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Democracy
Egypt: New Constitution Mixed on Support of Rights
![[Logo of Human Rights Watch.]](/content_images/3/sm_hrwlogoweb.jpg "[Logo of Human Rights Watch.]")
[The following statement was issued by Human Rights Watch on 30 November 2012.] The final draft of a constitution approved on 29 November 2012 by Egypt’s 100-member constituent assembly protects some rights but undermines others. The constitution, approved in the midst of a political standoff between the president and the judiciary, provides for basic protections against arbitrary detention and torture and for some economic rights but fails to end military trials of civilians or to protect freedom of expression and religion. The constitution drafting process has been extremely contentious, and a number of assembly members resigned in protest over what they said was the ...
Keep Reading »Dispatch from Mohamed Mahmoud Street: Egyptian Revolts
![[Protests on November 27th in Tahrir square against Morsi's constitutional declaration. Image originally posted to Flickr by Zeinab Mohamed.]](/content_images/3/sm_8223202131_7fbe7c06d0.jpg "[Protests on November 27th in Tahrir square against Morsi's constitutional declaration. Image originally posted to Flickr by Zeinab Mohamed.]")
“We are not thugs, and we are not criminals.” It is the sentence that every single protester in Mohamed Mahmoud Street used as they began to tell me about the protests that began on 19 November. That day is significant. It is the first anniversary of the “Mohamed Mahmoud Events,” when families and friends of those killed in the Tahrir uprisings of last year gathered to demand justice, and when the police dispersed their peaceful gathering. These anniversary “events” began three days before Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi’s constitutional declaration that ordered a slew of measures: the unconstitutional removal of the public prosecutor, the curtailment of the ...
Keep Reading »The President and the Fatal Trilateral Logic of US, Egyptian and Israeli Relations
![[Tahrir clashes on November 26th. Image originally posted to Flickr by Jonathan Rashad.]](/content_images/3/sm_8221665158_f11f315b04.jpg "[Tahrir clashes on November 26th. Image originally posted to Flickr by Jonathan Rashad.]")
In 2007, Mohammed Morsi, then chairman of the Brotherhood’s political department and member of the Executive Bureau, complained of the inability of Washington to match its rhetoric on promoting democracy in Egypt. He said that Israel had no interest in a democratic Egypt as it “would do more to support the Palestinians.” Now Morsi, having brokered a Gaza ceasefire, has shown that his policy on the Palestinians is no more imaginative than Mubarak-era policies and, partly as a result of US approval, has undertaken a democratic rollback that has ignited Egypt’s streets. Morsi has inadvertently, and in part, fallen victim to the trilateral logic of Egypt’s bilateral ...
Keep Reading »America's Native Prisoners of War
![[Screen shot from video below. Photo by Aaron Huey.]](/content_images/3/sm_amercasprinsonerofwar.jpg "[Screen shot from video below. Photo by Aaron Huey.]")
Two years ago, photographer, activist, and storyteller Aaron Huey gave a presentation called America's Native Prisoner's of War at the University of Denver. The presentation is a mix of photography and narrative, and traces the ongoing history of settling and occupying indigenous American land. The format of TEDx talks makes in-depth and serious discussions about important topics almost impossible. However, this presentation is exceptional in both its argument and its emotional rawness. Today, three days after “Thanksgiving Day,” it is important to remember that in the United States, settler colonialism has been so complete, and so successful, that the world has ...
Keep Reading »The “End of the Two-State Solution” Spells Apartheid and Ethnic Cleansing, not Binationalism and Peace
![[Portion of Israeli separation wall being built. Image by ISM Palestine. From Wikimedia Commons.]](/content_images/3/sm_800px-AL-WalajaApartheidWall.jpg "[Portion of Israeli separation wall being built. Image by ISM Palestine. From Wikimedia Commons.]")
Declaring the death of the two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become increasingly fashionable among growing sections of both right and left-wing streams of Palestinians and Israelis. The late Palestinian intellectual Edward Said was one of the first to propagate this notion in his essays on the failure of the Oslo accords and on bi-nationalism. Since then, and in the wake of a second Palestinian uprising, a unilateral Israeli redeployment from the Gaza Strip, a vicious one-sided Israeli war on the same territory, and a comatose negotiations process, it is little wonder exasperated observers and participants are increasingly declaring the ...
Keep Reading »The One-State Solution and Rebuilding the Palestinian National Movement: An Interview with Awad Abdel Fattah (Part Two)
![[Image of an NDA billboard in Israel. Image from Wikimedia Commons.]](/content_images/3/sm_PikiWiki_Israel_750_elections_2009_שלט_בחירות_2009.JPG "[Image of an NDA billboard in Israel. Image from Wikimedia Commons.]")
