258 While We’re Picking on Gulfis…
After another summer watching khaleegis slumming in Cairo, I figure that, like Flava-Flav, “I got a right to be hostile:”
[tags]Saudi Arabia, women, niqab[/tags]
256 The Elder of Cafe Horreya
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255 ‘Ten Million’ Web Sites Censored in Iran
On Sept. 11, the Iranian Communication and Information Technology News Agency (CITNA) reported (Original interview) that Esma’il Radkani, head of The Information Technology Company’s director-general for management and technical support, had told it that “the relevant authorities, including the judiciary, the committee for identifying unauthorized websites and the filtering system database,” had censored 10 million Web sites in Iran.
Radkani told CITNA that The Judiciary and the committee for identifying unauthorized Web sites name about 1,000 sites to block every month. In addition, Radkani said, software automatically updates the database of censored sites every day to include an average of 200-300 proxy servers that can be used to get around online censorship.
“Naturally, in the summer, when there is more traffic on the Internet, the extent of the filtering will also be greater,” Radkani told CITNA. “In addition to the filtering system database, comprising 10 million unauthorized Internet Web sites, since the system was installed, 13,000 more websites have been identified by the relevant authorities and are now being filtered.”
He continued:
The instances of official complaints over the filtering of sites by the communications filtering system usually concerns the blocking of news, social and political websites and their total number has been less than 100 so far. Be that as it may, many of the other instances of complaints concern the mistaken use of key words by the filtering systems of companies that use independent filtering system.
Via BBC Monitoring subscription service. (Lots worth reading on the public site today: The Turkish press on involvement in Lebanon, the international press reflecting on the 5-year anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and more…) I hope they will forgive my violating their copyrights by posting the full text of their article after the break. Come on guys, think of the Iranians…
More…
254 Saudis Consider Banning Women from Mecca
What’s wrong with these people? First kittens, and now this? Kittens and women are among the best things God ever did for the world.
Hooray for AP’s Donna Abu-Nasr. She seems not to be enjoying her trip to Saudi Arabia, and seems to be taking revenge by shining the torch of common sense on all the dark corners of religious zealotry run amok.
Saudis consider banning women from Mecca
By DONNA ABU-NASR, Associated Press WriterThu Sep 7, 2:25 PM ETOfficials are considering an unprecedented proposal to ban women from performing the five Muslim prayers in the immediate vicinity of Islam’s most sacred shrine in Mecca. Some say women are already being kept away.
The issue has raised a storm of protest across the kingdom, with some women saying they fear the move is meant to restrict women’s roles in Saudi society even further. But the religious authorities behind the proposal insist its real purpose is to lessen the chronic problem of overcrowding, which has led to deadly riots during pilgrimages at Mecca in the past.
253 The True Face of Western Imperialism
It only looks cute. Behind those contented eyes, there’s a world of evil, decadence, and malice. Via reader SP over email.
Saudi religious cops ban dog, cat sales
By DONNA ABU-NASR, Associated Press Writer Fri Sep 8, 4:21 PM ETSaudi Arabia’s religious police, normally tasked with chiding women to cover themselves and ensuring men attend mosque prayers, are turning to a new target: cats and dogs.
The police have issued a decree banning the sale of the pets, seen as a sign of Western influence.
The prohibition on dogs may be less of a surprise, since conservative Muslims despise dogs as unclean. But the cat ban befuddled many, since Islamic tradition holds that the Prophet Muhammad loved cats ? and even let a cat drink from his ablutions water before washing himself for prayers.
252 Secret Nerds
Funnily, this article, “How Human Rights Watch Lost its Way in Lebanon,” immediately touched off a super-nerdy email debate on the details international humanitarian law as regards Lebanon among friends who once worked for HRW. Don’t want to alienate anyone by posting even anonymous excerpts, but Jonathan Cook may be gratified to know people are really thinking about what he wrote.
The organization’s official analysis of the applicable law is here.
[tags]Lebanon[/tags]
250 Hope?
I harp on about Israel, but every now and again, something almost gives me hope that, as Madonna hopes, there will one day be peace in da Middle East. Like this Israeli blog post translated from Russian (Israel North Blog via Lisa Goldman). It’s downright touching if read carefully:
The elder son is determined to become a pilot. You can understand why. He has only one question that worries him: Mom, our pilots bomb only bad guys?
We were thinking for long time. Wished all “good guys” to be in time to the bomb shelter.
The son said: I hope so very much… Burst out crying. something wrong with nerves.
