Posts Tagged ‘February 2011’
Bloggers In The Middle East.
The Economist covers the plight of bloggers in the Middle East:
“GOVERNMENTS in the Middle East are getting increasingly twitchy about their citizens’ activities online. In Egypt, on Sunday April 10th, a blogger, Mikael Sanad Nabil, was sentenced to three years in prison for “insulting the military” in his blog postings, after a brief trial by a military court with no defence lawyers present. Other bloggers worry they may be next. Campaigners say the mainstream media are already fearful of criticising the army.
In Bahrain, two months after anti-government protests began, bloggers have been caught up in a sweeping crackdown in which at least 450 people have been arrested for being “political activists”. Zakariya Rashid Hassan, who ran a online forum for residents of his village, Al Dair, died in custody last week, six days after being arrested for “spreading false news”. His forum has been taken down and replaced with a picture of the Saudi and Bahraini kings. Human-rights groups allege he was tortured; the authorities say his death was due to anaemia.
Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based lobby, says three other “netizens” remain in custody in Bahrain. At least three other bloggers have been arrested, including two who campaign against sectarianism, Mahmood Al Yousif and @redbelt, the founder of #uniteBH, an online campaign. A similar movement has sprung up in Lebanon. These three have now been released, but at a time when hundreds have been fired from their jobs for taking part—or on suspicion of taking part—in protests, their arrests have sent a clear warning to Bahrainis. Even the country’s national football team has sacked four star players for being “against the government”. “
Update 1: This is just part of a wider issue:
Iran And Bahrain, What Do They Have in Common?
The Last Days Of A Dictatorship.
Update 2: NPR’s Bahrain Detains Activist After Crackdown On Dissent is worth a read too.
University and College Union And The Middle East.
I am away for a few days, but meant to post this letter from the Indy a while back:
“I wonder whether it is just possible that those members of the University and College Union (UCU) who, for many years, have campaigned for the academic boycott of Israel – the only democratic country in the Middle East – are prepared to think seriously about the implications of the Gaddafi-LSE affair and the acceptance by several UK Universities of huge amounts of money in order to set up Oriental Institutes and Islamic and Middle Eastern studies centres whose academic appointments and courses of study are strongly influenced by their patrons.
Will those members of UCU who call for the boycott of Israeli universities remain silent about the acceptance of funding with strings attached from the despotic rulers of countries such as Lybia, Saudi Arabia or Qatar?
Henry Ettinghausen
Emeritus Professor of Spanish
University of Southampton “
If readers are bored in my absent, please read Jhate it is a very good blog and relevent today, Kevin MacDonald is hilarious.
Protesting in Saudi Arabia, Live Fire.
If you listen to this clip you will hear the sound of live fire, real bullets being shot at people in Saudi Arabia.
On the Atlantic Wire:
“According to several news wire reports, Saudi Arabian police opened fire on Thursday at protests occurring in the kingdom’s east, specifically in the city of Qatif. The hundreds of mainly Shiite protesters were confronted with gunfire and stun grenades as police tried to clamp down on activists calling for democratic reforms. Groups had pegged this Friday for a “Day of Rage” aimed at bringing awareness for greater freedom in Saudia Arabia, even though the nation banned public protests last week.
As of this morning, western media outlets noted that the impact of the Saudi protests on oil prices has so far been minimal. “Here’s What The Market Thinks About Your So-Called ‘Day Of Rage,'” noted Joe Weisenthal’s headline at Business Insider, Weisenthal pointing to rising stocks and falling oil prices. That all changed in the afternoon as the price of crude oil jumped in what appeared to be a response of the scattered reports coming from the police shootings.”
BBC News covers yesterday’s protests in the city of Katif.
John Galliano And Bourgeois Taboos.
Eamonn McDonagh has a good piece on fashion, fashionistas and those who defend John Galliano:
“She doesn’t deny that Galliano expressed admiration for Hitler and wished death on people he believed to be Jews but chooses to divert attention from and minimize the importance of this with irrelevant blather of various sorts. By the tone and content of her remarks she also indicates that her admiration for Galliano has not been diminished by his having revealed himself to be a gross racist and enthusiast for killing Jews.
Of course Oloixarac might respond by saying “Oh that was just John being John, being provocative. No one can possibly believe that he really has anything against Jews, those were just words, and he’s an artist for heaven’s sake, always trying to break through the boundaries and limits on what can be said.”
