402 Trojan Horses and Doublespeak
Trojan Horse Department
Perhaps I’m rushing to judgment on this new group claiming to represent Darfuri nomads who say they’ve been unfairly associated with the Janjawid? Anyone know anything about these characters?
Does… Not… Compute Department
Via AFP:
Cairo. The leading opposition Muslim Brotherhood should have its place in Egyptian politics and should not be listed as an outlawed group, an executive of the ruling National Democratic Party said on Tuesday.
Mustafa al-Feqi, chairman of parliament’s foreign affairs committee, made the comments during a committee meeting attended by a delegation of US Congressmen. “Nobody can deny that the Brothers are a political organisation,” he said. “And I do not agree with those who describe the Brothers as a banned organisation, although I do not share their political views and I oppose mixing religion with politics,” he added.
He gave them “100 percent support to express their political opinions and let them have complete political freedom, like the others. The Brothers are welcome to participate in political life on a constitutional and legal basis and not on a religious basis,” he added.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which describes itself as a moderate organisation that wants to bring Islamic law to Egypt, has been outlawed since 1954.
I guess the three most important words in that are “like the others,” as in the kind of “complete political freedom” everyone else has.
Shoddy PR Department
Charles Levinson tracks Israeli-government and AIPAC edits to sensitive Wikipedia entries:
In the Wikipedia entry on the Israeli West Bank barrier someone from an IP address that is part of the Israeli Government Network changes a photo caption reading:
A section of the Israeli West Bank barrier between Qalqiliyia and the nearby Israeli highway. This section of the barrier is on the Green-line border between Israel and the Palestinian west bank.
to read instead:
The international court of justice in hague has ruled that the West Bank security fence, which is being built by Israel, is illegal. This is an outrageous, undemocratic, illegal and racist decision. The court has decided that palestinians minor conviniences are more important than israeli citizens lives. The world is helping the Arab conspiracy theories. Their target is the complete and total distruction of the state of Israel and the Jewish people.
Lastly, via Angry Arab, meet the woman who never misses an opportunity to take advantage of a friend.
401 Censoring Scientific Discourse, oh, and WordPress, in Turkey
Via the blog of the editors of The Scientific American: Adnan Oktar (aka Harun Yahya), author of the zany Atlas of Creation, has gotten Turkey to censor WordPress.com because, he says, it contains libelous material about him. That’s a shame: WordPress creator Matthew Mullenweg says WordPress.com blogs in Turkish were getting more than 12 million page views a month before the ban.
Well, Adnan, censor me. It’s a scientific fact that you are an ass.
400 Haleh Esfandiari Freed
Hooray! Haleh Esfandiari is free.
399 Egypt, Libya, and the Veil
Egypt first:
- Don’t miss Saad Eddin Ibrahim’s op-ed on “Egypt’s Unchecked Repression” for the Washington Post. Here’s a taste:
Like other autocrats with declining legitimacy, Mubarak is trying to tighten his grip on power. His family is grooming 44-year-old Gamal to succeed his father. Any real or potential competitors, especially ones with charisma and name recognition, are to be defamed, jailed, driven from the country or otherwise eliminated. Hence the hounding of Nour, Sadat’s nephews and Islamic youth leader Amr Khaled, all of whom are ambitious, popular and about Gamal Mubarak’s age. [full article]
- On a related note, Egyptian NGOs have held President Mubarak responsible for torture and have called for Egypt’s expulsion from the UN Human Rights Council. The full statement (which I’m ashamed to admit I received days ago, but only read this afternoon), is after the break.
- Egypt will continue supplying energy to the 500,000 Gazans facing blackouts.
- The big news on Al-Jazeera today is Seif al-Islam al-Qaddafi’s reform package, announced to massive rally in downtown Tripoli last night. He has proposed a free media, a new constitution, and an independent central bank.
- Kafr al-Hanadwa rails against Hossam Hagg’s nauseating new track, “Ithaggibti, Bravalayki!” (“You put on the veil, bravo!”). Kafr al-Hanadwa grumbles:
I cant wait for a music video that says You didnt run over pedestrians today, bravo to you or You didnt force poor peasants to bribe for their pensions, bravo to you.
The Egyptian NGOs’ statement on torture, rife with rank examples, follows after the break:
398 Horrible Idea vom tag
“Germany’s human rights commissioner has urged German tourists to be more discerning and vocal during vacation in countries with poor human rights.” I look forward to flocks of German tourists on two-week holidays to Egypt superciliously telling the alabaster salesman how much his country sucks. Will the German Embassy double its consular staff to look after the bloody noses? Here’s a suggestion for Germany’s human rights commissioner: Get the German government to make human rights a centerpiece of its foreign policy. That’d be a start.
396 Illuminating Humanity Since 1759
Mohammed `Ali al-Hasani, governor of Iraq’s southern Muthana province, became the second Shia governor killed this month. He died in a roadside bomb.
