Where is Facebook not used?

Look at this map, showing Facebook connections.

Well there are three reasons for big dark areas:

1.  Nobody lives there (vast tracts of the Amazon, Sahara, Arctic Circle, Siberia, majority of Australia but notice how Greenland is still connected despite a population of well under 1 million);

2.  Few can afford it (mountains of South America, central and west Africa, and the lower density in some areas);

but there is a third reason...

Look at China, no lack of people, no lack of people who can afford it, but it's a blank.  In fact look at the Middle East, except the shining lights from Egypt through Israel, Jordan and Lebanon.  Beacons in the oil rich Qatar, Bahrain and UAE.  Not Syria, Saudi, Yemen, Libya and little Iran.  Yet Vietnam has some, and we can see free China in the form of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau against the near devoid lack of mainland connections.  South Korea vs North Korea is too obvious to point out.  Indonesia and Malaysia are wonderfully well connected.

Speaks far more of freedom than many indicators.

Looking for innovation? Try a bureaucracy

Innovators, creators, producers, inventors.   Think of the greatest leaps forward in modern history that have changed economies and how people lived.  Think how many were spearheaded by a government bureaucracy.  Think how many benefited from being in a high tax economy.  Then read this from Wayne Mapp, a man who knows about innovation with his extensive entrepreneurial and  military and political background:

The Government is backing innovation to drive New Zealand’s economy forward and raise New Zealanders’ standard of living... Prime Minister John Key today launched the new Ministry of Science and Innovation (MSI)

Think of every single technological innovation in the last 30 years, do you really think there would be more if there had been the MSI?  

What else could government do?

How about get out of the way?  How about cutting company tax to 10%, so that businesses that do want to engage in research, development and be cutting edge about technology have an environment when they don't see the state taking a third of the "winnings"?

How about opening up the education sector so schools and universities are not dominated by a centrally planned bureaucratically specified curriculum, but that parents can withdraw their children from state schools and take their taxpayer funding with them to free private schools?  In other words, let innovators get involved in educating future innovators, not schools dominated by sclerotic unionists whose main philosophy is a burning envy of distrust of business and a politically driven view of the environment and humanity's relationship with it.

How about saying openly and loudly that you don't know what's best and you can't hire bureaucratics who can pick winners either?  You would be telling the truth, you'd be confronting the myth perpetuated by the left and most other parties that they can magically rescue the economy and advance it by spending other people's money on bureaucratically assessed beneficiaries.

However, it is clear National is of the left, given it's interest in growing the state.  So why vote for more of the same this year?

Why does the left ignore Islamism?

Noticed how so many on the left are, understandably, pleased about the imminent downfall of the Mubarak dictatorship in Egypt, but completely nonchalant about whether it becomes an Islamist dictatorship?

How the rhetoric and thinking, almost childlike in its simplicity goes like this:

What government does Egypt have? A dictatorship

Where does most of Egypt's aid come from? US government. 

That means the US supports dictatorship.  Dictatorship is bad.

What should Egyptian have? Democracy, like "we" in the West have.  Egyptians deserve the same rights we do.

Do you believe in human rights?  Yes

Do you believe women, gay and lesbian people, ethnic minorities and religious minorities deserve equal rights to everyone else? Yes

OK so far but then...

Does it matter who gets elected? Up to Egyptians.

Does it matter if Islamists arm and fund terrorists to wage war against Israel? Silent (but we think Israel deserves it).

Does it matter if Islamists arm and fund terrorists to wage war against the West? Yes, but it would be our fault for wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, backing Israel.  They will stop when they have justice.

Does it matter if Islamists get elected who then restrict democracy to be the same sham it was under Mubarak?  Silent

Does it matter if Islamists suppress free speech, shut down competing media, arrest protestors, use the police and army to suppress dissent?  Silent

Does it matter if Islamists execute political opponents, adulterers, rape victims, gay and lesbian people? Silent

Does it matter if Islamists institute laws and enforce laws discriminatory against women? Silent

Does it matter if Islamists get nuclear weapons? America has them, so what?

See in a blind leftwing hatred of the USA, there is a total blindspot about Islamism.  For people who apparently espouse a love for women, desire for equal rights for gay and lesbian people and who hate torture, suppression of free speech and the like, their willingness to tolerate and appease Islamism is absolutely disgusting.  