To which, two responses:
1. Great, he broke the bourgeois taboo about endorsing genocide and expressing grossly racist views. Clap! Clap! Perhaps we can now hope that other creative people will step forward and endorse pedophilia, the random murder of strangers and cannibalism and that Oloixarac will defend them with equal enthusiasm.
2. Great, he broke the bourgeois taboo about endorsing genocide and expressing grossly racist views. And because we respect his ability to think and act for himself we have to believe that he understood the likely consequences of expressing such views and making such threats in posh bars and restaurants in Paris and can have no complaints about his having been sacked by Dior.”
Libya, Egypt And Mauritania.
News is coming out on Twitter that three private planes belonging to the Gaddafi family have set off from Tripoli.
“Karl Stagno-Navarra, a journalist in Malta, told al-Jazeera taht three out of five of the Gaddafi family jets are in the air, headed to Vienna, Athens and Cairo respectively. His sources were air traffic control in Malta and Cyprus. “
The Guardian has good on-going coverage of events in Libya.
International women’s day didn’t go well in Cairo, as the Washington Post reports:
“CAIRO – Women hoping to extend their rights in post-revolutionary Egypt were faced with a harsh reality Tuesday when a mob of angry men beat and sexually assaulted marchers calling for political and social equality, witnesses said.
“Everyone was chased. Some were beaten. They were touching us everywhere,” said Dina Abou Elsoud, 35, a hostel owner and organizer of the ambitiously named Million Woman March.
She was among a half-dozen women who said they were repeatedly groped by men – a common form of intimidation and harassment here that was, in fact, a target of the protesters. None of the women reported serious injuries.
The demonstration on International Women’s Day drew a crowd only in the hundreds to Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the popular revolt that drove President Hosni Mubarak from power. Gone, organizers said, was the spirit of equality and cooperation between the sexes that marked most of the historic mass gatherings in the square.
As upwards of 300 marchers assembled late Tuesday afternoon, men began taunting them, insisting that a woman could never be president and objecting to women’s demands to have a role in drafting a new constitution, witnesses said.
“People were saying that women were dividing the revolution and should be happy with the rights they have,” said Ebony Coletu, 36, an American who teaches at American University in Cairo and attended the march, as she put it, “in solidarity.”
The men – their number estimated to be at least double that of the women’s – broke through a human chain that other men had formed to protect the marchers. Women said they attempted to stand their ground – until the physical aggression began. “
Meanwhile over in Mauritania:
“Young leaders have been severely beaten by dozens of policemen. Some 200 demonstrators have been dispersed by force and 30 were arrested fort further investigation. One leader was beaten so severely he remains in coma. Protesters collectively chanted their slogans, calling for justice, freedom and urgent social reforms. “
John Galliano, Fashion And Fascism.
The New York Times has a piece on John Galliano and High Fascism:
“Maybe we were. Fashion is more than business in France: it’s a mythology, a secular religion, a source of national pride, especially during Fashion Week, when the country recalls its history as the birthplace of haute couture.
In recent days, though, in response to the anti-Semitic diatribe by Christian Dior’s creative director, John Galliano, the French have been recalling a far more ominous chapter in their history.
According to witnesses, a drunken Mr. Galliano exploded at a woman seated near him in a Paris bar. “Dirty Jewish face, you should be dead,” he is said to have told her. “Your boots are of the lowest quality, your thighs are of the lowest quality. You are so ugly I don’t want to see you. I am John Galliano!”
France is highly sensitive to such matters, and reprisals came quickly. Dior fired Mr. Galliano, who now faces charges of using a racial insult, a crime in France. But beyond the spectacle of one man’s abhorrent politics, the episode invites consideration of the curious relationship between French fashion and fascism.
During the Occupation, the Nazis and their French allies recognized the power and national prestige of the French fashion industry and sought to harness it. When the collaborationist Vichy government took over direction of the French lifestyle magazine Paris Soir, it announced in its pages a “summer of couture … and shopping.” The Nazis were so enamored with fashion’s place in French culture that in their plans for postwar Europe, they stipulated that, unlike other industries, the fashion sector would remain in France.
…
Which brings us back to Mr. Galliano in the Paris bar. His was not a generic anti-Semitic tirade, but the self-conscious pronouncement of a world-class arbiter of taste (“I am John Galliano!”). Not only did he use ethnic slurs, he accused the woman of being unattractive and unfashionable, associating both with ethnicity, with being Jewish (which she happened not to be).The link is clear: like a fascist demagogue of yore, he was declaring that she did not belong to the gilded group who wear the right boots, and from this Mr. Galliano slid effortlessly to a condemnation of her very flesh, and a wish for her death. “
Stable Door And The London School of Economics
Weeks after the horse bolted, those connected to the Libyan regime are slowly trying to sever their connections:
“A Nobel prize-winning British scientist has resigned from the charity run by Muammar Gaddafi’s son that gave a £1.5m donation to the London School of Economics, and disclosed that the funding was awarded without the approval of board members.
