Santa stockings are a great source of fun for our family. Stocking stuffers run the gamut from nail files and travel earplugs to magazines and golf balls. And they include goofier thinking-of-you items as well. This year, my stocking included this bag of candy:
An “Arabian Nights” candy mix? Total, total mystery. All I see on the corporate website is that this is a “classic Christmas candy”. Perhaps it has something to do with the Nutcracker?

I have no idea, but I laughed with delight when I found this bag in my stocking. The more Arabian nights, the better!

Seven poets, seven emirates

Youssef Rakha

I arrive in Ras al Khaimah the night before my appointment and, drained by travelling non-stop for 12 hours, barely register the atmosphere before going to bed. When you live in Abu Dhabi, it turns out, waking up in Ras al Khaimah can be surreal.

The city is like the UAE capital through the looking glass. It boasts fewer salwar kameezes, for example, but this is made up for by a strong south Indian contingent, seemingly better integrated than Abu Dhabi’s Pashtun community. Either there are more tourists or the tourists are more visible. Emiratis drive leisurely through the hilly terrain, which keeps tapering into promontories until it suddenly levels out in the desert as flat as the plains of Dhafra – and then, when you are least expecting it, the sand gives way to green.

Echoing the phantasmagoria is the nickname the poet Abdul Aziz Jassim, another Ras al Khaimah native, reportedly gave the emirate, invoking the magic realism of Gabriel-Garcia Marquez: Colombia.

Nor are the historical facts very sobering: its being coextensive with the ancient port town of Julfar; its being the last sheikhdom to join the federation; its being home to the 15th-century navigator Ahmad ibn Majid, credited with finding the route to India, as well as one of two possible birthplaces (the other being Sharjah) for his contemporary al Majdi bin Dhahir, the legendary father of Nabati poetry… But I am here to meet the poet Ahmad al Assam – perhaps the only major Ras al Khaimah writer to continue living in Ras al Khaimah – and it is on his life and work that I should concentrate.

Assam seems to embody the intersection between the Gulf tradition of oral verse and the contemporary prose poem. His work, published sporadically, reads like fragments from an epic of Julfar. Few themes could be differentiated from the setting, which the poet celebrates in Whitmanesque tones, unbridled by form or reason.

He did not know it then, but at the majalis to which he accompanied his father as a child, many of the Nabati texts recited were prose poems.

Born in 1965, he lived “between two freejs”, and a mad neighbour “who kept to himself until he had an episode, during which he would concern himself solely with us children, behaving as an over-attentive father”, who contributed to his understanding of the human condition. Assam would grow up to develop William Faulkner’s knack for reading greatness into modest lives, and Pablo Neruda’s ability to perceive in his homeland a virgin, preternatural world untouched by vice.

With a population of 250,000 (220,000 of whom live in the eponymous city) dispersed over 1,700 sq km, Ras al Khaimah is the northernmost emirate, bordered by Oman as well as Sharjah and Umm al Qaiwain. In the early 1970s it housed the Trucial comrades of Oman’s Dhufar revolutionaries. Ras al Khaimah territory contains both the Mussandam Peninsula – where the Arab first met the Ajami, or “he who cannot speak [Arabic]”: the oldest, slightly derogatory term for a Farsi – and the Gulf’s closest thing to the Grand Canyon, Wadi Bih. It is the only emirate that has combined fishing and sheep farming with agriculture, and today thrives on reserves of hydrocarbons and minerals used in ceramics manufacture as well as agricultural produce.

“My peers always knew to stop talking once they sensed my presence, even at a distance,” he recalls, “because I had ears that could catch what they said. Now when I think about it, I realise that I saw and looked with my ears. When I write a poem, I do not write it with my eyes, I hear it. All my life, any whisper that presented itself, I felt. And then it wrote me.”

Assam is a short, stocky man in a mustard khandoura, with the demeanour of a performer in the tradition of the early Arabian poets. When he picks me up, his right foot has recently been operated on – diabetes complications, he will explain – but he drives easily, pointing out the problem only when the photographer suggests he should walk up a steep pier. He speaks of his poor health with an equanimity bordering on fatalism, “the sheer stubbornness of my people, not pride,” he repeats, “just stubbornness”.

And stubbornness is less obvious in his work than his refusal to acknowledge that he was ever poor, patriotic or political. Assam participated in the 1974 protests against low wages which, initially triggered by Iran’s occupation of the Greater and Lesser Tumbs Islands, took Ras al Khaimah by storm. He insists it was to impress a sweetheart in the front lines. His relative indifference to travelling highlights all three qualities. Why would you want to leave even for Dubai, he asks, when you have every possible environment – coast, desert, mountain and field – at your doorstep?

Even his stint at the Emirates University in Al Ain, from 1983 to 1985, was cut short by an insurmountable yearning for home. He never graduated. “Were I to live in an apartment in a high-rise building,” he says, “my sense of wonder would flutter out of the window and back to Ras al Khaimah.”

At the Grand Restaurant, a small place where Indians scoop up biryani with their hands, Assam professes gratitude to Sheikh Saqr bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, Ruler of Ras al Khaimah, for making modern education available to a generation of aspiring intellectuals. But it was this grassroots lore of the sea that informed his local radio appearances in the late 1980s – his true debut, coinciding with his joining the intellectual rights department of the Ministry of the Economy at Ras al Khaimah, which he now directs. This was Nabati poetry, and while it metamorphosed through the activities of a short-lived “literary salon” known as The Beggars and the establishment of the Ras al Khaimah branch of the Union of Writers and Authors of the Emirates in 1989, the drive to recite to friends has remained unchanged.

“People in Ras al Khaimah may seem outdated,” Assam confides as he drives me back to the hotel, “but they are the Emirates’ true intellectuals.”

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I arrived in Ras al Khaimah after a long drive at night and the same happens again with Ajman, the visually less compelling but intellectually psychedelic hometown of the poet Hashem al Muallim.

The smallest of the seven Emirates, with a population of 40,000 living in 260 sq km, Ajman lies entirely within Sharjah’s territory, recalling West Berlin prior to the unification of Germany – except that, rather than an iron curtain, all that separates the two emirates is freehold property and alcohol, with Ajman following in the footsteps of Dubai by accommodating expatriates and embracing the age of the high-rise. But the two are intertwined; Muallim, who was born in Sharjah in 1970, is himself an example of that. His father’s family lived in Sharjah, his mother’s in Ajman. When he was seven his father decided to join his in-laws. “You take a drag on your cigarette in Sharjah,” as he puts it, “and you blow it out in Ajman.”

The town seems cosier than anywhere I have been in the UAE, including Sharjah. It is framed by an unobtrusive Corniche, which figures extensively in Hashem’s work (one poem is prefixed with “This text was written over an abandoned pavement on the coast of Ajman”).

The stunning waterfront and the neat little bungalows inspire calm, though in the evening, driving back from the Carrefour shopping complex, Muallim and I will witness two traffic accidents within metres of each other on the main road. Ajman has all the luxuries of Dubai, but it retains a predominantly Emirati constituency – judging by Carrefour, at least, which is swarming with bare-headed men in white khandouras. People seem more approachable than in Abu Dhabi.

That morning I instantly recognise him at the Kampinsky terrace cafe: he is an average-looking man with an absurdist sense of humour. He is sipping Turkish coffee with a printout of his last poem in front of him: a homage to Abdul Aziz Jassim. Muallim featured in joint collections (notably with Assam) before publishing his sole book with the Sharjah Department of Culture and Information in 2003, Those Buried in the Air. A civil servant with the Ajman police, he never attended university – the early death of his father obliged him to provide for the family – and he explains with wry humour how he and his family live in a room at his mother’s. Poverty is a point of pride for him.

Muallim never writes about places per se, but his childlike wonder is rooted in the intimately observed settings of his youth; and he was part of a frenzied “search for the unusual” centred here in a period roughly coinciding with The Beggars in Ras al Khaimah. (The same period also saw the short-lived poetry journals Nawariss and Ruaa, published in 1990-91, put out in Sharjah by the present-day director of the Dubai International Film Festival, Masoud Amrallah, and the poets al Hanouf Mohammad and Ibrahim al Mullah.)

He still counts himself among a creative community of young people spanning the two emirates who were revolutionary in the intellectual sense: lovers of Bob Marley who knew nothing about Rasta, or else self-styled Dadaists until they saw a picture of Tristan Tzara, a groomed gentleman, and realised that Jassim or Ahmad Rashed Thani – the Emirates’ two biggest names in prose poetry – had more to say to them than either dreadlocks or gibberish.

Speaking unhurriedly, Muallim traces his loss of innocence to the sudden death of his younger brother in a car accident when he was eight or nine. He was present at the scene but it took him a long time to comprehend it. “I asked where they were taking him,” he recounts, “and they said to the grave. Was he going to sleep at someone else’s house? They said it was the house of God. And from this day on, my reflexive definition of the word grave has been the place where God lives. So I left an orange on our secret tree branch in the house, where I knew he couldn’t fail to find it, and I went to bed thinking that if it stayed where it was till morning, that meant my brother would never come home again.”

