Obama has to choose between the embodiment of his political values, and Mubarak

Egypt and the world today is at a critical stage in the struggle of democracy against autocracy.


BBC TV News led just now reported that Mubarak appears to have convinced America that if he went now, chaos would follow.

The signs are that Obama is still making up his mind.

In weighing up the balance of risks, the strong probability is that the consequences of Mubarak's staying in power is far more chaotic than if he goes now.

If Mubarak stays, a magnificent, inspiring, courageous and non-violent uprising, (revolution many call it), will be crushed. The world has seen what has happened, in the streets, the violence first from uniformed police, and then the same violence from the same men out of uniform, backed by violent prisoners let out of jail deliberately by the police.

The world has witnessed what has been happening it in their living rooms, if only the sanitised, pasteurised, homogenised fully skimmed aspartame sweetened variety presented on their TV screens.

Hundreds of thousands of people throughout the world have got closer in to Tahrir Square, seen the photographs, the videos, have watched this amazing demonstration of the courage of the human spirit through a stranger's mobile phone.

In Tahrir (Liberation) Square there is an expression of freedom that offers hope to the world. Not just the festival aspects, and the conviviality. Not just the songs, the poetry, the free haircuts. It offers the greatest hope where Muslims and Christians protect each other.

A reversal of the norms of hatred and violence that is the bread and butter of world politics. Wael Ghonim, the journalist arrested for 12 days, said "People believe there's bad at the core of everything. It isn't true".


This non violent revolution cannot be allowed to fail. The BBC was interviewing people in cafes and villages who wanted the country to get back to normal. These are people who watch Egyptian State TV. Egypt cannot go back to normal, if it means Mubarak still presides. Mubarak's rule is not normal.

If the non violent revolution is allowed to fail, a violent revolution will occur further on down the line.

That is not a threat, because the vast majority of the protesters are non violent. But there will be some individuals there who, returning home, and hearing that one by one  their comrades have been picked off, imprisoned, tortured, disappeared...some there will be who will turn to religion for consolation. And of these, some of these will turn to Wahabism. Not a lot. But Al Q'aeda only needs a few really disturbed souls to work its insane destructiveness.

Which means that if he chooses the dictator Mubarak over the community in Tahrir square, Obama the good man, the community leader, the calm brown man with a nice smile and a poetic delivery, Obama will be creating yet more enemies; yet more 9/11s, more 7/7s, yet more white flashes, more torn limbs and screams, more weeping, more anger. Obama you will be leading in the dance of death every time you step out with Michelle on the polished dance floor.

How can Obama choose an old dictator who does fake elections, political imprisonment, and torture? A man who sold arms to the side that was doing the genocide in Rwanda, almost certainly in breach of UN arms embargo?

How? Because he is surrounded by a world of wonks: highly intelligent, super-analytical paranoid minds who share one fixed idea:  

The solution to the IsraelPalestine problem is military domination.

Again, the opposite is true.

The solution to the IsraelPalesine problem lies in community co-operation and an end to strategic confrontation.

Obama, it's your choice.

You have before you, on the one hand

an ugly, bloodstained dictator who is manipulating the American media to believe the lie that he represents order. A dictator who sold arms to the genocidal Rwandan Army.

On the other hand,

the people, exactly the same people you worked with as a community leader who have made it very clear indeed that they will die rather than see him stay in office, but that if he goes, they will go home and prepare for democracy.

Your choice. You are the President.

Choose Mubarak, and you are casting a cold shadow over all the earth. 

Choose right, and you can change the course of history for the better, by letting the world see the strength of real democracy.

Mubarak Rwandan sanctions busting: UN should act to remove him?

[updated 9 Feb]

The United Nations might be able bring a case against Egyptian President Mubarak for breaking a 1994 UN arms embargo on Rwanda.

In January 1994 the Egyptian military lined up a deal with Gratien Kabiligi, Chief of Military Operations within the High Command of the Rwandan Army. He was tried for genocide, and found not guilty.

