Unruhen in der arabischen Welt: Die Aufstände nehmen kein Ende
FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE: Jemens Präsident Salih kündigt seinen Rücktritt an, in Libyen feiern die Rebellen die Befreiung Misratas - und in Syrien lässt das Regime Oppositionelle verhaften. Auch an Ostern geht der „Arabische Frühling“ weiter.

Nach sieben Wochen zermürbender Kämpfe haben sich die Soldaten des libyschen Machthabers Muammar Gaddafi aus der Rebellenbastion Misrata zurückgezogen. „Misrata ist frei, die Rebellen haben gewonnen“, sagte ein Sprecher der Aufständischen der Nachrichtenagentur Reuters. Die Gaddafi-Truppen seien auf der Flucht. Allerdings eroberten die Regierungssoldaten am Samstag im Gegenzug die Stadt Jafran im Westen des Landes. Mehr als einen Monat nach Beginn der westlichen Luftangriffe gibt es somit keine Anzeichen dafür, dass die Aufständischen den autokratischen Herrscher vertreiben können.

Auch im Jemen ist ein Ende des gewaltsamen Machtkampfs zwischen Präsident Ali Abdullah Salih und der jemenitischen Protestbewegung nicht in Sicht. Ein Sprecher des Präsidenten sagte am Samstag zwar, Salih habe einen Kompromissvorschlag der arabischen Golfstaaten akzeptiert, der seinen Rücktritt binnen 30 Tagen vorsieht. Viele halten das jedoch für eine Finte und Hinhaltetaktik.

Unterdessen stellte die syrische Führung in Damaskus die Massenproteste gegen das Regime als Angriff krimineller Banden auf die Sicherheitskräfte dar. Nachdem die Sicherheitskräfte am Samstag 14 Menschen erschossen hatten, die an Begräbnissen für zuvor getötete Demonstranten teilgenommen hatten, meldete die staatliche Nachrichtenagentur Sana am Sonntag, eine „bewaffnete kriminelle Bande“ habe am Samstag in der Provinz Daraa fünf Angehörige einer Armee-Einheit getötet. Die Soldaten hätten das Feuer erwidert und zwei der Angreifer erschossen. Andernorts in der Provinz sei ein „Mitglied einer kriminellen Bande“ getötet worden. » | Text: Reuters/dpa | Sonntag, 24. April 2011

Secrets of the Arabian Nights
Richard E Grant explores the history of the Arabian Nights, visiting Paris and Cairo to find out whether they can help change the West's distorted image of the Arab world
Watch BBC video here

Colonel Gaddafi-bashing by George Galloway

A Historic Moment in the Arab World
In TED's first talk of 2011, Al Jazeera's director-general shares his view on the uprisings sweeping the region. Wadah Khanfar

As a democratic revolution led by tech-empowered young people sweeps the Arab world, Wadah Khanfar, Al Jazeera's director-general, shares a profoundly optimistic view of what's happening in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and beyond.

In the first talk posted online from the TED 2011 conference in California, Khanfar describes the powerful moment when people realised they could step out of their homes and ask for change.

This talk was given on March 1, 2011 in Long Beach, California. TED 2011 is taking place between March 1 and March 4. [Source: Al Jazeera]

Arab Revolutions: The Limits of Intervention
THE GUARDIAN – EDITORIAL: The conflict inherent between policy and principle continues to this day

The international community has been compromised by the revolution sweeping the Arab world. In three uncertain weeks, the United States vacillated from urging stability to shore up a strategic ally in Hosni Mubarak to cheering his overthrow. France trod the same path in Tunisia. Happily, the foreign minister Michèle Alliot-Marie, whose first reaction to the uprising was to offer Ben Ali France's superior knowledge in riot control, has finally resigned. But her family's involvement with the ancien regime (her parents had shares in a property company owned by a businessman close to the regime) provided its own morality play.

