Nouveau clip du collectif “Kazeboon” (Menteurs), “Ikhwan Survive”
http://www.juancole.com/2013/05/survive-brotherhood-egyptian.html
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Several thousand in Tahrir for anti-Morsi demonstration
Officially launched on 1 May, the ’Rebel’ campaign is a grassroots movement aimed at registering opposition to Morsi and forcing him to call early presidential elections by collecting as many as 15 million signatures by 30 June. The group says it has already collected 2 million names.
Campaigners for the signature drive said they aim to intensify their presence in the square to collect the maximum number of signatures, Egyptian state news agency MENA reported.
Protesters put up a platform in the square, and pictures of slain protesters were displayed in the square’s central garden. By sunset, the numbers in the square and the surrounding streets had reached several thousand.
Security has been tightened around the usual protest hotspots, including the interior ministry, the Cabinet headquarters, the Shura Council, the presidential palace and the Brotherhood headquarters.
In Alexandria, hundreds of protesters have started heading to Qaid Ibrahim Square in support of the petition against President Morsi, condemning the “Brotherhoodisation of the state,” Al-Ahram’s Arabic-language news website reported.
A number of political parties are participating in Friday’s planned million man march, including the Constitution Party, the Free Egyptians Party, the Socialist Popular Alliance, the Karama party, the Free Front for Peaceful Change, the Popular Current and the Kefaya movement.
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IRAN. PROJECT ON MIDDLE EAST DEMOCRACY (POMED) publie un rapport sur la politique de réforme et la prochaine élection présidentielle iranienne
http://pomed.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/POMED-Policy-Brief-Farhi.pdfAs the Islamic Republic of Iran approaches its eleventh presidential election, the conflicting impulses that have shaped its 34-year life are once again manifest. The constitutional mandate to hold regular elections, whose competitiveness helps legitimize the Islamic Republic and deepen the allegiance of its citizens to the Islamic system, is again confronted with the need to place limitations on the contest in order to prevent the candidacies of those branded as “outsiders.”
The upcoming contest comes on the heels of two bruising presidential elections in 2005 and 2009: the former went to a second round, while the latter resulted in large protests and a subsequent crackdown by the security establishment. Ghosts of both cast long shadows on
the coming election, though for different reasons. The traditional conservative political establishment is fretting over the possible emergence of another relatively unknown and highly polarizing candidate “not up to the task” of managing the government and economy, as was the case in the 2005 election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. From this perspective, trouble lies in the possibility of continued economic ruin and international isolation through a combination of populist policies, managerial incompetence, and stridence.
Uncertainty regarding Iran’s fluid political environment remains. There exists potential for a large number of votes cast against a “preferred” candidate, even at the last minute. The working assumption is that the electoral environment and the field of candidates will be manipulated to assure that the establishment candidate is elected without tampering on election day. But an “engineered” election was also the plan in 2009, when a presumably washed up and uncharismatic former
Prime Minister, Mir Hossein Mousavi, was approved to run against Ahmadinejad, whose populist policies at least assured him support
in rural areas and smaller cities. The 85 percent participation rate registered in 2009, which was 22 percent greater than the participation rate in 2005, was unexpected—and grounds for public skepticism and post-election protests.
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Nicolas Maduro Did Not Steal the Venezuelan Election
http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/nicolas-maduro-did-not-steal-the-venezuelan-electionThe guy in the cheap brown windbreaker walking up the dirty tenement steps to my New York office looked like a bus driver. Nicolas Maduro, elected President of Venezuela last Sunday, did indeed drive a bus, then led the drivers’ union, then drove Chávez’s laws through the National Assembly as Venezuela’s National Assembly chief. And this week, the US State Department is refusing to accept the result, suggesting Maduro hijacked the vote count. But did he? Maduro came to me that day in 2004 on (...)
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Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan: Between Russia and the West
http://fpc.org.uk/articles/607Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan: Between Russia and the West
By Dr Kevork Oskanian.
