Egypt

AOG, Madrid

It looks like the winds of change have begun to blow in the Arab world. 

The events which unfolded in Tunisia two weeks ago ousted a Government, and, like wildfire, the same spirit for change and democratic reform seems to be sweeping across other Arab countries. 

Particularly Egypt, where its presidential dictator, Hosni Mubarak, has been in power since 1981.

Given the state of affairs, he has said he will not stand for reelection in the Fall. Isn't it amazing how the powerful will do anything to stay in power no matter what? His country, it would appear, will have to put up with him until then. 

However, it seems like the people of Egypt are not having it. They want him out. Or at least the majority do.

 

 Will this affect the rest of the region? It would seem so. Jordan, one of the most stable states in the Middle East for decades, has had a change of Government. There have been protests in Yemen. 

Even Iran -not an Arab country but yes an Islamic nation-, seems preoccupied with these events.

Closer to home, the West, that is Europe and the US, have been more lukewarm in their appraisal of the situation. As an example, these kind words from the former British Primer Minister, Tony Blair, who assures us that Mubarak has been "immensely courageous, and a force for good."

In the case of President Obama, also disappointing, as this article from the Huffington Post points out.

The word in the street is that no one thought in Europe that Mubarak was a dictator.

I guess that kind of thinking belongs in the 'No one thinks Hitler is Austrian' school of thought. 

Let us not kid ourselves, the West, for all its pro-democracy demagogy, is quite happy to let sleeping dogs lie. Such is the case with notorious human rights violators such as Cuba, and China. 

Of course, the West only takes issue with such regimes when they begin to rock the boat, as is the case with North Korea.  But even then, all that we ask for is that you remain quiet and move along quickly. 

As usual, trade and vested interests are more powerful than any democratic ideology we in the West might want to peddle. And, of course, these regimes know it. 

I've read in the press that the only country which has shown some concern about the whole situation is Israel. According to some press reports, they rather have a dependable dictator to deal with, than... well, nobody knows for sure what will come next. 

So the lesser of two evils, is still pretty evil. 

Time to find a new motto?

Russian superstitions

AOG, Madrid

I always like to learn about the superstitions of different peoples. I don't mean just from other countries; I like to know what the superstitions of my peers are.

Or if not theirs, then their family's lore. Every family has a little superstition here and there, and I love to learn what these may be.

Never mind that I often, at least for a while, take on their superstition just to see if its true.

I have just come accross this little Russian ditty regarding an old Russian custom (I don't know if by "Russian" the author means all of Russia or just some areas), but I think it is fascinating.

It says that if you have a ticket (public transport or maybe just a cinema ticket), and the sum of the first half of the digits of the ticket's numbers (like serial numbers) match to the sum of the second half, then you are holding a happy ticket.

And what do you have to do to ensure luck is bestowed upon you....? Eat the thing.

I love it!

Except that I'm not all that cool with eating paper these days.

It is a bit like Fortune Cookies (an American invention by the way).

The post in question also mentions that Russia's Department of Transport has ordered cookies from Russian designers at artlebedev.ru in the shape a Russian bus ticket. The catch? All the cookie's numbers add up. so they are all lucky.

That is cheating if you ask me.

Tibet 1-China 0

AOG, Madrid

For the past few days, Tibet has sought to free itself from China's control. The Chinese Government, ever the eternal sentinel of totalitarianism, managed to control the flow of information at first. Few images, and most of these heavily censured and biased.

However, thanks to modern technology, more images soon surfaced- on the free world anyway (I'm surprised I just typed those words; I had relegated them to the "Cold War" portion of my brain). In China, television images today showed a return to calm. Shoppers shopping,kids playing in school, and no demonstrating monks in sight. Some of the Western papers are amazed that this situation did not surface earlier.

Quick to accuse everyone of wrongdoing, the Chinese Government has accused the Dalai Lama of trying to boycott the Olympic games and the Dalai Lama has threatened to resign if the violence in Tibet goes on and welcomes any investigation by China's authorities to prove that he has not.

I find it amazing that this is their main concern. It reminds me slightly of the situation in Buenos Aires in 1978.

Back then, the Argentine military Government was busy detaining, torturing and killing a few dissidents in order to show the world its best face. So that no one suspected anything, many people died.
For all intents and purposes, the 1978 World Cup was held in complete normality. Alas, along came the Falklands invasion and the military Government collapsed. Argentina and its democracy never looked back.

I am still amazed that the IOC chose Beijing as the best place to hold the 2008 Olympic Games. In 1980, Moscow, as a nuclear power, somehow managed to organise the games whilst ensuring a large boycott because of its invasion of Afghanistan. I remember thinking at the time, as my parents pointed out, that politics and sport should not mix. And yet, when do they not?
Four years later, the Soviet Union retaliated by boycotting the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

It is too late to ask why Beijing will hold these games.

Certainly the Chinese Government has spent millions on building and organising the event and I am sure that for most people in China, hosting the games will be a source of joy as well as national pride. For many in Beijing, the Olympics will help China to continue its -controlled- conversation with the world. It already acts as its factory.

However, I can't help but think about the lack of human rights, the persecution of dissidents, and this latest instalment in Governmental repression by a Communist regime.

According to The New York Times, "To earn the right to play host to this summer’s Olympics, Beijing promised to improve its human rights record. As its behavior in Tibet — and the recent arrest of the human rights advocate Hu Jia and others — demonstrates, China does not take that commitment seriously."