UN Resolution 198(21994) came into force in May 17th 1994 and the relevant paragraphs read:

13. ...all States shall prevent the sale or supply to Rwanda by
their nationals or from their territories or using their flag vessels or
aircraft of arms and related matériel of all types, including weapons and
ammunition, military vehicles and equipment, paramilitary police equipment and
spare parts;


15. Calls upon all States, including States not Members of the United
Nations, and international organizations to act strictly in accordance with the
provisions of the present resolution, notwithstanding the existence of any
rights or obligations conferred or imposed by any international agreement or any
contract entered into or any licence or permit granted prior to the date of the
adoption of this resolution;



[Update 9 Feb)
It is possible that Mubarak's regime broke the law in sending arms to Rwanda, since although the initial deals may have been set up in January 1994, the shipments would have been going in after May17th, given the time required to negotiate the details, assemble the shipments, and transport them to Rwanda.

I have been searching for hard evidence that Egyptian arms broke the embargo.

Nothing direct has yet come up, but one piece of information suggests that Mubarak may have beaten the deadline. The Egyptians prided themselves on speedy delivery. OrwellToday quoted Linda Melvern's book, showing that in 1990 a $5.9 million arms order was dispatched on the same day that the contract was signed. If the deal went through with the same speed in 1994, Mubarak would be clear.

The possibility still remains that a tail end of the order 1994 deal was delivered later. The UN committee charged with monitoring the embargo might have information. See below for action that you could take.


Source
The original source for this information comes from Ennahar, an Algerian newspaper which was tweeted by Frank Habineza, Leader of the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda and President of the Africa Greens Federation.

Action

It is to be hoped that this information may be used by the UN to persuade President Mubarak to leave office immediately, in exchange for a case against him for sanctions breaking being dropped.

Mubarak’s obstinacy in remaining in office is endangering the legitimate democratic wishes of the people of Egypt. We reject the suggestion that it is necessary for stability that he remain in office until elections, and that the reverse is true, since defeat of the non-violent uprising of young Egyptian may be reasonably be expected to increase rather than decrease the risk of violent Islamic extremism in Egypt.



Go to the UN contacts page and enter your details and then paste in this message:


A Security Council Committee was established pursuant to resolution 918 (1994). 
Do the minutes establish whether any shipments of arms to Rwanda from Egypt were delivered after May 17 1994?

Thank you

Egypt's Boutros-Ghali sold $26million arms to Rwandan killers

While researching the involvement of Mubarak with supplying arms to Rwanda, I find a book by Linda Melvern, A People Betrayed:

In 1990, it was Boutros-Ghali who approved a secret $26 million arms sale to Rwanda, weapons stockpiled by the Hutu as part of the fairly public, longterm preparations for the genocide. (French banks, for their part, helped launder the international aid money that was used to pay for that and other arms shipments, including the purchase of some 580,000 machetes from China.) And it was Boutros-Ghali who, as the genocide progressed, ignored the increasingly urgent faxes from his peacekeeping commander begging for more men, gasoline, and equipment.

Boutros-Ghali was UN Secretary General 1992-6, presiding over the inadequate response ot the Rwandan genocide.

:(

Mubarak broke UN embargo in $6M arms to Rwanda deal?

[find a summary of this material here]
I have just read this story in Ennahar, an Algerian newspaper. The link was tweeted by Frank Habineza* (@Habinef), Leader of the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda,  and I've pasted it below, cutting it down to its essentials, and a few tidyings-up which I have [put in] for clarity.


The conclusions are affected by ongoing research posted below.

Hosni Mubarak broke UN arms embargo  

This information is related to arms sales contracts made by Hosni Mubarak and his Minister of Defense and Military Production Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, according to secret U.S. intelligence documents and other [documents] from United Nations Institutions and International Criminal Court.

Dated January 11, 1994, while war raged in Rwanda between Tutsis and Hutus, Rwanda's ambassador in Cairo sent a letter to Tantawi, asking him to prepare for hosting a military delegation from Rwanda, including Colonel Gratien Kabiligi, head of the delegation and head of operations at the General Staff of the Rwandan army, and Lt. Col. Cyprien Kayumba, Director of Finance, Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Rwanda. 

Delegations will arrive in Cairo during the week of 1/17 to 1/23/1994 for a period of one week. 

What was surprising in that letter from the Ambassador of Rwanda is that it was for the Egyptian Minister of Defense Mohamed Hussein Tantawi through an official at the Egyptian Ministry of Defense, General Seyed Sami, in his capacity responsible for relations with friendly countries, instead of being sent according to the diplomatic norms.

