The Skeptic الشكاك

1082 Amitav Ghosh on Egypt and Xenophilia

Amitav Ghosh, writing in Outlook magazine, fondly remembers his time spent in the Nile Delta as a young man, reflects on the non-aligned movement, and hopes that people from far-away lands will meet each other face-to-face more often:

The other principal association that rural Egypt had with India was the matter of water-pumps, which were of course very important in rural communities. In those days Egypt imported so many water pumps from India that in some areas these machines were known as makana Hindi – or simply as Kirloskar, from the name of a major pump-manufacturing company. The purchasing of a water pump was a great event, and the machine would be brought back on a pick-up truck, with much fanfare, with strings of old shoes strung around the spout to ward off the Evil Eye. Long before the machine made its entry into the village, a posse of children would be sent to summon me: as an Indian I was expected to be an expert on these machines, and the proud new owners would wait anxiously for me to pronounce on the virtues and failings of their new acquisition.

Now it so happens that I am one of those people who is hard put to tell a spanner from a hammer or a sprocket from a gasket. At first I protested vigorously, disclaiming all knowledge of machinery. But here again, no one believed me; they thought I was withholding vital information or playing some kind of deep and devious game. Often people would look crestfallen, imagining, no doubt, that I had detected a fatal flaw in their machine and was refusing to divulge the details. This would not do of course, and in order to set everyone’s fears at rest, I became, willy-nilly, an oracle of water-pumps. I developed a little routine, where I would subject the machine to a minute inspection, occasionally tapping it with my knuckles or poking it with my fingers. Fortunately no machine failed my inspection: at the end of it I would invariably pronounce the water-pump to be a makana mumtaaza – a most excellent Kirloskar, a truly distinguished member of its species.

Yet, even as I was disclaiming my relationship to those water-pumps, I could not but recognize that there was a certain commonality between myself and those machines. In a way, my presence in that village could be attributed to the same historical circumstances that introduced Indian pumps and Indian films to rural Egypt. Broadly speaking, those circumstances could be described as the spirit of decolonization that held sway over much of the world in the decades after the Second World War; this was the political ethos that found its institutional representation in the Non-Aligned Movement. We are at a very different moment in history now, when the words Non-Aligned seem somehow empty and discredited; today the movement is often dismissed not just as a political failure, but as a minor footnote to the great power rivalries of the Cold War.

It is true, of course, that the movement had many shortcomings and met with many failures. Yet it is also worth remembering that the Non-Aligned Movement as such was merely the institutional aspect of something that was much broader, wider and more powerful: this, as I said before, was the post-war ethos of decolonization, which was a political impulse that had deep historical roots and powerful cultural resonances. In the field of culture, among other things, it represented an attempt to restore and recommence the exchanges and conversations that had been interrupted by the long centuries of European imperial dominance. It was, in this sense, the necessary and vital counterpart of the nationalist idiom of anti-colonial resistance. In the West, Third World nationalism is often presented as an ideology of xenophobia and parochialism. But the truth is that many of these movements of resistance tried very hard, within their limited means, to create an universalism of their own. Those of us who grew up in that period will recall how powerfully we were animated by an emotion that is rarely named: this is xenophilia, the love of the other, the affinity for strangers – a feeling that lives very deep in the human heart, but whose very existence is rarely acknowledged. People of my generation will recall the pride we once took in the trans-national friendships of such figures as Nehru, Nasser, Sukarno, Chou En Lai and others. Nor were friendships of this kind anything new. I have referred above to the cross-cultural conversations that were interrupted by imperialism.

These interruptions were precisely that – temporary breakages – the conversations never really ceased. Even in the 19th century, the high noon of Empire, people from Africa, Asia and elsewhere, sought each other out, wrote letters to each other, and stayed in each other’s homes while traveling. Lately, a great number of memoirs and autobiographies have been published that attest to the depth and strength of these ties. It was no accident therefore that Mahatma Gandhi chose to stop in Egypt, in order to see Sa’ad Zaghloul before proceeding to the Round Table Conference in London. This was integral to the ethos of the time. [Full Essay…]

Thanks, SP

1080 The Truck Driver and the Atom Bomb

I’m enjoying this, from the latest New Yorker:

The single, blinding release of pure energy over Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945, marked a startling and permanent break with our prior understandings of the visible world. Yet for more than sixty years the technology behind the explosion has remained a state secret. The United States government has never divulged the engineering specifications of the first atomic bombs, not even after other countries have produced generations of ever more powerful nuclear weapons. In the decades since the Second World War, dozens of historians have attempted to divine the precise mechanics of the Hiroshima bomb, nicknamed Little Boy, and of the bomb that fell three days later on Nagasaki, known as Fat Man. The most prominent is Richard Rhodes, who won a Pulitzer Prize, in 1988, for his dazzling and meticulous book “The Making of the Atomic Bomb.” But the most accurate account of the bomb’s inner workings—an unnervingly detailed reconstruction, based on old photographs and documents—has been written by a sixty-one-year-old truck driver from Waukesha, Wisconsin, named John Coster-Mullen, who was once a commercial photographer, and has never received a college degree. [Read on…]

1065 Give Nagla the Attention She Deserves

…Which is to say none at all. Perhaps if everyone pretends Nagla al-Imam doesn’t exist, she’ll go away. In the meantime, she’s shooting her mouth off to anyone who’ll listen.

