Who am I to refuse the universe?

a shot in the foot is better than a knife in the back

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 12:55:48 GMT

I love it when political manouvering becomes full-on Machiavellian. This (if true) is a beautifully contorted dodge from Kremlin strategist Vladislav Surkov, protecting his own position:

At one point he began to fear that success would be his undoing: there was speculation that he had presidential ambitions, a dangerous rumour, especially in political circles, and he immediately leaked the fact of his Chechen father, which he had previously kept secret, in order to rule himself out of higher office, or so it’s said. It was his way of saying ‘I know my place.’

Mullet

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 13:00:53 GMT

Oh, the ways I find to faff in my lunch-break. Today, translations of Mullet; apparently every country wants to blame them on foreigners and/or sportsmen. So Sweden (similar to Norway and Canada) has the lovely-sounding Hockeyfrilla ("Hockey hair"). The Danes ("SvenskerhÃ¥r) blame it on the Swedes. Poland goes all the way with Czeski piÅ‚karz ("Czech footballer") -- sports and abroad all in one.

All this from reading the blog of Amelia Andersdotter, who managed to win an election with the slogan "Vote for me because I know a lot about European cooperation, or because I have a mullet".

David and the stegosaurus had learnt a lot about each other

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 23:54:34 GMT

The internet is poisoned. In my lunch break I started reading a blog on (er, mostly) Chinese politics, and within 5 minutes was confronted with slash involving David Miliband and a stegosaurus.

[no link, because it wasn't very good porn. I hope in the fullness of time somebody will do better, and occupy that particular niche in triumph]

Sometimes there is no man behind the curtain

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:13:19 GMT

It's not so surprising that lobbyists are offering to demonize Occupy Wall Street for money. That's their job, after all: latch on to whatever is happening, and demand cash to support or hinder or manipulate it.

What's sweet is how fixated they are on finding some rich central backer pulling the strings. Maybe it's Soros? After all, these people wouldn't do anything unless they were being paid for it:

"It will be vital,â€ the memo says, â€œto understand who is funding it and what their backgrounds and motives are. If we can show that they have the same cynical motivation as a political opponent it will undermine their credibility in a profound way.â€

Who gets publicly excited about music?

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 22:05:37 GMT

People, I lack music.

My office in Berlin was in a bar, above rehearsal rooms, with an electro-heavy playlist constantly on the stereo. There was enough music around that I didn't need to find my own. So, aside from the odd medicinal piece for a particular mood, I just soaked up whatever was in the air already.

My current office is more mundane: choose headphones, or choose silence. I can't just sink into the emotional rhythm of other people's music, so I need to create my own or let the entire day be identical.
Still, I'm not really asking for music recommendations. I really want to find music journalists. Or music blogers, music essayists, whatever. I may draw the line at twitter. Suggestions?
Ones I already like:

Simon Reynolds (despite his habit of concealing his articles across a dozen half-forgotten blogs)

Velvet Coalmine

K-punk,
Splintering Bone Ashes, and the rest of the hauntology crowd. Though they're more philosophy than music, and in any case seem mostly to have given up the ghost.

Sasha Frere-Jones (though I wish he were a bit less tastefully even-handed)

um...there most be some more? Right?

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 08:34:18 GMT

Reminder that today is my belated housewarming, and my housemate's birthday party. Location is 8A cheshire road, london n22 8JJ. Turn up any time from early evening -- with friends/partners/etc as you see fit.

Should you need it, my phone number is 07935 589442

Hunting for films

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 10:56:51 GMT

Practical advice time, folks: how do I find interesting films showing in London cinemas?

I'm particularly interested in older and moderately obscure films -- the kind that will turn up over the course of a year, but that I'll miss unless I inhale a listings magazine every week.

Does there exist a website that can take a wish-list of films, and email me whenever one of them is on in London? That seems like such an obvious and potentially-profitable concept that somebody must already have built it, but I can't find it.

Relatedly, does anybody want to come see some films with me?