This letter comes after a letter sent by the Office of Egyptian Ministry of Defense who expressed his agreement for the sale of arms to the Rwandan army while the United Nations had imposed an embargo on arms sales to Rwanda during the period of civil war where massacres were committed by the Rwandan army against Hutu tribe and the Tutsi rebels.

A correspondence was forwarded to the Egyptian Embassy in Kigali by the ICC on the movement of Rwandan military officials in Cairo under the arms purchase agreements in Egypt. The Egyptian ambassador, Djamel Chahine, in a letter, pretended to ignore the repeated trips to Cairo by Colonel Gratien Kabiligi.

Another secret document from the inquiry of the French parliament on the involvement of France and some Egyptian officials in the sale of arms to Rwanda shows operations transfer of large sums from Cairo to Credit Lyonnais Bank in France. The commission asked officials of the bank but they refused to talk under the bank secrecy.

Other documents of U.S. intelligence, dated March 31, 1994, reveal the involvement of Egypt in arms deals for the Rwandan army, accused of war crimes. According to the document, after the pressures on France, Germany and Belgium to respect the decisions of the UN arms embargo on Rwanda, the latter resorted to Egypt and Israel.

A contract, according to the document, signed by Hosni Mubarak with the Rwandan army March 30, 1992 for $ 6 million.

The contract included significant quantities of heavy and light weapons, ammunition and explosives.

Ismail Fellah
Ennahar 

---

*Frank is also:

Founding President, Democratic Green Party of Rwanda,

President of the African Greens Federation,

Co-Africa Representative to Global Greens Coordination (GGC)

Notes 

Clearly this needs further research. The key thing is that the UN now comes into the picture, and may be able to exert some leverage in the vital space between Mobarak's bum and the Presidential chair.

The UN embargo  from UNSC Resolution 918, came in to force on 17 May 1994, so Mubarak may have got his order in before, though the physical deliveries may have come in during the sanction period.

The relevant paragraphs of UNSC Resolution 198 
reads:
13. ...all States shall prevent the sale or supply to Rwanda by
their nationals or from their territories or using their flag vessels or
aircraft of arms and related matériel of all types, including weapons and
ammunition, military vehicles and equipment, paramilitary police equipment and
spare parts;

15. Calls upon all States, including States not Members of the United
Nations, and international organizations to act strictly in accordance with the
provisions of the present resolution, notwithstanding the existence of any
rights or obligations conferred or imposed by any international agreement or any
contract entered into or any licence or permit granted prior to the date of the
adoption of this resolution;

Therefore it is clear that Mubarak's regime broke the law in sending arms to Rwanda, since although the initial deals may have been set up in January 1994, the shipments would have been going in after May17th.

---

Incidentally, in researching this I found also on the Ennahar site: 

Mubarak deposited huge amount of platinum in a Swiss bank within 1 year of taking office.

Tony Blair displays his political paranoia on BBCR4 World at One

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable

-President JF Kennedy

^Photo by Nevine Zaki; second > by unnamed friend 

The BBC World at One has just had the war criminal Tony Blair on, talking about the Egyptian uprising. Predictably, he wants the impossible: he wants to be "certain" of the final outcome, certain that the incoming democratic Egyptian Government will continue with Mubarak's condoning of Israel's  oppressive policy towards Gaza.

There is no certainty in any political future, only probability.

The overwhelming probability is that the incoming democratic Government of Egypt will be secular, on the grounds that the revolution is predominantly secular. The Muslim Brotherhood is elderly and moderate, and has played a minor role in the revolution. There are many inspiring acts of friendship between Muslims in Tahrir. Muslims joined in Christian chants in Tahrir Square today. A month ago, Muslims protected Christians while they were celebrating Christmas.

When we have no final probability, our actions must be led by faith.  Blair's faith is in his belief in the inherent rightness of the American policy wonks whose word he worships, covering all his errors in blind religious faith.

Our faith, on the other hand, is in democracy.

This peace and co-operation is of course in the face of a common enemy, but if it is built on, out of a common victory over the dictatorship, it can help lead the whole world out of the absurd and irrational religious divide between Christian and Muslim fundamentalism, a divide that has no place in the 21st century.

