January 2011

» Dub FX

by Attention to the Unseen 01.23.2011

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It’s nice to have Twitter, but it’s even nicer to have the army on your side

by News Sources 01.22.2011

Noting that Tunisia did not just have a Twitter revolution, Doyle McManus writes: Now that the dust has settled, it’s clearer that Tunisia’s upheaval, like all revolutions, arose from local circumstances that don’t foretell what will happen anywhere else. Ben Ali’s government was a family-run kleptocracy; the economy was stagnant; and most important, he had [...]

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Turkey’s dynamic role in the Middle East

by Paul Woodward 01.22.2011

James Traub writes: In the fall of 2009, relations between Serbia and Bosnia — never easy since the savage civil war of the 1990s — were slipping toward outright hostility. Western mediation efforts had failed. Ahmet Davutoglu, the foreign minister of Turkey, offered to step in. It was a complicated role for Turkey, not least [...]

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WikiLeaks, the internet and democracy

by News Sources 01.22.2011

(H/t Pulse.) Share

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Lebanon Druze leader Walid Jumblatt sides with Hezbollah in crisis

by News Sources 01.22.2011

The Los Angeles Times reports: The U.S.-backed parliamentary coalition led by caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri was on the verge of losing its tenuous grip on the Lebanese government after a key politician defected Friday to support the Shiite militant group Hezbollah. The decision by Walid Jumblatt, a Druze chieftain and longtime player amid Lebanon’s [...]

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Algeria’s midwinter uproar

by News Sources 01.22.2011

Jack Brown writes: Soon after the onset of protests which eventually toppled Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, a wave of riots swept through Algeria as well, with many neighborhoods in the capital of Algiers and dozens of smaller cities overwhelmed by thousands of angry young men who closed down streets with burning tires, [...]

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Protests in Jordan

by News Sources 01.22.2011

Brian Whitaker writes: The “Tunisia effect” continues. Several thousand protesters took to the streets of Jordan yesterday, for the second Friday in succession. More than 5,000 marched in the centre of Amman, with smaller demonstrations in several other cities, according to agency reports. The protesters are said to have ranged across the spectrum, from leftists [...]

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Al Jazeera owned the Tunisia story

by News Sources 01.21.2011

Reuters reports: As events unfolded in Tunisia, a country where Al Jazeera’s bureau had been closed, the channel again innovated among Arab broadcasters by using mobile phone footage and social media. It no longer has a news monopoly in the Arabic satellite TV space. And some viewers say it treads a fine line between reporting [...]

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Islamists and the democratization of the Middle East

by News Sources 01.21.2011

Olivier Roy notes that there was no visible Islamist dimension to the uprising in Tunisia. Instead, the protesters were calling for freedom, democracy and multi-party elections. Put more simply, they just wanted to get rid of the kleptocratic ruling family. At the end, when the real “Islamist” leaders returned from exile in the West (yes [...]

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Truth and politics

by Paul Woodward 01.21.2011

“An opinion can be argued with; a conviction is best shot,” wrote TE Lawrence in The Evolution of a Revolt. Whatever ones views about the legitimacy or morality of the use of violence, it’s hard not to at least sympathize with the sentiment. How indeed is it possible to reason with those who are impervious [...]

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Tunisia’s Islamist democrats

by News Sources 01.21.2011

The New York Times reports: Ali Larayedh was imprisoned and tortured for 14 years for his role as a leader of the outlawed Islamist movement here, then hounded for the past six years by the omnipresent Tunisian secret police. But six days after the ouster of this country’s dictator, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, Mr. Larayedh [...]

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Islamophobia ‘acceptable’ in UK

by News Sources 01.21.2011

Al Jazeera reports: Prejudice against Muslims has “passed the dinner-table test” and become socially acceptable in Britain, the chairwoman of the country’s ruling Conservative party has said. Sayeeda Warsi, the first British Muslim woman to join the country’s cabinet, said in a speech at the University of Leicester on Thursday that Britain is becoming a [...]

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Ira Chernus: Obama trapped by myth

by TomDispatch 01.21.2011

Reprinted with permission of TomDispatch.com In New York City, my hometown, as in so many cities across the country, a hard-pressed local government and a desperate transit authority are cutting back on services while hiking prices for a deteriorating subway and bus system. For night workers and those out in the lonely, dark early morning hours, some [...]

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U.N. resolution on Israeli settlements puts Obama in a diplomatic bind

by News Sources 01.21.2011

Tony Karon writes: It was always going to be a struggle for the U.S. to dissuade its Arab allies from going ahead with a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements. But last week’s “people power” rebellion in Tunisia has made Washington’s effort to lobby against the plan more difficult. Tunisia has given the autocratic [...]

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Blackwater founder backs mercenary crusade in Somalia

by News Sources 01.21.2011

The New York Times reports: Erik Prince, the founder of the international security giant Blackwater Worldwide, is backing an effort by a controversial South African mercenary firm to insert itself into Somalia’s bloody civil war by protecting government leaders, training Somali troops, and battling pirates and Islamic militants there, according to American and Western officials. [...]

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Mahmoud Abbas fears the same fate as Tunisia’s ousted president

by Paul Woodward 01.20.2011

It seems natural that residents in the occupied West Bank where two intifadas failed to drive out the Israelis would want to celebrate Tunisia’s successful uprising — but that isn’t allowed under Mahmoud Abbas’ watch. He, it would seem, identifies more strongly with Tunisia’s ousted president, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. When Palestinians gathered in Ramallah [...]

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How the Obama administration hyped the WikiLeaks threat

by Paul Woodward 01.20.2011

Glenn Greenwald writes (and my comments follow): To say that the Obama administration’s campaign against WikiLeaks has been based on wildly exaggerated and even false claims is to understate the case. But now, there is evidence that Obama officials have been knowingly lying in public about these matters. The long-time Newsweek reporter Mark Hosenball — [...]

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Gaza doctor Izzeldin Abuelaish two years after Israeli attack that killed 3 daughters & niece

by News Sources 01.20.2011

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Self-fulfilling prophecy: Dennis Ross doesn’t think anything can get accomplished

by News Sources 01.20.2011

Ali Gharib lays out the multiplicity of reasons why Dennis Ross — “a three-time-loser on Israeli-Palestinian peace-making” — lacks the competence for any role in the Middle East. I was struck by an article by Nathan Guttman in the legendary Jewish Daily Forward about Dennis Ross and George Mitchell jockeying for the position of Obama [...]

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The escalation in racism among Israeli students

by News Sources 01.20.2011

Ynet reports: Three weeks after the publication of a petition calling on Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar to take action against racism spreading within schools and the general public, teachers told Ynet about the harsh reality they are forced to face daily. In one case, a 12th grade student of a northern Israeli school wrote “Death [...]

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» Two Men

by Attention to the Unseen 01.20.2011

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Tunisia: “The Islamists want democracy”

by News Sources 01.19.2011

The Guardian reports: Tunisia’s interim president, Foued Mebazaa, yesterday vowed “a complete break with the past” to calm fears that the revolution was being hijacked by the presence of the dictatorship’s ruling party in the interim government. In his first televised speech, Mebazaa promised a “revolution of dignity and freedom” following the ousting of Tunisia’s [...]

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WikiLeaks and Tunisia

by News Sources 01.19.2011

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