Tuesday, 1 March 2011
Friday, 18 February 2011
Egypt; not quite the revolution. From Al Jazeera News + WikiLeaks. A wonderful combination.
Suleiman as New Vice President of Egypt
From 1993 until Saturday, Suleiman was chief of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service. He remained largely in the shadows until 2001, when he started taking over powerful dossiers in the foreign ministry; he has since become a public figure, as the WikiLeak document attests. In 2009, he was touted by the London Telegraph and Foreign Policy as the most powerful spook in the region, topping even the head of Mossad.
In the mid-1990s, Suleiman worked closely with the Clinton administration in devising and implementing its rendition program; back then, rendition involved kidnapping suspected terrorists and transferring them to a third country for trial. In The Dark Side, Jane Mayer describes how the rendition program began:
"Each rendition was authorised at the very top levels of both governments [the US and Egypt] ... The long-serving chief of the Egyptian central intelligence agency, Omar Suleiman, negotiated directly with top [CIA] officials. [Former US Ambassador to Egypt Edward] Walker described the Egyptian counterpart, Suleiman, as 'very bright, very realistic', adding that he was cognisant that there was a downside to 'some of the negative things that the Egyptians engaged in, of torture and so on. But he was not squeamish, by the way'. (p. 113).
"Technically, US law required the CIA to seek 'assurances' from Egypt that rendered suspects wouldn't face torture. But under Suleiman's reign at the EGIS, such assurances were considered close to worthless. As Michael Scheuer, a former CIA officer [head of the al-Qaeda desk], who helped set up the practise of rendition, later testified, even if such 'assurances' were written in indelible ink, 'they weren't worth a bucket of warm spit'."
Under the Bush administration, in the context of "the global war on terror", US renditions became "extraordinary", meaning the objective of kidnapping and extra-legal transfer was no longer to bring a suspect to trial - but rather for interrogation to seek actionable intelligence. The extraordinary rendition program landed some people in CIA black sites - and others were turned over for torture-by-proxy to other regimes. Egypt figured large as a torture destination of choice, as did Suleiman as Egypt’s torturer-in-chief. At least one person extraordinarily rendered by the CIA to Egypt — Egyptian-born Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib — was reportedly tortured by Suleiman himself.
From 1993 until Saturday, Suleiman was chief of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service. He remained largely in the shadows until 2001, when he started taking over powerful dossiers in the foreign ministry; he has since become a public figure, as the WikiLeak document attests. In 2009, he was touted by the London Telegraph and Foreign Policy as the most powerful spook in the region, topping even the head of Mossad.
In the mid-1990s, Suleiman worked closely with the Clinton administration in devising and implementing its rendition program; back then, rendition involved kidnapping suspected terrorists and transferring them to a third country for trial. In The Dark Side, Jane Mayer describes how the rendition program began:
"Each rendition was authorised at the very top levels of both governments [the US and Egypt] ... The long-serving chief of the Egyptian central intelligence agency, Omar Suleiman, negotiated directly with top [CIA] officials. [Former US Ambassador to Egypt Edward] Walker described the Egyptian counterpart, Suleiman, as 'very bright, very realistic', adding that he was cognisant that there was a downside to 'some of the negative things that the Egyptians engaged in, of torture and so on. But he was not squeamish, by the way'. (p. 113).
"Technically, US law required the CIA to seek 'assurances' from Egypt that rendered suspects wouldn't face torture. But under Suleiman's reign at the EGIS, such assurances were considered close to worthless. As Michael Scheuer, a former CIA officer [head of the al-Qaeda desk], who helped set up the practise of rendition, later testified, even if such 'assurances' were written in indelible ink, 'they weren't worth a bucket of warm spit'."
Under the Bush administration, in the context of "the global war on terror", US renditions became "extraordinary", meaning the objective of kidnapping and extra-legal transfer was no longer to bring a suspect to trial - but rather for interrogation to seek actionable intelligence. The extraordinary rendition program landed some people in CIA black sites - and others were turned over for torture-by-proxy to other regimes. Egypt figured large as a torture destination of choice, as did Suleiman as Egypt’s torturer-in-chief. At least one person extraordinarily rendered by the CIA to Egypt — Egyptian-born Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib — was reportedly tortured by Suleiman himself.
Thursday, 17 February 2011
Thailand, 20th Feb, Red Shirts and Cranes
Red shirts to flood Rajprasong with 1 million red paper cranes
The red-shirt movement will flood the Rajprasong Intersection with 1 million red origami cranes on Saturday.