[This is the second installment of a two-part interview. Part One was also published on Jadaliyya on 16 November 2012.] Jonathan Cook (JC): So what is the most effective role Palestinian citizens can play in Israeli politics, assuming that a Jewish state will always exclude them from the centers of power? Awad Abdel Fattah (AAF): Our traditional strength derived from the fact that we, as a community, survived the ethnic cleansing of 1948 [the nakba]. We remained in our homeland, even as it was transformed into a Jewish state. But today, our strength derives from something different: we pose the biggest challenge to Israel’s claim to be a ...
Keep Reading »Inhale Reality, Exhale the Truth
![[Political rally for US President Barack Obama on the Pentacrest of the University of Iowa. Image by Douglas Jones via Wikimedia Commons.]](/content_images/3/sm_PentacrestObamaRallyWide.JPG "[Political rally for US President Barack Obama on the Pentacrest of the University of Iowa. Image by Douglas Jones via Wikimedia Commons.]")
Scattered are the lunatics, like rats, scurrying across the floor in panic when the lights are turned on. For forty years they have assumed that the cultural world of the United States is to their advantage. Hatred of the outsider and of women distinguished their social view. Theirs is the rhetoric of freedom and liberty papering over, lightly, a politics of suffocation. The main word was No: no to this, no to that, no to a woman’s right to dignity, no to the unfurling of the full personality of the outsider; no to the social wage: public transport, public schools, public health care, public welfare, and of course no to getting high. This election revealed that ...
Keep Reading »Urgent Call for Kurdish Hunger Strikers in Turkey
![[Protest in support of Kurdish hunger strikers in Berlin. Image by Thomas Rossi Rassloff via Flickr]](/content_images/3/sm_kurdsignhungerweb.jpg "[Protest in support of Kurdish hunger strikers in Berlin. Image by Thomas Rossi Rassloff via Flickr]")
[The following letter is being circulated as of 3 November 2012 with respect to Kurdish prisoners on hunger strike in Turkey.] To Your Attention: Academicians from different disciplines and universities in Turkey have started a new campaign in the face of the hunger strike of 683 Kurdish detainees in Turkish prisons. Sixty-four of them have passed their fifty-third day while seventy-nine more have been continuing their strike for forty-three days. The prime minister of Turkey has denied the existence of hunger strikes in a press conference in Germany at the exact same time when the Minister of Justice declared in Turkey that 683 prisoners are in hunger strike in ...
Keep Reading »Is the Sky Falling? Press and Internet Censorship Rises in Jordan
![[Jordanian political cartoonist Nasser al-Ga’fari’s work is frequently featured in the local daily newspaper Al-Ghad. This cartoon satirizes Jordanian King Abdullah II’s famous quote, “The sky is the limit for press freedoms in the kingdom,” spoken more than a decade ago. Al-Ga’fari portrays the government, as represented by the man on a ladder, covering an illusionary sky with grey paint from a bucket labeled “Press Law.”]](/content_images/3/sm_basmafida000.jpg "[Jordanian political cartoonist Nasser al-Ga’fari’s work is frequently featured in the local daily newspaper Al-Ghad. This cartoon satirizes Jordanian King Abdullah II’s famous quote, “The sky is the limit for press freedoms in the kingdom,” spoken more than a decade ago. Al-Ga’fari portrays the government, as represented by the man on a ladder, covering an illusionary sky with grey paint from a bucket labeled “Press Law.”]")
Since January 2011, the Jordanian political scene has been significantly affected by the waves of change in the region collectively known as “the Arab Spring.” Emboldened by regional events, some fear that barriers have been broken in Jordan as political and labor activists throughout the country have taken to the streets demanding greater governmental accountability, an end to neoliberal economic policies, and economic corruption, and political representation. Jordanian labor activism expanded exponentially in 2011. In 2011 alone, Jordan Labor Watch, an initiative of the Phenix Center for Economics and Informatics Studies, documented over 800 labor actions. Significant ...
Keep Reading »Letter Concerning Removal of Professor Rula Quawas from Her Post as Dean at the University of Jordan
![[Logo for Committee on Academic Freedom of the Middle East Studies Association. Image from MESA website]](/content_images/3/sm_Image-CAF-MESA.jpg "[Logo for Committee on Academic Freedom of the Middle East Studies Association. Image from MESA website]")
[The following letter was issued by the Committee on Academic Freedom of the Middle East Studies Association concerning the removal of Professor Rula Quawas from her position as Dean of the Faculty of Foreign Languages at the University of Jordan after a her students produced and published a video on sexual harrassment. To view the video, click here.] 26 October 2012 Dr. Ikhleif Tarawneh President University of Jordan Amman 11942, Jordan Dear President Tarawneh, I write to you on behalf of the Committee on Academic Freedom (CAF) of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) to express our concern over the dismissal of Professor Rula Quawas ...
