The Brotherhood Revolution!

By Tariq Alhomayed
This commentary was published in Asharq al-Awsat on 02/03/2011

Here I do not seek to imply that the Muslim Brotherhood was behind Egypt's revolution against the former regime, but rather I am alluding to news that young members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood intend to carry out a revolution within the organization itself. This is a remarkable development, for several reasons.
 
Firstly, the mere fact that Muslim Brotherhood youths are planning to gather nearly thirty thousand members to organize a revolution within their own movement, and against its old faces, confirms that there are now many disgruntled members within an aged organization. An exclusive clique still dominates decision making within the Brotherhood, at a time when the organization lobbies the Egyptian regime, and the Arab states, for greater pluralism and openness, along with other demands. Of course, this internal youth revolution within the Brotherhood is not a mere repeat of the January 25th revolution, for the Brotherhood youth have called for a revolt against the movement's internal structure in the past. However, it was clear that the group's clandestine activities, and animosity towards the former Egyptian regime, helped to form cohesion within the Brotherhood, for it is well known that the enemy unites under such conditions. Thus, the Muslim Brotherhood was able to withstand its aggrieved younger members during those years, because the former Egyptian regime was threatening the movement as a whole. However, the situation is different today.
 
The second interesting aspect of this development was the interview with the young engineer Kamal Samir Farag, general coordinator of the "Muslim Brotherhood Youth Revolution", in the newspaper "al masry al youm". In the interview, he said that "we have a crisis regarding the internal elections of the Muslim Brotherhood, in that there is no room to run as a candidate. The group views its leadership as (untouchable) elders, and the idea of competition is not acceptable. The group uses a candidate list at times when it wants, and this is then absent when it doesn’t want to use it". Yet Farag went even further in the interview, when he said that "Egypt post January 25th is different to how it was prior to this date, and this goes for the Muslim Brotherhood as well. In the past, the group could have issued a decision to dismiss someone, citing any reason, but nowadays the situation is different, and we will not allow anyone to force us out of the group".
 
What Kamal Samir Farag said, regarding the situation of the Muslim Brotherhood before January 25th, is very similar to how the Brotherhood criticized the former regime of Hosni Mubarak - there was no room to stand for election, the regime did not accept the idea of competition, it used candidate lists when they were convenient, and abolished them when they would not be beneficial, not to mention the dismissal of individuals without anyone daring to challenge the decision! It seems – as one of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has told me – that the impact of the former Egyptian regime over the past thirty years has resulted in an opposition that has come to resemble it in many ways, as evidenced by the criticism which the Brotherhood youth direct towards the organization today.
 
Thus, perhaps the "Muslim Brotherhood Youth Revolution", demanding change within the organization itself, will be a call for those who defend the organization, and attack us for criticizing it, to reconsider their position, or reinterpret the reality of the Brotherhood. All that glitters is not gold, as they say! This matter of course is not limited to the Muslim Brotherhood alone, as one of my colleagues said: "Who knows? We may also see a revolution from Hezbollah's youth", however it seems that this revolution would be subject to the success of the Green Revolution in Iran!

On The Belated Opposition In Libya

By Elias Harfoush

This commentary was published in al-Hayat on 01/03/2011

I am amazed by those who say that they have been caught off-guard by the current behavior of Gaddafi. Some of these had been, during the last week, ministers in the cabinet of the country of “the leader of the revolution,” or ambassadors to his regime at the United Nations and in the world’s major capital, and some were officers in his security apparatuses. Is it possible that these “have only just discovered,” on the 17th of this month, that Gaddafi is a reckless, mad, and blood thirsty dictator and that his and the interests of his family members come before those of Libya and its people, and [is it possible] that some made this “discovery” even later than that?

Some honesty is required, gentlemen. When the Libyan Minister of Justice says that he is in possession of information that proves the involvement of Gaddafi in the crime of detonating the American plane over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, would it not be the right of the victims’ families and the entire world to ask: where was the information of the minister and the apparatuses of “his justice” when the British tribunal were investigating this crime? And when the Libyan delegate to the United Nations, Gaddafi’s old friend and his former interior minister, says that the slogan of Gaddafi when ruling over the Libyans was: “I either rule over you or kill you”, then would it not be a right for people to ask: Where had Mr. Shalgam been in the last four decades when Gaddafi was ruling over the Libyans and stepping on their rights, sanctities, and freedoms under the slogan of “I either rule over you or kill you?” Was it not Saif al-Islam Gaddafi the one who was in charge - right under the noses of the Libyan officials who decided to break away from the regime belatedly - of leading the so-called “opening up” of this regime to the world, although he held no official post in the state’s apparatus?

