techniques of the counter-revolution

It looks like the Empire is striking back on multiple fronts. So far as I can see, these seem to have been the lessons learned by regional authoritarians from Egypt.

Never mind the martyrs. Given that ‘martyrdom’ had a catalytic effect on protest in Egypt and Tunisia, you’d have thought that other regimes would have taken care to handle demonstrators more gently. Not so, as events today in Bahrain have demonstrated and as shown in Yemen over the weekend. The issue instead appears to be control of the streets. Once the demonstrators in Egypt and Tunisia had it, they couldn’t be dislodged. So go in fast, early and hard.

Deny the revolution its focal point. That appears to have been the purpose of the raid on the Pearl roundabout in Manama. There have been reports of sporadic clashes in the city since then, but it’s hard either for reporters to get a handle on where or for demonstrators to find a place to assemble.

Get the countergangs in early. The protests in Egypt rapidly reached such a critical mass that the baltagiya lost their ability to intimidate. Indeed, they were defeated by physical force from the demonstrators. So they need to be used before that point is reached, as they are in Iran, Yemen and Libya.

Hijack the agenda. Issandr El Amrani on the forthcoming protests in Morocco:

...a confusion has been deliberately created that the February 20 protests are about overthrowing King Muhammad VI, which they are absolutely not about: they are largely about socio-economic grievances and the need for the reforms that the regime has pretended to undertake to actually be implemented, starting with constitutional reform to make Morocco into a genuine constitutional monarchy rather than an absolute one that disguises what it is by calling itself an "executive monarchy".

For the past two weeks, the regime propaganda machine has created an outpouring of affection from Muhammad VI. Much of it is based on genuine respect for the institution of the monarchy as well as the man himself, but it is dangerous to play with the king's image in this way. One possible backlash is that on February 20 the protestors will get attacked as traitors. Street violence can get pretty savage in Morocco — I dread to think what might happen

Handle this right and you get yourself a genuine loyalist mob.

Be a social dictatorship. Evgeny Morozev got a lot of stick over the past week or so for his scepticism about the role of social media in democratization. His proposition is that new and social media can be a force multiplier for dictatorships which take the trouble to understand its potential and use it effectively. This is the proposition under test now across the region. So far we’ve had Libyan terror messaging, facebook phishing exercises by Sudanese security forces and Iranian wumaodang twitter accounts. No doubt we'll get more along similar lines.

Use it or lose it. It’s difficult to say how effective all of this is. Protests don’t seem to be reaching critical numbers. On the other hand, demonstrators are persisting in the face of constant and occasionally lethal state violence (every day for the past week in Yemen).

One thing that’s going to be prominent in regime calculations is the response of Western and particularly American policy to the Egyptian uprising, which made it clear that a) western powers want their local policies to remain as they are, but aren’t betting everything on maintaining any given government and b) if protests get too big, then there’s nothing your western friends can do for you. So the way to respond is to use every repressive resource in your arsenal to stop them getting too big. Current signals coming from Washington – welcoming the Iranian protests, ignoring the ones elsewhere – seem to indicate that this strategy is generally acceptable.

Libya’s the country to watch here. Ghaddafi’s new friends would drop him like a hot brick if if only for someone less embarrassing given half an excuse, and he’s still on bad terms with the Saudis and the GCC states, so no prospect of exile there. He’s the one actually at risk of ending his rule swinging from a palm tree, and that possibility is going to dictate his response to the local uprising. Given our role in the Megrahi affair, it’ll be interesting to see what Britain’s response to that will be.

Comments

[john b]

Not sure why "our role in the Megrahi affair" is all relevant here.

We shafted Megrahi when the Americans told us to, we unshafted him again in exchange for an oil deal once the Americans no longer needed Libya shafted - and then we took the blame after various blowhard US politicians, having learned that blaming BP for America's failings in the Gulf of Mexico went down well with the xenophobic rabble, decided to double-up that strategy (I imagine some terrifyingly high proportion of Americans still believe Libya was involved in Lockerbie...)

Now, if the British government were sensible, the lesson would be "Americans are duplicitous bastards and certainly not our best friends, so let's stop pretending they are". As it is, the lesson seems to be absolutely nothing.

But I don't see how any of this makes the UK's position towards Qaddafi different from anyone else's - he's a bastard who we don't like and who doesn't like us, but who currently controls lots of oil he needs to sell and we'd like to buy. We'd just as much rather he was swinging from the lamp-posts as everyone else, surely?