Few were disinterested observers. When it came to the crunch, such as organising the interrogation under torture of jihadis picked up in Pakistan, the CIA, among others, traded with the darkest elements of Mubarak's regime being denounced with such ardour today. Russia and China, both of whom have much to fear from spontaneous demonstrations by their own people, have fared little better. Continue reading and comment >>> Editorial | Tuesday, March 01, 2011

Empire - Pax Americana: The US Taken by Surprise

Empire - Democracy in the Arab World: A New Dawn

Islam: The Enemy of Democracy and Freedom >>> Mark Alexander

ARAB REVOLUTIONS: What Is Really Awaiting Europe
PRESSEUROP: Terrorism, immigration, the economy: for Europeans, the wave of revolts that have shaken the Arab world is fraught with dangers that are not altogether clear. El País has tried to unravel truth from falsehood.

Rare are those who allow themselves to discuss the fact that the support offered by the West for decades to the dictatorships on the southern shores of the Mediterranean is a blotch on their history. The Arab uprisings of recent weeks have put to flight these attitudes, among other debasements. This does not mean, however, that the concerns motivating this Western policy were not and do not continue to be based on very real dangers. The dream of bringing democracy to the Arab world is an exciting one, but the path weaves among yawning chasms that some fear the dream will end up in (and others want it there).

The most obvious and widely discussed fear is that these changes will pave the road to power for Islamist groups hostile to Israel and to the West. However, several factors would appear to hold off that threat, at least in the short term. First is the nature of the events of these last weeks, which have been led by legions of young people aspiring to live in an open and tolerant society, and in which Islamism has not played a leading role. That does not stop some in Europe from raising the spectres of unstable transitions, terrorism, waves of immigration and drug-trafficking that can threaten economic stability and our energy supply.

Certain risks are there, but some experts are insisting there is no need to exaggerate them: the likelihood that they will become reality remains low. All the more reason to face the risks inherent in the bet on democracy with a little courage.
Some issues are more worrisome than others: >>> Andrea Rizzi | Monday, February 21, 2011

PRESSEUROP: EU – LIBYA: High noon with Gaddafi ¬– "If the EU continues to support the protests, Libya will stop cooperating with it on illegal immigration." As summed up by La Repubblica, this is the brunt of the message sent from Tripoli to the Hungarian presidency of the EU on February 20. The threat is worrisome, writes the Italian daily, for "if the Libyan dam breaks, tens of thousands of Africans who are working as slaves or being held in detention centres in Libya will lead an exodus of Biblical proportions. >>> | Monday, February 21, 2011

Assessing a Changing Arab World with MIT Professor Noam Chomsky & Al Jazeera's Marwan

AL JAZEERA ENGLISH: 'The genie is out of the bottle' >>> | Monday, February 21, 2011

After Mubarak: The Autumn of the Patriarchs
THE ECONOMIST: A generational change of mentality may bring fresh hope to the entire region

Photograph: The Economist
SEMINAL moments in revolutions do not come at nicely spaced intervals, but in a bewildering cascade. The accelerating rush of events leading to the abrupt downfall of Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, came so cluttered with markers signifying radical change that their deeper implications can be hard to discern. The country’s streets have now calmed, with the army in charge of a wobbly interim government. But the smallest happenings in Cairo still reverberate with new meanings, not only for Egypt but for the surrounding region.

One such little scene with big implications played out some 36 hours after Mr Mubarak’s exit, when two top generals from the military council now ruling Egypt hosted a chat with some of the youthful campaigners whose organisational genius, to their own surprise as much as anyone’s, finally toppled Mr Mubarak on February 11th. In a Facebook post, the visitors described the meeting as encouraging. Not only did the generals, both in their early 60s, affirm the army’s commitment to the goals of the revolution, including a swift transition to democracy under civilian rule. They also showed “unprecedented respect for the opinions of young people”.