More cheerfully, he recalls his Borgesian wonder at “those wholly magical creatures” he saw at the fish market nearby, where he discovered the existence of the wide, wide world beyond.

“One must become a black fish,” he wrote in Those Buried in the Air, “in the midst of lazy fanatics.”

The more I read of Muallim’s poems, the more familiar it feels. I realise with surprise that his texts have an affinity with those Egyptian poets known as the Generation of the Nineties; Muallim has had no contact with those poets (and read very little of their work). It dawns on me that, despite the economic divide separating the urban Gulf from older metropolises of Arabic literature, developments that have transformed poetry were happening everywhere at the same time. And yet, to a far greater extent than anyone in Cairo, Muallim’s conceptual vocabulary is drawn from nature: the tree, the fish, the bird.

“Still,” he says, “you can be a poet without having a word to your name. It has to do with being in tune, being able to see poetry for what it is – in the way the wave laps, in the birds’ wings, in the wind blowing through palm fronds. The poet is simply someone who can be like fronds, someone poetry can move through.”

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The journey from Ajman to Sharjah is far briefer than expected. On the way I recall the bigger emirate’s status as “cultural capital”. The third largest emirate, Sharjah has coasts on both the Arabian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, and its ports are the country’s busiest. It also has small enclaves separate from the area around Sharjah City (population 800,000). Its rulers, the Qasimis – a branch of which also rule Ras al Khaimah – were among the Gulf’s most invincible seafarers in the 19th century. Besides oil and housing revenues, Sharjah has a buoyant logistics and trucking sector.

It seems oddly appropriate that the office where I am headed – that of Al Ittihad newspaper – should be located across the road from the Kassbah with its iconic ferry wheel, in a building called Babel Towers. Besides shunning media attention, the man I am after, a cultural editor there, has stated ivory-tower views on poetry.

In a sense, the poet Ibrahim al Mullah – author of Baskets of Desert (published with the German based Dar al Jamal in 1997) and I Left my Glance in the Well (privately printed in 2003) as well as a book of film criticism and several short films – is Assam’s diametrical opposite. He sees poetry not as an oral or public exchange, but as a private act “akin to isolation”. Not a bang but rather, in this case, a moving image.

Where Assam sees with his ears, the trajectory of Mullah’s development has followed a strictly cinematic course, with “the great poets” of the screen – Tarkovsky, Pasolini, Nikita Mikhalikov – informing his sensibility. Where the Julfari feels no need to travel, Mullah derives his inspiration from wandering not only around the Arab world, where he is better connected than most Emirati writers, but in Asia and Europe as well. His position in a government institution has enabled him to explore cities like Rome and Bangkok.

When I meet him, Mullah has not written poetry for three years. “When you work as a journalist,” he explains, “it spoils writing for you. The inner light that guides the poem, the pleasure you take in it, begins to fade. ”

True to a notion of freedom that drove him against the verse compositions with which he started, Mullah’s poems evoke all the places he has been to, but they never name them. His Sharjah turns out to be different from the bustling city I have come to see.

I have waited for half an hour at the office when Mullah marches in energetically, a broad-shouldered, tall figure with a light beard. His demeanour immediately strikes me with a remarkable sense of balance – warmth and distance, enthusiasm and caution, melancholy and good cheer.

“Not here,” Mullah waves at the window, lighting another cigarette in the conference room, “but Sharjah remains a horizontal, not a vertical city.” Like most journalists at their offices, he is distracted, in a hurry. “It’s a bit like European cities, not so much in terms of its architecture as its general aspect. I am not talking about this area, which has gone the way of Dubai, but in the places where we grew up and in some cases where we still live, the place retains its character. It doesn’t have buildings that block out the sun and the air and the blue of the sky. Its skyline does not induce that kind of terror about your connection to your own space or how you might live in it.”

Mullah was born in 1966, and he deplores the dog-eat-dog existence to which “a virgin land” has been reduced over the course of his lifetime. People’s relations had been intuitive until “the compulsion to prove oneself in society” supplanted clarity and good will.

“There are break-ups,” he keeps saying. “Even among relatives, there are break-ups, and endless interference. Maybe other people accept it as the normal course of things but for a poet or an emotional person, it takes its toll on you.”

He was reluctant to do the interview. Now, to avoid being photographed without his sunglasses on, he accompanies the photographer and me downstairs as he speaks, describing two kinds of house for each family, located in two different freejs: a summer house built out of palm fronds, and a winter house built out of mud reinforced with rock from the sea.

“The sea was our guest at high tide,” he muses. “It came into the house, and that was fine – we were used to it.

“This openness,” he says, pausing to emit a melancholy laugh. “This openness to the colour blue.”

A nation of words

Youssef Rakha

The writer Tariq Ebeid al Ali began publishing his Nabati verses in 1985. Stephen Lock / The National

A poet in Dubai is like a needle in a haystack. With nearly 1.4 million residents, Dubai is the largest emirate by population, but though it may boast as many Arab men of letters as Abu Dhabi, they are all but evanescent in the multicultural multitude. Despite the scarcity of oil, Dubai’s superlative architecture and embrace of international capitalism make it a worthy experiment in future metropolitanism, but only 40 years ago it was little more than a string of fishing villages on the Arabian Gulf. Today, natives are an even smaller minority than elsewhere in the UAE.

Walking into the Spinney’s shopping complex in Jumeirah – where I am to meet Khaled al Budoor, a respected Dubai poet who maintains a visible profile against the odds – it occurs to me how strange it must be to have been born here in 1961, to have grown up in tandem with such mind-blowing development and, after three years in Ohio obtaining an MA in scriptwriting, to have come back to find your teenage haunts transformed beyond recognition. “Let’s meet at the Starbucks,” he says on the phone. “Jumeirah is where I grew up. You know Jumeirah, don’t you?” And it is as if, asking me, he momentarily doubts how sure he himself is. “One feels a kind of estrangement,” he says now. “The places of childhood are no longer there.”

Budoor is a man of less than average height in a spotless white khandoura, slight but sturdy, with an incredibly trim light moustache going from grey to white. His bearing reflects years of working as a radio and television anchor, notably with Dubai TV, where he settled for early retirement some five years ago. He has written films and for the press and presided over seminars and an all-Dubai sophistication comes through in his conversation: cosmopolitan, aloof, slightly technocratic. “One feels fortunate to live in a city like Dubai,” he intones, “because it offers the writer everything he wants – books, films, equipment, contact with the contemporary world…”

He started out writing in classical verse, quickly making the transition through the modern, modified metres into prose, but he has always written in the Emirati dialect as well as standard Arabic. Some of his vernacular poems have rhyme and rhythm, but the extended metaphors out of which he forges a text are comparable in each case. So far he has published three books: Night (1992), Winter (2002) and (in Emirati Arabic) Ink and Dalliance (1999). Several more volumes, including collected articles on folk literature, are upcoming in the next year.

He seems at home enough in Starbucks, but his poems would never be. They emerge, rather, from “a simple fishing village” where “PE classes at school consisted of swimming in the sea” and old men gathered in the moonlight to listen to each other’s stories and verses, their laughter unencumbered by the absence of a dining table, their knowledge of the outside world all but fantastical. Part of this village may once have occupied the space of the multinational outlet where we are talking, but Budoor does not seem to mind.

And it is precisely the ability not to mind, and the contemporary idiom he writes in, that allow his poems to preserve those nostalgic images as places of beauty to which Arabic readers everywhere can return. Yet his true achievement, paradoxically, remains the way he has managed to depart – from the Emirates, Ohio, even his career – returning, painfully but exultantly, through the creative act. What he feels for the old Jumeirah, far from homesickness in time, is “an escape-return relationship,” as he puts it, “escape and return”. These days he recognises his birthplace only “in the faces of some friends, or else in recorded songs of the sea”; sometimes, he adds, matter-of-factly, “I feel in tune with its spirit”.

But Dubai’s architecture does not help induce this feeling, “even if the human being tries, in his own house, to provide a more merciful space”. Still, Budoor’s principal concern is with “estrangement in language”, a literal reference to the fact that few people in Dubai speak Arabic. It is a fate he seems resigned to as part of the city’s contemporary character, what makes it a great place to live. “But at other times,” he sighs, as if making a delayed confession, “I have the urge to run far into the desert – or the sea.”

