Complicity in Torture

"It was nobody’s fault that an unarmed and unresisting electrician was shot six times in the head as he sat on a tube train. It was nobody’s fault the police subsequently lied about him. It is nobody’s fault that MI5 and MI6 officers were interviewing detainees with freshly mutilated genitals. It was nobody’s fault that, when I blew the whistle on active UK complicity in torture, I was immediately suspended from duty and charged with eighteen allegations of gross misconduct, every one of which was subsequently adjudged to be false. It was nobody’s fault that David Kelly died a horrible, lonely and mysterious death after letting slip the truth – that there were no Iraqi WMD. It was nobody’s fault that hundreds of thousands died and trillions were squandered due to the lies officially published – by nobody’s fault – about WMD."

http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2012/01/complicity-in-torture/

Liberia & Libya: war, peace and hospitality

It was once 'Africa's finest hotel', says the security guard as we wander around the concrete carcass. The Ducor at the end of Broad Street in Monrovia played host to many of the great and the good in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, and also the bad. The story goes that Idi Amin swam in the Ducor's swimming pool, his pistol still by his side.

The views enjoyed by the guests at this 300-room hotel, built in 1959 by the Intercontinental Group, were spectacular. They still are, giving you an all-round view of Monrovia's peninsulas and port.

This old brochure shows the sleek hotel as it once was.

A gem in an African crown of hospitality - it was one of West Africa's thriving hotels, but by 1990 the last guest had checked out.

Liberia had sunk into civil war and fighters and looters were moving in. The stories were now of a haunted, derelict hotel. It stood over Monrovia as a symbol of the sad side-effects of civil war.

By 2003, Liberia had signed up for peace and by 2005 it had elected a new leader, Africa’s first female president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. War had left Liberia behind, and all the talk was of reconciliation and reconstruction.

Eventually, the conversation turned to the Ducor's redevelopment. In January 2011, the vice presidenthanded over the site to the investment arm of the Libyan government, ready for a multimillion dollar refit. The Ducor was to be restored to its former glory.

Perhaps military strongmen may once again swim in the pool, pistols by their sides.

The squatters were moved on. Today, only Frank, the caretaker, and a handful of security guards remain to roam the hulk of the hotel. Workers ringed the site with a shiny new corrugated-iron wall.

But in February in Libya, the people began their revolt. Libya's $60 million investment in Liberia was at risk. By June, President Sirleaf had decided to cut ties with Gaddafi’s Libya and work stopped at the Ducor.

It was a hotel destroyed by war at home. Now, another war more than 6,000 kilometres away has dented the dream of its redevelopment.

And so the building stands... waiting for someone else to come up the millions needed to bring a grand old dame a much needed and deserved makeover to face an uncertain future.

Liberia's election: a test for peace

(First published here)

The sign at Monrovia airport said four things: NO STANDING, NO LOITERING, NO URINATING, NO SELLING. I stood, loitering until our fixer arrived. I bought a sim card from the kiosk selling them. Nobody urinated.

We drove into Monrovia, through the tropical lush green land along the coast, past the many election campaign posters, past the health ministry being rebuilt by the Chinese, past the huge UN tower, headquarters for the staff of one of the United Nations’ largest peacekeeping missions, cut from around 15,000 troops to 8,000.

“Monkey still working, let baboon wait small” reads one of the much-publicised posters from the ruling Unity Party of Africa’s first woman president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. It is one of many slogans she is using as she seeks re-election, urging voters to stick with what they know, a tried-and-tested, six-year-old government that is still on a mission to transform the country. The opposition can wait their turn. Other billboards focus on the schools and roads she has built and the development she has brought. “Development: Da’ my area.”

The country is captivated. Every radio and television station talks of nothing but the October 11 elections. Will they be peaceful? Can we tackle corruption? Who is the best candidate? Will the vote be free and fair?

And it is the same on the streets. Waiting for print-outs of our passport photos, we stood in a Chinese-run store. One man taking part in a march for a peaceful election burst through the door. He delivered his message loudly to assembled customers. At the top of his voice, he spoke of the importance of the election and of peace. He excitedly told the people they had a free choice.

I choose the best candidate for me. That is my choice. My girl, she chooses the best candidate for her. This is only for her.”

His words reflect the rise of women’s rights in Liberia, spearheaded by President Sirleaf, and the hope for a free vote.

The customers express their scepticism and complain of the “aggressive” campaigning by some candidates. Election teams are distributing footballs, t-shirts, hats, badges, all sorts of paraphernalia adorned with their images, in the hope it will win them a vote.

“No one else could have done it better than we have,” President Sirleaf reportedly told a crowd on her campaign. She has tackled the painful legacy of war, working on reconciliation, development and corruption. She promised to govern for only one term but is now seeking a second. She says the task ahead is huge and she needs more than six years.

But her opponents say she has fallen short on tackling corruption, first and foremost. The main contender is Winston Tubman, who has teamed up with Liberia’s equivalent of David Beckham. George Weah is a football superstar who came second to Sirleaf in 2005, having polled better than her in the first round. They believe their brains-and-popularity combination is powerful.

“When I get up, they cheer,” says Tubman. “But when Weah gets up, they get excited. Kids three and four are jumping up and down, older people as well. It’s something magical to watch.”

On Monrovia’s main artery road, women lie on a football field, dressed in white, making the shape of a crucifix. They are fasting for one day and asking God for peace in “Mama Liberia”. They wail and weep and cry, “We’re tired. We want peace.”