Since their independence, the three South Caucasian states have come to adopt widely divergent strategic responses to the complex structural realities underlying their region’s security landscape. Following the 2003 Rose Revolution, Georgia became unequivocally pro-Western: the goals of EU and NATO integration were firmly inscribed in two National Security Concepts, adopted in 2006 and 2011, which were recently confirmed in a rare bi-partisan parliamentary resolution uniting the otherwise fractious supporters of President Saakashvili and Prime Minister Ivanishvili.
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Hezbollah Low-Key as New PM Forms Government - Scarlett Haddad
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/04/hezbollah-silence-salam-appointment-lebanon.htmlThe data in Hezbollah’s possession allows the party to assume that a compromise is imminent between Russia, Iran and countries within the same circle of influence on the one hand, and the US and its allies on the other. This compromise should materialize during the summit to be held on June 1, between US President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Each side seeks to play its trump card in the anticipated negotiations. However, according to Hezbollah’s sources, should one of the two camps believe it would be at a disadvantage, the summit may very well be postponed.
Nevertheless, until this major event takes place — if it does as scheduled — Lebanon is going through a sort of limbo, where no important decision has been made. It is in this spirit that Hezbollah has chosen to support the candidacy of Salam for the presidency of the new government, without giving up on all its requirements regarding the formation of the government. Moreover, Hezbollah also wanted to make a goodwill gesture, especially with regard to Saudi Arabia. The party considered that Saudi Arabia has already made the first step by choosing Salam, who is believed to be a moderate figure.
[…]
Moreover, the March 14 coalition could also give new instructions to the army so as to marginalize its role, with the aim of requiring the deployment of international forces (maybe the UNIFIL after changing its mandate) along the border with Syria. In the same vein, Lebanon’s foreign policy would become favorable to the Syrian opposition, as desired by the March 14 coalition which continues to criticize the current foreign minister, accusing him of being the ambassador of the Syrian regime.
This scenario may seem overstated, but Hezbollah prefers to think of the worst instead of being taken completely off guard.
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Venezuela : WikiLeaks shows US use ’NGOs’ to cover intervention | Green Left Weekly
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/53825Sur certaines organisations prétendument non gouvernementales au Venezuela, étasuniennes et/ou financées par les Etats-Unis.
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Khairat El-Shater, the Muslim Brotherhood’s number two, may not have given up on the idea of taking public office
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Mark Lee Hunter’s Paris Journal
http://markleehunter.free.frYou’re at the website of Paris-based scholar, teacher and IRE award-winning investigative author Mark Lee Hunter. It’s a good place to download “Story-Based Inquiry”, the free ground-breaking manual by me and colleagues in the Global Investigative Journalism Network.
English, French, Chinese, Russian, Arabic
http://markleehunter.free.fr/documents/SBI_french.pdfThe Global Casebook, my follow-up anthology for UNESCO, including stories by some of the world’s best investigative reporters, is now in beta version.
http://markleehunter.free.fr/documents/UNESCO_global_casebook.pdfFor my latest research on media, insights from the “Business Models for Investigative Journalism” project that I initiated in the Global Investigative Journalism Network
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Why a Democratic Majority Is Not Demographic Inevitability (Part Two : The Politics of Immigration Reform) | The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/blog/173444/why-democratic-majority-not-demographic-inevitability-part-two-politics-iLe nombre croissant d’Hispaniques aux Etats-Unis ne garantit pas forcement des lendemains qui chantent pour le parti Démocrate, dit Rick Perlstein.
...taking the long view (...) it has to be acknowledged: party identities aren’t passed on through the genes. Blocs of “natural Democrats” have become natural Republicans before. Indeed, in at least one instance, it happened with shocking rapidity. As I noted last time, in the 1960s, droves of white Democrat ethnics—Italians, Eastern Europeans, the Irish—started voting Republican in a backlash against the Democrats’ continued embrace of civil rights in the wake of a failed open housing bill and the urban riots. Only an eye-blink earlier, they had been considered the soul of the New Deal coalition.