We have ecological and economic problems to overcome. Artificial differences based on centuries old cognitive constructs have no relevance to humanity today. Which is not to say we should ignore the unacceptable practices of Muslim cultures such as mutilation or stoning, any more than we should ignore unacceptable practices of so-called Christian cultures such as nuclear terrorism and  overlordship of the corporations.


Paranoia of Islamic extremism entertained by Western leaders lies behind the outrageous failure of Obama and the West to tell Mubarak to leave office. The more they prevaricate, the greater the danger that the revolution could be crushed like the Green revolution in Iran, or in a dreadful Arabic equivalent of Tiananmen Square,

If that happened, Egypt would end up as a pariah state, and the frustration of the revolutionaries would inevitably turn inwards, causing some to turn to suicide bombings.

In this way, politicians like war criminal Blair find that what you resist is what you get.


Blair, you are no JFK

-----------------------
See Also
Mubarak: why will Obama not tell him publicly to go?

West has to accept Egyptian Democracy, Muslim Brotherhood warts and all

Seven demands from the Tahrir (Liberation) protesters in Egypt

Seven demands have been reportedly forwarded by the Tahrir Square protesters to the government that should be immediately be met for them to end protests: 

1. Resignation of the president
2. End of State of Emergency
3. Dissolution of The People's Assembly and Shora Council
4. Formation of a national transitional government
5. An elected Parliament that will amend the Constitution to allow for presidential elections
6. Immediate prosecution for those responsible for deaths of the revolution's martyrs
7. Immediate prosecution of  corrupt people & those who robbed the country of its wealth

Murdoch's Fox News spreading rumours on Suleiman Assassination attempt?

Fox News (prop. Murdoch R) claimed on Feb 4 that an unnamed "senior Obama administration official" confirmed that an attack was made on Mubarak's  new Vice President on Jan 29.

Senior Egyptian sources denied the story to Reuters.

Next, Richard Engel, and NBC newsman, tweeted last night "#Egypt re-reports of assassination attempt against Suleiman. US source says "NO evidence of any attempt...rumor originated with media."

So who was the  senior Obama administration official that Fox spoke to? Or did they just hack his voice mail?

[update: The source, a German diplomat (not US, Fux News cant even get that right)  was Wolfgang Ischinger, host of the Munich Security conference. He has now retracted his statement.]

It looks as if Murdox News is spreading rumours and disinformation designed to boost sympathy for Mubarak.

And Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt wants to let Murdoch buy Sky News so that he can bring this poisonous rumour mongering to a screen near you.

Green Economics can grow UK out of recession

This afternoon a debate broke out among several Greens on Twitter about economic growth.
Debate on Twitter is possible, but not if you have 6 participants because the  @name list means that you are down to 100 characters or less. So I have been invited to invite everyone round to my place here. Welcome.

The question was "Is it OK to grow our way out of recession".

Natch, we disagree with the Coalition who believe the Easter Bunny Invisible Hand of the Market will make everything all right in the economy once they dismantle public spending.

Labour, insofar as it has a policy, believes that we must simply grow our way out of the recession. "Derr".

The Green Party has, rightly,  always been critical of economic growth because of the inconvenient truth that it is impossible to grow indefinitely in a finite space, and to take forever more from a finite resource. We aim for a steady state economy, where we live in balance with Nature's resources.

In this steady state, we will not have excesses of wealth and poverty, and we will be on a tendency for everyone to have enough. "Tendency" mind. We are realists, not Utopians.

So what do we do? Side with the ToryLibs and enjoy it as the UK wallows ever deeper in the mire of recession? Or change our stance on growth, and side with Labour?

Happily, that is not the choice we face. The reality is a bit more subtle than that.

What we are in fact against is growth in throughput of materials. We have no objection to the growth in Gross National Happiness, growth in knowledge, growth in the care of the elderly and sick. What we are against is the totally irrational and fantastical idea that we can continue to expand our ecological footprint on this planet.

We. Simply. Cannot. Do.That.

It is the throughput of materials, mining at one end, and churning out waste, toxic or otherwise, at the other.  That is what has to stop. That and the destruction of renewable resources like soil, fisheries and forests.

We live in an unsustainable economy that provides superficial and unstable wealth to some, and hands out unemployment and poverty to others, in the process, wrecking everything that is beautiful.

We need to work towards a Steady State Economy, where we humans live in a dynamic, fluid, but basically harmonious relationship with the processes of our planetary system, notably the global heat control mechanisms.