The whole nation knows that this election, if it is concluded without a resort to violence, will be a huge milestone towards achieving that lasting peace. But it is also a serious flashpoint. This election is a challenge to which Liberia must rise. The alternative is a step backwards, towards conflict.

Britain: The underclass, the upper class and us

We didn’t really notice when our society became warped. We were standing among the crowds. We knew it was changing because everybody had become middle class, like us. Posh people were middle class. Poor people were middle class.

But not quite everybody was. On the edge of the crowd a few had slipped away. Our famous class-structure had mutated.

Cool!

By 1997, the working class struggle was over. Their riots were routed, their jobs had gone, and their time had passed.

So too had John Major’s. Confused conservatism was out. The grey man of politics was replaced by a red man. But this was New Red, not Old Red. Old Red Neil Kinnock went into the Eurocracy. New Red Tony Blair cultivated Cool Britannia, having won the votes of the middle class.

Workers’ unions were out. Tony told us ‘things can only get better’ and his ministers danced to the tune. He was young and he was not too posh. He made Britain cool and filled us with hope for a more dynamic future.

We put Union Jacks on our cushions and on the roofs of our cars. We listened to new music. It was like old music, but cooler. The pop stars went to Whitehall and drank in Downing Street. They sang about champagne supernovas and wonderwalls, country houses and charmless men.

Boom!

Poor people got a minimum wage, so they were happy too. Tony wrote to us in 1999 in the Sunday People: “Why I’ve Declared War On Welfare”. He told us about his “big programme of reform. But you and I know it's necessary.”

We did know. We needed to stop those single mums who have babies at 15 and live off our state. They were out. We needed to stop those asylum seekers living it up on our tax money. They should stay out.

By 2002, Gordon Brown was telling us, “We today in our country have economic stability not boom and bust.” He had allowed the Bank of England to set interest rates. His people told us this was a visionary move, which had set us on the path to permanent prosperity.

It was good to know. The ‘90s had been very expensive. Interest rates had spiralled and people had lost homes and businesses.

But that was history. So banks texted and emailed us, offering to lend. We took their credit cards and bought new things. The experts told us consumer spending was driving the economy, so we drove new cars. We were all consumers now.

Things were so good that people were coming from all around. The plumbers were all Polish! They were cheaper and better than the British ones. There weren’t any British ones anyway.

Toffs!

At the same time, Tony was stopping the toffs from hunting foxes. They needed to find better ways to spend their spare time. Despite a million people marching in defence of country life, Tony moved to ban fox hunting.

The House of Lords struck back. The ones who had inherited their seat voted against Tony’s plans. So he stopped them from being able to vote and moved to get them out altogether.

Being born into the Lords and fox hunting were the preserves of old conservatism, which was out. We were all middle class now.

Chavs!

Even TV was changing. Andy Warhol had said in the future everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes. Now was the future. Reality TV was a revolution.

We watched Big Brother. We laughed at the contestants’ stupid behaviour and their ignorant comments. We witnessed people plucked from obscurity and made famous and rich. They lived a charmed life acquired for free.

On her way to winning Big Brother in 2002, Jade Goody declared the other contestants were "trying to use me as an escape goat." We laughed and were entertained. The phrase entered our slang dictionary.

But on her next journey into the Big Brother house Jade Goody was making someone else an ‘escape goat’. We were sickened by her victimisation of a Bollywood star. We felt it was racist. Her ignorance had gone too far.

Not long after the death threats, she got cancer. She then died slowly, while we watched her on TV and read about it in the newspapers and magazines. Perhaps this life of fame and luxury did not come for free.

But it did create a new path to prosperity. And it showed how Britain was a land of opportunity, where people and fortunes could be made overnight. We sneered. Others were inspired.

Another word had entered the slang dictionary of the middle classes: chav. Where had the word come from? Council House And Violent? Who knows? But here was the word for the subculture we loved to hate.

The ‘youth’ with the shaved hair, hood over his head, and pitbull terrier in tow was now a modern cliché.

Hoodies!

That youth worried us. The newspapers told us knife crime was spiralling out of control. We heard gun crime was more common now. We were told of postcode wars, where gangs fought for control of territory in our cities.

Tony’s war in Afghanistan wasn’t going too well either. And that had meant lots more heroin. Drugs supply was rising. We were worried about law and order.

The politicians stumbled across the idea of the ‘hoodie’. He was like the chav and sometimes the same. But he was more threatening.

Now crime had a face. We couldn’t see it, because it was hidden under this angry young man’s hood, but we knew it meant trouble.

One Tory MP and famous battle axe took herself off to learn more, while also making a TV programme called Anne Widdecombe vs The Hoodies. In 2006 she visited the Andover Estate near Kings Cross in London, and sought out what she called ‘the forgotten decents’ left to fend for themselves in a community under mob rule.

The locals said they had been vilified and painted with one brush because of where they lived and who they were. “I’ve tried to wear hoods less and less,” says one boy from the estate in a film made in reply, “because I realise people tend to stereotype a little bit.”

Hugs!

So while the kids tried to alter their wardrobes, the war on hoodies, but not the causes of hoodies, was stepped up. Opposition leader, now prime minister, David Cameron took on the issue in a now famous speech.

Hoodies, he said, could be dealt with using three principles. “Understanding what's gone wrong in order to put things right. Giving priority to the emotional quality of the work we do with young people. And giving real power to the real experts who can make the biggest difference.”

He was derided. The speech was boiled down to the slogan ‘hug-a-hoodie’ by the Labour government. One minister and attack dog called it “vacuous… wash-and-go politics.”

With the derision, the idea that we should "try and understand what's gone wrong in these children's lives” had died.

Asbo!

