What can we do to bring the Libyan conflict to a speedy end?

I have just sent this email to my MP. You can copy, customise and send it too, via WriteToThem.com




Dear [MP]


Action to block broadcasts of Gaddafi’s Al Jamahiriya 2 TV station

Now that the Prime Minister has rightly led, with France, the military action to protect the population of Libya from Ghaddafi, we must all hope and act to bring the allied operation to a successful conclusion as soon as possible.

The remit of the Allies is to protect the people. The intention of the people is to remove Ghaddafi. They have the will and the numbers to achieve success, as the Allied action re-balances the  military situation by removing Ghaddafi’s heavy weapons.

There is one more heavy weapon that needs to be neutralised: Ghaddafi’s TV station Al Jamahira 2 State TV, and also his radio stations.

Gaddafi is mentally unstable, showing symptoms of denial, delusion, paranoia, and irrational aggression. He is controlling within his inner circles, and manipulative in his dealings with world opinion. He probably has a borderline unstable extraverted personality disorder exacerbated by 41 years of unopposed power.

It is clearly inappropriate for a deluded individual to be permitted to spread his delusions through a TV station, especially when they result in delaying the successful end of the Libyan crisis.

The importance of Ghaddafi’s broadcasts to his war effort cannot be overestimated.  We have seen the blatant misinformation that his ministers put out with regard to a “ceasefire”. Libyans are subjected to this propaganda every time they turn on the TV. He maintains his supporters’ morale with his TV broadcasts, affects their cognitive framework with misinformation.

If his broadcasts were stopped, it is reasonable to expect that support for Ghaddafi would diminish among the Libyan people. If families of loyalist soldiers no longer express enthusiasm for Ghaddafi, morale among his soldiers will be reduced.  Blank TV screens would be a symbol to loyalists that Ghaddafi is losing control. There would also be a positive net effect on world opinion, since some broadcasters are using Libyan State TV as if it were a reliable news source.

Nilesat is Ghaddafi’s main TV service provider. They are located in Egypt. It might take just a certain amount of diplomatic pressure to get them agree to deny service to him.  Other options of course include jamming his signal.

In short this is an action that is non-violent, and can reasonably be expected to shorten the length of our engagement in Libya.

I have heard no substantive arguments against this line of action, though I imagine there may be some kind of gentleman’s agreement among governments along the lines of “I will not jam your signal if you will not jam mine”. Clearly this convention no longer holds now that Ghaddafi is subject to a UN R2P action.

I urge you therefore, please, to take this matter up directly and personally with the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Secretary of State for defence at the earliest opportunity. If there is any objection to the idea I would be grateful if you would call me so that we can talk it through. Time is pressing.


Many thanks for your action in this very important initiative.

Sincerely

....

Action to press the UN to recall the mercenaries here.

Israel's options in the new Middle East

The coming changes in North Africa and the Middle East will cause a huge shift in the balance of power in the region.

Wikileaks have shown the intransigent nature of Israeli negotiations. This will now change. Israel must start negotiating in good faith.

Although Zionism predated World War 2, the Nazi Holocaust motivated Jews to found a state for their people in Israel.

The psychological effect of the horror of the Holocaust must be remembered and understood as a the basic motive for the paranoid and aggressive position of the Israeli Government.
The State of Israel has had an expansionist policy ever since its foundation, displacing Palestinians to an extent that can be characterised as ethnic cleansing, and has also denied human rights to Palestinians. 

In retaliation for displacement and repression, Palestinians have fought back with hijackings, stones, rockets, and suicide bombings.
In retaliation of this, Israel has responded with ever-greater aerial bombings culminating with the disgraceful bombing of Lebanon in 2006 and Operation Cast Lead in 2008-9.

The mutual, retaliatory, violence-based policy is causing immense human suffering to the peoples of both sides, particularly the Palestinians. Militarism is causing polarisation of opinion, and an escalation of violence that could lead to wider conflict in the Middle East and even global conflict, which could even escalate into nuclear war. 

In order to avoid this diastrous outcome, all parties must focus on a peace settlement based on negotiation and compromise, focused around co-operation in the task of creating a sustainable economy in their arid land.

At the heart of the problem is the fact that the increase in population of Israel/Palestine on the part of both communities demands the functional expansion of the carrying capacity of the land, which demands in turn a functional increase in the supply of water to the area in order to increase the productivity of the land.

This must be based on co-operative water management solutions which will be both innovative and intensive.