Sex, drugs and phone hacking, with a Hague cameo

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 13:11:31 GMT

George Osborne supposedly used to regularly snort cocaine with a sex worker. Andy Coulson's NotW was on hand to damp down the story, hacking the escort's phone, attacking her personally, and printing an editorial sympathetic to Osborne. Hypocritical Tory saved by friends in high places, what's new?

But what I love is how in the midst of all this, she still manages to put the boot into Hague:

At the time [Osborne] was working for William Hague. I remember that vividly because he called William Hague insipid and I didn't know what the word meant. I do now.

[FWIW I find Hague much less insipid than the average politician, and in fact the current cabinet show up just how insipid the New Labour minsters were. Osborne, by contrast, has no redeeming features I've yet been able to find]

Party in October?

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 23:57:20 GMT

It seems about time for me to throw some kind of a party. Late-night consultation with my housemate Cristina narrows us down to the middle of October, i.e.:

- Friday 7/10
- Saturday 8/10
- Friday 14/10
- Saturday 15/10

Now would be a great time to tell me about clashes, holidays, bad omens and the like. Which dates could you manage, were you so inclined?

[this is in London, Wood Green, around here]

Twitter is the new USSR

Sat, 13 Aug 2011 09:41:49 GMT

Guardian:

Just as Tottenham residents in 1985 lambasted the media for scaremongering about protesters – the Daily Express suggested some had been trained in Russia – today's rioters might be surprised to read about "Twitter-organised chaos".

I love the idea of twitter as the new Soviet influence behind every event. It's not quite a perfect stand-in, but it comes close.

Birthday picnic in Finsbury Park, Sunday 10th July

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 13:57:44 GMT

I'm moving back to London in 2 weeks.

I'll be arriving on the July 4th. My birthday is on July 8th.

Combined, that's sufficient excuse for a gathering of londoners I love.

Conveniently, mirabehn and mirrorshard are already organizing a readthrough in Finsbury Park on Sunday 10th. I'm going to hijack it.

So: let's meet in Finsbury Park from noon that day. There will be food, and drink, and Shakespeare, and at least a 30% chance of sun. Those of you who don't know the readthrough crowd can be overwhelmed by how lovely they are. Those of you who do -- well, surely you'll want to come anyway? Anybody with a hotline to God, please hint that sun would be really convenient :)

Details of location, plans in case of rain, etc, to follow once we've figured them out :)

Sat, 14 May 2011 15:11:24 GMT

In less wanky news...
I'll be in London next week, Thursday to Sunday. Then off to Bristol for a couple of days.

Let me know if there are things I should be going to!

Fiction Suit: comics and the politics of the pseudonym

Sat, 14 May 2011 15:08:28 GMT

[warning: 600 words of indulgent waffle on identity politics]

I've never been good at pseudonyms, collective identities, self-reinvention. Nonmetheless, I consider them a Good Thing at a fundamental level. Your identity, or mine, is the accretion of social conformism, gender roles, the acceptance of our own position in society. You can try to unpick it, layer by layer, but the chances are you'll never get to a 'real you'.

Or you can take the shortcut: choose another identity, put it on, change it once it's no longer useful. Be Luther Blissett, be Spartacus. Be your friends, or your enemies, or some combination of them all.

steerpikelet just gave a wonderful interview, where she defends political action without a true name:

Anonymous is its own separate thing, an anarchic and brilliant thing, but the wider concept of anonymity itself as a political statement - whether online or offline - is gaining more and more ground as a way of rebelling against a political culture that not only seeks to root out unsavory elements with surveillance but which mandates individuality as a form of rigid conformity. Think about it: it you grow up being commanded to self-actualise, to be the best individual you can be, to define yourself by buying things, to be yourself and find your special centre and compete with your neighbors and colleagues, then choosing to be anonymous is an inherently revolutionary act, quite apart from the organising possibilities the phenomenon offers. Plus, there’s a growing sense that there is a great deal of power in the collective, in sharing a sense of solidarity, symmetry and protection in anonymity.

