Fudzail

Islamists poised to redefine society in the Arab world

2012-01-28T12:15:00.000+04:00

Image Credit: ©Gulf News

The success at the polls of Islamists (as political activists who draw on the Quran as inspiration for their social ideology have come, willy-nilly, to be known) tells us little about Islam and much about Arab society today.

In the wake of the Arab Spring, Islamists have flexed their muscles in countries as far apart as Morocco, Palestine and Yemen, and won handily at the polls in Egypt and Tunisia. Of the 22 legal political parties in Algeria, six are Islamist, and Islamists make up the most influential opposition force in Jordan. And in a remarkable display of prowess that would have seemed unthinkable a mere 12 months ago, the Muslim Brotherhood, in its guise as the Freedom and Justice Party, has secured in post-revolutionary Egypt the most seats in the country’s parliamentary elections. And last Monday, with the clear mandate they had gained at the polls, their parliament speaker, Mohammad Sa’ad Katatni, opened the inaugural session of the lower house of parliament.

Even in Syria, where the irrelevant phantasm of Baathism — an ageing concoction of pan-Arabist and Euro-nationalist ideology dreamed up by a Levantine secularist in 1940 — has retained its grip on government, the power of Islamists, albeit so far underground, is evident. There is not, in other words, a single country in the Arab world that does not have an Islamist vanguard.

These folks, as we speak, are preparing to play a dominant role in drafting new constitutions in their countries reflecting the new ideology of hope engendered by the Arab awakening, a movement that seeks to define a citizen’s right to live freely and independently not as a luxury but as a rigorous need. That indeed would be, well, yes, a revolutionary transformation for societies that, since independence well over six decades ago, have been broken in back and spirit, and whose people had for generations been socialised on an ethic of fear, defeat and despair. And it looks like the Islamists will be the agents of that transformation.
How do we explain this phenomenon, then, and what does it portend for the future?
To be sure, the Islamist revival in the Arab world may have begun, should we assume a point of departure for it, as far back as 1967, in the wake of the devastating military defeat of the June War, when Arabs collectively felt betrayed by the hodge-podge of secular ideologies they had put their trust in throughout the first three quarters of the 20th century, ideologies like Nasserism and Baathism, Communism and Greater Syria nationalism, socialism and pan-Arabism, that now were exposed as having been hollow and meaningless, essentially worthless imports from the West. As a massive silence descended upon Arabs at the time, which became a kind of rhetoric in its way, it seemed that there was no better ideology to turn to than the one that had grown out of the very bosom of their own culture — Islam.
Understandably, the activists who pioneered the Islamist movement, at the least in countries in the Levant and the Maghreb, were born again Islamists, originally secular ideologues who had turned to Islam after their secular ideologies began to appear impotent and irrelevant. These activists’ mass appeal became evident, even in traditionally secular societies such as Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Jordan, after they buttressed their vision with intimate responsiveness to peoples’ discontent with, disdain for and alienation from the ruling elite. And, above all, to peoples’ everyday, pedestrian needs.
When Uncle Ahmad, for example, the name we give the common impoverished Arab in these countries, needed a good school, a reliable clinic, a warm coat, adequate food and a summer camp for his kids, he did not turn to corrupt officials, who cared little about him in the first place, to address these needs. He turned instead to the mosque, seeking representatives of the Islamist group nearest him who he knew, from observing their modest life-style and moral rectitude, were above reproach. And a strong affinity inevitably developed between care-giver and the common man. The latter remembered all that when he went to cast his vote.

Truth be told, this state of affairs is characteristic of all deprived societies in which authority had callously turned its back on its people. In other words, when the state becomes corrupt and ineffectual, when it demonstrates its unwillingness to meet ordinary folks’ needs, civil society will in time establish an alternative order within the state, a shadow state, if you will.

All of which reminds us of the first scene in Godfather I.

Godfather I relevant to our theme here? Yes, very much so, I say. In that scene in Godfather I, an iconic film in American cinematic art, Amerigo Bonasera, a lowly mortician from New York’s Little Italy, fills the screen as he despairingly tells Don Corleone: “I believe in America, but ...” The Italian immigrant believed in America, but its justice system had failed him miserably. His daughter’s honour had been violated by two local boys who — after being apprehended and brought to court to stand trial — were acquitted on a technicality. To rub salt into his wounds, the boys even snickered at him as they walked out, free men. He wanted justice, and he wanted the Godfather to mete it out.
There is a zoom-out on the Don, played by the indomitable Marlon Brando, head of the Cosa Nostra Corleone family, who responds reproachfully in one of the most textually telling lines in the film: “Why didn’t you come to me first?”

Bonasera should have known better than to go to the authorities in the first place. Italian immigrants at the time, in the 1940s, were still anchored in their Sicilian culture and its norms: to settle a dispute or to right a wrong committed against you, you did not turn to the cops, who were corrupt and uncaring, but to that network of local Cosa Nostra chiefs who knew how to take care of their own. That is how it was in Italy in those days, and Italian immigrants brought that tradition with them to the New World. Cosa Nostra was born at the same time as the modern Italian state in the late 19th century, a weak state that could not, or would not, protect its citizens and guarantee them jobs and services, let alone social justice.
That’s also how it was, as well, before civil rights acts were legislated in the US, for African-Americans, who often turned to their church leaders because there was no one else to turn to for representation of their political and civil rights. And that’s how it was for Iranians, on the eve of the 1979 revolution, who had turned to their mosques to seek equity because the state had prevented them from, or punished them for, agitating for what was due to them.

Guess what? There are times when that shadow state, probably by fiat of the imagination inherent in history, comes to power. And when that shadow state itself becomes the state, you have to talk to it. No two ways about it. When you don’t, as the US did not in 2006 after Hamas became the ascendant authority, everybody ends up paying a heavy price in human suffering so that Washington will sustain a dysfunctional political system rejected by its people in fair, free and open elections.

Today Islamists are all over the place, all over the Arab world, poised to pre-empt and then define their societies’ tomorrow. And what the devil whimsical foreign policy will the US pursue then? Stay tuned.

Fawaz Turki is a journalist, lecturer and author based in Washington. He is the author of The Disinherited: Journal of a Palestinian Exile.

A watchman who started a free school from his savings

2012-01-27T20:26:00.000+04:00

A mighty heart

By Megha Pai

Friday, January 27, 2012

Sharjah resident Abdul Mannan Jamaluddin wasn’t exactly rolling in money when he started a free school in his hometown in Bangladesh but, as he says, when your heart is set on doing good, help is never far away. Student strength today: 200 and counting…

It is perhaps much  easier to be giving and charitable when you have a cool six figure in your bank balance and your next seven generations are taken care of (unless, of course, you are the progeny of Ebenezer Scrooge). But starting a free school in your hometown when you are a security guard living on a Dh1, 200 per month salary, is something to marvel about. So when we heard the story of Abdul Mannan Jamaluddin, we knew we had to meet him and hear his story.

Al Qasba is a well-to-do locality in the plush Buhaira Corniche in Sharjah. Not well-versed with the area and relying mainly on a somewhat malfunctioning GPS (at one point it instructed us to go off the road and drive into the water!), we decided to seek the help of a shopkeeper for directions to Bulbul Apartments, where Abdul is a security guard.

“Oh! You want to meet Abdul!” came the reply. Surprised as we hadn’t mentioned his name, we asked him how he guessed. “He is a bit of a local hero,” the shopkeeper smiled. “After all, how many watchmen do you know who start a free school from their savings?”

Good point. Following the much more reliable directions of the kindly shopkeeper — no need to jump into the Corniche, we were assured — we reached our destination, passing through the graffiti-riddled by-lanes. Abdul was standing at the gate, dressed in casuals, as it was his day off. He invited us to his office, which also serves as his living room and bedroom and offered us tea. A Bangla channel ran on mute on the television. On a shelf above his bed was a small stack of books in Bengali.

After some casual banter and lovely chitchat and tea, we came down to discussing Abdul’s extraordinary feat. He tells wknd. the story — from being a high school dropout to starting a free school in his native village, Belchura, in Bangladesh, where he has educated 200 children in the last six years.

As a child, I used to dream of becoming a lawyer but I wasn’t able to continue my studies after the tenth grade as my father couldn’t afford it. After my father passed away, the burden of my entire family fell upon my shoulders. I came to the UAE in 1989 at the age of 26. The only job that I could find was as a watchman. Due to my lack of education, I was not able to move up in life. That’s when I decided that I didn’t want the same fate for my next generation.

But there was no school in my village and the new highway that was supposed to connect our village to other places, separated us from the only nearby school. Here, in the UAE, parents drop and pick up kids or there are bus services to take the kids to and fro. But it is not so in my village. The parents have no time to keep a tab on the children. The fathers go to work in the fields every morning and the mothers are busy with the housework. So the children go to the school of their own accord — if at all. Despite making several requests to the government, no provisions were made to provide learning opportunities to the village kids.

Every time I saw the excellent lives of the children here in Sharjah, I couldn’t help but wish that the children in my hometown could also have such opportunities. Education is the first step to development. So when I visited home in 2001, I decided to start a free school and I had a few months to do it in before returning to Sharjah.

Initially, my wife didn’t approve of my initiative. I had my own three children to take care of. But I didn’t let that fact deter me from starting the school. I thought to myself, if every person thought only about oneself, there would be no goodness left in the world. Besides, I have very little expenses in Sharjah and I own a small garment business back home that takes care of my family’s needs. So I decided to put in all my savings and most of my salary into the project. Now all I needed was land.

When you have set your mind on doing good, help is never too far away. One day, I happened to mention my intention to one of the village elders. He very generously offered to donate a piece of land that belonged to his family. Amazed at how easily the situation was resolved, I got cracking on building the school.

With the help of the local labourers, I managed to put up a basic building in four months and with the aid of a teacher from the local mosque, I had the school up and running. Slowly but surely, children started coming in too. Soon there were several students in the first grade. I appointed a few more teachers and everything seemed great for a month. That’s when catastrophe hit.

The elder who had donated the land hadn’t asked all the family members before making the decision. Out of spite, the family members demolished the school building and there was nothing that I could do. I was back to square one.

It was time for me to return to the UAE. But I hadn’t given up. I took it as God’s way of testing my determination. For the next four years, I continued to save. It was not a matter of salvaging my image. My cause was bigger than that. I couldn’t fail as the future of the children was at stake.

After four years of saving and planning, when I went home in 2005, I wanted to include the entire village in the work as I knew I couldn’t do it without their help. But the moment I mentioned anything about the school, the people weren’t interested. So I had to come up with something more novel.

I invited the entire village for a feast to announce a wedding. I knew they wouldn’t say no to free food. And they would be curious to know who is getting married as there isn’t anyone of marriageable age in my family.

After the villagers had had tea and snacks, I told them that I had bought land where I intended to build the school and also told them that I didn’t expect them to contribute monetarily. However, I was surprised when a few of them offered whatever they could. Some gave money, while others gave sacks of cement, and some others simply put in hours of labour for the construction.

Before it was time for me to return to the Gulf, the ground floor of the building was ready, and the first batch of 70 students attended class at the school, called Hazrat Abu Bakar Siddique ® Sunni Madrasa.

The taste of sweet success at last was like nothing else. Those who had been sceptical and discouraging, including my wife, were now beginning to realise how good this was for the community.

Since we started in 2005, we have been adding one grade to the school every year. The number of students has grown from 70 to 200. This year we begin Grade 7. My aim is to see that the school expands all the way to Grade 12. Also, I intend to buy a bus for the school so the children from the village and the surrounding villages can be fetched easily. The day we have 100 per cent literacy in my village, I will have achieved my purpose.

For now, the fact that my kids and the rest of the children in the village will never have to live the kind of life that I had to live is reward enough for me. I intend to start a trust so that the progress is maintained even after I am gone.

Why 'waste' money in space?

2012-01-27T19:25:00.000+04:00

The launch of a new space mission, and even more so the failure of a spacecraft (as we witnessed recently), invariably leads me to face the following question from students and acquaintances: why do we waste that kind of money in space pursuits when we have so much poverty and suffering that we should be trying to alleviate here on earth?

That's a good, well-meaning question, and it deserves a good answer. There are several arguments that one can bring up in addressing this concern.

First, one must examine more closely just how much money is being "wasted" in space projects and compare that with other human expenditures.

The total space budget of all nations on Earth is less than $40 billion (Dh147 billion). Nasa's budget for 2012 is $19.5 billion (that is 0.5 per cent of the entire US budget); ESA's (the European Space Agency's) budget was $5.65 billion in 2011; the Russian space budget amounted to about $2.5 billion; China's is $2 billion; India's is $1.6 billion; plus small amounts for smaller countries.

The whole human expenditure on space projects, including all satellites, rockets, spacecrafts and the hundreds of thousands of people who work on that, increases by less than 1 per cent each year!
Contrast this with the world's spending in the military sector (armament and personnel): a whopping $1.6 trillion in 2010, the US part representing 42 per cent of that! That's 40 times more than the worldwide space budget, and that amount increases by about 5 per cent each year.

Destructive expenditure

Now, lest anyone think that they are not responsible for any of this (neither the space money ‘waste' nor the scary military budget), I would like to mention a few other kinds of expenses, these being more at the personal level. Each year in Europe (for which we have statistics), people spend about $50 billion a year on cigarettes; Europeans, who constitute only 10 per cent of humans, spend $150 billion a year on alcoholic drinks, $24 billion on pet food, $200 billion on cosmetics, and $1.4 trillion on entertainment and media (music, cinema, TV shows, electronics, newspapers and magazines)!

At this point of the discussion, my interlocutors usually respond with: yes, we humans are clearly wasting large sums of money on destructive items (weapons, cigarettes, alcohol), but does that mean that we should throw away more money in space? There are two ways to counter this argument. One line is to list the numerous and diverse spin-offs that have resulted from space research. Indeed, because space places different sets of constraints on any project, be it a new satellite or a trip to Mars, new tools often need to be developed, and these almost always find applications in our lives here on Earth.
There are, without exaggeration, hundreds of spin-offs, ranging from bio-medical techniques to digital systems, from imaging technology to robotics, where important uses have been found in medicine, meteorology, environmental monitoring (of potential or unfolding disasters), information and communication technology, remote sensing, surveillance, and many other fields.
What must be stressed is that such applications do indeed lead to helping address and alleviate the poverty and human suffering, which the sceptics of space projects insist that we focus on.

Another line of argumentation against the idea that "space projects are a luxurious waste and should at most be left to very rich countries" is more cultural and educational. Indeed, the pursuit of such ‘lofty' projects strongly reflects the intellectual attitude of a given nation: the more we look upward the more future-minded and less materialistic we prove to be. And the more governments push their people to seek discoveries of all kinds (space-bound or earth-focused), the more people will tend to pursue scientific and cultural careers and lift the whole society up in various ways. In many parts of the world, including in this region, students are fleeing the scientific disciplines, seeing them as difficult and not financially rewarding — compared to administrative and business careers. We must do everything to encourage our children and students to invest themselves in those fields, for they are not only fascinating but extremely important. Let us not forget the strategic importance of space, where powers engage in espionage and ‘monitoring'.

Encouragement for students to take on this field and its applications must come in the form of strategic projects, where governments and companies invest for the future. Salaries and rewards must be substantial. But most importantly, society in general, and the vital education and media sectors in particular, must project a bright image of those fields and of the people who pursue them.
It is a shame that hardly anyone can name an Arab or Muslim astronaut (yes, a few have gone up to space), but many can name entire sports teams or movie casts. We need to change this, for our future and our children's.

Several giant leaps for Dubai

2012-01-26T21:56:00.000+04:00

DUBAI // Stunning photographs of Dubai taken from space, showing the staggering pace of urbanisation over the past 11 years, have become an online hit.
Hundreds of thousands of people have viewed the time-lapse videos and images taken by Nasa, documenting the creation of The Palm and The World islands.
There are 12 photographs dated between November 11, 2000 and April 25 last year showing the city's remarkable growth in that time.
They can be found on Nasa's Earth Observatory website. Slideshow videos of the images have so far attracted more than 240,000 views on YouTube from people all over the world.
"To expand the possibilities for beachfront tourist development, Dubai, part of the United Arab Emirates, undertook a massive engineering project to create hundreds of artificial islands along its Persian Gulf coastline," says Nasa's website.
The pictures show how dredging helped to raise The Palm Jumeirah from faint outlines in 2002 to the complete structure, including buildings, by 2009.
"By October 2002, substantial progress had been made on The Palm with many sandy 'palm fronds' inside a circular breakwater," says the Nasa website.
"The final image, taken in February 2011, shows vegetation on most of the fronds and numerous buildings on the tree trunk."
At the same time Dubai can be seen growing out of the desert.
What look like thin lines begin to appear from February 2, 2002, with snake-shaped patterns popping up soon after. These eventually become the man-made lakes in Emirates Hills and Jumeirah Islands.
By November 4, 2003, road grids can be seen with more buildings being constructed. Dubai Marina, Media City and Internet City, The Greens and Tecom all begin to take shape.

The World islands begin to develop from 2004 and are fully formed by 2009.
"Inland, changes are just as dramatic between November 2000 and February 2011. In the earliest image, empty desert fills the lower right quadrant of the image, as cityscape primarily hugs the coast," the website explains.
"As the years pass, urbanisation spreads and the final image shows the area almost entirely filled by roads, buildings and irrigated land."
The pictures were taken by Nasa's Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer, or Aster, on the space agency's Terra satellite.
Nasa says the images are false colour, meaning bare ground appears brown and vegetation shows up as red, water is dark blue and buildings and paved surfaces are light blue or grey.
The images have delighted those who have seen them, with many commenting on social media.
"Beautiful! Nasa captures Dubai's insane 11-year urbanisation," tweeted Hamna.
"Wow! Dubai has seriously grown in 11 years. Check out the images," said Bearbledeals.

Thomas Brunskill tweeted: "So awesome! Artificial islands, parks, and new city blocks transformed Dubai over the past decade."
"Time lapse of epic proportions. Eleven years of Dubai's insane growth seen from space," tweeted mohamedsomji.
"Think Dubai's artificial islands look crazy? Just wait until you see them from space," said mariusmele.
There are at least three videos on YouTube featuring a short 44-second compilation of the images.
So far they have been viewed a combined 241,820 times.
The Terra satellite was launched in December 1999 as part of Nasa's Earth Observing System.
Aster is a joint project between Nasa, the Japanese ministry of economy, trade and industry, and the Earth Remote Sensing Data Analysis Centre, also in Japan.

‘Embracing Islam is the best deal I made in the Kingdom’

2012-01-25T17:36:00.000+04:00

US businessman and pilot calls for efforts to project true image of his new religion

RIYADH: Just after spending one month in the Kingdom, where he was treated with kindness in a spiritual atmosphere, American businessman and pilot Richard Patterson, converted to Islam.