[Myles]

and then we took the blame after various blowhard US politicians, having learned that blaming BP for America's failings in the Gulf of Mexico went down well with the xenophobic rabble, decided to double-up that strategy

I always thought David Cameron's response on BP was disturbingly weak, given that BP pays out one-eighth of the dividends on LSE, after all.

[Atlanta Roofing]

It took a while, but Obama and Hillary spoke up meekly for the right of Egyptians to protest. Will they comment on the violence from the governments of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia?

[ajay]

That's actually the most cogent and relevant bit of spam I've ever seen. Atlanta Roofing has passed the Turing Test!

[dsquared]

If I'm ever in Atlanta and in need of a bit of roofing, I'll certainly check them out!

[CharlieMcMenamin]

Mason offers an intersting, if entirely speculative, take on the meaning of the current situation: he thinks it may be America's 'Suez Moment'.

[ejh]

Sorry, is anybody claiming that BP weren't substantially to blame for the Gulf of Mexico disaster, or are we just supposed to cheer them on because they're British?

[ajay]

ejh: the latter, I think. Myles (and Boris Johnson IIRC) took the view that the Americans were being nasty about BP out of xenophobia rather than out of a distaste for having the entire Redneck Riviera covered in an even layer of toxic sludge. Therefore, because they represent 12.5% of LSE dividend yield - and thus represent one-eighth of everything that is good and pure and righteous about England - we should have rallied round them.

[john b]

The point is more that BP was no worse in safety practices than its US rivals (or, indeed, the US companies that designed and operated its rig), were victims of the kind of bad luck that occurs sometimes when safety rules are dodgy, and were treated far more harshly than a domestic company would have been in the same situation.

[ejh]

Poor BP.

[gastro george]

Quite, it reminds me that Bob Diamond is the luckiest (and most sanguine) person alive for have avoided buying ABN-AMRO by the the skin of his teeth. A slightly better bid and he would have sunk Barclays instead of "earning" his millions.

[ajay]

were treated far more harshly than a domestic company would have been in the same situation.

[citation needed], I think. Exxon didn't exactly get away scot free after the Valdez oil spill, which was considerably smaller than the Deepwater Horizon spill. The only spill in recent history of similar size to Deepwater was the 1991 oil spills in the Gulf.

[ejh]

When I read - when I can bear to read - of the ruination of BP and its executives, I am often put in mind of the suffering of the Carthaginians.

[ajay]

You think there's some BP intern whose boss has sworn him to vengeance and who, in twenty years' time, will be marching on Washington, elephants and all?

[Myles]

Myles (and Boris Johnson IIRC) took the view that the Americans were being nasty about BP out of xenophobia rather than out of a distaste for having the entire Redneck Riviera covered in an even layer of toxic sludge.

I am not quite silly enough to believe that, actually. BP wasn't treated in a beastly way or anything; the Americans were, with the exception of the usually loony Congressmen, generally fair. They probably did treat BP a bit harsher than they would have a domestic company, but Tony Hayward's bumbling has a lot of the blame for that, and Congressional grandstanding takes the rest.

Therefore, because they represent 12.5% of LSE dividend yield - and thus represent one-eighth of everything that is good and pure and righteous about England - we should have rallied round them.

My problem wasn't that BP dividends were getting ruined, it's that David Cameron didn't even get a promise out of Obama that BP would under no circumstance be bankrupted. Practically speaking it made no difference this time, but if Congress had been bloody-minded it would entirely have been within the realm of possibility (I heard people seriously suggesting the seizing of BP's American assets). It would have been absolutely disastrous for the British economy and Britain at large, and wouldn't have done the Americans much good either.

There's a distinct difference between suspending dividends for a few years, and knocking out that big a chunk from the British markets. And David Cameron seemed not to have grasped that difference.

[Myles]

Sorry, should rephrase that last bit. It's not so much David Cameron didn't know the difference, it's that he's basically oblivious to the kind of tail-end risks emanating from the American political and legal systems, which could easily spin out of control.

[ejh]

David Cameron didn't even get a promise out of Obama that BP would under no circumstance be bankrupted.

1. How could he have done so? Sent a gunboat up the Potomac?

2. How would the US have bankrupted BP, given their absence of control over BP's non-US assets?

3. How many local people were bankrupted, do you think, as a consequence of BP's greed and negligence?

[ajay]

My problem wasn't that BP dividends were getting ruined, it's that David Cameron didn't even get a promise out of Obama that BP would under no circumstance be bankrupted.