“Gaddafi did not just start today his deeds of oppression and killing against his opponents inside and outside Libya. And Gaddafi did not condense Libya into his own person and into his family just today. He has been doing so for forty years. Therefore, moral courage and live conscience should have pushed those with chivalry and magnanimity to act earlier, had they really been keen on preserving the Libyan people’s blood and rights, and had they been really concerned about the democratic system in Libya. As to what they are doing today, this is an attempt at fleeing the ship before it sinks and this cannot be considered as constituting a stand based on principles in any case.

The matter is not only restricted to the fugitives from the ship of Gaddafi’s regime. There is a long list of Arab politicians and media persons who used the funds of Gaddafi’s regime, i.e. the money of the Libyan people, when they used to consider that the Libyan leader is a pioneer of Arab patriotism, and a successor of Abdel-Nasser, and a leader to the so-called national movements and Arab revolution. Some Arab “intellectuals” and novelists have been hosted in Tripoli’s luxurious hotels and they came back astonished by the “talents” of the colonel in areas of culture, intellect, and creativity, and by his unparalleled and literary “talents.” These too have discovered just today that there is a regime of oppression in Libya. And they found that their interest calls for standing by the side of the Libyans in their bloody confrontation of this regime.

And to be fair with those who were late to move away from the bloody regime in Libya, we must say that these are not the only ones with such an attitude in our region. Gaddafi’s regime is not unique with respect to the leader’s monopolization of power, and threats to “turn the country into coals” if his people considered asking him to step down. In addition, the politicians and the intellectuals who used to shower Gaddafi with words of praise do not only operate in Libya. Take a look around you so that you may see the many similar examples. In the name of “patriotism,” “progressivism,” and the liberation of Palestine, only in words of course, the leaders of these systems have allowed themselves to practice all kinds of actions against their people, and they have forged electoral processes, and oppressed their opponents. In the name of those systems, “masses” have applauded in admiration and have condemned the external interferences, considering them to be “foreign conspiracies,” in the exact same way adopted by Gaddafi and his son today. As to the slogans of the defense of freedoms and the right of the people, the Arab intellectuals only remember these when water penetrates the regime’s ship and it starts to sink.

Arab World's Lady Gaga

Mahmood Saberi writes: Musician calls Muammar Gaddafi the Lady Gaga of the Arab world because of his over-the-top clothing and his theatrics.
This commentary was published by The Gulf News on 02/03/2011 

It's a good thing I am a medical reporter who writes about silly things like how French fries are real toxic stuff, instead of being a political pundit.

One thing I have learned after a year of reporting on health issues is that people love to get the free stuff, information, know-how, on how to lead healthy lives. People want to have a better quality of life, enjoy the time that they have, not spend it in hospitals.

People will avidly read a doctor's recommendations on anything from how to prevent a heart attack to how to have better relationships. They will lap up stuff that will show them how to improve their lives.

But sadly, they will do absolutely nothing to better themselves. Whenever I park my car and walk into Rashid Hospital, I invariably find an extremely sick man in a wheelchair outside, speaking to his wife or some family member and sucking desperately on a cigarette.The wife looks uncomfortable that her husband is killing himself and she cannot do anything to save him.

I know many people who never have annual check-ups. They would rather take better care of their cars than themselves. "I always take my car to the dealer. It has never given me trouble" said one friend, speaking about his sleek Japanese saloon.

Freedom over life

But he hadn't heard of ‘executive check-ups' for people over 40, at clinics in Karama, that identify likely trouble spots in your body way ahead of time so that you can take care of it.

"I have seen a patient stick a cigarette in the hole in his throat and smoke," said one cancer doctor. A nephrologist told me that some diabetics don't care about doctor's orders even if they find their head is swimming in fog at the workplace one day. "They go and do whatever they wish,' he said.

One amazing thing I have realized is that people value personal freedom more than their lives. They want the freedom to chose how to live their lives or how to kill themselves, albeit, slowly.
The ‘days of rage' that have mushroomed around the region have caught many leaders off guard, who thought people want to be told what to do. That apparently does not seem to be the case. People want to make their own choices.

