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NYT Reporter Anthony Shadid Missing in Libya
![Shadid at Brown University, April 2010 [photo credit: AP]](/content_images/3/sm_063664-anthony-shadid.jpg "Shadid at Brown University, April 2010 [photo credit: AP]")
[UPDATED March 21: The NYT announced that the Libyan government has released all four reporters, who are reportedly on their way home. Reports indicate the Turkish government played a key role in negotiating their freedom.] [UPDATED March 18: In an interview with Christiane Amanpour for ABC, Saif Qadaffi said that the NYT reporters had been detained and were in Tripoli. The NYT announced that they believed the reporters would be released on Friday. We still await official word of their release.] “Weeks before the war started, I had promised myself that I would stay in Baghdad through the conflict, whatever the circumstances,” wrote NYT reporter Anthony Shadid in July ...
Keep Reading »Bahraini Protesters to Obama: Foreign Troops Unleash Violence Against Bahrainis And Claim to Have American Green Light!
![[Protestors In Bahrain: Image From The Assosiated Press]](/content_images/3/sm_658-Mideast_Bahrain_Protests.sff.standalone.prod_affiliate.8.jpg "[Protestors In Bahrain: Image From The Assosiated Press]")
[This is a public letter addressed to US President Barack Obama from by protesters in Bahrain under the name “Movement of 14 February.” The letter was circulated on March 15, 2011] Mr President, You certainly know about the Saudi and other gulf troops arriving to Bahrain to aid the government in clamping down the peaceful protesters. If you can find any legal, logical or ethical justification for this intervention, can you find any justification as well to them forming thugs attacking peaceful Bahrainis in their own homes and villages, killing them with live rounds, intimidating women and children in these areas, and boasting themselves with a "claimed" ...
Keep Reading »Don't Blame the King for Islamophobia, Blame the Kingdom
![[Image from unknown archive]](/content_images/3/sm_iphobe1.jpg "[Image from unknown archive]")
Peter King and the Homeland Security Committee’s hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims are upon us. Mainstream op-ed pieces have increasingly suggested the "divisiveness" of this New McCarthyism, especially after the Southern Poverty Law Center listed Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller’s Stop Islamification of America as a hate group and after the Nuremburg-like Tea Bagging of a Yorba Linda Mosque. Muslim-baiting is not new nor is the strategy to divide and quarantine immigrant communities. Daniel Pipes has long portrayed the Muslim and Arab American communities as a seditious “Danger Within.” Tea-Baggers, pro-Israel ...
Keep Reading »And the Late Night Comedians Shall Lead Us
![[Stephen Colbert and John Stewart. Image from Pulse2.com]](/content_images/3/sm_colbert-stewart.jpg "[Stephen Colbert and John Stewart. Image from Pulse2.com]")
For those of you lucky readers who are able to access Al Jazeera or Al Arabiya on your televisions, you can stop reading now. This is for those of us, in the US, who either have to sleep with our laptops streaming the “real” news or who, for fear that our batteries may die, have to set our cell phone alarm clocks to wake up at 3:00 a.m. to watch reporting of a firefight in Benghazi or the de-powerification of another corrupt politician in (pick one) Palestine, Yemen, Iraq, Egypt, Algeria, Bahrain (and the list goes on). You lucky Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya subscribers can pity us, for indeed we deserve your pity. But we are not completely without our own reliable ...
Keep Reading »E-Mail From Judith Butler to the NY LGBT Center Adressing the Cancellation of a BDS Event Due to Charges of Anti-Semitism
![[Queers For Palestine; Image From Unknown Archive]](/content_images/3/sm_images-4.jpg "[Queers For Palestine; Image From Unknown Archive]")
[To: Glennda@gaycenter.org] [From: Judith Butler] [Subject: censorship at the NY LGBT Center] Dear Glennda Testone, I am writing to communicate my outrage and sorrow that our movement has come to this point where it refuses to house an organization that is fighting for social justice. I was appalled to see the very ignorant and hateful messages that supported your center's decision to ban Siegebusters from holding an event on the topic of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. The colleagues at Jewish Voice for Peace and other progressive Jewish organizations with whom I have spoken are in strong disagreement with your action. It is simply wrong ...
Keep Reading »Civil Society in Arab Lands: By Ballot or by Bullet?