The elite British university has been in turmoil over the donation, which last week led to the resignation of its director, Sir Howard Davies, and the launch of an independent inquiry into its links with Libya. Sir Richard Roberts, who was on the board of the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation, said the funding was given to the LSE without “any form of transparency or approval”.
The revelation underlines concerns that the Gaddafi foundation did not operate as a normal charity but was a vehicle for the Libyan dictator’s son Saif al-Islam.
The LSE council, its governing body, is facing scrutiny over its decision to approve the donation, granted in 2009. One of the LSE’s academics stood down from the board of the Gaddafi foundation in 2009 after a council meeting raised concern over a conflict of interests.
Roberts, an internationally renowned biochemist who won the Nobel prize for medicine in 1993, told the Guardian: “I never knew anything about that money before it appeared in the press. That was not done with any sort of clarity or transparency to the board.” “
Or does it all suggest that some of these supposedly smart people are not that smart at all, when it comes to rich dictators?
Over at the Beeb, they cover the Libyan Investment Authority with a choice quote:
“Like the rest of Gaddafi’s children, Saif lived a life of privilege and ease, although like his father he claimed to have no official position and denied having access large funds.
But now new evidence has emerged that despite his denials, Saif in fact controlled the multi-billion-pound Libyan sovereign wealth fund, the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA).
“I’ve seen the Godfather. This is the closest thing in real life,” commented a Libyan investment banker familiar with how the LIA was run.
“It is as if it is his own private farm. This was almost like a mafia operatiion.”
In the letters page of the Guardian there is an academic bun-fight on plagiarism, Saif Gaddafi and how to use Google:
“Lord Desai seems to be aggrieved because nobody told him as the PhD examiner of Saif Gaddafi that the candidate had committed plagiarism. But it is precisely the job of the examiner, as an expert in the field, to assess the originality of a doctoral thesis. So neither Desai, nor his co-examiner, nor Mr Gaddafi’s supervisors, did their jobs. Have none of them heard of Google? It’s not too hard these days to catch out the plagiariser.”
Antisemitic Rehab And John Galliano.
Hadley Freeman takes on the fashionistas and John Galliano’s excusers:
” If Field, Kidman and the rest of the fashion corps took their heads out of their butts for a few minutes and read a book, they would doubtless cite what is known as The TS Eliot Defence, which is that Eliot’s distasteful views of Jews haven’t stopped people reading his work. The answer to this is, quite obviously: 1. While antisemitism is always abhorrent, Eliot did live in a different era and some adjustments of expectations must be made, and, in any case: 2. Eliot, to my knowledge, never said all Jews should have been gassed.
If reading feels like too much of a trial, perhaps they could cite The Coco Chanel Defence, which argues that Chanel herself was not averse to having some sexy time with top-level Nazis during the war but people are not condemned for wearing the Chanel label today. Again, two simple replies: 1. Chanel was punished for her treacherous behaviour and her business suffered (because Parisians in the 1940s understood that wearing clothes by someone who expresses love for a Nazi is not such a good look), and: 2. The clothes are no longer designed by Coco Chanel as she is, in fact, dead. Yes, the designer for the label these days, Karl Lagerfeld, is German but, come on, we’ve all moved on. Well, all of us except Galliano.
While we all wait with bated breath to see how rehab cures Galliano’s antisemitism problem (and how, pray tell, does antisemitic rehab work? Is he force-fed matzo-ball soup? Made to watch Annie Hall on loop? Taught the ways of hypochondria? Gosh, sounds kinda like my childhood), let us muse on how the answer to Lucinda’s question is in fashion patois. The fancy term in fashion land for wearing a designer’s clothes is “showing support”, eg: “Tom Ford’s such a dear friend so I always try to show support for him.” Ergo, perhaps now is not the time to “show support” for Galliano. “
(H/T: Phoebe)
Update 1: At the Poor Mouth, Defending Galliano – When Silence is Golden.
Fred Halliday On the LSE and Libya.
