Jadaliyya

Military-Business Alliances in Egypt Before and After 30 June: Interview with Wael Gamal

▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/13070/military-business-alliances-in-egypt-before-and-af

I had the pleasure of conducting this interview with Wael Gamal, one of the more reliable and informed journalists who addresses critically political-economic variables in Egypt. In this interview, Wael addresses the less discussed dire social and economic situation that spurred the 30 June protests and the immediate aftermath, first under the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood and recently under an anti-Brotherhood loose coalition that is unfolding at the moment. Paramount in this interview is the role of military-business relations and prospects for change in social and economic policies in light of seemingly increasing influence of big capital. 

The caveat that Wael repeatedly refers to involves the wider opportunity now available for various social forces to exert pressure on government and confront elitist economic policies. Yet, it is not a struggle whose outcome can be determined in advance. Wael addresses a number of indicators to watch for as the new government is formed, and as the battle for guiding Egypt’s political economy unfolds in relation to economic policies, IMF loans and “packages,” and the management of subsidies.

Wael recounts significant factors that augmented resentment against the Brotherhood during the two years after the ousting of Mubarak, and treats this resentment and opposition as a force that is likely to pressure whatver current government and alliances are formed in the direction of asserting the demands for social and economic rights for wide sectors of the population. He identifies significant and strategic relations between the military and big business in current potential ruling formulas, but does not discount the ability of the non-fuloul segments of the protest movement to push forth with its basic demands.

Egypt Premiership Still Vacant : Presidential Media Advisor
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/12739/egypt-premiership-still-vacant_presidential-media-

Egypt Premiership Still Vacant: Presidential Media Advisor

Toujours pas de Premier Ministre en Egypte (il paraît que les salafistes ne veulent pas de Baradeï), mais il y a déjà un newly-appointed presidential media advisor : par qui ? qui décide ? qui négocie ? Le peuple veut ?

The Visual Emergence of the Occupy Gezi Movement, Part One: Oh Biber!

During June 2013, the Occupy Gezi Movement emerged as the greatest challenge to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s decade-long rule in Turkey. In the streets and in Gezi Park, as well as through its widespread use of social media such as Facebook and Twitter, the resistance movement has produced images in both real and digital spheres. Much of the visual output strikes at Erdoğan’s hubris and verbal threats, his attacks on personal freedoms, his brutal crackdown against the protests, and his pressuring of mainstream media into self-censorship. Although they conveyed serious concerns, the movement’s rhetorical and pictorial messages were often humorous, witty and intellectually alluring in their use of wisecracks and satire. Such levity offered biting commentary on the obscenity of police violence while also building group cohesion for an array of oppositional constituencies.

http://www.jadaliyya.com/content_images/fck_images/Gruber_figure5.jpg

▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/12714/the-visual-emergence-of-the-occupy-gezi-movement-p

#street_art #graffiti #Turquie #Istanbul #Gezi_park #Taksim

Religious Channels Go Off Air and Employees Arrested
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/12666/religious-channels-go-off-air-and-employees-arrest

Religious Channels Go Off Air and Employees Arrested

No comment, sauf que... c’est quoi leur crime ?

Sectarianism and Counter-Revolution in Egypt: Not a Family Affair
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/12581/sectarianism-and-counter-revolution-in-egypt_not-a

Ever since the early Cold War, and Washington’s decision to engage with the Middle East, the US preference for working with religiously conservative regimes has been clear. It has consistently employed divide and rule tactics by supporting these states against regional rivals which they have in common. With Washington’s first “special relationship” forged with King Abdel Aziz of Saudi Arabia in the 1940s, US interests in the Middle East crystallized around privileged access to oil and security cooperation. With the establishment of Israel in 1948, US interests extended to include the assurance of Israeli security and military advantage. As decolonization gathered momentum, the new generation of secular pan-Arabist leaders threatened these US interests, by emphasizing the Arab people’s unity, and rights to sovereignty and independence. US and UK policymakers singled out the Egyptian vanguard of this trend, Gamal Abdel Nasser, for “containment.” They attempted this containment through a combination of intermittent incentives, subversion, and increasing coercion throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Their principal strategy was to build up regional rivals in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Jordan, all conservative monarchies with state ideologies that revere Sunni Islam—rather than unifying, secular pan-Arabism. In Saudi Arabia in particular, members of the religious establishment founded the Muslim World League in 1962 to proselytize Wahhabism, and fostered strong ties with Egyptian exiles, aided by the “petrodollar effect.” The crucial corollary of this was the stifling of national, let alone trans-national, pan-Arab solidarities.