Richard, who is now called Abdulaziz, owns a company providing services in critical care. It has a capital of $50 million, and a fleet of two aircraft and two helicopters, specializing in medical flights.
Abdulaziz arrived in the Kingdom on a contract with the Saudi Red Crescent to train students for air emergency. During his stay, three members of the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Endowments, Call and Guidance invited him out for dinner. The members who worked with the “Guide Me to Islam” project, talked to Abdulaziz about Islam and it’s real essence.

“I came to the Kingdom for a commercial deal. I was so thrilled to make the best deal of my life with God Almighty by converting to Islam,” said Abdulaziz, during the conversion ceremony, commending the Saudi attire and describing it as comfortable and beautiful.

When Abdulaziz was in his country, he used to hear negative things about Islam through media channels, which were aimed at distorting its image.

“Just reading about Islam is not enough to understand Islam. It’s meeting people who best represent it and reflect its true spirit,” said Abdulaziz. He considers himself lucky to discover through Muslim friends he met and dealt with in the Kingdom that Islam is a religion of righteousness and tolerance. “Muslims and Saudis are kind, humble and open to others,” said Abdulaziz, adding that he felt they were like family to him, and never experienced alienation or ill treatment from their side.

What attracted Abdulaziz the most to the Saudi society is that it is religious. That helps people relate to religion as a part of their daily life. “I wish I could bring all my colleagues to the Kingdom to experience what I have and change their viewpoints on Islam,” he said.

Abdulaziz called upon fellow Muslim businessmen to work on attracting foreign businessmen to Islam, accusing them of not taking serious initiatives to call their peers to this glorious religion. “We can provide books on Islam to delegates during business meetings which help present true image of Islam to others,” said Abdulaziz.

Teacher and scholar Esam Abdul Razzaq, who translated for Abdulaziz, said that celebrities and key figures play a greater role in their societies in projecting a certain image. “Successful people have a credibility among members of their society, as they are considered important. Therefore, when they choose to convert to Islam, they trigger curiosity in others, who in turn, want to know more about this religion,” said Abdul Razzaq.

George Soros on the Coming U.S. Class War

2012-01-24T19:57:00.001+04:00

The situation is about as serious and difficult as I've experienced in my career.'

You know George Soros. He’s the investor’s investor—the man who still holds the record for making more money in a single day’s trading than anyone. He pocketed $1 billion betting against the British pound on “Black Wednesday” in 1992, when sterling lost 20 percent of its value in less than 24 hours and crashed out of the European exchange-rate mechanism. No wonder Brits call him, with a mix of awe and annoyance, “the man who broke the Bank of England.”

Soros doesn’t make small bets on anything. Beyond the markets, he has plowed billions of dollars of his own money into promoting political freedom in Eastern Europe and other causes. He bet against the Bush White House, becoming a hate magnet for the right that persists to this day. So, as Soros and the world’s movers once again converge on Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum this week, what is one of the world’s highest-stakes economic gamblers betting on now?

He’s not. For the first time in his 60-year career, Soros, now 81, admits he is not sure what to do. “It’s very hard to know how you can be right, given the damage that was done during the boom years,” Soros says. He won’t discuss his portfolio, lest anyone think he’s talking things down to make a buck. But people who know him well say he advocates making long-term stock picks with solid companies, avoiding gold—“the ultimate bubble”—and, mainly, holding cash.

He’s not even doing the one thing that you would expect from a man who knows a crippled currency when he sees one: shorting the euro, and perhaps even the U.S. dollar, to hell. Quite the reverse. He backs the beleaguered euro, publicly urging European leaders to do whatever it takes to ensure its survival. “The euro must survive because the alternative—a breakup—would cause a meltdown that Europe, the world, can’t afford.” He has bought about $2 billion in European bonds, mainly Italian, from MF Global Holdings Ltd., the securities firm run by former Goldman Sachs head Jon Corzine that filed for bankruptcy protection last October.

Has the great short seller gone soft? Well, yes. Sitting in his 33rd-floor corner office high above Seventh Avenue in New York, preparing for his trip to Davos, he is more concerned with surviving than staying rich. “At times like these, survival is the most important thing,” he says, peering through his owlish glasses and brushing wisps of gray hair off his forehead. He doesn’t just mean it’s time to protect your assets. He means it’s time to stave off disaster. As he sees it, the world faces one of the most dangerous periods of modern history—a period of “evil.” Europe is confronting a descent into chaos and conflict. In America he predicts riots on the streets that will lead to a brutal clampdown that will dramatically curtail civil liberties. The global economic system could even collapse altogether.

George Soros.

“I am not here to cheer you up. The situation is about as serious and difficult as I’ve experienced in my career,” Soros tells Newsweek. “We are facing an extremely difficult time, comparable in many ways to the 1930s, the Great Depression. We are facing now a general retrenchment in the developed world, which threatens to put us in a decade of more stagnation, or worse. The best-case scenario is a deflationary environment. The worst-case scenario is a collapse of the financial system.”

Soros’s warning is based as much on his own extraordinary personal history as on his gut instinct for market booms and busts. “I did survive a personally much more threatening situation, so it is emotional, as well as rational,” he acknowledges. Soros was just 13 when Nazi soldiers invaded and occupied his native Hungary in March 1944. In only eight weeks, almost half a million Hungarian Jews were deported, many to Auschwitz. He saw bodies of Jews, and the Christians who helped them, swinging from lampposts, their skulls crushed. He survived, thanks to his father, Tivadar, who managed to secure false identities for his family. Later, he watched as Russian forces ousted the Nazis and a new totalitarian ideology, communism, replaced fascism. As life got tougher during the postwar Soviet occupation, Soros managed to emigrate, first to London, then to New York.

Soros draws on his past to argue that the global economic crisis is as significant, and unpredictable, as the end of communism. “The collapse of the Soviet system was a pretty extraordinary event, and we are currently experiencing something similar in the developed world, without fully realizing what’s happening.” To Soros, the spectacular debunking of the credo of efficient markets—the notion that markets are rational and can regulate themselves to avert disaster—“is comparable to the collapse of Marxism as a political system. The prevailing interpretation has turned out to be very misleading. It assumes perfect knowledge, which is very far removed from reality. We need to move from the Age of Reason to the Age of Fallibility in order to have a proper understanding of the problems.”

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Sajak: Horizon

2012-01-24T19:42:00.001+04:00

(Dari majalah WANITA Februari 2012)

Horizon

Di udara
saujana horizon masa
melebar satu kerinduan
terlakar imej-imej perasaan
sebagai satu perjalanan
serba memungkinkan

Di jiwa
terbentang keinginan cita
pun rohani kepasrahan
gerabak musim di kejauhan
melerai seribu kenangan
di laman-laman persinggahan

Di mata
bersanding tanpa rupa
meriah tanpa suara
mengiringi janji gerhana
ke tapak-tapak pusara
nisan setia bercerita!

Fudzail
Hamilton, New Zealand

Why Israel needs blockbusters

2012-01-24T06:45:00.001+04:00

By URI AVNERY

Muslim-Jewish animosity started only a century ago, with the advent of Zionism, and for obvious reasons

ISRAEL has no foreign policy, only a domestic policy,” Henry Kissinger once remarked.
This has probably been more or less true of every country since the advent of democracy. Yet in Israel, this seems even truer. In order to understand our foreign policy, we have to look in the mirror. Who are we? What is our society like? In every immigrant country, from the United States to Australia, every new wave of immigrants is greeted by the scorn, contempt and even open hostility of those who came before them.

Still, the dominant myth was that of the “melting pot.” All immigrants would be thrown into the same pot and cleansed of their “foreign” traits, emerging as a uniform new nation without any traces of their origin. This myth died some decades ago.

Israel is now a kind of federation of several major demographic-cultural blocs which dominate our social and political life. Who are they? There are (1) the old Ashkenazim (Jews of European origin); (2) the Oriental (or “Sephardi”) Jews; (3) the religious (partly Ashkenazi, partly Oriental); (4) the “Russians”, immigrants from all the countries of the former Soviet union; and (5) the Palestinian-Arab citizens, who did not come from anywhere.

The political scene almost exactly mirrors these divisions. The Labor party was, in its heyday, the main instrument of Ashkenazi power. Its remnants, together with Kadima and Meretz, are still Ashkenazi. Avigdor Lieberman's Israel Beytenu consists mainly of Russians. There are three or four religious parties. Then there are two exclusively Arab parties, and the Communist party, which is mainly Arab, too. The Likud represents the bulk of the Orientals, though almost all its leaders are Ashkenazim.

The relationship between the blocs is often strained. Just now, the whole country is in an uproar because in Kiryat Malakhi, a southern town with mainly Oriental inhabitants, house owners have signed a commitment not to sell apartments to Ethiopians, while the rabbi of Safed, a northern town of mainly Orthodox Jews, has forbidden his flock to rent apartments to Arabs.

But apart from the rift between the Jews and the Arabs, the main problem is the resentment of the Orientals, the Russians and the religious against what they call “the Ashkenazi elite.”

Since they were the first to arrive, long before the establishment of the state, Ashkenazim control most of the centers of power — social, political, economic, cultural et al.

The Likud came to power in 1977, dethroning Labor. With short interruptions, it has been in power ever since. Yet most Likud members still feel that the Ashkenazim rule Israel, leaving them far behind. In our society, all the other blocs feel like outsiders looking through the holes, full of envy for the Ashkenazi “elite” inside, who have all the good things. They hate everything they connect with this “elite”: The Supreme Court, the media, the human rights organizations, and especially the peace camp. All these are called “leftist”, a word curiously enough identified with the “elite.”
How has “peace” become associated with the dominant and domineering Ashkenazim? That is one of the great tragedies of our country.

Jews have lived for many centuries in the Muslim world. There they never experienced the terrible things committed in Europe by Christian anti-Semitism. Muslim-Jewish animosity started only a century ago, with the advent of Zionism, and for obvious reasons.

When the Jews from Muslim countries started to arrive en masse in Israel, they were steeped in Arab culture. But here they were received by a society that held everything Arab in total contempt. Their Arab culture was “primitive”, while real culture was European. Furthermore, they were identified with the “murderous” Muslims. So the immigrants were required to shed their own culture and traditions, their accent, their memories, their music. In order to show how thoroughly Israeli they had become, they also had to hate Arabs.

It is, of course, a worldwide phenomenon that in multinational countries, the most downtrodden class of the dominant nation is also the most radical nationalist foe of the minority nations. This is one of the reasons why the Orientals were attracted to the Likud, for whom the rejection of peace and the hatred of Arabs are supreme virtues. Also, having been in opposition for ages, the Likud was seen as representing those who were “outside”, fighting those who were “inside.” This is still the case.
The case of the “Russians” is different. They grew up in a society that despised democracy, admired strong leaders. The “whites”, Russians and Ukrainians, despised and hated the “dark” peoples of the south — Armenians, Georgians, Tatars, Uzbeks and such.

When the Russian Jews came to join us, they brought with them a virulent nationalism, a complete disinterest in democracy and an automatic hatred of Arabs. They cannot understand why we allowed them to stay here at all. When, this week, a lady deputy (though “lady” may be euphemistic) from St. Petersburg poured a glass of water on the head of an Arab deputy from the Labor party, nobody was very surprised. For Lieberman's followers, Peace is a dirty word, and so is Democracy. For religious people of all shades — from the ultra-Orthodox to the national-religious settlers, there is no problem at all. From the crib on, they learn that Jews are the Chosen People; that the Almighty personally promised us this country; that the Goyim — including the Arabs — are just inferior human beings.

It may be said, quite rightly, that I generalize. I do, just to simplify matters. There are indeed a lot of Orientals, especially of the younger generation, who are repelled by the ultranationalism of the Likud, the more so as the neoliberalism of Benjamin Netanyahu (which Shimon Peres once called “swinish capitalism”) is in direct contradiction to the basic interests of their community. There are also a lot of decent, liberal, peace-loving religious people. (Yeshayahu Leibovitz comes to mind.) Some Russians are gradually leaving their self-imposed ghetto. But these are small minorities in their communities. The bulk of the three blocs — Oriental, Russian and religious — are united in their opposition to peace, and at best indifferent to democracy.

All these together constitute the right-wing, anti-peace coalition that is governing Israel now. The problem is not just a question of politics. It is much more profound — and much more daunting. Some people blame us, the democratic peace movement, for not recognizing the problem early enough, and not doing enough to attract the members of the various blocs to the ideals of peace and democracy. Also, it is said, we did not show that social justice is inseparably connected with democracy and peace.

I must accept my share of the blame for this failure, though I might point out that I tried to make the connection right from the beginning. I asked my friends to concentrate our efforts on the Oriental community, remind them of the glories of the Muslim-Jewish “golden Age” in Spain, of the huge mutual impact of Jewish and Muslim scientists, poets and religious thinkers throughout the ages.
A few days ago, I was invited to give a lecture to the faculty and students of Ben-Gurion University in Beer Sheva. I described the situation more or less along the same lines. The first question from the large audience, which consisted of Jews — both Orientals and Ashkenazim, and Arabs — especially Bedouins was: “So what hope is there? Faced with this reality, how can the peace forces win?” I told them that I put my trust in the new generation. Last summer's huge social protest movement can happen here. The movement united Ashkenazim and Orientals. Tent cities sprang up in Tel Aviv and Beer Sheva, all over the place. Our first job is to break the barriers between the blocs, change reality, create a new Israeli society. We need blockbusters.
Yes, it is a daunting job. But I believe it can be done.

Dubai's Global Village: From Arab Spring to unity

2012-01-23T16:17:00.000+04:00

Decorated pavilions of Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Yemen at Global Village speak volumes

This is Tahrir Square, the epicentre of Egypt’s January 25 revolution. Er, not in Cairo but in Dubai. The Egypt Pavilion at the Global Village is a model of Tahrir Square, where the Arab Spring began, and the narrow streets of Khan El Khalili in the Islamic district of Cairo.

Near the entrance, two men dressed as King Tut made me smile. Working laboriously on ‘traditional’ Egyptian crafts, such as hieroglyphic bookmarks and greeting cards, they look up for a second and get back to serious work.

“When I’m in Cairo, I go to Tahrir Square every Friday and join the latest ‘millioneya’,” (the million man/woman march which seems to be an event on most Fridays) says Abel H, while his friend Ahmed nods. “It is unacceptable for me to be part of the silent majority. Being part of the silent majority in Egypt now labels you as being a member of the ‘couch party.’ You sit on the couch and you watch the latest millioneya on television, and the only political views you have are communicated to whoever happens to be sitting next to you, or to your cat,” he says, firmly and gets back to work.

Naturally you come across the predictable papyrus leaf prints, busts of Nefertiti, cat statues and the paraphernalia. A sensational discovery 89 years ago by archaeologist Howard Carter turned the unknown pharaoh Tutankhamun into an international superstar. For years, Tutankhamun, his treasures and his tomb have been touring the globe with an ambassador-like presence in each city he visits. He’s here, too.

You walk further and you hear a slight music playing ahead from an oud. The history of music would remain incomplete without a reference of Egyptian Oud. Mohammed at the stall recalls how his friend Tarek from Revolutionary Artists of Egypt had taken his oud along and played music after the turmoil had calmed down in Tahrir Square. “It was then that he brought his oud guitar and we sang political and revolutionary songs, which gave people hope and excitement in those times,” he beams.

You walk further down and you come across quilts and people buying cotton underwear! The quilted fabric called ‘Khayameya’ fabric, takes its name from a whole quarter in old Cairo called Khayameya, originating from Kheyma or tent in Arabic. The fabric is actually used to set up huge tents in streets to celebrate or gather for a marriage or someone’s death.

The tent is calledSewan in Egyptian Arabic. I made a mental note that if I ever visited Cairo again, I would track down Khayameya Street (The Alley of Tentmakers, south of Bab Zweila) and get one of these quilts. But it was right there in front of me so I decided not to wait any longer.

While walking out of the square, I noticed a young man in a bright red T-shirt that read ‘My new birthday is January 25^th’ walking past. It reminded me of a shirt my friend had picked up for me from the (real) Tahrir Square which read ‘100 Percent Egyptian.’

Syria

When you step inside the pavilion, an ambience of a traditional Damascus courtyard house greets you, with the beautifully ornate shops resembling the Northern Damascus souk and homes. The pavilion is in the shape of a gate like the seventh Damascus gate.

The shops sell an assortment of traditional Syrian ware including abayas, crystal, antiques, traditional music instruments, wood work ‘Arabesk,’ herbs, traditional sweets, curtains, and the damascene table cloth symbolising the wealthy civilisation of the country.

Clank. Clink. Clank. The rhythmic clanking of his cymbals resonates distinctively through the thick noise of visitors bustling about. When a thirsty passerby stops him for erk sous, a cold liquorice juice, the vendor, in his baggy Turkish-style pants, thick cloth belt, little vest, and rubber boots, tilts his heavy ice-filled copper container and pours the brownish juice into a glass held way below his waist so as to foam up the liquid. Othman who’s being serving this drink in his hometown Homs says, “Homs is one place where the people just don’t give up, it has become so symbolic. It is such an extended city, with extensive suburbs, villages and surrounding areas taking part in the protests that it has been hard for the Syrian army to subdue all of that territory, as well as everywhere else,” he says, cautiously.

You can also experience the sounds of the religious folkloric band ‘Mawaly’ providing live entertainment, nearby.

The rows of knick-knack shops attractively displaying traditional antique Syrian items gives one a feeling of walking through an aisle selling heritage items in Souk al Hamidiyeh in Damascus. “People from Homs are renowned for their sense of humour and this has come out so strongly in the crisis says Abdallah, of the Arabesk furniture stall.

That is why in the Syrian revolution, Homs has become the capital that Damascus has not.

Yemen

You get surrounded by Yemeni stuff here, and at the stalls charming and chatty Yemenis in their traditional garbs, including daggers, sell their local goods.

The prime attraction at this pavilion is the Yemeni honey. It’s pricey but tasty. And if you have even slight grey hair and are male, get raedy for a ‘honey viagra’!

Yemen’s uprising began much before protesters in Tunisia and Egypt took to the streets. But while the dictators in those countries were toppled, activists in Yemen have been repressed by a leadership that for years has manipulated tribes and exploited the country’s instability.

“Yemen is not like Tunisia, or Egypt, or Libya, or Syria,” says Mousa, a honey-vendor, “Yemen has a culture and society of its own that is still deeply rooted in its old norms. Modernity is prevailing in all the other countries, but in Yemen it is still crawling,” he adds handing out the honey with a smile, to add to the sweetness.

Iraq

You may even walk past without noticing it. Sadly, the ‘cradle of civilisation’ pavilion is quite small and unassuming. But stop and look because it’s a real treasure house ‘a la Aladdin’s Cave,’ but full of artworks. This is the real deal: original oil paintings and other art forms, especially calligraphy come straight from Baghdad. Some of the art is sold directly from the artists. There are artists like Haider who make paintings the whole year just to display and sell it here. “I once sold a painting to an American marine telling him that the painting meant revival and renaissance and he bought it immediately,” he exclaims. “In actuality it was a painting of unrequited love, the story of Iraq is similar, isn’t it?” he questions with a lost look.

