Mona Bauwens Because she is different

Palestine and me

 
Its in my blood

Sarkozy: Netanyahu's a liar. Obama: I have to deal with him every day | News

Sarkozy: Netanyahu's a liar. Obama: I have to deal with him every day | News.

A Story to Tell. Part 1

I have a story to tell. It's about a little boy who lived in Palestine . In his eyes his house was very very big and his fathers orchard in his eyes was enormous. He believesd that in that orchard grew all the fruits in the world. Big fat oranges. Plump figs that oozed sweetness. Small sharp clementines, pomelos, melons and watermelons, prickly pears, back and green grapes and of course pomegranates.. These were his absolute favourites. He could never decide which type he preferred. The sharp red sour ones that made him scrunch his face when he popped the red seeds into his mouth and the juice hit the back of the fruit or the silvery pale red ones that tasted better than honey. This dilemma of which was his favourite caused him many many days of pondering. He would wander through the orchard staring at the two different types of trees trying to decide which was better. One afternoon having spent it lying on the ground amongst the trees he came with the perfect solution. Both types of pomegranates were perfection. He decided could love them both equally. The sour ones he reasoned complimented the sweet ones and the sweet ones complimented the sour ones. Perfection In his eyes his world was both perfect and complete. One day he thought, when he was grown up he would travel and explore the world but he was certain that he would always return home. Then one day and he remembered this so clearly, a foreigner came to visit his father. He came in a car alone. A studibaker. They sat on the verandah drinking coffee and smoking argil under the jasmine trellis beside the gardenia pots. He could smell that heavy but soft complex scent that cocooned you . He was eager to hear what what the foreigner had to say but his father, unusually shooed him away. As he ran to play in the orchard. He turned back. It seemed to him as if his heart had stoped and an overwhelming fear enveloped him. To this day he doesnt know why or how but he knew something had changed. He could neither hear what they were saying or see their expressions. But he just felt and sensed that his world was about change. To get rid of this unwanted thought that was beginning to crowd his head he ran and ran as fast as he could through the orchard in order to outrun these thoughts that had no place in his world............

UAE Torture

http://uaetorture.com/

TheStar The Arab freedom epic

TheStar The Arab freedom epic.

Egyptian Revolution

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxzhcU5ah2o&feature=player_embedded#

Hosni Mubarak's Wealth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=ES&v=Il-36NXye2c

Miaow. Spurned lovers Go go go

There is something unedifying about a president that won’t leave. Who clings to power like a spurned lover refusing to see he is no longer loved. President Mubarak is extraordinarily luck in having a people who want him to go in peace, they are not crying for retribution, they are just saying go go go.

 

Its really quiet funny, if that is the right word to see other arab leaders frantically changing governments, reducing taxes, promising change, poltical and economic reforms, promising not to seek re-election, not put their kids in power

. Well why why were all these changes not implemented before? Its not as if the Arab population was not crying out for it.

 

Lets take corruption or let me be gentler . Lets say you want a phone line in Cairo, in theory it straightforward. In practice you need ‘wasta’ someone who knows someone who knows someone who can do it. Otherwise you will spend weeks being sent from one line to another one building to another being asked for just one more paper. Along the way people want a little ‘sugar’.

It is just that corruption has become a way of life, of survival for ordinary people, for luxury for the elite.

One question that has always puzzled me and I have had no answers is the Palestinian Authority. How come do all these Abu’s who we are told have devoted their life to the Palestinian cause become so wealthy on government salaries? How come they can build these lovely houses in Ramallah on what is a modest salary? What businesses are they in that generate so much apparent wealth? How come all the big relatively speaking contracts or agencies are held in the families of the leadership? This is not exclusive to the PA or Egypt.

It is part of the system in the whole Arab world

 

Lets talk about the lack of the rule of law. Why did it have to take demonstrations and thirty years before it became on the agenda? How can you govern for so long and not have this most basic but fundamental right for anyone, any state? Its absurd for these leaders to now say oops we are now going to implement this?

What about poltical reforms? It’s too little too late to now proclaim that the process under the present leaders is going to take place. That I rubbish and we all know that.

These are just platitudes so that they can stay in power longer and the repercussion if they do stay will be horrendous for all the voices that spoke out.

 

What about abuses of human rights? Why was nothing done before? And these abuses are not exclusive to Egypt. Look at the labour laws or rather the lack of them in the UAE. Hundreds of workers from primarily Asian countries work in abysmal condition for a pittance. It does not stop there. Woe betide anyone who falls foul of a local as there is absolutely no protection from the legal system.

And all this is actually supported by the USA as they like other Western countries take the view  that oil and geographically strategic importance takes precedence over small things like rule of law, poltical reforms, and civil rights, human right. So what if ‘some’ people suffer.