Obsessed with Turkish Models in Egypt
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/12517/obsessed-with-turkish-models-in-egypt

... one could argue that the challenge of 30 June is one of subverting the “Turkish model” that the Muslim Brotherhood and its partners inside the military have imposed on Egypt.

But what comes after subverting the model?

As many opponents of Muslim Brotherhood’s rule implicitly and explicitly call on (or hope for) the military to intervene and take the side of the protesters, one cannot help but grapple with the question: What alternative can emerge to replace the pact between the Brothers and the officers? A social order in which the state finally heeds popular demands for bread, freedom, and social justice? Or yet another, equally regressive “Turkish model,” in which the military and new civilian counterparts rule Egypt by exclusionary pacts, along the lines of the al-Selmi document? Or perhaps those who will take to the streets on 30 June and beyond will refuse to go full circle. Perhaps they will resist Turkish models altogether.

New Texts Out Now: Thomas Pierret, Religion and State in Syria
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/12187/new-texts-out-now_thomas-pierret-religion-and-stat

The conclusions I draw from my book lead me to take issue with widespread narratives about the current rise of Sunni Islamism, and in particular of Salafism in Syria. This phenomenon is usually perceived in a negative way, that is, as an expression of sectarian radicalization against religious communities. There is undeniably some truth in that, but it is a partial view of the problem. There is also a “positive” dimension to it: the expression of an identity that has been suppressed for decades, notably, as I show in the book, by imposing severe restrictions on religious practices and symbols that are considered as perfectly harmless in most other Muslim countries.

In my view, this is one of the reasons that explains why several of the first insurgent battalions established by defector officers in 2011 were given Islamic names, despite the fact that they were not displaying any specifically Islamist agenda. The army is probably the most aggressively anti-religious institution in the Syrian regime, which means that for defectors, choosing religious names for their battalions was part of a paradigmatic, revolutionary break with the past. Later on, in liberated areas, growing a beard, adopting a Salafi style, and raising the black and white banner of the Prophet have been part of a process of self-assertion that does not necessarily amount to declaring war against those who do not share that religious identity, although of course this can be the case.

The rise of Salafism is also part of what I would call the “religious empowerment” of the Syrian peripheries (suburbs, small towns, and villages). Until 2011, the religious center— that is, the scholarly elite I study in the book—was very much rooted in traditional-Sufi Islam, and this was the case for both pro-regime and independent ulama. As for Salafi Islam, including its dominant quietist wing, it suffered genuine persecution at the hands of the regime and only survived in a kind of semi-underground fashion, often in the peripheries mentioned above. Seen from that point of view, the current rise of Salafism is not only a revenge against the regime and/or Alawite domination, but also a revenge of the social and geographical margins against the center. To a large extent, this is what this uprising is about.

#Syrie
#Islam
#salafisme
#islamisme

Is Everywhere Taksim?: Public Space and Possible Publics

▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/12143/is-everywhere-taksim_public-space-and-possible-pub

http://www.jadaliyya.com/content_images/3/heryergezi.jpg

« Everywhere is Gezi Park. Everywhere is Resistance," in Taksim, Istanbul. Image by Elizabeth Angell »

In a speech on 1 June, responding to the wave of protests sweeping through Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan proclaimed that “the issue is not the five to ten trees that are being removed.” By calling the demonstrators “ideological,” and suggesting they were simply opposition cadres or opportunistic rioters using the debate over the redevelopment of Istanbul’s Taksim Gezi Parkı to stoke unrest against his government, Erdoğan meant to discredit them. But on this point, the prime minister and the crowds of people in the streets calling for his resignation would agree: this is now about something much broader than the few hundred trees threatened by the plan to rebuild an Ottoman-era barracks in place of the park, or even about the preservation of a small green space at the center of a sprawling concrete city.