As you make your way out of the Global Village, you realise it’s not just about shopping for the unique handmade global items. The spirit of one world pervades the village. Even though gunfire reverberates in their homeland, these people are here as ambassadors of peace.

The rise of Islamists and Sharia-compliant realist governance

2012-01-23T08:39:00.000+04:00

A pragmatic principle gains ground in Islamist politics

The results are final: Islamists have secured 75 per cent of the seats in Egypt's parliament. They will shape politics for at least five years to come, a chilling thought for many. But the reverse might also be true, not only in Egypt but in every country where Islamists are winning at the ballot box: politics will shape Islamism.

The rise of Islamists in the region has revived a pragmatic form of Islamic jurisprudence that has been neglected for centuries: "siyasa shariyyah", or Sharia-compliant realist governance, deals with politics, economics and law based on an overarching principle known as "maslaha", or public interest. In practice, siyasa shariyyah is often seen as in opposition to traditional jurisprudence.

But it is a school of thought that is gaining ground in different quarters. "Politics is mainly about maslaha," says Dr Salman Al Odah, one of Saudi Arabia's more prominent clerics. Dr Al Odah is in the process of preparing a study on the subject that deals with Sharia in the context of the Arab Spring.

Sheikh Mohammed Hassan, one of Egypt's top Salafi clerics, has used the principle of maslaha to justify the need to comply with the peace treaty with Israel. He maintains that it is not in Egypt's best interests to break the accords, citing the example of a 10-year truce Prophet Mohammed signed with Quraishi leaders when Muslims were weak. Although it was a deeply "unfair and humiliating" agreement, Sheikh Mohammed says, the Prophet adhered to the truce until it was eventually broken by the Meccans. Egypt's Salafi Al Nour party has recently held training courses for its members on siyasa shariyyah.

Ibrahim bin Omar Al Sakran, a Saudi intellectual, has been attacked by extremist Salafis after writing a treatise on siyasa shariyyah in which he argued that the Islamic political concept of "shura", or consultation, meant that all Muslims must be consulted - rather than a select group - bringing the idea of shura closer to a democratic system. He also argues that governments have contracts with the people that can be revoked just like any other contract if the terms are breached. Political engagement of the entire community, he says, falls within the national maslaha.

The significance is that these opinions come from moderate figures within the Salafi movement, who base their arguments on Sharia texts (the Quran and the Hadiths) and the views of Islam's early generations, making the ideas more credible in the eyes of other religious scholars.

Here in the UAE, the judiciary offers concrete examples of how the principle of siyasa shariyyah is applied. In 2010, Abu Dhabi's Court of Cassation set a legal precedent by ruling that a Muslim can be executed for the murder of a non-Muslim although the UAE hears cases under the Maliki school of jurisprudence - which stipulates the contrary. The lower courts found a Sudanese man guilty of stabbing to death a Christian woman from Ethiopia, and sentenced him to 15 years in prison.

The Public Prosecution appealed against the verdicts and demanded the case be tried under Hanafi teachings, the only Sunni school that calls for the death penalty if a Muslim kills a non-Muslim. Prosecutors said it was in the interest of the country to ensure equality for residents. The victim was a legitimate resident and therefore entitled to protection, security and sanctity for her "blood, honour and money", according to the prosecutor.

The case was then retried under the Hanafi school and the man was sentenced to death. As the cassation court's rulings are binding on local courts, all Abu Dhabi courts now have to treat Muslims and non-Muslims equally in criminal matters. Magistrates at the time cited the pragmatic principle of siyasa shariyyah.
"In Islamic jurisprudence, judges can announce that a person is sentenced to death in accordance with Sharia but should not be executed in consideration of politics," says Dr Ahmed Al Kubaisi, the head of Sharia studies at UAE University. "The interests of the nation precede the interests of the individual. Justice that safeguards the interests of the whole nation is preferable to that which safeguards the interests of the individual."

In another case, the federal Supreme Court ruled against a borrower who refused to pay interest that he owed on delayed loan repayments. The man claimed that interest was forbidden by Sharia and therefore he was not obliged to pay. Lower courts accepted his argument but the Supreme Court ruled the bank's right to charge interest was in line with both UAE secular laws and Sharia.

"As a general rule, interest, whether simple or compound, is prohibited by Sharia," the Supreme Court ruled. "But it has been made necessary for banks to accept simple interest. As long as the necessity persists, and until an economic alternative is established to replace the current banking system, interest is lawful."
The judges based their ruling on the Hadith: "A rich man's delay in payment is an injustice.

"In line with the Hadith, ordering the borrower to pay interest for late payments can be considered a sort of damages, which is compliant with both the UAE law and Sharia," the justices ruled.

Over the last century, Islamic scholastic tradition has been largely shaped by faqihs, or Sharia scholars, whose fatwas have been based purely on religious texts, even if the issues involve scientific fact or public interest. Siyasa shariyyah, on the other hand, requires judgements in light of the specific context and the general maslaha.

Across the region, the principle has gained momentum since Islamists rose in the political arena after the Arab Spring. It is not enough for a scholar to issue a maslaha-based opinion; the reasoning still must be based on a religious text. That is why siyasa shariyyah has such an imposing authority within Islamist thought. And it is why it may fundamentally reshape Islamic jurisprudence in public affairs.

Time to Enter Libya....

2012-01-22T11:51:00.004+04:00

UAE firms race to enter Libya

Companies aware that time is key to beating competition to the untapped market

Image Credit: AP
A building in Tripoli that was destroyed by a Nato airstrike. Though the absence of clear laws is acting as a deterrent, companies in the UAE are aware that they have to act quickly to capture the Libyan market.

Tripoli: UAE companies want to move fast to establish themselves in Libya before rivals from other Gulf states and the rest of the world pile into a country that has a lot of oil revenue.
The depressing tawdriness of four decades of neglect under former dictator Muammar Gaddafi's rule is all too obvious in Libya's capital Tripoli. The roads are deeply pot-holed, most buildings are shabby and heavy concrete slabs betray their 1970s architecture, while large piles of rubbish mount up all around them.

But the miserable state of the country is also a huge business opportunity. "It might look grim, but there is so much to do. They need so much stuff," said the general manager of a family company in Abu Dhabi. He had flown into Tripoli as part of a 100-strong delegation of leading UAE companies and government officials, which used the inaugural flight of Etihad Airways to Tripoli as a reason to check out the new market.

The Emirati visitors all spoke of the need to move quickly to set up their businesses in Libya, despite the legal vacuum they would be moving into. They were well aware that the present interim government will draft some initial codes of conduct, which may then be replaced by the final elected government drafting new business laws, but the commercial reality is that they need to be on the ground as soon as possible.

Speed is critical
"Speed is important," Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair told Gulf News. "For any investor coming from the UAE, speed is critical. He has to choose where to invest because the whole world is going to be coming here.

"On the political situation in Libya, we are optimistic that life will stabilise. To reform a whole country will take some time, even a few years. It cannot be done in a few months. There is no trade agreement yet and that will take some time, but we sense a lot of goodwill from people in Libya."
Many businessmen on the delegation wanted a trade agreement between the UAE and Libya, so that the legal implications of doing business between the two countries would become easier. But looking ahead, others spoke of their hopes that they would be allowed to set up companies in Libya without local partners.

The Al Ghurair Group is well ahead of its rivals. "We have invested in the largest refinery in Libya, where we have a 50 per cent ownership," Al Ghurair told Gulf News. "We have come to expand our business, and plan to put in $1.5 billion [Dh5.5 billion] over four years."

The initial investment was made three years ago in the Ras Lanuf refinery, and is a partnership with the Libyan National Oil Company. This structure has the advantage that it is transparent, so that despite the drama of the change of regime, the investment has continued.

But the Al Ghurair Group is also looking at contracting, banking and insurance in Libya. "There is a lot to do, and therefore a lot of opportunities," Al Ghurair told Gulf News.

Looking around
Other companies in the delegation were going to Libya to start looking around. The manager of one Dubai family group was clear that bidding for any big infrastructure project would still be six months away from now.
"Companies are looking at starting with commercial options first. We have some spare capacity in Dubai thanks to the downturn, and we can put the stuff on a ship and do a deal. It will get our brand up in the town and we can look around.
"In addition to the senior managers, I am taking my logistics man since that will be a key part of getting things right in this market. And someone from administration, to understand how to manage the paperwork for imports and visas."
Along with many companies on the delegation, he was anxious to know what legal structures would be allowed. "There are lots of questions: in the absence of a trade agreement. For example: Can we go in as a sole trader, or do we need a local partner?
"And if we have to find a 51 per cent partner, then we need to find a family that we trust. Also, it is not clear if we should go with a Tripoli partner, or one in Benghazi."
But these challenges were all accepted as a normal part of getting to know a new market, and were not going to stop the businessmen looking for opportunities. One UAE company had already confirmed interest in Libya from a lot of the principals it already represents in the UAE.
"They know us, and they have no access to Libya at present. All the previous agreements in Libya were with the previous regime, and had Gaddafi-linked partners, so the field is completely open for new arrangements," he said.

Agriculture
The well-ordered green fields around Tripoli were in stark contrast to the rambling chaos of the city. One Abu Dhabi-based businessman came to a rapid conclusion that he would start by looking at how to support the obviously successful small holders, producing a lot of fruit and vegetables. "We should look at what the farmers might need, but we also need to see how we can get in on the distribution of their produce," as he thought of both the Gulf and European markets.
One small sector has already done very well this season. Unusually heavy rains in October and Nov-ember have resulted in a bumper crop of the local truffles, leading to a glut in the market. "Truffles are not common so a kilo is normally around 100 dinars [Dh300.5]," explained my gourmet taxi driver. "But now there are so much on the market that the price has fallen to between 25 to 50 dinars depending on the quality." Maybe a luxury product waiting to be exploited by a quick witted trader?

Tripoli seeks to be regional hub
Tripoli: Strategically, Libya sees itself as a regional hub between the Arab world, Africa and Europe, and the new authorities are anxious to build long-term relationships that will help them fulfil this aim.
Dr Yousuf Al Wahaishi, the Minister of Transport in the interim government, said that part of this regional strategy was that Tripoli airport is being rebuilt with a focus on working as a hub airport, carrying passengers and goods through Libya, rather than as a destination in its own right.
"Work on Tripoli International Airport has stopped, but will restart within a few months," he said. "And we will have an open skies policy when we get going."

Long-term operators
He also welcomed the UAE's acknowledged skills in managing ports, commenting that several of Libya's ports like Misrata and Benghazi needed major restoration after the impact of the recent fighting.
But they also will need long-term operators. "We will start to look for strategic partnerships that will operate for 10 to 15 years. The full details may have to wait for the new elected government, but they should not have to start completely from scratch. We need to see what we can do now," he said.

She survived after plunging six storeys from her apartment

2012-01-21T21:18:00.000+04:00

Image Credit: Faisal Masudi/XPRESS
Egyptian miracle girl Dunia Reda, 6, says she didnot see ‘who saved me’ but added 'it must have been an angel'.

A girl who survived after plunging six storeys from her apartment block in Sharjah last Thursday said an angel broke her fall.
Egyptian miracle girl Dunia Reda, 6, said: "I was falling fast at first, and very scared, but then I felt someone hold me like I was a baby. I didn't drop as hard as I thought I would."

“

I was falling fast at first, and very scared, but then I felt someone hold me like I was a baby. I didn't drop as hard as I thought I would

”

Dunia Reda

Dunia was still conscious after hitting the ground. She said she did not see "who saved me" but added "it must have been an angel".
Her father Reda added: "I believe her, it was divine mercy. She keeps telling me about it, she is very excited."
Dunia said she lost her balance after opening a window and leaning out of her building in Nabbah area to chat with children playing downstairs. The window was shut and locked as usual, Reda said, but Dunia "couldn't resist the sounds of children playing and wanted to say hi to them".
She had got up while her mum and baby brothers were still asleep. Reda was in Dubai at the time, at around 10pm last Thursday. She managed to unlock the window and slide it open.

Image Credit: Supplied
Watchman Nurul Anwar rushed to help Dunia after she fell from sixth floor apartment window.

‘I will be careful'
"I won't go near windows again, it's dangerous. I will listen to my parents," she said. Reda added: "We always keep the front door and windows locked. Dunia is a very social girl who loves to play outdoors with friends; she wanted to see the children playing that night."
She was rushed to Kuwaiti Hospital in Sharjah, he added. Dunia is now recovering from her injuries at Al Qasimi Hospital in Sharjah. When XPRESS visited her recently, she appeared to be doing well, playing games on her father's mobile phone and chatting with him.
He said: "Dunia was given a bracelet with ‘Allah' written on it by her mum hours before the fall. She refuses to take it off now, even when she is getting her dressing changed. She is a very spiritual girl, always smiling."
In the Nabbah neighbourhood people are still talking about the death-defying incident. "It's unbelievable indeed. Every day I am stopped by strangers asking me to describe how it happened," said Mohammad Nurul Anwar, the watchman of her building.
Dunia's fall comes on the heels of a string of fatal plunges seeing children toppling out of windows or balconies from high-rises in the UAE. At least 18 children fell last year, with about half a dozen deaths reported in separate incidents. Legal action was taken against parents accused of neglect in at least one case, with authorities warning against leaving children unattended or alone at home. Awareness campaigns highlighting the risks are planned as government officials try to introduce new safety rules and punishments to help prevent such accidents from happening.

First Lady of Shopping

2012-01-21T13:56:00.001+04:00

Dedicated follower of fashion

ROSMAH MANSOR likes to be introduced as the First Lady of Malaysia, but for Sydney fashion designer Carl Kapp, she is his first lady of shopping.

The wife of the Malaysian Prime Minister, Najib Razak, is known across Malaysia simply as FLOM (First Lady of Malaysia), and is Kapp's biggest customer, having dropped an estimated $100,000 in his boutique ordering garments during a private holiday in Sydney a little more than a fortnight ago.

''She was absolutely gracious and very easy to deal with,'' Kapp told PS this week, agreeing she was nothing like the woman often portrayed in Malaysian media for her allegedly extravagant lifestyle.

In recent months, Mansor, who stayed with her husband in the $20,000-a-night penthouse at The Darling hotel, has been forced to deny reports she had bought a $US24 million diamond and a $US200,000-plus crocodile skin, bejewelled Hermes handbag. Kapp, who has a keen eye for such bags, having worked for Hermes, said he did not see any such handbag when he met her.

What her critics in Malaysia will make of her Sydney shopping spree, first reported on local fashion blog Frockwriter, is yet to be determined.

Kapp, who became suspicious of the identity of his mystery VIP customer when his Oxford Street store received a flurry of calls requesting valet parking for her limo, said he was being flown to Malaysia next month with a collection of ''toiles'' for Mansor to try on before completing her massive order of 61 dresses, pants and tops.

All made from the finest silk and in a variety of exotic colours and prints, Kapp said his new muse had ''a very good eye for colour and she likes a lot of prints''.

Super Kerr now a model citizen

January 21, 2012

Andrew Hornery

Should we all cut back on salt—regardless of our blood pressure level?

2012-01-21T10:40:00.000+04:00

Most of the sodium in our diet comes from salt, or sodium chloride. Sodium has many important functions in the body, including:

transmitting nerve impulses

contracting and relaxing muscle fibers

maintaining proper fluid balance.

But Americans get much more than they need—3,400 mg of sodium per day, on average. (See the chart below for recommended intake.)The kidneys regulate the body's sodium level by getting rid of any excess. But if there's too much sodium in the bloodstream, the kidneys can't keep up. Excess sodium in the blood pulls out water from the cells. As this fluid increases, so does blood volume. That means more work for the heart, increased pressure in the blood vessels, and often, eventually, stiffened vessel walls, chronic high blood pressure, and an increased risk of heart attack or stroke.

Current recommended intakes of sodium for healthy adults by age group
Group	Adequate intake (AI) of sodium*	Salt equivalent	Upper limit (UL) of sodium intake**
Ages 19-50	1.5 g/1,500 mg	3,800 mg, or ²⁄₃ teaspoon (tsp.)	2.3 g/2,300 mg (equivalent to 5.8 g/5,800 mg, or 1 tsp., salt)
Ages 51-70	1.3 g/1,300 mg	3,200 mg, or ~½ tsp.	Less than 2.3 g, but a precise amount has not been determined
Ages 71 and over	1.2 g/1,200 mg	2,900 mg, or ½ tsp.
The average amount needed to replace sodium lost daily through sweat while providing enough other essential nutrients. UL may be higher for people who lose large amounts of sodium in sweat, such as athletes and workers exposed to extreme heat. Source:* Dietary Reference Intakes for Water, Potassium, Sodium, Chloride, and Sulfate, National Academies Press (2004).

Some people are especially sensitive to sodium—their blood pressure rises and falls directly with their sodium intake. That puts them at increased risk for cardiovascular disease, even if they don't have high blood pressure. It also means that they particularly benefit from restricting sodium intake.

Those most prone to salt sensitivity include:

the elderly

African Americans

people with hypertension

people with diabetes

people with chronic kidney disease.

What about the rest of us?

As many as one in three adults in the United States has high blood pressure, also called hypertension. Many more have "prehypertension," which means that while they don't have high blood pressure yet, they're likely to develop it. Many studies have shown that blood pressure is directly related to dietary sodium, so it makes sense for at-risk individuals to cut back. But what about the rest of us?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that limiting sodium intake should be just about everyone's concern. In a 2009 study, CDC researchers concluded that 70% of American adults should aim for a sodium intake of no more than 1,500 mg per day. People who fell into this group of about 145 million people included:

everyone over age 40

all African Americans

people with hypertension.

Some public health experts believe the 1,500-mg-per-day cap should be extended to everyone. Others say that proposal ignores other factors influencing blood pressure. Almost everyone agrees that we couldn't reach the 1,500-mg limit without reducing the amount of salt in processed and prepared foods—the main source of dietary sodium.

Sources of sodium

Most of the sodium we eat comes from restaurant meals and processed foods, including canned vegetables and soups, pasta sauces, frozen entrees, luncheon meats, and snack foods.

Sodium is also found in many condiments besides ordinary table salt—including soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, salad dressings, ketchup, seasoned salts, pickles, and olives. Baking soda, baking powder, and monosodium glutamate (MSG) also contain sodium.

What do the studies show?

Many studies have investigated links between sodium intake, blood pressure, and cardiovascular disease. Some of the most compelling evidence has come from the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) trials.

The first DASH trial showed that a diet rich in the following could lower blood pressure:

fruits

vegetables

low-fat dairy products

whole grains

beans

nuts

fish

lean meats

poultry.

In a follow-up trial, this diet was compared with one closely resembling the average American diet, and both diets were further divided into three sodium levels: high (3,500 mg/day), moderate (2,400 mg/day), and low (1,500 mg/day). More than 400 volunteers followed their assigned diets for 12 weeks, changing their sodium intake every four weeks.