It's perhaps not a coincidence that Laurie writes this in an interview with a comics blog. If there's one area that comics have picked over in every possible regard, it's the secondary identity. Start with a world that has Clark Kent/Superman as the mainstream, where almost every hero wears a mask or leads a double life. Then in the 80s, along come Alan Moore and friends, devote their considerable talents to picking apart every aspect of the superhero identity. The Guy Fawkes mask now identifying Anonymous is just the smallest part of this.

The climax of this tendency, to my mind, is Grant Morrison's The Invisibles. A cell of superpowered freedom fighters draw their personalities by lot; each necessary identity is filled by a different person each week. Characters live under layers of assumed identities, brainwashing themselves at each level to forget the next layer. Heroes and villains turn out to be the same groups, veiling their consciousness in order to play out their roles. The end result is reminiscent of, say, Shaiva Tantrism. By the end, it seems that everybody is part of the same identity: a character in a dream, a player in a video-game, the 'fiction suit' with which God walks the earth, or part of a hyper-dimensional being.

Yes, this is part plot device, part stoner esoterica. But it's also a guide to discarding the unwanted parts of your past, and to acting as a group not based on prior hierarchies. And, as Laurie suggests, to dodging surveillance. When government and corporations devote so much energy to tracking and correlating our behaviour, it becomes almost a matter of duty to thow a spanner in the works. That is to adopt some identity not linked to a passport and a birth certificate. To dream a fiction suit, be it, share it, discard it, and move on to the next identity.

The Hijab is anti-european

Sun, 08 May 2011 11:23:05 GMT

Azerbaijan has banned wearing hijabs in schools.

In a move some say is designed to bring the secular predominantly Muslim country closer to Europe, Azerbaijan follows a number of other countries in banning religious head scarves in schools. It also follows the closure of several mosques late last year under a new law on religion.

Don't you feel proud of the European export of tolerance?

[there's a very similar dynamic behind Turkish regulation of the hijab, and Turkish secularisation in general]

Policing Costs

Sun, 24 Apr 2011 17:50:11 GMT

Does the cost of policing affect what laws are enforced?

I'd (naïvely?) imagined that there would be some kind of institutional firewall in place, analogous to the division between advertising and content in a newspaper, or the various Chinese Walls inside financial firms. That is, that decisions on which types of crime to pursue would be separate from decisions about how to pay for it.

Is that not the case? Brooke Magnanti (belle de jour) writes:

Another way in which opposing sex work brings financial benefit is through the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. Police know, for instance, that if a brothel owner is prosecuted, since running a brothel is illegal, any money and property retrieved from the 'crime scene' becomes theirs. When police resources are limited, does the temptation of profit possibly influence victimless crimes being prosecuted more vigourously than they otherwise would?
...
It's impossible to know for certain, but one can imagine plenty of situations in which police - with restricted time and money - must make choices: unknown violent criminals who may be difficult and expensive to catch, or women technically breaking the law standing right in front of you, with cash assets?

Similarly, there's a debate about the cost of evicting travellers from Dale Farm:

The cost of evicting travellers from Europe’s largest illegal camp could spiral to £18million, councillors have revealed.
The occupants of Dale Farm in Crays Hill, Essex, have threatened violence if bailiffs move in, pushing up the bill to remove them from £3.5million just 18 months ago.
Basildon Council has set aside £8million for the operation – almost a third of its annual budget – while Essex Police has a £10million ‘worst-case scenario’ fund.
...
Despite the huge cost, Tony Ball, leader of the council is determined to press ahead if the families choose not leave by their own accord.
Mr Ball said: 'No one wants a forced clearance of this site and we have spent ten years asking the travellers to work with us to seek a peaceful resolution.
'However, it is important the law is applied equally and fairly to all people and if we do not take action in this case, we would have little moral right as a planning authority to take action against future unauthorised developments.

So it sounds like the cost of enforcement is taken into account in policing decisions, whether at the level of the police themselves or their political masters. Is that the case? If I break the law in some way that's expensive to identify, can I expect to get away with it?

