Iraqi Voices in Cairo is a collection of accounts of Iraq refugees’ lives in Egypt, where over 150,000 reside with few opportunities to remake their lives:
Approximately 150,000 refugees from Iraq are trapped in Cairo, Egypt, with little hope of integration and no home to return to. We are an association of reporters and researchers working together with the Iraqi community of Cairo to bring world attention to this unaddressed humanitarian crisis.
Check it out.
The Moroccan who was jailed for putting up a fake profile of Prince Moulay Rashid has been freed. This is great news, and while it should have never gotten to this, better late than never. I suppose the king wanted to make sure the message got across that the royal family is a no-go area for satirists and critics.
CASABLANCA, March 18 – Fouad Mourtada was released from Oukacha Prison at approximately 8:00pm local time today, having received a royal pardon.Mr. Mourtada, a 26-year old IT engineer, was taken into custody on February 5th, 2008, and was questioned regarding a fake Facebook profile of King Mohammed VI’s younger brother, Prince Moulay Rachid, which he had created on January 15. During his interrogation, Mr. Mourtada reports that he was beaten, spat on and insulted.On February 22, Mr. Mourtada was sentenced to three years in prison and a fine of $1350 for creating the fake profile. The official charge was identity fraud of an electronic document.Following Mr. Mourtada’s detention, an international online movement arose calling for his release and, following sentencing, for a full pardon. On Saturday, March 1, young activists used a Facebook group to organize worldwide protests opposing Mr. Mourtada’s imprisonment, which occurred in Rabat, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, Washington DC, Montreal, Madrid, and London. A video of the protests was later posted on YouTube.Mentions by international news organizations, such as the BBC, encouraged Moroccan domestic media to take up the story, which increase pressure on the government to act.Tonight Mr. Mourtada is staying at the house of friend in Casablanca. He will retain to his family tomorrow.
Too busy to blog right now, but you should definitely watch this and follow the coverage of the growing crisis over bread shortages in Egypt:
Also read:
FT.com / In depth – Egypt weighs cost of daily bread
Al-Ahram Weekly | Economy | Fuelling rumours and discontent
BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Egyptians hit by rising food prices
A lot of goof stuff here, but I found this particularly funny:
I must still be groggy from the all-night travel. At my first attempt to use the phone, a Tokyo Rose voice intones in American English, “In the name of God, the number you have dialled does not exist. Please hang up and check the number.�
On the more serious side, on the many candidates blocked from eligibility:
D is among the 2,000-odd parliamentary candidates whose electoral bid was nipped in the bud by the Guardians’ Council, the 12-man, unelected body of senior clerics which takes upon itself the duty of vetting candidates for public office. D is particularly upset because he had taken special care to avoid being branded a reformist, and therefore automatically suspect in the eyes of the conservative Guardians.
Although relatively liberal in his views, he had been encouraged to run by several hard-line MPs. D had also quit a well-paying job, and invested much time and money in his campaign. “I would have thought I was exactly the kind of young face, committed to working inside the system, and not associated with any controversy, that they would have wanted to encourage,� he says.
Yet almost worse than the fact of the rejection is that he has no idea what grounds it was based on. He knows from neighbours that anonymous agents made inquiries about his general behaviour, such as whether he attended prayers regularly at the local mosque. Someone from the Guardians’ Council even called D to ask a few polite questions, such as where he got his MA degree (that qualification, newly introduced for this election, has been attacked as yet another obstacle intended to block competition, since sitting MPs, overwhelmingly conservative, are exempted from it). There was, he admits, a brief pause when he said it was from an American university.
After notice came of his disqualification, D was slightly mollified to receive a letter, informing him that it was his right to demand an official explanation. So far, the Guardians have not replied to any of his repeated requests. D even asked lawyer friends whether he could sue the council, not for disqualifying him but simply for failing to provide a reason. The advice was that this would be a bad idea. It would be taken as a hostile act, damaging to the reputation of the Islamic Republic.
That being said, still a more polite form of election rigging than what’s going on right now in Egypt’s municipal elections.