As I said I am glad I do not write about political affairs, because it is absolutely crazy out there as the winds of change sweep through the region. There's just no way to analyse this cry for freedom that was sparked off by one repressed, desperate fruit-seller in Tunisia, and it is absolutely impossible to know what will happen next.

One Emirati political commentator put it succinctly when he tweeted: #Libya is not #Egypt. #Egypt is not #Tunisia. …. and so it goes on ... About how leaders kept on saying that the situation is not the same in their country, as the domino effect continues.

Obviously, the leaders are bad managers and seem extremely poor in their PR skills. Their last resort is to threaten their own people.

But whatever you say about Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, he knew how to take care of his health and had his own personal Ukrainian nurse. But it seems like the game's up as she has left him alone with his botox and his syringes.

Incidentally, a musician has remixed Gaddafi's infamous rambling speech that he will cleanse his country house by house, alley by alley, into a hip-hop song that has become sort of an anthem of the Libyan opposition.

"I call him the Lady Gaga of the Arab world," said the 31-year-old musician, because of his over-the-top clothing and his theatrics.

The song is called Zenga, Zenga and has gone viral on YouTube.

In Libya, a ‘zenga' is a narrow, impassable alley.

The Israelis Keep Bulldozing Their Village, But Still The Bedouin Will Not Give Up Their Land

The tiny village of al-Arakib has been torn down by the Israeli authorities 18 times in seven months, but each time the Bedouin rebuild their homes

By Harriet Sherwood
This commentary was published in The Guardian on 01/03/2011

A Bedouin woman among the ruins of her home in al-Arakib after it was torn down by the Israeli authorities. Photograph: AFP

The rutted track to al-Arakib leaves the desert highway at a sharp right angle through an unmarked gap in the roadside barrier. It's easy to miss, to be swept past with the stream of traffic heading through the sun-hardened and windswept landscape of the Negev.

About a kilometre from the main road, you come first to the village cemetery, where the oldest grave dates from 1914, and a corrugated iron barn that serves as the mosque and now a communal kitchen and shelter. Then, across a trough in the land, you see the remnants of the Bedouin village: four simple wooden frames whose tarpaulin covers are continually thrashed by the relentless wind. This is all that's left of a once-thriving community after a seven-month war of attrition that has pitted the Bedouin villagers against the Israeli army, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) and a Christian evangelical television channel called God TV. And the struggle is not over.

Since 27 July, the village has been demolished at least 18 times, most recently last Thursday. Each time the bulldozers and soldiers come at dawn to tear down the makeshift structures that have replaced the 40 concrete buildings that used to house the villagers, the men of al-Arakib rebuild them. Each time their footprint gets a little smaller.

Although the villagers say they have deeds to the land proving ownership since 1906, al-Arakib is "unrecognised" – meaning the state of Israel regards its very existence as illegitimate. Israel declared the land state property shortly after the 1948 war, and in recent years has accelerated efforts to drive the Bedouin into designated townships.

The villagers stand in the way of a government-backed JNF project to encourage Jewish settlement in the sparsely populated Negev and create a forest by planting half a million trees paid for by God TV. Launched in the UK in 1995 but now broadcasting globally from Jerusalem, God TV is part of a Christian Zionist movement that believes the Jews must return to the Holy Land as a pre-requisite of the Second Coming of Christ. In videos posted on its website, founder Rory Alec speaks of an "instruction from God" to "prepare the land for return of my Son". He takes supporters to the Negev to plant saplings and urges others to make donations to fund the trees the TV channel has pledged to supply.

Afforestation has become a tool of the Judaisation of the Negev, says Oren Yiftachel, professor of political geography at the nearby Ben-Gurion University. The authorities have uprooted thousands of olive trees to replace them with "Jewish trees". It's only our trees that matter, he says wryly.
The new saplings, struggling to take root in the arid soil, are visible from the tent where Aziz Sayah Abu Mdagem sips sweet tea brewed in a blackened kettle over a kindling fire. This is our land, he says; we will not give it up. He describes the first demolition as a scene from a battlefield: hundreds of soldiers dragging screaming women and children from their homes before the bulldozers crushed the buildings. Special forces troops on horseback and on motorbikes surrounded the area as helicopters clattered overhead.

A shed housing the village's chickens was flattened, killing all the birds inside. Trees – olive, citrus and almond – were uprooted. He shows us a collection of rubber bullets, tear gas canisters and spent stun grenades collected from successive demolitions.