Across the board, less sodium intake led to lower blood pressure. The DASH diet with sodium restricted to just 1,500 mg per day worked best for all participants. And for people with hypertension, it was almost as effective as medication.

The researchers concluded that we could all benefit from reducing our sodium intake. But the study did little to quell controversy over the issue. Critics charged that it was too brief to justify a general recommendation, and they warned of health risks from insufficient sodium in the diet. Proponents say that's unlikely, because most human beings don't even need as much as 1,500 mg a day for good health. Of course, this 12-week study couldn't predict the impact of reduced sodium intake on the risk of cardiovascular disease down the road.

A 2007 follow-up study to the Trials of Hypertension Prevention (TOHP) provided a longer-term perspective. The original TOHP study involved two randomized trials of lifestyle interventions conducted in the late 1980s and early 1990s. A team led by Harvard researchers tracked down the original TOHP participants and found that those who had permanently lowered their sodium intake to between 2,000 and 2,600 mg per day and continued to watch their salt intake had almost 30% fewer cardiovascular events, including death, in the following 10 to 15 years.

The TOHP trials didn't require drastic dietary changes. Instead, the volunteers learned how to look out for hidden salt and avoid it. Those who were able to reduce their salt intake by one-third to one-half teaspoon per day reaped the cardiovascular benefits.

One size doesn't fit all

The controversy about universal salt restriction will probably continue. As in most health matters, one size doesn't fit all. How salt affects your blood pressure and health depends on many things, including your:

genes

age

race

medical conditions.

What to do

If you're under age 50, your blood pressure is in the healthy range (under 120/80 mm Hg), and your health is good, you have little reason to worry about your dietary sodium intake, at least for now. Still, try to limit it to no more than 2,300 mg per day.

The risk for high blood pressure rises with age, so you'll do yourself a favor if you wean your taste buds from a yen for salt. Research has shown that people who slowly reduce their intake find that they eventually prefer less salt.

If you're older, obese, African American, or have diabetes, you may be salt-sensitive. Most experts agree people in these categories should cut back. Keep your sodium intake to less than 1,500 mg a day.

If you have hypertension, prehypertension, kidney disease, or heart failure, keep your sodium intake to less than 1,500 mg a day.

If you're hypertensive or prehypertensive or just want a healthy eating plan, consider following one of the three diets that were tested in the OmniHeart trial. The first is the DASH-like diet explained in this PDF published by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. The second was high in unsaturated fats, and the third was high in protein. (See www.omniheart.org for specifics.)

Results showed that all three diets lowered blood pressure, improved cholesterol levels, and reduced the risk of heart disease. (The high-unsaturated-fat and high-protein diets improved cholesterol levels and blood pressure even more than the DASH diet, which was higher in carbohydrates.)

The health benefits of these eating plans can't be attributed to any single ingredient—the magic is probably in the mix—but one reason they work is that they're rich in potassium. Potassium has been shown to be beneficial to blood pressure.

Whatever diet you follow, make sure it includes plenty of fruits and vegetables, which contain little or no sodium and are an important source of potassium. Potassium-rich choices include bananas, orange juice, cantaloupe, spinach, avocado, and sweet potato.

The Greatest Running Shoe Never Sold

2012-01-20T09:47:00.000+04:00

How hard is it for an independent inventor to sell an idea to a multinational? Try running a mile in Lenn Hann's shoes

Photograph by Daniel Shea

Late one night in August 1997, 54-year-old inventor Lenn Rockford Hann placed two bottles of Gatorade near Concourse F of Chicago O’Hare International Airport, unlaced his sneakers, removed his socks, then dodged curious maintenance workers for two hours while running 13.1 miles on the walkways. His pace surprised him. He was convinced the springy, resilient surface was almost perfect. “My legs felt amazing,” says Hann, a marathoner. “I’ve been chasing a shoe that feels that good ever since.”

For years, Hann had been designing a running shoe that he hoped would give him an edge. After his airport run (in the days of lighter security, naturally), he knew he was on to something, and he became obsessed with O’Hare’s movable sidewalks. Finding a walkway in the midst of repair on a subsequent jog, he jumped into the pit to look at its clockworks. There he found rollers on each side, with nothing holding people up in the middle but the belt’s tension. The next day, Hann called the belt company, Dunlop Conveyor Belting, and learned they were adjusted to 2,500 foot-pounds of force to create the right balance.

Lenn Rockford Hann in his home studio Photographs by Daniel Shea

Athletic brands spend millions every year trying to build a better sneaker that will propel them to the front of the $6.3 billion running shoe business, one of the biggest and most visible areas of sporting goods, with 11 percent growth in 2011, according to industry analyst SportsOneSource. Nearly all sneakers have a sole that looks like lasagna, composed of layers of rubber, foam, and plastic. The fluffy foam is made from ethylene-vinyl acetate, or EVA, which has its critics: EVA adds weight to shoes, and lab tests show it requires more energy per stride. Running shoe companies have long sought an EVA substitute that absorbs shock but also returns more energy. “Consumers like the cushioned feeling associated with a conventional running shoe,” says Darren Stefanyshyn, a University of Calgary researcher and former chairperson of the Footwear Biomechanics Group. “If you could provide that without using foam, you’d have a winner.”

It took him eleven years, but Hann finally converted his airport research into a breakthrough sneaker patented in 2008, a shoe with an entirely different system to cushion and propel the foot. It quickly attracted the attention of fast-growing athletic brand Under Armour (UA), which spent two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop it as the prospective centerpiece of the company’s first line of footwear. Hann’s shoe was scheduled to launch early this year and was poised to rock the footwear industry, but it never quite made it to market.

Feet of Imagination: The Prototype Photographs by Daniel Shea

Hann is a former software engineer with glasses, short brown hair, a high domed forehead, and ears that stick out like antennae. He is talkative, relentlessly upbeat, and consistently attired in marathon T-shirts. His Volkswagen (VOW:GR) bears the license plate TNASHS, for “tenacious.”
In the years following his midnight airport jog, Hann licensed several inventions—an electronic cat toy among them—that brought him modest income, but the shoe was always his favorite project. He tried many materials before landing on carbon fiber, an ultra-strong substance that holds its shape after years of pounding. He engineered carbon fiber shock absorbers into his shoe to give it cushioning and stability in one mechanism. A hinge in the forefoot provided flexibility.
Three days before the 2002 Chicago Marathon, Hann bought industrial carbon fiber fabric and baked it in his kitchen. Once the fumes dissipated, he cannibalized the uppers of a pair of New Balance 763 running shoes for his proto-types. As he hacked off layers of EVA foam from the sneakers with a table saw, his hand slipped and the blade cut deeply into his thumb, embedding bits of blue foam into the wound. Hann rushed to the emergency room, then assembled the shoes the next day.

Hassan Al Banna's brother: Islamist win is just a blip

2012-01-20T07:56:00.000+04:00

When it comes to the political turmoil in Egypt, Gamal Al Banna is anything but short-sighted.
Indeed, the 91-year-old younger brother of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood sees developments through the lens of the 30,000 volumes of Islamic theory and world history that line the walls of his office near Bab Al Sheariya Square in downtown Cairo.

Looking elfin in a Moroccan hood and scarf behind a desk stacked with paper, he said the success of Islamist groups in parliamentary elections - the Muslim Brotherhood-backed Freedom and Justice Party won roughly 45 per cent of the seats in the lower house - was but a blip in Egyptian history.
"I'm completely unhappy with their victory, but it is not a major historic moment," he said dismissively. "They are living in a different time than our contemporary one. I think they will fail to deliver a better society."

That repudiation of the movement and ideology that Hassan Al Banna built into one of the most powerful organisations in the Arab world does not mean he has any less respect for his brother, who was assassinated in 1949. Gamal describes Hassan as a "genius", comparing him to Vladimir Lenin, who spread communism across the world, and John Rockefeller, the American businessman who built up an oil empire and spread capitalism.

Still, Gamal has devoted his life to a cause far different than his sibling's - a liberal interpretation of the Quran that eschews religious institutions and Islamic political movements.

His interpretations, part of what he calls the Islamic Renaissance, have led him to declare that a Muslim woman does not have to wear a hijab and can lead fellow Muslims in prayer, and that many of the Hadiths are inconsistent with the Quran. His controversial opinions have made him an outsider in Islamic scholar circles, including the state-run Al Azhar University and of course, the Muslim Brotherhood itself.

His criticism of these institutions and groups is rooted in a belief that Islam has veered off course from what he calls its true nature. In his view, it has become an end in itself instead of serving as a guide for Muslims on how to live their lives.
The result is that many modern Islamist groups are misogynist, illiberal and seek to circumscribe freedom of thought, rather than allow Islam to be continuously reinterpreted to mirror the realities, innovations and challenges of modern life, he said.
He derides such ultraconservative moves as the recent court case against Coptic Christian business tycoon Naguib Sawiris for publishing a cartoon of Mickey and Minnie Mouse.
"They are very sensitive about anything about their religion, but what is the criticism?" he asked, speaking in both Arabic and English. "What is the problem?"

He reserves some of his most incisive criticism, though, for the Salafis, a branch of Islam that calls for Muslims to style themselves around the 7th century world-view into which the Prophet Mohammed was born. The Salafis' whose political party won 20 per cent of the seats in the lower house of parliament. But these strict interpreters of the Quran are not following the true path of Islam, Mr Al Banna said.
"They don't live in the present age," he said. "They focus too much on individuals from the past. They are not real Muslims. They are more like an offshoot, like the Sufis."
Mr Al Banna credits his life's work to an upbringing that was religious but not dogmatic.
While his brother Hassan was mobilising young men to resist the regime, his father Ahmad, who repaired watches for a living, spent more than three decades collecting and interpreting the 30,000 sayings of Imam Ahmed Ibn Hanbal, founder of one of the four main streams of Sunni Islam, in 22 volumes. His father also admired classical literature, reflecting his view that religion did not reject the secular arts.
Gamal Al Banna believes his strength stems from a willingness to debate controversial issues and the refusal to follow the views of others. This is the driving force of his interpretation of the Quran, which he says should be a liberating force rather than a constraining one. Thus, women should be treated as equals and people of other religions allowed to coexist peacefully.
Fawzia, his sister, made his life of scholarship possible through a donation to his foundation and an inheritance she later left him when she died in 1997. He lives in a small bedroom at the back of his office and spends most of his waking hours devouring as many as two books a day. Unbeholden to any institution or movement, he said he feels "free" to devise his own interpretations with Allah as his guide.
For instance, he rejects the idea that the government should base laws on interpretations of Sharia, a view that puts him at odds with some efforts by the newly elected Islamists to enshrine religion in even more powerful terms in the country's new constitution. Rather than trying to control the lives of people through the government, Islamist groups should work separately to encourage interpretation of Islam as a way to live, he said.
Mr Al Banna describes himself as Islamist, but believes living by Sharia does not require anything other than a Quran.
"What we need is a more open society," he said. "This is difficult considering the low status of intellectualism in the Arab world."
Religion does not need the state to better lives and bring people closer to Islam, he insisted.
"Allah is the power that will protect man from excess," Mr Al Banna said, invoking one of the 100-odd books he has written entitled Islam is Religion and Community, not Religion and State.
An avid supporter of trade unions and a 30-year lecturer at the Cairo Institute of Trade Union Studies, Mr Al Banna takes the view that Islam is not compatible with capitalism and that religion should help steer society away from a culture of "excess".
"Excess is the fault of western civilisation," he said. "Their civilisation is like a strong motor of the car, but there are no brakes. They are very powerful, can build nuclear energy stations or a tunnel very quickly, but they destroy towns in the process … What we need to do is discriminate between what is right and wrong as a society, not a government."
When politics and religion are mixed, the result is a path to totalitarianism, he said.
"When Christians merged politics with Christianity, they got the Spanish Inquisition."

Sajak Dari Dewan Sastera 2012

2012-01-19T08:29:00.004+04:00

Di Lautan

Di lautan, gelombang hari melontar
asakan yang menghampar
saujana kilauankehidupan
bersama arus tidakhenti
membawa pasang surut
ke pantai yang merentas
penantian di gurunperasaan
membujur lalu,melintang patah
sebagai ilusi di kamarmalam
meniti gerhana kefajar

Di lautan, gelombangmusim mengulang
jejak-jejak seribuperjalanan
imej-imej sejutaharapan
dari rakus anginmenyongsang
mendepani hakikatseluas ruang
hitam, putih buasbertindihan
dan terburai pecah dipesisiran
bayangan waktu dikejauhan memori
menjerat pelarian yangterperangkap
lemas mencari jalanpulang!

Fudzail
Istanbul, Turki

Mother Mosque of America woven into fabric of life in Cedar Rapids

2012-01-18T07:27:00.001+04:00

CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA // The oldest standing mosque in the US is not an imposing building. It lies in a quiet residential neighbourhood just north of downtown Cedar Rapids.
The wooden building with its little green dome is on the National Registrar of Historic Places. But what is considered the Mother Mosque of America, built in 1934, is more than a historical curiosity: it is testament to the vitality of one of the oldest Muslim communities in the US, one rooted in Iowa's second-largest city, which has a population of about 127,000.
With American Muslims under more scrutiny since the September 11 attacks, perhaps the mosque's real significance today is not its history but its location, said Albert Aossey, co-founder of the Midwest Islamic Association.
"Most people don't think of Muslims in the heartland. But this is where they first came looking for a better life."
Abbas Habhab blazed the trail. The young man from Kfarhouna, then Greater Syria, in 1888, became the first documented Muslim in Iowa, and over the next seven years he brought his three brothers, Musa, Yousef and Ali.
Lured by the promise of land - under the Homestead Act of 1862, new immigrants could secure 160 acres of land for a nominal fee if they fulfilled certain requirements for five years, including growing crops and building dwellings - the brothers started as farm hands, peddlers and at whatever else work they could find. They worked hard and long, said Paul Habhab, 41, Musa's grandson. They were "hard men", he said.
Two generations later, Mr Habhab is managing director of Islamic Services of America (Isa), which was founded by his father, also Paul, in 1975. Isa is one of a handful of American companies that provides internationally recognised halal certification for the food, pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries, a US$2.3 billion (Dh8.4bn) global industry.
Together with another Cedar Rapids company, Midamar - which was founded by Albert Aossey's younger brother, Bill, and is America's largest distributor of halal food - Isa has given the Muslim community in Cedar Rapids a global reach that belies its humble beginnings.
"It's a typical American story," said Mr Habhab, who estimated the size of the community at 2,500. "My grandfather shovelled coal for a dime a day. He worked hard and that's why we are where we are today."
Evidence of the Muslim-Arab connection is dotted around Cedar Rapids. Apart from the city's three mosques, there is the inevitable Aladdin restaurant, specialising in Mediterranean food. There are retail outlets with names such as Kamal's Rug Store.

As a measure of the degree to which the Muslim community is woven into the fabric of life here, the Midwest Islamic Association's name appears on a plaque that notes the otherwise Christian-church dominated list of partners to the Ecumenical Community Center, a faith-based charity in the centre of the city.
Albert Aossey, 73, keeps an office there. He and his two brothers, Joe and Bill, founded the Midwest Islamic Association as a non-profit organisation in the 1970s in part to oversee the renovation of the Mother Mosque in 1978, when it had fallen into disrepair. Their efforts ensured that the Mother Mosque avoided the fate of the first mosque to be built in the US, in 1929 in North Dakota, which was torn down in the 1970s.
"It's a very significant building to Muslim Americans," Mr Aossey said. "It's part of our history."
Mr Aossey's father, Yahya, was also originally from what is now southern Lebanon. In 1907, at the age of 16, Yahya came to Iowa. He spent his first months with a German family who renamed him William. Speaking no English, William realised only later that the language he had begun to learn from them was German.
He moved to Cedar Rapids in the 1920s where he opened his own general store. In 1934, he helped build the Mother Mosque with a handful of others.
In 1948, William Aossey donated 10 acres he had acquired over the years for a Muslim graveyard - the National Muslim Cemetery - the first of its kind in America. It was dedicated in part to fill a growing national as well as a local need, and in part in recognition of those who had died fighting for the US in the Second World War.
"Not bad for a man who never learnt … to read or write," said Mr Aossey after a short prayer over his father's grave, which, like all the others in the cemetery, faces toward Mecca.
Four of Mr Habhab's uncles fought in the 1939-45 conflict. His father fought in Korea. And Mr Habhab bristles at the media attention the American Muslim community has received after the September 11 attacks.
Ten years after the twin towers came down, many Americans continue to view Islam and Muslims with suspicion.
In September, a Brookings Institution/Public Religion Research Institute poll, found that 47 per cent of people in the survey believe Muslim values are at odds with American values. And almost one in three said they believed American Muslims want to impose Sharia in the US.
Overt controversy about Islam has largely bypassed Cedar Rapids. There was no public attack, no mosque was defaced and there was no rally against Muslims after September 11, 2001, said Lyle Muller, editor of The Gazette, Iowa's second-largest daily newspaper. This, he added, was in large part because the Muslim community is part of the "fabric of the city".
"You have [Muslim] business people and folks in your area that are interacting with you as Cedar Rapidians and Iowans, and that's how they are viewed."
But Mr Muller also acknowledged that it hasn't all been smooth sailing. Last year, plans for a Muslim Youth Camp at Coralville Lake south of Cedar Rapids had to be abandoned after both local and national opposition to the idea.

And Mr Habhab said there continued to be "deep ignorance" about Islam in spite of the heavy media coverage after the September 11 outrages, but concedes that those attacks also forced American Muslims - of whom many used to be what he called "part-time Muslims" - to explore their own faith. "Suddenly all we saw on TV was martyrdom, suicide missions, 73 virgins, Shiite, Sunni. And a lot of part-time Muslims were like, 'Huh? This is what I believe?'"
The result, he said, was an inward exploration that actually increased people's attachment to their faith.
That has given rise to a reassertion of a Muslim identity among American Muslims. Where his grandfather Musa became Moses at Ellis Island, the port of call for new immigrants in the 19th century, Mr Habhab's children - Jameela, Raya and Tarek - are closing a circle with their names.
"They used to anglicise their names to fit in, like all communities did," Mr Habhab said. "Now, there's a sense of returning to our roots.

UK Barrister Wants Shari`ah Tribunals

2012-01-17T08:52:00.001+04:00

3

“It's very important that they be acknowledged and allowed to exist,” Sadakat Kadri saCAIRO – A leading British barrister at Harvard Law School wants Britain to become more Shari`ah-literate, saying that Islamic teachings are compatible with human rights legislations that can serve the whole community.

“It's very important that they be acknowledged and allowed to exist,” Sadakat Kadri, a barrister and contemporary of Barack Obama at Harvard Law School, told The Guardian on Monday, January 16.

“So long as they're voluntary, which is crucial, it's in everyone's interests these things be transparent and publicly accessible.