This requires a radical shift in the way we carry out our economic activity, and indeed how we look at economics.

Here is a brief overview of green economics.
Here is an interesting take on what is meant by work, linking physics, economics and biology.
Here is a proposal to change the JSA into a Green Wage Subsidy, so that we emerge out the other side of a recession with a strong green core to the economy, and the foundation of Citizen's Income at the same time.
Here is the same proposal with cleaned up language, Government for the enticement of.
The banking system needs radical change, because it demands and creates economic growth

Both show that green economics is real economics, and conventional economics is a distortion of reality.

Back to the question: How do we make the transition from where we are now?

We are in a position where we can offer Green Growth (or "Green Development", for people who sufer an allergic reaction on exposure to the word "growth").

We can offer hundreds of thousands of jobs in a Green New Deal.

I advocate a GND+, where the GWS is added in. In my book Bills of Health (1996), I calculated that this could produce between 1 and 2 million jobs, at a time when the unemployment figures lay between 1 and 2 million.

So there we have it.
Our starter for 10.
Let debate begin.

Objective assessment of Human Rights throughout the Middle East

I have surveyed some of the economic problems faced by Arab countries here.

What about their Human Rights status?

The Political Terror Scale allocates countries to 5 bands, with 1 being the best performers, and 5 being the worst. African countries are here, and other ME countries here.

From the PTS data, we can rank all Arab countries' Human Rights performance.

The data is derived from reports by Amnesty International and the US State Department. Where they agree, one band is given. Where there is disagreement, the AI figure is given first.

This is what each band represents:

Political Terror Scale Levels

1  : Countries under a secure rule of law, people are not imprisoned for their view, and torture is rare or exceptional. Political murders are extremely rare.

2  : There is a limited amount of imprisonment for nonviolent political activity. However, few persons are affected, torture and beatings are exceptional. Political murder is rare.

3  : There is extensive political imprisonment, or a recent history of such imprisonment. Execution or other political murders and brutality may be common. Unlimited detention, with or without a trial, for political views is accepted.


4  : Civil and political rights violations have expanded to large numbers of the population. Murders, disappearances,and torture are a common part of life. In spite of its generality, on this level terror affects those who interest themselves in politics or ideas.

5  : Terror has expanded to the whole population. The leaders of these societies place no limits on the means or thoroughness with which they pursue personal or ideological goals.



For Arab countries, these are the results for 2009:

Israel Occupied Territories      5
Iraq                                     5/4
Iran                                     4
Saudi Arabia                          4
Syria                                   4
Yemen                                4
Egypt                                  4/3
Tunisia                                3
Turkey                                3/4
Jordan                                3
Libya                                  3
Morocco                              3
Algeria                                3/2
Bahrain                               2/1
Qatar                                  2/1
UAE                                   2/1
Oman                                 1

So, well done to Oman, and the worst human rights offender in the region, according to professional assessments by Amnesty and also by their friends in the US State Department, is - Israel.

Incidentally, the UK finds itself in band 2, worse than Bahrain, Qatar, UAE and Oman, and the USA finds itself unranked by the State Department, and ranked 3 by AI.

The great advantage of these objective measurements is that the status of a country can be measured at a glance, instead of relying either on spin from politicians and the corporate media.

It is Green Party policy that the UN should adopt a scale of this kind, and publish each year an assessment of all the countries in the world. All this needs is development and extension of the UN's Universal Periodic Review.

The UN Global Human Rights Index, when it comes in, will not cure HR abuses at a stroke, but will provide a continuous, universal pressure on all governments to attend more closely to improving their Human Rights performance.

There is another approach to setting out the data, the CIRI Human Rights Data Project, but I find the PTS easier to use.

Mubarak Plays his Last Card: the Threat of Civil War

Mubarak is fed up.

That is one human emotion that he shares with the democracy protesters in Tahrir/Liberation Square in Cairo and across Egypt. They too are fed up. Fed up with him and his regime. Their inalienable objective is to wave goodbye to his helicopter. They have no choice.

So Mubarak plays his last card. "If I go now, Egypt will be plunged into chaos and civil war",

The question is - Does the unrest last longer if he stays of if he goes?

