...Or Does It Explode?

This Blogpost is For Maronites Only

With Lebanon on the verge of a major sectarian/politican confrontation tomorrow, it's worth noting an innovative new p.r. campaign that seeks to undermine sectarian divisions by taking them to the extreme. And thus we have Amam:

Generously conceived for AMAM by a multi-confessional creative team of like-minded people from the H&C Leo Burnett agency, the campaign is bound to make you both laugh and think. The tone, which is innovative, provocative, funny and straight to the point, will most certainly generate debate and provoke much-needed thinking about the reality of how far confessionalism dictates our every day social behaviour.

The Washington Post has more:

Part provocation, part appeal -- with a dose of farce that doesn't feel all that farcical -- advertisements went up this month on 300 billboards across the Lebanese capital and appeared in virtually every newspaper in the country. Thousands of e-mails carried the ads across the Internet to expatriates. Each offered its take on what one of the campaign's creative directors called a country on the verge of "absurdistan" -- cooking lessons by Greek Orthodox, building for sale to Druze, hairstyling by an Armenian Catholic, a fashion agency looking for "a beautiful Shiite face." At the bottom, the ads read in English, "Stop sectarianism before it stops us," or, more bluntly in Arabic, "Citizenship is not sectarianism."

...Many have praised the ads for asking uncomfortable, even taboo questions about a system in which sectarian affiliation determines everything from the identity of the president to loyalty to sports teams. Some have mistaken the campaign for reality. Across the capital, one in six billboards was torn down, prevented from being put up or splashed with paint, usually the tactic of choice for conservative Muslims irked by lingerie ads...

One is a doctor's plate: "Dr. Mohamed Chatila, Muslim Sunni." Another is a three-story banner that reads, "For Druzes, Building for Sale." A license plate is pictured: "A Shiite car," it says in Arabic, "Shiite" in English. And an ad for a car: "2000 model, in near perfect condition. Owned and maintained by a Maronite. Never driven by non-Maronites."

The team took the ads to Amam 05, a grass-roots group that grew out of last year's protests. The name means "ahead," an acronym of the Arabic for civil society. It states its mission, admittedly ambitious, as "a modern, sovereign state built on non-feudalism, non-confessionalism and non-clientelism."

But before the billboards went up, they had to go through the formality of getting permission from the intelligence branch known as General Security. At first, officials refused; one compared the ads to Nazi-era segregation. It took two hours of face-to-face meetings to reach a resolution, by convincing the officials that the campaign was intended to be ironic...

Good luck, Amam! You're up against some pretty powerful forces, but you're given us newfound appreciation of the individual - still buried there deep beneath all the identity politics.

UPDATE: More here, and dig the similarly creative title of the article.

Qaddafi Airport Ruckus: A Revealing Encounter

Muammar has managed to grab headlines yet again. No, it's not another Lionel Ritchie concert in Tripoli. It's grandstanding at the airport in Nigeria. Read the BBC story and think about what it reveals about how to handle a dictator like Qaddafi:

Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has been involved in a diplomatic incident as he arrived in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, for a summit. Nigerian officials say Col Gaddafi was accompanied by more than 200 heavily armed Libyan bodyguards…

The size of Libya's delegation was not a problem, it seems, just the sheer amount of weapons and ammunition they carried. So Nigerian security refused to let them proceed to the capital.

As arguments raged, the Libyan leader angrily set off on foot, intending to walk some 40km to the capital, before he was persuaded to return to the airport lounge.

By sheer coincidence, President Obasanjo was passing through the airport at the same time.  He intervened in person and proposed that the weapons could be allowed through if they were registered first.

But the Nigerians say that was rejected and the Libyan delegation threatened to fly home. Incensed, the Nigerians said that was fine with them and told the delegation that instead of the original compromise, they could now only carry eight pistols if they wanted to enter Nigeria, like any other diplomatic security detail.

They ordered that the rest of the weaponry had to be put back on the Libyan official jet. After a stand-off lasting several hours, the Libyans backed down and finally made their way to Nigeria's capital.

How great would it be if international leaders took this kind of approach with Qaddafi more often? After all, Qaddafi spends his days in Libya being accountable to no one. It takes moments like these to bring the ego-maniac back down to earth, if even for a moment. Too bad he didn't actually do the walk to Abuja.

Denial is Not Just a River in Sudan

Omar Al-Bashir speaks! ...for two and a half hours at a news conference about Darfur. And the main message: nothing to see here, folks.

"They say that more than 200,000 thousand have been killed in Darfur, we affirm that this number is not true and that... the number of deaths has not reached 9,000.

Those who argue that the situation on the ground is deteriorating are liars, Mr Bashir said...

No further comment is necessary.

Satire from the Early '80s...

...seems so quaint.

