415 The Ranks Are Restive
Here’s why friend and former Cairene Andrew Exum thinks the US might not attack Iran. (And notice we’re now talking about why they might not attack Iran.)
414 Movie Night at the Cairo Institute
If Karkar isn’t your thing, the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies is screening more serious fare Saturday night:
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??? ???? ?????? ?? ????? ??????? ????? 2 ??????? ?????? ????????? ?????? (??????) ????? ????????? ?????? ??? ??? ?????? ??? ?? ????? ????? ???? ???? ??? ??????? ???? ??????? ????????????? ?????? ???? ???????? ??? ?????? ?????? ?? ????? ???????? ??? ?????? ????? ?????? ??????? ???? ????? ??? ?????? ?????? ???? ???? ??????? ????? ?????? ????? ?????? ?? ???? ??? ?????? ???????? ??? ???? ????? ????? ??????? ?? ?? ????????.
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412 Update from Whale Valley
More on the story that European diplomats seriously damaged a 40 million-year-old whale fossil in Egypt’s Western Desert. It was the Belgians. The AP got their side of the story, too:
Egypt: Belgian Diplomats Damaged Fossils
By SALAH NASRAWI
The Associated Press
Monday, August 27, 2007; 9:58 AMCAIRO, Egypt — Egyptian authorities have accused Belgian diplomats of damaging a 40 million-year-old whale fossil when they allegedly drove over the remains in a protected desert area, an official said Monday. Belgian officials denied any damage was done.
Mohamed Ibrahim, an official in the Ministry of Environment, said the diplomats in four-wheel-drive vehicles ran over the fossil in July after ignoring signs warning visitors not to drive in the Wadi el-Hitan, or Valley of the Whales, protected area and UNESCO World Heritage site located about 93 miles outside of Cairo.
The Belgian Foreign Ministry and its embassy in Cairo denied the vehicles caused any damage to the fossil. Foreign Ministry spokesman Marc Michielsen said the two diplomatic-plated all-terrain vehicles were in the area but “did not leave the road.”
“They were not aware that the area was a protected area,” Michielsen said. “It seems the area was not cordoned off, and no notice or guards were present.”
Egyptian and Belgian authorities both said the incident took place in July. It was unclear why Egyptian officials waited until now to make the allegations.
Michielsen said Egyptian authorities sent a letter to Belgian authorities in mid-July, which Belgian authorities answered Aug. 5 by saying the diplomats did not damage any fossils.
“Since then we have not received any reaction,” Michielsen said.
Ibrahim, who works in the Environmental Ministry’s Natural Protected Zones office, said the Egyptian prosecutor’s office has estimated the damage at $325,000 and has demanded Belgium pay that amount in compensation.
“The financial value doesn’t really matter. What matters is the historical value,” he said.
Wadi el-Hitan contains fossils of the extinct suborder of whales, the archaeoceti, that date back about 40 million years. UNESCO says the fossils show the evolution of the whale from a land-based mammal to an ocean-based one.
UNESCO declared the site, discovered in 1936, a World Heritage site in 2005.
___
Associated Press Writer Constant Brand in Brussels, Belgium, contributed to this report.
411 Negm on Ruby; WSJ on Gay Lebanon
I really like Negm.
This via Wassim, who notices that the kid presenter “is dressed like a complete pansy” and wonders if this (lack of) sartorial sense has “become completely normal over there.” (The Sham?) I don’t know if the presenter prefers men or women. I would prefer not to think about his sex life at all, thank you very much. But Wassim’s observation does provide an awkward transition of sorts into this interesting article from the Wall Street Journal about marketing Lebanon to gay tourists:
More…
410 Quick Readings
Busy preparing to leave town again, but just wanted to flag a few quick reads:
- Ellen Knickmeyer (and Nora Younis) give legs to the story of the Darfuri refugees slated for expulsion from Israel. I’m glad Ellen has been posted to Cairo. She’s doing a fantastic job.
- Also in the Washington Post, Julie Flint, who deserves credit for being among the first to shout to the world about the crisis in Darfur, urges UN peacekeepers to “step out of that armored car and ask the Darfurian people: ‘Just what the hell is going on here?'”
- The Iraqi government limps along.
- Russian police arrested an Israeli man wanted by Interpol for training Colombian militants. In a former life, I used to follow South and Central America more closely and was intrigued by the Israeli and Lebanese (sometimes identified as Hizballah-affiliated) merchants of war messing around in the region. Sometimes stories would pop up in the local press about arms deals that would implicate corrupt or cynical officials in three or more countries, but whenever I’d have a correspondent dig deeper, the stories would die on the vine because of information from dodgy sources, libel laws, and fears for the correspondent’s safety. Other times, the story would simply be too tangled to explain to a casual reader in less than 6,000 words. There’s gotta be a good book, New Yorker essay, or Hollywood thriller in one of these stories.
