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Via Big Pharaoh comes this photo of the week, a veritable classic. Filing a report from a Moulid, a public birthday party for a deceased saint (in the case an Iraqi who died in Egypt eight centuries ago), Big Pharaoh snapped this delicious shot amidst the raucous celebrations:
The "long-serving" Tunisian despot is giving juicy soundbites to the Lebanese press. Here's President Ben Ali to the Lebanese magazine El Hawadeth:
President Ben Ali stressed the major reforms undertaken to strengthen the rule of law as well as pluralism and democracy, expressing his commitment "to move ahead in anchoring democracy and promoting political life"."We will move ahead in further consolidating the foundations of a pluralist society and political parties are called upon to promote their capacities within a context of freedom and national responsibility" he said, adding that "the continuous promotion of our political life ranks first on my personal agenda".
The key phrase is "within a context of... national responsibility." Freedom can supposedly exist, but it is that pesky problem of "national responsibility" which Tunisian dissidents continually fail to uphold... and get hauled off to jail for offending.
Robert Mayer of the global-freedom-monitoring blog Publius Pundit dropped a comment on our recent post regarding the Saudi woman who got a sex change, in part in order to get a driver's license:
Sounds like a painful way to get it, but that's not the only way. A friend of mine from Saudi Arabia, a princess (of course, one of many), is able to freely drive her father's Mercedes around Riyadh and Jeddah without a problem. And just wait till these girls get to Marbella in August, when they shed the veil for the bikini!
It's good to be the princess...
The warm and cuddly Saud clan - unhappy over a news story - has banned the regional newspaper Al Hayat (Life), indefinitely:
Saudi Arabia has indefinitely banned the distribution of a leading Arab newspaper, days after the paper disclosed that a Saudi extremist had played a key role in a violent Iraqi al-Qaida front group.One of the kingdom's most influential journalists immediately criticized the ban, calling it a sharp retreat from recent growing press freedoms.
It was unclear if the Iraqi article was the main impetus for the ban, or merely the culmination of several weeks of disputes, mostly on other issues, between the Al Hayat newspaper and the kingdom's information minister.
Amazighs, or Berbers, make up roughly 10% of Libya's population, but have long been denied any kind of official recognition. According to a new report, that is suddenly starting to change:
A regime that since it took power in 1969 had derided Berber demands for recognition as a colonial plot to divide the Arab nation, this month allowed Berber activists to hold a congress in a Tripoli hotel for the first time.
Both Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi`s son Seif al-Islam and Prime Minister Baghdadi Mahmudi have also made high-profile visits to the Berber heartland in the Jebel Nefusa mountains southwest of the capital to launch major projects to boost the local economy.
The sharp relaxation in official policy in a matter of months has impressed activists from the wider Berber community which stretches across north Africa from Egypt to Morocco and totals more than 25 million people.
World Amazigh Congress president Belkacem Lounes hailed what he called "a courageous first step to discuss a subject of importance to all Libyans," who number around six million.
Less than six months ago, Lounes was spurred to write an open letter to Kadhafi after the Libyan leader delivered a speech in which he yet again denied the existence of a Berber minority and threatened to "eradicate those who want to spread colonialism`s poison".
Lounes retorted: "The people of whom you spoke are women, men, and children who speak their Amazigh language daily... What worse offence to elementary rights is there than denying the existence of a people?"
Libyan researcher Shishank Issa, a specialist in Berber studies, said the shift in official attitudes had been remarkarble. "Berber identity in Libya used to be a taboo not to be broken," he said. "But now we can lift the veil on the history of Libya`s Berbers and prove that we`ve been here for thousands of years and that life in Libya did not start only with the arrival of the Arabs" from the 7th century onwards...
Through the auspices of the Kadhafi Foundation which he heads, Seif al-Islam, has been a champion of the new easing of policy towards the Berbers. Last year, his foundation won a lifting of a quarter-century-old ban on the use of Berber names which it had described as "an aggression which can no longer be ignored."
Wow... you couldn't even use Berber names in Libya until last year. If you start that low, then anything is an improvement.
It's a "small" victory because it required the king's intervention. But the fact that their protest got the king to intervene while he was traveling abroad and to intervene against a member of his own family, well, gotta give the guys credit:
Fishermen in a Shiite village in Sunni-ruled Bahrain who were in danger of losing their livelihood in a row with a royal family member celebrated on Tuesday after the king intervened on their behalf.
The latest dispute threatened to raise tensions within Bahrain's majority Shiite community, which continues to feel discriminated against despite reforms introduced by King Hamad, including restoring an elected parliament in 2002.The long-running feud centred around traps belonging to a cousin of the monarch that had been laid in coastal waters and prevented access to fishing grounds for local fishermen.
"Had it not been for pressure from residents, these illegal fish traps would not have been removed," said one of scores of residents of Al-Malkiya vilage as he watched workers remove the traps set up by the royal relative.
The fishermen's anger boiled over on Sunday and they tried to remove the traps themselves, sparking clashes with police in the village south of the capital Manama.
King Hamad bin Issa al-Khalifa, who is currently in London, stepped in to defuse the row and ordered the removal of his cousin's fish traps, Yousef al-Boori, a senior local government official, said on Monday...
Al-Wasat, a newspaper edited by Mansur al-Jamri, a Shiite former opposition leader who returned to Bahrain from exile in Britain in late 2001, on Tuesday hailed the king's intervention on behalf of the poor fishermen.
"Al-Malkiya's victory is a victory for law and rights," the paper headlined. "Al-Malkiya's residents won because they insisted on their rights and demanded that the law applies to all... This is not a transient event, but one that will remain engraved in the people's memory," wrote one of the daily's columnists.
"Egypt's Unchecked Repression" - Read the whole thing. Could this earn him a return trip to prison?
Just ask Myriam, a.k.a. Khaled:
A 19-year-old Saudi Arabian woman, Myriam, has undergone a successful sex-change operation in Jeddah and now, with her new name of Khaled, aspires for just one thing: a driving licence. Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world where women are banned from driving, added Okaz daily, reporting the news today. "The first idea that came to my mind a few hours before the operation, was to have a driving licence," Myriam/Khaled told the newspaper, adding she was encouraged by her family to have the operation. Sex change operations are rare in ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia. "I entered (the hospital) with the abaya (traditional women's garment) and I came out with thub, ghotra and ogal, the white tunic and hat worn by men," Myriam/Khaled said.