Instead, the only answer was to stamp out this antisocial behaviour by tackling it head on, we decided.

Tony had been trying, and had introduced Anti-Social Behaviour Orders or ASBOs back in 1999. They would stop kids from spitting, stealing, and shoplifting by telling them they couldn’t do it. If they did, they’d face a tougher punishment.

The idea failed. We thought it was a bit stupid and soft. Then we started reading about farmers getting ASBOs and angry grannies. Then it seemed kids were proud of their ASBOs which made them look tough and cool.

Eventually we gave up, and the children’s secretary Ed Balls said he wanted, "to live in the kind of society that puts ASBOs behind us." It was no good telling these kids what not to do, we thought. They had to be punished for doing it, or stopped in the first place.

We needed more coppers and they needed to be able to do their jobs. Then the experts said policemen were spending a ‘truly staggering’ amount of time doing paperwork, not being bobbies on the beat. So we needed to get the boys in blue back on the streets and away from their desks, like the good old days.

Crash!

Ten years into Tony’s journey, and he’d managed a few more big reforms to help make us all middle class.

We should all be graduates, or at least half of us, he insisted. So Tony made more university places. The universities said they couldn’t afford to pay for the extra students, even though the kids were now paying fees. Tony said the universities were exaggerating.

He said students could borrow money from companies to pay for their tuition, and put the price up. He’d taken it from free to £1,000 to £3,000. It wasn’t great, but it was okay because we could borrow the money from a company for now and pay it back later. We all had good prospects.

Tony also sold all the houses provided by the council to companies, so poor people could rent or buy them. We should all be homeowners, he’d said. And the banks had all said so too. So we borrowed to buy houses.

Then Tony said goodbye and the middle class masses waved him off.

But soon after we heard that a bank called Northern Rock was in trouble. Lots of people tried to get their money out and we had a run on the bank as if we were living in Argentina or somewhere.

Then it all got worse. Lehman Brothers went down. Lloyds TSB was in trouble. Then the government had to take over Bradford and Bingley. RBS and HBOS were next.

Scandal!

Soon we were hearing about plans ‘to pump billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money into the economy.’ Just how many seemed unclear. A lot. Hundreds of billions. And it was our money, and for what? We hadn’t gambled it away. Maybe we had borrowed too much? We didn’t think so.

The answer seemed to lie in the city, where clever men had dreamt up ways to put lipstick on the pig of risky debt and call it safe debt. We realised, they had been paying themselves fortunes, millions of pounds to do so.

The papers began a narrative that’s familiar now, bashing the bankers for their greed. But before we could really take them to task, the Daily Telegraph had turned on the MPs. They had been cooking the books as well, fiddling their expenses and putting mortgages on the tab.

We were angry about it. And then one of them, Anthony Steen, said, “Do you know what it is about? Jealousy. I have got a very, very large house. Some people say it looks like Balmoral.”

• By 2010, the academics had worked out that Britain’s richest 10 per cent of people were more than 100 times as wealthy as the poorest 10 per cent.

• A million young people between 16 and 24 years old are now out of work, one in five of them.

• Last year, the 1,000 richest people in Britain amassed 30 per cent more money than they had a year before. They owned £333.5 billion in total.

Plutocrats, us, scum.

We had created a parallel plutocracy and underclass. At the top of our society a new breed of super-rich were creaming off fortunes. They were making crazy money of the levels we had never dreamed of.

Chief executives were giving themselves huge pay rises far beyond inflation. Bankers were getting bonuses of millions of pounds and then fiddling it into untaxable share and stock options. They were driving around in Aston Martins, wearing Breitling watches and travelling with Louis Vuitton luggage to sail their luxury yachts in the Mediterranean.

And what’s more, they weren’t facing the music for fomenting the financial chaos.

Underneath us all was another class, the hoodies and the chavs, occupying an underworld.

Their antisocial behaviour was unstoppable. We read that they didn’t want to work. They wanted to get famous on reality TV. The girls wanted to have babies young and live off benefits, or marry footballers and live off them.

They were fighting postcode wars and stabbing each other on street corners in dark estates. They were stealing and dealing and fighting.

Like the Americans we are paying for our higher education, aspiring to be super rich, not regulating our businesses or taxing them too much and giving the police the power they needed to stop the criminal elements in our society. Like the Americans we are letting the rich get richer and the poor slip away.

We are fearing a vilified class that isn’t the super-rich and isn’t us. The underclass. The ones left behind, outside of our society.

London’s burning!

So when a new coalition government came in, led by the familiar Eton-Oxford cabal who rubbed shoulders with the plutocracy, they were not popular with the underclass.

And when they told those poor ten or twenty per cent that they had to pay more tax (especially value added tax, which costs them proportionately more than it does the rich) and they must receive less in return, that didn’t please them either.

And why must they pay more and get less? Because the plutocracy borrowed, gambled and lost too much, so much that it threatened our entire economy.

Mary Riddel, in her article “Riots: the underclass lashes out” outlines J K Galbraith’s causes of recession in his book, The Great Crash 1929: “bad income distribution, a business sector engaged in “corporate larceny”, a weak banking structure and an import/export imbalance… All those factors are again in play.”

We’ve all roundly condemned these looters for their “mindless violence” and “sheer criminality”. But as Riddel writes, it is not sufficient “to heap contempt on the rioters as if they are a pariah caste.” They already are.

"To behave in this manner young people have to believe they have no stake in the neighbourhood, and consequently no stake in wider society," writes Stafford Scott.