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The trip to Fujairah never materialises. As is the case with Umm al Qaiwain, for the longest time I am told one of two things: there are no poets; or what poets there are, “classicists”, are not contemporary poets. “There are poets,” the Ras al Khaimah master Ahmad al Assam finally declares. “They may not write in prose, they may use Emirati Arabic. But there are poets.” And he picks up his mobile phone…

After a few days’ worth of toing and froing, one sultry evening I take a taxi to the Shangri-La Hotel, on Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai, to meet the Nabati poet Khaled al Dhahnani, who shows up a little late at 11.30pm, straight from the studio where he was a guest juror at a teenage Nabati poetry competition. “When you have been a juror on so many competitions,” he explains, “it doesn’t feel right to participate in the Millions Poet.” Within hours, Dhahnani is due at the airport for his summer holiday in Europe, but he has not only made the effort to show up, he also pays for dinner and provides over an hour of engaging conversation.

A tall, dutifully groomed figure with an easy-going, slightly distracted air, Dhahnani was born in 1972 to a family so involved in the politics of Fujairah – and so close to the Al Sharqi family – that he compares them to the Baramikah, viziers to the Abbasids and their empire’s true movers and shakers for hundreds of years after the ninth century. “Except that, unlike them,” he adds, “we do good.” Although he keeps his house in Dubai as well as Fujairah, Dhahnani feels he is wholly a product of this most mountainous of all the emirates, which commands stunning views of the Gulf of Oman. And, at 130,000 people, it is the second least populated emirate, with active mining and tourism industries but high unemployment rates among Emiratis.

A major media official in Fujairah (he organises the bi-annual International Monodrama Festival) Dhahnani stresses his connection with nature and the conscious effort to “reinforce talent with reading”, developing his own instantly recognisable style. He may write in the vernacular, he says, but he uses “a white language” comprehensible to all Arabs. And he is so concerned with the future of Arabic among Emiratis that for months he struggled to rid his speech of the word “OK”, but ironically – in a high-end setting potentially more alienating than Jumeirah – he feels no estrangement whatsoever.

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At 67,340 square kilometres – 86 per cent of the country’s land area – Abu Dhabi is too vast to picture all at once. First, there is the coastal city housing most of the emirate’s 1.3 million residents: in itself, a layered amalgam of worlds, as multinational as Dubai, but with more stress on Bedouin heritage. Then there is the original desert spring, Al Ain, population 614,180: the agricultural, educational and camel-racing centre whence settled members of the emirate’s powerful tribes, the Al Nahyan included, invariably hail. Between and beyond the two cities, oil fields, palm forests, luxurious resorts and construction workers’ camps frame the legendary Empty Quarter.

The mythic journey from Al Ain to the city of Abu Dhabi – originally a seasonal fishing and pearl-diving pilgrimage – has come to symbolise the formative years of the UAE, with the centre of gravity shifting from one to the other in the course of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan’s lifetime, to coincide with the genesis of the federation. It is a journey the director of the Union of Writers and Authors of the Emirates, Hareb al Dhahiri, made at the age of 12, during a historical juncture, he says, “bridging two eras”. Moving from one city to the next was like “replacing the desert with the sea”. Together with Abu Dhabi’s cultural initiatives of the 1980s and 1990s – lectures and exhibits in the Tourist Club, the establishment of the Cultural Foundation, liaisons with Sharjah about founding the Union – it remains a central reference point in his life. “Abu Dhabi,” he says, “was a trail blazer.”

A Romantic poet better known as a short story writer, Dhahiri lives in Battin, an older enclave with one of the lowest skylines in the city, not far from the Old Airport Road. His spacious villa is furnished in the Second Empire style prevalent among the Arab bourgeoisie. Joining him in his salon, I remember that he is not only an intellectual, but also an Adnoc manager, and reportedly an effective juggler of priorities in the vexed arena of Abu Dhabi cultural policy. A critic of “mixing tourism into culture”, he brings the views of Abu Dhabi literary figures, like the poet Ahmad Rashed Thani, and the novelist Ali Abur Rish, the latter originally from RAK, into the public sphere. “Countries work on their artists until they become international,” he declares. “They do not import foreign artists, paying them millions of dollars they wouldn’t dream of earning in their countries.”

Dhahiri’s house bespeaks comfort and safety. And so, in a sense, do his poems: easy expressions of a “philosophy of love” informed by the work of visionaries like Blake and Gibran Khalil Gibran. He has written four books: Mandoline (1997), A Kiss on the Cheek of the Moon (1999) and Puppets’ Night and Soul Pulse (2004). Only two are collections of poems. In the others, narrative plays a smaller role than exploration of the psyche; and the same “philosophical way of writing” produces a layered, sometimes arcane short story similar to a prose poem. Only very subtly do Dhahiri’s social concerns rise to the surface: the disintegration of the fabric of society, dependence on the West, and the receding tide of cultural as opposed to tourist initiative.

A dark, round man with slow gestures and an easy smile, Dhahiri sits gingerly in an armchair to delineate his literary trajectory: from traditional verses through khawatir, or thoughts, to short stories. “For Arabs and especially Bedouins,” he says, “the connection with poetry is born with you when you are born. So it is only natural that even a short story writer should take this course.” Gradually, as he warms to his theme, his back slumps further into the cushion, his arms relax, and what strikes me as a conversational technique peculiar to Abu Dhabi – slow, measured but eventually revealing – begins to operate.

Dhahiri speaks of Scarborough, England, where – at his own initiative, at the age of 15 – he spent three months living with a local family to learn English. He speaks of his three years studying business at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon, where his writing teacher – a tremendous support to him – turned out to be a Jewess, and how people had discouraged him from going to America under the impression, gleaned from action movies, that whoever lives there will end up dying in a shooting. He speaks of “the simple and old place”, Al Ain, “that stays with you as you grow up”; and of the inscrutable mysteries of poetic inspiration.

But imperceptibly, deftly, he steers the conversation back to Abu Dhabi. “When I first got here, there was an empty sand lot where we used to play, the present al Rawdha: people would come over and ask after a specific person. We were small then, but we could always tell them where that person lived. That’s how closely knit life was. But these days it reminds me of Scarborough. Now we are big,” he laughs, “but we don’t know the names of our next-door neighbours.”

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I have been in Umm al Qaiwain for nearly 24 hours when I realise the person I am here to see is actually in Abu Dhabi. So the interview is postponed till my return, and my observations are promptly recorded before I head back, smoking to my heart’s content in my first unmetered Emirati taxi.

Tariq Ebeid, a member of the Al Ali clan of which the Al Mualla sheikhs are a subsection, is a former police officer currently training as a school teacher. Periodic changes of career, he believes, are necessary for a rounded view of life. Born in 1967, Ebeid started publishing his Nabati verses in 1985; and urban discomfort notwithstanding, he has always worked in Abu Dhabi, spending the weekends and holidays at home, where he still has the greatest audience base, frequently holding poetic evenings in an atmosphere where “everyone is family and friends”.

The least populous emirate, and in some ways the least developed, Umm al Qaiwain recalls the hinterlands of the Sahara and Sinai by turns. It has few public amenities, no real centre, and a vastly spread out miscellany of beach-orientated establishments, among which the garland-dispensing, dancing-girl-on-stage “Indian nightclub” is particularly popular. Patronised mainly by sailors and jet skiers, the emirate “has few resources”, Ebeid says, but “boasts a glorious tradition of learning and the old, affectionate way of life”.

It has contributed much skilled labour to the bigger emirates, he goes on, producing a portfolio of magazine clippings out of which he reads a few samples.

Ebeid is an admirer of the Millions Poet, from which he says he learns a lot, but the opportunity to participate has not presented itself. In reality, he belongs more firmly in a humorist tradition of zajal, less emotional and rhetorical than the kind of work showcased in the programme, and more concerned with everyday life.
A small, dark, eminently hospitable man, Ebeid meets me at his Old Airport Road apartment while it is being packed in preparation for travelling to Umm al Qaiwain, and he repeatedly apologises for nonexistent inconveniences. “This is only a place to stay,” he says, “so that the children who go to school in Abu Dhabi should have a home here too. But the quiet, comfortable life is back there in Umm al Qaiwain, where there is neither traffic nor noise – and we keep travelling back and forth. One day, God willing, you will come and visit me there. And then you will see the difference for yourself.”

الشعر المعاصر في الإمارات

http://www.thenational.ae/article/20080824/ART/682973072/1007

http://www.thenational.ae/article/20080826/ART/575817412/1007

http://www.thenational.ae/article/20080824/ONLINESPECIAL/893373589

Merry Christmas Eve to those of you who are celebrating, and for those of you commemorating Ashoura, I hope that it is an opportunity for reflection for you. (And I hope that you are as pleased as I am that Muharram was included in my employer’s “Season’s Greetings” email.)

At the start of the month, I read a very interesting article in Ha’aretz, which I had intended to post immediately. “Immediately” turned into several weeks, but am pasting it in below. The article announces a planned law that would allow Arabic-language works – originals and translations – produced in the confrontation states to be sold in Israel.

Those of you who, like me, are obsessed with the Mandate era, will be fascinated (but probably not surprised) to learn that the current law is a gift of the British. And those of you who, also like me, enjoy following the twists and turns of the cozily hostile Israel-Syria relationship, will be delighted to learn that the Arabic-language translations of well-known Israeli writers like Amos Oz are produced in Syria.