If he goes, the demonstrators will leave Tahrir Square, go home for a shower, meal and long sleep, then start organising for the elections, whether they be in September or earlier, having successfully demonstrated the essential workings of real raw democracy. They can work intensively, and with utmost determination, to organise secular, rational, political parties, to create a new democratic Government in September or earlier.

They will draw up plans for addressing unemployment, poverty and the many other real problems that the country faces.

Already one party addresses the water crisis - a core green issue.

Egypt can go on to have a fair election, in which the Muslim Brotherhood will doubtless get a bit more than the 20% of the seats, as they do at present. Why will they not dominate? Because the heart of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 was Youth, not Religion.

If Mubarak goes today, the Egyptian people can re-open their shops and factories tomorrow.

And if he does not go?

If he stays, the present position continues. The pro-democracy protesters will continue, they will organise and defend themselves from attack. In the absence of Army action, the thugs will escalate the violence. Already more have died in Egypt than died after the tragically suppressed Green Revolution in Iran 2008-9, when there were 72 deaths on the streets, which were vigorously condemned by our Governments.

If he stays, his goons will come and get the protesters, imprison, torture and disappear them.
He will manipulate the negotiations.
He will perpetuate his regime.

The dreadful scenario of civil war has been raised. It is much more likely to occur if Mubarak stays.

If he goes, the thugs will go. They are bullies, and bullies are strong when they feel they can get away with what they are doing. At present they are probably acting under orders from, but not attributable to, Mubarak's NDP party. Once the party is decapitated, and their pay dries up, the thugs will melt away.

Those are the options. Of course, the reality that unfolds will not be as simple as that, and nobody knows the final outcome. It could go bad. Nobody knows. But we do know this: that we face a choice between democracy and dictatorship, only a fool would choose dictatorship.

Evidence that pro-Mubarak thugs are police

David Cameron said yesterday “If it turns out that the regime in any way has sponsored or tolerated this violence, that is completely unacceptable...These are despicable scenes that we are seeing and they should not be repeated".

The Guardian reports: The White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs, condemned the unleashing of what, it appeared he presumed, were state-sponsored attacks on pro-democracy demonstrators, in the face of a direct call from Obama that there should be no violence. "If any of the violence is instigated by the government, it should stop immediately," he said.

Here are a few tweets. I did not record the time and date, but all tweets can be validated by searching for the author and one of the terms in the tweet. You have to start at http://twitter.com/

--- 

@MayaHojeij Alarabiya eyewitness: one sniper caught by protesters had police ID card, they refused to kill him, but they hit him.#Egypt #jan25

---

@monasosh One of Mobarak thugs caught, turns out he is a police officer.Yasin Ali Mohamed Ali, from 10th of Ramadan police station. ID 89015191
---

@HebzyA  Amiralx Mohamed at #tahrir confirms 3 ppl have been shot by snipers now. Thugs caught have NDP ID. Over 50 thugs have been caught so far.

---

@carlesdijous ID cards of people who tried to infiltrate the protest camp. (Photo) http://bit.ly/hmXCeV #Tahrir #Egypt #Jan25

---

safeworld4women  R @sharifkouddous: Every now and then an infiltrator is caught. Police ID found. & dragged away roughy to be arrested by army #Egypt #Jan25

---

LazyByDefault Ahmed

The confiscated thugs have confessed that they were paid 50 LE to come and protest pro-Mubarak by central forces (via @Gsquare86 & @AmoonaE

---

NickKristof Nicholas Kristof

Small jail set up in #Tahrir for thugs and infiltrators with weapons. Best organization I've seen in egypt.

---

MT @sharifkouddous: .. think infiltrators in #Tahrir. People walking around filming, not looking the part. #Egypt #Jan25 

---

hindhassan @SkyNews foreign editor @ITwitius: I have seen at least 17 ID all from 'mukhabaraat' (secret police). #Jan25 #Egypt #Tahrir

---

ShawkattRaghib Shawkatt Raghib

Protesters caught a StatePolice Major Ahmed Mahmoud Abdel Meguid (ID shown) who tried to burn the National Museum. #Tahrir #Jan25
---

So there you are, Mr Cameron and Mr Gibbs. Here is some evidence for you, sampled from Twitter searches like #jan25 ID, and #Tahrir infiltrators by an amateur in a few minutes.  You are going to have to search your thesaurus for synonyms for "unacceptable", "despicable", and "stop immediately".

