³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

Here, hold my hand. I want to take you to meet some of the world's richest and most powerful men. (And yes, sorry, they are nearly all men.)

We're off to Davos in Switzerland, for the annual jamboree of global movers and shakers known as the World Economic Forum. So you'll need your passport, of course, some nice smart clothes for all those evening parties - oh yes, and some cash.

You won't want to go as a mere journalist, I know, because that won't get you anywhere near the inner sanctums (sancta?) where the real money is. So let's enrol you as a fully paid-up participant.

Did I say fully paid-up? Hang on to your credit card, because here come the numbers. Basic membership fee, entitling you to one invitation: 50,000 Swiss francs (£33,000, or $53,000). Cost of one ticket, 18,000 Swiss francs, plus tax: so total cost of membership plus ticket: £44,000, or $71,000.

Mind you, I should warn you: if you want to get in to the really interesting sessions, the ones where the really important people are, you'll need to enrol as an "Industry Associate". That'll cost £86,000, or $137,000. And yes, you'll still need to buy a ticket as well.

Ah, you want to bring a friend. Sorry, mere Industry Associates aren't allowed any friends. You'll need to be an Industry Partner, which costs a bit more: £164,000, or $263,000. Yes, you guessed: you'll both need to buy tickets as well.

I could go on, but you'll have got the idea by now. How do I know all this? Not, needless to say, because I've become a member of the Global Club of Movers and Shakers, but because the very kindly spelt it all out this week in a fascinating article.

So here's the question: what on earth do they do with all that cash? Well, I did what any self-respecting hack would do: I had a look at their latest . In 2009/10, total revenue: 143 million Swiss francs (£95 million, or $150 million). Total expenditure: about the same, of which about one-fifth went on office costs, 40 per cent on staff, and the rest on "activity-related" costs.

Perhaps none of this matters very much. The people who go to Davos are very rich people who represent very rich corporations. (I assume the politicians get a special rate ...) What they do with their cash is their business.

Incidentally, Gideon Rachman of the had some useful Davos tips the other day if you do decide to go: they include wear sensible shoes, because of all the trudging through the slush; and end the evening at a party with loud music, because by the end of the day, you'll have had enough of earnest discussions.

Me? No, I'm not there - not my thing, I'm afraid. But you get a flavour of it from Rachman's note about a session he went to on , just as anti-government protesters were out in their thousands on the streets of Cairo.

"One of the participants was Amre Moussa, the secretary-general of the Arab League and a former foreign minister of Egypt. The bad news is that I am not allowed to report what Moussa said. The good news is that he actually said nothing worth reporting, so it's no great loss."

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

There are various ways of looking at the cache of Palestinian documents that have apparently been leaked to and published in .

(I say "apparently" because Palestinian officials are denying their authenticity and the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ has not independently verified them. The Guardian says many of them "have been independently authenticated ... and corroborated by former participants in the talks and intelligence and diplomatic sources.")

Here are some options for you:

1. The Negotiators as Traitors: what right did the Palestinian negotiators have to offer so much to Israel in return for so little? Nearly all of east Jerusalem? Joint control of the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount, the third holiest place in Islam? No right to defend their own territory with their own armed forces? No right of return for Palestinian refugees? That's not negotiating ... that's surrendering.

2. The Negotiators as Statesmen: Look how far they were prepared to go. Look at the painful concessions they were prepared to make. How can the Israelis claim they have no "partner" to negotiate with when these papers show the exact opposite to be the case? How can anyone argue now that it's the Palestinians who are being unreasonable?

3. The Negotiations as Charade: Doesn't this just prove what a waste of time this whole so-called "peace process" is? Who do these negotiators represent, other than themselves? If their Fatah party were to be tested in elections, they'd be wiped out - and they know it. Besides, they don't even control the Gaza Strip, so nothing they supposedly "offer" will matter a damn. In any case, they still don't get it. Israel will give up not an inch of Jerusalem, and will never agree to anything that might threaten its existence.

Over to you ...

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

I imagine you would agree that no government takes a decision that's more important than going to war.

In which case, presumably, it follows that understanding how and why such a decision is taken is pretty important as well.

That's why - for those of us interested in the machinery of government - the being conducted by Sir John Chilcot and his colleagues provides such a fascinating insight.

This morning, Tony Blair was back, almost exactly a year after his first appearance at the inquiry. There were no fireworks, but there was a significant - and an uncharacteristic - admission.

Yes, said Mr Blair, in retrospect, it might have been better if the then Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, had been more closely involved in the process of negotiating the UN security council resolution which either did (according to Tony Blair and, eventually, Lord Goldsmith) provide legal cover for the Iraq invasion, or (according to critics of the war and many international lawyers) did not.