#turquie #contestation #résistance

The Right to the City Movement and the Turkish Summer

▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/11978/the-right-to-the-city-movement-and-the-turkish-sum

As I write this, Istanbul is under siege. The might of Istanbul’s entire police force—the largest city police force in Europe—is violently cracking down on peaceful occupiers in Gezi Park.

http://www.jadaliyya.com/content_images/3/fdfkksdkf.jpg

The protest, which began on 27 May, is ostensibly over a planned shopping center to be built over a park in Istanbul’s central Taksim Square. Nevertheless, massive popular movements like this do not emerge out of nowhere. Typically, they are the result of the tireless groundwork of activists over the course of an extended period. And then, something happens: a spark sets off the lighter fluid accumulating unnoticed at everyone’s feet.

Occupy Gezi: The Limits of Turkey’s Neoliberal Success

▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/12009/occupy-gezi_the-limits-of-turkey%E2%80%99s-neoliberal-succ

There are two telling, though widely neglected, details about what initiated and popularized the groundbreaking protests in Taksim Square, Istanbul: the protests started out as a response to the governing neoliberal party’s project of urban transformation or urban renewal; yet, urban questions quickly took a backseat as the protests became massive. Understanding these two facets of the mobilization sheds much light on what is happening in Turkey and why.

http://www.jadaliyya.com/content_images/3/AP173293481807-1.jpg

#turquie

On the ’Turkish Model’: Neoliberal Democracy with Teargas
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/12008/on-the-turkish-model_neoliberal-democracy-with-tea

Important as this attempt to end the war with the PKK is for the resolution of the Kurdish problem and for the further democratization of the country, other governmental policies point to a severe regression in Turkey’s democratic standards. Examples abound. Academic faculty have lost their jobs because they mention the oppression of Armenians, Kurds or Alawis in their classes. The Prime Minister has ordered the destruction of public artwork that offends his sensibility. His government has also banned a book that documents the relationship between the Turkish police force and an opaque Islamist group strongly entrenched in state security forces before its publication. Finally, last summer, in an attempt to derail public protests in response to the Turkish Air Force’s mass slaughter of thirty-four village smugglers in the Uludere/Roboski region of Turkey in December 2010, Erdogan made a public statement equating this massacre with women getting abortions, saying “every abortion is an Uludere”. He then pushed for legislation that would severely limit women’s access to abortion, as well as caesarian sections.

Citizens have protested against this onslaught of anti-democratic moves. Most protests, however peaceful, are met with the police’s generous use of tear gas and high-pressure water hoses, in addition to other forms of violence. This process of protest and violence has been ongoing since the demonstrations on Taksim Square on 28 May and until today 3 June, across Istanbul and the rest of Turkey.

Just a month ago, on 1 May, when citizens attempted to march to Taksim Square for Worker’s Day, they were met with police firing tear gas canisters in abundance. But we did not need this spectacle to know that the government’s commitment to its people safety and wellbeing was less than stellar. According to one report an average four workers lose their life daily in work-related accidents in Turkey. The same day, a number of people, including teenagers, were severely injured and hospitalized, with two suffering hemorrhages from the blows they received in the back of their head, and one losing an eye.

This is the kind of cruel absurdity that governs the lives of the people of Turkey these days, just as the international news celebrates Turkey’s robust economy and its much acclaimed role as a “democratic model” in the “new Middle East.” For instance, one recent New York Times op-ed covered Erdogan’s recent visit to Washington, DC and his meeting with Obama on intervention in Syria. The terms of Erdogan’s positive evaluation were government’s ability to “progress toward resolving the Kurdish conflict” and its retention of “its impressive economic achievements.” The authors went on to warn that political instability in the region might affect foreign investment in Turkey, and adversely the country’s economic stability.

What is missing from such sweeping representations of “international relations and foreign policy” are the voices of citizens who dare protest the country’s neoliberal restructuring and the images of the violent police attacks on them. Also missing are the stories of fired teachers who dare speak of oppression and inequality, and the imprisonment of journalists who openly critique the AKP government. Finally, missing from such representations are those of us who aspire to a democratic society. We are ordinary citizens who see no end to the oppressive and abusive politics of the AKP government as Turkey’s democratic Western partners fiddle (or choose to look the other way in the name of “strategic expediency”).

The Myth of the “Yemen Model”
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/11970/the-myth-of-the-yemen-model

Maybe misconceptions of Arabs as apolitical, who were just “awakened” by the “Arab Spring,” leads to the belief that anything is a step forward. These misconceptions, if internalized, lead to flawed analysis, and worse they can become disastrous policies.