Who represents this class of people in our politics now? The Tories and Labour look after the plutocrats and middle classes. But the poor? Nobody listens to them. Nobody represents them in our parliament. They have no party. They have no voice.

Become middle class, and you have a voice. That is our message.

Penny Red noticed one NBC report, in which a young man in Tottenham was asked if rioting really achieved anything:

"Yes…You wouldn't be talking to me now if we didn't riot, would you? Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night, a bit of rioting and looting and look around you."

Revolution! Where next?

When Mohammed Bouazizi set himself alight outside government offices in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, on December 17, 2010, nobody could possibly have thought his actions would spark two, possibly three revolutions in North Africa.

But the uprisings of 2011 have been very real and provoked by what Hillary Clinton called a ‘perfect storm of powerful trends’. When she said it, her words were laced with fear and warning.

What would these uprisings bring? Would they benefit the people of those countries, and more importantly to her, would they benefit America? They will if she manages things well.

But since December 17 last year, we have seen two dictators flee in disgrace, Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt. Now, Muammar ‘Mad Dog’ Gaddafi looks like he will go down in a hail of mercenaries’ bullets and a sea of Libyan blood, which he has been intent on spilling.

Where next?

The big question many people are asking now is where next?

The Economist has had a go at answering the question with the Shoethrowers Index.

It aims to offer predictions looking at each country with these questions:

• How long has the leader been in power?
• What proportion of the population is under 25 and how many people does that make?
• What is the country’s gross domestic product?
• How pervasive is corruption?
• How much press freedom is there?
• How much democracy is there?

They are good questions to ask. The last two are, with the exception of Iraq and Lebanon, easily answered with ‘virtually none’.

The result is that Yemen, Libya, Syria, Iraq and Oman emerge most vulnerable to revolution. Libya is on its way. Yemen may be too, although it will play out more slowly than the others.

Syria, Iraq and Oman are more complicated examples. Clearly we need to add more to the index to get a reliable result.

What follow are less scientific supplementary measures that I propose. Then you get my guess (and it is just that – a guess) of where this all goes next.

(Another disclaimer: below are lots of sweeping generalisations. This is a massively wide ranging post which covers a whole region. Corrections, improvements, suggestions are very welcome.)

Ethnic make up

Which groups make up society is crucial. In Bahrain, the estimated 70% Shia population feel disenfranchised and frozen out of government. They do not have a say and opportunities for work, income, education and beyond are limited. This breeds resentment which is focused on the government which has denied them these things. The Shia have been quick to protest and they have been joined by an out-of-work, disenfranchised group of Sunni Bahrainis who want greater opportunities and a voice. This combination is a powerful opposing force.

In Libya, the neglect of the east has played a part. The region has been underdeveloped for decades and held back by Gaddafi. Now he is reaping what he sowed, and Benghazi in the east is the epicentre of the uprising. Nearly all tribes except his own now oppose him.

Sudan, for example, may well have faced a similar southern insurrection, having faced a two-decade civil war, had it not broken in two. If the disadvantaged ethnic outcasts had joined forces with the disenchanted Arab population, Bashir may have faced a revolt. As it is, he has conceded a third of his territory to avoid this eventuality, among others.

But where a country’s ethnic division is not a simple two-way split but a more complicated patchwork of groups, it can actually have a calming effect.

Take Syria. Here, no one religious group wants to rise up because they have a lot to lose. President Bashir, an Alawite, and his father, did much to keep the peace between the religious groups (sometimes brutally) and to protect the minorities’ social position. Any uprising may erase that work and leave each group with a lot to lose in a nasty, sectarian scramble for power.

These nations are dominated by one group, which has a stabilising effect: Yemen – it has its rebellions to contend with but it is mostly made up of Arabs, roughly 70 per cent of whom are Sunnis. Oman, Libya, Jordan, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE are also broadly one people.

The odd one out here is Mauritania, which by this measure is not so stable. It has a deeply complex ethnic make up which I do not pretend to begin to understand. Roughly, it is Arabs, Berbers and African black ethnic groups like the Pular, Wolof and Soninké. But it has a history of ethnic tensions since independence, which may resurface now and work against the government.

GDP growth

It is not just how wealthy people are (GDP), but what prospect they have of getting wealthy (GDP growth). If an economy is booming, everybody is on the make and chasing the dream of affluent living. Corruption works against this. So too does a government favouring certain groups in society and freezing out others.

It is worth noting that in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, economic growth had been slowing in the last few years. Although Tripoli was full of towers, Libya’s economic growth has come down from nearly 10 per cent in 2005. Tunisia’s good fortune had taken a turn, as tourism incomes slowed and the same was true in Egypt.

Syria is doing well, growth has been around 5 per cent for the last 5 years, and this suggests stability. Oman has been in a relative boom, Qatar's economy in the Gulf is exploding. Bahrain had been doing quite well too, defying the pattern.

But not the UAE or Saudi. And Yemen's growth has been steady, but perhaps not fast enough in a poor nation. Jordan too has seen slowing growth, and the King has been fast to make concessions in a bid to nip protests and an uprising in the bud.

Note also, Mauritania’s economy has been contracting. Algeria has also been struggling.

And in Iran, which saw protests in mid 2009, the economy has gone from a boom of nearly 8 per cent growth in 2007 to just 1.8 per cent in 2009. In the noose of sanctions, it may well be shrinking now. That should worry Khamenei, Ahmadinejad and co.

Leader’s popularity

Longevity does not necessarily mean unpopularity. Some long-time leaders are extremely popular and a people does not always get fed up with its leader.

