Unrest In The Middle East.

The Associated Press has a summary of unrest in the Middle East:

“SYRIA

Syria’s vice president calls for a transition to democracy in a country ruled for four decades by an authoritarian family dynasty, crediting mass protests with forcing the regime to consider reforms while also warning against further demonstrations. Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa was speaking at a national dialogue. Key opposition figures driving the four-month-old uprising boycott the meeting, refusing to talk until a deadly crackdown on protesters ends.

EGYPT

Army troops firing in the air clash with stone-throwing protesters in the strategic city of Suez after crowds block a key highway to push for faster reform efforts, including probes of alleged abuses during the uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak. Suez has been hit by days of unrest over calls for swifter action against Mubarak-era officials. In Cairo, protesters block access to the Egyptian capital’s largest government building and threaten to expand sit-ins to other sites.
…”

Elsewhere the Torygraph reports:

“In scenes that would have been remarkable before four months of protests and violent suppression, the regime of President Bashar al-Assad allowed public criticism to be aired at a televised conference and promised “multi-party democracy” in response.

“The bullets are still being fired in Homs and Hama,” said one participant, the writer Tayyeb Tizini, of two major cities that have seen repeated demonstrations. “Laying the foundations for a civil society requires the dismantling of the police state.

“That’s an absolute prerequisite, because otherwise the police state will sabotage all our efforts.” He also called for the freeing of “thousands” of political prisoners, some who he said had been in prison for years.

But the convention was boycotted by many more leading dissidents and opposition figures with links to the street protests, calling its final purpose into question. “I thought 1,500 people died for more than a dialogue between the regime and itself,” one activist wrote on Twitter. “

Dictators’ Malware.

Whilst protesters across the Middle East and elsewhere are using social media and the Internet to coordinate actions against dictators and other despots, they are not alone.

Eli Lake in the Washington Times has news of how a British company offered software to spy on protesters, or more accurately their PC activities:

“Egyptian anti-regime activists found a startling document last month during a raid inside the headquarters of the country’s state security service: A British company offered to sell a program that security experts say could infect dissidents’ computers and gain access to their email and other communications.

The discovery highlights the emerging market of Western companies that sell software to security services from the Middle East to China to spy on the kinds of social media activists who recently toppled regimes in Egypt and Tunisia.

Amid the scattered papers, interrogation devices and random furniture found during the raid, the activists uncovered a proposed contract dated June 29 from the British company Gamma International that promised to provide access to Gmail, Skype, Hotmail and Yahoo conversations and exchanges on computers targeted by the Interior Ministry of ousted President Hosni Mubarak.

The proposal from Gamma International was posted online by Cairo physician Mostafa Hussein, a blogger who was among the activists who seized the ministry’s documents. “

Maikel Nabil Sanad.

I read on CyberDissidents.org how an Egyptian blogger has been jailed, and I think his case deserves more publicity:

“Nabil has been arrested several times for his political activities. Most recently, he was arrested on March 28th for a blog post criticizing the role of the military in the “January 25” protests that ousted former President Hosni Mubarak. He is awaiting a trial by military tribunal, which has already been postponed by four days.

Nabil was arrested at night at his home in Ein Shams and has been detained since then. He has been forbidden to contact his family, though he succeeded in secretly calling his brother. The blog post for which he was arrested questioned the army’s intentions in seeing the Mubarak regime fall. On April 11, he was sentenced to 3 years in jail. “

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information has more on human right abuses in the region.

I would recommend using the Chrome browser and viewing their Arabic pages as they are more up to date, Chrome should provide an option to automatically translate the pages.

This is the ANHRI’s page on Egypt.

The Fate of Dictators?

Over in Egypt events are moving on a pace, with the removal of the symbols of the Mubarak period, the New York Times reports:

““Egyptians have adopted this habit for centuries — since the time of the pharaohs, when the image of pharaoh was everywhere,” said Mr. Sabry, doing a little walk-like-an-Egyptian maneuver with his hands and head. “Corrupt people should not be honored. I do not want to delete 30 years of Egyptian history, but I want to remove that name.”

The name and face have been scraped away piecemeal since Mr. Mubarak was overthrown Feb. 11 after three decades as president. Mr. Sabry’s lawsuit, filed in Cairo Expediency Court on March 1, seeks a court order to mandate “deMubarakization” in one fell swoop.

The idea draws widespread, but not universal, approval. A brief legal hearing on the issue on Thursday ignited a heated skirmish outside the downtown Cairo courthouse between those seeking to preserve the Mubarak name and those wanting it expunged.

Given that the once universal billboards bearing Mr. Mubarak’s portrait have largely come down, the sudden profusion of his picture held aloft by more than 100 supporters seemed alien. “

It is More Than Mubarak.