Happy reading!

Books translated in “hostile countries” will soon be allowed to be sold in Israel, after the Ministerial Committee for Legislation decided yesterday to support a bill overturning a World War II-era law aimed at blocking information from enemy states.

This will allow the Arabic translations of best-selling children’s books like “Harry Potter” and “Pinocchio,” as well as Arabic versions of prominent Israeli authors, to be sold here.

Until now, Arabic translations of popular children’s books and works by authors like Amos Oz, Yoram Kaniuk and Eshkol Nevo were not available in Israel, because they were printed in hostile countries like Syria and Lebanon. This was because a 1939 British-Mandate era law prohibited literature from being imported from enemy states.

Given the relatively low readership of Arabic-language books in Israel, and the resulting low returns on translations, almost none have been produced in Israel.

The present bill, initiated by MKs Yuli Tamir, Yariv Levin and Zeev Bielski, aims to make literature in Arabic more readily available.

Tamir (Labor) said yesterday, “This would be an important law, one that ensures the freedom of literature and culture of all citizens. Every citizen is entitled to read literature in his mother tongue. This law would end the absence of children’s books and belles-lettres for Arabic readers.”

The bill calls for freedom to “import books from any country, and allow translations into any language, in order to ensure exposure to a wide array of literature and to expand citizens’ rights to rich cultural lives in their native tongues.”

The proposal allows security authorities to reject the importation of a certain book or journal for content that could be used for incitement, such as literature denying the Holocaust or encouraging terrorism.

In January, the human rights organization Adalah petitioned the High Court to allow Kol-Bo Sefarim – Israel’s largest supplier of Arabic-language textbooks – to import books from Egypt and Jordan that were published in Syria and Lebanon.

The book supplier has imported books from Egypt for three decades, and since 1993, it has imported books from Jordan as well. Most of the books were printed in Syria or Lebanon, but the company had received permission from the chief military censor to import them.

In August of last year, however, Kol-Bo received a letter from the Industry, Trade and Labor Ministry stating its permit to import books from enemy countries would not be renewed. The letter said such books could not even be imported through countries with which Israel has diplomatic relations, due to the World War II-era law.

Adalah’s petition noted that 80 percent of books intended for Israel’s Arab community, and most Arabic books destined for college and university libraries in Israel, are printed in Syria and Lebanon, where several large publishing houses hold exclusive rights to translate major Western literary works into Arabic.

Lebanese printing houses hold exclusive rights to translate “Harry Potter” and “Pinocchio,” as well as works released by Britain’s Ladybird Books, which publishes a variety of popular children’s books. The Lebanese printing houses also hold exclusive rights to the Arabic translations of classic works by William Shakespeare and Moliere, and modern works by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Paulo Coelho.

A handful of Syrian printing houses have exclusive rights to the Arabic translations of Hebrew works by Oz, Kaniuk and Nevo.

Stratfor | December 21, 2009

Just arrived:

Walsh, John, “Die neuen Handelswege – Thailand und die arabische Welt,” Südostasien, Jg.25, Nr.4 (2009), pp.28-9.

Available now for eight euros, although I daresay I could supply the English version of my article if anyone is really interested.

Publié sur: L’expression (lexpressiondz.com)
20 Décembre 2009

Les Egyptiens continuent de manipuler les médias et les satellites privés dans le but de nuire à l’Algérie et surtout dans le but de se faire une image de leader de la nation arabe. Mais avec l’entrée de la télévision satellite arabe en 1985, l’Egypte a perdu sa mainmise sur la médiatisation dans le Monde arabe. Avec l’arrivée de MBC en 1991, d’Al Jazeera en 1996, Dubai TV en 2002, Al Arabya en 2003, le monde audiovisuel arabe n’est plus dominé par les Egyptiens. Ce sont les nations du Golfe, aidées par les experts anglais et les compétences arabes, notamment libanaises, syriennes et maghrébines, qui s’affirment aujourd’hui comme les seules voix des Arabes dans le monde audiovisuel.
Même si les Egyptiens ont dominé les médias arabes durant les années 70 et 80, aujourd’hui, ils sont considérés comme une nation peu crédible en matière de communication, de médias et surtout en matière de liberté d’expression. Car, dans le passé, chaque fois que les Arabes firent confiance aux médias égyptiens, ils furent déçus et trahis. Durant la guerre israélo-arabe en 1967, les populations arabes étaient restées collées à la radio égyptienne «Saout el Arab», la radio fondée par Gamel Abdel Nasser. Ahmed Saïd, le célèbre présentateur égyptien, dont le nom était connu dans tout le monde arabe, annonçait que les forces arabes ont vaincu les Israéliens et que les avions israéliens tombaient du ciel comme des mouches, mais une semaine plus tard, les Arabes découvrirent à travers l’AFP et d’autres canaux médiatiques occidentaux que les armées arabes furent balayées et perdirent plus de terrain qu’en 48.
Le crédit des médias égyptiens fut détruit et les Egyptiens furent humiliés par le mensonge d’Etat égyptien.
En mai 2004, l’Egypte était candidate à l’organisation de la Coupe du Monde de 2010, le ministre égyptien avait annoncé que son pays avait obtenu assez de votes, qui lui assurerait l’organisation de la Coupe du Monde en Egypte. Le ministre égyptien avait déclaré notamment: «Nous avons gagné quelque chose.» Mais la réalité était tout autre, puisque c’est l’Afrique du Sud qui bénéficia de l’organisation de la CM 2010, avec 14 voix, suivie du Maroc second avec 10 voix,
L’Egypte était en réalité classée bonne dernière avec zéro vote. Ces mensonges d’Etat égyptiens, c’est la spécialité des médias du Caire, puisqu’ils poursuivent cette méthode aujourd’hui avec la campagne médiatique anti-Algérie.
L’Egypte avait cette fois expérimenté ses nouvelles chaînes satellitaires lancées à partir de 2004 et elle découvre l’amère réalité du terrain audiovisuel. Elle pensait qu’elle pouvait battre les Algériens qui n’ont pas de télévisions privées. Mais c’était sans compter sur la hargne de la presse écrite algérienne et surtout du soutien des médias occidentaux et des satellitaires arabes.

Amira SOLTANE
amirasoltane08@live.fr

Aminatou Haidar is returning to Western Sahara!

Not many Americans will understand the significance of that statement – but if you’re North African or Spanish, that news comses as a bombshell development.

Ms. Haidar, a campaigner for Western Sahara’s independence from Morocco, has become an icon in the last month – gaining support from prominent Spanish celebrities such as actor Javier Bardem. What has she been doing? Not much, actually – just sitting in an airport in the Canary Islands and starving herself to death. However, as of today, she has won her war with the Morocan government without firing a shot.

Haidar arrived in the Canary Islands on November 13th – she was returning to Western Sahara (a former Spanish Colony now occupied by Morrocco) after acceptng a human rights award in the United States, but the Morroccan authorities stopped her at the airport, confiscated her passport, and sent her plane to the Spanish-controlled Canary Islands. Of course, she couldn’t leave Spain without a passport, so essentially she was stuck. So, she did what any sensible revolutionary would do – refuse to leave the airport and go on hunger strike.

As of today – she hasn’t eaten in a month, says she won’t eat until the Morroccans let her come home to Sahara, and has gained a huge following in Spain. Then, today, the situation got worse. A month without food is not good for the human body, and today she had to be rushed to intensive care by Spanish authorities (and still won’t eat anything although accepting treatment).

So – the Moroccans now have a pickle on their hands. They can give in and say that the woman intimidated them into submission – or they can let her starve to death, inflame the passions of the entire population of Western Sahara, and risk a massive outcry for Saharan independence. It’s a damned-if-you-do-damned if you don’t situation, but it’s a pretty easy choice to make. Needless to say, Ms. Haidar is leaving the hospital today, going back to the airport and boarding a no-strings-attached flight back to Western Sahara.

Personally, I’m glad that hunger strikes don’t generally work in the West (both because we see starving oneself as petulant action and because most of us are too lazy to actually go through with a fast to the death), and while I support Saharan self-determination, I’m not particularly supportive of the “Polisario” rebels that Haidar supports. That said – kudos to the “Gandhi of the Sahara”. She has single-handedly brought her issue back to global significance – and she’s a breath of fresh air in a part of the world where rebel movements tend to be violent rather than Gandhian.

Alors que la militante sahraouie, Aminatou Haidar, 42 ans, entamait son 31^e jour de grève de la faim, mercredi 16 décembre, aucune solution ne semblait en vue. La jeune femme maintient qu’elle continuera son jeûne, à l’aéroport de Lanzarote, aux Canaries, aussi longtemps que les autorités marocaines ne l’auront pas autorisée à regagner El-Ayoun, la capitale administrative du Sahara occidental, où elle réside avec sa mère et ses deux enfants de 13 et 15 ans.

