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August 2007 Archives

August 29, 2007

Preview of the Moroccan elections, part III

It is a very fitting symbol that former interior minister Driss Basri died today Monday of cirrhosis (he was a heavy drinker, as many sécuritaires tend to be nowadays), a few days into the official electoral campaign for the Moroccan House of Representatives (1). Deputy minister of the interior from to 1974 to 1977, he was Morocco's all-powerful minister of the interior from 1977 to a few months after the death of the late king, Hassan II, in 1999. If the few elections held before his time - general elections of 1963 and 1970, local elections of 1960 - were too few and perhaps too early to establish Morocco's democratic credentials (that of 1963 was clean while that of 1970 was a sham), the ones held thereafter were managed in a way that allowed him to run the whole gamut of his manipulative, divisive, corruptive and deeply undemocratic electoral techniques.

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Posted by Ibn Kafka at 06:16 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack
Filed Under: North Africa , Political Development

August 27, 2007

Economic Development, Risk Taking & Culture (or excessive attention to culture)

Taking cue from from my own Lounsbury comment, a slightly modified and updated set of thoughts on this IHT article: Egypt searches for a balance that rewards risk-takers while valuing the past, although as I said on The Lounsbury, to be fair it is an AP article.

While it has aspects of breathless gullibility, it's not without a discussion of evolving business culture...or aspirations of evolving business culture. But in advance of my comments, a few thoughts.

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Posted by The Lounsbury at 06:11 AM | Comments (12) | TrackBack
Filed Under: Business, Private , Economic Development , MENA Region General , North Africa

August 25, 2007

Syria's Consideration: A Realistic Travelogue in A Surprising Place

I must say something nice about the Washington Times, which normally has MENA-related fare along the lines of FoxNews and this type of swill. I saw this story a short time back of a travel-writer's visit to Syria in the dead-wood version, but not online. Now I see it is online. Amazingly, the writer actually seems to have taken note of the place and reported it and experienced what normal travelers there would notice, although one might find it too saccharine for its non-comments on the ubiquitous Leader & Family photos, or the pervasive poverty. Still, entitled sincerely and without guile The Kindness of Syrians, it is well done and refreshingly rooted in relevant reality; excerpts for you link-avoiders below the break. (Elsewhere on deeper questions of wealth and poverty, AbuFares has this to say; more on that at another time. Now back to the W. Times.)

Continue reading "Syria's Consideration: A Realistic Travelogue in A Surprising Place"

Posted by Matthew Hogan at 09:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Filed Under: Economic Development , Gender Issues , Islam General , Levant , MENA Region General , Media , Op-Ed , Political Development , Society & Culture

August 22, 2007

Material Support

Via Jim Henley, a wide-ranging interview with Nir Rosen on "Democracy Now". He covers the situation in Iraq, which is depressing but could hardly be surprising to anyone who's been following the news at all closely. There's some stuff about Nahr El Bared camp in Lebanon, the clash between Fatah al Islam and the Lebanese government – Rosen falls into the "Hariri's allies, if not Hariri himself, were supporting Fatah al Islam" school of analysis there.

But the thing that brought me up short was the discussion of Iraqi refugees' prospects for entry into the United States:

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Posted by tomscud at 02:00 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Filed Under: Iraq War

Preview of the Moroccan elections, Part II

In my previous post on the subject, I underlined the considerable constitutional preeminence afforded to the King of Morocco. But as if this wasn't enough, the judicial and institutional practice has gone even further in entrenching the absolute character of the Moroccan monarchy.

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Posted by Ibn Kafka at 08:31 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
Filed Under: North Africa , Political Development

August 19, 2007

Preview of the Moroccan elections, Part I

Few people outside Morocco - and indeed inside Morocco as well - will have noticed that the elections to the House of Representatives (majliss annouab - chambre des représentants) is due in a few weeks time. They could be excused: as Ahmed Benchemsi, publisher of the independent weeklies Nichane and Tel Quel, wrote in an editorial which has led to his prosecution for crime of lèse-majesté, everyone in Morocco knows that the important decisions on the fate of the country have not been, are not, and will not be, for the elected representatives of the people to make.

Continue reading "Preview of the Moroccan elections, Part I"

Posted by Ibn Kafka at 10:26 AM | Comments (26) | TrackBack
Filed Under: North Africa , Political Development

August 16, 2007

Iraq: Ahhh, the military is infiltrated by Shia...

I found this quite comical really: Andrew Sullivan takes cue from credulous Totten in noticing, aha, the Iraqi military is rather riddled with Shia militia members or sympathizers; although the bit about Mahdi Army being Iran's "major proxy in Iraq... in effect, the Iraqi branch of Hezbollah" is comical on the part of Totten.

Well in any case, watching the Americans blunder about with Iraq (and bloody hell, Iran) now is no doubt what it was like to watch Vietnam from afar, in the early 1970s. Already clearly lost, and already clearly a disaster... they try desperately to convince themselves something can be done. Responsibility and all that.

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Posted by The Lounsbury at 09:39 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Filed Under: Iraq War

August 15, 2007

MENA, Credit Crunches, Sovereign Funds & Fear Mongering: Expanded Thought

Expanding on an earlier Lounsbury post or three, that is the preceding on Lounsbury on Credit Crashes & MENA as well as a brief note on what I expect to be a source of fear mongering (although I may be wrong), a few thoughts on the credit melt-down and MENA. Brief and semi-stale.