Barons of the cufflink trade

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 22:43:06 GMT

I've lately been poking around in the UN Comtrade database. This records international trade in detail that is mind-boggling, and I suspect not entirely reliable. So today I learned that:

The UAE spent half a billion dollars on swords in the space of 2 years. How many swords does that buy you?
The UK is the world's leading importer of cufflinks, responsible for a quarter of the world trade. We export, too. The leading customer? Nigeria.

PR top tip: when the world thinks your workers are heroes, go along with it

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 16:15:17 GMT

I thought the nuclear industry had the best PR money could buy. Maybe not in Japan. Here's a spokesman of the Tokyo Electric Power Company, managing to make his employer sound as uncaring as possible. He's talking about the workers inside fukishima, exposing themselves to high radiation levels:

Some people call them heroes. But we don’t think they are heroes. They are doing what they should do as TEPCO employees.

[via the BBC Global News podcast today, though the interview seems a few days older, and is also in the Economist]

Where I'm at

Fri, 18 Mar 2011 00:24:36 GMT

Oh, hello LJ. You're still my one true love, however much I abandon you for shinier, nastier and more superficial hangouts -- it's just that when I'm busy and stressed, I end up following the path of low resistance and quick feedback.

And it's been a ridiculously busy few weeks. I'm feeling overwhelmed, overexcited, connected and useful, in a way I haven't since 2003. I have a stack of projects and involvements, any one of which could justifiably expand to become a life-defining obsession. You could knock out the top three and I'd still have enough to usefully fill my days several times over.

So, telegraphically:
- At vodo, we've just released the first part of a brilliant drama, launching itself at ideas of identity and pain and truth through a near-future setting. I'm in a slight bind over this: the people I'd most like to recommend this to are those who'll be (justifiably) annoyed that e.g. the primary female character is a prostitute doing it for self-actualisation. But trust me: it's worth it nonetheless.
- We're also introducing in-browser streaming fed by bittorrent. Again, this is simultaneously exciting and hard to recommend. It's potentially *very* significant, but the existing system isn't entirely reliable.
- My interest in events in Egypt/Tunisia/Libya/Bahrain/Yemen is probably obvious to anybody connected to me on twitter or facebook. I've now found a useful conduit for that interest, in the form of the Egyptian-German Network for Changing Egypt. Rhey're fficient, smart, driven by a desire to improve things rather than pose as radicals. They remind me a huge amount of CASI, probably still the project I'm still most proud of having been involved in. After two meetings we already have real progress on several fronts, and I'm thrilled to imagine how it could develop

[there are several more layers to go. But I'm writing this in a break from a phone call, and should get back to it. More later, or perhaps you'll have to infer it from 140-char blobs of inanity]

Storming the Bastille: Egyptians' raid on State Security buildings

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 20:01:19 GMT

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.

EU arms sales to Libya: a summary of what's been noticed so far

Sat, 26 Feb 2011 23:14:45 GMT

[cross-posted from ohuiginn.net. I really need to stop having so many semi-active bits of myself across the net]

There's no doubt that European weapons are today being used to kill Libyans.

Journalists across Europe are now fleshing out the details, figuring out whodunnit and how. Here's a summary of what they've found so far...

Start with the official figures: €343 million of weapons sold in 2009 alone. The EU Observer, Deutsche Welle and Der Spiegel summarize those numbers and examine what is behind them. They speculate, for example, that the €43m of German electrical exports includes jamming equipment used to block the mobile phone and GPS networks.

Italy is the biggest exporter: they officially sold Libya €111m of weapons, but are also responsible for €80m of firearms dubiously licensed through Malta. The Corriere della Sera has found a government report detailing the Italian companies involved, which Sky News summarizes in English:

Missile systems maker Mbda Italia signed a deal worth 2.5 million euros ($A3.42 million) in May 2009 to supply Libya with 'material for bombs, torpedoes, rockets and missiles', the interior ministry report was quoted as saying.

Helicopter maker Augusta Westland signed two contracts with Libya in October 2010 worth 70 million euros ($A95.88 million). Also last year, Selex Sistemi Integrati signed a 13 million euro ($A17.81 million) deal to provide Libya with gun targeting equipment.