Alternatively, you could pick up the phone and tell the Egyptian Army that they are going to have a budget deficit of $1.3 billion next year unless they give Mubarak the bum's rush.

Mubarak: why will Obama not tell him publicly to go?

In Tahrir Square, Cairo,it looked so good yesterday.

Now Hosni Mubarak has released ugliness into the picture. Unable to send uniformed police against the people, he has bussed in paid supporters, some of them criminals that his agents released from the prisons, and arranged for police to go in in mufti. It seems also that he has infiltrators.

All these charmers are being presented in Western TV as the news that "Mubarak Has Supporters".

Of course he has supporters. He has the NPD and the police, and his prison guards and his torturers, and thousands of other hangers on, all with vested interest in holding onto the regime. There is no wonder that they turned out, especially if they were paid.

Tweets are reporting confessions of captured thugs, even tweeting their ID numbers.

Their argument of his supporters is that they need Mubarak to stay until September to oversee an orderly transition.

The reality is that if Mubarak stays, he will manipulate, he will provoke, he will arrest thousands of demonstrators, and he will do all he can to continue his legacy of authoritarianism. The Revolution will have been in vain. The revolutionaries know this, and they will stay until he goes.

Mubarak must go. His presence is the provocation for unrest.

The Egyptian Army holds the key to his dismissal. They could arrest him, but this would probably involve an unpleasant gun battle with the Presidential Guard, and would stir uneasy fears of a return to military rule. But if they were openly contemptuous of his orders, defied them, and in every way short of force made it clear that they wished for him to go, he would have no option but to go.

So why does the US not order persuade the Egyptian Army to do that for them, calling in their billion dollar a year favours?

Because the US is undecided. In one of his capacious ears, he has the spirit of the American Revolution whispering its truths. In the other equally capacious ear, he has the Paranoiacs, screaming uncontrollably. To the Paranoiacs, Mubarak, like Saddam, is a bulwark against The Enemy - militant Islamic fundamentalism. They fear the Muslim Brotherhood might form the largest party in a freely elected Egyptian Parliament.

Israel wants Mubarak to stay. More or less. Step inside the looking glass world of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if you will. On January 28, one of his Ministers, a Mr Ano Nymous, said "We believe that Egypt is going to overcome the current wave of demonstrations". For which read, Mubarak is going to win, and stay on. Or at least, his policies will. cites He further says: "the Gaza Strip as a signal warning of the risk that comes with asking the people what they want". For which read, democracy is OK so long as there are no Muslim fundamentalists in the population.

Today, However, Netanyahu says "Democracy is dear to us, it is real, and it is obvious that a democratic Egypt will not endanger peace, just the opposite".


Why all this havering? Because of the Muslim Brotherhood.


The Muslim Brotherhood threat is greatly overstated. We can believe this not because the democracy is a great big washing machine that kills all known germs, but because the best way to stoke the fires of Islamism is to block the will of the Egyptian people. If successful, the people will feel empowered, assertive, and alive. They will turn their energies to solving Egypt's economic problems. If defeated, their anger will turn inwards. Some will seek the consolation of religion, and some of those will decide to take it to the extreme.

So it is in the interests of all, not just Egyptians, but of all the millions who live in fear of speaking their minds, whose lives are blighted with injustice, political persecution, imprisonment torture and death, that Mubarak to go immediately. The sooner he goes, the sooner this clear expression of the will of the people succeeds, the sooner it is made plain to all the world that the will of the people is the ultimate source of political power.

With agonising, treacly slowness, Obama and Cameron are moving towards the point that they say in public their man Mubarak has lost his legitimacy.

The slower they are to wake up to political reality and rally to support the forces of democracy, the better it will be for everyone.

Post-revolutionary Arab governments must address unemployment and poverty

	TUNISIA	EGYPT	JORDAN	YEMEN	SAUDI	SUDAN	BAHRAIN
DICTATOR	X	X	M	X	X	X	M
CORRUPTION	-	X	-	-	-	X	X
FREE SPEECH	-	-	-	-	-	X	-
POLICE BRUTALITY	X	X	-	-	-	-	-
UE	X	X	X	X	X	X	X
POVERTY	X	X	X	X	-	X	-
FOOD PRICES	X	x	X	X	-	-	-
WATER	-	-	-	X	-	-	-
INFLATION	X	X	X	X	-	X	-

KEY
RPG = Rich Poor Gap
M     = Monarchy
RPG = Rich Poor Gap
UE    = Unemployment

This crude table represents data that I have picked up on searches about the causes of protests in the Arab States. It is work in progress, and blanks (-) mean that I have not yet gathered anything on that field.