A Madrid, le gouvernement Zapatero est soumis à une forte pression. La classe politique et la presse lui reprochent d’avoir cédé à l’injonction du Maroc et accepté qu’ Aminatou Haidar soit refoulée vers les Canaries, contre son gré, le 13 novembre. Mardi, le Parlement espagnol a adopté une motion réclamant une gestion “au plus haut niveau” de cette affaire et lancé un appel au Maroc.

Pour l’heure, les autorités marocaines se montrent inflexibles. En privé, elles affirment que la jeune femme “se nourrit la nuit” et qu’il n’y a donc pas de véritable urgence. Rabat exige toujours d’Aminatou Haidar une marque d’allégeance pour l’autoriser à rentrer au Sahara occidental.

“Nous ne pouvons pas céder à ce chantage. Cette dame n’a qu’un objectif : revenir à El-Ayoun en clamant qu’elle n’est pas marocaine. C’est inacceptable”, a déclaré au Monde Taieb Fassi-Fihri, le ministre des affaires étrangères marocain, de passage, mardi, à Paris. Pour lui, Aminatou Haidar est instrumentalisée par le Front Polisario et son alliée l’Algérie. “Ce n’est pas un hasard si elle s’est lancée dans cette grève de la faim alors que nous discutions de la date et du lieu d’une seconde rencontre informelle (entre le Maroc, le Front Polisario et l’Algérie)” a-t-il ajouté, accusant le Front Polisario de vouloir faire de la militante indépendantiste “une martyre”.

A Rabat, une cellule de crise a cependant été constituée. Certains ne cachent pas leur préoccupation face à ce “piège dans lequel le Maroc est entré tout seul”, et qui remet brusquement sur la scène internationale un conflit oublié. Le roi Mohammed VI, lui, garde le silence. Il serait à Paris depuis le 14 décembre, en visite privée.

L’Algérie, quant à elle, semble décidée à ne pas répondre aux accusations répétées du Maroc, selon lequel elle a “ourdi ce complot”. On estime à Alger que Rabat “tente de faire diversion” en s’en prenant à son voisin.

Dans son campement de Lanzarote, Aminatou Haidar continue de ne boire que de l’eau sucrée, sans vitamines ni médicaments. Allongée sur un matelas, dans une petite pièce, sans fenêtre, sans toilettes et sans eau, en proie à des nausées et maux de tête incessants, la jeune femme refuse toujours toute surveillance médicale, de crainte qu’on procède à son alimentation forcée. “Sa santé décline mais sa conscience reste intacte. Elle ne cédera pas”, indique un porte-parole de son groupe de soutien, Fernando Peraita. “Dire qu’elle reçoit ses ordres du Polisario ou de l’Algérie est une absurdité ! Elle est totalement indépendante. Même la pression de ses enfants ne change rien à sa détermination”, ajoute Ines Miranda, son avocate. [Article paru dans Le Monde du 16.12.2009, Florence Beaugé]

A tragedy for Western Sahara
As the world’s diplomats duel over her destiny, Aminatou Haidar, on the 29th day of her hunger strike, could be hours from death

Brian Eno and Stefan Simanowitz
guardian.co.uk, Monday 14 December 2009

Sahrawi Gandhi: "I have been threatened with arrest on my return"

Anyone who has seen Hunger, Steve McQueen’s harrowing film about the Maze prison hunger strike, will have some idea of just how horrific it is to die by starvation. Bobby Sands, a fit 27-year-old man, survived 66 days without food. Aminatou Haidar, a delicate 42-year-old, is on the 29th day of her hunger strike; with a perforated ulcer and a constitution weakened by years of imprisonment and torture, there are fears that she will not survive much longer.

She is now too weak to stand, and the director of Lanzarote hospital, Domingo de Guzmán, has warned that Haidar’s life expectancy is now “hours or days rather than weeks”. Listing her symptoms as hypotension, nausea, anaemia, muscular-skeletal atrophy and gastric haemorrhaging, Dr Guzman believes she is nearing an irreversible deterioration that could result in her death even if she were to abandon the hunger strike. But abandoning her strike is not something Haidar, a human rights activist nominated for the Nobel peace prize, will countenance unless her single demand – to be allowed to return to her country – is met.

Haidar has been on hunger strike in Lanzarote airport since being deported there from her home in Western Sahara on 15 November. Two days earlier she had flown back to Laayoune, the largest city in Western Sahara, from New York, where she had picked up the Train Foundation’s Civil Courage human rights award. On her arrival in Laayoune she wrote her address on her landing card as being in “Western Sahara” rather than “Morocco”. As a Saharawi, she has never recognised Moroccan sovereignty over her native land which has been occupied by Morocco in breach of international law for over 34 years. In the past Morocco has chosen to overlook her numerous “landing card protests”, but on this occasion she was interrogated, stripped of her passport and expelled to the volcanic Canary Island which lies less than 80 miles off the African coast.

Spain offered to give Haidar refugee status or Spanish citizenship so she could be allowed to return home, but she rejected both options on the grounds that she did not want to become “a foreigner in her own land”. According to Human Rights Watch, her forced expulsion breached Article 12 (4) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), ratified by Morocco, which makes it clear that no one can be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter their own country. In addition, by preventing her return to Western Sahara, Spanish authorities may have breached both Spanish national law and Article 2 of Protocol 4 of the European convention for the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms. Article 12 (2) of the ICCPR also stipulates that everyone shall be free to leave any country.

On 4 December, perhaps after having been made aware of the legal situation, Spain laid on a private aircraft to carry Haidar back to Laayoune. As she boarded the plane with Agustin Santos, of the Spanish foreign ministry, it seemed as if Haidar had won a significant victory. However, celebrations among Saharawis and campaigners around the world were short-lived when it emerged that the Spanish had not received any agreement from Morocco to allow her return. In a hastily organised press conference held soon after tearful supporters had watched Haidar being stretchered back into the airport terminal, Santos claimed that Spain had attempted “to facilitate the exercise of her right to return to her country” and could do no more.

This statement was greeted with incredulity by the Spanish media, and the Zapatero government has come under increasing internal and international pressure to do more to resolve the crisis. Indeed, today Hillary Clinton was due to discuss the issue with Spain’s foreign minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos. Last week the UN secretary general, Ban-Ki moon, urged the Moroccan foreign minister to re-admit Haidar. The European Union has also urged Morocco to “meet its human rights obligations”.

Morocco has taken a firm line on the matter, with the foreign minister, Taieb Fassi-Fihri, insisting that Haidar had “disowned her identity and her nationality” and “must accept, on her own, the legal and moral consequences which result from this behaviour”. Morocco has also demanded that she offer an apology for questioning Morocco’s claim to sovereignty over what is a former Spanish colony – a claim that has not been recognised by a single nation and was rejected by the international court of justice.

Haidar’s deportation has been condemned by governments, civil society groups and human rights organisations across the world. Her action has raised awareness of the forgotten injustice perpetrated against her people, but the cost may be high. Imelda Gonzalez, one of many campaigners who travelled to Lanzarote to offer their support, is aware that Haidar is irreplaceable. “Western Sahara has had so many martyrs, they do not need another. Her death would be a tragic loss to the world and its leaders must act together and act quickly to save Aminatou.” As high-level discussions take place around the world, Haidar is on the brink of death. Biology knows nothing of politics.

Amnesty International [10 December 2009]

The Moroccan authorities confiscated human rights activist Aminatou Haidar’s passport on 13 November and expelled her from the country the following day. Stranded in Lanzarote Airport, in the Canary Islands, she has been on hunger strike since 15 November in protest.

Aminatou Haidar was detained at Laayoune airport, Western Sahara on 13 November when she returned from a month-long visit to other countries, including the USA where she accepted the 2009 Civil Courage Prize, awarded annually “for steadfast resistance to evil at great personal risk.”

She was questioned about why she had given her home as “Western Sahara” rather than “Moroccan Sahara” on her landing card; she was also asked about her travel, as well as her political opinions and affiliations. Her Moroccan passport and identity card were then confiscated and she was detained in the airport overnight.

She says that on 14 November Moroccan officials offered to release her if she would publicly acknowledge Morocco’s “sovereignty” over Western Sahara. She refused to do so, and a few hours later she was put on a flight to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands.

Aminatou Haidar’s family say that she has become physically weak. Her health is at particular risk because she suffers from anaemia and a stomach ulcer. She is refusing to take her regular ulcer medication, as part of her hunger strike.

Insisting on her right to return to Western Sahara, Aminatou Haidar has rejected the possibility of obtaining refugee status in Spain. Without travel documents, Aminatou Haidar is effectively confined to Lanzarote.

Her situation is further complicated by the fact that neither she, nor her family, can access her bank account. An anonymous source has told her family that a high-ranking Moroccan security agent instructed the bank to block her account.

On December 4, the Directorate General of the National Police and Civil Guard in Spain issued an exceptional permission for Aminatou Haidar to leave the Spanish territory, citing her right to freedom of movement.