...

This year, military shipmaker Intermarine Spa started negotiations with Libya for contracts worth a total of 600 million euros ($A821.86 million).

Selex Sistemi Integrati, Augusta-Westland and Oto Melara are also in talks with Libya for contracts totalling 150 million euros ($A205.47 million).

In Britain, the Campaign Against the Arms Trade reports that "the UK Government had approved the export of goods including tear gas and crowd control ammunition and sniper rifles to Bahrain and Libya". The arms-promotion wing of the UK government counts Libya as a "priority market", and says "high-level political interventions" have supported UK weapons sales there. Last November, over half of the exhibitors at the Libyan Defence & Security Exhibition (LibDex) were UK companies.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has provided another cause for controversy, bringing along eight arms firms on a trip to Egypt and Kuwait last week. Cameron openly defended arms sales, saying "he could not understand why anyone would oppose his attempts to boost British defence sales in such a volatile region"

Belgian sales to Libya consist mostly of small arms made by FH Herstal. Le Soir is doing a fantastic job of investigating this. Last Monday they were already reporting contracts for guns. By Thursday they'd identified spent ammunition from the libyan city of Al-Bayda as manufactured by FH Herstal.

In France, web outlet Rue89 interviews Jean Guisnel, whose recent book on the arms trade has a chapter devoted to Libya. He names French politicians involved in weapons deals with Libya: president Nicolas Sarkozy, minister of defence Michèle Alliot-Marie and her husband, and the Libyan middle-man Ziad Takieddine. As for companies:

Involved in recent contracts were MBDA, subsidiary of EADS, for the Milan anti-tank missiles, EADS Defence and Security for telecommunications networks, and the Dassault-Thales-Snecma Sofema consortium for renovation of the Mirage jet. In my opinion, these are the most important.

Then there are are ongoing negotiations not yet concluded: military and civilian Eurocopter helicopters, the renovation of Rattlesnake missiles sold by Thales, or renovation of Combattante boats.

A few journalists are starting to look beyond pure arms sales, examining training and other collaboration. I highlighted reports from 2008, claiming that former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder had brokered a deal for elite German commandos to train the Libyan security services:

The German officers would receive €15,000 each, paid by a private security firm which in turn got a €1.6m cheque from Libya. They would take time off from their elite anti-terrorist unit. Their superiors thought they were vacationing in Tunisia, though the German embassy in Libya knew their real purpose. The officers set up shop in a barracks in Tripoli, where for 6 months they taught their Libyan counterparts how to storm buildings, board ships and operate out of helicopters.

Finally, openDemocracy weighs in on a big story not yet getting enough attention: arms deals aren't the only link between Europe and Gaddafi's military. The tyrant has also been a conveniently ruthless border guard, keeping refugees away before they become Europe's problem. The EU's €50m funding for Libyan border controls is just part of the problem:

We, the citizens of the EU, should also be reminded that for over three years now, we have relied on Gaddafi and his state apparatus to keep asylum seekers and other migrants away from our doors.

The Gaddafi Government’s treatment of migrants has been known to undercut human rights for a long time. In the past week, matters have escalated further. Human rights groups have reported atrocious racist violence against Sub-Saharan Africans in Libya, including those removed there by Italy on the basis of bilateral agreements with Libya designed to combat illegal immigration to Europe. Eritrean, Somali, and Sudanese refugees, accused of being mercenaries on the payroll of the government are summarily executed with knives and machetes.

Libya and Germany

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 14:04:24 GMT

In Britain, there's currently a certain amount of self-criticism over the UK's rapprochement with Libya over the past decade -- how our demands were about terrorism and biological weapons, how our desires were for weapons and oil deals, and how anything involving human rights or democracy within Libya was left out of the picture.

In Germany, there's been nothing of the sort. When the German press has blamed anybody outside Libya, they've blamed the US -- which is somewhat unfair, given that in this instance America has cleaner hands than any European government. There's been occasional criticism of Britain, France, Italy and the EU, but almost none of Germany itself.

