Month: March 2007

The Teapacks: Push the button

The Israeli band The Teapacks’ song “Push the button” may be banned from the Eurovision song contest for being too political. I think the song is funny and in parts catchy (I love the gypsy folk music accordion thing) and should not be banned, but then again I don’t think the Israelis should be allowed to contest Eurovision generally for political reasons and because they are not Europeans.

Either way, this is a clever PR coup from the Israeli officials who presented the song to Eurovision — but don’t see it as anything more than that.

Garton Ash on Egypt

Timothy Garton Ash has an op-ed on Egypt in which he contrasts EU and US policies for democracy promotion. I think the difference between the two is while the US has a democracy promotion policy that systematically loses out to its imperial policy and domestic interests (big oil, Israel, etc.), the EU is even more morally bankrupt in that it does not have a democracy promotion policy at all. In fact, it barely has the guts to have any kind of foreign and security policy at all. The history of EU policy (not individual states) towards the Middle East in the past 15 years is the history of a failure, the failure of the Barcelona Process. It’s risible, really. But I don’t care much about democracy promotion as a concept, frankly (recent years have left a bad taste in my mouth), and think that European states’ policy towards the Middle East essentially take place in a transatlantic context, not in terms of direct bilateral relations between European and Arab states.

There is a part of the article I want to quote:

You cannot pass many hours here without encountering the unshakable conspiratorial conviction that the west is to blame for everything that is wrong in the Middle East (starting with Israel). The truth is that Usama’s future, and that of the more than 400 million mainly young Arabs who are likely to be around in 20 years’ time, is 80% up to the governments and people here and only 20% up to all the powers outside.

While I certainly agree that Arab countries have to do get their act together by themselves, it’s profoundly hypocritical to dismiss the regional and global environment when talking about a region that is the core of the oil-based modern global economy. Furthermore, what Garton Ash forgets is that the independent policies of strong and representative Arab states may not be at all to his or Western governments’ lacking. But then again organic intellectuals like Garton Ash will be at hand to criticize them when they are too strong rather than too weak.

Qui écrit encore à Tunis ?

Tunisian intellectual Taoufik ben Brik writes on how the Ben Ali regime has emptied Tunis of its very soul and verve. A deeply sad recollection of better times for someone like me that has only known the current, dreadfully mournful and oppressive Tunis. Tunisians might inform me whether it is, as it appears, a barely disguised ode to Bourguiba.

(Text pasted below, in French, from Le Monde.)
Continue reading Qui écrit encore à Tunis ?

Lebanon re-arming

This Le Monde article focuses on an arms race in Lebanon that is driving up prices as militias re-arm themselves:

Le fait est, néanmoins, que d’après les connaisseurs, la demande ne cesse de croître sur le marché noir, où le prix des armes individuelles aurait augmenté. Une kalachnikov se vend désormais entre 500 et 600 dollars au lieu de 100 à 150 dollars avant la crise. Les autorités syriennes ont annoncé de leur côté avoir intercepté, dans un camion se rendant au Liban, un colis comprenant 96 pistolets de 9 mm, un fusil-mitrailleur et leurs munitions.

Plus grave : le patriarche de la communauté maronite (catholique), le cardinal Nasrallah Boutros Sfeïr, a fait état d’une véritable ” course à l’armement de tous les partis et protagonistes libanais “. ” Comme si, a-t-il ajouté dans un prêche prononcé le dimanche 25 février, nous étions revenus plus de vingt ans en arrière ; comme si nous n’avions tiré aucune leçon des drames et des tragédies que nous avons vécus. “

Officiellement, les milices de toutes appartenances politico-communautaires qui ont participé à la guerre civile de quinze ans ont été dissoutes et ont remis leurs arsenaux à l’armée. Le Hezbollah (chiite, opposition) fait exception. Il continue d’être équipé d’armes de tous calibres, fournies principalement par l’Iran pour lui permettre de lutter contre Israël. Des dizaines d’obus de moyenne et de courte portée, appartenant au Parti de Dieu, récemment saisies par l’armée libanaise, ont toutefois semé le doute sur ses intentions, pour le moins aux yeux de ses adversaires politiques.

It also mentions Seymour Hersh’s recent article in which he alleges that US funding or arms are reaching Jihadi groups with the blessing of the Siniora government and the Hariri-controlled Internal Security Forces.

I think I am going to puke

I am not going to even go into what I think of “Middle East experts” like Robert Satloff, but I do want to highlight that if he thinks anti-Semitism is a major problem in the Arab world, he has no idea what a real problem is. Real problems are when half of your country is illiterate, you’ve been under martial law as long as you remember, state failure is rife, massive unemployment has created a lost generation of people with no prospects, and as far as you can see there is little ground to be hopeful about your country for the foreseeable future. This drivel he is producing may achieve its goal, which is getting the support of American Jews and others for his agenda of supporting and legitimizing ethnic cleansing in Palestine (and you really wonder why Jews have a bad image in the region?), but it certainly won’t help understand anything about the region’s situation.

Le Figaro on the crackdown on the MB

Tangi Salaun has a good article about the crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood in Le Figaro, looking it the regime’s fear that the MB could become a legitimate interlocutor for foreign powers, notably the US, as one explanation for the crackdown. This aspect of things, even if not a prime motivation for regime-MB relations, is often overlooked in the US media. He also highlights the widespread condemnation in the independent media and among prominent state press columnists, who have been calling for the state to adopt a more intelligent and conciliatory attitude towards the MB (I am talking here about people like Magdi Mehanna and Salama Ahmed Salama, who are not at all MB lovers.)