position:prince

  • Hacking a Prince, an Emir and a Journalist to Impress a Client - The New York Times

    With Israel help

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/31/world/middleeast/hacking-united-arab-emirates-nso-group.html?imp_id=299442091&action=click&m

    The lawsuits also shed new light on the political intrigues involving Israel and the Persian Gulf monarchies, which have increasingly turned to hacking as a favorite weapon against one another.
    Image
    The NSO Group’s actions are now at the heart of the twin lawsuits accusing the company of actively participating in illegal spying.CreditDaniella Cheslow/Associated Press
    The U.A.E. does not recognize Israel, but the two appear to have a growing behind-the-scenes alliance. Because Israel deems the spyware a weapon, the lawsuits note, the NSO Group and its affiliates could have sold it to the Emirates only with approval by the Israeli Defense Ministry.

    Leaked emails submitted in the lawsuits show that the U.A.E. signed a contract to license the company’s surveillance software as early as August 2013.
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    A year and a half later, a British affiliate of the NSO Group asked its Emirati client to provide a sixth payment of $3 million under the original contract, suggesting a total licensing fee of at least $18 million over that period.

    An update the next year was sold through a different affiliate, based in Cyprus, at a cost of $11 million in four installments, according to leaked invoices.

    Tensions between the U.A.E. and its neighbor Qatar reached a boil in 2013 over a struggle for power in Egypt. Qatar had allied itself with the Egyptian Islamist movement that won the elections after the Arab Spring. Then the U.A.E. backed a military takeover that cast the Islamists into prison instead.

    In the escalating feud, each side accused the other of cyberespionage. Hackers broke into the email accounts of two outspoken opponents of Qatar — the Emirati ambassador to Washington, Yousef al-Otaiba, and an American Republican fund-raiser who does business with the U.A.E., Elliott Broidy. Mr. Broidy has filed a separate lawsuit accusing Qatar and its Washington lobbyists of conspiring to steal and leak his emails.

    Other hackers briefly took over the website of the Qatari news service to post a false report of an embarrassing speech by the emir to damage him, and later leaked Qatari emails exposing awkward details of Qatari negotiations over the release of a royal hunting party kidnapped in Iraq. Allies of Qatar blamed the Emiratis.

    The leaked emails disclosed in the new lawsuits may also have been stolen through hacking. Lawyers involved said the documents were provided by a Qatari journalist who did not disclose how he had obtained them.

    The messages show that the Emiratis were seeking to intercept the phone calls of the emir of Qatar as early as 2014.
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    But the Emirati target list also included Saudi Arabia. In the email discussions about updating the NSO Group’s technology, the Emiratis asked to intercept the phone calls of a Saudi prince, Mutaib bin Abdullah, who was considered at the time to be a possible contender for the throne.

    The Emiratis have been active promoters of Prince Mutaib’s younger rival, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Last year, the crown prince removed Prince Mutaib from his role as minister of the national guard and ordered his temporary detention in connection with corruption allegations.

    In a telephone interview, Prince Mutaib expressed surprise that the Emiratis had attempted to record his calls.

    “They don’t need to hack my phone,” he said. “I will tell them what I am doing.”

    According to the emails, the Emiratis also asked to intercept the phone calls of Saad Hariri, who is now prime minister of Lebanon.

    Mr. Hariri has sometimes been accused of failing to push back hard enough against Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese movement backed by Iran. Last year, the U.A.E.’s Saudi ally, Crown Prince Mohammed, temporarily detained Mr. Harari in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, and forced him to announce his resignation as prime minister. (He later rescinded the announcement, and he remains prime minister.)

    Mr. Alkhamis, who resigned in 2014 as the editor of the London-based newspaper Al Arab, called the surveillance of his phone calls “very strange” but not unexpected, since he had published “sensitive” articles about Persian Gulf politics.

    The U.A.E.’s use of the NSO Group’s spyware was first reported in 2016. Ahmed Mansoor, an Emirati human rights advocate, noticed suspicious text messages and exposed an attempt to hack his Apple iPhone. The U.A.E. arrested him on apparently unrelated charges the next year and he remains in jail.

  • D’un coté #Macron en plein selfie à l’Elysée avec son grand pote saoudien, le jeune prince « moderne et féministe » #Mohamed_Bin_Salman, à qui la France vend des armes et qu’elle soutient contre vents et marées dans la région. Brutal et orgueilleux, il est en quelque sorte le Jupiter de la péninsule arabique.

    De l’autre #Asra-al-Ghangam, militante pour les #droits_des_femmes et la libération des prisonniers politiques en Arabie Saoudite, arrêtée en 2015 avec son mari. Elle a été exécutée, décapitée au sabre, hier matin. Avant de mourir elle aurait déclaré à ses bourreaux : « Je n’ai tué personne ».

    https://www.facebook.com/nadjil.kallisto/posts/701682903498898
    #Arabie_saoudite #France #armes #armement #féminisme #femmes #décapitation #militantisme #résistance
    cc @reka

    • En tout cas d’après https://www.middleeasteye.net/fr/reportages/en-arabie-saoudite-une-activiste-chiite-risque-la-peine-de-mort-10174, ce n’est pas Esra al-Ghamgam sur la photo mais Samar Badawi
      La vidéo qui circule date de 2015

      Elle serait encore en vie

      http://article19.ma/accueil/archives/97947

      https://twitter.com/ali_adubisi/status/1031146505611161600 13:50 - 19 août 2018

      علي الدبيسي
      @ali_adubisi

      في قضية #إسراء_الغمغام، الحكم لم يصدر بعد والذي حصل هو بدء المحاكمة بالجلسة ١ في ٦/٨/٢٠١٨ وطالبت النيابة العامة بإصدار حكم الإعدام.
      الجلسة ٢ ستعقد في ٢٨/١٠/٢٠١٨ وأقترح دعوة جماهيرية واسعة حول العالم لتظاهرات قبل الجلسة، تضامناً معها ودفاعا عن حقها في الحرية والحياة.
      حياتها أمانة.

      European Saudi Organization for Human Rights Director رئيس المنظمة الأوروبية السعودية لحقوق الإنسان ali.adubisi@esohr.org

    • C’est assez intéressant :

      cette info arrive sur FB formatée dans un style assez spectaculaire pour ne pas dire putassier (l’image de macron et du prince en vis à vis de la photo d’une femme supposée être Israa al-Ghamgham (que le post dit avoir été décapitée) et qui est en fait selon « middleeasteye.net » Samar Badawi, une autre militante saoudienne. Par ailleurs une vidéo circule prétendant être l’execution de cette militante et qui en fait s’avère être une autre décapitation qui date de 2015. Tout le monde a été profondément ému au point de signaler ce post FB sans penser à vérifier. C’est peut-être vrai, peut-être pas, mais une journée complète de recherche n’a rien donné de vraiment probant.

      Comme nous nous intéressons à la situation des droits humains en Arabie saoudite, nous avons aussi été très bouleversé, d’autant plus qu’il y a cette incertitude.

      Ce type de dissémination de l’info me fait peur et me fait penser que nous restons très fragiles face à ce qui nous arrive par différents canaux. D’où l’importance des débats et des partages, et des recherches communes sur seenthis pour tenter de déconstruire cet invraissemblable magma.

    • Saudi Prosecution Seeks Death Penalty for Female Activist

      Saudi Arabia’s Public Prosecution is seeking the death penalty against five Eastern Province activists, including female human rights activist #Israa_al-Ghomgham, Human Rights Watch said today. The activists, along with one other person not facing execution, are being tried in the country’s terrorism tribunal on charges solely related to their peaceful activism.