For Egyptians inured to rigid hierarchies of class and age, this last point was telling. Only a week before, as huge demonstrations engulfed the country, Mr Mubarak’s short-termed vice-president, the dour ex-head of intelligence, Omar Suleiman, had infuriated young Egyptians by suggesting that the protesters’ parents should tell them to go home. His prime minister, Ahmed Shafik, when pressed to apologise for a murderous attack on unarmed protesters by paid pro-Mubarak thugs, promised sarcastically to send the victims chocolates and sweets. >>> | Thursday, February 17, 2011 from PRINT EDITION

The Arab World: The Awakening
THE ECONOMIST – LEADER: As change sweeps through the Middle East, the world has many reasons to fear. But it also has one great hope

THE people of the Middle East have long despaired about the possibility of change. They have felt doomed: doomed to live under strongmen who have hoarded their wealth and beaten down dissent; doomed to have as an alternative only the Islamists who have imposed their harsh beliefs—and beaten down dissent. In some places, like Saudi Arabia and Iran, the autocrats and the Islamists have merged into one. But nowhere has a people had a wholly free choice in how they are ruled. And the West has surrendered to this despair too, assuming that only the strongmen could hold back the extremists.

Two months ago a Tunisian fruit-seller called Muhammad Bouazizi set fire to these preconceptions when, in despair over bullying officials and the lack of work, he drenched himself in petrol and struck a match. Tunisians and, later, Egyptians took to the streets. Almost miraculously, the people overwhelmed the strongmen who had oppressed them for decades. In the past few days tens of thousands have marched in Tehran, braving beatings and arrest. In tiny Bahrain men have died as the security forces sprayed protesters with rubber bullets and smothered them in tear gas. In Libya crowds have risen up against a fearsome dictator. Jordan is sullen, Algeria unstable and Yemen seething (see article).

Radical Islamists have long been the Arab world’s presumed revolutionaries, but these fights do not belong to them. In a region that had rotted under repression, a young generation has suddenly found its voice. Pushing ahead of their elders, they have become intoxicated with the possibility of change. As with Europe’s triumphant overthrow of communism in 1989, or even its failed revolutions of 1848, upheaval on such a scale can transform societies. What does that mean for the Islamists, the strongmen and the world? >>> Leader | Thursday, February 17, 2011 from PRINT EDITION

Analysis - Arab Uprisings Overturn Clichés on Democracy
REUTERS: Arab uprisings against unpopular Western-backed rulers have undercut the arguments of some Western intellectuals about passive populations who are not prepared to fight for democracy.

During the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, neoconservative cheerleaders for war who had direct access to Western policymakers said force was the only way to take down Arab dictators. A minority of Arab intellectuals agreed with them.

Many writers, especially in the United States, suggested there were characteristics peculiar to the region that could explain why Arabs had not been touched by the democratic wave that toppled East European regimes two decades ago.

Often they cited Islam, or implied there was something wrong in the Arab psyche. Those who suggested more of a focus on U.S. policies and backing for unpopular regimes have had less access to mainstream media and policy makers.

Bernard Lewis, one of the intellectual giants of this trend, wrote in 2005 that "creating a democratic political and social order in Iraq or elsewhere in the region will not be easy," as if "creating" democracy required American tutelage.

The uprisings that removed Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali on January 14 and Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak four weeks later have shown the people are capable of doing it themselves, even when up against huge odds. >>> Andrew Hammond, Cairo | Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Islam: The Enemy of Democracy and Freedom >>> Mark Alexander | Friday, April 20, 2011

A Marriage of Inconvenience
THE ECONOMIST: What an Arab democratic spring will mean for America’s relations with the Jewish state

BRITAIN’S is based on history and showing its age. Geography dictates that Canada’s and Mexico’s will stay strong. Saudi Arabia’s will endure as long as America needs to buy its oil. The one with Hosni Mubarak (though not the one with Egypt itself) was dropped like a hot potato once the protests began.

America, in short, is both promiscuous and flighty when it comes to “special” relationships. One of the most fascinating is its long-standing fling with Israel. What, exactly, does America see in the Jewish state? And is the relationship in danger from the wind of change rattling Egypt and the wider Arab world?