Keep Reading »دستور الثورة..الوصاية مستمرة
![[تصوير سارة كار]](/content_images/3/sm_amr_photo.jpg "[تصوير سارة كار]")
القراءة الأولية لمسودة باب الحقوق والحريات فى الدستور الجديد تظهر أن القيود الثلاثة المفروضة على حريات الأفراد والجماعات المشكلة لقوام هذه الأمة والتي نشأت فى خضم عملية بناء الدولة الحديثة عبر زمنيّ الاستعمار والتحرر الوطني مازالت حاضرة فى ذهن كتّاب دستور الثورة. نعني بهذه القيود أشكال ثلاثة رئيسية من الوصاية: الوصاية على الحق فى التنظيم والحركة المستقلة للجمهور العام وما يتطلبه ويقتضيه من حريات، الوصاية على ضمير الأفراد ومايستتبع ذلك من تقييد لحريات الاعتقاد والعبادة وأخيراً الوصاية على الجسد والسلوكيات العاطفية والجنسية، وخصوصاً جسد المرأة المُعتقل بشكل حصري داخل مجال الأسرة البرجوازية والمُنظَّم بقوانين تعتمد على تفسيرات متشددة للتراث الإسلامي. ...
Keep Reading »Libyan Eastern Tribal Chiefs, Population, and Government (Part 1 of 2)
![[Image from the 15 September meeting in Benghazi. Image by Andrea Khalil.]](/content_images/3/sm_ScreenShot2012-09-25at10.49.03AM.png.jpg "[Image from the 15 September meeting in Benghazi. Image by Andrea Khalil.]")
On 15 September 2012, the tribal chiefs of Libya’s eastern region held a meeting to announce their solutions to the recent spate of violence, which culminated in the attack on the US consulate on 11 September. Although invitations were extended to government officials at this meeting, the tribes announced a clearly critical stance vis-a-vis the government’s weak politics, at times condemning its performance and thus affirming a new capacity to criticize the Libyan state. At 10:00 AM, the chiefs and their guests began to arrive at a wedding hall in Benghazi. When I arrived at the meeting, I was surprised to see a half a dozen or so security guards standing at the ...
Keep Reading »Social Justice and the Draft Constitution
The political economic system that the revolution rose up against was not successfully eliminated because it is built on an alliance between political despotism and unreserved capitalism, monopoly and association. This has resulted in a marriage between power, money and mounds of brazen corruption that we have yet to entirely discover and that is bound to leave an enormous legacy of social injustice. Therefore, revolution forces or its advocates should provide a sound foundation to establish social ...
Keep Reading »Afghanistan: The Long, Hard Road to the 2014 Transition
[The following report was issued by International Crisis Group on 8 October 2012.] Afghanistan: The Long, Hard Road to the 2014 Transition Executive Summary Plagued by factionalism and corruption, Afghanistan is far from ready to assume responsibility for security when U.S. and NATO forces withdraw in 2014. That makes the political challenge of organising a credible presidential election and transfer of power from President Karzai to a successor that year all the more daunting. A repeat of ...
Keep Reading »Democracy, Democracy, But The Courts Can’t Touch Me
Through the release of a controversial set of executive decrees, President Mohamed Morsi has granted himself unheralded powers—powers normally reserved for dictators, not democratic leaders. The raft of decrees effectively renders him as “above the law,” meaning that the jurisdiction of Egypt’s courts no longer applies to the Egyptian president, or any of his Islamist-controlled executive bodies—an unprecedented move that not even Hosni Mubarak himself dared to employ. The promises of democracy, social ...
Keep Reading »الثورة بصفة شخصية
تحت ضوء عمدان الإنارة البرتقالي، امتلأ الميدان بالهتافات. هتافاتٍ متفرقة على كل ناصية؛ كان الشهر السادس من العام 2012، في الفترة بين الجولتين الأولى والثانية من الانتخابات الرئاسية، وكانت الثورة في حالة ارتعاشٍ. بينما لعبت السياسة لعبتها وراء الأبواب المغلقة. كان الميدان ممتلئاً بعددٍ كبير من المتظاهرين، ولكنه خلا من أي روحٍ كانت؛ جاء الإخوان المسلمون يهتفون لمرشحهم محمد مرسي وضد المرشح الآخر، أحمد شفيق، والسلفيون عموماً ظهروا محتارين بعد قرار استبعاد مرشحهم الذي بذلوا دماءهم في مساندته، لكنهم ...