      The Public Prosecution, which reports directly to the king, accused the detained activists of several charges that do not resemble recognizable crimes, including “participating in protests in the Qatif region,” “incitement to protest,” “chanting slogans hostile to the regime,” “attempting to inflame public opinion,” “filming protests and publishing on social media,” and “providing moral support to rioters.” It called for their execution based on the Islamic law principle of ta’zir, in which the judge has discretion over the definition of what constitutes a crime and over the sentence. Authorities have held all six activists in pretrial detention and without legal representation for over two years. Their next court date has been scheduled for October 28, 2018.

      “Any execution is appalling, but seeking the death penalty for activists like Israa al-Ghomgham, who are not even accused of violent behavior, is monstrous,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Every day, the Saudi monarchy’s unrestrained despotism makes it harder for its public relations teams to spin the fairy tale of ‘reform’ to allies and international business.”

      Al-Ghomgham is a Shia activist well known for participating in and documenting mass demonstrations in the Eastern Province that began in early 2011, calling for an end to the systematic discrimination that Saudi Shia citizens face in the majority-Sunni country. Authorities arrested al-Ghomgham and her husband in a night raid on their home on December 6, 2015 and have held them in Dammam’s al-Mabahith prison ever since.

      Saudi activists told Human Rights Watch that the Public Prosecution’s recent demand makes al-Ghomgham the first female activist to possibly face the death penalty for her human rights-related work, which sets a dangerous precedent for other women activists currently behind bars.

      Saudi Arabia’s Specialized Criminal Court (SCC), set up in 2008 to try terrorism cases, has since been increasingly used to prosecute peaceful dissidents. The court is notorious for its violations of fair trial standards and has previously sentenced other Shia activists to death on politically motivated charges. The court sentenced a prominent Shia cleric, Nimr al-Nimr, and seven other men to death for their role in the 2011 Eastern Province demonstrations in 2014 and another 14 people in 2016 for participating in the protests. Saudi authorities executed al-Nimr and at least three other Shia men on January 2, 2016 when they carried out the largest mass execution since 1980, putting 47 men to death.

      International standards, including the Arab Charter on Human Rights, ratified by Saudi Arabia, require countries that retain the death penalty to use it only for the “most serious crimes,” and in exceptional circumstances. Human Rights Watch opposes capital punishment in all countries and under all circumstances. Capital punishment is unique in its cruelty and finality, and it is inevitably and universally plagued with arbitrariness, prejudice, and error.

      A recent crackdown on women’s rights activists in Saudi Arabia has led to the arrest of at least 13 women under the pretext of maintaining national security. While some have since been released, others remain detained without charge. They are: Loujain al-Hathloul, Aziza al-Yousef, Eman al-Nafjan, Nouf Abdelaziz, Mayaa al-Zahrani, Hatoon al-Fassi, Samar Badawi, Nassema al-Sadah, and Amal al-Harbi. Authorities have accused several of them of serious crimes and local media outlets carried out an unprecedented campaign against them, labeling them “traitors.

      “If the Crown Prince is truly serious about reform, he should immediately step in to ensure no activist is unjustly detained for his or her human rights work,” added Whitson.

      https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/08/21/saudi-prosecution-seeks-death-penalty-female-activist

    • L’algorithme de Google a encore des progrès à faire pour savoir utiliser correctement le féminin …

      A recent crackdown on women’s rights activists in Saudi Arabia has led to the arrest of at least 13 women under the pretext of maintaining national security. While some have since been released, others remain detained without charge. They are: Loujain al-Hathloul, Aziza al-Yousef, Eman al-Nafjan, Nouf Abdelaziz, Mayaa al-Zahrani, Hatoon al-Fassi, Samar Badawi, Nassema al-Sadah, and Amal al-Harbi. Authorities have accused several of them of serious crimes and local media outlets carried out an unprecedented campaign against them, labeling them “traitors.

      est traduit par

      Une récente répression contre les militantes des droits des femmes en Arabie saoudite a conduit à l’arrestation d’au moins 13 femmes sous prétexte de maintenir la sécurité nationale.

      En utilisant « militantes des droits des femmes » sont invibilisés les hommes « militants des droits des femmes ». A la phrase suivante, les femmes redeviennent des hommes …

      Alors que certains ont depuis été libérés, d’autres sont toujours détenus sans inculpation. Les autorités ont accusé plusieurs d’entre eux de crimes graves et les médias locaux ont mené une campagne sans précédent contre eux, les qualifiant de « traîtres ».

  • @rastapopoulos , on se console de la mort d’Aretha Franklin...

    Erykah Badu fait enfin son Tiny Desk :
    NPR, le 14 août 2018
    https://www.npr.org/2018/08/14/638483063/erykah-badu-tiny-desk-concert

    Erykah Badu On Stand-Up, Meeting Prince And ’Unpopular Opinions’
    NPR, le 15 août 2018
    https://www.npr.org/2018/08/15/638641327/erykah-badu-on-stand-up-comedy-meeting-prince-and-unpopular-opinions

    A mushroom walks into a bar and the bartender says, “Sorry, we don’t serve mushrooms in here.” The mushroom replies, “Why not? I’m a fungi!

    #Erykah_Badu #Musique #Nu_Soul

  • Facebook is Killing The Internet, One Lion at a Time - Facebook Zoo
    https://www.themaven.net/facebookzoo
    https://www.themaven.net/facebookzoo/poached-publishers/facebook-is-killing-the-internet-one-lion-at-a-time-z9jI4W32B0KCm7Cm72w5Vw

    Comment se servir des fables de Lafontaine pour monter une affaire.

    Facebook is like a zoo. And what the zoo did is that they went out and invited the best animals in the animal kingdom to come into their zoo, so it would be easier for people to see them. They told the lions that, ’the biggest fans of you, the lion, are here at the zoo and it’s so much easier for them to see them here than go out on safari and to see you out there. It’s safer for them. Won’t you come into our zoo and we’ll display you prominently and your fans will be able to see you. You’re a great lion, please, come be a lion in our zoo.’ And that was early stage Facebook.

    And then middle stage Facebook was basically they got so many people at the zoo, that nobody noticed that Facebook had gone out with a bunch of hunters and just shot all of the animals in the wild and killed them so that there were no more websites. Everybody’s website looks like shit because it’s just a repository of things that they posted on Facebook once. And so in our metaphor here, the whole Serengeti is just filled with the corpses of animals and whole ecosystems that are just gone now. But you can still see those animals in the zoo.

    Then they started playing games with those animals in the zoo. Forcing the lion, ’well, hey people aren’t really, you’re not getting the engagement you once did just walking around being a lion, if you don’t mind, would you mind dancing a little bit or playing the according here so that people will be more engaged with you. The chimpanzee has been doing all this accordion stuff and it’s been awesome. You know the parrots have been doing all this top down recipe making where they make food and you’re looking directly down on it. Lion, why don’t you make those foods or play the accordion or whatever. And if you don’t, I’m sorry, we’re just going to have to shrink your enclosure more and more until you die as well, just like your brethren did out in the wild.’ That’s like what Facebook is doing right now to the Internet."

    Au fait c’est une publicité d’un éditeur internet qui cherche des clients pour son propre réseau de publication et de distribution. Pourtant l’analogie avec Facebook est frappante et je suis émerveillé par la modernité des propos du poète.

    Fable Le lion malade et le renard - Jean de La Fontaine
    https://www.poesie-francaise.fr/jean-de-la-fontaine/fable-le-lion-malade-et-le-renard.php

    Recueil : Les fables du livre VI (1678).