It will be based on work on water harvesting, waste minimisation and water recycling, and reafforestation from the coast inwards.

While this work is in progress, the role of the international community is to conceive of and facilitate a way for this situation to come about by dialogue with all actors in the Middle East.

The case for peace is overwhelming from a rational point of view. Reason must displace emotions such as fear and resentment as the primary motive for action.

This objective can only be realised through the mutual recognition of the rights of independent statehood and secure borders of both Palestinians and Israelis; an immediate end to the violence and de-escalation of the arms build-up in the region; enforcement of UN resolutions 242 and 338; international assistance so that both the Palestinian and Israeli states can develop co-operative self-reliance in water management, food production and basic services and industries; and long term exploration of the possibility of establishing a confederation with neighbouring states, with free and equal access for each state's citizens.

All Israelis, Palestinians, and their families should have and be able to exercise full human and civil rights throughout Israel and the occupied territories. Israel should be subject to the Geneva Convention concerning the rights of individuals and communities.

All actors must recognise the right of the people of Israel to exist peacefully within secure borders.

Both the Israeli Government and the PLO to unequivocally reject violence as a means of settling their conflict.
Israel should repeal its present "law of return" because it is incompatible with the full exercise of human rights and is implicitly discriminatory, and is open to the accusation of being racist.

Israel should to have direct talks with representatives of the Palestinian people with a view to ensuring genuine religious, political, economic and other human rights for all people within Israel and the occupied territories.

Israel should allow Palestinians and their families to return to their former homes and be offered full Israeli citizenship, or to compensate those unable or unwilling to return to their homes and/or property.

Arab states should agree a mutual non-aggression pact, and a non-aggression pact with Israel. Such pacts must be guaranteed by the international community.

The United States Government should use its special relationship with Israel to halt military and financial support until Israel enters the dialogue called for above.

The Middle East is faced with a decision. Continuation of the old politics of confrontation and conflict can only lead to war. Co-operation in securing the basis of a sustainable economy for all in the area can lead to a just and lasting peace.

The choice is ours.

Egypt: way forward through maintaining political unity

There have been about 50 revolutions throughout the world since 1990 according to this list.

I was going to study what happens after a revolution, but I can see that this would need a lifetime of study.

It is obvious that each revolution has its own unique setting, characteristics and results, but at the same time, there is a common pattern, with early conflicts over betrayal of the ideals of the revolution, followed by disorder, followed by imposition of order by a strong man or strong party.

The ongoing Egyptian revolution has its own beauty in its non-violent nature, apart from the defensive measures the pro-democracy protesters had to take in response to the thugs. It also gained from the excellent oath taken by Egyptian Army not to kill their fellow-citizens, and this offers hope that Egypt will avoid this chaos-strong man pattern, thus setting an example for the world to follow.

Right now the Egypt revolution is justifiably in a mood of euphoria and a tremendous sense of unity. The physical , life threatening dangers are, hopefully, over.

The next phase means that they are entering the next level of difficulty in this existential game.


Politics.

The revolutionaries have to decide what to do now. Before, opinion was united around the simple insistence that Mubarak must Go.

Now opinion will be spread out on a spectrum between those who want an immediate overthrow of the Cabinet, the regime and all its policies, and those who want Egypt to get back to normal life as soon as possible.

An important part of this spread will be the formation of political parties in preparation for early elections. I know only too well, from 30 years of experience in a marginalised political party, how toxic relations between political parties can become. Personality and ego comes to the fore and reason goes out of the window. Competition is everything: if another party says white, you say black.

If the majority, secular part of Egypt's January 25 movement fragments into many disparate parties, the Muslim Brotherhood could end up as the largest single party in the post-revolutionary Parliament. I think it is highly unlikely, for several reasons, that they will create a theocracy like Iran, but their predominance would feed the paranoia of the US pro-Israeli right, which could lead to further military tensions in the region at a time when we need a popular movement of cooperation focussed on the foundations of the real economy, especially water.

Clearly, what happens now is up to the Egyptian people, but from a distance, which is often a good place to see the whole picture, the best political outcome would be for the secular (with or without the Muslim Brotherhood Jan25 revolutionaries to form an umbrella group to contest the next election, focused on the the 7 Demands, and on a radical direct approach to nation's economic and infrastructure problems: food prices, energy and water management.

Within the term of the post-Revolutionary Parliament, differences would coalesce into the natural political  formation of political parties, who would contest the following election in the usual way.

Mubarak: why will Obama not tell him publicly to go?

In Tahrir Square, Cairo,it looked so good yesterday.