Ayad Allawi called Iraq “a failing state” in a Washington Post op-ed: “More than four years after its liberation from Saddam Hussein, Iraq is a failing state, not providing the most basic security and services to its people and contributing to an expanding crisis in the Middle East.” Informed opinion is now focused on containing the chaos in Iraq lest the power vacuum provoke a regional war. Here’s Allawi’s prescription:
- Declare a state of emergency for Baghdad and all conflict zones
- Bring in the UN and the Arab world
- Keep Iraq together
- Reverse de-Baathification
- Keep the Kurds in the tent
- Restore infrastructure, get rid of corruption
- Get rid of President al-Maliki
Israel said it would continue expelling Sudanese asylum-seekers. Israeli human rights groups charged that Israel breached international law when it deported 48 Sudanese refugees and asylum seekers back to Egypt without hearings. (Israel’s attorney general invoked the “immediate return” loophole, saying the Sudanese migrants had not entered the country. The slightly-less-Zionist Haaretz disagreed with the New York Times on how long the asylum-seekers were in the country. Haaretz said more than a day.)
If, however, the deportation convinces other would-be Sudanese asylum seekers trapped in Cairo that it’s not worth getting shot trying to cross a heavily militarized border to get to an even more intractable conflict than Sudan’s, then perhaps the apparent breach of international law is the lesser evil. But it does make pro-Israel Jews’ (welcome and sincere) handwringing about Darfur sound a little hollow.
Egypt discovered 500 kilograms of TNT in a bush near the Gaza border.
Gaza’s main power station shut down after the EU said it was afraid it wouldn’t be paid for a fuel shipment.
King Abdallah II dissolved the Jordanian parliament, paving the way for elections. Adding some excitement, the Muslim Brotherhood, Jordan’s largest opposition party, still looks set to boycott the elections, though some Islamists are calling this political suicide. See Abu Aardvark or Al-Jazeera for more.
The Economist got it right on Egypt (again).
A surprisingly frank editorial from Lebanon’s Daily Star also got it right on Egypt.
The Egyptian government charged `Issam al-`Irian and 15 other Muslim Brotherhood members with attempting to overthrow the government. I guess SSI prosecutors don’t read The Guardian.
Hossam el-Hamalawy‘s mere presence in the United States tipped the political balance in that country to the left.
Harper’s quotes Kant on the primacy of human rights: “There must be no compromise, no median worked out between pragmatically oriented rights (between rights and utilitarianism)all politics must bend its knee before human rights, and only in this fashion may politics ever aspire to reach the stage where it will illuminate humanity.”
It must have been so nice to have been around in 1759. Does anyone still look to politics to “illuminate humanity”?
395 Syria Bans Anonymous Speech Online
Thanks to Maha for flagging this, from Beirut’s As-Safir. The Syrian Ministry of Telecommunications has issued a memo requiring owners of Syrian Web sites to “feature the name of the writer of the article and the person commenting on it in a clear and detailed way.” Full article in Arabic (and translated into English by Mideastwire.com) after the break.
394 Anwar in the Middle
Iraq is now run by traitors… So, who is there to complain to? Shall we complain to the Iranians, who are the enemies of Iraq? Shall we complain to the Americans, who are occupying the country? We only have God to complain to.
Yazidi leader Anwar al-Umawi, on Al-Sharqiyah TV, via BBC Monitoring.
393 Or, for Those with a More Serious Bent…
…Ask yourself what makes this man, whom the Egyptian government considers dangerous enough to detain and prevent from leaving the country, such a threat?
If you’re not sufficiently depressed, consider the rash of public hangings in Iran. Or criticisms of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from the head of the Iranian judiciary.
Or the families of Algerians not heard from since they tried to get to Europe months ago. From Al-Watan via Reuters:
“No one can give us the number of our fellow citizens buried in Tunisia, Libya, Sardinia or Malta … The authorities should help us, logistically and judicially.
“We know the Tunisians, Libyans and Italians are sovereign on their soil … if there are people in prison, we need to be told, and if they are dead, they should tell us.”
392 Weekend Miscellany
I’m not sure what to make of the new promos for Melody Tunes’ English station. Anyone else feel a bit uncomfortable when a crafty beggar sings Britney Spears?
Or when a mama, pointing to her crotch, sings a 50-Cent sex anthem to her fat, crying son? Or when overindulged women in a chi-chi coffeeshop sing the Pussycat Dolls? How ’bout when a woman hanging out her underwear sings Shakira? Listen to crap American pop and you too can be a snob.
Times like this I’m proud to have introduced Hossam to Immortal Technique. All things considered, I’d rather have the fabled Arab Street hear this from the proverbial Amriki Street:
They say the rebels in Iraq still fight for Saddam
But that’s bullshit, I’ll show you why it’s totally wrong
Cuz if another country invaded the hood tonight
It’d be warfare through Harlem, and Washington Heights
I wouldn’t be fightin’ for Bush or White America’s dream
I’d be fightin’ for my people’s survival and self-esteem
I wouldn’t fight for racist churches from the south, my nigga
I’d be fightin’ to keep the occupation out, my nigga
You ever clock someone who talk shit, or look at you wrong?
Imagine if they shot at you, and was rapin’ your moms
than “Oops, I did it again.”
***
So let no one call this infidel stupid. She has a beautiful mind.
***
Instead, why not just sit back and marvel at the pet hippo?
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