    De par le Roi des animaux,
    Qui dans son antre était malade,
    Fut fait savoir à ses vassaux
    Que chaque espèce en ambassade
    Envoyât gens le visiter ;
    Sous promesse de bien traiter
    Les députés, eux et leur suite,
    Foi de Lion, très bien écrite :
    Bon passeport contre la dent,
    Contre la griffe tout autant.
    L’édit du prince s’exécute :
    De chaque espèce on lui députe.
    Les Renards gardant la maison,
    Un d’eux en dit cette raison :
    « Les pas empreints sur la poussière
    Par ceux qui s’en vont faire au malade leur cour,
    Tous, sans exception, regardent sa tanière ;
    Pas un ne marque de retour :
    Cela nous met en méfiance.
    Que Sa Majesté nous dispense :
    Grand merci de son passeport.
    Je le crois bon : mais dans cet antre
    Je vois fort bien comme l’on entre,
    Et ne vois pas comme on en sort. »

    Le texte original est bien plus beau que sa parodie commerciale.

    #USA #culture #publicité

  • Zionism’s terrorist heritage - Opinion - #Israel News | Haaretz.com
    https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-zionism-s-terrorist-heritage-1.6217633

    Juin 2018

    There it is. Israel has a terrorism problem which has been part and parcel of Zionism even before the state was founded

    [...]

    Our terrorism problem has grown so cosmeticized as to have become all but invisible. Hidden in plain sight.

    It was there at the opening of the landmark official visit of Britain’s Prince William. It was there in the breezy dispatch of Israel 10 Television News correspondent Akiva Novick, who reported, in a reference to former Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin’s Irgun Zvai Leumi armed underground:
    "For the first time ever, an official visit of a member of the Royal Family, and in the place blown up 72 years ago by IZL men in one of the operations which brought about the end of the British mandatory rule here.

    “It took very many years for the British to restrain themselves, or to have absorbed this insult.”

    “The terror attack on the King David Hotel in Jerusalem was in its day the equivalent of the Twin Towers,” wrote historian Tom Segev in 2006, after Benjamin Netanyahu had taken center stage at a commemoration celebrating the 60th anniversary of the attack. Years later, Segev would call it, “at the time the most lethal terrorist attack in history.”

  • The History of Civilization Is a History of Border Walls

    When I joined my first archaeological dig at a site near Hadrian’s Wall in 2002, walls never appeared in the nightly news. Britain was still many years away from planning a barrier near the opening of the Chunnel in Calais. Saudi Arabia hadn’t yet encircled itself with high-tech barricades. Israel hadn’t started reinforcing its Gaza border fence with concrete. Kenya wasn’t seeking Israel’s help in the construction of a 440-mile barrier against Somalia. And the idea that India might someday send workers high into the Himalayas to construct border walls that look down on clouds still seemed as preposterous as the notion that Ecuador might commence construction on a 950-mile concrete wall along its border with Peru.

    No one chatted about walls while we cut through sod to expose the buried remains of an ancient fortress in northern Britain. I doubt that anyone was chatting about walls anywhere. The old fortress, on the other hand, was generally considered the crown jewel of British archaeology. For more than 30 years, sharp-eyed excavators at the Roman fort of Vindolanda had been finding writing tablets — thin slivers of wood upon which Roman soldiers had written letters, duty rosters, inventories, and other assorted jottings. At first, the tablets had represented something of a technical challenge; their spectral writing faded almost immediately upon exposure to air, almost as if written in invisible ink. But when the writings were recovered through infrared photography, a tremendous satisfaction came from the discovery that Roman soldiers complained about shortages of beer while the wives of their commanders planned birthday parties. The Romans, it turned out, were a lot like us.

    Archaeology, even at such a special place, was tiring business, but after work I enjoyed taking hikes along the wall. It was beautiful countryside — well lit by an evening sun that lingered late during the Northumbrian summer — and as I ambled over the grassy hills, occasionally enjoying the company of sheep, I sometimes imagined I was a lonely Roman soldier, stationed at the end of the world, scanning the horizon for barbarians while I awaited a resupply of beer. I’m ashamed to say that I took no detailed notes on the wall itself. It made for beautiful photographs, the way it stretched languidly over the countryside, but my real interest lay in other things: the Roman soldiers, the barbarians, the letters. If anything I saw in Britain was to hold any significance for my research, it seemed obvious that I would find it in the wet gray clay of Vindolanda. There I hoped only to discern tiny clues about a particular period of Roman history. Such are the modest goals of the academic. For the duration of my stay, my focus was on the clay. All the while, I was standing right next to a piece of a much bigger story, a fragment of the past that was about to rise up from its ancient slumber to dominate contemporary politics on two continents. I was leaning against it, resting my hand on it, posing for pictures by it. I just didn’t see it.

    It was my interest in the barbarians that finally opened my eyes to the historical importance of walls. The barbarians were, in the main, inhabitants of every North African or Eurasian wasteland — the steppes, the deserts, the mountains. Civilized folk had erected barriers to exclude them in an astonishing array of countries: Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Iran, Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Britain, Algeria, Libya, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Peru, China, and Korea, to give only a partial list. Yet somehow this fact had entirely escaped the notice of historians. Not a single textbook observed the nearly universal correlation between civilization and walls. It remained standard even for specialists to remark that walls were somehow unique to Chinese history, if not unique to Chinese culture — a stereotype that couldn’t possibly be any less true.

    By some cruel irony, the mere concept of walls now divides people more thoroughly than any structure of brick or stone.

    The reemergence of border walls in contemporary political debates made for an even more surprising revelation. Like most people my age, I had watched the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 with great excitement. To many of us, it looked like the beginning of a new era, heralded by no less towering an international figure than David Hasselhoff, whose concert united both halves of Berlin in inexplicable rapture. More than a quarter-century has passed since then, and if it had once seemed that walls had become a thing of the past, that belief has proven sorely wrong.

    Border walls have experienced a conspicuous revival in the 21st century. Worldwide, some 70 barriers of various sorts currently stand guard. Some exist to prevent terrorism, others as obstacles to mass migration or the flow of illegal drugs. Nearly all mark national borders. By some cruel irony, the mere concept of walls now divides people more thoroughly than any structure of brick or stone. For every person who sees a wall as an act of oppression, there is always another urging the construction of newer, higher, and longer barriers. The two sides hardly speak to each other.

    As things turned out, it was the not the beer or the birthday parties that connected the past to the present in northern England. It was the wall. We can almost imagine it now as a great stone timeline, inhabited on one end by ancients, on the other by moderns, but with both always residing on the same side facing off against an unseen enemy. If I couldn’t see that in 2002, it was only because we were then still living in an anomalous stage in history and had somehow lost our instinct for something that has nearly always been a part of our world.

    How important have walls been in the history of civilization? Few civilized peoples have ever lived outside them. As early as the 10th millennium BC, the builders of Jericho encircled their city, the world’s first, with a rampart. Over time, urbanism and agriculture spread from Jericho and the Levant into new territories: Anatolia, Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Balkans, and beyond. Walls inevitably followed. Everywhere farmers settled, they fortified their villages. They chose elevated sites and dug ditches to enclose their homes. Entire communities pitched in to make their villages secure. A survey of prehistoric Transylvanian farming villages determined that some 1,400 to 1,500 cubic meters of earth typically had to be moved just to create an encircling ditch — an effort that would have required the labor of 60 men for 40 days. Subsequently, those ditches were lined with stone and bolstered by palisades. If a community survived long enough, it might add flanking towers. These were the first steps toward walls.

    The creators of the first civilizations descended from generations of wall builders. They used their newfound advantages in organization and numbers to build bigger walls. More than a few still survive. We can estimate their heights, their thicknesses, their volumes, and their lengths. But the numbers can only tell us so much. We will always learn more by examining the people who built the walls or the fear that led to their construction.

    And what about these fears? Were civilizations — and walls — created only by unusually fearful peoples? Or did creating civilization cause people to become fearful? Such questions turn out to be far more important than we’ve ever realized.