This is odd, given that Germany has by my reckoning been one of the main forces supporting trade, business and even military links with Gaddafi, and has been no more obviously concerned with the ethics of it than any other country.

I spent part of last night going through German newspaper archives, picking out past reports on German relations with Libya -- be they around oil or engineering (common) or human rights (very, very rare). Here's just one instance from the pile of notes.

Let's go back to 2004. The EU arms embargon on Libya had just been lifted, thanks to lobbying by Germany, France, Italy and the UK. Denmark and Sweden had mentioned human rights, but the general feeling was that, by abandoning its biological weapons program and renouncing international terrorism, Libya had conceded on all the truly important issues.

Just days later, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder landed in Tripoli with an entourage of 25 businessmen. In passing he praised what he called the 'political change' in Libya. But his main reason for visiting was the promotion of German business. Openly so, and with the support of much of the German political spectrum, from his own center-left SPD, through the pro-business FPD to the conservative CDU. So he shook hands, made introductions, closed deals. He was photographed in an elaborate tent, and at an oil well, looking equally out-of place in both locations.
What didn't emerge until four years later was that, alongside oil and engineering negotiations, Schroeder was fixing up a deal whereby elite German commandos would train the Libyan security services.

This caused controversy when it emerged in 2008. Not as military support for a dictator -- the €43m of German jamming equipment bought by Libya in the last 2 years has raised few eyebrows -- but because it was being provided by German security personnel, and thus involved sharing state military know-how with a potential enemy.

In fact, the Byzantine structure of the deal shows everybody knew they were bending the rules to breaking point. The German officers would receive €15,000 each, paid by a private security firm which in turn got a €1.6m cheque from Libya. They would take time off from their elite anti-terrorist unit. Their superiors thought they were vacationing in Tunisia, though the German embassy in Libya knew their real purpose. The officers set up shop in a barracks in Tripoli, where for 6 months they taught their Libyan counterparts how to storm buildings, board ships and operate out of helicopters.

Training can't be identified in the same way as you might see 'Made in Germany' on a used shell. But it's no less real; we can be sure that a hundred or so of the Gaddafi loyalists struggling to keep control of Tripoli have been trained by the German security forces.

[this is a modified cross-post from Ethnography of Light, a group-blog run by a few friends in Berlin. If you feel like browsing through there, do click through on the links. Much of the best stuff -- like this collection of poetry -- is hidden behind not-very-prominent links to Google Docs]

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 01:12:07 GMT

Here is a good article on how Europe and the US could influence what's happening in Libya:

There are numerous steps the United States and its allies can take today to affect the immediate calculations of the Qaddafi regime. Europe buys 85 percent of Libya's oil, after all. And the West largely controls the international financial system through which the Libyan leadership moves its money -- and could block transactions with one word from the Treasury Department or other finance ministries. And there's more: Western governments could say today that they will seek international investigations and prosecutions of Libyan officials who murder their people. And they could offer to provide humanitarian assistance to parts of Libya that have fallen to the opposition.
...
We should be under no illusion that Qaddafi himself will give in to international pressure at this point. As his brutal tactics show, he is fighting for his life. But Libya's fate is not in Qaddafi's hands; it is in the hands of those who must decide, today and tomorrow, whether to follow his orders. Every psychological blow to Qaddafi's government -- whether it is a Libyan official who defects to the opposition or a forceful repudiation of his government by the international community -- gives them another reason to refuse to commit further outrages on their leader's behalf, for which they may be held accountable when the crisis is over.

ETA: The International Crisis Group also has some suggestions.

Egypt again

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 01:21:26 GMT

Worrying what's going to happen in Egypt today. Still think that, without anybody for Mubarak to talk to, it's most likely to end in a really nasty way.