Keep Reading »ثورة . . . أما بعد
بعد عام من أول إنتخابات شرعية في تونس أضحت البلاد منذ تولي الحكومة الحالية - المنتخبة ديمقراطياً - ساحةً للعديد من الصراعات بين أديولوجيات مختلفة متناسيةً بذلك الأهداف الأساسية التي من أجلها أستشهد المئات من الشباب: شغل، حرية، كرامة وطنية ..إنه لمن المحزن مشاهدة الثورة تحيد عن مسارها تاركةً الشعب التونسي وآماله في مهب الريح .عام مضى، وكل ما كسبه الشعب التونسي هو تقلبات مزاجية صباحية مردها حكومة شرعية تنقصها الشفافية في التعامل مع مطامح شباب ثار على الظلم والطغيان، وأمل في حياة كريمة قوامها ...
Keep Reading »The One-State Solution and Rebuilding the Palestinian National Movement: An Interview with Awad Abdel Fattah (Part One)
[This is the first installment of a two-part interview. Part Two was also published on Jadaliyya on 16 November 2012.] The following interview was conducted in Nazareth with Awad Abdel Fattah, secretary general of the National Democratic Assembly party. The NDA (Al-Tajamoa in Arabic, and Balad in Hebrew) is one of three parties in the Israeli parliament representing Israel’s Palestinian minority, which numbers 1.4 million and comprises nearly a fifth of the country’s population. The NDA is best ...
Keep Reading »Open Letter to Egyptian President Morsy from Mahmoud Salem, @SandMonkey
[The following letter was published in Daily News Egypt on 5 November 2012.] Dear Morsy, Like many Egyptians, I was looking forward to your government’s attempt to implement its decision to close down shops at 10pm, out of the sheer comic value it would’ve presented. I set up an observation post in front of my building in Roxy Square, chairs, Shisha and all, to get a front row seat to the Tom & Jerry-style shenanigans that would take place the moment you tried to shut down the shops ...
Keep Reading »Reflections on Egypt's Draft Constitution
Constitutions define and set out relationships between the primary institutions of the state. They also suggest some of the compromises and agreements between powerful political forces that have been necessary to create these institutions and it gives us some hints about what the drafters think political life will look like. On balance it looks as if, through whatever compromises they have made, the drafters of the Egyptian constitution envisage a civil state based on a very powerful ...
Keep Reading »The London Statement: Members of Global Media Community Speak Out on Journalist Safety
[The following statement was issued by members of the global media community, including the Committee for the Protection of Journalists, on 18 October 2012.] The London Statement on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity Addressed to the UN Inter-Agency Meeting on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity in Vienna on 22-23 November 2012, organized by UNESCO and co-hosted by the United Nations Development Program, Office of the High Commissioner for Human ...
Keep Reading »Egypt’s Constituent Assembly: Contempt and Counterrevolution
The constitution has taken center stage this week in Egypt’s fraught political transition. On Tuesday, Cairo’s Administrative Court referred the matter of the Constituent Assembly’s legality to the Supreme Constitutional Court, and the SCC is not expected to rule on the matter for at least two months. Advocates for the Assembly saw the Administrative Court decision as affording the constitution-writing body an opportunity to wrap up the work it has undertaken in the past four months. Ever since the ...
Keep Reading »Anti-Apartheid: An Interview with Ronnie Kasrils
Ronnie Kasrils is a South African author and activist. He was Minister of Intelligence Services from 2004 to 2008, and member of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1987 to 2007. He was a founding member of Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) and lived in exile in London, Luanda, Maputo, Swaziland, Botswana and Lusaka where he served the ANC. He is currently a jury member of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine. I caught up with Kasrils in London where he participated in a book ...
Keep Reading »Letter Concerning Interruption of Study of Four Medical Students at King Faisal University in Saudi Arabia
[The following letter was written by the Committee on Academic Freedom of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA).] Dr. Abdullah Mohammed Al-Rubaish President, King Faisal University via email aalrubaish@kfu.edu.sa; president@ud.edu.sa Dr. Waleed Albu-Ali Dean, College of Medicine, King Faisal University via email wbuali@kfu.ed.sa Dr. Majid bin Ali Al-Naimi Minister of Higher Education, Bahrain via facsimile +973 1768 0161 Prince Faisal Bin Abdullah Bin Muhammad ...
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