The Skeptic الشكاك

829 Mubarak Pardons Ibrahim Eissa

Excellent news!

CAIRO (AFP) — Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Monday pardoned an outspoken editor sentenced to two months in jail after his newspaper published rumours on Mubarak’s health, state-run MENA news agency reported.

An appeals court’s decision last month to jail Ibrahim Eissa, editor-in-chief of the independent daily Al-Dustour, provoked widespread criticism from media activists.

MENA said that Mubarak pardoned Eissa, who despite sentencing was not imprisoned, as part of the president’s efforts to foster freedom of the press in Egypt.

Eissa welcomed the pardon but said Egypt was one of a few countries whose laws allow for reporters to be jailed.

“While I welcome this ruling, I think the issue is larger than that between one reporter and the president,” he told AFP. “The issue is that of Egyptian journalism, which suffers from an arsenal of laws that negate freedoms.” [Full Story]

It’s too bad it had to come down to a presidential pardon. It creates the impression that freedom of expression is “a gift [from] the ruler to be offered or withdrawn whenever he likes”— which is precisely contrary to President Mubarak’s avowed beliefs.

826 This International Incident Has Been Brought to You by the Letter ‘H’

Thank you, France! Comic relief is rare in the Israeli-Iranian nuclear showdown:

JERUSALEM (AFP) - French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on Sunday he was misquoted by Israel’s Haaretz newspaper which reported him as saying Israel would “eat” Iran before Tehran developed a nuclear bomb.

“During the interview in English with journalists from Haaretz, (I) used the word “hit” and not “eat” about a possible Israeli response with regard to Iran,” the visiting minister said in a statement.

Kouchner however said he did “indeed evoke the possibility of Israeli strikes to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon”.

A spokeswoman for Haaretz would not immediately comment on the incident.

In its print edition, the Haaretz quoted Kouchner as saying in English: “I honestly don’t believe (a nuclear weapon) will give any immunity to Iran. First, because you will eat them before. And this is the danger.”

The statement from Kouchner, who is on a two-day visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories, said he regretted any “phonetic confusion”.

” ‘it them! I said, ‘ ‘it them!’ Not ‘ ‘it them!’ ”

Speaking of nukes in the Middle East, here is an Egyptian initiative at the international level I can support: a nuclear-free region, policed, by agreement of all the countries, by the IAEA. Al-Masry al-Youm has translated their article of a few days ago here. Scroll down to the bottom of the article for highlights from the scrapped draft.

819 ‘Gods Don’t Get Sick’

Here, via M, is a translation of the August 2007 article for which a Cairo court jailed Al-Dustur editor Ibrahim Issa last week:

Gods don’t get sick

The president in Egypt is a god and gods don’t get sick. Thus, President Mubarak, those surrounding him, and the hypocrites hide his illness and leave the country prey to rumors. It is not a serious illness. It’s just old age. But the Egyptian people are entitled to know if the president is down with something as minor as the flu.

Everybody has information about the president’s health situation: the White House, Tel Aviv, and Europe, where the president goes for treatment. The information is hidden only from Egyptians. Nobody would have known something was amiss had the president not lost consciousness on television during a speech a few years ago. Had he not stayed in Germany for a long time for treatment nobody would have said anything.

The state wants to present him as a sacred person who never errs, with whom nobody competes. So he definitely cannot fall ill. And nobody should even dare to think he can die like other human beings! The issue now, however, involves the country’s present and future. As everyone knows, the president’s family and Mrs. Mubarak have been pushing for the president to give up power—during his lifetime—and pass it to his son Gamal. The president is the only member of the family who resists this idea either because he wishes to stay in power or because he’s worried about antagonizing the Egyptian people and some important army generals.

The president fears his son’s life would be in danger if he transferred power to him. But with the president’s illness, and in a home ruled by fatherly sentiments and loyalty to the wife who has shared his life, the father’s heart may soften and overpower his mind. So Egypt’s future depends on sentimental decisions reached at a moment of illness.

The president’s temporary absence due to illness may allow people inside or outside the palace to do as they please. Mass Muslim Brotherhood arrests, rough security treatment of newspapers, hastening to hold NDP elections, and giving a push to Gamal Mubarak and Ahmed Ezz’s supporters against Safwat al-Sherif and Kamal al-Shazly’s men—all are steps the son uses to pressure state parties to render his move to the presidency a done deal. Rumors about the president’s health may even have stemmed from the son’s wish to impose a reality that nobody can refuse.

The president does suffer from circulation problems which, although not fatal, reduce circulation to the brain and may cause loss of consciousness for seconds or minutes. The question is, does this not affect the country? Does this not call for the president to rest? Gamal Mubarak thinks so. He believes the president should rest and leave ruling to him.