Should this country then be allowed to hold the Olympics? 28 years later I ask myself the same question. Then I said yes, of course, politics and sport should not mix.

But, today, 28 years later, knowing full well that both of these have, in fact, mixed, I am not so quick to support China's "right" to hold the Olympics. Not under these circumstances. Not in a country where people's lives are not held in a very high esteem by their own government.

Some Historians have argued that the Olympics, amongst other things, helped to liberate the stodgy Soviet Nomenklatura of the USSR. By 1990, only 10 years later, the Soviet state was falling apart. We are still living with the consecuences of that socio-political and economic capitulation to liberal capitalism (albeit not Western-style democracy yet).

Perhaps in 20 years time, China might be freer- or even free.

But I am sure that between now and then, many people will continue to die; human rights will continue to be violated; and the West will, hypocritically, continue to allow it to go on given its economic dependence on China. It is hard not to notice that the US removed China from its list of top 10 human rights violators just as the biggest anti-China protests in 20 years erupted in Tibet.

Since no Government is impermeable to criticism, here's a petition to ask it to stop its actions in Tibet.

Hopefully it will make a difference. It does not matter how small.

The protests began March 10, the anniversary of a failed 1959 Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule.

Success in North Korea but will Iran follow?

AOG, Madrid

North Korea has agreed to take steps toward nuclear disarmament under a groundbreaking deal struck on Tuesday that will bring the impoverished communist state some $300 million in aid.

Under the agreement, it will freeze the reactor at the heart of its nuclear program and allow international inspections of the site. The US and Japan -albeit belatedly- also said they would take early steps toward normalizing relations with North Korea, although a long running dispute between Japan and North Korea over kidnapping of its nationals by its communist neighbor, is still far from solved.

Washington agreed to resolve the issue of frozen North Korean bank accounts in Macau's Banco Delta Asia within 30 days, chief U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill told reporters.

As a special treat, the US will also initiate -under a separate bilateral forum- a process to remove North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism. This must be because the US have proof that North Korea no longer sponsors terrorism, or proof that it never did. Either way I think it is in everyone's interest to know which is it of the two possibilities.

The proposed plan hammered out by the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and China after nearly a week of intensive talks will only be the first step in locating and dismantling North Korea's nuclear arms activities, leaving many questions to future negotiations.

"These talks represent the best opportunity to use diplomacy to address North Korea''s nuclear programs," President Bush said in a statement.

White House spokesman Tony Snow called it a "very important first step toward the denuclearization of North Korea" but said Pyongyang still faces sanctions if it reneges. Which it may do, as it has done before.

Iran standing by....

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Iran, another country at loggerheads with the West over its nuclear program, should see North Korea as an example. Indeed.

"Why should it not be seen as a message to Iran that the international community is able to bring together its resources?" she asked at a news conference.

Perhaps what Iran will see is that it is not enough to appear to be a nuclear power to get the US to the negotiating table; it might come to the conslusion that it is, in fact, a sine qua non condition for american collaboration.

As a morsel of things to come, Pyongyang's official KCNA news agency said the other parties decided to offer economic and energy aid equivalent to one million tonnes of heavy oil in connection with North Korea''s "temporary" suspension of the operation of its nuclear facilities. Hill dismissed that report as posturing. "Any action to restart the reactors would be a violation of the agreement," he told reporters. And yet....straight from the mouth of babes...

U.S. trade sanctions will also begin to be lifted from a country Bush once lumped with Iran and Iraq on an "axis of evil."

But is it a good deal after all?

One area of uncertainty is whether North Korea has a highly enriched uranium program as alleged by the USA. North Korea has not acknowledged the existence of such a program. Highly enriched uranium can be the fissile material for nuclear weapons and its production can be much harder to detect than plutonium refinement.

"We have to get a mutually satisfactory outcome on this. We need to know precisely what is involved," Hill said.

As details of the draft leaked out, Japan was already voicing doubt that any agreement could be made to stick.

John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and outspoken conservative, said the Communist state should not be rewarded with "massive shipments of heavy fuel oil" for only partially dismantling its nuclear program.

"It sends exactly the wrong signal to would-be proliferators around the world," he told CNN.

The deal says North Korea must take steps to shut down its main nuclear reactor within 60 days. In return, it will receive 50,000 tonnes of fuel oil or economic aid of equal value. It will also receive another 950,000 tonnes of fuel oil or equivalent when it takes further steps to disable its nuclear capabilities, including providing a complete inventory of its plutonium -- the fuel used in Pyongyang's first nuclear test blast in October 2006. The 1 million tonnes of fuel would be worth around US$300 million at current prices.

The steps for now do not involve providing 2,000 megawatts of electricity - at an estimated cost of $8.55 billion over 10 years and about equal to North Korea's current output - that South Korea pledged in September 2005 and which is due after North Korea's denuclearization is completed.

The deal is obviously less than perfect. It involves the cooperation of a distrustful North Korea and its only-too-willing donors

North Korea has been here before. In 1994 there was an agreement with the Clinton administration which would only collapse in 2002 after Washington accused Pyongyang of seeking to produce weapons-grade uranium.

And lets not forget that between the two Koreas there is a truce, not a peace treaty. The US maintains some 30,000 troops on the Korean peninsula, which has remained in a technical state of war since the 1950-53 Korean War truce.

Can it get worse...? Japan will not join in giving aid to North Korea because of past abductions of its nationals by Pyongyang's agents, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in Tokyo.