The problems of Egypt go beyond a single President or his VP.

And the rot goes much deeper, just considering two aspects should make that clear, State violence and economic power.

Violence against ordinary Egyptians has been a fact of life from before the time of Sadat’s repression in the 1970s/80s. There have been decades of violence, censorship and State interference. Most economic changes since the 1970s have benefited a very small minority of rich Egyptian families, the military, security services and their allies.

Fixing Egypt, and offering ordinary Egyptians a taste of freedom and more importantly a degree of financial security, is going to be very difficult.

I do not see it succeeding without a real and concious process of wealth distribution, from the corrupt elites to the people of Egypt.

That necessary change seems unlikely to occur.

For the moment the army is in charge, they have a conflicted role. On the one hand as instruments of change and on the other, how they propped up Mubarak’s repressive regime.

We should not forget they were the major backers of Mubarak and without them he could not rule.

So the question is, what now and will the Army manage to bring in any real change?

I am not so sure, as the vested interests in the ruling clique are against real reform, against real change.

They might usher in a new constitution with all of the trappings of bourgeois democracy, even initiate the first proper elections for over 60 years, but will that be sufficient?

The deep seated problems of Egypt go further than elections: endemic corruption, a lack of development, an almost non-existent welfare state and infrastructure, and generational poverty are just a few of those tangible issues that have to be dealt with.

Mubarak is history, and not before time, but let us wish Egyptians good luck with their struggles, the real problems facing Egyptians are ahead.

Mubarak: Can’t Take A Hint.

Hosni Mubarak like so many with power, can’t give it up and certainly can’t take a hint, from the Egyptian people.

He is hoping the longer he holds on, that the greater the chance of the protests dissipating and him being able to fiddle the elections in September, as he and the ruling regime have done for decades.

I imagine that his stubbornness will only invigorate those that have sensed the taste of freedom, without the 30 years of his dictatorship and the emergency powers.

Hosni Mubarak is clearly worried that once he leaves the Presidency he’ll be fair game and liable for assassination, as often happens with dictators and despots, but there’s a broader picture here because in many ways he is a figurehead for a wider regime with corruption and repression embedded in it.

Those factors and the dire economic circumstances faced by so many Egyptians fuel the protests.

The sooner that the Egyptians are rid of Mubarak and his henchmen the better, the sooner ordinary Egyptians can live without the threat of jail, a beating or lifelong poverty the better.

Go Mubarak, go now.

Update 1: Kellie has more.

Revolt, Reaction And Mubarak.

Eight days into the revolt in Egypt and we are seeing Mubarak marshal his forces against the peaceful protesters.

Mubarak and his clique were caught off guard by the speed and vigour of the uprising against their corrupt rule, initially they were unsure what to do and just employed the Interior Ministry troops.

They were insufficient and thankfully overwhelmed, so then the military came into view, but again they were unsure precisely which side to commit to.

Mubarak has been pressurised both internally and externally, yet he’s not buckling, he’s clinging to power as best he can. He doesn’t want to go.

Mubarak assumes he can’t fully rely on the army, so he has brought in members of his party, the NDP and bolstered by those who benefited from his misrule they are now mounting the reaction that we see on TV.

Mubarak’s probable calculation is that they will be sufficient to cower the people’s revolt in Egypt, allow him to employe the Interior Ministry troops again and maybe the Army (despite their promises), and hold on.

The violence, instigated by Mubarak’s supporters, could give him a pretext for a clampdown, a violent and bloody one. He’s not held on to power for 30 years to give it up overnight and it would be naive to think that he would, he will cling on to the end.

But whatever happens Mubarak must go.

Mubarak Must Go.

The sight of elderly politicians clinging on to power is not a pretty one.

Mubarak still thinks he can make it, at least until September 2011.

But the departure of his regime with all its brutality, corruption and contempt for ordinary Egyptians is long overdue, 30 years too late.

Mubarak must go.

Modems and Scraps.

Just a few scraps that occurred to me, the Beeb has a good post on how older technology is helping Egyptians organise after the State clampdown:

“Fax machines, ham radio and dial-up modems are helping to avoid the net block imposed on Egypt.

On 27 January, Egypt fell off the internet as virtually all international connections were cut following an order from the government.

But older technologies proved their worth as net activists and protesters used them to get round the block.

Protesters are also circulating information about how to avoid communication controls inside Egypt.

Call charge

Dial-up modems are one of the most popular routes for Egyptians to get back online. Long lists of international numbers that connect to dial-up modems are circulating in Egypt thanks to net activists We Re-Build, Telecomix and others.

Dial-up numbers featured heavily in Twitter messages tagged with hashes related to the protests such as #egypt and #jan25.