Other circles in the country are very tense. They fear silence, but they also fear taking action. Still others want everyone to shut up and achieve this by imprisoning or threatening them. My deepest fear is that the president’s illness will cause Egypt’s illness to deteriorate to the point of incapacity and bed sores that will paralyze and deform it.

Thank you, M. I’ll miss Issa’s articles while he’s in jail, but I’m gratified to see that this blog from “a loyal son of the NDP” has come online to entertain in the meantime.

814 Oil Struck

AP:

CAIRO, Egypt: Circle Oil and Premier Oil said Friday that they have struck oil in their onshore North West Gemsa Concession in Egypt.

Initial, sustained production was over 3,000 barrels per day of crude and 4 million standard cubic feet per day of natural gas, the United Kingdom-based oil and gas producers said. The concession lies southeast of Cairo in the Gulf of Suez Basin.

“This discovery is excellent news,” Circle Chief Executive Officer David Hough said in a statement. He noted that it comes on the heels of the company’s gas production start-up in Morocco. [Full Story]

808 The CTUWS Blog

The Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services (CTUWS) has a blog.

The Egyptian government closed the organization in April 2007 after officials from the Ministry of Social Solidarity blamed it for inciting workers to strike. Last June the Ministry of Social Solidarity announced that it would comply with a March 30 Cairo Administrative Court order to allow the center to reopen.

The people I have met from CTUWS have spent their adult lives trying to help Egyptian factory workers. Their blog promises to be an important resource on labor conditions around the country.

804 ‘Killing Is a Career’

The BBC’s Hugh Sykes talks to leaders of Iraq’s “Awakening movement” who warn that if their men aren’t incorporated into the Iraqi Army and police forces, they may switch sides.

An Ameriya engineer who did not want to give his name is also uneasy. He says the continuing security of the neighbourhood relies on all the Awakening men, not just a few of them.

He fears many will be bored, will lose their status, and may be tempted back to al-Qaeda.

“Killing is a career,” he said.

And al-Qaeda are busy threatening members of the Awakening movement. While I was sitting with him, Abu Ibrahim al Azawi got a mobile phone text message from an al-Qaeda member.

“We will put you in the sewer,” it read, “like all unbelievers who sell their souls for dollars.”

The message continued: “You are the shoes of the worshippers of the cross.” Showing the sole of a shoe is a profound Arab insult. [Full story]

(Had to include that last sentence for Angry Arab, who gets a kick out of foreign journalists explaining that “showing the sole of a shoe is a profound Arab insult.”)

Along the same lines, see Robert Dreyfuss’ phone interview with another Awakening commander:

The commander of the Sunni-led Awakening movement in Baghdad says that attacks by the Iraqi government and government-allied militiamen against Awakening leaders and rank-and-file members are likely to spark a new Sunni resistance movement. That resistance force will conduct attacks against American troops and Iraqi army and police forces, he says. “Look around,” he says. “It has already come back. It is getting stronger. Look at what is happening in Baghdad.” [Full story]

799 Syria ‘Tightens Control Over Internet’

Mazen Darwich’s Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression reports that 161 (mostly opposition) sites are blocked in Syria and that the government has become more savvy about plugging up loopholes. Phil Sands in The National:

In a sign that the censors are becoming more technologically advanced, a series of software gaps that existed in online controls a few months ago have been closed. It used to be a relatively simple matter for internet surfers to get around the censors using freely available programmes. Now accessing prohibited pages is much more difficult, and requires specialised knowledge.

I’d love more details, please!

792 ‘Amnesia Was Our Preferred State’

I am really trying not to write about the U.S. elections, but I’ll make an exception for Joan Didion, my favorite living American journalist:

Audio via The New York Review of Books. I stopped listening to the other audio clips after I heard Mark Danner’s unintentional parody of a moaning New York intellectual: “We are in the depths of a quadrennial phase which I’m going to call the time of Democratic fear and loathing.” You can’t make this stuff up.

While you’re there, see Peter Galbraith on Iraq: “George W. Bush has put the United States on the side of undemocratic Iraqis who are Iran’s allies. John McCain would continue the same approach. It is hard to understand how this can be called a success—or a path to victory.”

790 Hostages Freed

Thank God. And it’s the top news in Ghana.

787 Sudanese Forces Clash with Kidnappers

Sudanese government officials are telling reporters that the Sudanese forces killed six men accused of complicity in the abduction of 11 tourists and eight Egyptian guides after a high-speed chase through the desert. The Sudanese say they captured two people involved, who said that the hostages had been moved to Chad. If all the reports coming out have been true, then the hostages have been moved from Egypt, across the border to Sudan, across the border into Libya, then back into Sudan, and again across the border into Chad.