OpenDemocracy has Fred Halliday’s memorandum to the London School of Economics from October 2009 concerning Libya and it is a good read:
“While it is formally the case that the QF [Qaddafi Foundation] is not part of the Libyan state, and is registered in Switzerland as an NGO, this is, in all practical senses, a legal fiction. The monies paid into the QF come from foreign businesses wishing to do business, i.e. receive contracts, for work in Libya, most evidently in the oil and gas industries. These monies are, in effect, a form of down payment, indeed of taxation, paid to the Libyan state, in anticipation of the award of contracts. The funds of the QF are, for this reason, to all intents and purposes, part of the Libyan state budget. ‘NGO status’, and recognition of such by UN bodies, means, in real terms, absolutely nothing. Mention has been made, in verbal and written submissions to the School and in correspondence to myself, of the membership of the QF’s advisory board: a somewhat closer examination of the most prominent politicians involved, and of their reputations and business dealings, should also give cause for some concern.
(ii) That the President of the QF [Qaddafi Foundation], and its effective director, is himself the son of the ruler, and, for all the informality of the Libyan political system (even the ‘Leader’, Colonel Qaddafi, has no formal position), in effect a senior official of that regime, confirms this analysis. In Arab states many of the most important positions have no official title, and kinship, and informal links, are more important than state function – and this, above all, in Libya. “
Libya, Dumped In The Street.
The Associated Press reports on the terrible goings-on in Libya:
“Bodies of people who vanished have been dumped in the street. Gunmen in SUVs have descended on homes in the night to drag away suspected protesters, identified by video footage of protests that militiamen have pored through to spot faces. Other militiamen have searched hospitals for wounded to take away.
Residents say they are under the watchful eyes of a variety of Gadhafi militias prowling the streets. They go under numerous names – Internal Security, the Central Support Force, the People’s Force, the People’s Guards and the Brigade of Mohammed al-Magarif, the head of Gadhafi’s personal guard – and they are all searching for suspected protesters.
“While you are speaking to me now, there are spies everywhere and people watching me and you,” one man said, cutting short a conversation with an Associated Press reporter visiting the Tripoli district of Zawiyat al-Dahman on Thursday.
Residents said calls for new protests to be held Friday after weekly Muslim prayers were being passed by word of mouth in several districts of the capital.
Whether crowds turn out will depend on the depth of fear among Gadhafi opponents. Friday could prove a test of the extent of Gadhafi’s control. The capital is crucial to the Libyan leader, his strongest remaining bastion after the uprising that began on Feb. 15 broke the entire eastern half of Libya out of his control and even swept over some cities in the west near Tripoli.
The clampdown in Tripoli has left some yearning for outside help. One 21-year-old in Zawiyat al-Dahman said residents were hoping for manpower to come from the opposition-held east. A Libyan writer in his 70s said he rejects “foreign intervention” in Libya’s upheaval – but wouldn’t mind a “a powerful strike” on Gadhafi’s headquarters to stop further bloodshed. “
No Foreign Intervention In Libya.
I think anyone watching the events unfolding in Libya must wonder, whether or not foreign intervention would help.
Clearly, Governments toned down their rhetoric whilst their nationals were in Libya and potentially under danger, but what now?
Sanctions are utterly useless, as they don’t address the here and now.
But shouldn’t more be done to aid the Libyans?
I think so but any foreign intervention would, in my view, be disastrous, for a number of reasons:
1) Such action would only bolster Gadaffi, it would allow him to argue that it was really imperialists that wanted to take over his country, in the first place, and that his people loved him but they were puppets of Western imperialism.
2) It would come too late and take precedence over the Libyans’ views, which should be paramount.
3) The Libyans, above all, should oversee their own emancipation and probably have sufficient resources now to complete it.
Ultimately, I think any western intervention in Libya would be counterproductive, I think aid and support for the refugees should be expedited, but that’s a different issue.
This is what some Libyans think:
Mauritania, The Forgotten Revolt.
Mauritania is often forgotten about, but its people are up in arms too, Reuters explains things:
“NOUAKCHOTT (Reuters) – Hundreds of people took to the streets in Mauritania on Friday calling for better living conditions and more jobs in the vast, impoverished desert nation that straddles black and Arab Africa.
Such demonstrations are rare in the West African country and few expect to see protests on the scale of those that have rocked Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and to a lesser extent, neighbouring Algeria.
A handful in the crowd of 1,000-1,500 mostly young people who took part in the peaceful protest demanded the departure of President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, but they were in the minority and there was only a light security presence.
“The president has to respect his people. Aziz has always said he’s the president of the poor; now the poor are in front of you asking for dialogue,” said Mocktar Mohammed Mahmoud, a social worker who said he had got involved through Facebook.