“If you don't have open tribunals, they're going to happen anyway, but behind closed doors,” he added.Kadri confirmed that the 1400-year-old Islamic law is compatible with the human rights legislations.

The Harvard professor said that "Shari`ah courts", such as the Muslim arbitration tribunal, could serve "the community as a whole."

This aim could be reached by putting Shari`ah laws on a transparent, public footing to be more widely accessible to those who want to use or know about these laws, he said.

Making his point clear, Kadri sets out the history of Shari`ah in a new book, Heaven and Earth, to be published next week.

The book describes the slow development of Shari`ah law, which is derived directly from the Qur'an and Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessing be upon him)'s Sunnah, in the centuries after the Prophet's death.

"I'm not a theologian," said Kadri.

"But this is my interpretation of Islamic history. There's a mistaken belief that Islamic law is a vast unchanging body of rules – 1,400 years of Muslim history shows that little could be further from the truth.

"It's really important that the Muslim community engage with its actual history, as well as idealized traditions. If that's to take root, critical engagement with the past among young Muslims will be crucially important."

In Islam, Shari`ah governs all issues in Muslims’ lives from daily prayers to fasting and from, marriage and inheritance to financial disputes.

The Islamic rulings, however, do not apply on non-Muslims, even if in a dispute with non-Muslims.

Misconceptions

The leading British barrister said that misconceptions about Islam and Muslims following the 7/7 attacks helped spread rumors about a claimed violent nature of Shari`ah.

"After 7/7 people were saying the Shari`ah is all about violence, it's all about chopping people's hands off, it's all about stoning adulterers to death. Others said it's nothing to do with that, Islam is a religion of peace,” Kadri said.

“Clearly both of those things were true at a certain level, but very early on I just realized no one had a clue what Shari`ah said about this or that."

Britain is home to a sizable Muslim minority of nearly 2 million who have taken full brunt of anti-terror laws since the 7/7 attacks.

They have repeatedly complained of maltreatment by police for no apparent reason other than being Muslim.

Kadri's call was earlier echoed by Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury, in 2008 when he suggested that Shari`ah law should be more widely adopted.

Under the Arbitration Act 1996, the rulings of religious bodies, including the Muslim arbitration tribunal, already have legal force in disputes involving matters such as inheritance and divorce.

Barrister Kadri said that many of the punishments associated in people's minds with Shari`ah law have only been applied very recently.

"I try to show how it's only really in the last 40 years, since Colonel Gaddafi in Libya, but more especially since the Iranian revolution in 1979 that the idea of enforcing Islamic rules through national laws has come to the fore,” he said.

“Before 1973, it was only Saudi Arabia which actually did that.”

Forbes: United Arab Emirates ranked as the least friendly country

2012-01-16T14:36:00.002+04:00

The most unfriendly country? No, just a country in change

In a recent article published by Forbes, the UAE was ranked as the least friendly country for expatriates in the world. The rankings were based on four criteria, including the ability to befriend locals, success in learning the local language, capacity for integration into the community, and ease in fitting into the new culture.

There are some questions about the statistical significance of the survey by HSBC, which queried 3,385 expatriates in 100 countries between May and July 2011. But more important is how the UAE has dealt with these criteria in a proactive and welcoming manner.
Start with the ability to befriend locals: first and foremost, because of the skewed demographics (about 10 per cent of the population is Emirati), getting to know the "locals" can be a tough task for any new expatriate. And in any country within a matter of days, an expatriate will find his or her countrymen, the familiar cuisine and hangout spot.
It is very easy for an expatriate to quickly fall into a comfort zone and go quite a while without actually interacting with an Emirati on a personal level. So I think the difficulty is related to the opportunity to meet people in the first place, rather than making friends.
The UAE is known for its hospitality, which stems from who we are as a people, from the days of the Bedouin, to households today and the lavish hotels across the country. Welcoming is second nature to us.
The second criteria is the ability to learn the language. The UAE can cater for most of the expatriate community because almost everyone can speak English. It wasn't until early in 2008 that Arabic was made the official language of the UAE.

The opportunity to learn the language is open to everyone, with some companies offering complimentary classes. But again, the issue is based on demographics: ask an expatriate who has lived here for several years why he or she hasn't learnt the language and, nine times out of 10, the answer is: "I never had to."
The third point is the capacity to integrate into the community. For any expatriate, moving to a new country and settling down is no easy task. In the UAE, however, authorities in partnership with the existing expatriate communities have taken steps to make this easier.
Most expatriate communities have set up their own social clubs and community centres that act as a point of first contact. These clubs offer an easy transition for new arrivals and the opportunity for a crash course in local customs.
And there are consultants such as Wael Al Sayegh, the founding director of the intercultural consultancy firm Alghaf, who has been doing a phenomenal job of bringing the UAE learning experience to expatriates' doorsteps. By teaching people the history and modern lifestyle of the country through the eyes of an Emirati, consultants enable expatriates to feel a greater sense of connection to the country and its people.

Last, but certainly not least, is the ease in which expatriates fit into the new culture. Cultural understanding, in my opinion, is the most sensitive topic because living in a certain way for most of your life, then having to adapt can be daunting. In all honesty, I think expatriates have a hard time fitting into UAE culture because the culture itself is constantly evolving.
In many ways, the country actually brings expatriates' cultures home: just think of all the Christmas decorations in the malls and hotels. Another example is the Holi festival of colours celebrated by the Indian community. The UAE has always embraced many cultures, giving expatriates the freedom to celebrate and enjoy the most precious festivities of their home countries.
But giving expatriates insights into where Emiratis come from is critical for a better understanding of the country. This is where entities such as the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage and the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority come in.
When events such as the Al Dhafra Camel Festival and the Liwa Date Festival are held, they are not just opportunities for the local community, but as importantly for expatriates to learn who we are as a people.
Thinking about how so many nationalities are able to live in harmony within the UAE, and how so many expatriates end up calling it home, it worries me that someone would rank the UAE as unfriendly. We are not perfect, but we have a lot more to than a "last place" offering, and we look forward to proving it: welcome to the United Arab Emirates.

Khalid Al Ameri is an associate at an Abu Dhabi development company

Gaddafi's female bodyguards

2012-01-15T15:16:00.001+04:00

Photo 1 of 11

Two months after he was driven away from power and into hiding, former Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has died; thus ending the nearly 42-year regime that had turned the oil-rich country into an international pariah and his own personal fiefdom.

A 'flamboyant' Colonel Gaddafi, frequently pictured with female bodyguards, said women were not equal to men because they were biologically different, but he nevertheless exhibited them as a symbol of the success of the Libyan revolution. None had a higher profile than his phalanx of female bodyguards, who wore camouflage fatigues, red nail polish and high-heeled sandals, and carried submachine guns.

Here's a look at the women who became synonymous with Gaddafi's political reign.

Photo 2 of 11

Colonel Gaddafi, protected by his bodyguards, gives a press conference at the end of a bilateral meeting with the chairman of the European Commission in 2004.

Photo 4 of 11

President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko and Muammar Gaddafi listen to national anthems during a ceremony of the meeting at the Presidential office in Kiev on November 4, 2008. (AFP Photo)

Tame Your Trouble Spots: Belly Fat and Menopot

2012-01-14T22:10:00.001+04:00

Living life to the fullest is all about striving for a mind-body balance every day. Achieve a mental, nutritional, and physical transformation for life with tips from wellness expert Pamela Peeke, MD.

Hi everyone. This is a terrific time of year to take a moment to check in with your body. How’s your current lifestyle workin’ for you? Well, if you’re like most of America, there’s room for improvement. To help you out, today we begin a six-week series entitled “Tame Your Trouble Spots”. We’ll be doing a full tour de force of your body and finding creative ways to lessen the lumps and shrink the bumps. This week we’ll be focusing on your belly. And we’re adding something new to this blog: my fitness Rx is now live on a video to help guide you. Yep, that’s yours truly bending, flexing and stretching. Follow along and let’s team together to help you look and feel your best mentally and physically.
Before we blast any belly, let’s lay down four golden rules that will apply to every segment of this series. The exercises are important, but you won’t get the results you want unless you engage each one of these critical and essential lifestyle habit elements:
1)      Mind: Be clear about your POWER WHY, or the reason you want to do the work to change in the first place. Perhaps you’re a woman who finally wants to feel comfortable wearing a nice white sleeveless dress in the springtime. Or you’re a guy who longs to see his feet again. Whatever the motivation, keep it front and center in your mind to help power you through challenging times when you may want to cave and default to your more sedentary, overeating habits. Also, throughout our series, we’ll tell you again and again how important it is to learn how to adapt and adjust to life’s stresses without resorting to self-destruction. This means you’re going to learn how to regroup much faster and with minimal if any damage control. Finally, be loving and patient with yourself. You’ll definitely slip up and that’s fine. Just learn how to turn it around faster and get right back on track. This takes practice. Hey, you have six weeks to begin to hone this skill!
2)      Mouth: You know the drill. What goes in must come out. Alright, it’s never that easy and it’s not quite that precise, but suffice it to say, you can do all the crunches in the world, but if you then go home and stuff your face, we’re going nowhere fast. So, I highly recommend you log onto the WebMD Food and Fitness Planner, input your data and then eat nutritious whole foods in appropriate portions as you pick up the pace in your physical activity. The best abs in the world are the result of a well-structured diet in combination with strength training and cardio exercise. Remember this fact as you dive into this series.
3)      Muscle: To truly tame your trouble spots, you need to be combining cardio with strength training. Please try to schedule in no less than 30 minutes of cardio at least 5 days per week. And it’s OK if you break it up into 2 or 3 segments. But when you do them, put some gusto and intensity into whatever form of aerobic exercise you’re doing—Zumba dancing, walking, running, biking, swimming, hiking. The key is to assume the vertical and cook some calories all day long. Don’t just exercise once and sit on your behind the rest of the day because you’ll all but shut down any fat burning you need. So, in addition to the specific exercises we’ll be recommending make a special point of just getting more physical activity in 24/7. This is called increasing your activities of daily living. Clean out the attic, organize the garage, work in the garden, rake the leaves and shovel the snow. They all count!
4)      Macrocosm: I’m talking about the environment within which you live and work. De-clutter so you have room to exercise at home. Clean out that closet so you can actually find your sneakers. And start thinking about the people, places and things in your life that either help or hinder your healthy lifestyle goals. Hang around the former and start eliminating the latter. You want to have a supportive environment in every sense of the word. Friends and family members (pets count!) who are your healthy lifestyle cheerleaders are priceless gifts. Cherish them!
Alright let’s get started. It’s belly time.
Take a moment and answer these questions:
1)      Is your belly getting so big it’s got its own zip code?
2)      When you pack on pounds, does that extra weight make a beeline to your waistline?
3)      Can you see your toes?
4)      Are you living in elastic waistbands?
5)      Does the thought of wearing a white shirt tucked into a cool pair of slim jeans sound like mission impossible?
6)      When you turned 40, did you wake up one morning and find a spare tire had mysteriously appeared out of nowhere?
Well, if it’s any comfort, you’re not alone. There’s a major girth control problem going on globally. So, let’s do our humble part in helping to rein in the belly fat. Men, you’ve always had more belly fat cells so you’re wearing your extra beers and pizza around your middle. Women, prior to the age of 40, most of you looked like a pear or an hour glass. After 40—shock, horrors!—you start looking like the guys. Yep, your extra pints of Ben and Jerry’s are creeping up from your thighs and bottom to your belly area and making themselves right at home. You’re morphing from an hourglass to a shot glass! I call this perimenopausal belly fat the menopot. Prior to the age of 40, the belly fat leakage over your waistline is a muffin top. Either way, you need to get this under control so you can look fit and fabulous.
I’m going to make this simple. I looked for the easiest ab exercises to do that give you the best results for your effort. They’re all crunches and they really do the trick. All you need is a floor mat and enough room to lay down and perform your exercise. An ab ball is an inexpensive piece of equipment that’s well worth having. Always get approval from your medical team for any new fitness regimen, especially if you have any medical condition and/or physical disabilities.
All of these exercises can be done 3x week. Heck, do them while you’re watching TV! Also, these exercises are meant to establish a beginning template. If you’re more highly trained, then you can increase the repetitions as well as the resistance.
Ball Crunch: You’re strengthening the muscle that shoots straight down your middle— the rectus abdominus. On the ab ball, the ab muscles really work hard and your whole body is engaged to help stabilize you as you carry out the exercise.
Position yourself such that the ball is under your lower back. Take your arms and place them either behind your head or across your chest. The key is you want them out of the way. Contract your ab muscles, really engaging them, and then lift your torso off the ball as though it were reaching up toward the ceiling, making sure the ball doesn’t roll. You don’t have to curl up much. Now, gently lower back into starting position and while you do, use this as another opportunity to engage your core. Do 3 sets of 12-15 reps.
Another version of this is to grab a lightweight medicine ball (e.g. 2-5 pounds) and hold it up above your head while you do this exercise. As you contract, you’re reaching for the sky with the ball. This adds more resistance and intensity and helps you strengthen your abs even further.
Waist Crunch: This is your typical ab exercise and it’s got a terrific payoff for your rectus abdominus. It looks deceptively easy. Your job is to maintain excellent form and really make your abs work.
Lie on a floor mat on your back. Bend your knees. Place your hands behind your head or across your chest. Flatten that curve in your lower back by pulling your belly button towards your spine. Contract your ab muscles and slowly bring your shoulder blades about 2-3 inches off the floor. Don’t forget to breathe. Exhale as you contract and come up and inhale as you come back down. Make sure to keep your neck straight and your chin up. Once you get to the top, hold for 5 seconds and then slowly lower back down to start position. As you lower, again, here’s a wonderful opportunity to get another ab muscle contraction. Do 3 sets of 10-15 repetitions.
Bicycle Crunch: This is my favorite crunch because I’m a multi-tasker and I can strengthen three different ab muscles at the same time: rectus abdominus and the internal and external obliques. Plus, it’s fun. I crank up some great music and hammer away. You’ll love it too!
Grab that floor mat again and lie flat on your back, pressing your back into the ground, decreasing the curve in your lower back. Contract your core ab muscles. Position your hands gently behind your head. Lift your knees up to about a 45 degree angle. Aim your right elbow to your left knee and twist to try to reach that knee. You don’t have to. The key is to contract that side oblique ab muscle. Now alternate to the opposite side, with your left elbow aiming for your right knee. Keep it going as you pedal away. Do 3 sets of 10-15 repetitions to each side.
If you can, try each ab exercise and mix it up throughout the week.
Get on the floor and have some fun. Look at you! You’re minimizing that muffin top, mashing that menopot and blasting your belly. Great job!

Camel Beauty Contest in Abu Dhabi

2012-01-05T22:26:00.000+04:00

For the fifth winter, thousands of camels will return to the vast desert beyond Madinat Zayed in the Western Region to compete in the country’s — if not the region’s — most expensive beauty show.

So far, 1,300 camel owners have registered their 20,000 camels for the beauty competition alone in the Al Dhafra Festival, and even more are expected to come along before the start of the festival on December 17.

Organised by the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH) till December 28, Al Dhafra will have quite a few new competitions, while other activities from the past, such as the cooking competitions for professional chefs, have been dropped.

“We have once again seen a growth in the number of participants for the festival, which reflects the continued interest in preserving and highlighting camels as an integral part of the heritage of not only the UAE, but the region as well,” said Mohammed Khalaf Al Mazrouei, Advisor for culture and heritage at the Abu Dhabi Crown Prince’s Court, Director-General of the ADACH and Chairman of the High Permanent Committee of the festival.

Apart from the camel beauty show, there will also be camel auctions, saluki and falcon competitions, a photography competition, and the very popular souq.

“All in all, we will have about 3,000 participants in the festival this year,” said Salem Al Mazrouei, the festival’s manager.

“As for visitors, we expect them in thousands,” he added.

As always, the camel competitions include various categories for both Asayel (the golden-brown camel, which originated in Oman) and Majahim, (the black camel that comes from Saudi Arabia). Most of these categories have separate laps for shaikhs’ camels and for those owned by tribes.

“We will have 24 contests for bred camels, which are the ones born in the owners’ farm, not bought. This is actually helping to increase (the number of) camel breeders and owners,” explained Salem.Prizes for the winning camels, which are either in cash or a four-wheel vehicle, exceed Dh35 million. Participants come from as far as Jordan, but the vast majority are from the Gulf countries. To set up camp on the festival’s grounds, all they need is to reserve an area and pay Dh5,000 refundable guarantee for cleaning their camp area when leaving.

“We expect the camel auction, which is separate from the beauty competition, to grow by 30 to 40 per cent this year,” added Salem.

Overall, the Al Dhafra Festival is quite a big economic boom for Al Gharbia’s Madinat Zayed region, with plenty of sales not just in the traditional handicrafts souq, but also in the nearby grocery and other types of shops. Water and wood for camping are supplied for free to participants on the festival’s grounds.

Visitors too are allowed to camp in the festival’s area, but they do have to register with the organisers.

Gene Sharp, Nonviolent Warrior

2012-01-04T22:48:00.001+04:00

Gene Sharp has labored in obscurity for much of his life. In the past few weeks, however, he has been propelled into the media spotlight—hailed in news reports as the world’s top theorist of nonviolent strategy and cited as an inspiration by leaders of the campaign that brought the Mubarak regime down. He has been called a “nonviolent Clausewitz,” in reference to the grand military strategist of the early nineteenth century. And in some ways he could also be seen as a nonviolent equivalent of Leon Trotsky—another brilliant strategist, with a penchant for pithy aphorisms, whose ideas (albeit framed in dramatically different ways) offered up the possibility of rolling, and transformational, global revolutions.

Sharp admits that bold claims about his impact on events in the Middle East make him slightly uneasy; he doesn’t think he can substantiate them. It is true, though, that his early works—including, most notably, his three-volume treatise The Politics of Nonviolent Action—established his reputation as a leader in the small field of nonviolence studies. And in recent years, From Dictatorship to Democracy, an enormously influential handbook published in 1993 that synthesized and condensed his major findings, has been translated into more than thirty languages. For nonviolent protest organizers, the book has become something akin to Saul Alinsky's famed Rules for Radicals.

Sharp is also the founder and head of the Albert Einstein Institution, a bare-bones, privately funded operation that has been spreading the word about nonviolence for nearly three decades. The organization argues that it reacts to events rather than pushing people in specific countries to embark on specific actions. But despite the modesty of the institution and the man at its helm, there’s no doubt that Sharp’s ideas have greatly influenced opposition groups from Burma to the Balkans and, most recently, the Middle East.

Robert Helvey, who met Sharp while completing an Army fellowship at Harvard and who subsequently joined the Albert Einstein Institution’s board, describes his friend as “obsessed with the need to share his insights into power to stop or reduce the killing of people, especially civilians, in war.”

The force of Sharp’s emancipatory thinking was on full view in Egypt last month, as a population long thought to be too passive to throw off the yoke of tyranny finally found its voice. “I was surprised by the Tunisian and Egyptian developments,” Sharp says. “It was never thought that Arabs could do this, that Muslims could do this. Now the Muslims are doing it. In some cases it’s not very disciplined, but in other cases it’s very disciplined. In Egypt, it’s unbelievable. The stereotypes are all gone.”