It is the mindless view that anyone who challenges those they hate (the Republican Party, Israel) are to be thought of generously.

Well no.

I want Egyptians to be free, to have free speech and an open secular society and government.  I want Egypt to progress.  On balance I do not think it will become Islamist, but the risk is there.

For those on the left, whose hatred of the Mubarak regime is so thorough they will accept any alternative, are completely betraying the beliefs they purport to hold.

Want to see why? Look at how often they criticise the regime of Bashar al-Assad of Syria. A socialist Baathist dictatorship, led by a man who got his position through hereditary succession, whose father was a warm friend of the Soviet Union, who runs a secret police and torture network that rivals Hosni Mubarak. Who has invaded Lebanon twice to overthrow liberal secular regimes that were not compliant with it.

No, you wont hear quite the same hatred of Assad as you will Mubarak, because he didn't have US support.  He had Soviet support, so he isn't as bad.  I mean he has not made peace with Israel, he has not promoted peace in Iraq and continues friendly relations with Iran, so who cares?  After all, nothing gets the left more upset that the US backing a dictatorial regime - not because it should know better, but because the US is the embodiment of what they hate.

It completely robs them of credibility.  Particularly when nobody on the political opposite is saying "save Mubarak, he's good". Nobody is saying that.  All that is being said is that Egyptians deserve the rights and freedoms we all expect.  That is consistent, because it rejects Mubarak and Islamism.

However, for some on the left Islamism is implicitly ok because American is bad.

Where do you get this sort of thought? Try here, here or here for starters.

Egypt faces the crossroads

Egypt has always been seen as the leading Arab state.  Not being flush with oil wealth, it was the centre of anti-colonialism and Arab nationalism under the populist dictatorship of Nasser, who confiscated the Suez Canal for the state and waged war on Israel.   After failing miserably to destroy Israel, but losing the Sinai Peninsula to it, he was deposed and replaced by Anwar Sadat, who had another attempt at Israel before deciding enough was enough - and agreeing a peace treaty, which resulted in Israel swapping land (Sinai) for peace.  

Sadat was assassinated by an Islamist and replaced by his deputy, Hosni Mubarak, who took a less friendly view of Israel, but was sustained by the US pouring more aid money into Egypt than any other country bar Israel (and more recently Iraq).  Mubarak was sustained because the alternatives were seen to be Soviet and then Iranian backed Islamists.   

Let's be clear, an Islamist run Egypt would pose a threat not only to Israel, but could be a base for terrorist activities in Europe and beyond.  It would have a stranglehold over shipping through the Suez Canal, and be leading the largest Arab state by population.   The Iranian military religious dictatorship is already claiming a new Middle East, Islamic dominated, is coming to the fore, let's hope not.

For if it were to happen, do not be deluded that it will cost in lives, and could create a new age of conflict that makes Iraq and Afghanistan seem like they were easy.

Yet the Mubarak regime is far from good, it was relatively open economically, but used torture, suppressed free political expression and has been corrupt and kleptocratic (although not as bad as some).  It has been moderately benign as far as dictatorships go, but it is hardly an endorsement that it is better than the alternative.   So the time has come, as relative moderate secular Egyptians demand political freedom, and the dignity and respect of being able to challenge government, politicians, political appointees and the regime.

My hope is that he steps down, announces free and fair elections, and provides the space for real political pluralism to flourish in a country where more suppression may only embolden Islamists.

For the future of not only Egypt, but Israel, the Middle East and the world is deeply affected by what happens in Cairo.   I sincerely hope that those on the left, who with some justification, criticise and despise the Mubarak regime (although I suspect somewhat motivated by anti-Americanism) will not celebrate or support an Islamist takeover of Egypt.  

For if it is a bad dream for Egyptians to be suppressed by the Mubarak regime, it would be one of our worst nightmares to have an Ayatollah of Cairo.

Arabs stand up, but where will they walk?