Often, though, this is because a monarch or supreme leader insulates himself from responsibility by installing a government to do the hard work, such as Iran’s Supreme Leader. King Abdulla in Jordan dismissed his entire government and is clearly working to portray himself as an overseer and guardian of Jordan, not a man intricately involved in the nitty-gritty of government.

Note also how Gaddafi, in his impromptu phone call to state TV, suddenly said he was mostly a symbolic leader.

Popularity is a difficult thing to quantify, and is of course a subjective judgement. There are few or no public opinion surveys in the region to rely upon.

But it is generally accepted that Morocco’s king is a popular character. So too is Bashir in Syria, helped along by the siege mentality (more on that later). Sultan Qaboos in Oman is popular, credited with bringing about what is known in the country as 'The Renaissance’. Despite his longevity he remains revered.

There’s a question mark here though about Bouteflika of Algeria. Is he popular? He’s been around for 12 years. And in Mauritania, General Abdelaziz has only been in power a few years, but his popularity is by no means assured and he has not had time to establish a reputation as a guardian of peace and prosperity.

Foreign influence

This is a minefield. But there are a few things at play here that we can identify easily enough.

U.S. opposition to Syria and Iran’s regimes have helped Bashir and Ahmadinejad cultivate a perception of their countries being under siege by an imperial power and in turn helped the leaders to shore up power. Both have got a clear ‘enemy’ and a justifying narrative, which is absolutely essential to their survival. Bashir and Ahmadinejad are both able to present themselves as part of an axis of resistance to a malign American influence.

It’s something Gaddafi in Libya has done for a long time. Although his cosying up to the West since 2004 has stolen him of this narrative now he tries to put down the revolution. Instead he’s blaming Bin Laden. Flip it on its head, and it means we have the unusual situation of an American president and Bin Laden both backing the same side in Libya!

In Yemen, Saleh’s close cooperation with the U.S., allowing its drone strikes (revealed by Wikileaks) leaves him vulnerable to claims he is an American stooge. But it also means the Americans may work hard to keep him in power. He is important for them in the battle against Al Qaeda. Yemen is home to much Al Qaeda activity and while he may not be an ideal leader, he is reliable. He lets the U.S. carry out drone strikes and gives them good access for intelligence gathering. The Americans won’t want to see him go.

But Saleh doesn’t have a great deal of support in Saudi, and won’t get much help from them. That is no the case in Bahrain, where Saudi soldiers were rumoured to have been on the streets helping to put down the protests. The Bahraini government will be under strict instructions from Riyadh not to concede, I have no doubt.

Across the Gulf, in Bahrain, Saudi, UAE, Qatar and Kuwait, there is some popular unease with the close cooperation with the U.S., but I think many understand that having a great big American military presence brings with it security. The first Gulf War has not been forgotten. Though it does generate some resentment among Gulf populations. Looking at it from the other angle, and it is obvious the U.S. will absolutely not want Saudi to slip into uprising and revolution, or Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE or Qatar. But that’s highly unlikely anyway.

King Abdulla in Jordan has a similar problem to Mubarak. He’s made peace with Israel and become a close ally of the U.S. It’s a situation which leave shim very vulnerable to claims of being a stooge and having sold out. But Jordanians, like many in the Middle East, prize peace very highly in a region that has seen so much war. They understand and have sympathy with his rationale and are grateful for peace. And the King has the backing of the Americans, who will work to keep him in place.

Algeria and Morocco also have cordial relations with the U.S., which appear generally appreciated by their populations as beneficial. And the Americans will in turn try to keep protests to a minimum.

And lets get Iraq out of the way. This is an anomaly. The links between Western and Iraq governments are so complex and so close that things are not so straightforward. We could write books and books on the relationships here and the battle for Iraq being waged by various nations. All we can safely say is that all the leaders are flirting with outside powers and are vulnerable as a result.

Conclusion

If you apply these other less quantifiable and less scientific measures on top of the Economist’s Show Thrower’s Index, you get a good picture of how the region is set.

It shows Oman is the odd one out so high up the list. The leader is popular. The country is ethnically pretty uniform. The country’s economy is growing healthily, in part because of its good relations with the West. These all mean the population will not be provoking a revolution any time soon.

There have been small gatherings amid the regional uprisings, but nothing on a large scale. The only thing that contradicts this is how hard it is to find work for young, educated Omanis. This leaves the youth frustrated and out of work, which could lead them to protest but don’t bank on it just yet.

Iraq is also an odd one out. Its unique experience of the devastating U.S. invasion means while people will demand better government than they have been getting recently, they will not force a full, bloody revolution. There is enough blood being shed already. And outside powers will not want a revolution either. There is enough going on already.

Yemen is rightly at the top. It might not have got as much press as Bahrain, but in both places, the genie is now out of the lamp. The people are on the streets and full of anger after their governments shot their fellow countrymen dead and unleashed their goons. Both face long, drawn out days of demonstrations. Both will have to make significant concessions, and may have to go.

But both also have strong American backing and very powerful forces which want them to stay. The Americans will urge them to tough it out while trying to kill as few people as possible. That strategy may well work.

Saleh in Yemen on Thursday urged his police to protect the protesters. This was, I suspect, suggested to him by the Americans. And the Bahraini government has suddenly found a heart, calling for a day of mourning. We’ll say sorry, but we won’t quit. That is their message, brought to you by America.

Mauritania and Algeria can move up the list. Their leaders’ popularity is not as high as in other nations. Their economies are not booming. Mauritania has a complex ethnic make-up. Algeria borders Libya and Tunisia. Mauritania is a weak state.