From now on, he adds, no American president can claim that US intervention is necessary to free an oppressed Muslim population from dictatorship. “These people are capable of freeing themselves,” he says. “No outside messiah was needed. It’s a great realization.”

Despite the fever for democracy that seems to be spreading across the region, though, Sharp does not assume that Egypt’s neighbors will necessarily enjoy the same success. “Egypt is bound to inspire people,” he explains, “but inspiration alone doesn’t do much.” Nor does Sharp put much stock in historical determinism. “I don’t think it’s inevitable, or that there’s a force sweeping the world that’s sort of mystical. I don’t think on those terms,” he says.

Nonviolent uprisings are, at their essence, political campaigns. According to the complex analysis of power that Sharp has painstakingly developed over the years, the success or failure of any peaceful revolt largely depends on the campaign’s ability to weaken the allegiance of civil servants, police and soldiers to the regime; to persuade fence-sitters to join the opposition; and to prevent tyrannical and violent responses to civilian protest from being implemented—or, if implemented, from undermining the nonviolent movement's strategic game plan. “As that know-how becomes available,” he explains, “it’s more likely that people will use it skillfully and not just in terms of inspiration and a surprise victory here and there. And that will contribute to profound change—not because of a sense of inevitability but because people have made new possibilities possible.”

Of course, one could argue that the limits to such thinking are on display in Libya, where the ruthless (some would say maniacal) dictator Col. Muammar Qaddafi has shown no compunction in unleashing maximum force against his opponents. In such a situation, say critics—and even some of Sharp’s friends—strict adherence to nonviolence demands that the protesters pay too steep a price. Imagine, for example, calling on Jews to remain nonviolent during the Warsaw ghetto uprising. There might be, says Sir Adam Roberts, president of the British Academy and a longtime friend of Sharp’s, limited instances in which violence is both legitimate and required to stop fast-evolving atrocities.

Sharp disagrees. Although he doesn't claim to be a pure pacifist, he's also unwilling to delineate specific situations in which violent resistance might be appropriate. “The power relationships exist only when completed by the subordinates’ obedience to the ruler’s commands and compliance with his wishes,” he opined in volume one ofThe Politics of Nonviolent Action. “Even where subjects wish to alter the established order, they may remain submissive because they lack confidence in bringing about the desired changes. As long as people lack self-confidence they are unlikely to do anything other than obey, cooperate with, and submit to their rulers.”

According to this logic, the ineffectiveness of nonviolent protest in Libya right now does not stem from Qaddafi’s aggressive use of force but from the rebels’ inability to plan ahead and to identify and exploit the regime’s vulnerabilities. Events in Libya simply unfolded too fast for a sophisticated nonviolent strategy to take root. The key, he says, is “to maximize the areas where nonviolent struggle can be powerful and effective” and “to narrow the area in which violence appears to be the only effective option.”

All regimes have fundamental weaknesses, Sharp explains. Nonviolent struggle “concentrates on weakening them further and cutting off their sources of power” until the regime dissolves. “That’s the ultimate goal. But it won’t happen easily, or quickly, or always.”

* * *

Gene Sharp grew up in a conservative Republican family in the American Midwest. His formative years were dominated by stories of World War II, images of the horrors of death camps, the onset of the cold war, the atomic bomb. As the images sank in, he developed an abhorrence of violence and totalitarianism; during the Korean War he went to prison rather than allow the Army to conscript him.

Shortly after Sharp was released, he wrote a book about Mahatma Gandhi, who had recently been assassinated and who, Sharp concluded, was misunderstood. Maybe he was a saint, as he was widely being portrayed; maybe he wasn’t. To Sharp the question was beside the point. For him, Gandhi was one of the century’s great political strategists. He realized that Indians couldn’t successfully fight the British Empire militarily and instead carefully crafted a nonviolent strategy that ultimately destroyed the Raj. When Sharp completed the book, he sent a note to Albert Einstein, asking whether he would write an introduction; to his delight, the legendary physicist cum peace activist agreed. Sharp’s course was set.

Over the next several decades, Sharp worked on the mammoth Politics of Nonviolent Action while living in England, where he worked as a visiting scholar at Oxford; in Oslo; and in Boston, where he lectured at Harvard and later headed the Albert Einstein Institution. Sharp’s opus was followed by a number of texts and policy papers on strategy and resistance, along with a large volume titled Waging Nonviolent Struggle.

Part historian, part sociologist, part psychologist, Sharp became interested in historical examples of nonviolent resistance early in his career—from Gandhi’s famous Salt March against the Raj to Norwegian teachers resisting the imposition of Fascist curriculums during World War II, from US civil rights campaigners to antiapartheid struggles in South Africa. He was also interested in theories of power: how rulers rule and how the ruled, in some ways, agree to be ruled; how obedience is inculcated in populations and how nonviolent movements can, by embracing specific nonviolent tactics and carefully targeting the support pillars upon which administrations rest, break the bonds of unthinking obedience and emancipate populations.

“Dictatorships in particular have specific characteristics that render them highly vulnerable to skillfully implemented political defiance,” he informed his readers. They have Achilles’ heels such as dependence on the population’s cooperation and ongoing submissiveness; inflexible command-and-control structures; leaders who are surrounded by yes-men predisposed to tell the leader what he wants to hear rather than what is really going on; the likelihood of rivalries between elites, which can be exploited by savvy on-the-ground opponents; and a predisposition to regionalism, whereby power brokers lay claim to their slice of the ill-gotten pie.

Once enough people and organizations within a society (trade unions, religious groups, sports clubs, civil servants, even the police and military) withhold their cooperation from a regime, Sharp wrote, “The dictators’ power will die, slowly or rapidly, from political starvation.” If protesters hue closely to nonviolence, this process will “lead tode facto freedom, making the collapse of the dictatorship and the formal installation of a democratic system undeniable.”

For Sharp, violence, by contrast, isn’t just morally problematic; it is also a peculiarly ineffective way to take on despots. After all, governments have access to more, and more sophisticated, weapons. Their armies are better trained in using those weapons. And they generally control the infrastructure that allows them to deploy those weapons and armies. To fight dictators with violence, Sharp argues, is to cede to them the choice of weaponry. Nonviolence forces the regime to fight on unfamiliar terrain. It is, in many ways, akin to fabled organizer Marshall Ganz’s idea that David beat Goliath not by outfighting him so much as outfoxing him [see Abramsky, "A Conversation With Marshall Ganz," February 21].

The worse the regime gets, the more steadfast ought the opposition to be in its commitment to nonviolence. The result will be a “severing of power,” a process of political jiujitsu in which the ruler’s actions turn against him and he becomes progressively isolated from the people and institutions whose complicity he needs to keep the administration functioning. Take that complicity away, and the ruler will be exposed as naked, a Wizard of Oz character with the curtains pulled back. At the same time, the more the populace resists, the more they will realize their own innate power and, like Dorothy, discover that they had possessed the means of shaping their own destiny all along.

When Sharp first began publishing his theories, the ideas all made sense. But they were so counterintuitive that Sharp’s work remained largely ignored for decades. He was like a boutique wine: cherished by a select few, hidden from the broader public. Even his friends and colleagues believed that he was, to a degree, tilting at windmills.

These days, however, with the Egyptian revolution upending longstanding assumptions about the interplay between dictatorships and the people they oppress, Sharp’s ideas don’t seem so quixotic. Those windmills, says his friend Helvey, might just be morphing into giants.

The 50 Most Inspiring Travel Quotes Of All Time

2011-12-31T16:16:00.000+04:00

1. “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” – Mark Twain
2. “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” – St. Augustine
3. “There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” – Robert Louis Stevenson
4. “The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.” – Samuel Johnson
5. “All the pathos and irony of leaving one’s youth behind is thus implicit in every joyous moment of travel: one knows that the first joy can never be recovered, and the wise traveler learns not to repeat successes but tries new places all the time.” – Paul Fussell
6. “Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.” – Jack Kerouac
7. “He who does not travel does not know the value of men.” – Moorish proverb
8. “People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home.” – Dagobert D. Runes
9. “A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.” – John Steinbeck
10. “No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.” – Lin Yutang
11. “Your true traveler finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty-his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.” – Aldous Huxley
12. “All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.” – Samuel Johnson
13. “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” – Henry Miller

14. “Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” – Cesare Pavese
15. “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” – Henry Miller
16″A traveler without observation is a bird without wings.” – Moslih Eddin Saadi
17. “When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in.” – D. H. Lawrence
18. “To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.” – Freya Stark
19. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain
20. “Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” – Miriam Beard
21. “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” – Martin Buber
22. “We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.” – Jawaharial Nehru
23. “Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.” – Paul Theroux
24. “To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.” – Bill Bryson
25. “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
26. “Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by.” – Robert Frost
27. “A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” – Lao Tzu
28. “There is no moment of delight in any pilgrimage like the beginning of it.” – Charles Dudley Warner
29. “A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.” – Lao Tzu
30. “If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.” – James Michener
31. “The journey not the arrival matters.” – T. S. Eliot
32. “A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.” – Tim Cahill
33. “I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.” – Mark Twain
34. “Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quiestest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.” – Pat Conroy

“A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” – Lao Tzu

35. “Not all those who wander are lost.” – J. R. R. Tolkien
36. “Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.” – Benjamin Disraeli
37. “Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.” – Maya Angelou
38. “Too often travel, instead of broadening the mind, merely lengthens the conversation.” – Elizabeth Drew
39. “Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe”……Anatole France
40. “Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.” – Seneca
41. “What you’ve done becomes the judge of what you’re going to do – especially in other people’s minds. When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.” – William Least Heat Moon
42. “I soon realized that no journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within.” – Lillian Smith
43. “To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.” – Aldous Huxley

44. “Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of art.” – Freya Stark
45. “The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.” – Rudyard Kipling
46. “Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.” – Paul Theroux
47. “The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.” – G. K. Chesterton
48. “When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.” – Clifton Fadiman
49. “A wise traveler never despises his own country.” – Carlo Goldoni
50. “Adventure is a path. Real adventure – self-determined, self-motivated, often risky – forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind – and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white.” – Mark Jenkins

18 Secrets for a Longer Life

2011-12-27T07:41:00.001+04:00

Protect Your DNA

As we age, the ends of our chromosomes -- called telomeres -- become shorter. This makes people more vulnerable to disease. You might think there's nothing you can do, but new research suggests otherwise. In a pilot study, lifestyle changes boosted an enzyme that increases telomere length. Other studies also find diet and exercise can protect telomeres. So healthy habits may slow aging at the cellular level.

Be Conscientious

An 80-year study found one of the best predictors of a long life is a conscientious personality. Researchers measured attributes like attention to detail and persistence. They found that conscientious people do more things to protect their health and make choices that lead to stronger relationships and better careers.

Make Friends

Science has given you one more reason to be grateful for your friends – they might help you live longer. Australian researchers found elderly social butterflies were less likely to die over a 10-year period compared to people with the fewest friends. Another analysis of results from 148 studies supports the link between plentiful social connections and longevity.

Choose Your Friends Wisely

Your friends’ habits rub off on you, so look for companions with healthy lifestyles. Studies indicate obesity is socially “contagious" – your chance of becoming obese increases by 57% if you have a friend who becomes obese. Smoking is another habit that spreads through social ties, but the good news is that quitting is also contagious.

Quit Smoking

While it's no secret that giving up cigarettes can lengthen your days -- the amount of extra time may surprise you. According to a 50-year British study, quitting at age 30 could increase your lifespan by an entire decade. Kicking the habit at age 40, 50, or 60 boosts life expectancy by 9, 6, or 3 years, respectively.

Embrace the Siesta

A siesta is standard in many parts of the world, and now there's scientific evidence that napping may help you live longer. A recent study with 24,000 participants suggests that regular nappers are 37% less likely to die from heart disease than occasional nappers. Researchers think naps might help your heart by keeping stress hormones down.

Follow a Mediterranean Diet

The Mediterranean diet is high in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, olive oil, and fish. An analysis of 50 studies involving more than half a million people shows the impressive benefits of this diet. The findings show it significantly lowers the risk of metabolic syndrome – a combination of obesity, elevated blood sugar, increased blood pressure, and other factors that raise your risk of heart disease and diabetes.

Eat Like an Okinawan

The people of Okinawa, Japan once had the longest life expectancy in the world. Researchers attribute this to the region's traditional diet, which is high in green and yellow vegetables and low in calories. Some Okinawans make a habit of eating only 80% of the food on their plate. As younger generations have veered from these traditions, life expectancy in Okinawa has fallen.

Get Married

Several studies show that married people tend to outlive their single counterparts. Many researchers attribute the difference to the social and economic support marriage provides. While a current marriage offers the greatest benefit, people who are divorced or widowed have lower mortality rates than those who have never been married.

Lose Weight

If you're overweight, slimming down can protect against diabetes, heart disease, and other life-shortening conditions. Belly fat appears to be particularly harmful, so focus on deflating that spare tire. A 5-year study of Hispanics and African-Americans suggests eating more fiber and exercising regularly are effective ways to reduce belly fat.

Keep Moving

The evidence is overwhelming – people who exercise live longer on average than those who don't. According to dozens of studies, regular physical activity reduces the risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, some forms of cancer, and depression. Exercise may even help you stay mentally sharp in your old age. Ten-minute spurts of activity are fine, as long as they add up to about 2.5 hours of moderate exercise per week.

Get Spiritual

Research suggests people who attend religious services tend to live longer than people who never attend. In a 12-year study of people over age 65, those who attended services more than once a week had higher levels of a key immune system protein than their peers who attended no services. They were also significantly less likely to die during the study period. The strong social network that develops among people who worship together

Forgive

Letting go of grudges has surprising physical health benefits. Chronic anger is linked to decreased lung function, heart disease, stroke, and other ailments. Forgiveness will reduce anxiety, lower your blood pressure, and help you to breathe more easily. These benefits tend to increase as you get older.

Use Safety Gear

Accidents are the fifth most common cause of death in the U.S., and the top cause of death for people ages 1 to 24. Wearing safety gear is a simple way to boost your odds of a long life. In the event of a motor vehicle crash, seatbelts reduce the risk of death or serious injury by 50%. In bike accidents, most deaths are caused by head injuries, so always wear your helmet.

Make Sleep a Priority

Getting enough good quality sleep can lower the risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and mood disorders. Sufficient sleep will also help you recover from illness faster. Burning the midnight oil, on the other hand, carries serious health risks. Sleeping less than 5 hours per night boosts the risk of premature death, so make sleep a priority.

Manage Stress

Dean Ornish, MD, has published research suggesting that lifestyle changes including stress management not only help prevent heart disease, but may actually reverse it. Although avoiding stress is not a viable option for most people, there are effective ways to control it. Try yoga, meditation, or deep breathing. Even a few minutes a day can make a difference.

Maintain a Sense of Purpose

Finding hobbies and activities that have meaning for you may contribute to a long life. Japanese researchers found men with a strong sense of purpose were less likely to die from stroke, heart disease, or other causes over a 13-year period compared to those with a low sense of purpose. Another study at Rush University Medical Center indicates that having a greater sense of purpose is linked to a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

Drink in Moderation

Heart disease is less common in moderate drinkers than in people who don't drink at all. But keep in mind that too much alcohol pads the belly, boosts blood pressure, and can cause a host of other health problems. The American Heart Association recommends that if you drink alcohol, the limit should be one drink a day for women and one or two for men. But if you don't drink, don't start. There are many other ways of protecting your heart.

Camel Milk May Be Answer to Diabetes?

2011-12-26T16:14:00.000+04:00

It has been scientifically proven that gulping down camel milk daily would supplement 60 to 70 per cent of insulin in Type I diabetics.

India is sitting on the world diabetes throne with the maximum number of diabetics across the globe. Yet in the arid sand dunes of Rajasthan, there is a tribe of camel breeders called Raicas who are immune to this condition, thanks to a staple item on their daily menu, camel milk.

According to the research conducted at the Diabetes Care and Research Centre, SP Medical College Bikaner, a litre of camel milk contains about 52 units of insulin.

“These units in camel milk are not neutralized by the acidic juices in the stomach, unlike other forms of orally administered insulin,” said Mr RP Agrawal, director, Diabetes Care and Research Centre, Bikaner.

It has been scientifically proven that gulping down camel milk daily would supplement 60 to 70 per cent of insulin in Type I diabetics.

The research on the project had begun with the Raica community as the base model. An initial survey revealed zero prevalence among the Raicas in Jaisalmer and Jodhpur, while the rest of the tribe members in the same region who do not like camel milk but have similar lifestyles, had five to six per cent prevalence. Camel milk was successfully tested on albino rats clinically induced with diabetes. Later, similar tests were conducted on more than 50 individuals with Type I and Type II diabetes for more than two years, resulting in a drastic fall in their blood sugar levels.

“A Type I diabetic who needs 20 units of insulin annually can bring this down to six to seven units with regular intake of camel milk,” he said. Both camel milk and this batch of researchers from Bikaner are yet to get their due in their own diabetes-infested country. But they have featured in many international journals and research publications and even been recommended by the American Diabetes Association.

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) recently recognized this unique discovery which could provide an effective relief to scores of diabetics in the country.
"Sadly, most of the people in our country are unaware of the fact. But, we are in correspondence with medical universities and research institutes in the USA,” Dr Agrawal said.

Scientists are attributing this trait of camel milk to a unique phytonutrient (derived from plants) present in the camels’ daily diet. But they are yet to isolate this blood sugar fighting agent. Research is on. Camel milk is also high on minerals and low on cholesterol content, compared to cow's milk.

Changing horses in midstream

2011-12-26T10:51:00.000+04:00

How to pursue your passion, and become a better-rounded person, through a career change

Whether you are pursuing a life-long passion or looking to reinvent yourself, it is never too late to pursue a new career. Aimee Flynn, career services director at The Art Institute of Raleigh-Durham in North Carolina, US, offers tips on changing careers and making the most of this transitional period.

Hunt and gather

It’s important to start with a thorough investigation into your new industry.

“You are looking for general parallels between who you are and who you want to be, where you’ve been and where you are going,” says Flynn.

Pasha Lemnah, a photography student at The Art Institute of Raleigh-Durham, found this parallel between the past and the future. After 20 years in the nursing field, she re-evaluated her life and what she wanted from her career. This investigation led her to pursue her childhood passion of photography.

Seasoned pro or newbie?

Dumping the ego is crucial. “Be open to starting fresh, and embrace a sense of equal status with everyone in the classroom,” she says. “Surrender to the fact that you can learn as much from a first-year student as they can from you.”

Lemnah embraces this equal status, finding support through her fellow students who refer to her as “Mama Pasha”.

Network, network, network

While this is a common tip, be smart about how and with whom you network. Try to network with people already employed in your field of interest. Surround yourself with people who are supportive and can help you acquire new contacts.