![[Image Source: Unknown]](/content_images/3/sm_TunisiaProtests.jpg "[Image Source: Unknown]")
Each time I attend a panel, workshop, forum, conference, symposium, brainstorming session, or congressional session on civil society in the United States, I am disappointed yet optimistic! I am disenchanted because at least since 9/11, the Bush administration as well as the Obama administration has not understood the real dynamics within the Arab and Middle Eastern civil societies. Rather than begging for money from the U.S., civil society actors in this region are asking U.S. policymakers to cease baking the Arab Ceausescus -who kept them in the Dark Age for more than four decades- in order to be able to establish a genuine democracy in the region and enjoy its ...
Keep Reading »Why Tahrir Infuriates the Neo-Cons
![[Niall Ferguson. Image from CNReview]](/content_images/3/sm_niall-ferguson-hand.jpg "[Niall Ferguson. Image from CNReview]")
Everywhere you turn, Niall Ferguson is berating Obama’s “muddling” of Egypt. He’s blogging on The Daily Beast, spewing angrily on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, and inaugurating his new column in Newsweek with a cover story blasting Obama. Tahrir Square is the neo-cons’ worst nightmare… And Ferguson is one of the scribes who helped globalize and legitimize the neo-cons’ ideas. Since 9/11, Ferguson’s books on empire have become airport bestsellers, and he’s gone from Oxford to NYU to Harvard. Like the Oxford chap that he is, Ferguson took on the role of tutor: it’s not that imperialism is bad, he advised, it’s just that you Americans didn’t perfect it the way we Brits did. ...
Keep Reading »Indyk Won't Apologize for U.S. Policy Toward Egypt [Video-Today!]
![[Martin Indyk Interviewed by Sam Husseini]](/content_images/3/sm_indyk.jpg "[Martin Indyk Interviewed by Sam Husseini]")
[Video Below] The new activist group RootsAction put out an alert this week calling on the U.S. government to apologize for its policy of backing a dictator in Egypt for 30 years. Washington Stakeout today questioned Martin Indyk (currently director of foreign policy at Brookings, senior adviser to U.S. government envoy George Mitchell. He has worked in the past at Washington Institute for Near East Policy and American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC]): Sam Husseini: “Does the U.S. foreign policy establishment owe the Egyptian people an apology for having backed a dictator for all these years? …” Indyk: “What the Egyptian people want to see is that ...
Keep Reading »U.S. Foreign Policy and the Democratic Uprising in Egypt
![[Image Source: AP]](/content_images/3/sm_Mubarak_Obama2.jpg "[Image Source: AP]")
At least thirteen pro-democracy protesters have been killed and hundreds injured in clashes with pro-Mubarak mobs in and around Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo. The attacks began on Wednesday when hundreds of Mubarak’s supporters, some of them on horses and camels, charged the pro-democracy protesters in an attempt to take control of the area. The assault escalated in the early hours of Thursday when Mubarak’s mob opened fire on their opponents. Since then, the mob has continued to use violence and various other means to disperse the mass of ordinary Egyptians calling for the regime’s ouster. The Egyptian army – which is widely respected in the country – stood by and ...
Keep Reading »The "Anderson Cooper Effect" on American TV Reporting from Cairo (Updated Feb 3)
![[Anderson Cooper in Cairo. Image from Huffington Post]](/content_images/3/sm_AndersonCooper.jpg "[Anderson Cooper in Cairo. Image from Huffington Post]")
UPDATE BELOW. On February 2, CNN journalist Anderson Cooper was one of many victims of violence by Mubarakoids who turned Tahrir Square into a battle zone. Cooper was beaten by thugs, as were other members of his crew. A BBC crew was arrested, blindfolded and taken into custody for several hours before being released. MSNBC’s Richard Engel and his NBC colleague Brian Williams reported throughout the night from a vantage point where they could see, film and comment on the violence that has engulfed what, a day earlier, was a site of celebratory hopefulness. Katie Couric, a “sweetheart” journalist, was filmed being surrounded by a menacing gang of thugs. Reporters on the ...
Keep Reading »Panel Video: How Now BDS? Media, Politics and Queer Activism
[Earlier, Jadaliyya Reports re-published critical statements (see here and here) in responses to the NY LGBT Center's decision to cancel the "Party to End Apartheid." Below is a brief description and the video of a panel ("How Now BDS?") organized by Adalah-NY as part of Israel Aparthied Week, wherien Judith Butler and John Greyson also address the NY LGBT Center's decision.] Video: How Now BDS? Media, Politics and Queer Activism A conversation with John Greyson and Judith ...