In his groundbreaking book Army of Shadows, Hillel Cohen, a research fellow at Hebrew University’s Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace, exposes this particularly nefarious side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Cohen has spent years in numerous Israeli and British archives gathering information that many would pre fer to forget, and in Army of Shadows he sum mons his findings to document the actions of a seemingly endless number of Palestinian mukhtars (village leaders), land merchants, in formers, weapons dealers, journalists, busi nessmen, farmers and teachers who collaborated with the Jews between 1917 and 1948. By focusing on them, Army of Shadows chron icles a tragic chapter in the people’s history of Palestine, one that many Arab scholars have refrained from writing because it contradicts the dominant ethos of Palestinian national unity. Zionists have ab stained from recording it as well because it undermines their claim that the Palestinians were able to unify and fight against the es tablishment of a Jewish state after the UN partition resolution of November 29, 1947. Cohen reveals that many Palestinians signed pacts with the Zionists during the 1948 war and that some even fought with the Jews against the Arab armies.
Collaboration is a very thorny issue, primarily because of its corrosive blend of betrayal, exploitation and deceit, so it’s not surprising that Army of Shadows created a stir when the Hebrew edition was published in 2004. Both liberal Jews and Palestinians found the book difficult to digest because each group found its side portrayed in unflattering terms. Many Jewish readers were upset by Cohen’s revelation that the prestate Zionist intelligence agency, Shai, and the Jewish Agency’s Arab bureau exploited almost every honest Jewish and Palestinian relationship to advance narrow Zionist interests. There were, Cohen notes, many Jews who desired only friendship or good business relations with Palestinians but were eventually identified by the Shai, which used them to collect information and enlist Palestinian collaborators. The Jewish Agency even helped establish and finance Neighborly Relations Committees, which initiated mutual visits and Jewish-Palestinian projects, ranging from pest control to the sending of joint petitions to the Mandatory government. The rationale for the creation of these committees was not only to enhance coexistence but also to recruit informers.
Ezra Danin, head of the Shai’s Arab department from 1940 to 1948, identified twenty-five occupations and institutions in which Jews and Palestinians mixed company, among them trucking, shipping, train and telecommunications systems, journalism, Jewish-Arab municipalities, prisons and the offices of the British Administration. He proposed that the Jews in these walks of life enlist Arab collaborators, adding that “such activity should be similar to the way the Nazis worked in Denmark, Norway, and Holland–touching on every area of life.” Cohen explains that this approach was different from that of British intelligence, which allowed only political and military organizations and subversive bodies to be targeted as pools for potential informers. This revelation, besides shedding light on some of the ruthless tactics employed by the intelligence agencies, helps explain why, from Zionism’s very beginnings, it was almost impossible for many Jews to develop loyal relationships with indigenous Palestinians.
[From Shadowplays]
This post is not about Ron Paul, since I am not a libertarian and do not agree with most of his views outside of foreign policy (specifically his argument for the end of American empire in the Middle East and major cuts in defense spending). But there is something deeply wrong with Congress when this kind of deeply flawed, lob-sided resolution can go through with only one vote against:
On Wednesday, March 5, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 951, which condemns the ongoing Palestinian rocket attacks on Israeli civilians, holding both Iran and Syria responsible for “sponsoring terror attacks.” Additionally, the resolution claims that “those responsible for launching rocket attacks against Israel routinely embed their production facilities and launch sites amongst the Palestinian civilian population, utilizing them as human shields …”. For the full text of House Resolution 951, please click here.
This resolution problematically includes a strong defense of the recent Israeli incursions in Gaza. The following is one such exert: “Whereas the inadvertent inflicting of civilian casualties as a result of defensive military operations aimed at military targets, while deeply regrettable, is not at all morally equivalent to the deliberate targeting of civilian populations as practiced by Hamas and other Gaza-based terrorist groups…”
The resolution passed the House with an unequivocal majority of 404 to 1 with four representatives voting present and nineteen abstaining. Who was the lone Member of Congress to stand up to the Israel Lobby? Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) not only voted against HR 951, but also made a very strong statement explaining why he opposed such a biased pro-Israel statement.
Below is Rep. Paul’s statement he gave to the House before the vote:
Mr. Speaker I rise in opposition to H. Res. 951, a resolution to condemn Palestinian rocket attacks on Israeli civilians. As one who is consistently against war and violence, I obviously do not support the firing of rockets indiscriminately into civilian populations. I believe it is appalling that Palestinians are firing rockets that harm innocent Israelis, just as I believe it is appalling that Israel fires missiles into Palestinian areas where children and other non-combatants are killed and injured.