...
Hispanics are more liberal than voters in general on all sorts of issues—for instance, 75 percent of Hispanics prefer “a bigger government providing more services” rather than “a smaller government providing fewer services,” compared to 41 percent for the general population. But what if they start becoming “Italian”? That is to say, what if Hispanics, less hobbled by official discrimination, follow the pattern of other immigrant groups before them, become increasingly upwardly mobile—and become increasingly identified, by themselves and others, as “white.” Is it not reasonable to assume that they might become more Republican? That would certainly be the historical precedent: more and more immigrant groups (excluding, of course, African-Americans), becoming “white.”
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Egyptian Leftist Bloc Leader Calls Morsi ’New Mubarak’ -
Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/03/morsi-new-mubarak-opposition-leader-hamdeen-sabahi.html“I disagree with those who demand the return of the military to power. Egyptians should [determine] their political life, and the military has to enable them in doing so while it fights any dangers and puts an end to the spread of violence,” he added.
Sabahi believes the military is being forced to interfere not because of popular demands but because of the “oppressive policies of Mohammed Morsi and his government that refuses to interact with the people and their peaceful protests.” -
Egyptian Leftist Bloc Leader Calls Morsi ’New Mubarak’ -
Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/03/morsi-new-mubarak-opposition-leader-hamdeen-sabahi.html“I disagree with those who demand the return of the military to power. Egyptians should [determine] their political life, and the military has to enable them in doing so while it fights any dangers and puts an end to the spread of violence,” he added.
Sabahi believes the military is being forced to interfere not because of popular demands but because of the “oppressive policies of Mohammed Morsi and his government that refuses to interact with the people and their peaceful protests.” -
Famed US #hacker helps Ecuador secure its vote
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/130216/famed-us-hacker-helps-ecuador-secure-its-voteKevin Mitnick, who once gained notoriety as America’s most wanted computer hacker, now heads a thriving Internet consultancy tasked with helping keep Sunday’s presidential elections in Ecuador secure.
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The limits of U.S. influence in Israel | The Great Debate
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/01/22/the-limits-of-u-s-influence-in-israel
A victory in Tuesday’s Israeli elections by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Yisrael Beiteinu alliance and the ascent of even more extreme parties are indications of Israelis’ continued move to the right.
It is also an indication of the limits and the challenges faced by the Obama administration in its relationship with Israel. Despite Netanyahu’s obvious preference for President Barack Obama’s Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, in the U.S. presidential elections — and a sense that he was intervening through proxies — Obama’s ability to influence the outcome of the Israeli elections has been negligible.
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South Korea to Get Longer-Range Missiles under New Deal with US
By Associated Press in Seoul
Guardian
October 7, 2012With the permission of the US, South Korea has extended the range of its ballistic missiles to reach all of North Korea. In response, North Korea has declared that its missiles can now strike mainland US. After missile tests in 2006 and 2009, North Korea’s already crippled economy has been sanctioned by the UN. With a recent power transition in the North and upcoming presidential elections in the South, tensions are again rising on the Korean Peninsula.
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Somalia: The End of a Failed State?
http://www.globalpolicy.org/home/172-general/51887-somalia-the-end-of-a-failed-state-.html
By Konye Obaji Ori
The Africa Report
September 11, 2012When speaking of war-torn “failed states”, Somalia is often mentioned as the archetype. Indeed, Somalia has not had a functioning central government since 1991 and it is ranked today 222th worldwide in terms of GDP per capita. Yet, on September 10th, Somalia held its first presidential elections in 40 years. Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, the new President, is seen as incarnating a drive for change, promoting reform and readjustment after decades of war and poverty. However, the country’s stability is still threatened by resource-driven conflicts, arms smuggling and foreign interventions, all of these worsen by a lack of viable institutions. Will these elections really be a first step on the path towards recovery?
