Tag Archives: Arab Spring

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Mona Eltahawi Brings The Anger Into Arab Feminism

I always believed that Arab women should be angrier than they actually are. Their stoicism in face of what is clearly a raw deal has always amazed me. So I was very pleased when I read this.

The author Mona El-Tahawi is something of a fringe, but her latest article in Foreign Policy is so explosive and so emotionally intense that after reading it you’ll feel like being hit by a truck.

I wouldn’t have chosen her words or her tone. I accept that her traumatic experiences are not typical of Arab women (and especially Lebanese ones), but I admire her no-holds-barrel tell-it-like-it-is style that is the rhetorical equivalent of burning her bras and throwing them at her tormentors.

 

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A Laundry-List of What March 14 Did Wrong

A good piece by Hussain abdul Hussain (a self-described Shiaa-born March-14 supporter) on why March 14, 2005 did not turn out to be the beginning of spring in Lebanon. It’s too late to change my blog’s name but he makes some very good points on the failings of the political parties that comprised the March 14 gathering, the failing of the March 14 general secretariat and the overal disinterest by the movement to form a truly civil and democratic country.

Bonus: Nobel Laureate Shirine Abadi makes similar arguments for why we should stop calling the Arab uprisings the “Arab Spring”.. (Hat Tip: Mich)

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How One Syrian Slipped Videos Past The Airport’s Custom Officers

The Toronto Star:

A few hours before leaving his home in Syria to begin a new life in Canada, Mostafa picked up a kitchen knife and began cutting into his left arm near the elbow. [...] Without telling anyone his plan, Mostafa transferred the videos from his iPhone to a Nokia micro memory card that was smaller than his finger nail. He slipped the memory card under the skin of his arm, covered it with a large bandage, and drove with his parents to the airport in Damascus.

Watch the videos here..

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The Anatomy of Syrian Revolution YouTube Videos

Qifa Nabki noticed what resembles a common format in those revolution Youtube Videos:

They’re typically shot on a camera phone by a young Syrian male who begins by announcing the date and place of the video. We see scenes of bullet-scarred buildings, maybe a dead body. Sometimes, the videos are filmed during a battle scene: little puffs of concrete dust drift gently to the ground from a building or mosque that is allegedly under attack by machine-gun wielding troops or rebels. The violence is usually telegraphed: its perpetrators are invisible snipers or artillery commanders, improvised explosive devices and insurgents. We see the effects, hardly ever the crimes themselves.

As Elias noticed, the door is wide open for cynicism. To me what I find most baffling is the complete lack of good quality videos (with some notable exceptions). I understand why many videos are produced using mobile phones, but you can also get really good quality videos using some point-and-shoot cameras that are on sale everywhere, cheap and as easy to hide as phones. Even bandwidth is not an excuse because many Syrians are crossing to neighboring Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey and Jordan. Is it possible that not a single good quality amateur video has slipped out?

Sometimes I feel that TV stations are intentionally lowering the quality of the videos to make them more “authentic” and “dramatic”.

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❊ The Future Movement Needs More Than Distancing Itself from The Salafis. It Needs To Stand Up To Them

– A Threat? –

The Lebanese Salafis are feeling confident. They are emboldened by the rise of Islamists in the Arab world and by the void in Lebanese Sunni politics that Mr. Saad Hariri has left behind.

They are making a play for power. They are coming up with charismatic leaders, organizing demonstrations and are getting louder than ever. Today’s demonstration is their first in Beirut, and they are getting a sympathetic ear in March 14 media because they are expressing the people’s anger against the monstrous Syrian regime.

The good news is that they’re not about to dominate Lebanese Sunni politics any time soon. They don’t own media conglomerates and they are far from Lebanese mainstream public opinion. But they can cause great harm to the Future Movement (FM), a movement which until recently was the de-facto umbrella movement for most Sunni parties in Lebanon.

The FM likes to sell itself as the voice of Sunni moderation, an image that is diametrically opposed to that of the Salafis. And yet whenever the Salafis show up in public events, The March 8 propaganda machine manages to portray them as an extension of Hariri’s embattled political empire.

This is bad because it’s scaring Christians and other minorities who are sitting on the fence and watching how Islamists in the Arab world (and Nigeria) are massacring Christians and driving them away. And yet the FM, beholden to the Saudis who also support the Salafis, can’t pull off anything more than issuing weak statements to distance themselves from the hardliners.

In the past, the FM got away with cozying up to the Islamists, but in today’s world this is complete folly. Future TV and Almustaqbal newspaper should keep featuring moderate Muslims lambasting the medieval thinking of the Salafists, their antiquated treatment of women, their penchant for violence and their deeply intolerant beliefs. The salafis should be constantly attacked, ridiculed, made fun of until any association with them becomes an embarrassment to any average Lebanese Muslim.

Also: Lebanon’s Suspended Sunnis.

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“Syrians should beware of ‘friends’ as much as enemies”

Brian Whitaker on the participants of the “Friends of Syria” conference:

There is something surreal about a group of “friends” promoting change in Syria that includes so many autocrats and, as one of its leading lights, the country most notorious for resisting progress: Saudi Arabia. [...] The reality, of course, is that for all countries attending, national interests (or what they perceive as their national interests) come first and the Syrian people second. In some cases a distant second, even among the “brotherly” Arabs.

Great point, but Whitaker did not mention the honorable exception: The Democratic government of Tunisia, the organizer of the conference and arguably the only country that wishes for Syria what it had itself: A transfer to a real people-powered democracy.

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Syrian Activists Using Carrier Pigeons to Communicate?

Very nice story (French) to share. But I looked at the YouTube video and something felt wrong. I finally realized what it is: It’s really weird to use a cellphone camera to take a video of a message being sent by a carrier pigeon, and then upload that video to YouTube. Why not send the message using a cellphone in the first place?

I’m not saying it’s fake, I’m just wondering. Perhaps the receivers don’t have internet access because they’re being bombarded? But would a pigeon fly into an area that is being shelled?