Some of the traumatised children have been unable to speak since, he says. They wet their beds, they call out in their sleep. He shows a picture from an album of a pile of rubble. This, he says, is the children's playground now. Later, he points to fresh furrows ploughed in the baked ground in preparation for tree-planting. "Every day they dig the land closer," he says.

The JNF says its afforestation plan in the Negev is for the benefit of all inhabitants, but Abu Mdagem finds it hard to see how the destruction of their homes is a positive move for the Bedouin villagers. The JNF acknowledges the donation of trees from God TV but is reluctant to discuss the partnership.

God TV did not respond to a request for comment, but recently posted a message on its website, saying that claims that the evangelical channel is responsible for the displacement of the Bedouin people are false. It says its tree-planting endeavours, which are an "apostolic, prophetic act", are simply part of "an effort to restore the desert places to the lush green land it once was, preparing the Holy Land for the return of the King of Kings".

The struggle to save the village has won support from Jewish activists and intellectuals, including the celebrated Israeli novelist Amos Oz. Al-Arakib was, he said, a ticking time-bomb.

In the now near-deserted village, Abu Mdagem shows us the mosque, where mattresses are piled against one wall and cooking utensils line another. This is where the women and children of the village sleep at night, he says. He weaves through the stone-covered mounds in the adjacent cemetery to take us to the oldest grave, which, he says, proves their connection with the land.

During demolitions, the villagers seek refuge among the dead, believing the soldiers will not pursue them on to sacred ground. But recently even that has not proved safe, with shots and tear gas being fired into the cemetery.

"This is our life now," Abu Mdagem says, threading prayer beads through his fingers. "We live together with the dead people in the cemetery."

Misery At The Border As Gaddafi's Guests Flee

Libya's migrant workers have become a pitiful human tide. Robert Fisk reports
This Commentary was published in The Independent on 01/03/2011

 

An Egyptian woman flees Libya across the border into Tunisia yesterday

"We want the Egyptian army – why isn't our army here?" they shouted in their thousands: the refugees, the poor, the sick – the wealthy having long ago fled Gaddafi's rump dictatorship – as they stormed around the frontier station through refuse and muck. They are the people of Cairo and Alexandria and Sohag and Assiut and a thousand Delta villages, all with their monstrous, preposterous, overweight baggage of cheap clothes and bedding.

The Egyptian army cannot come to Tunisia, of course, to save the tens of thousands of its countrymen pushing their way over the border. Only the Egyptian navy came yesterday, in the shape of a black-painted frigate that carried just 1,000 men, women and children home over rough, wind-topped seas.

But the misery at the border was greater than any ship of mercy. Perhaps 7,000 people – perhaps 8,000, the figures are as imperfect as they are unable to convey such suffering – squeezed themselves up to the last Libyan barrier and over into Tunisia. Libyans beat them – and then the young men of Ben Gardene beat them for arriving in their nearby Tunisian town to take their jobs. The Egyptians were not seeking work – nor were the thousands of Bangladeshis with no embassy in Tunis, nor the Chinese, nor the Filipinos. For yes, this was misery from what we once called the Third World, now made jobless and homeless by a truly Third World dictator.

A young Tunisian security policeman, in a black leather jacket and shades and holding a Steyr rifle, began shouting at journalists. "Do you see how many there are? How can Tunisia look after all these thousands? Go and look at them yourselves." And we could see them on the Libyan side, pushing against a concrete wall, dwarfed by Libya's glowering green-domed customs station. Tunisian army officers cursed the cop for demonstrating his own country's plight.

Yet the Tunisians were also kind. They drove Egyptian peasant workers to a newly installed refugee camp in their own cars. They stamped temporary visas for those who had driven to Jerba airport for flights to Cairo and to the harbour at Djerdjes. They brought bread rolls and water and blankets to the frontier.

An Egyptian foreign ministry official, in a white T-shirt with the Egyptian flag sewn on to it, told us he had come as a volunteer to help his people – not something you could have expected under Mubarak's corrupt old regime – and he, too, praised the Tunisians.