Nagla was sent by a women’s rights organization to fly the flag at the trial of the man who sexually harassed Noha Rushdie. After the trial she falsely claimed Noha was Israeli (she’s not; she’s Palestinian, born in Libya and raised there and in Egypt), and proclaimed she was going to work for the convict’s release. I understand Nagla lost her job because of the controversy she caused.

Then, speaking on Al-Arabiya on October 31, she called on Arab men to sexually harass Israeli women as “a form of resistance.” (leave it to MEMRI to feature the stupidest, ugliest things said on TV in Arabic, ignoring the condemnation). I tried to ignore this offensive idiocy (have Arab women and men and “resistance” really fallen so low?), hoping it was her last cry for attention before she faded into obscurity.

No such luck. Now she’s telling Youm al-Sabaa that the convicted man’s name was on President Mubarak’s list of people to pardon this Eid. Youm al-Sabaa quietly acknowledged at the bottom of the article that it has no source for this story save a phone call to Nagla, and that the president traditionally pardons only convicts who have already served at least nine months in jail. But that didn’t stop the paper from calling Nagla and running her claims under the alarming headline, “News of the Release of the Man Who Molested Noha Rushdie.” The following day, Youm al-Sabaa ran another story saying the rumor (they started) was not true.

Only Noha comes off well in this whole sorry tale. The man who harassed her comes off like a sleaze. Nagla comes off as unhinged. And the journalists who give her a platform look so desperate for news over the holiday that they’ll call up any loon with something inflammatory to say, dress her rants up as fact, and then get a second story out of saying their previous story was untrue.

There are millions of stupid people with inflammatory things to say in this world. Let’s not neglect them. If Youm al-Sabaa‘s journalist will send me his email address, I promise I will supply him with one inflammatory and inaccurate quote collected from someone on the streets of Cairo a day, so long as he stops calling Nagla.

1060 Free Hoder

Iranian bloggers are reporting that Hossein Derakhshan‘s family says he is detained. Online activists have set up a Farsi blog calling for his release.

Free Hoder. Since Hossein first told me he was thinking of going back to Iran, I have feared I would have to say that one day. Now I think we all must. The people who write about Iran professionally will have to verify, but I have no reason to disbelieve the bloggers’ reports.

Hossein, if you read this when you get out (may it be soon), sorry for calling for the authorities to release you. I know you asked people not to do so. But I can’t sit on my hands while you’re in jail.

Update: The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran has confirmed the bloggers’ reports. Hadi Ghaemi, who runs the project, is a thoughtful, careful and knowledgeable researcher, and I respect his work:

(11 December 2008) The family of Hussein Derakhshan, an Iranian blogger whose whereabouts have been a mystery for more than a month, has confirmed his detention, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said today.

The Campaign called on the Iranian Judiciary to either immediately release Derakhshan or to charge him with a recognizable offence under the law and provide for due process and a fair trial.

“We are extremely concerned for Derakhshan’s health and safety. His family should have immediate access to him,” said Hadi Ghaemi, the Campaign’s spokesperson.

Derakhshan, known by his blogging name Hoder, is a controversial figure who wrote in both Persian and English. He returned to Iran a few months ago after several years of living abroad.

The Campaign has confirmed that security agents from the office of Tehran’s Prosecutor General, Saeed Mortazavi, raided his home in Tehran on 1 November 2008, detaining him and confiscating his personal belongings. For several weeks, rumors have circulated on the internet about his detention, but Iranian authorities have provided no information about his situation.

Since his detention, Derakhshan made four brief phone calls to his family, each lasting no more than a minute. His family has not been allowed to visit him and does not know where he is being held. Phone calls from Derakhshan to his family stopped two weeks ago, raising serious concerns for his health and safety.

“It is heartbreaking for any family not to know where their son is, what the charges against him are, and have no official explanations,” Ghaemi said.

“In this, as in many other cases, authorities are exercising raw power over citizens with no explanation, no accountability, and no transparency,” he said.

The Campaign called on the Iranian Judiciary to fully respect Derakhshan’s rights under international standards and Iranian law and allow his family and lawyer to visit him.

(Thanks PH)

1053 2:53 of Viewing Pleasure

Thank you, Ahmed

1048 ‘Cops and Bloggers’

Journalist and blogger Scarr chases a detained blogger and a journalist from a police station to State Security headquarters, records the telling details that don’t usually make it into articles, and leaves “with renewed respect for the junior lawyers who put in the leg work running from police station to police station after detainees, trying to prevent them disappearing into the system.”