“There is no party behind us, there is no particular tribe behind this. We are behind you in your war against terrorism but you’ve got to stand behind us in our war against hunger.”
Abdel Aziz came to power first in a 2008 coup and then won an election in 2009, which has largely restored stability to the nation but failed to bridge the gap between the mostly rich Arab elite and the largely poorer African classes. “
Yahoo has more:
“The United Nations Development Program indicates the life expectancy for Mauritanians is 57.3 years.
* The U.N. Human Development Index ranks Mauritania 136th out of 169 countries, placing it high among the countries rated as having low human development. It is rated below Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia, all North African countries that have experienced protests and uprisings in the past two months.
* Half the population relies on agriculture and livestock, and the country is rich in iron ore, its main export. Fishing is a major, though threatened, resource and oil reserves have not materialized to the extent expected. “
Unentertainment News, John Galliano: “I love Hitler”
As with so many bigots and antisemites their history comes back to haunt them.
John Galliano, who was suspended by Dior for an antisemitic incident at a Paris cafe recently, did it before.
According to the JC, a video has surfaced on the Internet with Galliano making a comment “I love Hitler”.
Further, Galliano goes on to say
“People like you would be dead. Your mothers, your forefathers, would all be fucking gassed.”
Update 1: Linda Grant’s thoughts are here.
Blair Kissing Gaddafi.
Just when you think that Tony Blair’s reputation can’t sink much lower, something new appears.
Take a look at the very first part of Charlie Brooker’s rant on Gaddafi, and you’ll see the warm greeting between Gaddafi and Blair.
Update 1: The NYT has an insider’s view of events:
“The younger Mr. Qaddafi promised journalists they would find the streets peaceful and his father beloved. Do not mistake the sound of celebratory fireworks for bursts of gunfire around the streets of Tripoli, he advised them.
The next morning, a driver took a group of foreign journalists to an area known as the Friday market, which appeared to have been the site of a riot the night before. The streets were strewn with debris, and piles of shattered glass had been collected in cardboard boxes.
A young man approached the journalists to deliver a passionate plea for unity and accolades to Colonel Qaddafi, then slipped away in a white van full of police officers. Meanwhile, two small boys surreptitiously offered bullet casings that they presented as evidence of force used on protesters the day before.
At another stop, in the working-class suburb of Tajoura, journalists stumbled almost accidentally into a block cordoned off by low makeshift barriers where dozens of residents were eager to talk about a week of what they said were peaceful protests crushed by Colonel Qaddafi’s security forces with overwhelming, deadly and often random force.
A middle-age business owner, who spoke on condition that he be identified only as Turki, said that the demonstrations there had begun last Sunday, when thousands of protesters inspired by the uprising in the east had marched toward Green Square.
Suddenly, he said, they found themselves caught between two groups of double-cabin pick-up trucks without license plates, about forty in all. Men in the trucks opened fire, and killed a man named Issa Hatey. He said neighbors had renamed the area’s central traffic circle “Issa Hatey Square” in his memory.
He and other residents said that over the past week neighbors had been besieged by pickup trucks full of armed men shooting randomly at the crowds, sometimes wounding people who were sitting peacefully in their homes or cars. At other times, they said, the security forces had employed rooftop snipers, antiaircraft guns mounted on trucks and buckshot, and the residents produced shells and casings that appeared to confirm their reports. Turki said that on one day he had seen 50 to 60 heavily armed men who appeared to be mercenaries from nearby African countries.
The neighbors built the low barricades on the streets to impede the trucks with guns. “They come and they kill whoever they can see,” he said. “We are just walking and we don’t have guns.”
After Friday Prayer, Turki and his friends said, a crowd of several thousand had gathered at Issa Hatey Square to march to Green Square. They raised what he called “the old-new flag,” the former tricolor of the Libyan monarchy that rebels have claimed as the flag of a free, post-Qaddafi Libya.
Two carloads of Libyan Army soldiers had joined them, he said, though they never used their weapons to avoid provoking a bloody retaliation.
But when the march arrived at the Arada neighborhood, they were ambushed by snipers on the rooftops. Some protesters said they had been attacked by the personal militia of Colonel Qaddafi’s son Khamis Qaddafi, which is considered the most formidable battalion in the Qaddafi forces.
At least 15 people had died there, he and others said.
A precise death toll has been impossible to verify. A Libyan envoy said Friday that hundreds had been killed in Tripoli. “
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