The point is a simple one: Tony Blair knew that all his commitments to President Bush in the months leading up to the invasion would be worthless if the Attorney General formally advised the Cabinet that military action would be illegal. He also knew that, almost up till the last moment, that was the Attorney General's view.

It would have been much easier, Mr Blair suggested, if Lord Goldsmith had been present at discussions about the language of Resolution 1441, because that way he would have seen how deliberately it was chosen in order to offer legal cover for military action as a last resort. (Whether that is indeed what the Attorney General would have concluded, we shall never know.)

We already know from innumerable accounts of the Blair years that he favoured an informal style of government. It didn't go down too well with civil servants, nor does it, it seems, with members of the Chilcot inquiry. They want to see minutes of meetings, and records of conversations.

In a nutshell, Tony Blair's approach can be summed up like this: I know what needs to be done, so my task is simply to persuade everyone else - and then do it.

He was not, as prime minister, nor is he now, the sort of man who says: We seem to have a problem, so I'm going to sit down with all my Cabinet colleagues and see if we can work out what to do about it.

I remember interviewing him in Downing Street in December 2002, three months before the Iraq invasion. I asked him if it bothered him that his critics were calling him "Bush's poodle."

"Oh, it's much worse than that," he said. "I agree with him."

His problem was that many of his Cabinet colleagues, many Labour MPs, and many British voters, were much less sure. So throughout the pre-invasion period, the question he was asking himself was not: What is the right thing to do? It was: How can I persuade everyone else that what I'm doing is the right thing to do?

You may think that certainty in a political leader is no bad thing. Or you may think that in a Cabinet-system of government, with a civil service offering professional advice, certainty can sometimes risk leading to bad decisions.

When the Chilcot inquiry report is published, it won't pass judgement on whether the Iraq war was legal. (Just as well, perhaps, given that not a single member of the inquiry team is even a lawyer, let alone a judge.)

But it may well have a great deal to say about the way decisions were made. It won't provide the sort of headlines that critics of the war are hoping for - it won't result in Mr Blair being dragged off to The Hague in handcuffs - but I'm pretty confident that it'll make riveting reading for anyone who's interested in how we are governed.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Jordan?

Maybe, maybe not, but there's an interesting run-down from Foreign Policy.

We'll be reporting from Egypt on the programme tonight (Wednesday).

Meanwhile, the head of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, has linked the upheaval in Tunisia to deteriorating economic conditions throughout the Arab world. Speaking at an Arab summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, he warned leaders that their people's anger had reached unprecedented heights: "The Arab soul is broken by poverty, unemployment and general
recession."

Is he right?

• Bookmark with:
• del.icio.us |
• Digg |
• Reddit
• - What's this?

Do not underestimate the importance of what has just happened in Tunisia. The toppling of President Zine al-Abidene Ben Ali means that for the first time since the Iranian revolution in 1979, an unpopular Middle Eastern dictator has been overthrown by people power.

It's early days, to be sure, but the consequences could be profound. Throughout the Arab world, people are glued to their TVs, their computers and their social network feeds and asking: "Could we do the same?"

Their leaders are asking a different question: "How can we stop them doing the same?"

Thanks to the work of the website , which collates social network comments from around the world, we can read the thoughts of, for example, Bader Al Aujan, from Saudi Arabia: "Thank you, thank you, thank you, to our relatives in Tunisia. I never thought that I would ever have this feeling of pride and achievement."

Or Ahmad Fahad, in Oman, who says he cannot take his mind off Twitter: "How am I supposed to work while governments are being overthrown live on Twitter?"

Or Ahmad Badawy in Egypt: "Ben Ali, tell your brother (Mubarak) that the people of Egypt hate him."

Be honest: until a few days ago, how much did you know about Tunisia? Small country, North Africa, nice tourist beaches? Oh yes, and Carthage, of course, three millennia old and definitely worth a visit if you're in the area.

Or, alternatively, "a police state, with little freedom of expression or association, and serious human rights problems ... Corruption in the inner circle is growing. Even average Tunisians are now keenly aware of it, and the chorus of complaints is rising ... Anger is growing at Tunisia's high unemployment and regional inequities. As a consequence, the risks to the regime's long-term stability are increasing."

Take a bow, former US ambassador Robert Godec, who got it pretty much dead right in a to Washington 18 months ago, now released by WikiLeaks.

Arab leaders have a habit of sticking around for a very long time. Ben Ali lasted 23 years, and as Blake Hounshell pointed out in this week, Muammar Gaddafi has been in charge in Libya for 41 years; President Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen for 33 years; Hosni Mubarak in Egypt for 30 years. You could add the Assads, father and son, in Syria, 40 years.

Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa, east Asia - all of them, over the past 30-40 years, have seen a flowering of democracy. But not the Arab world, where, with the partial exceptions of Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon, democracy is conspicuous only by its absence.