    Since 2002, I’ve had ample time to reflect on the Roman soldiers who once guarded Hadrian’s Wall. They certainly never struck me as afraid of anything. Then again, they weren’t exactly Roman, either. They came chiefly from foreign lands, principally Belgium and Holland, which were in those days still as uncivilized as the regions north of the wall. Everything they knew of building and writing, they had learned in the service of Rome.

    As for the Romans, they preferred to let others fight their battles. They had become the definitive bearers of civilization and as such were the target of a familiar complaint: that they had lost their edge. Comfortable behind their city walls and their foreign guards, they had grown soft. They were politicians and philosophers, bread makers and blacksmiths, anything but fighters.

    The Roman poet Ovid knew a thing or two about the soft life, but he also had the unusual experience of learning what life was like for Rome’s frontier troops. The latter misfortune came as a consequence of his having offended the emperor Augustus. The offense was some peccadillo — Ovid never divulges the details — compounded by his having penned a rather scandalous book on the art of seduction. “What is the theme of my song?” he asked puckishly, in verse. “Nothing that’s very far wrong.” Augustus disagreed. Reading Ovid’s little love manual, the moralistic emperor saw plenty of wrong. He probably never even made it to the section where Ovid raved about what a great ruler he was. Augustus banished the poet from Rome, exiling him to Tomis, a doomed city on the coast of the Black Sea, 60-odd miles south of the Danube.

    Tomis was a hardscrabble sort of place, a former Greek colony already some 600 years old by the time of Ovid’s exile in the first century AD and no shinier for the wear. Its distinguishing characteristics were exactly two: First, it was about as far from Rome as one could be sent. Second, it lay perilously close to some of Rome’s fiercest enemies, in an area that didn’t yet have a border wall. Like northern Britain, the region of Tomis would one day receive its share of border walls, but in Ovid’s day, the only barriers to invasion were the fortifications around the city itself.

    Ovid suffered in his new home. It was one thing to live in a walled city, but quite another to be completely confined within those walls. In his letters to Rome, Ovid complained that the farmers of Tomis couldn’t even venture out onto their fields. On the rare occasion when a peasant dared to visit his plot, he guided the plow with one hand while carrying weapons in another. Even the shepherds wore helmets.

    Fear permeated everyday life in Tomis. Even in times of peace, wrote Ovid, the dread of war loomed. The city was, for all intents and purposes, under perpetual siege. Ovid likened the townspeople to a timid stag caught by bears or a lamb surrounded by wolves.

    Occasionally, Ovid reminisced on his former life in the capital, where he’d lived free from fear. He wistfully recalled the amenities of Rome — the forums, the temples, and the marble theaters; the porticoes, gardens, pools, and canals; above all, the cornucopia of literature at hand. The contrast with his new circumstances was complete. At Tomis, there was nothing but the clash and clang of weapons. Ovid imagined that he might at least content himself with gardening, if only he weren’t afraid to step outside. The enemy was quite literally at the gates, separated only by the thickness of the city’s wall. Barbarian horsemen circled Tomis. Their deadly arrows, which Ovid unfailingly reminds us had been dipped in snake venom, made pincushions of the roofs in the city.

    The birth of walls set human societies on divergent paths, one leading to self-indulgent poetry, the other to taciturn militarism.

    There remained a final indignity for Ovid: the feeble, middle-aged author was pressed into service in defense of Tomis. As a youth, Ovid had avoided military service. There was no shame for shirkers back in Rome, a city replete with peaceniks and civilians. Now aging, Ovid had finally been forced to carry a sword, shield, and helmet. When the guard from the lookout signaled a raid, the poet donned his armor with shaking hands. Here was a true Roman, afraid to step out from behind his fortifications and hopelessly overwhelmed by the responsibility of defending them.

    From time to time, a Chinese poet would find himself in a situation much like Ovid’s. Stationed at some lonely outpost on the farthest reaches of the empire, the Chinese, too, longed for home while dreading the nearness of the barbarians. “In the frontier towns, you will have sad dreams at night,” wrote one. “Who wants to hear the barbarian pipe played to the moon?” Sometimes they meditated on the story of the Chinese princess who drowned herself in a river rather than cross beyond the wall. Even Chinese generals lamented the frontier life.

    Oddly, none of these sentiments appear in the letters written by the Roman soldiers at Vindolanda. Transplanted to a rainy land far from home, they grumbled at times about the beer supply but had nothing to say about shaky hands or sad dreams. It was as if these barbarian-turned-Roman auxiliaries had come from another world, where homesickness and fear had been banished. Perhaps they had.

    Almost anytime we examine the past and seek out the people most like us — those such as Ovid or the Chinese poets; people who built cities, knew how to read, and generally carried out civilian labor — we find them enclosed behind walls of their own making. Civilization and walls seem to have gone hand in hand. Beyond the walls, we find little with which we can identify — warriors mostly, of the sort we might hire to patrol the walls. The outsiders are mostly anonymous, except when they become notorious.

    The birth of walls set human societies on divergent paths, one leading to self-indulgent poetry, the other to taciturn militarism. But the first path also pointed to much more — science, mathematics, theater, art — while the other brought its followers only to a dead end, where a man was nothing except a warrior and all labor devolved upon the women.

    No invention in human history played a greater role in creating and shaping civilization than walls. Without walls, there could never have been an Ovid, and the same can be said for Chinese scholars, Babylonian mathematicians, or Greek philosophers. Moreover, the impact of walls wasn’t limited to the early phases of civilization. Wall building persisted for most of history, climaxing spectacularly during a 1,000-year period when three large empires — Rome, China, and Sasanid Persia — erected barriers that made the geopolitical divisions of the Old World all but permanent.

    The collapse of those walls influenced world history almost as profoundly as their creation, by leading to the eclipse of one region, the stagnation of another, and the rise of a third. When the great border walls were gone, leaving only faint traces on the landscape, they left indelible lines on our maps — lines that have even today not yet been obscured by modern wars or the jockeying of nations for resources. Today, a newer set of walls, rising up on four continents, has the potential to remake the world yet again.


    https://medium.com/s/greatescape/the-history-of-civilization-is-a-history-of-border-walls-24e837246fb8
    #civilisation #histoire #murs #murs_frontaliers #histoire #frontières #livre #David_Frye

  • L’interview de la mère d’Oussama Ben Laden, Alia Ghanem, par Martin Chulov dans le Guardian est l’évènement médiatique du moment :
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/03/osama-bin-laden-mother-speaks-out-family-interview
    L’article a été largement signalé et commenté (positivement) dans les grands médias français.

    Or, en dehors d’Angry Arab, personne ne semble vouloir remarquer que l’interview reprend tous les talking points de la propagande séoudienne de l’ère Mohamed Bin Salman.

    D’entrée de jeu, Chulov admet qu’il interviewe la famille Ben Laden sous le contrôle du régime séoudien :

    Now, Saudi Arabia’s new leadership – spearheaded by the ambitious 32-year-old heir to the throne, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – has agreed to my request to speak to the family. (As one of the country’s most influential families, their movements and engagements remain closely monitored.)

    Voilà l’une des dictatures les plus violentes de la planète, où le déplaisir du prince vous vaudra la ruine, ou la prison, ou la réclusion à vie dans une résidence privée, ou quelques centaines de coups de fouets, voire la décapitation. Un pays où des milliardaires parmi les plus puissants ont été retenus dans un hôtel, possiblement torturés, avant d’être proprement ruinés. Où un Premier ministre étranger a été retenu et démissionné d’office.

    Mais si la famille accepte enfin de parler – avec l’accord de la nouvelle direction du régime – c’est, selon Chulov, pour éviter de « réouvrir d’anciennes plaies » :

    Unsurprisingly, Osama bin Laden’s family are cautious in our initial negotiations; they are not sure whether opening old wounds will prove cathartic or harmful. But after several days of discussion, they are willing to talk.