Speaking of the Saudi Judiciary System

Yesterday we noted in passing the excesses of the Saudi judicial system. Here's a reminder of the extent to which Saudi judges will go - forcibly divorcing husbands and wives:

Mansoor is the man who had his happy marriage cut short when he was forcefully divorced from his wife by a judge in Al Jouf on the grounds of it supposedly violating social customs and practices. Mansoor told the story of how his brothers-in-law — who incidentally are his wife's half-brothers — decided to dissolve his marriage because of supposedly tribal incompatibilities...

A few years after their marriage, the couple were shocked to learn that Fatima's half-brother had filed a lawsuit to have their marriage annulled on the grounds that she belonged to a superior tribe to that of her husband's. In fact, they were unaware of the crisis that had befallen them until the judge annulled their sacred union...

The wife was forced to leave her house because of the court decision and had to go back and live with her family who instantly found her a new husband. The only common factor between her divorce and the second proposed marriage was that none of Fatima's family members had bothered to consult her in either case.

Fatima is currently in jail for refusing to go along with her family's plan, after being tracked down by Saudi authorities:

A Saudi appeals court is set to rule within days in the case of a couple forced to divorce against their will because of arcane tribal custom, a lawyer said on Tuesday.

A 32-year old Saudi woman, called Fatima, has been in prison for more than three months after she refused to return to her half-brothers' home when a court last year annulled her marriage to Mansour Al-Timani, 36.

Now why don't we ask King Abdullah to explain the Saudi justice system to us?

"How Can a Jury Believe an Indonesian Maid?"

A court case in Denver, Colorado, has burst into an international incident, requiring the state's attorney general to be flown by the US State Department and Saudi king to the Arabian heartland to explain the workings of the US judicial system. No, it's not controversy over a terror suspect held at Guatanamo... but rather a connected Saudi citizen convicted of slavery and rape in Denver.

Homaidan Al-Turki was recently convicted of holding an Indonesian maid in forced servitude in his Denver home and of repeatedly raping her. But the Saudi media reporting on the case had consistently presented Al-Turki as a victim of the American judicial system and anti-Muslim bias. To do diplomatic damage control, Colorado Attorney General John Suthers had to fly to Saudi and be interrogated by King Abdullah himself:

"One of the brothers of the defendant that I had met sat through the trial and they simply cannot understand that a jury can give credibility to an Indonesian maid," Suthers said. "And the only possible explanation that is some sort of anti-Muslim bias."

For the whole sad story, watch the video here.

The outrages here are nearly too many to count. The total disdain for Indonesian maids (themselves Muslim), the slavery and rape, and the scandalized Saudi press. But perhaps even more ridiculous is that the Colorado official has to justify to judicial practices to King Abdullah. The king presides over a country that denies the most basic rights to millions of foreign workers (like Indonesian maids), denies religious freedom for non-Muslims and non-Wahhabis (talk about religious bias!), and has one of the most corrupt judicial systems in the world.

The interrogation should be the other way around. But who is going to hold King Abdullah's feet to the fire?

Friday Foto from Fez

Via the newly-launched Ikbis comes this handsome photo:

"Shove Your Civil War"

From Martyrs Square in Beirut today. Now when we can see posters like this displayed openly in Damascus, then a new day will at last be upon us.

Ruminations on Assassinations

What happens on the street of this city over the next few days will likely set the tone for much of the region.

In March of 2005, the dramatic nonviolent protests following Rafik Hariri's assassination sparked a swell of grassroots activism across the region, inspiring reformers in Kuwait, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, and Tunisia. There was a sense of hope, of possibility, that the best of the human spirit could triumph over dictators and thugs. That peaceful protest could trump murder.

A year and a half later, the dictators and thugs sense weakness. The euphoria of possiblity seems to have dissipated. Repression and murder appear to have the upper hand again in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Iran, Bahrain...

But the decent people of Lebanon helped inspire the region last time, and just maybe they can do it again. May the assassination of Pierre Gemayel at least yield a positive response, and may advocates of nonviolent reform and human dignity retake the initiative.

p.s. Happy Thanksgiving to our American readers. Be thankful of the precious liberties you enjoy every day.

Bless His Beating Heart - Mubarak Vows to Keep Ruling

Dude, Mubarak, you rule! No, like, you rule, dude! And apparently, dude, you intend to keep ruling as long as your heart keeps beating.

Yeah, it sounds like a cheesy love song adapted to fit the egomaniacal ambitions of a dictator. But he did say it:

CAIRO: President Hosni Mubarak won’t step down and it is not clear whether the planned constitutional amendments will allow more candidates a fair chance to run in presidential elections.

"I will carry on with you, crossing to the future, shouldering the responsibility, as long as my heart is beating and I'm breathing," Mubarak said during the parliamentary opening session on Sunday.

While the statement confirmed the president’s intent on staying in power for the current term, it didn’t rule out the potential succession of his son Gamal.

Amazing. The man could easily have a good 15+ years left in him. If Mubarak lasts that long, he will have ruled Egypt for more than 40 years, longer than most Pharaohs.