These questions are best tackled in reverse order. It is easy to see why an Arab democratic spring might chill relations between America and Israel. The peace between Israel and Egypt was made between leaders, not peoples. That hardly mattered when the people of Egypt, like other Arabs, had no voice. But it will matter once they find one. Right now, the demonstrators in Tahrir Square are demanding their own freedom, not Palestine’s. But the statelessness of the Palestinians remains the great unifying cause of the Arab world. So even Israelis acknowledge that if Arab leaders have in future to respond to the wishes of their people they will become more hostile to Israel—and, by extension, to Israel’s American paramour. In that case, if America’s relationship with Israel was a marriage of convenience, like the one it has just annulled with Mr Mubarak, America might begin to see the case for a divorce, or at least some separation.

But, of course, America’s attachment to Israel is not a marriage of convenience. It looks a lot more like true love. Listen to all the sweet talk, for a start. Even Barack Obama, who in his desire to mend America’s relations with Islam has been tougher on Israel than many presidents, goes misty-eyed when he harps on the “special relationship”. It is founded, he says, on “shared values, deep and interwoven connections, and mutual interests”. And the billing and cooing is the least of the evidence. The strongest proof of America’s feelings for Israel is all the inconvenience America puts up with for the relationship’s sake. >>> | Thursday, February 10, 2011

Self-immolation and Individual Freedom
THE JERUSALEM POST – EDITORIAL: The personal stories of despair that led up to these acts of self-sacrifice are inevitably brought to the forefront.

Self-immolation is horrifying. Yet the pent-up turmoil and despair to which it gives graphic expression has the potential to move masses to action.

Such was the case with Muhammad Bouazizi, a 26-yearold Tunisian college graduate who set himself on fire last month. Unable to find employment commensurate with his skills, Bouazizi settled for peddling fruits and vegetables in his home town. He became despondent when security forces brutally destroyed his unlicensed cart and confiscated his wares. His desperate act of protest touched a nerve with educated Tunisian youths in situations similar to Bouazizi’s and helped spark a revolution.

It also set off a spate of self-immolation attempts this week in Africa and the Middle East. >>> JPost Editorial | Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Tunisia's Upheaval Stirs Emotions Throughout the Arab World

Tunisia Riots: Reform or Be Overthrown, US Tells Arab States Amid Fresh Riots
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Riots by youths protesting against Tunisia's 50-year dictatorship clashed with police in the country's capital as the United States warned its Middle Eastern allies to reform or be overthrown.

Police in Tunis opened fire and shot tear gas in the air as stone-throwing youths breached a curfew and surrounded government buildings.

At least three people were reportedly killed, bringing to more than 60 the number said by human rights groups to have died in a wave of unrest in what was previously seen as one of the Arab world's most stable and prosperous countries.

Four more people had already been shot and killed in Tunis's suburbs on Wednesday night.

President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, 74, who has been in power since he overthrew his predecessor in 1987 sacked the interior minister on Wednesday but failed to quell calls for his resignation.

On Thursday night Mr Ben Ali attempted to pacify protesters by saying in a television address that he would not change the constitution to allow him to run again when his term expires in 2014. He also ordered his security forces to stop using firearms against protesters and said prices for sugar, milk and bread would be reduced.

However, as the president was speaking, promising an end to force, two people were killed as police opened fire on protesters, witnesses said.

Hillary Clinton ended a tour of the Gulf with a warning that leaders who failed to carry out political and economic reform risked being cast aside.

"In too many places, in too many ways, the region's foundations are sinking into the sand," she said.

"Those who cling to the status quo may be able to hold back the full impact of their countries' problems for a little while, but not forever.

"If leaders don't offer a positive vision and give young people meaningful ways to contribute, others will fill the vacuum."