ISPs in France, the US, Sweden, Spain and many other nations have set up pools of modems that will accept international calls to get information to and from protesters. Many have waived fees to make it easier for people to connect.

Few domestic lines in Egypt can call internationally to get at the modems, however. The Manalaa blog gave advice about how to use dial-up using a mobile, bluetooth and a laptop. It noted that the cost of international calls could be “pricey” but said it was good enough for “urgent communication”. The advice was posted to many blogs, copied and sent out by many others.

We Re-Build, which campaigns for unmonitored internet access around Europe, said it was also listening on some ham radio frequencies and would relay any messages it received either by voice or morse code. ”

Elsewhere, the ever useless Labour leader, Ed Miliband, is profiled:

“Labour leader Ed Miliband has revealed he was a “bit square” as a youth, eschewing drugs and under-age drinking.

In a GQ magazine interview with Piers Morgan, he said his greatest talent was being “good at the Rubik’s Cube”.

Asked if he had ever been in a fight, he said: “Well, I may have been hit a few times. I went to a tough school.”

Mr Miliband, 41, added that he would not bow to pressure to marry his partner, Justine Thornton, with whom he has two children.

He also refused to “boast about my sexual prowess” when questioned about his romantic history.”

Are you still using Internet Explorer? A very bad idea as the Beeb explains:

“Microsoft has issued a “critical” warning over a newly-discovered flaw in Windows.

In a security advisory, the company warned of a loophole that could be used by malicious hackers to steal private information or hijack computers.

The bug potentially affects every user of the Internet Explorer web browser – around 900 million people worldwide.

Microsoft has issued a software patch to defend against attacks, and said it was working to develop a long-term fix.

The security advisory, which was published on Friday, details how the vulnerability can be used to manipulate users and take over their machines.

Although the flaw is actually inside Windows itself, it only appears to affect the way that Internet Explorer handles some web pages and documents.”

Please, oh please, try Chrome or Firefox instead, better still go for Linux.

Update 1: Here’s the Egypt Resource Page at We Rebuild which is full of interesting stuff.

Egypt, What Will Happen Next?

In the West there is plenty of analysis of the situation in Egypt, what’s happening now, what could happen in the near future, who might take over etc

But the truth is no one knows, as with most major world events, ie. the fall of the Eastern bloc.

Sometime down the line, things will settle and ex post facto rationalisations will become the order of the day, borne out, frequently, by the contemporary agendas that are at play.

Still, we would be foolish not to admit how contingent history is.

How a simple action here or there could have changed the order of things. How a trivial mistake by one party or another could have lead to a completely different outcome. That type of thinking tends to get lost after the events when we try to make sense of things, and there is an unfortunate tendency to indulge in post hoc ergo propter hoc.

We all do it, to some degree, but it is more common amongst politicos and politicians, and those who have an agenda to push.

But we shouldn’t forget that, at the moment, no one really knows anything, and despite what will happen, the post rationalisations to come, we are all scrambling around in the dark.

That is not to say that serious researchers in the future might be able to provide insights into the events and the people concerned, however, that seems unlikely in the short-term.

So here is a subjective selection of the thoughts of others.

On Egypt.

Labourstart has a good news feed on events in Egypt.

Now Unions have joined in it seems just a matter of time before Mubarak goes.

It is apparent that Mubarak appointed a Vice President in the hope that should he be thrown out, his successor would look after him. Mubarak’s son has fled and so he saw the writing on the wall.

I suppose it just a case of where will Mubarak go? Saudi Arabia? Or London (maybe even Paris, it seems very popular with rich dictators and their families).

Good riddance.

And when he does go it should be amusing to see how Western governments fall over themselves to explain away their decades long support for Mubarak’s dictatorship with materials, armaments and masses of money.

Update 1: In spite of a communication blackout ordinary Egyptians are managing to use old (and newer) technologies to get around the government clampdown, as IT News reports:

“Egyptian activists have relied on landlines and amateur radios to communicate since the country’s internet connections were severed on Friday.

Despite network shutdowns and nationwide curfews, demonstrators continued to rally against President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule.

Mubarak’s government appeared to have ordered the cessation of mobile and internet services last week, as online activists rallied supporters for a major demonstration on Friday.

To date, at least 125 people have been killed in violent protests across the nation. Sixty-eight were reportedly killed on Friday.

Besides the well-resourced few with direct satellite links to the internet, a majority of Egyptians remained offline.

Others were using services like Speak To Tweet, Jan25 Voices and amateur radio channels to communicate with the outside world.

Global net activist group, Telecomix, said its amateur radio efforts were aimed at “[carrying] health and welfare traffic from Egypt in the face of [a] total communications blackout”.

