to call Tim Berners-Lee’s invention) is really just the newest way to convey visual stimuli to couch potatoes, is over. And the past has won.

Mubarak pulls the ‘kill switch’

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Source — Renesys.

Thoughtful article in Salon by Dan Gillmor.

This isn’t the first time government has shut down access to the Internet during a national crisis, or ordered mobile phone companies to stop letting customers make calls and send text messages. Burma largely succeeded in closing off its media borders several years ago, and regimes around the planet have created harsh censorship systems that prevent the majority of their people from seeing information deemed unacceptable by the people in charge.

Now, the shutdown isn’t absolute. Some data is still getting in and out of Egypt, and circulating within the country. The reports are so sketchy, even from experts in the field, that it’s hard to know precisely what is happening. But Egypt’s shutdown of most communications to the outside world, and communications inside the country, is the most blatant abuse yet of this kind by a large power. And it’s Exhibit A in how the modern Internet, despite its heritage as a system where information would find its way around outages, has become increasingly vulnerable to choke points that governments and their corporate partners/subjects have become adept at using to restrict the flow of information.

The Internet isn’t the only way people use digital communications, of course. But most phone service in Egypt is mobile. So it’s trivially easy, unfortunately, to take mobile phone service off the air. In Egypt’s case, it simply ordered the providers—which operate at the government’s sufferance—to stop providing service. Vodafone and other mobile carriers, having no real alternative, complied–though we still might wish for an example of corporate guts in the face of dictatorial abuses. Oligopolies and monopolies are easy to tame.

Yep.

Oh and btw this is the same ‘kill switch’ that Joe Lieberman would like to pull in the US.

Where on Earth is Neville? The Met’s investigative zeal

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Interesting excerpt from the interrogation of Assistant Commissioner John Yates by the House of Commons – Culture, Media and Sport Committee on September 2, 2009.

Q1891 Chairman: The evidence which the Guardian produced and indeed gave to this Committee actually came from you originally. It is evidence that was handed over to the court from the police investigation—

Mr Yates: Yes, it was unused material.

Q1892 Chairman:— which reached the Guardian. The key one, which you will be familiar with, is the email and “this is the transcript for Neville”. Why did you not think that it was sufficiently important to interview Neville?

Mr Yates: Well, again we took advice on this and it did form part of the original case and formed part of, what we call, the sensitive, unused material. There are a number of factors around it, some practical issues. Firstly, the email itself was dated, I think, 29 July 2005 and we took possession of it in August 2006, so it was already a minimum of 14 months old, that email, that is the minimum and we do not know when it was actually compiled or sent. We know from the phone company records that they are not kept for that period of time, so there was no data available behind that email. There was nothing to say that Neville, whoever Neville may be, had seen the document and, even if the person, Neville, had read the email, that is not an offence. It is no offence of conspiracy, it is no offence of phone-hacking, it is no offence of any sort at all.

Q1893 Chairman: Sorry to interrupt, but you say there is nothing to say whether Neville had read the email, but you could have asked him.

Mr Yates: Well, if I can finish, there is no clear evidence as to who Neville was or who is Neville. It is supposition to suggest Neville Thurlbeck or indeed any other Neville within the News of the World or any other Neville in the journalist community. Mulcaire's computers were seized and examined. There is nothing in relation to Neville or Neville Thurlbeck in those computers and, supported by counsel latterly and by the DPP, they both are of the view, as we are, that there are no reasonable grounds to suspect that Neville has committed any offence whatsoever and no reasonable grounds to go and interview him.

Q1894 Chairman: Well, it does seem an extraordinary coincidence though that somebody working for the News of the World sends an email, saying, "This is the transcript for Neville" when the chief reporter of the News of the World is called Neville and you think that this is not sufficient to ask Neville Thurlbeck whether he is the Neville referred to in the email.

Mr Yates: Well, there is no evidence of an offence being committed, which is what I said first.

Daniel Bell RIP

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Daniel Bell, whose book The End of Ideology shaped the way many of us think about politics, has died at the age of 91. This nice anecdote comes from the NYTimes obit.

Mr. Bell liked to tell of his political beginnings with an anecdote about his bar mitzvah, in 1932. “I said to the Rabbi: ‘I’ve found the truth. I don’t believe in God. I’m joining the Young People’s Socialist League.’ So he looked at me and said, ‘Kid, you don’t believe in God. Tell me, do you think God cares?’ ”

How a bail-out works

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From today’s Financial Times…

The rain beats down on a small Irish town. The streets are deserted. Times are tough. Everyone is in debt and living on credit. A rich German arrives at the local hotel, asks to view its rooms, and puts on the desk a €100 note. The owner gives him a bunch of keys and he goes off for an inspection.

As soon as he has gone upstairs, the hotelier grabs the note and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher. The butcher hurries down the street to pay what he owes to his feed merchant. The merchant heads for the pub and uses the note to pay his bar bill. The publican slips the note to the local hooker who’s been offering her services on credit. She rushes to the hotel to pay what she owes for room hire. As she puts the €100 note on the counter, the German appears, says the rooms are unsuitable, picks up his €100 note and leaves town.

No one did any work. No one earned anything. Everyone is out of debt. Everyone is feeling better. And that is how a bail-out works.