What does Somalia’s first presidential election in 40 years mean to a nation seeking to filter itself from the shadows of a war-torn failed state?
#somalie #corne-afrique #failed-state #afrique-est
For observers, the answer begins with the implementation of an overwhelmingly free and fair election, respectably accepted by the outgoing president. -
Egypt Transition on Brink of Collapse
http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/egypt-transition-brink-collapseEvery aspect of Egypt’s transition has been badly mangled over the past 16 months and its legitimacy has been seriously called into question. Calls are growing for the entire process to be dumped in favor of a fresh start without the army at the helm. What is more likely to happen is that political elites will not come together to take on the military council, but instead pursue their own interests; band-aids will be used in a bid to save a decapitated political process and the country will stagger clumsily into another phase of uncertainty. For its part, the revolution will continue its struggle confined to where it first began: on the streets.
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Flash : after the presidential elections, Assad will leave to Russia, security forces and police will be reformed to unable more killings and revenge actions
zaidbenjamin
عاجل : بعد اجراء الانتخابات الرئاسية سيغادر الى روسيا ثم يجري اعادة هيكلة قوات الامن والشرطة لمن المزيد من القتل والانتقام #Syria #Assadand in the same way as it was done in Eastern Europe after the fall of the communist regimes
50u5
#PRT بالطريقة التي أعيدت فيها هيكلة أجهزة الأمن في أوروبا الشرقية أيام الأنظمة الشمولية. -
Mideast analysts, mea culpa time
A year and a half into the emergence of a new Middle East in the context of the Arab uprisings, it behooves commentators who have been tracking these events to step back and assess our own evaluations. There’s no point in dwelling on what we think we’ve gotten right. What’s more important is where we can see we have gone wrong, and why. Taking note of these missteps provides valuable lessons for reading ongoing events with greater accuracy.
I’m going to look at several of my own most notable mistakes or rushes to judgment over the past 18 months, and what can be learned from them.To read more: http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=405647#ixzz1wwjc6eha
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Ibishblog
New Ibish article: Learning From My Mistakes [what I’ve gotten wrong in the past 18 months on the Arab uprisings] - http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=405647 -
Egypt’s elections do not simply mark a return to the status quo
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/25/egypt-elections-return-status-quoIn the Islamist stronghold of Alexandria, the two Islamist candidates, Abdel Moneim Abul Fotouh and Mohamed Morsi, managed only 37% between them. In areas of the delta long considered to be the Brotherhood’s electoral fortresses, their official candidate trailed second, third or even fourth. And in the sprawling, informal Cairo neighbourhood of Imbaba – known as the “Islamic emirate of Imbaba” in the early 1990s, when Egypt’s government sent in the army to clear out what they believed had become a state-within-a-state for Islamic militants at the heart of the Egyptian capital – secular nationalist Hamdeen Sabahi romped home to victory. Several contradictory trends are becoming apparent within Egyptian electoral politics, but none of them represent an unreconstructed return to a timeless status quo.
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Dans son curriculum : il a le soutien des pétromonarchies du Golfe et de… la France
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/05/201251515750848456.htmlInfighting and a lack of political coherence within the SNC have made it struggle to win formal international recognition as the sole legitimate representative of the anti-Assad movement.
However, Ghalioun enjoys the backing of the Gulf Arab states and France, and is seen as a consensus figure in a group where Islamists, divided into different factions, hold sway.
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‘Arabs are not ready for democracy’: the orientalist cravings of Arab ruling elites
Hasan Tariq Alhasan, 8 May 2012Scrambling to adjust to the new reality of the Arab revolts, Arab regimes have fallen back on Orientalist stereotypes. Portraying the Arab peoples as unready for democracy, the sole goal of these remaining regimes is to prolong their people’s subjugation.