 

Lets be clear here its is for the West much easier to work with corrupt leaders as they can be ‘malleable’ and for years Western governments have refused to hear the voices from the street and have turned in truth a blind eye to the daily inequities that go on. Yet and this is what is so so frustrating. What people in the Arab world want is very much what we have in the West, Freedom of choice, to choose who we elect. Civil , poltical and social rights,  the rule of law, Governments that are accountable to us.

 

 Finally and its Miaow but it is interesting to see how many former leaders and prominent politicians rush to the Gulf when their public tenure ends. If it were not so sad it would be hilarious. Miaow……

 

 

 

The Great Arab Revolution and the Gulf States. Christopher Davidson

http://www.currentintelligence.net/gulfstream/2011/1/31/the-great-arab-revolution-and-the-gulf-states.html#entry10285958

Will you now hear the voices?

 

 

Am I surprised by the recent events in Egypt and Tunisia? I don’t think any Arab is. It was always a question of when not if? There comes a point when you simply say ‘enough’. Enough. ‘I am not going to be humiliated any more.’

‘ I am not going to beg for work ‘.

I am not going to prostate myself anymore to a leader that has stripped away my being’.

 

These are just some of the sentiments that have been bubbling away in the heart of the Middle East. and not just for days but for years and years. The enormous frustrations that many Arabs feel is clearly being demonstrated out in the streets of Cairo.  All the Arabs I know, friends, family colleagues are glued to the news or on the phone trying to reach family and friends in Cairo

 

On my last visit to Cairo at the tail end of the volcanic ash disruption last year. I landed, late tired just needing to sleep. I went through immigration. Purpose of your visit? Holiday. Arab father? Yes. Oops wrong answer. To cut a long story short I was escorted to security and merely told that my name was on the computer. Why? What for? I never figured out. I only mention this to illustrate what it is like for Arabs to be in an Arab country led by an autocratic regime even with a UK citizenship.

 

It is much worse for the Egyptians. I can recount you endless stories of the daily frustrations encountered by Cairenes unable to get jobs, unable to support their families and bluntly put fed up with Western democracies like Britain supporting highly corrupt regimes on the basis that the alternative would be much worse…..

It’s a myth that has been so embedded into the Western psyche that the alternative would be catastrophic that in many ways we chose to turn a blind eye.

 

We took the tours not knowing or ignoring that an ordinary Egyptian national would be barred from certain seaside tourist areas in order to avoid any potential ‘terrorist’ attack. We focused on shark attacks at the red sea but not the attacks from a brutal highly corrupt regime towards its own people.

 

The reality for many Arabs under dinosaur leaders is a daily grind of survival. Add to this suppression, a frustration of being powerless to do anything and the result was going to be explosion. There is so much frustration on the streets in Arab capitals directed at the lack of any recognition towards them as people.

 

Arab leaders rarely accord dignity to their citizens. Anyone with a modicum of power will invariably abuse it as have seen with Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian who was humiliated by a police officer, slapped and denied a permit t sell a few paltry produce to support his family. Took the desperate measure of burning himself.

 

Corruption for the elite is part of the job perk and while this may not matter so much in the oil rich countries, it has a profound and deep impact on nations with less disposable income. Most of the Arab world is run by rulers who regard the nations wealth as theirs and their offspring’s.

 

President Mubarak’s family wealth like the deposed Tunisian President is massive. It is extremely diffcult to attempt to do business there without a powerful ally. It’s taken as read that any business venture of any substance would require the partner of someone powerful generally in the ruling elite.

 

I recall when my late father was in hospital at the Red Crescent in Cairo. Desperately ill he had just received some treatment when Egyptian security barged in. Heavily armed they lifted my father off. In my feeble attempt to protect him I tried to put myself between the perpetrators and my father. I just got beaten up. My mother and I were locked in the room. When we finally managed to get out our car tyres had been slashed. When I personally spoke too the then Foreign Minister of Egypt. His response this can't be happening. This is Egypt.

 

Well it was happening and it did happen. Very quickly the Arab leaders colluded in ensuring our story was not heard as they have in the past stopped other stories. It is in their intrest to keep the lid on as otherwise a big can of worms will be opened. And sadly the West colludes in this. People like our family are a nuisance to them. We ask too many questions that ‘compromise’ their ‘special’ relationship.

 

This happens frequently, there is no rule of law, accountability. Most of the present leaders of the Arab regime know that the West may mouth and request rule of law, democracy, human rights etc, but in truth nothing has been done. We in the West need to ask our governments to stop protecting and supporting these regimes.  The people of Egypt are not chanting Anti West slogans but they are asking us to listen.

 

Security, stability will only be durable when there are democratic regimes that uphold the rule of law and accountability.

 

Maybe just maybe this time the voices will be heard and as Chancellor Angela Markel said "you can't divide your principles and say my principles are valid for some countries, where you can speak your mind and vote freely, but in other countries these principles don't hold at all’.

UAE and the Rule of law

http://www.currentintelligence.net/gulfstream/2011/1/10/rule-of-law-in-the-united-arab-emirates-2010-in-review.html