Unfortunately, legislation such as this is more likely to perpetuate violence in the Middle East than contribute to its abatement. It is our continued involvement and intervention – particularly when it appears to be one-sided – that reduces the incentive for opposing sides to reach a lasting peace agreement.
Additionally, this bill will continue the march toward war with Iran and Syria, as it contains provocative language targeting these countries. The legislation oversimplifies the Israel/Palestine conflict and the larger unrest in the Middle East by simply pointing the finger at Iran and Syria. This is another piece in a steady series of legislation passed in the House that intensifies enmity between the United States and Iran and Syria. My colleagues will recall that we saw a similar steady stream of provocative legislation against Iraq in the years before the US attack on that country.
I strongly believe that we must cease making proclamations involving conflicts that have nothing to do with the United States. We incur the wrath of those who feel slighted while doing very little to slow or stop the violence.
I love Legos. I would play for hours with them as a kid, building spaceships, forts, guard towers, supercars (that’s right, they were super) and tons of other stuff. So I’m delighted that BrickArms, a company that provides accessories that Lego does not make, is updating the arsenal and look of Lego characters for today’s kids. While the old-fashioned may go for the WW2 stuff, like the range of Nazi uniforms, I like the mujahideen look they’ve come up with (even if they tactfully call it “bandit”). It will go very well with the “colonial marine” character, and it’s nice that the “bandits” come in three different shades of hoods so you can assign them to different sectarian groups and not get them confused. And the K9 Kop will come in handy for those interrogation sessions.
Rami Khouri has written a series of thoughtful articles about the restructuration of state power in the Arab world — both the power shift away from the military towards the security services as well as wider issues of the failure of public institutions. His his latest piece he explores the subject further:
What is significant is that the centralized power of Arab states is slowly fraying or dissipating, even in strong states with emphatic central governments and efficient, self-assertive security organizations, such as Jordan, Egypt and Morocco.
Power is decentralizing in many cases because governments simply do not have sufficient money to maintain the welfare, employment, subsidy and state-building services they provided very efficiently for half a century after the surprise of their own statehood in the 1930s, 40s and 50s.
The decentralization and dissipation of state power into the hands of Islamicized urban quarters, armed militias, ethnic-based parties, neighborhood thugs, autonomous regional authorities, multinational corporations, and private sector commercial real estate firms is an important sign of several simultaneous phenomena: the fraying credibility of state authority, the determination of concerned citizens to take charge of their own life needs and well-being, and the enormous power of the globalized commercial marketplace.
As Arab power configurations evolve, it is critically important that we do not repeat the mistakes of the past 75 years on authoritarian governance; instead, we must prod sensible statehood by consulting rather than ignoring the Arab citizen. Coming to grips with the evolving realities of power and authority requires much more honest, integrated and sophisticated analysis than has broadly pertained in recent years in the public discussions of what is wrong with our societies and how can we make things better. Much of this debate has been driven by ideological zealots, and a few naïve rascals in the Anglo-American-Israeli-dominated West, who tend mainly to focus on Islam and Arab violence — or by elite Arab autocrats who are equally blind to the powerful currents of their own fellow citizens’ discontent and fear.
The reconfiguration of power and authority is the big, new, historic and pervasive macro-development now taking place in Arab society, as the prevailing power structure of the past 75 years reaches the limits of its abilities. Not surprisingly, concerned citizens, agile gangs and efficient businessmen alike are moving in to grab their share of power in those spaces where the state is retreating, or franchising its own legitimacy and authority. Handled wisely, this could be a heartening and positive development that allows Arab society to define itself according to the consensus views of its pluralistic citizens — unless American, British, Israeli or other Western armies invade again and try to re-configure us to their liking, rather than to our rights and wishes.
I haven’t had time to read the explosive Vanity Fair article on the US-Fatah coup attempt against Hamas yet, but from what I hear about it, it would confirm many of the allegations made around the time of Gaza takeover and that has been published in the Arabic press and elsewhere, not to mention some of the allusions made in the De Soto report leaked last year.
I was sent former Palestinian National Security Chief Mahmoud Dahlan’s response to the article, which he obviously denies. Dahlan has long been said to be at the center of the US-Israeli-Fatah plot against Hamas.
More later.
The Lebanese authorities, like every country, issue out statistics on various economic indicators. Below is the chart that shows the number of employment permits issued for various professions between 2003 and 2005. Click to get a bigger image and look at under “specialized professions,” where there is a category for “knight.” A holdover from the Crusades?