Now that you’re back in the classroom, go beyond it: attend local ‘lunch and learns’, workshops and industry-related events.

Be willing to change

“Every industry has its own tenors; its own language. Adopt them,” says Flynn. Edit your Facebook, Twitter and social networking pages to reflect who you want to be.

A willingness to change is a key factor in successfully reinventing yourself through your career. A great example is Denise Hartz, an interior design student at The Art Institute of Michigan. Hartz, who is retiring from her current career in two years, says, “I want to be a successful older person. I don’t want to retire.” Instead, she’s taking steps to turn a passion she’s had for years into a brand new career in interior design.

Revisit your resume

“Develop a new resume as a platform to highlight your critical and analytical thinking skills, your leadership abilities and willingness to collaborate, your planning and management skills, and your ability to facilitate creative thinking when faced with a problem to solve,” recommends Flynn.

Build your team

Find a dedicated career services advisor. “Make an appointment, show up prepared, and be humble and open to a possible entry level experience,” says Flynn.

“I just think it’s never too late in life to do what you want to do... pursue a dream,” says Hartz. Lemnah echoes this statement, calling herself a “walking, living, breathing dream catcher”.

Story of Salahuddin Ayyubi- Holy Warriors Richard & Saladin

2011-12-25T16:04:00.000+04:00

Note: This movie is produced from a western perspective and DOES NOT portray real history but there are certain aspects of Islamic justice which even the orientalists could NEVER deny! This movie is not here to teach you history, rather to make you curious to go and read more about our heroes and about the system of Khilafah which produced such heroes which are not produced anymore since we got divided into pieces of lands each with own flags. Come back to Islam, come back to Islamic Khilafah and support the parties working for the real revival- the Islamic System.

Salahuddin Ayyubi kicked out the crusaders and liberated Palestine and saved it from destruction by the kuffar. After the fall of the Khilafah in 1924 our lands were divided among the colonialist kuffar and Palestine was taken by British and then converted into Israel. Today once again our Haram Al Quds is under the kuffar. Only the return of the Islamic Khilafah with its army dedicated to Islam alone can liberate Palestine and give it back to its rightful owners. The nationalist nations of today under tyrant hypocrite rulers using its army to kill its own people and help the kuffar are an obstacle in the liberation of our lands.

The Saladin movie (Arabic)

The goggle-eyed, angular necked, round shaped, legless butterball

2011-12-24T17:15:00.000+04:00

Some time back I wrote a piece about people in a future generation having only flippers for arms and little stumpy appendages for legs seeing as how we have become a world of watchers instead of doers.

The more that is written and spoken about exercise and physical effort the less it is being done. While that says something about the power of publicity the fact is that technology has compelled us to be ashamed of labour in any form. So, we have decided that anything which prevents us from using our limbs has to be a status symbol.

Here are some day-to-day examples of our natural sloth. Don’t run away, well, actually, that is a silly thing to say, you can’t run, probably haven’t run for years.

See if this is you in these scenarios.

We will press the elevator button to go one floor ... down, forget about up.

The now largely defunct phone has to be cordless so that even if there is access to an instrument which is ten feet away the effort is cumbersome and often entails refusal to answer the caller because who, at the age of 35, is going to get up and walk that 5 metre marathon.

There is a friend of mine who was visibly astounded that the DVD system does not flip its side automatically and that he has has to get up and physically change it.

The same goes for remote controls for all your systems and TVs. No self-respecting owner can even conceive of a situation where he has to actually get up and change a channel manually. In fact, modern TVs see to have removed that option totally. In fact, many of us folks would not even know how to do it from the main set. Haven’t you seen the red alert action station panic if the remote is misplaced? A whole family goes into shell shock and it becomes a talking point.

People drive to the corner market in a car because the five minute 100 metre walk is too much of a nuisance.

People go round and round for twenty minutes in a Mall underground parking lot so they can park three lanes closer to the entrance. It is a laughable scene yet we have all seen it.

Even exercise has become a comical exclusion of exertion. Have you seen golfers play their game? They walk to the tee, hit the ball, then get into a little electronic cart and drive to the next stroke. Total walking done over 4800 metres is 48 metres. Then they come home and talk about their excellent afternoon’s game.

Tennis at the club is a joke when they play doubles and you only have to watch it and then keep yourself from laughing.

The new games in town which seem to be the current fad include eating while gaping game. In this sport, you sit and stare at the TV screen and see how swiftly you can consume a packet of crisps.

Then there is the Finger Muscle Programme (FMP) which covers pressing the car music system and hitting the buttons on the mobile phone.

Finally, there is the Conservancy Comforter in which you believe you are saving up your body by lounge lizarding and doing nothing. It is very much like being a couch potato and is based on the logical concept that if you are not putting your body to work you are preserving it from wearing out.

Consequently, you will live to a hundred, like an unused car.

A new physical deformity expected to hit the human race along with the flippers and appendages will be neckitis, a sort of leaning tower of Pisa effect between the chest and the head with the neck tilting to a thirty degree angle. This will be caused by the incessant cradling of a mobile phone while driving, eating, drinking, standing, sitting or doing anything. Medical practitioners have already indicated that the tilt has begun. Another few years and the goggle-eyed, angular necked, round shaped, legless butterball with little flippers for human arms will be a common sight. Go on, is that really you?

Sajak : Sebelum Dhuha (Mingguan Malaysia 25 Disember 2011)

2011-12-24T05:15:00.002+04:00

Sebelum Dhuha

Hening ini menyusuk
sesudah subuh, sebelum dhuha
menjelang fajar yang merentas
warna-warna padang pasir
serpihan dari sejenak menikmati
keindahan ruang, kemesraan alam
damai mengongsi kesementaraan
meriah sebuah perjalanan jasmani
dari kalendar ke kalendar

Hening ini menganjak pradigma
menafsir setiap nafas yang tersisa
ke belakang, masa lalu yang jauh
ke hadapan, jarak yang semakin singkat
di sini, saat ini, sejenak yang manis
singgah dan akan pergi
bagai satu transit debu-debu
berterbangan tanpa siapa peduli
kecuali hati-hati yang menginsafi
destini ke satu destinasi rohani

Hening ini, setiap langkah bermula
dari setiap haluan persimpangan
mencorak sejengkal perjuangan nafsu
dari suci kelahiran anak kecil
kepada kedewasaan dan kematangan
bercampur aduk dalam satu jasad
mimpi dan realiti, hitam putih kehidupan
menjejak usia dan musim perantauan
rindu yang kian kurus diselimuti
kain kapan yang robek!

Fudzail
Sharjah, UAE

Statistics: Israelis and Palestinians

2011-12-18T19:28:00.000+04:00

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the world’s major sources of instability. Americans are directly connected to this conflict, and increasingly imperiled by its devastation.

It is the goal of If Americans Knew to provide full and accurate information on this critical issue, and on our power – and duty – to bring a resolution.

Please click on any statistic for the source and more information.
Statistics Last Updated: October 25, 2011

Israeli and Palestinian Children Killed September 29, 2000 - Present
125 Israeli children have been killed by Palestinians and 1,471 Palestinian children have been killed by Israelis since September 29, 2000. (View Sources & More Information)

Israelis and Palestinians Killed September 29, 2000 - Present
	1,092 Israelis and at least 6,537 Palestinians have been killed since September 29, 2000. (View Sources & More Information)

Israelis and Palestinians Injured September 29, 2000 - Present
10,792 Israelis and 59,575 Palestinians have been injured since September 29, 2000. (View Sources & More Information.)

Daily U.S. Military Aid to Israel and the Palestinians Fiscal Year 2011
	During Fiscal Year 2011, the U.S. is providing Israel with at least $8.2 million per day in military aid and $0 in military aid to the Palestinians. (View Sources & More Information)

Current Number of Political Prisoners and Detainees
	0 Israelis are being held prisoner by Palestinians, while 5,300 Palestinians are currently imprisoned by Israel. (View Sources & More Information)

Demolitions of Israeli and Palestinian Homes 1967 - Present
0 Israeli homes have been demolished by Palestinians and 24,813 Palestinian homes have been demolished by Israel since 1967. (View Sources & More Information)

Israeli and Palestinian Unemployment Rates
	The Israeli unemployment rate is 6.4%, while the Palestinian unemployment in the West Bank is 16.5% and 40% in Gaza. (View Sources & More Information)

Current Illegal Settlements on the Other’s Land
Israel currently has 273 Jewish-only settlements and ‘outposts’ built on confiscated Palestinian land. Palestinians do not have any settlements on Israeli land. (View Sources & More Information)

On the deficiency of love in politic

2011-12-17T16:52:00.001+04:00

The higher world leaders climb, the more love they have to shed on the way as if the weight of love hinders their rise

Socrates once wrote, “One word frees us / of all the weight and pain in life / that word is Love.”
Ever since the beginning of the beginning love existed, and despite all other efforts to break it down, it has insisted on finding its way into the callous hearts of some people just as grass can find its way in between arid rocks.

Yet there are places in which it is seems extremely difficult for love to grow, and the most infertile of all happens to be in political fields and specifically in the hearts of politicians. For not only do the hearts of most politicians seem to be devoid of love, but they also happen to be blinded by downright self-interest and utter imprudence about the rest of us in humanity.

If we were to step away from the desiccated political fields, it becomes easy to stumble across love in every corner of our world. For love comes in all forms and shapes and has made the hearts of people its dwelling place!

Take a mother’s heart for example, a place that happens to be an endless spring of love tirelessly and eternally streaming devotion, compassion and forgiveness.

And how delightful is the love that comes in a romantic setting and flourishes in the hearts of two who are “in love”— the sort of love that led to the death of Romeo and Juliet and to the insanity of Qais, Majnun Leila.

It is the kind of love that was written about by Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani, a love illustrated “on the walls of caves / and on potteries and clay vessels long ago / and ...engraved on the ivory of elephants in India / and on papyrus in Egypt / and on rice grains in China.”

There is also the patriotic love for one’s country and homeland — a love that has its roots entrenched across the lands regardless of the countless human made borders that have divided our world’s map, a love that is pronounced in every national anthem and embodied in the colours of our flags.

Yet, time after time and throughout history, one can easily note that the higher world leaders climbs their political ladders, the more love they have to shed on the way, as if the weight of love hinders their rise in politics. And later, what is shed of love is gradually transformed into tears shed by humans.

As Che Guevara put it, “Cruel leaders are replaced only to have new leaders turn cruel.” Why is it that such phenomenon insists on repeating itself? And with whom can humanity entrust its hopes when few are the ones who have proven to be worthy?

Gandhi’s concept

Will there ever come another Mahatma Gandhi who can act upon the concept of love and reject violence and killing, someone who can truly act as the “change” that he wants to see happen in the world? Gandhi insisted that we “must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.” But one asks, how can we not lose faith in our leaders in the midst of today’s depressingly grim political reality?

Of the multitude of passages that have been written on love, one especially comes to mind: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres” The Bible 1st Corinthians.

If only it were possible to clone some of the materials that make the emotion of love and implant it in the hearts of those who run our world, for it seems as if their hearts have become hollow cavities with a very noticeable deficiency of love.

The Dali Lama said “Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. declared, “At the centre of non-violence stands the principle of love.” And Buddha preached, “Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.”
One wonders why such quotes are not parts of our political ideology, and why they are rarely practised by our politicians!

So let it be said to every politician sitting on his/her throne, and to everyone whose decisions can alter the hopes and dreams of his/her people, and especially to those who are to become our future politicians, we plead in the name of love for you to help stop the killing and bloodshed, to stop the breaking of a mother’s heart, to stop the shattering of a bride’s dream, and to stop the tear shed by our children.

We beseech you to help release the world of the weight of pain and to retrieve a love that once existed in your hearts before you took on your positions of power! Unearth a love that undoubtedly is buried deep within, and allow it to play a part in your decisions, ones that could ultimately decide the course of history and prevent avertable wars of agony and destruction.

Building Cities on the ocean - Seastead

2011-12-11T13:15:00.001+04:00

Seasteading: Libertarians dream of creating self-ruling floating cities. But can the many obstacles, not least the engineering ones, be overcome?

THE Pilgrims who set out from England on the Mayflower to escape an intolerant, over-mighty government and build a new society were lucky to find plenty of land in the New World on which to build it. Some modern libertarians, such as Peter Thiel, one of the founders of PayPal, dream of setting sail once more to found colonies of like-minded souls. By now, however, all the land on Earth has been claimed by the governments they seek to escape. So, they conclude, they must build new cities on the high seas, known as seasteads.

It is not a completely crazy idea: large maritime structures that resemble seasteads already exist, after all. Giant cruise liners host thousands of guests on lengthy voyages in luxurious surroundings. Offshore oil platforms provide floating accommodation for hundreds of workers amid harsh weather and high waves. Then there is the Principality of Sealand, a concrete sea fort constructed off Britain’s coast during the second world war. It is now occupied by a family who have fought various lawsuits to try to get it recognised as a sovereign state.

Each of these examples, however, falls some way short of the permanent, self-governing and radically innovative ocean-based colonies imagined by the seasteaders. To realise their dream they must overcome some tricky technical, legal and cultural problems. They must work out how to build seasteads in the first place; find a way to escape the legal shackles of sovereign states; and give people sufficient reason to move in. With financing from Mr Thiel and others, a think-tank called the Seasteading Institute (TSI) has been sponsoring studies on possible plans for ocean-based structures and on the legal and financial questions they raise. And although true seasteads may still be a distant dream, the seasteading movement is producing some novel ideas for ocean-based businesses that could act as stepping stones towards their ultimate goal.

Floating some ideas
Seastead designs tend to fall into one of three categories: ship-shaped structures, barge-like structures based on floating pontoons and platforms mounted on semi-submersible columns, like offshore oil installations. Over-ordering by cruise lines means there are plenty of big, second-hand liners going cheap. Ship-shaped structures can pack in more apartments and office space for a given cost than the other two types of design, but they have a big drawback: their tendency to roll in choppy seas. Cruise ships can sail around storms, but static seasteads need to be able to ride them out. And the stabilisers on big cruisers only work in moderate seas and when the ship is moving.

Enthusiasts have proposed a wide range of designs for seasteads

Pontoon-type structures, or giant barges, are the cheapest of the three options, but they are even more vulnerable than ships to choppy seas. Shipbuilders like Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan have proposed various designs for floating cities based on massive “mega-float” pontoons, with skyscrapers towering above the waterline. But these would only work in calm, shallow waters—and these tend to be within land-based governments’ territorial limits. George Petrie, a former professor of naval architecture at the Webb Institute in New York state who is writing a series of technical papers for TSI, has calculated that even in a relatively benign stretch of water off Hawaii, such structures would leave their residents pretty groggy much of the time.

As oil companies drilling in ever deeper waters have demonstrated, structures built on floating columns are the most rugged, though they are more expensive than ship- or pontoon-type vessels. The shipbuilding industry has plenty of experience in making them, but the expectations of comfort among the permanent residents of a seastead will be much greater than on an oil platform, where workers are paid well for short tours of duty in relative discomfort. Even in placid weather, floating-column structures bob up and down as the sea heaves beneath them, which can make people seasick. To prevent the vessel from drifting due to currents and winds, seasteads may need dynamic-positioning thrusters, but these would increase costs. In waters less than 1,800 metres deep, Mr Petrie calculates, a cheaper option would be to moor the platform to the seabed. As it happens, there are a number of barely submerged islands off the coast of California, the location of preference for early seasteaders. Alas, they tend to be volcanoes.

Even once a viable blueprint for the structure of a seastead is produced, the technical challenges are not over. The more it relies on land-based supplies of fuel and water, the harder it will be to achieve the libertarian dream of escaping the evil ways of existing governments. At sea there is plenty of wind and wave energy, and occasionally sunshine, but building renewable-energy systems that can survive harsh ocean conditions is even harder and more costly than designing land-based ones. Another problem is communication. Satellite-based connections are slow and expensive. Laying a fibre-optic cable would be difficult. A point-to-point laser or microwave link might work, suggests Michael Keenan, the president of TSI. But that would rely on a land-based transmitting station, again making the seastead reliant on landlubbers.

The long arm of the law
The technical challenges are daunting enough. The legal questions that seasteads would face are no less tricky, and call into question whether it would really be possible to create genuinely self-governing mini-states on the oceans. Until seasteaders are ready to cut their ties with the land altogether, they will want to build their colonies not much more than 12 nautical miles (22km) offshore—the limit of countries’ territorial waters—otherwise travelling to and from the seastead will take too long. But the laws of the sea give countries powers to enforce some criminal laws up to 24 nautical miles out and to regulate some economic activities in a 200-mile “exclusive economic zone”. Ships are granted exemptions, but a seastead tethered to the seabed would not qualify.

Some countries (notably America) assert the right to extend their jurisdictions, in matters affecting their citizens, across the entire planet. And like any other seagoing structure, a seastead would be obliged to register with a “flag state”, to whose maritime laws it would be subject. Some flag states are lax about enforcement but if, say, America disapproved of the goings-on aboard a seastead, it could lean on such states to get tough—and offer enforcement on their behalf. In the 1960s Britain’s government shut down pirate-radio ships not by sending the navy to attack them but by banning British suppliers and advertisers from doing business with them.

In all, the leaders of the seasteading movement concede that they will have to avoid getting into anything too provocative—drugs, pornography or money-laundering, for example. As for taxes, America already demands that its citizens pay income tax even when they are living abroad—and that would include living on a seastead. There is nothing to stop other countries following suit and indeed getting extraterritorial about other taxes too. Until seasteaders are able to bank their money with independent, ocean-going financial institutions, they may not be able to escape the taxman’s clutches.

“The ideal builders of seasteads may not be small groups of innovators, but giant engineering firms.”

And escaping the taxman may not, in any case, be enough of an incentive to lure residents to a seastead. Despite their stated preferences even libertarians, it seems, prefer to live in over-regulated, high-tax places like London and New York. Mr Keenan notes ruefully that the Free State Project, a scheme started ten years ago to get 20,000 people to move to New Hampshire and vote in a libertarian local government, has had little success so far. Unless a seastead were the size of Manhattan its citizens would have to forgo the cultural life, the parks and the wide choice of shopping and restaurants offered by large cities. The most realistic designs produced so far would reduce residents to living in cabins that, however sumptuously kitted out, would be little bigger than a typical millionaire libertarian’s bathroom.

Some seasteaders think the way forward is to build less ambitious offshore communities to demonstrate the potential of the idea. By basing themselves just outside countries’ territorial waters to avoid some of their laws, floating habitats could show land-based governments how such things as low taxes, light regulation and free access for foreign workers can produce wealth without ill effects. Such ocean-based businesses could be a step on the way to true seasteads.