Tunisia

Tunisians stood up because they saw the contrast between their own recession (driven in some part by a drop in demand for Tunisian goods and tourism due to the recession in Europe) and the privileged kleptocratic lifestyle of former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his thieving bitch of a wife, the gold-digging hairdresser.  Having appointed himself as President for an extra two years, and maintained a tight grip on media, speech and maintaining a personality cult, Tunisians had had enough and rightly turfed him out.  Even when some of his lackeys tried to take over, Tunisians weren't standing for that either.   Ben Ali took over from Tunisia's relatively moderate but dictatorial founding President Habib Bourquiba, a man whose record was described by Christopher Hitchens as follows:

he was strongly influenced by the ideas of the French Enlightenment. His contribution was to cement, in many minds, secularism as a part of self-government. He publicly broke the Ramadan fast, saying that such a long religious holiday was debilitating to the aspirations of a modern economy. He referred with contempt to face-covering and sponsored a series of laws entrenching the rights of women.

Bourquiba was no angel, but he was one of the more moderate of the Arab world's strongmen, look at who he had to the east with Muammar Gaddafi making Libya a personal fiefdom and sponsor of murder worldwide.   He wasn't an economic genius and left Tunisia with mounting inflation and debts.

Ben Ali took over when Bourquiba was pronounced too ill to continue, and resisted an Islamist terrorist campaign to take over the country in 1987.  Ben Ali naturally got extensive US and French support to suppress the Islamists, and Tunisia and its neighbours are no doubt the better for it.

Yet as with all dictators, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Tunisia hosted the PLO for over a decade, and Ben Ali made considerable efforts to encourage it to reach out to Israel and recognise its right to exist.  He opened up the economy and living standards increased, but freedom of expression was not on offer. He hosted multi-party and multi-candidate elections that were for show, and as the economy has waned, and he has appeared aloof from it all, so Tunisians said enough.

However, wherever Tunisia ends up, it is unlikely to be Islamist and it is, after all, a small country.  It is hoped that its largely secularist past will bode well for the future.

Yet Arabs in Algerian, Egypt, Yemen and Jordan have all watched the protests on TV and online, and have seen how easy it is to topple a strongman.  None of the countries have political freedom, all have economic difficulties, but where will they end up?

Algeria

Algeria was born of a bloody civil war against the French, and it went through three Presidents in three years as power struggles and uncontested elections meant a volatile scene.  In 1965, Houari Boumedienne seized power in a coup and ran Algeria on strict socialist principles, with strong allegiances with the Soviet bloc and China, even giving an honorary doctorate in person to Kim Il Sung.  He wasted the country's oil wealth on developing state owned heavy industry which proved uncompetitive and unproductive, and ran a ruthless police state.

Boumedienne's death saw a brief interim Presidency, followed by his protege, Chadli Bendjedid who was unremarkable, as the economy stagnated with falling oil prices.   As debts grew and government spending was cut, protests emerged and Bendjedid liberalised politics to announced the introduction of multi-party elections.  That, as is well known, sparked the rise of Islamism.  Local elections in 1990 saw the Islamic Salvation Front win a majority of positions, and there was every risk it would win the central government election in 1991.  The Islamic Salvation Front was lukewarm towards retaining democracy, with the vice president of the party claiming "If the people vote against the law of God, this is nothing other than blasphemy. In this case, it is necessary to kill the non-believers for the good reason that they wish to substitute their authority for that of God".  The party opposed the widespread coalition of Operation Desert Storm that had UN Security Council endorsement to eject Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait.

Hardly surprising that the military intervened and stopped the election, but what followed was a brutal oppression and civil war.  Thousands were rounded up and locked up, prisons were full, and Islamists took to the countryside with weapons.  Islamists embarked on a policy of deliberate massacres of entire villages if they were not supported, the military responded and over 100,000 were killed in 11 years of war.  The war ending only because so many Algerians were tired of the slaughter.   The military supported Abdelaziz Bouteflika to become President, and an amnesty saw many Islamists give up.  He was elected in 1999 in an election boycotted by opponents, but in 2004 he was re-elected in an election described by the OSCE as free and fair.  He engaged in substantive economic reforms, taking advantage of rising oil and gas prices to rebuild infrastructure, construct housing and the economy recovered considerably.   His amnesty and reconciliation process gained much support domestically, except among militant Islamists.  He engaged in privatisation of heavy industries and the tourism sectors.