- Speaking of corruption and arms sales…
- Kudos to the Christian Science Monitor. Sometimes journalism can make a difference, as in the suspension of the Pentagon’s creepy (but impressive) ADVISE data-mining system, which the CSM first reported in February 2006.
- I enjoyed Wassim’s reflections on Edgware Road.
408 European Diplomats Destroy Egyptian UNESCO Site
Whoreson impudent embossed rascals! Spleeny onion-eyed boar-pigs! Lumpish doghearted pignuts! Spleeny beetle-headed malt-worms! Pribbling lily-livered jolt-heads!
Cairo – European diplomats in four-wheel-drive cars have caused extensive damage to a fossilised whale lying for millions of years in the Egyptian desert, a security source said on Sunday.
“Whale Valley officials have informed the authorities that people from two diplomatic vehicles destroyed the fossil,” the source told reporters after the destruction was discovered 150km south of Cairo.
Two cars drove into the protected area on Friday and then refused to stop when asked to do so by wardens who nevertheless obtained the vehicles’ registration numbers which the source said were from “a European country”.
“The damage is more than ten million dollars,” the source said.
The site, known as Wadi Hitan (Whale Valley), was home to whales around 40 million years ago when the area was still under water. It is a Unesco World Heritage site and home to hundreds of of whale fossils. – Sapa-AFP
407 Revolving-Door Detentions
`Abd al-Monim Mahmud, himself detained earlier this year, reports that while two Brotherhood MPs have been released on bail, five Brothers were immediately detained again after prosecutors ordered their release, and a court threw out a prosecutor’s order to release four others:
406 ‘The Diminution of Giants’
I love Rami Khoury:
Why a society with such a tremendous reservoir of human talent, historical legitimacy, state credibility and modern political leadership in the Arab world would need to use authoritarian police state tactics against its own citizens who engage in peaceful politics is one of the great, painful tragedies of the Arab world. Egypt is one of the few Arab countries that can influence the rest of the region, given the power, legitimacy, and respect of its unique legacy of Arab statehood, nationhood, citizenship rights, constitutionalism and pluralism. To lose Egypt to the emotional and intellectual dungeons of authoritarianism is to lose immense Arab treasure and potential.
404 New Photographs Expose Flow of Arms into Darfur
More photographs accompany Amnesty International’s press release, the full text of which is after the break:
403 Good Causes for Bad Reasons
I’ve had worlds of respect for Anatol Lieven since I read his 2002 comments on the march to war in Iraq. At the time, the entire United States (the loony Leftwhich was either rushing off to show support for Saddam Hussein or confusing Haiti with Cuba with Iraqexcepted) was singing “America, fuck yeah!” So when, in October 2002, Lieven wrote,
The most surprising thing about the Bush Administration’s plan to invade Iraq is not that it is destructive of international order; or wicked, when we consider the role the US (and Britain) have played, and continue to play, in the Middle East; or opposed by the great majority of the international community; or seemingly contrary to some of the basic needs of the war against terrorism. It is all of these things, but they are of no great concern to the hardline nationalists in the Administration. This group has suffered at least a temporary check as a result of the British insistence on UN involvement, and Saddam Hussein’s agreement to weapons inspections. They are, however, still determined on war – and their power within the Administration and in the US security policy world means that they are very likely to get their way. Even the Washington Post has joined the radical rightist media in supporting war.
The most surprising thing about the push for war is that it is so profoundly reckless. If I had to put money on it, I’d say that the odds on quick success in destroying the Iraqi regime may be as high as 5/1 or more, given US military superiority, the vile nature of Saddam Hussein’s rule, the unreliability of Baghdad’s missiles, and the deep divisions in the Arab world. But at first sight, the longer-term gains for the US look pretty limited, whereas the consequences of failure would be catastrophic. [full article]
I started singing “Anatol Lieven, fuck yeah!”
But I’m not entirely sure what he’s on about with his piece in yesterday’s Financial Times:
Even western observers who criticise human rights groups for naivety or irresponsibility generally give them credit for purity of intentions – and, of course, this noble character is indeed true of many groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. But it is not always true, and western public debate would benefit greatly from a recognition of the moral ambiguities involved in some contemporary human rights advocacy.
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