Month: March 2007
YouTube videos of referendum vote-rigging
Via Sandmonkey, although I think they were originally posted by Wael Abbas.
Dhimmitude with attitude
The liberation of Iraq
White House statement on referendum
Statement on Egyptian Referendum Vote
Yesterday Egypt concluded a popular referendum on a package of amendments to its constitution. While the approval of these amendments is a question for the Egyptian people to decide, it is evident that the vast majority of Egyptians did not choose to participate. Many voices in Egypt have criticized the abbreviated process which led up to this referendum, and have criticized the amendments themselves as a missed opportunity to advance reform and a step backwards. We also took note of significant discrepancies between the estimates of voter turnout provided by the Government and by both Egyptian and foreign media and observers.
As the Middle East moves toward greater openness and pluralism, we hope that Egypt will take a leading role as it does on many other regional issues. Secretary Rice was recently in Egypt and discussed political reform with senior Egyptian officials. We will continue to raise these issues at the highest levels in an effort to help the Government of Egypt fulfill the aspirations of the Egyptian people for democracy and meet the standards of openness, transparency, and reform the Government has set for itself.
But, as always, no consequences.
On security services
Arab States: Security Services and the Crisis of Democratic Change
Amr Hamzawy
The lack of democratic breakthroughs worthy of mention in Arab countries has spurred debate about barriers to change. Much of this debate has focused on economic, social, and cultural factors, or on the fragility of political forces demanding democracy. The debate would be incomplete, however, without a discussion of the means by which the authoritarian Arab regimes control their societies, namely the critical roles performed by security services with their quasi-military (police and interior ministries) and intelligence (internal and external) components.
Final Schedule: 5th Cairo Anti-War Conference and 3rd Cairo Social Forum جدول الندوات واللقاءات بمؤتمر القاهرة الخامس والمنتدى الإجتماعي الثالث
I’ll be speaking in two meetings. The first is on the fight against police torture in Egypt…
Sorry, some last-minute rearrangements… I won’t be speaking at the anti-torture forum. Blogojournalist and friend Abdel Moneim will be kindly replacing me.
Cairo 3rd Social Forum
Raise your Voices against Torture
Activists against Torture
Friday 30th of March 2007
3.30 – 6.00 pm
Press Syndicate – 3rd floor
Slide show: Victims and Tormentors
Interventions by activists against torture
Testimonies by survivors and their families
Join us with testimonies and recommendations for an international movement against torture
And the other one on “Citizen Journalism,” scheduled Saturday, 6pm, at the Press Sydicate 4th floor, Room 5..
I’ll be speaking on the Egyptian blogosphere, part of the following forum: “Young Journalists: State Oppression and Violation of Economic Rights, Saturday from 3.30-5.30 pm, The Press Syndicate’s 4th floor, Room 4
The conference should be a golden opportunity for us ya shabab to exchange experiences with international and local activists. I hope to see as many of you there. Click on the cartoon below to download the invitation and a background on the conference in Arabic, English, and French…
300
I’m a Frank Miller fan, but this film neither innovates visually (it’s really a combination of Miller’s dark ink drawings as showcased in Sin City with the cartoonish bloodletting and fighting styles of Kill Bill and epic martial antics of the Lord of the Rings trilogy) nor artistically (all “acting” is done by shouting as loud one can while retaining a steely gaze and taut abs).
So all you have left is basically what will be interpreted by many to be a propaganda film for the war on terror, although it’s probably more telling of frat-house mentality. That has been picked up by today’s Persians — as the New Yorker’s review notes:
In Tehran, after pirated copies hit the streets there a few weeks ago, the movie was quickly denounced by an Iranian government spokesman as an act of “psychological warfare” that was intended to prepare Americans for an invasion of the country. “American cultural officials thought they could get mental satisfaction by plundering Iran’s historic past and insulting this civilization,” he said. The complaint was echoed by President Ahmadinejad, who said, “They are trying to tamper with history . . . by making Iran’s image look savage,” and a Time correspondent reported that many Iranians assumed that the movie was produced by an American government conspiracy. It is perhaps unfair to expect the Iranians to develop a sense of humor about American pop culture. They may also have trouble understanding that commercial American movies are ordered up not by “cultural officials” but by studio officials. The film is, of course, less an act of psychological warfare than an act of capitalism. It was called into being not by a hunger for war but by the desire to exploit a market—professional-wrestling and X-treme Fighting saturnalias play into the movie’s atmosphere. Everyone screams at everyone, and specialized Persian warriors wearing masks and other freakish regalia turn up to do battle. Pop has always drawn energy from the lower floors of respectability; this movie, in which fan-boy cultism reaches new levels of goofy chaos and sexual confusion, draws energy from the subbasement.