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Posted by The Lounsbury at 04:13 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Filed Under: Economic Development , Foreign Policy & MENA , MENA Region General

August 13, 2007

A Cheney is only as strong as the weakest link

This American Enterprise Institute resident's expert comments, from circa 1994, are making the rounds, as well they should. Perhaps no one in the current Administration had encountered these thoughts, during the buildup to the Iraq invasion.

Posted by Matthew Hogan at 01:29 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Filed Under: Foreign Policy & MENA , Iraq War , Levant , MENA Region General , Political Development , US Foreign Policy

August 12, 2007

Blacklisting little tiny radical groups

The first thing that came to mind in reading that that the Americans have "blacklisted" a little radical group in a Leb refugee camp was "oh my, I guess they won't be able to launder any assets through buying discounted mortgage assets.... Well, actually that's not true, my first thought was "why do they bother?"

I have no doubt it took more expenditure on the part of the Americans to go through the process, than this little marginal group has ever seen. Freezes their assets.... for a group of flea-like importance relative to US interests. In the Americans fixation in a Comintern / Soviet type threat, they descend into comical acts; wasteful as well.

Posted by The Lounsbury at 07:45 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Filed Under: Foreign Policy & MENA , Islamism , Levant , MENA Region General , US Foreign Policy

August 10, 2007

Influence, the Market for: MENA & Delusions - Lebanese Examples

The recent elections in Lebanon (or Leb Land as I like to style it) produced an interesting result although not one of such great surprise, except to perhaps the Tottens and Friedmans of the world, that is, the blow-back of incompetence and utterly delusional policy based on wishful thinking and unresolved contradiction on the part of the Great Power.

The NY Times article is a solid enough and illustrative of some issues long discussed here at Aqoul, notably the severe contradiction between American (but not only American, Western in general) "promotion" of democracy, and inattention to tied-in policies; never mind inability to take an appropriately rational "who's the best long-term bet for our fundamental interests" analytical view of potential allies in region - including the Islamists.

[It has been pointed out in comments that my comments on the article are undermined by the dodginess of the article premise - in particular the reality of the American connexion impact. As I am not watching Leb Land politics with great caution or interest, I'll simply issue this mea culpa for being suckered into ranting on too little basis. This being noted there is much other commentary remaining]

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Posted by The Lounsbury at 12:37 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
Filed Under: Foreign Policy & MENA , Levant , MENA Region General , Political Development , Religious Minorities

August 08, 2007

British "leftism" fails to address terrorism

Liberal Muslims living in the UK are increasingly angry towards the British government for its "leftish" "politically correctness" in addressing Islamic extremism and terrorism, according to Adel Darwish writing in TheMiddleEast. He notes that British prime minster Gordon Brown has outlawed the term "war on terror" and claims that after the Glasgow airport attack, neither Brown nor British home secretary Jacqui Smith "used words like Islamists, or Muslim terrorists; music to the ears of British muslim "leaders" (mostly self styled) and leftist commentators":

As refugees from the violent suppression and censorship of 1970s Arab-nationalism, liberal Arab journalists in London acknowledge their affiliation with the West. And it is they who saw more clearly than their British liberal and leftist colleagues the danger that the UK's lax immigration policies, and its ideologically driven multi-culturalism and political correctness policy, poses to liberal thinking Muslims desperately trying to reform the minds of young Muslims.

As Abdul Rahman Al Rashed, former editor of Asharq Al-Awsat, whose daily column is a cornerstone of the paper's liberal message observed: "I, and people like me, kept saying to the British authorities, you are allowing radicals in this country. These people were chased out of their own countries [for terrorist activities], and the British government chose to let them in. They [the British welfare agencies] pay for their housing and even pay for their lawyers to argue to allow them to extend their stay. This system is on auto-pilot."

Posted by secretdubai at 11:19 AM | Comments (31) | TrackBack
Filed Under: Terrorism

August 05, 2007

Honor Off Her: Fadlallah Fatwas Honor-Killing Out of {Shia} Islam

The practice of hyperpatriarchal societies of murdering suspect sexually-impure females, known as honor killing, and prevalent in the MENA region, in the ME far more than the NA parts, has been ruled unIslamic by Grand Ayatollah Fadlallah, Lebanon's leading Shiite Muslim figure. (This has appears to me a bit underreported, though to their semi-credit the story is noted by the creepshow bigots at Jihadwatch who then go on to argue that a fatwa against honor killings isn't really a fatwa against honor killings, because well, you know, it, um, well , it, anyway it makes sense to ignorant hate-spewers who claim to "get it" about Muslims, unlike us poor "dhimmis".) The fatwa, as some coverage notes but others in comments report differently, is not replicated much in Sunni circles to date. An analogy may be to southern American Christians who accomodated race-segregation even when some religious were not in favor, out of fear of public prejudice in favor of the practice. In any event, the fatwa's a cool thing, and it did not require the efforts of Irshad Manji. As far as I can tell, no comment by Ayaan Hirsi Ali on this, possibly because it doesn't compute?

Posted by Matthew Hogan at 09:48 PM | Comments (37) | TrackBack
Filed Under: Gender Issues , Islam & Politics , Islam General , Islamism , Levant , MENA Region General , Political Development , Religious Minorities

August 03, 2007

New Month, Old Tradition - August 2007 Edition

Shamefully late, I almost forgot our ancient and hoary tradition, which would be at once a sin and... well something.

Here again, time to comment, complain, suggest or whatever.

Posted by The Lounsbury at 01:49 PM | Comments (26) | TrackBack
Filed Under: Site News