    L’idée qu’il n’est pas bien sain, d’un point de vue journalistique, de présenter dans de telles conditions la parole de ces gens comme un authentique entretien, est soulevée dans la fin de l’article par une demi-sœur de Ben Laden installée (réfugiée ?) à Paris. Objection balayée d’une phrase et l’euphémisme « complicated status in the kingdom » :

    From her home in Paris, she later emailed to say she strongly objected to her mother being interviewed, asking that it be rearranged through her. Despite the blessing of her brothers and father, she felt her mother had been pressured into talking. Ghanem, however, insisted she was happy to talk and could have talked longer. It is, perhaps, a sign of the extended family’s complicated status in the kingdom that such tensions exist.

    D’ailleurs la conversation se fait ouvertement en présence d’un commissaire politique du régime mais, précise notre grand reporter : qui ne fait aucune tentative pour influencer la conversation…

    When we meet on a hot day in early June, a minder from the Saudi government sits in the room, though she makes no attempt to influence the conversation.

    On est heureux de constater que les méthodes séoudienness se sont affinées depuis l’interview grotesque de Saad Hariri.

    Bref, l’entretien commence.

    D’entrée de jeu, premier élément de langage tiré de la propagande officielle saoudienne : Oussame Ben Laden s’est radicalisé sous l’influence d’un membre des Frères musulmans. Subtile…

    “The people at university changed him,” Ghanem says. “He became a different man.” One of the men he met there was Abdullah Azzam, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood who was later exiled from Saudi Arabia and became Osama’s spiritual adviser.

    Un autre élément de langage, central, reviendra plusieurs fois dans l’interview : en Afghanistan, Ben Laden est un type très bien : il n’est pas encore un jihadiste (jusqu’en 1999…).

    “[…] He spent all his money on Afghanistan – he would sneak off under the guise of family business.” Did she ever suspect he might become a jihadist? “It never crossed my mind.”

    Tant qu’à faire, le petit détail sectaire qui ne trompe pas : la maman de Ben Laden est alaouite :

    Ghanem begins to relax, and talks about her childhood in the coastal Syrian city of Latakia, where she grew up in a family of Alawites, an offshoot of Shia Islam.

    Évidemment, le bon fan-boy de la rébellitude syrienne ne tarde pas à en faire la bonne lecture : la mère de Ben Laden est alaouite « comme les Assad ». Par exemple Sam Dagher te conseille l’article en commençant par cette remarque (subtile) :
    https://twitter.com/samdagher/status/1025343757229678597

    Must read by ⁦@martinchulov⁩ on Bin Laden’s mother. She’s Syrian Alawite like the Assads. […]

    Un autre talking point typique de MBS : l’Arabie séoudite était un pays relativement libéral dans les années 70 (ah ah… comment traduire « freewheeling » ici sans paraître totalement ridicule), mais a adopté une interprétation rigoriste du wahhabisme en réaction à la révolution iranienne (dont le but, écrit-il, était d’exporter le chiisme dans le monde arabe sunnite).

    Osama bin Laden’s formative years in Jeddah came in the relatively freewheeling 1970s, before the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which aimed to export Shia zeal into the Sunni Arab world. From then on, Saudi’s rulers enforced a rigid interpretation of Sunni Islam – one that had been widely practised across the Arabian peninsula since the 18th century, the era of cleric Muhammed ibn Abdul Wahhab.

    Ah, il faut te dire qu’à ce moment de ce long article, l’interview proprement dite de la mère de Ben Laden est terminée depuis longtemps, et n’a dû occuper que deux gros paragraphes…

    À la place, on part dans des considérations enthousiastes sur cette nouvelle direction saoudienne, sous l’influence de Bin Salman, qui voudrait instaurer un « islam modéré » en Arabie (Chulov est d’ailleurs sans surprise coupable, dans le Guardian, de plusieurs articles enthousiastes sur les femmes séoudiennes autorisées à conduire) :

    In 2018, Saudi’s new leadership wants to draw a line under this era and introduce what bin Salman calls “moderate Islam”. This he sees as essential to the survival of a state where a large, restless and often disaffected young population has, for nearly four decades, had little access to entertainment, a social life or individual freedoms. Saudi’s new rulers believe such rigid societal norms, enforced by clerics, could prove fodder for extremists who tap into such feelings of frustration.

    Reform is beginning to creep through many aspects of Saudi society; among the most visible was June’s lifting of the ban on women drivers. There have been changes to the labour markets and a bloated public sector; cinemas have opened, and an anti-corruption drive launched across the private sector and some quarters of government. The government also claims to have stopped all funding to Wahhabi institutions outside the kingdom, which had been supported with missionary zeal for nearly four decades.

    Such radical shock therapy is slowly being absorbed across the country, where communities conditioned to decades of uncompromising doctrine don’t always know what to make of it. Contradictions abound: some officials and institutions eschew conservatism, while others wholeheartedly embrace it. Meanwhile, political freedoms remain off-limits; power has become more centralised and dissent is routinely crushed.

    Toujours plus éloigné du sujet initial (la maman d’Oussama), le prince Turki al-Faisal, l’« érudit » ancien chef des services secrets saoudiens :

    I meet Prince Turki al-Faisal, who was the head of Saudi intelligence for 24 years, between 1977 and 1 September 2001 (10 days before the 9/11 attacks), at his villa in Jeddah. An erudite man now in his mid-70s, Turki wears green cufflinks bearing the Saudi flag on the sleeves of his thobe.

    Lequel te synthétise l’élément de langage central de l’article : en Afghanistan c’est un combattant de la liberté, et c’est après que ça se gâte :

    “There are two Osama bin Ladens,” he tells me. “One before the end of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and one after it. Before, he was very much an idealistic mujahid. He was not a fighter. By his own admission, he fainted during a battle, and when he woke up, the Soviet assault on his position had been defeated.”

    As Bin Laden moved from Afghanistan to Sudan, and as his links to Saudi Arabia soured, it was Turki who spoke with him on behalf of the kingdom. In the wake of 9/11, these direct dealings came under intense scrutiny.

    Et une autre explication totalement tirée par les cheveux : si la plupart des terroristes du 11 Septembre étaient séoudiens, ce n’était pas parce que les Séoudiens vivent dans un environnement toxique depuis l’enfance, mais parce que Ben Laden voulait tourner le monde occidental contre l’Arabie… Oui, c’est une très jolie théorie du complot dans laquelle on présente le royaume comme une victime du 11 Septembre :

    “There is no doubt that he deliberately chose Saudi citizens for the 9/11 plot,” a British intelligence officer tells me. “He was convinced that was going to turn the west against his ... home country. He did indeed succeed in inciting a war, but not the one he expected.”

    Et pour terminer, enfonçons le clou sur l’authentique conviction réformatrice (« mais pourra-t-il réussir ? ») de ce brave Mohammed Bin Salman :

    While change has been attempted in Saudi Arabia before, it has been nowhere near as extensive as the current reforms. How hard Mohammed bin Salman can push against a society indoctrinated in such an uncompromising worldview remains an open question.

    Saudia Arabia’s allies are optimistic, but offer a note of caution. The British intelligence officer I spoke to told me, “If Salman doesn’t break through, there will be many more Osamas. And I’m not sure they’ll be able to shake the curse.”

  • As U.S. pushes for Mideast peace, Saudi king reassures allies |
    Reuters

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-paelestinians-usa-saudi/as-u-s-pushes-for-mideast-peace-saudi-king-reassures-allies-idUSKBN1KJ0F9

    RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has reassured Arab allies it will not endorse any Middle East peace plan that fails to address Jerusalem’s status or refugees’ right of return, easing their concerns that the kingdom might back a nascent U.S. deal which aligns with Israel on key issues.