My prediction? Yemen may rumble towards a revolt. Mauritania and Algeria are the two other countries at most risk of an uprising. Elsewhere, protests might make governments give concessions, but there will be no more dictators heading to luxury compounds to live out a life in exile.

Meat, murder and all that

Daisy, who is young and idealistic, sent me this link to meat.org. It takes you to a video of Sir Paul McCartney explaining that commercial farming practices and the mass killing of farm animals can be very cruel. On that point he is perfectly correct.

Sir Paul then goes on to suggest that because of this, we should all become vegetarians. The video shows a picture of Natalie Portman and some other movie star, both fine specimens of the human race, as evidence of the benefits of vegetarianism.

He also explains that meats are an unhealthy 'stew' of bad bacteria, which I am not sure is quite true.

Sir Paul has achieved some amazing things in his life, but I think that converting the human race from being omnivorous to being herbivorous is beyond even him.

Humans eat meat. They always have. They always will.

While killing animals to eat them may be cruel, it is inevitable and it is natural. We have been doing it ever since we first appeared on this planet. Humans developed tools primarily so they could kill animals to eat.

But Sir Paul is right in so far as the tools we have developed today to kill animals in the most efficient, fast and cheap ways are callous and cruel.

The logical conclusion is to take action, but it is not logical to decide not to eat meat. Much more sensible is to aim to minimise the cruel practices by which we kill farm animals.

Sir Paul might focus on holding to account those who carry out such cruelty. He might consider making them adhere to better standards of slaughter. And he might lobby the government to improve the methods by which animals are legally farmed and slaughtered.

But by urging us all to become vegetarian, he actually makes the problem worse. Some farmers breed animals and then kill them in callous, cruel ways because it is the most profitable way.

If fewer people eat meat, then it becomes harder to make a living from farming, and so farmers are further compelled to cut costs and be cruel.

Sir Paul, if there are parts of farming that are cruel, you should work to make them less cruel.

You should not try to achieve something that is both impossible and unnatural, like getting the human race to avoid eating meat.

Don't ask, don't tell, don't be gay: Roger Garford & Jean MacDonald

Jean MacDonald and Roger Garford have finally got some media coverage (thanks to Kris Jepson at Channel 4 News) for the injustice they suffered from the UK Ministry of Defence.

Two years ago, in March 2008, they also got a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights saying the MoD was wrong to expel them both for being gay.

Their story has come out as the U.S. votes to repeal it’s so-called ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ laws which allowed gay soldiers to serve in its military on the basis they kept their sexuality quiet.

But just ten years ago in Britain, the law was far more repressive. There was nothing about asking or telling, just a clear stipulation that to be a soldier you had to be straight. If you weren’t, you were liable to get the treatment Roger and Jean received.

Bear in mind, the government has still not apologised to either of them.

A stolen retirement

Just before he was due to retire, the Royal Air Force (RAF) began a witch hunt against Roger, to find out if he was gay.

They hauled in the Chief Technician for four long rounds of interrogation. They made him name and shame his partners. They humiliated him with graphic questions about his sexual encounters. He broke down and confessed all.

He told Kris Jepson at Channel 4 News: "Their investigation went into very personal details. They asked me was I still having sex with my wife, what sort of sex? They got me down on my knees – I was in a desperate state and I was forced to give names of men I had been with, which I regret to this day.”

They discharged him just over 100 days before he was due to stop work with a full army pension. A career that had begun in 1960 with high hopes ended in shame two days before Christmas in 1983.

"I was a real mess, psychologically, mentally and I suppose physically. The first few months after I'd lost my job, I lost my wife, my home. Those first few months of drinking I was in a real mess…I lost everything that was important to me, even recalling it now upsets me."

A career cut short

Jean was 20 when she joined the Royal Women’s Army Corps, which she hoped would be the beginning of a lifelong career. Four years later she had been dishonourably discharged for being gay.

In April 1981 an investigation began into Jean’s sexual orientation. She says she was interrogated by military police for 6 hours and not allowed toilet breaks or refreshments. Once again, the questioning was graphic and humiliating.

She tells her story to Channel 4 News: "They threatened me by saying they knew my twin sister was gay and said if I didn’t sign the discharge papers they would get her. They threatened to tell my mother. They said if I agreed to certain things that I would be safe. They said things like 'if I was in the same situation I would have experimented...' They basically convinced me I would be OK.

"They threatened to take me to the medical block because they claimed I had love bites down my back. They asked a lot of very sexual and intimate questions, including about sex toys and stimulations. It was just very crude and disgusting really.

"I got to the point where I would have done or said anything to get out of the room. I was very young and I just felt I had no other option but to sign the bit of paper. All I admitted was having a drunken fling with someone – I'd ended up in bed with another woman and we both had our underwear on and that's why they discharged me. I never admitted to being a lesbian because then I simply didn’t know."

In a desperate attempt to buy time to launch a legal challenge, Jean says she asked a friend to break her wrist so she would fail the army medical. After drinking heavily, they tried, but an Army X-ray showed it was not fractured.

She was discharged soon after. Later, her local hospital X-rayed the wrist again and said it was broken.

Discrimination in compensation

Both Jean and Roger had to rebuild their lives and start new careers. Jean still suffers from depression 29 years later. Roger is still working when he could have retired in the 1980s.

In March 2008, Roger, Jean and two other former members of the armed forces won their legal battle against the MoD at the European Court of Human Rights.

The decision is made quickly. Lacking resources, the ECHR simply makes a ruling and leaves it to the parties involved to decide upon compensation. The MoD would decide how much compensation it would pay for its breach of human rights.

What it offered the soldiers is, lawyers say, only a fraction of what they would have received in a UK employment tribunal.