Keep Reading »Of Predators and Radicals: King's Hearings and the Political Economy of Criminalization
To understand Congressman Peter King’s (R-NY) hearings on the “extent of radicalization” of U.S. Muslims before the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security, one need not go so far back as the McCarthy era or Japanese interment (At the same time Congressman Mike Honda of California’s public stance connecting the King hearings to internment is worth noting here – and a powerful statement). Listening to the few, highly-orchestrated testimonies King assembled, I was brought back to a much more recent ...
Keep Reading »The Peter King "Radicalization of Muslims" Hearing and American Democracy
Republicans clearly think that they have found a political winner in Muslim-bashing. Peter King, Republican representative from New York’s Third Congressional District (in Long Island), is the new chair of the House Homeland Security Committee. He was way ahead of the Muslim-bashing curve. Most Republicans didn’t get excited about the possibilities of using an anti-Muslim platform as a wedge issue until 2010, after the wild popularity of the "Obama is a secret Muslim" meme and the meteoric rise ...
Keep Reading »Palestinian Queers Respond to NY LGBT Center's Decision to Cancel "Party to End Apartheid"
alQaws and Aswat Statement to the LGBT Center in NY Dear Glennda Testone, We, Palestinian queer activists from alQaws for Sexual & Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society and Aswat Palestinian Gay Women, are writing to you to express our shock and dismay at your recent decision to cancel the "Party to End Apartheid" event and ban activists working for human rights in Israel/Palestine from the LGBT Center. We have recently concluded a first of its kind tour to the US, where we shared ...
Keep Reading »The Marriage of Sexism and Islamophobia; Re-Making the News on Egypt
I find myself intermittently infuriated and nauseated by the news coverage of the sexual assault on a female CBS reporter in Tahrir Square during the celebrations the day that Husni Mubarak resigned. This coverage has ranged from the disappointing silence of Al-Jazeera to the blatant racism of Fox News. What actually happened that day to Lara Logan, chief foreign correspondent for 60 Minutes, is not yet known and I have no interest in speculating over the lurid details of a sexual and physical ...
Keep Reading »Solidarity and Its Discontents
While building solidarity between activists in the U.S. and Iran can be a powerful way of supporting social justice movements in Iran, progressives and leftists who want to express solidarity with Iranians are challenged by a complicated geopolitical terrain. The U.S. government shrilly decries Iran’s nuclear power program and expands a long-standing sanctions regime on the one hand, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad makes inflammatory proclamations and harshly suppresses Iranian protesters and ...
Keep Reading »Recuperating the Democracy Narrative: Fareed Zakaria and Preparing for a Post-Mubarak World
On February 8, 2011 Secretary of Defense and ex-CIA chief Robert Gates urged “ governments in the region” to “take measures to begin moving in a positive direction toward addressing the political and economic grievances of their people."[1] The mantra has droned out of Obama administration corridors for weeks including Hilary Clinton’s now infamous and indeed racist admonition of Arab regimes to reform in early January. In Doha, the Secretary of State criticizes the “corrupt institutions and ...
Keep Reading »Preparing Tomorrow's History Lessons
Last night, my husband Michael Kennedy and I wrote an essay for Jadaliyya suggesting that the Polish Round Tables of 1989 might present a model for those hoping to move the Tahrir protest movements forward. He is an academic who works on Central and Eastern Europe, I on the Middle East. The difference in our world regions, I often tell him, is in your part of the world, the US supports protest movements; in my part of the world, the US stands in their way. I’d hoped Egypt’s January 25 movement would be ...
Keep Reading »Encouraging the Outcome through Silence
On Tuesday February 1st, the 82-year old Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt with a hammer-swinging fist since 1981, announced that he would not run in September’s presidential election. He also pledged to “die on Egyptian soil,” sending the message that he would be retiring in Egypt, not into exile. The demonstrators rejected his belated concession. The protesters’ demands have not wavered since the beginning of the uprising. They want an end to Mubarak’s tenure and have signaled that military generals ...
Keep Reading »Open Letter to President Obama in Support of the Egyptian People
Dear President Obama: As political scientists, historians, and researchers in related fields who have studied the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy, we the undersigned believe you have a chance to move beyond rhetoric to support the democratic movement sweeping over Egypt. As citizens, we expect our president to uphold those values. For thirty years, our government has spent billions of dollars to help build and sustain the system the Egyptian people are now trying to dismantle. Tens if not ...
Keep Reading »Infomous
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