    King Salman’s private guarantees to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his public defense of long-standing Arab positions in recent months have helped reverse perceptions that Saudi Arabia’s stance was changing under his powerful young son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, diplomats and analysts said.

    This in turn has called into question whether Saudi Arabia, birthplace of Islam and site of its holiest shrines, can rally Arab support for a new push to end the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, with an eye to closing ranks against mutual enemy Iran.

    “In Saudi Arabia, the king is the one who decides on this issue now, not the crown prince,” said a senior Arab diplomat in Riyadh. “The U.S. mistake was they thought one country could pressure the rest to give in, but it’s not about pressure. No Arab leader can concede on Jerusalem or Palestine.”

    SPONSORED

    Palestinian officials told Reuters in December that Prince Mohammed, known as MbS, had pressed Abbas to support the U.S. plan despite concerns it offered the Palestinians limited self-government inside disconnected patches of the occupied West Bank, with no right of return for refugees displaced by the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948 and 1967.

    Such a plan would diverge from the Arab Peace Initiative drawn up by Saudi Arabia in 2002 in which Arab nations offered Israel normal ties in return for a statehood deal with the Palestinians and full Israeli withdrawal from territory captured in 1967.

    Saudi officials have denied any difference between King Salman, who has vocally supported that initiative, and MbS, who has shaken up long-held policies on many issues and told a U.S. magazine in April that Israelis are entitled to live peacefully on their own land - a rare statement for an Arab leader.

    The Palestinian ambassador to Riyadh, Basem Al-Agha, told Reuters that King Salman had expressed support for Palestinians in a recent meeting with Abbas, saying: “We will not abandon you ... We accept what you accept and we reject what you reject.”

    He said that King Salman naming the 2018 Arab League conference “The Jerusalem Summit” and announcing $200 million in aid for Palestinians were messages that Jerusalem and refugees were back on the table.

    FILE PHOTO: Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud attends Riyadh International Humanitarian Forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia February 26, 2018. REUTERS/Faisal Al Nasser
    The Saudi authorities did not respond to a request for comment on the current status of diplomatic efforts.

    RED LINES

    Diplomats in the region say Washington’s current thinking, conveyed during a tour last month by top White House officials, does not include Arab East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state, a right of return for refugees or a freeze of Israeli settlements in lands claimed by the Palestinians.

    Senior adviser Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, has not provided concrete details of the U.S. strategy more than 18 months after he was tasked with forging peace.

    A diplomat in Riyadh briefed on Kushner’s latest visit to the kingdom said King Salman and MbS had seen him together: “MbS did the talking while the king was in the background.”

    Independent analyst Neil Partrick said King Salman appears to have reined in MbS’ “politically reckless approach” because of Jerusalem’s importance to Muslims.

    “So MbS won’t oppose Kushner’s ‘deal’, but neither will he, any longer, do much to encourage its one-sided political simplicities,” said Partrick, lead contributor and editor of “Saudi Arabian Foreign Policy: Conflict and Cooperation”.

     Kushner and fellow negotiator Jason Greenblatt have not presented a comprehensive proposal but rather disjointed elements, which one diplomat said “crossed too many red lines”.

    Instead, they heavily focused on the idea of setting up an economic zone in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula with the adjacent Gaza Strip possibly coming under the control of Cairo, which Arab diplomats described as unacceptable.

    In Qatar, Kushner asked Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani to pressure the Islamist group Hamas to cede control of Gaza in return for development aid, the diplomats said.

    One diplomat briefed on the meeting said Sheikh Tamim just nodded silently. It was unclear if that signaled an agreement or whether Qatar was offered anything in return.

    “The problem is there is no cohesive plan presented to all countries,” said the senior Arab diplomat in Riyadh. “Nobody sees what everyone else is being offered.”

    Kushner, a 37-year-old real estate developer with little experience of international diplomacy or political negotiation, visited Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt and Israel in June. He did not meet Abbas, who has refused to see Trump’s team after the U.S. embassy was moved to Jerusalem.

    In an interview at the end of his trip, Kushner said Washington would announce its Middle East peace plan soon, and press on with or without Abbas. Yet there has been little to suggest any significant progress towards ending the decades-old conflict, which Trump has said would be “the ultimate deal”.

    “There is no new push. Nothing Kushner presented is acceptable to any of the Arab countries,” the Arab diplomat said. “He thinks he is ‘I Dream of Genie’ with a magic wand to make a new solution to the problem.”

    A White House official told reporters last week that Trump’s envoys were working on the most detailed set of proposals to date for the long-awaited peace proposal, which would include what the administration is calling a robust economic plan, though there is thus far no release date.

    Editing by Giles Elgood
    Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

    • In Saudi Arabia, the king is the one who decides on this issue now, not the crown prince,
      […]
      A diplomat in Riyadh briefed on Kushner’s latest visit [in June] to the kingdom said King Salman and MbS had seen him together: “MbS did the talking while the king was in the background.

      Euh, question bête : c’est dans la même aile de l’hôpital la gériatrie de king S et la rééducation (il est probablement sorti des soins intensifs, depuis le temps) de Kronprinz bS ?

      Ce serait quand même plus commode pour Mr Son in law

  • https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenrwald/2018/07/25/signs-point-to-trouble-ahead-for-saudi-economy/#3591ae46635d

    Signs Point To Trouble Ahead For Saudi Economy

    The lasting impact of that crackdown (or purge, depending on how you see it) has been a stifling of the Saudi private sector, with many wealthy Saudis unwilling to invest domestically despite Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s centralized push for business growth . The government, under the direction of the prince, is trying to compel economic growth and diversification, primarily through the Vision2030 program. This has left the Saudi government as the major source of investment in the Saudi economy, which, ultimately, defeats the objectives of diversification and privatization. Government investment can make Saudi economic numbers look good on paper, but it is a risky strategy. When oil prices fall so does government spending (meaning government spending does not lead to diversification).

    This also sends a troubling signal to foreign investors and foreign businesses considering opportunities in the kingdom. If Saudis are trying to move their money out of the country—and if the government is concerned enough to prevent them from doing so—foreign investors or companies looking to open businesses in Saudi Arabia will hesitate. Without assurances that the rule of law is respected in Saudi Arabia, foreign businesses will consider Saudi Arabia too risky to enter. Capital flight from Saudi citizens is a key indicator.

    #arabie_saoudite suites de la #nuit_torride

  • Saudi Arabia Still Detaining Dozens From Corruption Crackdown - WSJ
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-arabia-still-detaining-dozens-from-corruption-crackdown-1530734356

    Those still in custody include some of Saudi Arabia’s richest men, and some who once held powerful government positions until their arrests last November. Among them are Mohammed al-Amoudi, a Saudi-Ethiopian billionaire; Bakr bin Laden, the chairman of the construction giant Saudi Binladin Group; Amr al-Dabbagh, former head of Saudi Arabia’s investment agency; and Adel Fakeih, a former economy minister and once a trusted aide to Prince Mohammed.

    Also detained is a senior royal, Prince Turki bin Abdullah, who served as governor of Riyadh and is a son of the previous monarch, King Abdullah.

    [...]

    Since the Ritz was closed as a detention center and reopened as a hotel in late January, there has been nearly complete official silence on the cases of 56 suspects who didn’t agree to a settlement.

    The Saudi government wants to avoid the publicity of the Ritz episode “and will do things more quietly with any new arrests,” a person familiar with the matter said.