Roger was offered around £88,000, less than the value of his pension and lost income, not to mention the impact his dismissal had on his personal life. Jean was offered, £35,000.

Bear in mind that Kerry Fletcher, a lesbian soldier who successfully sued the MoD in the UK for unfair dismissal on the grounds of sex discrimination and discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, won £187,000 in 2008, on the grounds she intended to continue in the army for another 12 years.

But for Jean, the MoD based their calculations on the assumption that a typical, heterosexual female soldier served for only 6 years.

That does not take into account the fact that lesbian women served for longer in the armed forces, or that at the time the MoD had a policy of dismissing any women who got pregnant, which was later ruled illegal.

Ironically, the MoD used a discriminatory method to calculate Jean’s compensation for being discriminated against.

There was no apology. There seems to be no further legal recourse.

***

Watch this 1997 film starring Helen Baxendale about a Military Police officer assigned to rooting out lesbian soldiers, only to find out that she too is gay.

Wikileaks: A geek gets the new Watergate

As the diplomatic documents spill onto our front pages day after day, writers furiously fuel the debate about whether the Wikileaks release was right, and what to do with Julian Assange.

Is he a hero? Or is he a criminal? Is he a journalist? Or is he a geek and a freak? Should he be celebrated? Or should he be jailed?

This all conflates the two issues of whether the Wikileaks release was justified and whether he is a rapist. It does so on the assumption the charges are trumped up or were the result of a honey trap. Who knows.

But do many men who fail to use a condom end up on Interpol’s red list? More to Interpol’s shame, do many rapists? No. Western governments are pursuing him with remarkable zeal. And by doing so, they throw up all sorts of “delicious ironies”. Hillary Clinton’s statement on the issue reads, as John Naughton points out, like a “satirical masterpiece”.

Of course, the comedy has been helpfully highlighted by America’s rivals. Russian President Vladimir Putin has noted the hypocrisy of a nation which superficially champions freedom of speech but also pathologically pursues a man who has asserted the people’s freedom of information.

U.S. duality in its dealings with free speech are clear to see. And in the cables, a similar hypocrisy is unveiled. A nation notionally concerned with human rights asking the Ugandan army not to commit war crimes using its intelligence is a shocking example. The message: if you’re going to rape and pillage and worse, fine, but don’t implicate us, OK?

While it shocks, it might not surprise. The U.S. has sought to capitalise on that, insisting these leaks are ‘no big deal’. But that itself is inconsistent with the angry pursuit of Assange. And if it’s no big deal, why is the CIA is checking out the cables so much.

Aside from governments’ aggressive response, I have been surprised by how many journalists have turned on Assange. Some – like the Washington Times - have called for his assassination. Many say he has been reckless, churning out a tonne of data without interpreting it or redacting it. That it not true. He fed it through ‘professional’ journalists who have gone through the cables and crafted articles to accompany them. And he has removed many of the names.

But there is one uncomfortable fact that I am yet to see any journalist point out. As far as I can tell, this is the biggest exposé since Watergate.

It might not bring down the U.S. President, like Watergate, or expose criminal wrongdoing (depending on your opinion), but many politicians and civil servants' heads may roll.

The U.S. has had many cards stolen from its hand. Suddenly, other countries are holding the aces. They know what the Americans are thinking, and they can use it to their advantage. Power has been shifted.

But unlike Watergate, this didn’t come from journalists and their hard work and research. It came from a geek. Hundreds of thousands of journalists all over the world, and it is a reclusive nerd who gets the biggest scoop for decades.

Assange managed to cultivate a contact who gave him access and insight to the workings of the U.S. State Department. He used his knowledge of technology to expose it. He shone a floodlight into the dark corridors of power.

And journalists had barely managed to light a candle.

Venezuela's Lust Hotels

Rachel Jones has a rosy view of Venezuela's "rent-'em-by-the-hour" hotels. She calls them 'Love Hotels.' I'll call them 'Lust Hotels.' This is my little story about one of them.

Back in 2006 I went off to Caracas. On a budget, I checked into a cheap-as-chips hotel downtown. A few days later, having been followed home a number of times and reminded of the less-than-safe situation in the city, I moved.

Opposition supporters march in Caracas. There's a sexy hotel to the right.

I had already scoped out one that looked safe and solid. It was in the mid-range part of the city, Sabana Grande. It was built with red bricks and didn't have many windows. It looked secure.

I went in to find the receptionist behind a solid-glass screen. I asked to check in. She looked a little perplexed from the start. I asked if I needed a reservation. She gave a wry smile and said no. I paid for the night and took the key.

My room wasn't far away, but when I got in I realised the error of my ways. There was no window. There was a mirror on the ceiling. The bed had a plastic sheet between the mattress and the top sheet. The TV, facing directly at the bed, beamed an array of hardcore pornography direct into the room. I knew this was not a place to visit on your own.

After one night on the crackly plastic sheets, I moved. But there was big demand for hotel rooms at the time, so I spent the rest of the time moving from hotel to hotel in the Sabana Grande area.

One evening I met up with the BBC's Man in Caracas. I had spoken to him on the phone and told him where I was staying. He said he would come with his driver and pick me up. I met him in the hotel reception. He then announced in an unusually deliberate fashion that we were ''going to go to the car now.'' This I had assumed.

He opened the front door of the hotel and ran to the car. I walked behind, bemused. He leaned out of the car and told me to hurry up. When I got in and closed the door, he exclaimed: ''Bloody hell! You chose an interesting place to stay!'' I declined to explain that this was one of the higher class hotels I had frequented.