Still, the Iranians have a point: though first planned years ago, “300” is a political fable that uneasily engages the current moment. An all-volunteer expeditionary force of Spartans ventures forth, the warriors sacrificing themselves to stop the invading hordes from killing their wives and children, which may be an allusion to the Bush Administration’s get-them-in-Iraq-before-they-hit-us-here rationale. The Spartans also fight, as a lofty narration informs us, “against mysticism and tyranny.” Against mysticism? How many ancient armies went to their deaths with that as their battle song? And how many men have died, as the Spartans do, to defend “reason”? A whiff of contemporary disdain for the East—what the late Edward Said called “Orientalism”—arises from the mayhem: “300” turns into a dawn-of-democracy epic in which violence is marshalled to protect the future of Western civilization. Made in a time of frustration, when Americans are fighting a war that they can neither win nor abandon, “300” and “Shooter” feel like the products of a culture slowly and painfully going mad.
Luckily American popular cinema is a very, very varied thing. As a counterpoint to 300’s glorification of Western superiority, there’s some good-natured self-parody in Mike Judge’s Idiocracy, when an average American of today wakes up 500 years into the future and finds that everyone is incredibly stupid and speaks a mixture of frat-boy wooos and valley girl slang. The joke is not just that this is the way Western consumerist culture is headed, but that it’s not that far off now anyway. An Occidentalist argument? Perhaps, but then again one gets the feeling that the characters of Idiocracy are the kind of people that 300 is intended for.
Amendments passed at 75.9% “yes” votes, 27.1 participation
CAIRO, March 27 (Xinhua) — Egyptian Justice Minister Mamdouh Mohieddin Marai announced on Tuesday that 75.9 percent of voters in Monday’s national referendum said yes to constitutional amendments, the official news agency MENA reported.
Marai said the turnout reached 27.1 percent, which meant that some 9.6 million of Egypt’s 35.4 million eligible Egyptian voters went out and made a vote on Monday’s public referendum.
The opposition and monitoring NGOs are skeptical, saying it couldn’t have been more than 10% of voters at most.
Low turnout for Egypt referendum: al-Jazeera
Anas al-Fiqi, Egypt’s information minister, said turnout on Monday stood between 23 and 27 per cent, according to early estimates.
The independent Committee for Democracy Support, which deployed 300 observers, said overall turnout was no more than three per cent by 5pm (15:00 GMT).
More stories are coming out on this, casting doubt on participation and highlighting apathy — AP, LA Times, WaPo.
In other news, a friend was given a voting ballot by a taxi driver last night. The driver was furious that he had gotten it as payment for a half-hour cab ride — presumably with a NDP or election official actually the friend just confirmed that it was given by a police officer. In a voting station near the Pyramids, another friend reported that NDP activists were only letting in people who said they would vote “yes” — just some of the many usual stories of electoral fraud we’ve come across yesterday.
HRW on arrests of anti-referendum protesters
Egypt: Don’t Enshrine Emergency Rule in Constitution
Protesters, Journalists Assaulted on Eve of Referendum
(Cairo, March 26, 2007) – Proposed constitutional amendments approved by the Egyptian parliament on March 21 effectively remove basic protections against violations of Egyptians’ rights to privacy, individual freedom, security of person and home and due process, Human Rights Watch said today. Parliament overwhelmingly approved amendments to 34 articles of the constitution on Tuesday in a vote that closely followed party lines. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak scheduled a referendum on the amendments for today, weeks ahead of the expected date. Opposition parties and the Muslim Brotherhood said they would boycott the referendum.
Last night, security forces arrested at least 13 activists on their way to a protest against the proposed amendments. Eyewitnesses and victims told Human Rights Watch that plainclothes officers supported by riot police surrounded two groups of activists and bloggers in downtown Cairo at around 7 p.m. The plainclothes officers kicked and punched activists, assaulted a number of female protesters, and confiscated memory cards from three foreign photojournalists’ digital cameras. Two of the 13 were subsequently released, but the authorities have not provided any information on where the remaining activists are being detained. A spokesman for the opposition al-Ghad (Tomorrow) Party today told Human Rights Watch that security forces surrounded their offices in Cairo, Alexandria, Kafr al-Shaikh, Buhaira and Port Said last night, and that authorities had detained six Ghad Party members.
Continue reading HRW on arrests of anti-referendum protesters