Now Hosni Mubarak has released ugliness into the picture. Unable to send uniformed police against the people, he has bussed in paid supporters, some of them criminals that his agents released from the prisons, and arranged for police to go in in mufti. It seems also that he has infiltrators.

All these charmers are being presented in Western TV as the news that "Mubarak Has Supporters".

Of course he has supporters. He has the NPD and the police, and his prison guards and his torturers, and thousands of other hangers on, all with vested interest in holding onto the regime. There is no wonder that they turned out, especially if they were paid.

Tweets are reporting confessions of captured thugs, even tweeting their ID numbers.

Their argument of his supporters is that they need Mubarak to stay until September to oversee an orderly transition.

The reality is that if Mubarak stays, he will manipulate, he will provoke, he will arrest thousands of demonstrators, and he will do all he can to continue his legacy of authoritarianism. The Revolution will have been in vain. The revolutionaries know this, and they will stay until he goes.

Mubarak must go. His presence is the provocation for unrest.

The Egyptian Army holds the key to his dismissal. They could arrest him, but this would probably involve an unpleasant gun battle with the Presidential Guard, and would stir uneasy fears of a return to military rule. But if they were openly contemptuous of his orders, defied them, and in every way short of force made it clear that they wished for him to go, he would have no option but to go.

So why does the US not order persuade the Egyptian Army to do that for them, calling in their billion dollar a year favours?

Because the US is undecided. In one of his capacious ears, he has the spirit of the American Revolution whispering its truths. In the other equally capacious ear, he has the Paranoiacs, screaming uncontrollably. To the Paranoiacs, Mubarak, like Saddam, is a bulwark against The Enemy - militant Islamic fundamentalism. They fear the Muslim Brotherhood might form the largest party in a freely elected Egyptian Parliament.

Israel wants Mubarak to stay. More or less. Step inside the looking glass world of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if you will. On January 28, one of his Ministers, a Mr Ano Nymous, said "We believe that Egypt is going to overcome the current wave of demonstrations". For which read, Mubarak is going to win, and stay on. Or at least, his policies will. cites He further says: "the Gaza Strip as a signal warning of the risk that comes with asking the people what they want". For which read, democracy is OK so long as there are no Muslim fundamentalists in the population.

Today, However, Netanyahu says "Democracy is dear to us, it is real, and it is obvious that a democratic Egypt will not endanger peace, just the opposite".


Why all this havering? Because of the Muslim Brotherhood.


The Muslim Brotherhood threat is greatly overstated. We can believe this not because the democracy is a great big washing machine that kills all known germs, but because the best way to stoke the fires of Islamism is to block the will of the Egyptian people. If successful, the people will feel empowered, assertive, and alive. They will turn their energies to solving Egypt's economic problems. If defeated, their anger will turn inwards. Some will seek the consolation of religion, and some of those will decide to take it to the extreme.

So it is in the interests of all, not just Egyptians, but of all the millions who live in fear of speaking their minds, whose lives are blighted with injustice, political persecution, imprisonment torture and death, that Mubarak to go immediately. The sooner he goes, the sooner this clear expression of the will of the people succeeds, the sooner it is made plain to all the world that the will of the people is the ultimate source of political power.

With agonising, treacly slowness, Obama and Cameron are moving towards the point that they say in public their man Mubarak has lost his legitimacy.

The slower they are to wake up to political reality and rally to support the forces of democracy, the better it will be for everyone.

Fair play to the Egyptian Army! Big Respect Due!!

The Egyptian Army has just declared that it will not use force against its own people.

In doing so, they have demonstrated that Egyptian Soldiers are righteous, professional soldiers. They are not cowardly killers and beaters of unarmed civilians.

The sole valid reason for an army to exist is to protect the nation from invasion*.

Their role, irrational and problematic though it is when viewed objectively, is to try deter, if necessary with lethal force, any armed invaders who try to occupy their country.

That is the central role of an army: protection of their nation, its people, territory and values.

The real, professional soldier is not there to kill unarmed civilians of their own nationality. 

This is why the Green Party has this policy (PD306): All serving personnel will be required to sign a pledge that they will not obey any order which would entail any breach of international law. In particular they will be able to disobey any order that required them to fire on unarmed civilians of their own or any other country.


Maybe this is a good day to raise this question:

Will the British Army make a solemn oath that they will never use force against non-violent British civilians?

*OK, primary purpose. Commenters are welcome to enter other uses, like, UN peacekeeping missions.