Father refused to go from Haifa. Even though there are friends and relatives, of course I promised to get him from door to the door. No, he doesn’t want. Tired to run up and down the staircases, stays in the shelter, took the laptop there. And table and two matresses we moved there before – together. We are staying in touch on phone. He yells that I have to stay, not to return yet…
When I was staying in shelter, I was reading Bujold – space wars, explosions etc… In Kfar-Saba I was choosing the book very long. I’ve chosen Jane Eyre. Garantied – no missles and aviation.
[tags]Israel, Lebanon[/tags]
249 Madonna: Peace in da Mideast
Always something good at Aqoul.
[tags]Israel, Palestine[/tags]
248 The Jackal Disembowles the Rabbit
…and the world goes on. So J.M. Coetzee wrote in Waiting for the Barbarians. I read this today as I was taking a break from trying to catch up on what I’d missed while I was away.
Israel’s decision to lift its air and sea blockade of Lebanon is important and welcome news. The daily carnage reports from Iraq and Afghanistan are equally important. They’re also more terrible than usual. Mutilated corpses are still turning up in Baghdad. Soldiers are unearthing torture chambers they suspect members of Iraqi factions are using to torture rivals. Another of Saddam Hussein’s lawyers died a violent death. So did many others less famous.
But all this has been so widely reported that even I heard about it, and I was busy with my brother’s wedding and the 24-hour travel time back to Cairo. As I sort through what’s happened since I’ve been out of the loop, here’s what I’m following:
Seems President Hosni Mubarak is really standing by his warnings that the war in Lebanon “triggered an increasing rage within the Arabs, Muslims, and worldwide.” On Sept. 3, Al-Misri al-Youm reported that State Security agents had arrested 70 people from the streets of Alexandria during the war on suspicion of trying to get to Iraq to fight for Al-Qaeda. According to the families, the only evidence against the detainees is that they viewed Al-Qaeda-affiliated Web sites. (If true, it’s almost immaterial whether these people were actually seriously trying to get to Iraq to fight for Al-Qaeda. Visiting a Web site should not be grounds for imprisonment. Recent reports suggest the government may have been particularly nervous because of advance intelligence. If true, and if these people were really trying to get to Iraq, the authorities should provide more evidence.)
On Sept. 5, Al-Misri al-Youm reported that State Security agents had arrested 25 people from Damanhour, Suez, and Al-Marg, also on suspicion of belonging to Al-Qaeda. The wires are picking up the story now.
These detentions coincide with the crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, now months old but renewed since the war. It also follows Mubarak’s Aug. 27 appointment of Maj. Gen. Aadil Labib as governor of Alexandria. The general was the deputy head of State Security’s investigations department before Mubarak made him governor of Qena in 1999. Qena has been quiet since, as Al-Ahram Weekly‘s hymn to Labib reluctantly acknowledges. Gone indeed are Qena’s “reputation for lax policing” and as “a haven for outlaws.”
Seventy Islamist detainees have gone on hunger strike in Damanhour’s prison.
Grumbling is even creeping into The Other Egypt (h/t Sandmonkey) through the back door. Last night I ducked into a fancy eatery to pee (quality paper towels to dry your hands and face with—the true yardstick of first-world comfort, and well worth the indignity of wearing shib-shibs to battle with five haughty doormen, waiters, and busboys). From the bathroom I listened to a table of pretty, rich girls talking about the sort of things pretty, rich girls talk about. At first I thought they were also talking about State Security kidnapping someone from the street. Then I realized that coversation was coming from the kitchen. Of course.
Who will object? Probably not the United States, Israel (more), or even Australia, who are all concerned that the war may stoke violent urges in Egypt. The Americans and the Israelis must be particularly concerned, Israel because it carried out the war, and the Americans because… well, if even Israeli and American journalists have been writing that the Bush administration helped the Israelis plan the war last Spring, what must Arabs think?
Journalists at least have a lot of other things on their minds:
- Israel’s offensive in Gaza continues to claim lives, while outside the region only the Wires and Noam Chomsky take note.
- On Wednesday in Sudan, editor Mohammed Taha’s decapitated corpse was found on a dirt road. Taha’s paper, Al-Wifaq, had published an article questioning the Prophet Mohammed’s lineage. The government closed the paper for blasphemy, but Islamist groups considered the sentence too light.
- In Riyad, around 300 Shia Muslims protested Saudi Arabia’s “repressive policies” on Shia Muslims in the country.
- In Syria, a Kurdish woman was tortured.
- And, yeah, did I already mention that in Egypt, some 90 people were arrested as terrorists on what press reports suggest was very slim evidence, leaving people to wonder whether it would be more or less disturbing to think that the charges were well-founded?
[tags]Egypt, Islamists, Syria, Shia, Saudi Arabia, Al-Qaeda, detainees[/tags]
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