    #Arabie_saoudite

  • Foreign journalist barred from covering William-Netanyahu meeting over suspicion he is Muslim - Israel News - Haaretz.com
    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-journalist-barred-from-covering-royal-visit-suspected-to-be-muslim

    • Nebi Qena, AP’s chief TV producer in Israel for the past three years, was detained by security guards at Netanyahu’s residency
    • PM’s office says ’lessons will be drawn immediately’

    Security guards at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residency detained Associated Press senior television producer Tuesday due to his Albanian citizenship.

    le reste derrière #paywall

    • Le communiqué de l’AP sur le NYT

      Israeli Security Bar AP Journalist From Prince William Event - The New York Times
      https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/06/26/world/middleeast/ap-ml-israel-journalist-blocked.html

      An Associated Press journalist was prevented from covering a visit by Britain’s Prince William to the prime minister’s official residence after Israeli security agents questioned him about his religion and ethnic background.

      Nebi Qena, the AP’s chief television producer for Israel and the Palestinian territories, was held at the entrance to the residence for 45 minutes, forcing him to miss Tuesday’s event, while other journalists were allowed to enter. Netanyahu’s office later apologized, citing “human error.

      Qena, an Albanian citizen, has been with the AP for 10 years, including three based in Jerusalem. He said he was repeatedly questioned by security guards about his “ethnic origin.

  • Ironiquement, alors que l’Europe s’apprête à généraliser les Robocopyrights, une des affaires les plus emblématiques de leurs dérives (Dancing Baby) arrive à son terme aux États-Unis après 10 ans de procédure...

    After More Than a Decade of Litigation, the Dancing Baby Has Done His Part to Strengthen Fair Use for Everyone.
    https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/after-more-decade-litigation-dancing-baby-ready-move

    Litigation can always take twists and turns, but when EFF filed a lawsuit against Universal Music Group in 2007 on behalf of Stephanie Lenz, few would have anticipated it would be ten years until the case was finally resolved. But today, at last, it is. Along the way, Lenz v. Universal contributed to strengthening fair use law, bringing nationwide attention to the issues of copyright and fair use in new digital movie-making and sharing technologies.

    It all started when Lenz posted a YouTube video of her then-toddler-aged son dancing while Prince’s song “Let’s Go Crazy” played in the background, and Universal used copyright claims to get the link disabled. We brought the case hoping to get some clarity from the courts on a simple but important issue: can a rightsholder use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to take down an obvious fair use, without consequence?

    Congress designed the DMCA to give rightsholders, service providers, and users relatively precise rules of the road for policing online copyright infringement. The center of the scheme is the notice and takedown process. In exchange for substantial protection from liability for the actions of their users, service providers must promptly take offline content on their platforms that has been identified as infringing, as well as several other prescribed steps. Copyright owners, for their part, are given an expedited, extra-judicial procedure for obtaining redress against alleged infringement, paired with explicit statutory guidance regarding the process for doing so, and provisions designed to deter and ameliorate abuse of that process.

    Without Section 512, the risk of crippling liability for the acts of users would have prevented the emergence of most of the social media outlets we use today. Instead, the Internet has become the most revolutionary platform for the creation and dissemination of speech that the world has ever known.

  • Saudis arrest another women’s right activist

    The arrest of Hatoon al-Fassi is part of Riyadh’s crackdown on activists in the kingdom.

    SOURCE: Al Jazeera News
    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/06/saudis-arrest-women-activist-180627130433127.html

    Saudi Arabia has arrested Hatoon al-Fassi, a Saudi women’s rights activist and writer, as part of its crackdown on activists in the kingdom, a human rights group said.

    ALQST, a UK-based rights group focusing on Saudi Arabia, confirmed to Al Jazeera on Wednesday al-Fassi’s arrest.

    Considered a leading figure in women’s rights in the region, and the kingdom, in particular, al-Fassi has long been fighting for the rights of Saudi women, including their right to participate in municipal elections.

    As a scholar, her work focuses on women’s history and politics.
    WATCH: One year since Mohammed bin Salman crowned prince of Saudi (2:25)

    Al-Fassi was among the first Saudi women to drive for the first time since the religiously conservative country overturned the world’s only ban on female drivers.

    Last month, the government announced that a number of activists were being held for having suspicious contacts with foreign entities, as well as offering financial support to “foreign enemies”.

    Other suspects were being sought, the government said at the time, while state-linked media labelled those arrested as traitors and “agents of embassies”.

    Eight of the 17 detained activists, including five women, were later temporarily released “until the completion of their procedural review”.

    None of the activists has yet been officially charged, and they are being held incommunicado - with no access to their families or lawyers.

    Earlier on Wednesday, United Nations experts urged Saudi Arabia to immediately release a number of women’s human rights defenders arrested in the nationwide crackdown.

    “In stark contrast with this celebrated moment of liberation for Saudi women, women’s human rights defenders have been arrested and detained on a wide scale across the country, which is truly worrying and perhaps a better indication of the Government’s approach to women’s human rights,” they said in a statement.

    “We call for the urgent release of all of those detained while pursuing their legitimate activities in the promotion and protection of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia.”
    #Arabie_saoudite #droits_des_femmes#repression#liberte_d'_expression

    • Saudi Arabia has arrested Hatoon al-Fassi, a Saudi women’s rights activist and writer, as part of its crackdown on activists in the kingdom, a human rights group said.

      ALQST, a UK-based rights group focusing on Saudi Arabia, confirmed to Al Jazeera on Wednesday al-Fassi’s arrest.

      Considered a leading figure in women’s rights in the region, and the kingdom, in particular, al-Fassi has long been fighting for the rights of Saudi women, including their right to participate in municipal elections.

      As a scholar, her work focuses on women’s history and politics.
      WATCH: One year since Mohammed bin Salman crowned prince of Saudi (2:25)

      Al-Fassi was among the first Saudi women to drive for the first time since the religiously conservative country overturned the world’s only ban on female drivers.

      Last month, the government announced that a number of activists were being held for having suspicious contacts with foreign entities, as well as offering financial support to “foreign enemies”.

      Other suspects were being sought, the government said at the time, while state-linked media labelled those arrested as traitors and “agents of embassies”.

      Eight of the 17 detained activists, including five women, were later temporarily released “until the completion of their procedural review”.

      None of the activists has yet been officially charged, and they are being held incommunicado - with no access to their families or lawyers.

      Earlier on Wednesday, United Nations experts urged Saudi Arabia to immediately release a number of women’s human rights defenders arrested in the nationwide crackdown.

      “In stark contrast with this celebrated moment of liberation for Saudi women, women’s human rights defenders have been arrested and detained on a wide scale across the country, which is truly worrying and perhaps a better indication of the Government’s approach to women’s human rights,” they said in a statement.

      “We call for the urgent release of all of those detained while pursuing their legitimate activities in the promotion and protection of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia.”

  • Dystopia #venezuela: Cryptocurrency is Aiding a Society in Collapse
    https://hackernoon.com/dystopias-philosophies-and-cryptocurrencies-venezuela-earth-19866bcb82c?

    An interview with The Venezuelan PrinceCC 2.0 franzconde Adapted https://flic.kr/p/7wgGhdMind the gap: This piece may contain offensive language.A dial tone pings as we set up an encrypted VoIP. My contact is very serious about security, and respectably so, as he describes his home country of Venezuela. He paints a picture of a country in the grips of an oppressive regime, a sci-fi dystopia which he sees being challenged by decentralized systems and cryptocurrencies. What he describes applies not only to Venezuela , but could help us define the next century of global civilization.We’ll call our friend “The Crypto Prince”, a reference to the comparatively lavish lifestyle he lives as a student outside of Venezuela. In reality, The Prince, a Caracas native tells us that his family was (...)

    #dystopia-venezuela #ethereum #revolution #bitcoin

  • Israel adopts abandoned Saudi sectarian logic - Modern Diplomacy

    https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2018/06/16/israel-adopts-abandoned-saudi-sectarian-logic

    Amid ever closer cooperation with Saudi Arabia, Israel’s military appears to be adopting the kind of sectarian anti-Shiite rhetoric that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is abandoning as part of a bid to develop a national rather than a religious ethos and promote his yet to be defined form of moderate Islam.