L’auteur présumé de l’attentat contre le marathon de #Boston s’appellait #Tamerlan
Ce nom inspira déjà les poètes des années 1920. Il n’y a pas de rapport direct avec les événements ni avec le personnage précis, pourtant dans les jours á venir on verra surgir au sein des colonnes des journaux des récits fantasmagoriques inspirés d’images ataviques.

Eva Meier chante Tamerlan de Rudolf Nelson et Kurt #Tucholsky
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijpHp5WPDB0

Mir ist heut so nach Tamerlan!

Tamerland war Herzog der Kirgisen und jeder Mensch in Asien wusste wohl das.
Tamerland ritt ueber gruene Wiesen und wo der Junge einmal hintrat wuchs kein Gras.
Und alle Frauen lauschten angstvoll seinem Schritt und fielen die Staedte, fielen die Maedchen alle mit.
Er war auch stets zu einem wilden Kampf bereit, das war in Asien eine schoene Zeit.
Mir ist heut so nach Tamerland nach Tamerlan zumut. Ein kleines bisschen amerland, ja Tamerland waer gut.
Es waere ja, geniert mich das, geniert mich das, gelacht. Ich glaube es passiert noch was, passiert noch was heut nacht.
Mir ist heut so nach Tamerland nach Tamerlan zumut. Ein kleines bisschen Tamerland ja Tamerland waer gut.
Und sehe ich ins Publikum da liegt heut so ein Fluidium.
Ach Mensch geh mir weg.
Es hat ja nur Zweck mit dem Tamerland.

Traduction anglaise trouvée sur ▻http://weimar.facinghistory.org/content/mir-ist-heut-so-nach-tamerlan-music-rudolf-nelson-lyrics-kurt-

Mir ist heut so nach Tamerlan!

Tamerland was the Duke of the Kirghizia,
famous throughout Asia.
Tamerland rode over green meadows
and where he stepped, grass no longer grew.
And all the women listened, fearful of his steps.
When the towns fell, the girls fell too.
He was always ready for a savage fight.
That meant a nice time in Asia.

CHORUS:

I’m longing for Tamerland, for Tamerland.
A little bit of Tamerland, yes, Tamerland would be good.

It could happen – I’m embarrassed, I’m embarrassed,
I know it sounds ridiculous.
I believe something is going to happen tonight.

CHORUS:

I’m longing for Tamerland, for Tamerland.
A little bit of Tamerland, yes, Tamerland would be good.

And when I look into the audience,
there is definitely something in the air.
[to men in the audience] Stay away from me!
It only makes sense with Tamerland

.

Imperialist Liberalism and the Egyptian Revolution
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/11201/imperialist-liberalism-and-the-egyptian-revolution

By “imperialist liberalism,” I mean that loose US-European academic tradition, whose defense of liberalism, especially of representative democracy and individual freedom, is inextricably tied to a colonial, Western-centric conceptual toolbox that sometimes reaches the limit of directly and unashamedly defending US global interests.

The Alawite Dilemma in Homs
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/11122/the-alawite-dilemma-in-homs

This study is based on observations and interviews conducted with members of the Alawite community in the Homs area during the summer of 2012. The interviewees range from army officers to paramilitaries and civilians, including students, academics, businessmen and individuals from diverse backgrounds. While some identified themselves explicitly as religiously observant Alawites, others consider themselves trapped in the »Alawite box« as a result of the current crisis. Some interviewees were aware of the research, whereas others were not aware of the aims of our discussions. This was particularly true of the Shabiha with whom I spent time as a »participant observer«. Some of the interviews and observations gathered in outlying villages were provided by intermediaries. The interviewed sample is not representative in that it does not reflect a broad cross sectional range of views by Alawites, although it nevertheless provides some insight into the Alawite community in Homs. The objective is neither to censure nor to defend but to shed light on the multifaceted and often complex political and social realities of the Alawite community in Homs today.

Point de vue particulièrement pertinent : Has Citizenship Got a Future in Egypt ? - Paul Sedra
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/11111/has-citizenship-got-a-future-in-egypt

I have written before in these pages about Egyptian sectarianism, its modern origins and recent manifestations. The impulse to lay the blame for this sectarianism at the feet of the Muslim Brotherhood is strong and, in my view, not without justification, particularly given the sectarian incitement in which the organization has engaged since its rise to power. Indeed, only two weeks ago, Amnesty International issued a press release directed at Egypt’s rulers whose title read, “Egypt’s Coptic Christians must be protected from sectarian violence.”