About the author
Hasan Tariq Alhasan is currently pursuing a Masters in International Political Economy at the London School of Economics, UK, having obtained an undergraduate degree from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po) in Paris. He can be contacted on twitter @HTAlhasan
It is ironic that scarcely more than a year prior to announcing his candidacy to the presidential elections on Saturday, April 7, former Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman had confidently declared that, “Egypt is not ready for democracy” ↑ . Suleiman’s last-minute application for candidacy in Egypt’s presidential elections, handed in only half an hour before the 2pm deadline on Saturday, is perhaps a reminder of the fact that Arab anciens régimes and western governments are, themselves, the ones not ready for democracy in the Arab world.
Scrambling to adjust to the new reality of the Arab revolts which they rightly deem threatening to their own hegemony, these Arab regimes, Israel and their Orientalist chums advising western governments have dug once again into their vast repertoire of nonsensical Orientalist stereotypes to portray the Arab populations in a fashion similar to that in which their former British and French colonizers had portrayed them in the past; all this for the sole purpose of prolonging their subjugation. To the colonizer, quoting Edward Said, “subject races did not have it in them to know what was good for them.” (Orientalism, p. 37) Clearly, this very same tautological, performative belief that Arabs – for some occult, essentialist reason - are not ready for democracy is still perhaps one of the greatest barriers standing in their way to emancipation and self-government.
Suleiman merely echoed a discourse characteristic of most of his Arab counterparts in other countries struck by last year’s protests. Despite their struggle against despotism, Arab populations were deemed unfit for self-government by the same despots they were trying to overthrow. The assumption underlying the discourse is that almost despite themselves Arabs were predisposed to extremism and tyranny. As such, the naïve, passionate Arab has to be disciplined and tamed; his anger is to be vented. Although it is quite unclear how the Americans and the French were ‘prepared’ for democracy before overthrowing their despots in 1783 and 1789 respectively, Arab populations are almost automatically compared to their western counterparts, seen as better disposed to governing themselves. -
Comparaison des élections présidentielles de 2012 en France et aux Etats-unis par Manu Wallerstein.
Binghamton University - Fernand Braudel Center : Commentaries
http://www2.binghamton.edu/fbc/commentaries/index.htmlHowever, if Melenchon gets a large vote and Hollande is nonetheless in the second round, two things will be true. One, there will have been a clear message to the Socialists that politically they must move left. And secondly, most Melenchon voters will vote for Hollande on the second round. On the right, however, most LePen voters will be reluctant to vote Sarkozy, and the Front National will not recommend this. Were they to do so, they would undermine the very basis for their existence.
The French system seems to work better for the radical left. The U.S. system seems to work better for the far right. But this is primarily because of different electoral rules.
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The French media : in bed with power
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/b5382b9e-6d66-11e1-b6ff-00144feab49a.html#axzz1pK5KMgcLFrance’s media-political embrace climaxed under President Nicolas Sarkozy. He gave himself the right to appoint the directors of state TV and radio. His links with private media barons are almost hilarious, featuring the manifold entanglements of a Brazilian soap opera or Victorian novel. Bouygues is godfather to one of Sarkozy’s sons. Sarkozy has called Lagardère “more than a friend, a brother”. Vincent Bolloré, another billionaire in media, lent Sarkozy his yacht. Dassault, whose family is big in fighter planes, is a senator in Sarkozy’s party, though sadly no longer a mayor, having lost the post after a court found he had paid cash to voters.
On the “night of Fouquet’s” in 2007, many of these men gathered with Sarkozy to celebrate his election in that swish Champs-Elysées restaurant. To those living beyond the choicest arrondissements of Paris, all this looks a bit like Putin’s Russia. No wonder Hollande has built his campaign around distrust of wealth and capitalism.
No wonder also that, on the average day, less than 2 per cent of French people buy a national newspaper.
Le fort mérité déclin de la presse française
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