Last Thursday, as Tunisia was erupting in opposition protests, the US secretary of state was in Qatar, delivering some home truths to Arab leaders: "Across the region, one in five young people is unemployed. And in some places, the percentage is far more. While some countries have made great strides in governance, in many others people have grown tired of corrupt institutions and a stagnant political order. They are demanding reform to make their governments more effective, more responsive, and more open."

She didn't mention anyone by name - she didn't need to: "Those who cling to the status quo may be able to hold back the full impact of their countries' problems for a little while, but not forever. If leaders don't offer a positive vision and give young people meaningful ways to contribute, others will fill the vacuum. Extremist elements, terrorist groups, and others who would prey on desperation and poverty are already out there, appealing for allegiance and competing for influence."

To which Washington's critics will reply: Huh! Who's been propping up these sclerotic regimes all these years? Who's been backing Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, the al-Sauds in Saudi Arabia - and yes, Zine al-Abidene Ben Ali in Tunisia? As ambassador Robert Godec reported in his WikiLeaks cable, there's been substantially increased US military assistance to Tunisia in recent years, as well as joint counter-terrorism programmes and strengthened commercial ties.

So Arab leaders will be watching events in Tunisia very nervously. Watch out for protests in Algeria, Jordan, and Egypt, where there have already been demonstrations against corruption, food prices and unemployment.

It's far too soon to say that a wind of democracy is blowing through the Arab world. But someone just lit a touch-paper in Tunisia, and we don't yet know what detonations might follow.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

I wrote on this blog just before Christmas about why I thought there
were some good reasons to be hopeful about the future. Click
to see the extraordinary Swedish academic Hans Rosling say the same
thing much more graphically than I could.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

The trumpets will sound; the drums will beat; the flags will flutter proudly. After a referendum to be held on Sunday, a new nation will be born on the continent of Africa - and great will be the rejoicing.

Well, I'm sorry, but maybe not so fast. For the people of southern Sudan, yes, after decades of war and hardship, it will indeed seem that there is much to celebrate. They have fought long and hard for their independence, and they will be sure that they have earned the right to celebrate.

But my task this weekend is to draw your attention to a few other recent occasions when people celebrated the birth of new nations - and to ask whether perhaps some of their celebrations were just a tad premature.

You may be surprised to learn that over the past 20 years, more than 30 new nations have appeared on the face of the globe. Nearly half of them emerged from the wreckage that used to be the Soviet Union (all the way, alphabetically if not geographically, from Armenia to Uzbekistan).

Seven have emerged from the former Yugoslavia (Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia).

There's also Namibia, which broke away from South Africa in 1990; the Czech Republic and Slovakia which went their separate ways in 1993; and Eritrea, which split from Ethiopia, also in 1993. More recently, East Timor (Timor-Leste) won its independence in 2002, after 27 years of Indonesian occupation - and of course Kosovo declared itself independent of Serbia in 2008.

Some of these countries are doing well enough: Namibia, Slovenia, the Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. But others - Eritrea, East Timor, Kosovo - are not (yet?) great success stories.

So the people of Southern Sudan would be wise to be cautious. There is, admittedly, no good reason why the lines drawn on a map by 19th century British colonialists should be set in stone - yet the landlocked south will need more than its fair share of good luck to become a viable independent state.

Its substantial oil reserves could turn out to be a curse as much as a blessing. There are likely to be months of bitter arguments over how to divide up the revenues from oil sales; and the north will want generous terms in return for allowing the oil to travel through its territory in the already existing pipelines.

But the people of the north (mainly Muslim) and the people of the south (mainly Christian) have never had much in common - and what unites them now is a shared wish not to return to war. That, at least, is a positive sign.

Until very recently, there were real doubts whether this referendum would be held on schedule. President Omar el-Bashir was thought to be deeply reluctant to authorise a poll that he knew would result in secession. And when he was indicted by the International Criminal Court in connection with war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed in Darfur, it seemed he had little incentive to bow to the will of the West.

But US diplomats have been heavily engaged in Sudan for several months now; and if the referendum goes well - and if the secession of the South takes place without major problems - Washington will have good reason to be pleased.

Some commentators have taken to referrring to Sudan as "Obama's Rwanda", a reference to Bill Clinton's known regret that he didn't do more to prevent the genocide in Rwanda in 1994.

Remember, Sudan is the biggest country in Africa. It's of major strategic importance and is a key trading partner for China. Its president is the only serving head of state ever to have been indicted as a war criminal.

The stakes on Sunday are high. The omens are a lot better than they looked just a matter of months ago. But there are still many hurdles to be surmounted before the new nation of Southern Sudan can confidently take its place as the newest kid on the United Nations block.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?