Stepping stones to a seastead
In 2010 a group of marine engineers produced a detailed design study for the ClubStead—a floating resort city which would sit perhaps 100 nautical miles off the Californian coast, with 70 staff and 200 guests. It would combine the comforts of a cruise ship with the resistance to wind and waves of an oil platform, which its design closely resembles. Seven storeys of buildings would be cantilevered off the columns and, in an idea borrowed from bridge design, its extensive open decks are slung from cables. There would be solar panels (and gardens) on the roofs of these buildings, but the ClubStead would also rely on diesel power. It would make its own fresh water from seawater and have two helipads and a dock for boats.

How the ClubStead might look

The ClubStead design study includes a lot of detailed work on wind and wave resistance, construction methods, and so on. But its authors admit that much more would need to be done to produce a full blueprint ready for a shipyard to start building it. Nigel Barltrop, professor of naval architecture at Strathclyde University in Scotland, says he has “little doubt that you can do something like this and make it work”. But he thinks the structure may need further reinforcement to prevent fatigue—think of all of those metal joints constantly creaking in the waves. Otherwise the result could be a disaster like the collapse in 1980 of the Alexander Kielland, a floating accommodation block for North Sea oil workers, which broke apart and capsized, killing 123 people.

Besides its moderately spacious apartments, the ClubStead would have room for either a casino resort or a “medical tourism” centre. Many of the staff could be non-Americans who would otherwise struggle to get visas. They could spend most of the time aboard, taking occasional shore leave on tourist visas. The designers reckon it would cost $114m—less than some land-based luxury hotels—of which the biggest item is constructing and kitting out the apartments, at just under $50m. Running costs would be $3.4m a year.

A breakaway group from TSI is working on a simpler and cheaper idea called Blueseed. The idea is to convert a cruise liner into an offshore “incubator” for small, high-tech start-ups and position it just outside American territorial waters off California. The attraction for the start-ups is that they would be able to hire foreign engineers and scientists without the hassle of getting work visas for them.

Dario Mutabdzija of Blueseed says chartering and adapting a cruise ship should cost $15m-50m, depending on its size, and the combined rent for a tenant’s living quarters and office space might be around $2,000 a month, comparable with costs in Silicon Valley. So far the project is at the seed-capital stage, working to overcome venture capitalists’ doubts about getting involved in something subject to maritime law, an unfamiliar matter. Another problem, Mr Mutabdzija admits, is that it is unclear how American officials will choose to interpret the complex and vaguely worded immigration laws. He hopes that they will “just leave us alone for a while and see how it goes”.

If the sort of “just-offshoring” approach of the ClubStead and Blueseed projects can prove itself, it might be attractive for several industries in which large revenues are generated by relatively small numbers of skilled people, and which are subject to onerous taxes or regulation. Financial trading, gambling and cosmetic surgery are obvious candidates. Private hospitals could provide new treatments that have been approved by other countries but not by America’s sluggish regulators.

Rather than deciding in advance which line of business will be a seastead’s livelihood, Mr Petrie has a more Darwinian idea, one that libertarians should warm to: create a large expanse of floating “land” in mid-ocean and rent it out to whoever wants it. Individual homes and business premises would be winched aboard on cranes and bolted down. If their owners don’t pay the rent, they could be lifted out and replaced. The seastead thus “evolves and finds its way”, says Mr Petrie. He has set himself the objective of making the cost of living on a seastead not much more than the average for upper-middle-income housing in a typical American city.

Linguists quip that a dialect is a language without an army and a navy to enforce its status. Theologians likewise say that a cult is simply a church that lacks political clout. Seasteads may end up as wannabe sovereign states without the means to defend their autonomy against land-based governments. The first ones to overcome the many technical challenges, raise the money to construct their vessels and set out for the open seas will be quite dependent on terrestrial authorities’ goodwill. But countries short of available land, or whose leaders are struggling to pass liberalising reforms against resistance from vested interests, may tolerate limited experiments in low-tax, rule-free self-government. So the seasteaders may be in with a chance.

Who will jump in first?
Given the huge costs and risks involved, perhaps the ideal builders of seasteads will not be small groups of innovators like the Blueseed team, but giant engineering firms such as Mitsubishi, India’s Tata group or Samsung of South Korea. Indeed, as Mr Keenan notes, the most viable political model for a seastead may not be a libertarian democracy but an enlightened corporate dictatorship.
Sceptics will say that floating pies in the sky are more likely to materialise than floating cities on the oceans. But the seasteaders are undeterred. Nobody anticipated the immense variety of uses that would be dreamed up for the internet, Mr Keenan observes, and the same may apply to the idea of creating colonies on the high seas. As Mr Petrie puts it: “All that is lacking is for the first one to go into the water and say, ‘Hey, come on in, the water’s fine.’”

Looking to Africa!

2011-12-10T15:16:00.001+04:00

The hopeful continent

Africa rising

After decades of slow growth, Africa has a real chance to follow in the footsteps of Asia

THE shops are stacked six feet high with goods, the streets outside are jammed with customers and salespeople are sweating profusely under the onslaught. But this is not a high street during the Christmas-shopping season in the rich world. It is the Onitsha market in southern Nigeria, every day of the year. Many call it the world’s biggest. Up to 3m people go there daily to buy rice and soap, computers and construction equipment. It is a hub for traders from the Gulf of Guinea, a region blighted by corruption, piracy, poverty and disease but also home to millions of highly motivated entrepreneurs and increasingly prosperous consumers.

Over the past decade six of the world’s ten fastest-growing countries were African. In eight of the past ten years, Africa has grown faster than East Asia, including Japan. Even allowing for the knock-on effect of the northern hemisphere’s slowdown, the IMF expects Africa to grow by 6% this year and nearly 6% in 2012, about the same as Asia.

The commodities boom is partly responsible. In 2000-08 around a quarter of Africa’s growth came from higher revenues from natural resources. Favourable demography is another cause. With fertility rates crashing in Asia and Latin America, half of the increase in population over the next 40 years will be in Africa. But the growth also has a lot to do with the manufacturing and service economies that African countries are beginning to develop. The big question is whether Africa can keep that up if demand for commodities drops.

Copper, gold, oil—and a pinch of salt

Optimism about Africa needs to be taken in fairly small doses, for things are still exceedingly bleak in much of the continent. Most Africans live on less than two dollars a day. Food production per person has slumped since independence in the 1960s. The average lifespan in some countries is under 50. Drought and famine persist. The climate is worsening, with deforestation and desertification still on the march.

Some countries praised for their breakneck economic growth, such as Angola and Equatorial Guinea, are oil-sodden kleptocracies. Some that have begun to get economic development right, such as Rwanda and Ethiopia, have become politically noxious. Congo, now undergoing a shoddy election, still looks barely governable and hideously corrupt. Zimbabwe is a scar on the conscience of the rest of southern Africa. South Africa, which used to be a model for the continent, is tainted with corruption; and within the ruling African National Congress there is talk of nationalising land and mines.

Yet against that depressingly familiar backdrop, some fundamental numbers are moving in the right direction. Africa now has a fast-growing middle class: according to Standard Bank, around 60m Africans have an income of $3,000 a year, and 100m will in 2015. The rate of foreign investment has soared around tenfold in the past decade.

China’s arrival has improved Africa’s infrastructure and boosted its manufacturing sector. Other non-Western countries, from Brazil and Turkey to Malaysia and India, are following its lead. Africa could break into the global market for light manufacturing and services such as call centres. Cross-border commerce, long suppressed by political rivalry, is growing, as tariffs fall and barriers to trade are dismantled.

Africa’s enthusiasm for technology is boosting growth. It has more than 600m mobile-phone users—more than America or Europe. Since roads are generally dreadful, advances in communications, with mobile banking and telephonic agro-info, have been a huge boon. Around a tenth of Africa’s land mass is covered by mobile-internet services—a higher proportion than in India. The health of many millions of Africans has also improved, thanks in part to the wider distribution of mosquito nets and the gradual easing of the ravages of HIV/AIDS. Skills are improving: productivity is growing by nearly 3% a year, compared with 2.3% in America.

All this is happening partly because Africa is at last getting a taste of peace and decent government. For three decades after African countries threw off their colonial shackles, not a single one (bar the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius) peacefully ousted a government or president at the ballot box. But since Benin set the mainland trend in 1991, it has happened more than 30 times—far more often than in the Arab world.

Population trends could enhance these promising developments. A bulge of better-educated young people of working age is entering the job market and birth rates are beginning to decline. As the proportion of working-age people to dependents rises, growth should get a boost. Asia enjoyed such a “demographic dividend”, which began three decades ago and is now tailing off. In Africa it is just starting.

Having a lot of young adults is good for any country if its economy is thriving, but if jobs are in short supply it can lead to frustration and violence. Whether Africa’s demography brings a dividend or disaster is largely up to its governments.

More trade than aid

Africa still needs deep reform. Governments should make it easier to start businesses and cut some taxes and collect honestly the ones they impose. Land needs to be taken out of communal ownership and title handed over to individual farmers so that they can get credit and expand. And, most of all, politicians need to keep their noses out of the trough and to leave power when their voters tell them to.

Western governments should open up to trade rather than just dish out aid. America’s African Growth and Opportunity Act, which lowered tariff barriers for many goods, is a good start, but it needs to be widened and copied by other nations. Foreign investors should sign the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, which would let Africans see what foreign companies pay for licences to exploit natural resources. African governments should insist on total openness in the deals they strike with foreign companies and governments.

Autocracy, corruption and strife will not disappear overnight. But at a dark time for the world economy, Africa’s progress is a reminder of the transformative promise of growth.

Stealing A Nation

2011-12-08T15:01:00.001+04:00

There are times when one tragedy, one crime tells us how a whole system works behind its democratic facade and helps us to understand how much of the world is run for the benefit of the powerful and how governments lie. To understand the catastrophe of Iraq, and all the other Iraq's along imperial history's trail of blood and tears, one need look no further than Diego Garcia.

Paradise Cleansed
by John Pilger

10/11/04 "The Guardian" -- There are times when one tragedy, one crime tells us how a whole system works behind its democratic facade and helps us to understand how much of the world is run for the benefit of the powerful and how governments lie. To understand the catastrophe of Iraq, and all the other Iraqs along imperial history's trail of blood and tears, one need look no further than Diego Garcia.

The story of Diego Garcia is shocking, almost incredible. A British colony lying midway between Africa and Asia in the Indian Ocean, the island is one of 64 unique coral islands that form the Chagos Archipelago, a phenomenon of natural beauty, and once of peace. Newsreaders refer to it in passing: "American B-52 and Stealth bombers last night took off from the uninhabited British island of Diego Garcia to bomb Iraq (or Afghanistan)." It is the word "uninhabited" that turns the key on the horror of what was done there. In the 1970s, the Ministry of Defense in London produced this epic lie: "There is nothing in our files about a population and an evacuation."

Diego Garcia was first settled in the late 18th century. At least 2,000 people lived there: a gentle creole nation with thriving villages, a school, a hospital, a church, a prison, a railway, docks, a copra plantation. Watching a film shot by missionaries in the 1960s, I can understand why every Chagos islander I have met calls it paradise; there is a grainy sequence where the islanders' beloved dogs are swimming in the sheltered, palm-fringed lagoon, catching fish.

All this began to end when an American rear-admiral stepped ashore in 1961 and Diego Garcia was marked as the site of what is today one of the biggest American bases in the world. There are now more than 2,000 troops, anchorage for 30 warships, a nuclear dump, a satellite spy station, shopping malls, bars and a golf course. "Camp Justice" the Americans call it.

During the 1960s, in high secrecy, the Labour government of Harold Wilson conspired with two American administrations to "sweep" and "sanitize" the islands: the words used in American documents. Files found in the National Archives in Washington and the Public Record Office in London provide an astonishing narrative of official lying all too familiar to those who have chronicled the lies over Iraq.

To get rid of the population, the Foreign Office invented the fiction that the islanders were merely transient contract workers who could be "returned" to Mauritius, 1,000 miles away. In fact, many islanders traced their ancestry back five generations, as their cemeteries bore witness. The aim, wrote a Foreign Office official in January 1966, "is to convert all the existing residents ... into short-term, temporary residents."

What the files also reveal is an imperious attitude of brutality. In August 1966, Sir Paul Gore-Booth, permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office, wrote: "We must surely be very tough about this. The object of the exercise was to get some rocks that will remain ours. There will be no indigenous population except seagulls." At the end of this is a handwritten note by DH Greenhill, later Baron Greenhill: "Along with the Birds go some Tarzans or Men Fridays ..." Under the heading, "Maintaining the fiction", another official urges his colleagues to reclassify the islanders as "a floating population" and to "make up the rules as we go along".

There is not a word of concern for their victims. Only one official appeared to worry about being caught, writing that it was "fairly unsatisfactory" that "we propose to certify the people, more or less fraudulently, as belonging somewhere else". The documents leave no doubt that the cover-up was approved by the prime minister and at least three cabinet ministers.

At first, the islanders were tricked and intimidated into leaving; those who had gone to Mauritius for urgent medical treatment were prevented from returning. As the Americans began to arrive and build the base, Sir Bruce Greatbatch, the governor of the Seychelles, who had been put in charge of the "sanitizing", ordered all the pet dogs on Diego Garcia to be killed. Almost 1,000 pets were rounded up and gassed, using the exhaust fumes from American military vehicles. "They put the dogs in a furnace where the people worked," says Lizette Tallatte, now in her 60s," ... and when their dogs were taken away in front of them, our children screamed and cried."

The islanders took this as a warning; and the remaining population were loaded on to ships, allowed to take only one suitcase. They left behind their homes and furniture, and their lives. On one journey in rough seas, the copra company's horses occupied the deck, while women and children were forced to sleep on a cargo of bird fertilizer. Arriving in the Seychelles, they were marched up the hill to a prison where they were held until they were transported to Mauritius. There, they were dumped on the docks.

In the first months of their exile, as they fought to survive, suicides and child deaths were common. Lizette lost two children. "The doctor said he cannot treat sadness," she recalls. Rita Bancoult, now 79, lost two daughters and a son; she told me that when her husband was told the family could never return home, he suffered a stroke and died. Unemployment, drugs and prostitution, all of which had been alien to their society, ravaged them. Only after more than a decade did they receive any compensation from the British government: less than £3,000 each, which did not cover their debts.

The behavior of the Blair government is, in many respects, the worst. In 2000, the islanders won a historic victory in the high court, which ruled their expulsion illegal. Within hours of the judgment, the Foreign Office announced that it would not be possible for them to return to Diego Garcia because of a "treaty" with Washington - in truth, a deal concealed from parliament and the US Congress. As for the other islands in the group, a "feasibility study" would determine whether these could be resettled. This has been described by Professor David Stoddart, a world authority on the Chagos, as "worthless" and "an elaborate charade". The "study" consulted not a single islander; it found that the islands were "sinking", which was news to the Americans who are building more and more base facilities; the US navy describes the living conditions as so outstanding that they are "unbelievable".

In 2003, in a now notorious follow-up high court case, the islanders were denied compensation, with government counsel allowed by the judge to attack and humiliate them in the witness box, and with Justice Ousley referring to "we" as if the court and the Foreign Office were on the same side. Last June, the government invoked the archaic royal prerogative in order to crush the 2000 judgment. A decree was issued that the islanders were banned forever from returning home. These were the same totalitarian powers used to expel them in secret 40 years ago; Blair used them to authorize his illegal attack on Iraq.

Led by a remarkable man, Olivier Bancoult, an electrician, and supported by a tenacious and valiant London lawyer, Richard Gifford, the islanders are going to the European court of human rights, and perhaps beyond. Article 7 of the statute of the international criminal court describes the "deportation or forcible transfer of population ... by expulsion or other coercive acts" as a crime against humanity. As Bush's bombers take off from their paradise, the Chagos islanders, says Bancoult, "will not let this great crime stand. The world is changing; we will win."

Stealing a Nation, John Pilger's documentary investigating the expulsion of the Chagos islanders will be shown on ITV on Wednesday at 11 pm; his new book, Tell Me No Lies: Investigative journalism and Its Triumphs, is published by Jonathan Cape

Copyright: The Guardian.

Misogyny - in the UK or Saudi Arabia - has no excuse

2011-12-07T16:01:00.001+04:00

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Uprisings are sweeping through the Middle East, constitutions are being rewritten and free elections are taking place. After decades of oppression, Arab societies are finally beginning to champion the rights of the individual. But for half the population, women, real change often remains a mirage.

Statistics may show more women enrolling in higher education and increasingly breaking into the workforce. The future is theirs, they are promised. The reality, however, can be quite different.
From the preposterous to the tragic, recent news reports have put in stark context the social attitudes that women are subjected to in this day and age.

Saudi clerics last week caused a media storm when they claimed that if women were given the right to drive, Saudi Arabia would see a "surge in prostitution, pornography, homosexuality and divorce." That is one heavy burden for Saudi women to carry.

The absurdity of the statement is self-evident and barely needs a response; nonsensical ramblings have no place in modern society. It is also an insult to the many Arab societies that have yet to descend into debauched anarchy because women have taken to the roads.

Ironically, the statements do serve a very important purpose: they highlight the narrow-mindedness and misogyny that women still face on a daily basis in many Middle Eastern societies.

All the rights in the world are meaningless if they are not backed by genuine tolerance and respect. How can women even begin to break the so-called glass ceiling in the workplace when such backwards thinking still prevails? And when the day comes, as it surely must, when Saudi women are finally allowed to drive, it is likely to be a bittersweet victory. What sort of harassment and prejudice will they still face on the roads? Legislation is one thing, realities on the ground quite another.

These attitudes are in no way limited to the Middle East of course. A report released last week showed that nearly 3,000 so-called " honour" attacks were recorded by police in the UK last year, an average of eight attacks per day against British women of Middle Eastern or Asian origin.

As most assaults go unreported, police and women's groups fear that these attacks - which range from beatings and acid attacks to murder - are just the tip of the iceberg.

Worryingly, the Arab revolutions, in themselves unquestionably long overdue, are in some places promoting at best chauvinistic, and at worst criminal, behaviour among some of the demonstrators.
Amid the euphoria of the scenes in Tahrir Square over the last 10 months, stories of the mistreatment of women have gone against the spirit of change. In February, the CBS News correspondent Lara Logan was sexually assaulted by a mob in Tahrir Square while covering the downfall of Hosni Mubarak.

And in the last few weeks, a video doing the rounds shows a group of Salafists, whose party has won 20 per cent of the vote in the first round of Egypt's parliamentary elections, attacking a woman for the crime of daring to disagree with their views. While it must be pointed out that the majority of men reject this behaviour, many women continue to be harassed on the streets.

In a brutally frank post, one Egyptian women had this to say on her blog: "My father and mother spent years of sweat, tears and hard-earned cash on educating me into an emancipated woman so that one day I become a walking piece of meat on the street."

The truth is that those who blame religion miss the point: "honour" killings and the like masquerade in the name of religion to perpetrate acts that violate the basic principles of Islam and other religions.
The year 2011 will forever be remembered for the rights of Arabs as individuals, and the demand for a life of dignity and aspiration. Every woman, whether in a niqab or a business suit, deserves those rights too.