That evening, she was accompanied to a plane in a wheelchair by her doctor, her lawyer and Agustin Santos, a Spanish government official – only to be informed that permission to land in Laayoune had been denied by the Moroccan authorities.

Amnesty International believes that Aminatou Haidar’s expulsion and confiscation of her Moroccan identification document and passport are politically motivated and that she is being punished because of her stance on Western Sahara’s self-determination.

Photo from EPA

It takes a rare form of courage to conduct a hunger strike in full public view.

Aminatou Haidar’s self-imposed ordeal in protest at her treatment by the Moroccan authorities is taking place at the bus station on the edge of Lanzarote’s main airport.

She’s been surviving over the last 30 days on sips of sugared water and the media spotlight around her is growing ever brighter. Satellite trucks, cameras and correspondents record her every movement. Aminatou is weakening rapidly and now has to be taken in a wheelchair to use the public lavatories on the site.

Shielding her eyes from the glare of the Spanish sun and the pursuing pack of press, she is prepared to endure the daily humiliation because each day now it is becoming harder for political leaders to ignore what is happening in the disputed territory of the Western Sahara, just one hundred kilometres away from the shores of the Canary Islands, and that bastion of human rights, the European Union.

Because each day now it is becoming harder for the Moroccan government to justify Rabat’s control of the territory – dubbed Africa’s last colony – or gloss over the scale of suffering amongst the indigenous Sahrawi population.

Aminatou is now the best-known activist campaigning for their rights of self-determination.

She was travelling back to her home town of Laayoune in the Western Sahara last month to see her mother and her two teenage children. But when Haidar refused to state her citizenship as Moroccan on the entry forms, her passport was confiscated by officials and she was expelled.

She had just been to the United States to collect a civil courage award from the Train Foundation for what they described as her “courageous campaign for self-determination of Western Sahara from its occupation by Morocco and against forced disappearances and abuses of prisoners of conscience”.

When I spoke to her on the eve of her second month on hunger strike, Aminatou told me she had a message for her children: “I chose this way to be a defender of human rights. But if I have to die, they need to understand, at least I will die with dignity.”

Speaking softly but coherently in fluent French, she added: “I also have a message for my people and fellow defenders of human rights. Please continue your non-violent struggle. If I die it won’t be the end of the world.”

There seems little prospect of that struggle succeeding though. In a speech last month the Moroccan monarch King Mohammed VI seemed to finally rule out any idea of independence.

“One is either a patriot or a traitor,” he declared.

“Is there a country that would tolerate a handful of lawless people exploiting democracy and human rights in order to conspire with the enemy against its sovereignty, unity and vital interests?”

The Polisario Front fought a 16 year long war to dispute that opinion. It only ended on the promise that a referendum would be held to determine the future status of the territory.

The Sahrawis are still waiting for the United Nations to make good on that promise. More than 100,000 of them are living in the limbo of refugee camps in neighbouring Algeria.

There is no war, but neither can there be peace as long as their plight is ignored by the international community. Aminatou’s voice may be fading as her hunger strike reaches its final stage but her message is only growing stronger. [By David Chater in The Africa Blog at: blogs.aljazeera.net | December 15th, 2009]

As a Muslim, I am always wary of the reinforcement of the nationalist ideals at the possible expense of dividing the ummah. Yet it is no question that in this day and time, the global system exists on two possibilities. The first, a gradual approach towards the integration and cooperation of regional groups – of course based on which ideas tie those peoples the most. The second, a disseminating approach towards the further division of peoples and the creation of further nation-states. At the same time, these two aspects can and do run concurrently. While Europe integrates, for example, the Arab World divides.

On Al Jazeera in English, you will find a section solely based on articles relating to Arab Unity (though it has not been updated from some time). Yet there are fundamental flaws in this coverage, in order to simplify the complexity in the English language – nevertheless all worth reading.

In one article in the Al-Ahram Weekly On-Line, Galal Nassar concludes that

“A new phase began after 1967, a phase that so far has been as emotional and erratic as its predecessor. But it is not too late for pan-Arabism. We don’t need to reproduce Arab nationalism in its original form, but we can create an updated and more pertinent version.”

Although one may disagree on Nassar’s origins of Arab Nationalism in the ‘Pan-Arab’ context, the events he underlines represent major developments in the development of the idea. It is no question that now we must seek such an ‘updated’ version of unifying Arab Nationalism. But do the leaders of Arab States want this?

What we underestimate most is that we believe in a global system that no longer exists. We retrace the borders that evolved out of the colonial system, while Europe – from where we imported our nation-state system – abandons the borders between themselves. We argue that the Security Council represents a world that no longer exists, and push for African and Arab seats in any future enlargement of the Security Council, but return to our States within the strongly barricaded borders that divide us.

We often fall into the belief that the Arab World is competing between two ideologies: Pan-Arabism vs. Pan-Islamism. This is not the case on the government level. On the government level, these two ideologies as they are – do NOT exist. Just as the borders of old, that we continually reinforce, the Arab World must move towards a union based on the European example.

In the Western Sahara, for example, their struggle for independence is based on the fact that many of their human, civil, and political rights – have not been granted. The option they have is to be Moroccan or nothing. This is a painful situation not only for the Sahrawis, but for those who genuinely believe in Arab unity. It is only through the creation of an Arab Union, that ratifies and implements ALL the instruments of international law – that perhaps one day we could become one nation, undivided.

When Focus disappeared from the shelves (although I notice it reappeared this week after being way for a year) I switched to Soura. Soura is Arabic for photography. The magazine is published by a company in the United Arab Emirates and is the only photo magazine in the Middle East.

It sounds improbable, but it is one of the most interesting photo magazine currently available. It concentrates on the work of photographers from the Arab world, but does not exlude those from other countries. Issue 20, for example, features the work of French photographer Dorothy-Shoes on the front cover, followed by a brilliant 12 page spread of her work.

Production values are different to Focus. Design is less conservative (although the cover is more so, not having a single cover line) and it is not so wordy. Nor is it aimed solely at the fine art market, although some of the images are the equal of anything in the New York magazine and yes, equipment and techniques do seep in, but Soura is still about photographs, not gear.

On the whole, the photographs in Soura are much more avant garde than that of Focus and that was unexpected. One tends to view the Arab world as being much more conservative than the West, but from the stuff being published in this magazine that is not really true.

Emergency Broadcast! New World Order Ahead!

Martial Law Coming To A Town Near You!!

LaRouche talked about Obama getting the nomination and the evil mindset behind the “Lisbon Treaty” to create a British-European totalitarian superstate.

The brilliant, but wicked and evil spirited occult New World Order masterplan is unfolding. The ultimate goal of globalization (or globalisation) through propaganda and rhetoric (War on Terror) and initiating chaos that will lead to depopulation (genocide).

Under the energy of Venus and the Sun, the occult NWO masterplan must be realized by 2013. (that is, by Gregorian calendar date December 22, 2013 following another ritual circle around the Sun (starting in Solar Maximum year =2012) counting from December 22, 2012. (= end date of Mayan Long Count Calendar 13.00.00 Baktun).

It takes 243 years for Venus to return to the exact point where it started. It’s called a Venus Round. And they (Illuminati), determined the creation of the NWO in 1770, with Rothschild and Adam Weishaupt as the real “founding fathers.”

1770 was the year in which a new cycle of 242 years started, sectioned in 99,11,121,11 = 242 years! (=11×9, 99:9, 11×11, 121:11) (sequence= x9,:9,x11,:11 = ratio 9/11)

Right now we are living in the ‘:11 stage’, meaning the LAST 11 years from SolarMax to SolarMax, starting from 2001 (WTC attack) to 2012.

11:11 as deceptive symbolism, means nothing more than the completion of their NWO in the last solar maximum cycle to 2012 with the start of their NWO in the new year 2013.

In 2013 there will have been a complete Venus Round of 243 years counting from 1770, and in THEIR (Illuminati/Elite) minds, the celebration of a new “spiritual era” but not in the sense as you think it will be, but with a “New Rome” represented by the United Nations (UN)/NATO in the spirit of ancient Babylon. The true meaning of the City and Tower of Babel.

We are still living under the Anglo-American World Empire. The key London oligarchs, bankers, the House of Windsor and those in alliance with them (who brought the Nazi system into power, starting in the 1920s) are still dominating the political-occult ruling Elite, of which the Bilderberg group.

Is it any coincidence the NEXT official summer Olympic Games will be held in 2012 and in the City of London? No.

In their arrogance, convinced that by 2012 Europe will have become that socialist/fascist superstate and the global NWO (European Union/North American Union (SPP)(EU/NAU) will be a fact, they will celebrate the historical Venus rising and transit on Solar Maximum 2012 with a Nazi-Germany style Olympic Games (Berlin -1936) in order to demonstrate the power and reality of this New World Order and their supporters to the entire world.

And this

It’s ALL symbolism!