And if 100,000 refugees have now fled Libya for Tunisia and for Egypt itself, how to avoid the ultimate figure of responsibility – that of the despot of Tripoli, he who supposedly gave power, in his wretched Green Book, to the people? "No Democracy without People's Congresses and Committees Everywhere," read one of the nonsensical lines which I read on a poster in Tripoli last week. Then what of all these people at Ras Jdir? No congress or committees for them. Just the hard road home. Or rough seas. For yesterday morning, the Egyptian navy came to the rescue. True, it was a mere frigate with the capacity for only 1,000 souls, but the arrival at Djerdjes of the Shalatein, streaming with Egyptian banners and decks lined with smart Egyptian marines, somehow retrieved this crisis from just pain and destitution. It was the first Egyptian military operation since the overthrow of Mubarak, and the seamen and marines knew that the world's cameras were upon them. They carried children aboard, welcomed old men leaning on walking sticks, put their arms around the rough fellahin from upper Egypt.

Over the ship's Tannoy system they played "Al-Helmel Arabi" – the "Arab Dream", the old song of Arab unity – as buses brought hundreds more Egyptian migrant workers from the border 50 miles away.

Even the reporter of the Egyptian navy's house magazine took pictures of the middle-aged and elderly peasants, almost all of them clutching soiled blankets and cheap plastic bags containing all they possessed. Less than two decades ago Gaddafi threw half of his Palestinian migrant workers out of Libya, a dry-run for this infinitely greater exodus.

But what happens when all these huddled masses at the Tunisian border go home? The economy of Egypt will be sorely hit. So, too, will those of Bangladesh and Turkey. But none more so than Libya itself, whose construction plants and power stations and oil and gas facilities now lie idle.

Four more Egyptian naval ships are en route to Tunisia, a bigger task force than the British and Americans sent for their own evacuees. But even these vessels will not be able to carry the growing crowds at the frontier.

Don't Make An Oil Deal With Unhinged Dictator

By Steve LeVine
This commentary was published in the Foreign Policy on 01/02/2011

Libya falls squarely into the central aim of this blog, which is to identify and follow the geopolitical impact of energy events. Libya is fundamentally an energy event. After decades of ostracism because of his terrorist attacks and links, Col. Moammar Qaddafi was re-embraced by the international community in 2003, led by the United Kingdom and the United States, for one primary reason -- he said he would open his oilfields to their companies. Oh, there was the renunciation of terror, too -- no trivial matter -- but then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair reversed Britain's stand on the Libyan-ordered Lockerbie airline bombing specifically to shoehorn BP, Britain's biggest company, into some monstrous new oilfields. The same went for the rest of Europe and the U.S., where ConocoPhillips, Hess and Occidental also got oil deals.

Eight years later, we observe the geopolitical impact in the spectacle of Qaddafi provoking an unnecessary civil war, and roiling world oil markets, all so he can continue his almost 42-year rule. The energy-geopolitical takeaway -- political and financial compromise with a certain class of petro-tyrant can rebound back on you profoundly, destabilize a region, and shake up economies, all while tarnishing you with the same brush. One also doesn't know if, in the end, the deals themselves will all hold up.

There's much debate about the matter of getting in bed with Qaddafi. At the Financial Times, writer Edward Hadas argues in this video (no embed available) that Qaddafi's behavior over the years "could have been worse" had the West not embraced him. The Economist understands that business and diplomacy must be done, but notes that Qaddafi "seems to crave blood," and suggests that countries and companies must keep that in mind when cutting deals with plainly unhinged individuals. "Countries dealing with dictators should never confuse engagement with endorsement and ... the West should press for human rights and democracy -- even when it is inconvenient, as it is with China and Russia," the magazine writes.

One can certainly make a list of countries whose leaders deserve ostracism, but that isn't the litmus test. Instead, where else might the thirst for oil or some other commodity come back to haunt us with geopolitically bad consequences? Given events so far, the autocrats of the world are mainly dialing back on the harsh stuff and seeking conciliation with the street -- witness Bahrain, Oman and Yemen.  

But there are oil-rich dictatorships whose leaders are doubling-down in the confidence that they risk more by either doing nothing or going soft. Iran may have arrested key opposition leaders Mir Hussein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi. Many of Iran's leaders definitely meet the unhinged litmus test, yet apart from China most of the world has stopped doing big business there, at least openly. China could be a case of future mortification -- it has a habit of cracking down in ways that have helped fuel the Middle East unrest, including on Sunday in Beijing after Internet calls for a "Jasmine Revolution." Yet the West does not go too far in criticizing Beijing -- Washington, for example, is hooked on a type of commodity market -- China's hunger for U.S. Treasury bonds. 