Some people have been suggesting phoning random Egyptian numbers with encouragement. There's something appealing about that, however much it smells of "let's you and him fight". I suspect I'd only do it if I had some longstanding connection with Egypt, but then I'm not a big fan of the phone in the first place

Other than that, I imagine the only useful thing to do is bug our own politicians. Ideally, asking them for something concrete -- like threatening specific responses if Mubarak starts seriously shooting people later today.

Anybody else have smarter ideas? Since I imagine any spare attention I have tomorrow will float towards Egypt anyway, I may as well try to do something semi-useful with it.

Without leaders, how do you negotiate?

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 20:28:34 GMT

The organized opposition don't matter much to the protests in Egypt. Everything is being arranged online, and through informal networks.

Given that -- how are they ever going to reach a compromise with the government?

In a movement with leaders, this follows an intuitive pattern. The authorities talk to the leaders, grant some of their demands, and persuade them to call off the protests. If needed, they can add some extra pressure with personal bribes or threats.

Without leaders, this just doesn't work. The government can offer things to the protesters, but has no way of getting a halt to the protests in return. So any concessions they do make will just encourage the rebels to continue with further demands.

So: either the demonstrations gradually peter out, without being able to force any change. Or the government reacts with violence, terrifies people out of joining the protests. Or, just possibly, things escalate until the government falls, accompanied by who knows how much violence.

But I can't see how the Jan25 movement -- or any movement without an ability to negotiate -- can end with some kind of moderate, limited success.

Am I wrong?

Egypt link-dump

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 21:39:23 GMT

I know nothing about Egypt. Or Tunisia. Or Sudan. Or Lebanon. Or Albania. Or -- there's a lot of news happening at the moment, isn't there?

But here are some of the articles I've found about Egypt that get beyond "woo! riots!":

Al-ahram on the significance of the date:

Police Day [Jan 25] is meant to mark the day when the police forces took to the street in Ismailia to fight the British Occupation.
...
"The decision may be controversial but I think it was a good choice," says Essam El Erian, the media spokesperson of the Muslim Brotherhood, the country's largest opposition group. "Six decades ago the police did their patriotic duty and fought the British occupation, now we ask them to also fight against a corrupt government that has rigged the elections."

Marc Lynch on the Arabic media:

During the key period when the protests were picking up steam, Al Jazeera aired a documentary cultural program on a very nice seeming Egyptian novelist and musical groups, and then to sports. Now (10:30am EST) it is finally covering the protests in depth, but its early lack of coverage may hurt its credibility. I can't remember another case of Al Jazeera simply punting on a major story in a political space which it has owned.

Simon Tisdall on protest tactics -- how this is what happens when you don't go through the same ritual demonstrations:

Egyptians have been here before. The so-called Cairo spring of 2005 briefly lifted hopes of peaceful reform and open elections
....
But Tuesday's large-scale protests were different in significant ways, sending unsettling signals to a regime that has made complacency a way of life. "Day of Rage" demonstrators in Cairo did not merely stand and shout in small groups, as is usual. They did not remain in one place. They joined together – and they marched. And in some cases, the police could not, or would not, stop them.
....
an ad hoc coalition of students, unemployed youths, industrial workers, intellectuals, football fans and women, connected by social media such as Twitter and Facebook, instigated a series of fast-moving, rapidly shifting demos across half a dozen or more Egyptian cities. The police could not keep up – and predictably, resorted to violence.

And, since they seem to be mentioned almost nowhere else, Global voices lists the demonstrators' demands

To raise the minimum wage limit to LE 1200 and to get an unemployment aid.

To cancel the emergency status in the country , to dismiss Habib El-Adly and to release all detainees without court orders.

Disbanding the current parliament , to have a new free election and to amend the constitution in order to have two presidential limits only.

Also, Anonymous are in the thick of it. Again. They've apparently turned LOIC on Egyptian government websites. This is after Tunisia, where they were about the first outside group to get involved. Meanwhile in Spain, having contributed to the December protests which prevented passage of an anti-download law, they're back at it as the government takes another shot at it.

It's like the gang of bored teenagers on the street corner has turned into a politicised mob.

Obligatory riot porn: Stopping a water cannon, Tiananmen-style. And something less violent