What emerges very strongly already is that unemployment, poverty and food prices are very common factors driving the dissent. Unemployment is the hey, because it creates poverty, and increases the RPG.

Even when all the dictators are gone, the new democratic governments will face major economic problems. It is very clear that the current economic model is not working. If there is no food, not even the purest of pure democratic governments cannot magic food out of the air.

We need a new economic model that can address unemployment, poverty and food prices. Conventional economics has one simple, single minded answer to this: Economic Growth in the Free Market. This model is not delivering. It pours investment into big businesses, who do employ some in making grandiose projects, but most of the investment sticks to the upper levels of management, who can buy grand homes, and save their wealth in banks at home and overseas.

Conventional economic growth does enable the rich to get richer, but the money does not "trickle down" to the working classes. The Trickle Down theory is discredited.

Green economics turns conventional economics on its head. Instead of beginning with money and markets, it is founded on ecology - our relation with the natural resources we need to live - water, food, energy, shelter, hygiene - and conviviality. (More)

The Green economic approach has a lot to offer the incoming democratic governments. The major headline areas for employment are water, food, energy and corruption control.

Water, for instance is an acute problem in Yemen, and a challenge in all arid regions.

Strategists have long worried about conflict over water resources.

However, Peter Gleik of the Pacific Institute states "Water resources have rarely, if ever, been the sole source of violent conflict or war."

Humans have evolved a way of co-operating about this most basic life resource.

Aaron Wolf believes that co-operation over scarce water resources offers a path to peace. Here is his resource page.

I have long been advocating the expansion of the approach of Friends of the Earth Middle East in cross community approach to water as a pathway to peace in Israel-Palestine.

So. Unemployment and water shortages are threats, but also opportunities.

We can create work in water management.

First, stop wasting water. Rural communities can use composting toilets instead of crapping into the drinking water. You know it makes sense. Return the matured compost safely to the land to boost fertility.

Second, harvest rainwater. You need plastic guttering, pipes, and storage tanks. Fit to each and every roof, and run the water into tanks. Use, after filtering and treatment if necessary.

Third, plant trees from the coast inwards. Forests act as aerial aquifers, absorbing and storing moisture, increasing cloud cover and precipitation.

Fourth, solar desalination plants offer great promise in production of electricity (ans salt) from seawater.

That's water. Next, food.

The Cuban response to food shortages is well known: Maximise domestic and small gardens.

In hot countries, this has an important secondary, cooling effect. Every bit of sunlight that is captured and turned into sugars by photosynthesis is a unit of sunlight that does not overheat the city.

Here is a .pdf on the Economic, Social and Ecosystem Benefits of the Urban Forest.

Even widespread use of window boxes can have a cooling effect, while at the same time providing fresh food to the household.

Vertical Gardens are a promising approach to extending urban growing space.

Next, Energy. North African countries are plentifully supplied with sunlight.

Solar water heating and photovoltaic collectors can be distributed on homes and workplaces.

Insulation is still necessary in hot countries, to keep heat out as well as in. All measures that reduce heat in living spaces reduces the need for energy expenditure on air conditioning.

As well as small-scale, distributed activity, there is a huge opportunity for economic activity in large scale solar energy collection, in the form of Concentrated Solar Power, as well as large-scale PV arrays.

Linked to this is the High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) technology that will be able to export surplus solar generated electricity to countries that can use it. In the long run, HVDC grids will play a very important part in our transition away from insecure and damaging fossil fuels.

These last two offer opportunities for classic, large scale investment, while the other measures are low-tech, small scale, labour intensive technologies that benefit people directly.


Finally, one more employment opportunity for white collar workers: an Anti-Corruption Police force. A new unit can be set up charged with identifying and prosecuting corrupt officials. This will massively reduce economic inefficiency.

In short, there is an opportunity in the green sector of the economy to address unemployment directly, with the result of both short and long-term economic benefit.