The political-occult NWO endgame masterplan was executed in the year 2000, or the year zero (00) when George W. Bush became president-elect on December 13, 2000 which is the Julian calendar date for our Gregorian winter solstice calendar date December 22.

(Remember that Al Gore conceded to Bush on this exact date December 13, 2000 and remember that Hillary conceded to Obama on the exact Venus rising date as evening star on June 9, 2008.)

The capture of Saddam Hussein on that exact date, December 13, 2003, was well planned ahead and NO coincidence either.

The political-occult ruling European Elite arranged the deceptive “Lisbon Treaty” -which should make Europe a totalitarian superstate- to be signed on that exact date, December 13, 2007, which is NO coincidence either.

As was foreseen, after Ireland rejected this treaty in the one and only referendum on June 12, 2008, the political-occult ruling European Elite are NOW simply going to ignore Ireland and force their “Lisbon Treaty” through.

Their arrogance knows no bounds. And it has everything to do with their political-occult 2012-2013 NWO agenda.

All Americans should read this. What You Need to Know About the British-Israel World Federation Movement:
http://jordanmaxwell.com/articles/bri…
http://www.larouchepac.com

The biofuel scam of Prince Philip that is reducing the worlds population. It is now been exposed biofuel has caused the present food crisis. Leaked report – Biofuels the source of world food crisis:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment…

LaRouche also talked about World War 3 and the British Empire’s past and present successful plans to take control of the whole planet. Download or watch all of the “Tragedy & Hope” productions (May 7, 2008) from LaRouche Webcast:
http://www.larouchepac.com/media/2008…

LaRouche has a brilliant website and lots of informative videos to watch/download for free:
http://www.larouchepac.com

]]> http://kingsbridesforum.wordpress.com/2009/12/11/hamas-violent-indoctrination-of-children/ Fri, 11 Dec 2009 12:16:10 +0000 King's Bride http://kingsbridesforum.wordpress.com/2009/12/11/hamas-violent-indoctrination-of-children/

I am sure we all have heard about this already, but I found this video shocking to watch, especially with Twinkle Twinkle Little Star playing in the background.

On 8 December, the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) released their annual report on human rights in the Arab World, entitled “Bastion of Impunity, Mirage of Reform 2009 Report on Human Rights in the Arab Region” [see press release and links to the full report here].

The report focuses on twelve Arab States, including: Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Yemen.

Last year, the CIHRS released its first report, entitled “From Exporting Terrorism to Exporting Repression: Human Rights in the Arab Region” [see press release here and full report here].

I have paramount admiration for the work carried out by the CIHRS. They have gone beyond the call of duty to push for the universality of human rights in the Arab World and have documented an astounding amount of human rights violations. Last year, some of the “points” of the report were a bit troubling for me – particularly the word usage and the simplicity of conclusions to the questions of human rights in the Arab World.

The points from last year were as follows:

Grave Deterioration of Human Rights while Reform Faces a Dead End
• Advocates of reform and respect for human right are the primary targets of repression
• Liberators have become executioners and “weapons of resistance” increasingly used against innocent civilians
• Rising religious extremism after ruling regimes ally with Salafis
• Islamists no longer central target of repression

From Exporting Terrorism to Exporting Repression
• Arab governments turn the UN and Arab League into platforms for exporting repression
• The Arab League supports war criminals, anti-democratic coups, and restrictions on freedom of expression

Some of these terms were imported into the 2009 Report. The very notion that Arab regimes are allying themselves with Salafists is nonexistent in that oversimplification.

The term ‘Islamist,’ for one, is bad enough – especially based on the implication usually intended in the Bush and post-Bush era; here we also find the emergence of ‘conservative Islamists’ – further stressing the ‘Islamization’ of these peoples. In fact, the Islam-oriented political parties in most Arab countries are deemed illegal and therefore ineligible to run. The distinction must be made between these so-called ‘alliances’ and the scope of the political spectrum as it exists. Arab governments do what is in their best interests to preserve and concentrate power within elite circles. This is the problem and it differs on a case-by-case basis.

Additionally, blaming the Arab League Secretariat for the misuse of its summits by submitting to the pressures of Arab leaders, would be like blaming the United Nations Secretariat for the plight of today’s refugee populations. The Arab League must be taken back from the governments and must become a tool for pan-Arab dreams of democracy, human rights, and all the other ecstasies that come with reform in the Arab World. We cannot sideline it. We must use it to reinvigorate and develop the Arab Charter for Human Rights. I have met a number of high-level members in the Arab League, and they are nothing like the leaders which they disagree with.

The Arab World faces serious challenges, and those challenges remain within the hands of Arab leaders. The report is one of the few ‘internal’ reports that the Arab World has, and is a means of seriously challenging the status quo on human rights. It hits hard at the “monopolization” of state power, which is arguably the greatest hurdle to human, civil, and political rights in the region. Indeed, it is a system that has been and is being carried onto to the ‘new’ generation of leaders, as the kings and presidents pass over that power to their sons.

The Report touches upon many of the most disturbing aspects of human rights violations in the Arab World. Such are the freedom of expression and assembly, religious freedom and treatment of minorities, torture, poor democratic processes, and impunity from War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity from Arab leaders against its own peoples.

On another note, check out this observation by the Angry Arab in this article from the Guardian: “The CIRHS is an independent body whose work is respected by western-based human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.” So the organization is only credible because Western organizations approve of it?”

There are lots of exciting things going on in the Middle East architecturally and not just in the attention magnet of Dubai. Sustainable architecture is spreading throughout the region and interesting projects are being developed. Not enough I admit and the uptake is painfully slow. But on a more positive note along with the the flatscreen TVs and other electronics the store opposite my place now has a advert for solar panels for water heating. It is a mystery to me why Lebanon, like in Greece, have not caught on to the fact that solar panels for heating water is very cost effective…but anyway it looks as if it is slowly starting to catch on! I have written a review of a few of these sustainable designs in the region for Real Magazine:

In Their Eyes or in the Mirror

By BOUTHAINA SHAABAN

In a meeting with a distinguished group of female Philippines journalists (editors, op- ed writers, major TV hosts) in Manila last week, I found out that their questions about the Arab world, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the conditions in Palestine, Iraq and Iran, are based on information obtained from western media.  I saw the surprise on their faces when I rephrased their questions from an Arab, or rather realistic, view of events on the ground, and as lived by the peoples of these countries.  A short while after the beginning of the meeting, I discovered that the journalists, who cannot be described as hostile to Arab rights and causes, do not know anything about the Arab perspective of any of the issues covered by western media which base their coverage on the Israeli versions of reality, terminology and view of things.

The first question was how I would compare the condition of Arab women with the achievements of western women in terms of rights, independence and freedom.  I was also asked whether all Arab women still wear all-covering gowns and about the ratio of men who marry more than one wife.  When a well-known political editor asked about our position towards Iran’s nuclear activities and the problems the west is facing with Iran, I asked her whether she knew that Iran was a signatory of the NPT which allows it to possess nuclear knowledge and peaceful nuclear power, while Israel is not a signatory of the NPT, possesses over 200 nuclear heads, occupies Arab land by force and kills Palestinians and expels them from their villages and cities on a daily basis and builds settlements on the ruins of Palestinian homes, history and civilization.

There was no question about the Gaza blockade which has turned into a policy of genocide in the 21st century which, South African lawyers acknowledge, has become worse than the apartheid that prevailed in South Africa in the 20th century.  Neither was there a question about the Goldstone report and the thousands of crimes committed by Israel in Gaza, nor on secret Israeli jails which have within their walls 3,000 Palestinians since 2000 and in which extremely serious crimes against Palestinian prisoners are committed under international silence.  Lawyers and the ICRC are not even allowed to know where there prisons are.  Israeli occupation troops use the most brutal methods of torture against prisoners, including physical abuse and rape.  There were no questions about Israeli demolition of Palestinian homes on a daily basis, building settlements on the ruins of these homes and turning the Palestinians into refugees on and outside their land.  There were no questions about the effects of the American occupation of Iraq which left over a million widows and more than two million orphans.

While I tried to answer questions with information and facts about Arab rights and the crimes committed by Israel since 1948 against Arabs as a result of a Zionist settler strategy, targeting intellectuals in Iraq and the disasters caused to the country as a result of brutal occupation, I acknowledged to the journalists that I do not blame them for the lack of facts in their questions because western media are the only conduit between east and west,

I wondered about what we all know about Afghanistan, for instance, and what is happening in it and in Pakistan except through western media.  What do Arabs know about China, India and Russia; and what do these countries know about Arabs except through western media?  In a moment of real dialogue, we agreed that this is the most dangerous thing about the international condition in the modern age.  We also agreed that changing this reality should be a priority for countries of the east and the south.

For instance, can one imagine that the most popular books in the International Islamic Book Fair, held in New Delhi recently, were about divorce, terrorism and banking?  If we take into account that most of these books have been written either in the United States or the United Kingdom, we realize the danger of reproducing the western evaluation and image of Islam and Muslims themselves, which means that they look at themselves, at their religion and culture in a western mirror.