Protests over unemployment and food prices have also broken out in Algeria, Jordan and even Saudi Arabia in recent weeks, all countries with a high proportion of young people, many well-educated but jobless. >>> Richard Spencer, Middle East Correspondent | Thursday, January 13, 2011

Liens en relations avec l’article. Aussi ici, et ici.

The Price of Arab Lies
YNET NEWS: Culture of lies good for Israel, leaves Arabs mired in cesspool of misery

Dishonesty and deceit have become part and parcel of current-day politics worldwide. Yet even within this reality, the culture of lies prevalent throughout the Arab world goes far beyond the “norm.” The utterance of lies by Arab leaders and politicians has become so deeply rooted, blatant, and irrational that it cannot be compared to the usual manipulation of information we see elsewhere.

While the sight of club-wielding “activists” claiming to be “peace lovers” or Knesset Member Zoabi insisting that IDF troops were not met with violence on board the Marmara – in the face of unequivocal video footage – may be infuriating at first, these and similar examples are in fact good news for Israel.

Indeed, the culture of lies and web of deceit that has taken root in Arab political life is a source of great weakness; Arabs are paying the price for it every day and will continue to do so as long as this mentality persists.

In the words of Abraham Lincoln, “You can't fool all of the people all the time." While global public opinion has been largely receptive to Arab lies, their sheer scope and ludicrousness have left many shaking their heads. When one lies so much and so blatantly, one is bound to get caught. In this respect, it would be worthwhile to pay less attention to online talkbacks and more to actual political developments. >>> Yigal Walt | Wednesday, June 02, 2010

Roots of Islamic Fundamentalism Lie in Nazi Propaganda for Arab World, Book Claims
THE TELEGRAPH: The roots of Islamic fanaticism can be traced to Adolf Hitler's radio messages broadcast around the Arab world during the Second World War, according to a new book.

Roots of Islamic funamentalism lie in Nazi propaganda for Arab world, book claims. Photograph: The Telegraph
"Your only hope for rescue is the destruction of the Jews before they destroy you!" Hitler said in a 1942 message, one of thousands broadcast across the Middle East in an attempt to woo the Arab world.

In a broadcast aimed at provoking an anti-Semitic uprising in Egypt, he said: "A large number of Jews who live in Egypt, along with Poles, Greeks, Armenians and Frenchmen, have guns and ammunition.

"Some Jews in Cairo have even asked the British authorities to set up machine guns on the roofs of their houses," he claimed.

But the Nazi's wartime broadcasts had remained a largely hidden chapter in the history of the war until the transmissions were unearthed by a US scholar, who believes they have fuelled continuing unrest in the Middle East.

"The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians would have been over long ago were it not for the uncompromising, religiously inspired hatred of the Jews that was articulated and given assistance by Nazi propagandists and continued after the war by Islamists of various sorts," said Jeffrey Herf, a history professor at the University of Maryland.

In his new book, "Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World", Mr Herf argues that Nazi propagandists offered a message that neatly dovetailed with underlying prejudice.

"Islamic fundamentalism, like European totalitarianism in the 20th century, was and is a mixture of very old and very modern elements. >>> Allan Hall in Berlin | Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Illiteracy in Arab World Growing: Report
ARAB NEWS: DUBAI: A report on knowledge, released at the Arab Strategy Forum on Wednesday, warned of large-scale illiteracy in the Arab world.

Despite the fact that the region had spent five percent of its gross domestic product and 20 percent of its national budget on education one third of its adult population, (60 million people), remain illiterate -- two thirds of them women.

According to the report this situation will worsen in the future because 9 million children of primary school age are out of school. The report sought urgent action to remedy the problem.

The report highlighted the many obstacles to development focusing mainly on the fact that knowledge doesn't reach all levels of society, in particular the disadvantaged groups.

At the same time education at university level is not necessarily on par with advanced nations which is one of the main obstacles as it creates a critical mass of highly-skilled human capital capable of innovation, creativity and renewal, and essential to development. >>> Shadiah Abdullah | Thursday, October 29, 2009

The Path to the Final Solution