Nathee Sorawaree, a red-shirt leader, said red-shirt people would gather at the Pathum Wanaram Temple from 10 am to 9 pm to commemorate the deaths of red-shirt protesters.
At 5 pm, the protesters would gather at the Rajprasong Intersection and "release" 1 million red paper cranes.
The red-shirt movement will flood the Rajprasong Intersection with 1 million red origami cranes on Saturday.
Nathee Sorawaree, a red-shirt leader, said red-shirt people would gather at the Pathum Wanaram Temple from 10 am to 9 pm to commemorate the deaths of red-shirt protesters.
At 5 pm, the protesters would gather at the Rajprasong Intersection and "release" 1 million red paper cranes.
Returning from China
I've been in Chengdu in the Great South West of China where the rain and mists pour down from the high plateau of Tibet province. The great rivers flow through the great basin towards the sea still so far away. China is doing well in terms of massive investment in infrastructure with roads and rail and urban development the really big areas of ongoing rapid improvement pretty well everywhere.
Whilst China is intending to keep the redevelopment push West going for twenty years, by the rate and the scale of improvements, I'd think a significant amount of redistribution of Wealth to the newly-centralising Western rural pod-growth areas will probably take only ten years.
There remains adherence to the pattern of 'the sun rising in the east and spreading west through the day'...such is the simple plan for the development of the country.
This New China is a very big and quite energised system moving at an unprecedented speed to develop yet each step is calculated well by many analysts within the core-system, always questioning themselves and running specific political experiments in a range of representational forms, although certainly not Western democratic forms, except some experiments lifted from Northen Europe for social modelling. I think China studies itself and others more so than any other country does.
China will not become a democracy. One of the main reasons is that what they are doing is working so very well for people in great numbers... numbers unheard of in history.
By sticking to a centralist socialist government of Chinese design at the core of a state capitalist redistribution, incorporating Confucian principles, more human beings have been delivered from rank poverty and at a faster rate than any system or empire or religion or philosophy in human history. 200 million in 20 years, and more each day into the future. China is on track and is also linking itself very structurally to all its 16 neighbour countries where one country, for example Vietnam is formally linked trade-wise and rapi-transport-wise with a city such as Shanghai. The economy of Shanghai City is much larger than the economy of Vietnam. If you look at the border countries, all of them are now linked with shiny new infrastructure to particular growth centres in China. The interdependency of all Asia thus becomes the best reason to never have wars whereas the American economy needs wars as the main driver for continuation of its wealth having neglected infrastructural investments for many decades, by it's own free choice.
No one in history has ever seen socio-economic progress running at this speed on on this scale.
I wish China well. It's an amazing thing to be living at a time of such profound and radical world change.
Whilst China is intending to keep the redevelopment push West going for twenty years, by the rate and the scale of improvements, I'd think a significant amount of redistribution of Wealth to the newly-centralising Western rural pod-growth areas will probably take only ten years.
There remains adherence to the pattern of 'the sun rising in the east and spreading west through the day'...such is the simple plan for the development of the country.
This New China is a very big and quite energised system moving at an unprecedented speed to develop yet each step is calculated well by many analysts within the core-system, always questioning themselves and running specific political experiments in a range of representational forms, although certainly not Western democratic forms, except some experiments lifted from Northen Europe for social modelling. I think China studies itself and others more so than any other country does.
China will not become a democracy. One of the main reasons is that what they are doing is working so very well for people in great numbers... numbers unheard of in history.
By sticking to a centralist socialist government of Chinese design at the core of a state capitalist redistribution, incorporating Confucian principles, more human beings have been delivered from rank poverty and at a faster rate than any system or empire or religion or philosophy in human history. 200 million in 20 years, and more each day into the future. China is on track and is also linking itself very structurally to all its 16 neighbour countries where one country, for example Vietnam is formally linked trade-wise and rapi-transport-wise with a city such as Shanghai. The economy of Shanghai City is much larger than the economy of Vietnam. If you look at the border countries, all of them are now linked with shiny new infrastructure to particular growth centres in China. The interdependency of all Asia thus becomes the best reason to never have wars whereas the American economy needs wars as the main driver for continuation of its wealth having neglected infrastructural investments for many decades, by it's own free choice.
No one in history has ever seen socio-economic progress running at this speed on on this scale.
I wish China well. It's an amazing thing to be living at a time of such profound and radical world change.
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