“Internet [not] working, police cars [burning],” the group received in Morse code on Friday.

On Saturday morning, it received the description: “dark skies, bloody [moon]”. “Everything is happening, everything we thought,” another message read.

Telecomix also compiled a list of 56kbps dial-up details that could be used to reach internet service providers in Norway, France, the Netherlands, Spain and the US. “

The Last Days Of A Dictatorship.

The pent-up rage, economic and social frustrations are coming out in Egypt, and understandably so.

They have suffered under Mubarak’s legalise dictatorship since 1981.

Economically, Egypt is backward and suffers from high unemployment.

Socially, there are many problems.

And dissent is not tolerated, as Egyptian bloggers have found out.

Still, with the breadth and nature of the uprising in Egypt I feel that Mubarak’s days are numbered and about time too. His regime has been kept in power by fiddled elections, police brutality, State repression, and the compliance and support of the West.

He’s clinging on to power furiously, as he knows the fate of many ex-dictators is to be shot.

But Mubarak could probably borrow a nice comfortable villa from his fellow despots in Saudi Arabia, and while out the rest of his life, there as others have done.

Boycott Egypt !

No, I’m not suggesting that, but there is an amusing spoof doing the rounds.

It argues that because of Egypt’s terrible treatment of Palestinians, the building of a wall at the Egyptian end, the handling of the recent convoy and general nastiness that they should be boycotted.

Surprisingly, the usual suspects are against it, so it’s not the treatment of Palestinians which invokes a boycott or the threat, but **who** does it.

Apparently from this mindset, it is unbecoming for Israelis to ever do anything nasty, but is somehow more acceptable when it’s done by Egyptians.

Make your own mind up:

”Jews for Boycotting Egyptian Goods

News Release

No. NR – 238

LONDON, January 14 — A new boycott campaign against Egypt that will require the cooperation of every lover of Palestine has been launched by a group of prominent British Jews, it was announced today.

“It is high time we exposed the crimes against humanity committed by the modern pharoah of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, who is caging in the long-suffering Palestinians of Gaza with an apartheid wall of 100 metres in depth made of steel, ” stated primary school teacher Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi.

Speaking to dozens of activists in a Walthamstow church, Ms. Wimborne-Idrissi stated that Egypt has prevented over 30 million pounds worth of British medical equipment and drugs from entering Gaza. Just recently, that country had bloodied the limbs of hundreds of Viva Palestina activists for bringing a convoy of much needed food and medicines to Gaza and deported British Respect MP George Galloway for leading this convoy.

The former Reuters news correspondent deplored the callous disregard by the Egyptian leadership of the plight of their Arab brethren in Gaza. “It is simply incomprehensible that the government of Egypt is applying this brutal blockade against Gaza,” she declared. As a consequence, her new organization — Jews for Boycotting Egyptian Goods (J-BEG) — will be demanding that all UK importers halt immediately their purchases of cotton yarn and garments, rugs, fertilisers, dates, figs, and sheet metal from Egypt. In addition, all UK firms with investments in Egypt will be pressured to transfer these to other countries.

“We are confident that the UK public is prepared to support our initiative until the the racist Egyptian siege of Gaza is broken,” Ms. Wimborne-Idrissi affirmed.

“The welfare of the beleaguered Palestinians in Gaza must be our number one priority,” she stated.

The new boycott campaign is supported by Viva Palestine, the Palestine Solidarity Committees of Britain, Ireland and Scotland, MP George Galloway, Jews for Justice for Palestinians as well as by the democratically-elected Islamic Resistance government of Gaza.

J-BEG co-founder Tony Greenstein, a veteran crusader for the rights of the unemployed, pointed out that the illegitimate Mubarak government of Egypt is being targeted by his comrades with arrest warrants should they step foot on British soil. Under Britain’s laws of universal jurisdiction, war criminals and their ilk are liable to arrest upon the deposition of a citizen’s complaint before a UK magistrate.

He emphasized that his group’s actions were in complete fulfilment of the treasured Jewish tradition of seeking justice for suffering humanity. Moreover, it has the complete approval of his London legal advisers ITN Solicitors, specialists in criminal law.

“As for our Christian and Muslim friends amidst the general public, we do sincerely hope they will be moved to embrace the boycott of Egypt in the finest tradition of ‘love thy neighbour as thyself,’ ” Wimborne-Idrissi and Greenstein concluded.
…”

As I said, it is a spoof and a bit of a wind up, and in many ways tasteless, but it is slightly comical to see how pro-Israeli boycotters react to it, one standard when it comes to Israelis, another for Egyptians. Quel surprise?

[Before anyone asks, I thought that the Egyptian handling of the convoy was unnecessarily heavy-handed, despite the fact that one of their soldiers was killed.]