Richard Spencer

Protesters from Qamishli, Syria, tear down billboards with photos of President Bashar Assad (Photo: AP Photo/Amateur video, Shaam News Network)

I try to avoid the blanket use of terms like “thug” and “goon” to describe the assorted minders, spooks, cops and soldiers of regimes that we, as journalists and westerners, tend not to like. These men are always some mother’s sons, after all. Even when they are telling lies or committing acts of brutality, we are deceiving ourselves if we think the sins of war are not a greater part of human life than saintliness.

We are all potential thugs, and even thugs have flashes of human virtue such as humour and remorse. When overpowered in Tripoli earlier this year… Read More

Inspired by Ed West’s reflections on the link between the pictures on bank-notes and political stability, I thought I would see what Libyan money tells us. One thing is that for all Gaddafi’s, ahem, flaws, Libya seems to have retained some sense of aesthetics, a trait not shared by most totalitarian states, viz the damage inflicted by Mao and Stalin on their cities, or Saddam Hussein’s grotesque architectural remnants.

Tripoli remains a surprisingly attractive place, if run-down in parts, with its elegant mixture of Arab and colonial buildings and its lack of dictatorial grandiosity. And Libya’s bank-notes, particularly the ten dinar, are beautifully done.

Ah, the ten dinar. Is that, though, the exception, or the rule? Unlike other notes, the ten dinar does not show the face of Col Gaddafi. Instead, it has a rather fierce portrait of Omar Mukhtar, and thi… Read More

President Bashar al-Assad delivering a speech at Damascus University (Photo: EPA)

What makes the Arab Spring uprisings so fascinating and important for everyone, not just those interested in the Middle East and who worry about its impact on our own lives, is this: a whole variety of regimes with different systems and different leaders and different international allegiances have all reacted in basically the same way, without regard to how stupid it seems to everyone else on the planet. Why is this?

It is a very tough question, but one that will at some point have to be addressed, even in places like Dubai and Qatar which have not seen significant unrest. If the politics are different, what are the cultural underpinnings of these regimes that make them simultaneously so fragile… Read More

The second tower of the World Trade Center bursts into flames on September 11, 2001 (Photo: Reuters)

I’ve seen it written in a couple of places that even if he was no longer a key figure in the operational plans of al-Qaeda, the killing of Osama bin Laden has only upsides and no downsides.

That’s clearly wrong. Even leaving aside the possibility of retaliatory attacks, which has already been widely taken into account, and even without challenging the positives, there are clearly possible negative short- and long-term consequences.

Here are five:

1. Other jihadists will now strive to assume his position – if not as leader of al-Qaeda per se at least as moral leader of the jihadist cause. This may cause the sub-groups who follow them… Read More

Cairo's Tahrir Square Egyptian protesters were jubilant the day after their success in ousting President Hosni Mubarak (Photo: AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

One of the many complaints of British university students and recent graduates these days is that it’s getting more and more difficult to get a decent job without first doing a long period of “internship”. What was once a couple of weeks of holiday work experience is now dragging out to an expectation of several months on no salary, reliant for a living on the generosity of parents or the sofas of luckier friends. Meanwhile the company bosses who oversee such practices seem to get ever higher salaries as they are rewarded for not surprisingly being able to bring… Read More

Predictably enough, President Barack Obama has come under fire from both sides in the last couple of weeks over his position on Egypt. Here’s a particularly eviscerating analysis from the fearsome Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post, from the Right. She terms Mr Obama’s position “an assault on reason”.

Egyptian women celebrate the resignation of Hosni Mubarak (Photo: AP)

Tahrir Square, Cairo

On Tahrir Square tonight, there is celebration, and we are all swept up in the mood. The people know that their central demand has been met – the dictator has gone. The future seems to be in their hands: it would be a brave army, let alone general, to try to take it back from them.

This is a great triumph for people power. Experts like me said the opposition could achieve little without a leader against a regime as well-organised and entrenched as Mubarak’s. We were wrong. The opposition remains leaderless, but triumphant.

It also remains, in the best possible way, clueless. No one has any idea what’s coming next. Some know that the army has taken over, but many don’t…. Read More

Anti-government demonstrators gathered at Tahrir Square (Photo: Reuters)

An avoidable and shameful disaster is taking place in Cairo tonight. Whether by accident or design – the latter seems more likely – President Hosni Mubarak has created a caged arena full of hate for a final confrontation.

As I write, the anti-regime protesters have been presented with an ultimatum to leave Tahrir Square but no opportunity to do so, given that they are surrounded by club-wielding hoodlums at all exits.

They have responded as idealists and revolutionaries have through the centuries, by building barricades. But as those who occupied Tiananmen Square for freedom or democracy in 1989 discovered, to claim ownership is to invite response.

That comparison might be hysteria generated by the time I have spent in China. The army have said they will not use… Read More

A tank guards Mohamed Avenue in Tunis (Photo: AP)

The Western unease would be funny were it not so serious. The French urge against a rush to judgment on the hideously corrupt regime of President Zine al Abedine Ben Ali of Tunisia – even offering to lend police support to put down demonstrations against his 23 years in power.

Suddenly he is gone, and his family are simply far too disreputable to be allowed to stay at EuroDisney, and are kicked out. Suddenly democracy is a good thing again, even in former French colonies. Then as if we haven’t learned, up pops Hillary Clinton – first of all calling for reform in the Arab world, then for “stability” in Egypt – stability being universal code-word from Beijing to Brazzaville for dictatorship – and… Read More

A demonstrator faces police during clashes in Tunis (Photo: AP)

Life is full of unintended consequences. Barack Obama, on coming to power, turned away from Bush-era rhetoric about bringing freedom and democracy to the world. His idealism was pragmatic. When I saw him tell the Muslim world in Cairo in June 2009 that he wanted to be its friend, he shocked some people because he didn’t say it was conditional on reform.

Since his host, Hosni Mubarak, has been in power for 30 years with little pretence of free and fair elections that was all to the good. But it didn’t please human rights groups, and liberals scattered across the Arab world felt betrayed.

It’s too early to divine the full meaning of the revolution in Tunisia. But it does look like the… Read More