But the language of that title points to a tendency that, I would venture, bears nearly as much responsibility for the current violence as the Brotherhood. The notion of “protection” referenced by Amnesty conjures up an image of Coptic Christians in Egypt as an inert, monolithic bloc – a bloc whose leadership is assumed to reside with the Church. What is missing here is the notion of citizenship – the notion of Copts as Egyptian citizens, equal before Egyptian law and the Egyptian state to their Muslim compatriots. 

The irony of this language of “protection,” as deployed not only by Amnesty but a wide variety of human rights organizations, is that this language is central to the Muslim Brotherhood’s own conception of Copts and their place in Egyptian society. Indeed, if one is to take the constitution produced by a Brotherhood-dominated assembly as a guide, Egypt’s current rulers conceive of Copts not so much as equal citizens but as a distinctly sectarian constituency that is best left in the hands of the Church. For instance, Article 3 of the constitution vouchsafes control of the personal status affairs of the Coptic Orthodox to the Coptic Orthodox Patriarch, regardless of whether particular Copts are, in fact, believers or not.

All in all, the way in which Copts are discussed, both in Egyptian public discourse and in the international media, seems stuck in the nineteenth century, with commentators still relying on the conventional wisdoms of the millet paradigm – according to which Ottoman rulers relied upon clerical leaders to represent the political interests of their respective sects. Under these circumstances, how can one possibly have a meaningful conversation about citizenship – about how the Egyptian revolution might shape conceptions of Egyptian identity?

Not Enough Water in the West Bank?
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/10732/not-enough-water-in-the-west-bank

Friday is World Water Day and an opportune time to highlight the gross misallocation of water resources between Israel and the Palestinians.

(...)

This info graphic is created by Visualizing Palestine and EWASH, an international coalition of thirty humanitarian organizations including Oxfam and Save the Children. It depicts the abundance of available water in the occupied West Bank, its appropriation, and ethno-national based distribution between Palestinians and Jewish-Israeli settlers. EWASH will be using this image to highlight the inequitable access to water among other humanitarian organizations during President Obama’s visit to the region.

http://www.jadaliyya.com/content_images/fck_images/WB_Water_March4%20-%20FINAL%20FINAL.jpg

Voir aussi ▻http://visualizingpalestine.org/infographic/wb-water

#visualisation_Palestine

Elliott Colla: “The Poetry of Revolt” in the New Egypt | Radio Open Source with Christopher Lydon

▻http://www.radioopensource.org/elliott-colla-the-poetry-of-revolt-in-the-new-egypt

This is a new generation, a generation of activists who are not ideological. In other words, they have looked at the struggles of their parents and even grandparents against imperialism, against capitalism, against all the “isms.” By and large, they are saying that’s not how they want to understand the world, and that’s not how they’re going to organize their response to the problems that they face. In this sense, many in the leadership have no ideological platform; they are starting their analysis and their project from how they live their daily life, what they see, what they experience, what they would rather have. …

#egypte #poésie #ElliottColla

Clashing with the Ultras : A Firsthand Account
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/10204/clashing-with-the-ultras_a-firsthand-account

Témoignage du journaliste Wael Eskandar - manifestation du 15 mars 2013 où les Ultras ont empêché les manifestants de leur groupe de scander des slogans anti-régimes, n’autorisant que les slogans anti-SCAF et anti-police, confirmant leur identité anti-autoritaire et non-partisane. (révolutionnaire ?)

The march (which felt like more of a sprint) was unusually silent, apart from the interludes performed by the Ultras Ahlawy. As we tried catching up with the swiftly moving crowds, reports were circulating that Ultras members were silencing any chants expressing opposition to President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. There had been numerous disagreements on the Facebook wall of the event page announcing the march about the chants and whether or not people would chant against Morsi. As the march drew closer to the Ministry of Defense, it grew more silent and the reports of efforts to suppress anti-regime chants began circulating more widely.

Al-Moqattam Clashes in Photos

▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/10800/al-moqattam-clashes-in-photos

#Egypte #22mars