However, tensions have risen in the last two year as Bouteflika sought and gained a constitutional change to allow him to run for the Presidency for a third term, meanwhile Islamists have gained support in resistance to his attempts to retain power.  He held an election in 2009 described by Western observers as a sham, as many candidates and voters boycotted it, and he subsequently won.  In essence, Algeria's carefully won peace has been undermined by the hunger for power by a man who started by doing good, but has been unwilling to let free expression and pluralism rise against him.  As a result, those who are not scared of doing violence and unwinding the peace - Islamists - are gaining the upper hand.  Algeria's economy is in reasonably good shape, but tensions with rapidly rising food prices and dissatisfaction with corruption and suppression of dissent, are firing up protests.  None of this is helped by Islamist backing for a revolution. It would be fair to say that the greatest risk in Algeria is a second bloody civil war.

Yemen

Often forgotten is the fact that the Republic of Yemen was only united in 1990, as much of Yemen's post colonial history was spent as two governments and states.  The new united Yemen was promising as it established a multi-party democracy, guaranteeing equality under the law, basic individual rights.  However, the election didn't result in acceptance of all political leaders, as the President and Vice President came from the two former northern and southern republics.  Grievances spilled out into armed conflict between the two sides, not helped by the failure of the two state's armies to integrate.   The unified Yemen acted as if it were two countries, with Saudi Arabia supporting the socialist south because it was opposed to a united Yemen.  The UN Security Council and most other states sought a ceasefire, and the civil war ended quickly with dominance from the north.  Subsequently parliamentary and presidential elections saw dominance achieved by Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had been President on reunification, and had previously been President of the northern Yemen Arab Republic since 1978.   Although elections have widely been considered to be reasonably free and fair, Saleh has had considerable influence over the media and press.

However, the main challenge to his rule since 2004 has been an Islamist insurgency from the north, which is partly tribal and religious motivated (as it has come from a sub-sect of Islam - the Shia Zaidiyyah).  Terrorism and attacks have persisted in Yemen, with the Yemeni government fighting a continuous campaign against the Islamist rebels.  Both it and the Saudis claims Iran is supporting the Islamists materially.  Saudi Arabia is now backing the Yemeni government, as Al Qaeda Saudi Arabia has shifted its base to Yemen.  The US has since provided direct military support to the Yemeni government to attack its bases in the north, including air combat support.

Yemenite discontent is from a combination of disenchantment with the almost continuous rule by one President since 1978, but also an economy which has performed poorly.  This was not helped by the repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Yemeni workers during the 1991 Gulf War because the regime supported Saddam Hussein.  Yemen's economy has been dependent on subsistance agriculture and modest oil and gas reserves, of which revenue is used to offset high subsidies for domestic petroleum.  Tourism is virtually non-existent, and the civil war has dissuaded foreign investors as well as driving more skilled Yemenis overseas.  In short, the country has been seriously hamstrung by ongoing conflict.

The great fear is that protests in Aden will be taken advantage of by Al Qaeda and its associated Islamist rebels, particularly as Yemen is in a strategic position on the approach to Suez.

As for Egypt? The news is unfolding... the consequences could be far reaching.... and I will write on it later.

However, the common theme amongst all of these state is resistance to political power, to absolute rule, to those who have used the state to enrich themselves and not ever been accountable for what they have done.  In short, Arabs in these states have wanted political freedom.

Yet more than a few have seen it as a chance not just to throw off the shackles of existing regimes, but to introduce a new order.  Akin to how Iranians threw off the authoritarian corrupt Shah, and supported the most well organised alternative - who has since proven to be more authoritarian and despicable.

The Western support for the likes of Hosni Mubarak has been because the apparent alternative would be far worse - yet the truth is nobody knows what will happen, and maintaining dictatorship and one man rule simply provides fodder for the Islamists, promotes hatred of Western values and civilisation as Islamists can say the West supports political freedom for all, except Arabs.   So support must be given for these regimes to change, to let people have their say, and for freedom to emerge in secular modern republics.  Yet if any look like becoming Islamist states that will harbour and promote terrorism and war, then it is a different story, for it risks the national security of the targets of that terror and war.  Hopefully most Arabs in these countries, having lived under relatively secular rule for some time, have little appetite for a new form of tyranny - but, one might have said the same of Iran in 1979.