Russia, meanwhile, is profiting from the trouble. As John Helmer reports, Italy -- Libya's biggest natural gas customer before the trouble -- has replaced the volumes with supplies from Gazprom.

Westeners, Be Careful The Company You Keep

By Anne Applebaum

This commentary was published in The Washington Post on 28/02/2011

 

Every British newspaper worth its salt has written lately about Saif Gaddafi, but the Sunday Times had by far the best graphic illustration. A photograph of Moammar Gaddafi's second son - clad in a white jacket and tasteful silk tie, with a carefully pressed keffiyeh draped elegantly over his shoulders - occupies the center of a large box. 

 

Photographs of his British friends and business partners cluster in a circle around him: Nat Rothschild, scion of the banking family, who gave a party for Saif when he completed his PhD on "civil society" and "global governance" at the London School of Economics; Sir Howard Davies, director of the LSE and one of Tony Blair's economic envoys to Libya; Lord Peter Mandelson, a former Blair adviser, cabinet minister and European commissioner, who now advises "companies hoping to expand markets overseas"; Prince Andrew, who promotes British trade abroad; and, last but not least, Blair himself. 

 

Saif was popular: He went to parties in St. James's Palace and sailed in yachts off Corfu. He was also rich. Thanks to his contacts, he became the conduit through which British companies invested in Libya - and through which the Libyan Investment Authority invested in British companies. At least that was what he was doing until last week, when he appeared on Libyan television vowing that his father's bloody regime would fight "to the last man, the last woman, the last bullet." Suddenly, the acceptable face of Libyan tyranny became unacceptable: Underneath that Western-educated veneer, it seems there lurks a ranting psychopath. 

 

Saif was not the only dubious character to inhabit the space where money meets politics in London, the city that has become the true capital of global capitalism. Any list of, say, people with whom Prince Andrew has recently dined will reveal dozens of similarly polished thugs: more Libyans, Kazakhs, Kirghiz, and of course, the ubiquitous Saudis. 

 

Money, even foreign money (and particularly that Saudi money) has always been able to buy access to Western statesmen. But in the past decade or so, the proportions have subtly shifted. The democratic West has become relatively poorer, while a clutch of undemocratic "emerging" markets have become richer. To put it more bluntly, Western politicians, ex-politicians and even aristocrats have become much, much poorer than the very, very rich businessmen emerging from the oil-and-gas states of central Asia, eastern Europe and the Middle East. Twenty years ago, no retired British or German statesman would have looked outside his country for employment. Nowadays, Blair advises the governments of Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, among others; former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder collects a paycheck from Gazprom, the Russian energy behemoth. 

 

True, there is legitimate argument for maintaining contacts with dictators: Blair helped persuade Colonel Gaddafi to give up his nuclear weapons program in 2003, and in the past 10 days he has twice called the dictator and asked him to stop shooting his people. It hasn't helped, of course, but it can't hurt to try. 

 

But there is no justification for taking dictators' money or befriending their offspring, especially not while simultaneously playing politics with their parents. This is not just a British problem, either. Frank Wisner, the U.S. envoy President Obama sent to negotiate with Hosni Mubarak in the early days of the Egyptian revolution, also works for Patton Boggs, a law firm that has worked for the Egyptian government. The administration was reportedly angry when he unexpectedly opined that Mubarak "must stay," just a few days before Mubarak fled Cairo - but should anyone have been surprised? 

 

Meanwhile Michele Alliot-Marie has just lost her job as France's foreign minister because she went on holiday in Tunisia during the revolution, hitched a few rides on a private plane belonging to a friend of the Tunisian president and helped her father do a business deal there, too. When she got back, she tactfully suggested that the French help their friends in the Tunisian police put down the riots. 

 

Fingers crossed Alliot-Marie's departure is the first of many: If Western governments want to have any credibility in the post-revolutionary Arab world, they need to stop hiring people, even as "envoys," who are already in the pay of current or former Arab dictators. Blair should resign immediately from his informal negotiators' role in the Middle East; Prince Andrew should be told to stay home. The Wisners of the world should be sent back into retirement. Finally, for good measure, the legions of former public officials now in the pay of Chinese, Russian or Saudi businessmen should be kept far away from their previous places of employment, just in case. Come the revolution, you can be sure they will turn out to have embarrassing friends, too.