What are we supposed to make of Barbie wearing the veil and chador on her 50th anniversary in a charity auction in Florence, Italy.  The rationale of the exhibition was that it was essential for girls throughout the world to feel free to express their real image.  The fact of the matter was  enhancement of  the image of the veil and chador as the only image for Muslim women, reducing them to an appearance considered by the west an evidence of injustice to women in the Muslim world and their inability to be effective, respectable members of their society.

Talking about the importance of cultural dialogue and the ignorance which characterizes people’s understanding of their civilizations and the events taking place on their land, Philippines specialists pointed out that Spanish colonialism which lasted over 300 years left no clear cultural influence which forces dependence on Spanish culture, while American colonialism, which lasted only 50 years, left cultural, educational and institutional dependence which is difficult to break.  It can be argued that neo-colonialism in the 21st century is cultural and western by nature, and that the Arabs, who, in the past, gave the world extremely important discoveries in all sciences are the most prominent victims of this colonialism.  The Arabic language is being subjected to unprecedented neglect, and local intellectual production which expresses the Arab condition and Arab issues in an attractive manner is at its lowest level. 

Regional groupings could be one of the effective responses to ‘westrocentrism’; and communication between these groupings in the future will be the real breakthrough out of westrocentrism and replacing it at least with a multi-polar world where countries of the world restore their status, sense of importance and their contribution to the progress and prosperity of humanity.  ASEAN has lifted visa restrictions between its member states and opened up free trade and active economic, cultural and political exchange between its countries.  Latin American countries are setting up a cultural, economic and political space resistant to American hegemony which used to consider the countries of Latin America its backyard.  Most countries of the world are waking up from their fascination with the English language and are restoring the prestige of their local languages in education and the production of culture and knowledge.  Look at Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, receiving Iran’s president despite western ire against this step which is a clear expression of self confidence and independence of western hegemony.

The question is: when will the Arabs see that their salvation lies in cherishing and protecting their language and producing science and knowledge in this language.  And when will they see that creating a regional bloc with the Arabs as a major player is the only salvation of the Arab future and integration into the new world order in which the countries of Asia and Latin America are gaining real independence intellectually, scientifically, politically and economically.

There is no doubt that real independence lies in abandoning the western mirror in which we misperceive ourselves and, instead, in communicating with others who share our goal in order to produce a future in which all components of human civilization flourish far away from westrocentrism based on extermination of indigenous peoples, pillaging the wealth of the planet for the benefit of western countries and pushing the rest of humanity into the cycle of poverty and inactivity. 

The thousand-mile-trip starts with one step; and the first step is to break this mirror and look instead in the color of the soil of our countries and the faces of our children, and expressing ourselves in our language and putting trust in our thought, causes and our capability to be real contributors to the prosperity of humanity and to the protecting of human freedom and dignity.

Bouthaina Shaaban is Political and Media Advisor at the Syrian Presidency, and former Minister of Expatriates. She is also a writer and professor at Damascus University since 1985. She has been the spokesperson for Syria and was nominated for Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. She can be reached through nizar_kabibo@yahoo.com

 http://www.counterpunch.org/shaaban12012009.html

Le gouvernement algérien n’a pas laissé passer, sans broncher, les dépassements professionnels et moraux des chaînes satellitaires égyptiennes. L’Etat a enregistré et archivé tous ces dépassements pour répondre le moment venu aux autorités égyptiennes qui se sont cantonnées des semaines durant dans le rôle de spectateur, sinon celui de l’incitateur caché.

La position du gouvernement algérien et sa façon d’aborder les agressions égyptiennes à l’encontre de l’Algérie après le match de Khartoum, ont été révélées par le ministre de la PME et de l’artisanat. Mustapha Ben Bada a affirmé hier que le silence de l’Algérie tout au long de la campagne politique et médiatique de l’Égypte n’est pas synonyme d’indifférence ou de passivité.

Ben Bada a indiqué que le gouvernement a, dans ce cadre, enregistré tout ce qui a été émis par les chaînes égyptiennes en termes de dépassements, atteintes et violations médiatiques, qui sont actuellement en train d’être traduits vers l’anglais avant d’être utilisés pour défendre l’honneur, la dignité et la réputation de l’Algérie.

S’agissant de ce qui a été dit par les milieux médiatiques égyptiens sur l’interdiction faite au président de la FAF, de se rendre en Égypte, le ministre a indiqué que Mohammed Raouraoua n’a nullement besoin de visiter ce pays après ce qui lui est arrivé, ainsi qu’à l’équipe nationale et aux supporters algériens. Mais s’il doit s’y rendre, Raouraoua ira par force de loi. D’ailleurs la domiciliation au Caire de la fédération africaine de football est un motif suffisant pour que le président de la FAF se rende dans ce pays. Ceux qui y voient un inconvénient n’ont qu’à transférer le siège de la Fédération africaine dans un autre pays, a ajouté Ben Bada.

D’autre part, le ministre de la PMA et de l’artisanat a souligné que dorénavant, l’Algérie prendra en considération dans ses relations avec l’Égypte, ces récents incidents avec les autorités égyptiennes, et derrières elles, les médias égyptiens…allusion faite à la décision de l’Algérie de sortir l’Égypte de la liste des états qui bénéficient d’avantages particuliers dans leurs relations avec l’Algérie. [Echorouk, Algerie]

“فقد الجزائريون دينهم بعد أن فقدوا عقولهم من أجل مباراة كروية لن يزدادوا بها إلا خسارا”، “المنتخب الجزائري اللعين”، “ذلك المنتخب الذين يضم مجرمين،” “بعد أن فاز هؤلاء المتخلفون الأوغاد في المباراة وتحقق لهم حلم الوصول لكأس العالم الذي لن يحصلوا عليه حتى لو رأى رئيسهم الذي زج بهؤلاء المجرمين حلمة أذنه، وسوف يحصدون مر الهزيمة وحصرمها في اللقاءات الأولى، لأنهم عار على الرياضة وعلى الرياضيين. ولن يزدادوا بتلك الرياضة إلا شرا وبهيمية وتخلفا وحقدا وإجراما تشهد به الدنيا.”

هذه الكلمات لم يتلفظ بها مراهق أو إعلامي دعي في دكاكين الفتنة، انما هذا الكلام كان خلاصة “اجتهاد” أحد ابرز أعضاء مجمع البحوث الإسلامية وهيئة التدريس في الأزهر الشريف الدكتور عبد الله النجار الذي كتب هذا الكلام أول وثاني أيام العيد، وبعد ثلاثة ايام من زيارة شيمون بيراز إلى القاهرة، كتب هذا العالم المصري هذا الكلام في عموده اليومي “قرآن وسنة” الذي تنشره يومية “الجمهورية” الحكومية، وفي المقالين المذكورين طالب فضيلته الفيفا والمجتمع الدولي “بتطبيق الحد” على الجزائر
.

 

ليس غريب أن يكفرنا مصري، لأنهم آباء التكفير وأئمته، ومن عندهم خرجت فتاوى دفعنا ثمنها من دمائنا، ومازلنا نرقع آثارها، لكن الغريب أن يخرج التكفير من معهد بناه الجزائريون وعمروه ليكون قلعة لنشر الإسلام وصد عدوان أعدائه، وأغرب من ذلك أن يصدر هذا الفقيه فتواه دون أن يذكر النصوص التي استند إليها أو الوقائع التي بنى عليها فتواه، وهل كانت شهادات فيفي عبدوه وصويحباتها عنده شهادة موثوقة إلى درجة يمكن أن نبني عليها حكما شرعيا بحجم إخراج أمة من دينها؟.
أو أن يوقع بناء على تلك الشهادات الكاذبة عن رب العالمين بيانا يصنف فيه لاعبي المنتخب الوطني مع ابليس ويقول فضيلة الشيخ النجار “المنتخب الجزائري اللعين”.
كما أظهر الشيخ الأزهري غلا غير مبرر ضد الجزائر والجزائريين، فتمنى على الله أن يخسر المنتخب الوطني الجزائري الذي قال بأنهم “سوف يحصدون مر الهزيمة وحصرمها في اللقاءات الأولى، لأنهم عار على الرياضة وعلى الرياضيين”.
إلى ذلك بدا من خلال كلام فضيلته أن هناك خللا في المعلومات التي يقدمها الأزهر لطلابه، تلك المغالطات هي التي جعلت الأزهر يفقد مكانته العلمية، لأنه عندما نسمع شيخا أزهري يقول “بعد أن فاز هؤلاء المتخلفون الأوغاد في المباراة”، ويقصد بالمتخلفين الجزائريين، فهذا يدل على أن الأزهريين لم يدرسوا حتى تاريخ الأزهر، وإلا كيف يدرس في معهد كبير بناه متخلفون؟.