All of this, as you might have guessed, illustrates that Caracas can be a violent place. In fact, it is so violent the newspapers have a separate section to report the daily blood letting. It's on the back page, where many other countries' newspapers put their sport.

Today, for example, tucked away at the bottom of the page is a story about two kids who burst into a 38-year-old army major's house, shot him dead and robbed him.

Back in 2006, I remember sitting in the reception of that same hotel, reading about a 'by-the-hour' hotel in the 'sucesos' section on the back page. The story was so brutal that it stayed with me.

It was the early hours of a Sunday morning. After a night of partying, couples were queueing at one of these hotels on the outskirts of town, waiting to rent a room where they could go crazy with one another.

But the hotel was full. And when one couple rented the last room, which the man behind them had wanted for himself and his lady friend, he shot them both dead. He then rented the room instead.

Caracas hotel rooms are cheap. Sometimes, it seems, life is too.

Political plots threaten to bring down Maldives government

At 5pm local time on Tuesday, the entire Maldives cabinet resigned. Hours later, the police issued arrest warrants for former President Gayoom's half brother, Abdulla Yameen, and his billionaire protégé, Gasim Ibrahim. They face charges of bribery and corruption and are suspected by police of 'attempting to topple the government illegally.'

It looks unlikely there was any 1988-style attempted coup, complete with mercenary foreign forces poised to storm the capital Malé and seize the President's Palace. That was a disaster which led to deaths, failure, arrests and exile.

Instead, the allegations point to a plot to cripple the minority government of President Mohamed 'Anni' Nasheed by paying off Maldivian MPs to obstruct privatisation projects. 'The opposition MPs are operating a scorched earth policy, trying to stop the government from doing any work to help the people', says Foreign Minister Dr Ahmed Shaheed.

Sources close the government say the motive is to block a deal to contract management of Male' International Airport to an outside consortium led by GMR. The plans threaten local tycoons' business interests providing services to Maldives Airports.

Usual suspects

Police are still investigating while Abdulla Yameen and Gasim Ibrahim are held under house arrest. They are two of the Maldives most colourful characters. Their web of influence and wealth reaches far and wide. They have been on the scene for decades and are now both leaders of opposition parties, the People's Alliance and Jumhooree respectively.

Yameen is the half-brother of former President Gayoom. He held many portfolios during Gayoom's 30-year rule, including Home Minister. He was renowned for his hard-man image and his readiness to crush political opposition using the paramilitary 'Star Force'.

His aspirations to be the top man in the Maldives are also well-known, and during the period of transition from Gayoom's regime to the next, he was jostling for position and power.

Gasim's is a rags-to-riches tale. It begins with him working as a house boy for Gayoom's wife's family. From there, he is spotted by Gayoom and in time given the tools to make himself a rich man. He founded the Villa company, which provided gas, diesel and other imported products. He was also given resorts to run when the Maldives first tried out tourism in the 1970s and ‘80s. Both those businesses boomed.

He rose to become Finance Minister under Gayoom, a role that was created especially for him, despite a lack of qualifications. Today, Villa has a huge portfolio of companies, providing everything from resorts to schools.

It was, in fact, Gasim's money which helped form the opposition group now known as the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP). When Gayoom found out the man whom he had made had betrayed him, he threw him in jail. An eyewitness who shared the cells with him tells me that for the week he was behind bars, Gasim was a wreck. Unable to cope with prison, he broke down and gave up his aspirations to rule. He was released and never again betrayed his boss.

Dilemmas

But if these two are both now found guilty, the question is: what will President Nasheed do with them? And what will he do about his lame-duck minority government?

'Anni' himself spent years in prison under Gayoom's rule, at least one of those in solitary confinement. He rose to power at the helm of an opposition movement which deplored the repression of Gayoom's government and the human rights abuses it committed. He assembled a party of former political prisoners and ran in the 2008 elections on a platform of democratisation.

If he now begins banging up his political opponents, his image as South Asia's democratic golden boy will be tarnished. But if they are proven to have carried out this plot, and he doesn't punish them, they may well bring down his government.

This is a dilemma Maumoon Abdul Gayoom is familiar with. Many times during his rule he faced a situation where close allies and rivals tried to rise up against him. He knew he had to slap them back down but not keep them down, especially in a small country like the Maldives. So he kept many of his rivals close.

For Anni, it's not quite that straightforward. Gayoom didn't have to worry about his image as a democrat, because he didn't have one. Anni does. And he also has to contend with the fact his government is without a cabinet and without a way of cooperating with parliament. What can he do?

Gayoom's former information minister, now an independent MP also called Mohamed Nasheed, has told Minivan News: “I have also heard from a highly reliable source that the president has been considering a cabinet reshuffle and will use this opportunity to appoint new ministers, and remove non-MDP cabinet ministers in the new arrangement. That, and threats and intimidation.”

But will it work? Or has Anni's power base been undermined too much already? He may simply have to resign and hand government to the DRP and PA alliance, declaring himself the victim of a plot he was powerless to stop, and one that was masterminded and carried out by MPs within the next government.

Or he may be able to trigger another round of elections, hoping he can secure a new mandate. That will be hard to do, though, with a majority ready to form a government. And even if he can call elections, he faces an electorate that never gave him a majority in the first place, even when the reformist mood was at its height.

Besides those two options, all he could do is make an audacious swoop for power by rushing these charges through court, finding Gasim and Yamin guilty, jailing them and weeding out all the complicit MPs. But that is the approach of his predecessor, not of an enlightened democrat.

Resign or repress. That is his choice.