The lawyer said that the ma2moor “just wanted to get rid of” as many of the people in the police station as possible, because the cage was getting crowded. Ahmed later told us that many of the detainees had been brought in from a local slum area where there had been a fight. What looked like the relatives of these people were sat opposite the police station. Women and children, one of whom was asleep across his mother’s lap. They were camped out under the huge, imposing tower of the Islamic Bank.

Ahmed also said that he had been held with men who had been in the police station “for five days without charge” and that they were beaten on a daily basis and generally kept in deplorable conditions. He said that one of these men lifted up his shirt to show him cigarette burns on his torso, inflicted by the police.

Ahmed was particularly moved by the plight of a female detainee was being held inside the police station with her 2 year-old daughter. The child was hungry, and Ahmed gave a policeman 20 LE to go and get her some food.
[Full Post…]

Whenever I’ve seen the Egyptian criminal system at work, it’s been because of some high-profile case. Every time, I’ve felt the same respect for the lawyers who chase people around police stations and the same unease at passing by the crowds of people who do disappear, all those who never get web banners, press releases, lawyers or trials. So thanks, Scarr, for writing about them too.

1044 Echoes of Mahalla… in Tunisia

Completely slammed with work and suffering from crippling IT problems, but wanted to flag 10 quick items:

1. I highly recommend Doshka ya Doshka, an excellent blog from Gaza by “a startled Anglo-Arab woman.” I have just subscribed to the RSS feed.

2. The case against editors and journalists from Al-Wafd and Al-Masry al-Youm for reporting on Egyptian real-estate developer Talaat Mostafa’s murder trial despite a gag order has been referred to trial. According to Al-Masry al-Youm, prosecutors have taken no action on another case, against editors and journalists from the government-owned Al-Ahram, Al-Akhbar, and Gomhuriya newspapers, for reporting on the trial.

3. Al-Masry al-Youm and Al-Wafd are also under fire from Amr Bargisi, who, in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, called them “Jew haters.” The following day, Al-Masry al-Youm ran a summary of his story.

4. Patrick Swayze is, alas, not dead yet.

5. The Muslim Brotherhood has promised to endorse Gamal Mubarak, the son, if President Hosni Mubarak, the father, resigns. Surely a bit tongue in cheek, but over the years I have heard from many people that they would forget their complaints about the president if he were to resign.

6. Speaking of the Brothers, another 28 were arrested in Marsa Matrouh and Alexandria last Saturday. The Press Syndicate’s Freedoms Committee is sponsoring a conference on behalf of Mohammed Adil and Mohammed Khairy, two Gaza solidarity activists with Brotherhood ties detained in a separate roundup last month. Both maintain blogs.

7. Echoes of Mahalla: Amnesty International is calling on the Tunisian government to investigate allegations that security forces tortured labor activists after demonstrations spread through Tunisia’s southeastern Gafsa region last summer:

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
PUBLIC STATEMENT
3 December 2008
Tunisia: Urgent investigation needed into alleged human rights violations in the Gafsa region

Amnesty International today called on the Tunisian government to order an independent investigation into allegations of torture and other abuses by security forces when quelling protests earlier this year in the Gafsa region on the eve of the trial of a local trade union leader and 37 others accused of fomenting the unrest. Adnan Hajji, Secretary General of local office of the General Union of Tunisian Workers (UGTT) in Redeyef, and his co-accused are due to go on trial on 4 December 2008 on charges including “forming a criminal group with the aim of destroying public and private property”. They could face up to more than ten years of imprisonment if convicted. At least six of 38 accused are to be tried in their absence.

In a letter to Tunisia’s Minister of Justice and Human Rights Béchir Tekkari, Amnesty International called for the authorities to disclose the outcome of an official investigation which they said had been set up after police opened fire on demonstrators on 6 June 2008, killing one man and injuring others, sparking allegations that police had used excessive force. The letter also detailed cases in which people suspected of organizing or participating in protests are reported to have been detained and tortured by police who forced them to sign incriminating statements that could be used against them at trial and falsified their arrest dates in official records.

BACKGROUND
The phosphate-rich Gafsa region, in south-east Tunisia, was wracked by a wave of popular protests in the first half of this year. They began in the town of Redeyef after the region’s major employer, the Gafsa Phosphate Company, announced the results of a recruitment competition. These were denounced as fraudulent by those who were unsuccessful and others, including the UGTT, and the protests, which developed into a more general protest about high unemployment and rising living costs, then spread to other towns as the authorities deployed large numbers of police and other security forces into the region. Hundreds of protestors were arrested and more than 140 have been charged with offences, some of whom have been convicted and sentenced to jail terms.

For the continuing repercussions of labor unrest in Mahalla, see 3arabawy.

8. Jordan is threatening to jail smokers.

9. Peter Lagerquist has an excellent article in MERIP about the riots in Acre last October. Who can resist an article with such headings as “hummus and demography?”

10. Where (not very) particular people congregate: An online map of bars in downtown Cairo, including such helpful information as how much a Stella costs and whether shisha is also available.

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