And was BP in fact bankrupted? No. By ownership, it is almost as much a US company (39%) as a UK one (40%). Bankrupting BP would have meant US investors losing tens of billions of dollars - safe to say Obama wouldn't have wanted to do that.

You also seem a bit hazy on Obama's powers vis-a-vis the American legal system. If, say, a Louisiana court had ruled that all BP's assets in LA were forfeit as damages, what do you think Obama could have done about it?

[Myles]

1. How could he have done so? Sent a gunboat up the Potomac?

Appeal to Obama's common sense? Look, Cameron's the PM, and it's his job to make sure every contingency gets looked after. And the thing is, if you want to prevent things from possibly getting out of control, you want to douse the flames before they even get started.

2. How would the US have bankrupted BP, given their absence of control over BP's non-US assets?

Congressional action and (somewhat related) mass torts depending how how much Congress fiddles with the laws, and also depends on what part of BP's assets exactly were under US jurisdiction in one way or another.

3. How many local people were bankrupted, do you think, as a consequence of BP's greed and negligence?

Well they jolly well aren't getting compensated if BP goes under, are they?

[ejh]

Shorter Myles:

1. Waffle.

2. Waffle.

3. Who cares?

[Myles]

You also seem a bit hazy on Obama's powers vis-a-vis the American legal system. If, say, a Louisiana court had ruled that all BP's assets in LA were forfeit as damages, what do you think Obama could have done about it?

The Louisiana court is not, under then-existing laws, empowered to do such a thing, but Congress changed the laws immediately after the disaster, and the laws could have been changed in a way as to make such a seizure possible (and given the American court system, it was bound to happen somewhere). Cameron's job was to make American political actors (the biggest of which include Obama) understand that such a course would be inadvisable.

[Myles]

safe to say Obama wouldn't have wanted to do that.

Ah, but you are falling into the trap of the British mindset ("surely Americans wouldn't want to hurt themselves") about the American system again. Americans don't care as much; entire companies have been bankrupted by torts. They do have more room to assert the relevant legal and political principles than Britain does, and they assert them quite well. In the American mind, a company like BP going bust because of mistakes is just a part of life. Not to say I don't admire the mindset (I do), but it's simply much more viable given the size of the U.S. economy and investor base than in the British context.

After all, many Americans thought Detroit should have been fully liquidated. Imagine the comparable British response.

[Chris Williams]

Memo to self - DC's job includes the task of asking foreign governments to bullet-proof UK assets. Myles - you ever heard of the China River Judgement (China Navigation Company 1930)? This is the kind of shit that never happened even when the UK was a superpower.

[Myles]

Myles - you ever heard of the China River Judgement (China Navigation Company 1930)?

I tried googling it and can't find anything. Link?

[Cian]

For fuck's sake. The Obama administration has bent over backwards to protect BP. They've lied for them, muzzled experts, done their best to cap damages, limit the political damage, done their best to limit access from activists/locals/journalists to the damage.

[chris williams]

CHINA NAVIGATION COMPANY, LIMITED v. ATTORNEY-GENERAL. [1930. C. 2497.]

There is no legal duty on the Crown to afford by its military forces protection to British subjects in foreign parts. If, in the exercise of its discretion, the Crown decides to afford such protection, it may lawfully stipulate that it will do so only on the condition that the cost shall be borne by those asking for it.

[Myles]

There is no legal duty on the Crown to afford by its military forces protection to British subjects in foreign parts.

Fair enough. This was an extremely tangential issue, given that the American government acted extremely reasonably toward BP, so I am not about to sob about injustices at the hand of Obama or any such nonsense.

I am just slightly annoyed with Cameron, who seems to have a thing for vacuity.

[john b]

Myles is absolutely right about the capacity of the US judicial system to engage in monumentally stupid, value-destroying and capricious acts for no discernible reason.

3. How many local people were bankrupted, do you think, as a consequence of BP's greed and negligence?

Easy: none. Everyone's going to be (and was always going to be be) generously compensated for the disaster's impact.

They've lied for them, muzzled experts, done their best to cap damages, limit the political damage, done their best to limit access from activists/locals/journalists to the damage

[citation needed]

[ejh]

Easy: none. Everyone's going to be (and was always going to be be) generously compensated for the disaster's impact.

[citation needed]