    The Israeli rhetoric in Arabic-language video clips that target a broad audience across the Middle East and North Africa emerged against the backdrop of a growing influence of conservative religious conscripts and officers in all branches of the Israeli armed forces.

    The clips featuring army spokesman Major Avichay Adraee were also designed to undermine support for Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip and backed recent mass anti-Israeli protests along the border with Israel, in advance of a visit to the Middle East by US peace negotiators Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt.

    The visit could determine when US President Donald J. Trump publishes his long-awaited ‘art of the deal’ proposal for a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that despite Israeli and tacit Saudi and United Arab Emirates backing is likely to be rejected by the Palestinians as well as those Arab states that have so far refused to tow the Saudi line.

    Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, in tacit cooperation with the Palestine Authority on the West Bank, have adopted a carrot-and-stick approach in an as yet failed bid to weaken Hamas’ control of Gaza in advance of the announcement of Mr. Trump’s plan.

    Citing a saying of the Prophet Mohammed, Major Adraee, painting Hamas as an Iranian stooge, asserted that “whoever acts like a people is one of them… You (Hamas) have officially become Shiites in line with the Prophet’s saying… Have you not read the works of the classical jurists, scholars…who have clearly warned you about the threat Iranian Shiism poses to you and your peoples?”

    In a twist of irony, Major Adraee quoted the very scholars Prince Mohammed appears to be downplaying. They include 18th century preacher Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahhab, whose ultra-conservative anti-Shiite interpretation of Islam shaped Saudi Arabia for much of its history; Taqi ad-Din Ahmad ibn Taymiyyah, a 14th century theologist and jurist, whose worldview, like that of Wahhabism, inspires militant Islam; and Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Egyptian-born, Qatar-based scholar, who was designated a terrorist by Saudi Arabia and the UAE because he is believed to be the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.

  • ’Riyadhology’ and Muhammad bin Salman’s Telltale Succession - Lawfare

    By Chibli Mallat Friday, June 8, 2018,

    https://www.lawfareblog.com/riyadhology-and-muhammad-bin-salmans-telltale-succession

    Saudi Arabia’s monarchy entered a new era last June when King Salman’s ambitious son Muhammad bin Salman, then just shy of 32, was made crown prince by royal order. MBS, as he is widely known, displaced Muhammad bin Nayef, an influential prince with deep ties to Washington, as next in line to the throne, marking a shift from the aging sons of the country’s founder, ‘Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud, to a younger coterie of royals—and skipping the generation in between. Since even before his accession to crown prince, MBS promoted a dynamic agenda of economic and social reforms—with plans to diversify the country’s economy, expand women’s rights and grant greater openness to Western culture—while also cracking down on political dissent.

    There are different ways to try to decipher the political intrigue among the Saudi royal family. Among the best available tea leaves are the Saudis’ own legal pronouncements, and the royal orders that brought MBS to his current position are telling. Clearly rushed and poorly vetted, they suggest that King Salman and MBS were working outside the normal process for consensus within the royal family and that there is significant opposition to MBS’s rule waiting in the wings. 

    Otherwise dry Saudi legal texts tell us much about “Riyadhology”—the Saudi equivalent of Kremlinology in the days of Soviet signal opacity. Laws of social science are more elusive, but I have defended the concept of “constitutional science” against skeptical editors, and sometimes prevailed. If one looks closely enough at key constitutional clauses, the wording reveals a compromise of political powers, each trying to push the language to his advantage. This is trite. More daring is the proposal that the fractured logic of these texts can give clues about a coming crisis.

    When MBS was appointed crown prince in June 2017, the irregularities in the official process portended trouble. At stake is the transition of power from King Salman to his son.

  • Sneak peek inside Putin’s new limo : Russian leader showcases his ride (VIDEO) — RT World News
    https://www.rt.com/news/428525-putin-inside-new-limo

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COR3yFERV5o


    surtout parce qu’on reconnait fort distinctement Ramzan #Kadyrov au deuxième rang, immédiatement derrière VVP (et son interprète). Y compris sur la vignette de la vidéo.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin showed off the interior of the brand-new addition to his motorcade to Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who is visiting Moscow.
    Following talks, Putin invited the prince, nicknamed MbZ, to check out his car from the new ‘Kortezh’ (‘Motorcade’) project. As they approached the black limo parked near the Grand Kremlin Palace, Putin told his guest the car is a little bit bigger than a Mercedes.

    It’s very comfortable,” MbZ said sitting inside with Putin.

    #Cortège

  • Why is Saudi Arabia Restricting German Business in the Kingdom? | Al Bawaba

    https://www.albawaba.com/news/why-saudi-arabia-restricting-german-business-kingdom-1139232

    By Eleanor Beevor

    Over the past week, business analysts have balked at the news that Saudi Arabia appears to have imposed a boycott on German businesses wishing to strike deals with the Saudi state. Though the “boycott” is not enshrined in policy yet, multiple reports have quoted both German and Saudi sources confirming an impasse.

    And until there is confirmation otherwise, rumours of the boycott should be taken seriously. It appears that attempts to divest state projects away from German companies have been in the making for a while – infrastructure projects that seemed likely to go to German firms have changed hands in the last few weeks. Dr. Courtney Freer, a Research Officer at the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics told Al Bawaba:

    Boycott mulled for months

    “I do think that Riyadh will follow through on blocking German businesses, at least from government tenders. This decision has likely been mulled over for months, as diplomatic ties between the two have gotten worse. I imagine this measure will primarily hurt large German companies active in the kingdom like Siemens, Bayer, and potentially Daimler; these companies’ employees will also of course be affected as well inside the kingdom.”

    What is striking is how narrow the grievances are that reportedly sparked the boycott. Der Spiegel quoted German business owner Detlef Daues, 65% of whose business revenues come from Saudi Arabia, as saying that Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman has been “deeply offended” by German government statements and policy of late. Specifically, Prince Mohammed is still apparently upset by a remark six months ago by the then-German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel.

     

    File photo taken April 10, 2018, shows Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman posing upon his arrival at the 
    Elysee Presidential palace for a meeting with French President in Paris. (AFP File Photo/Ludovic Marin)

  • Without France, Lebanon would probably be at war, Macron says | Reuters

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-lebanon-saudi/without-france-lebanon-would-probably-be-at-war-macron-says-idUSKCN1IT1P1

    “If France wasn’t listened to then there probably would be a war in Lebanon at this moment as we speak. It’s French diplomacy, it’s our action,” Macron said in an interview with broadcaster BFM TV, visibly irritated after being asked if his foreign policy over the last year had achieved anything.

    Macron said an unscheduled stopover in Riyadh to convince Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, followed by an invitation to Hariri to come to France, had been the catalyst to ending the crisis.

    “I remind you that a prime minister was held in Saudi Arabia for several weeks,” he said, a comment that could irk Riyadh which, like Hariri, denied he was ever held against his will.

    Macron dined with Hariri and Prince Mohammed in Paris in April after a conference to rally international support for an investment program to boost the Lebanese economy.

    France offers citizenship to ’Spider-Man’ migrant
    Hariri, who visited Riyadh in February for the first time since the November crisis, is working to form a new coalition after a May 6 parliamentary election that strengthened his rival Hezbollah and its political allies.

  • Saudi Arabia Detains Activists Who Pushed to End Ban on Women Driving
    By Ben Hubbard
    May 18, 2018
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/world/middleeast/saudi-women-drivers-arrests.html

    BEIRUT, Lebanon — Saudi Arabia has detained at least five people connected to the campaign to end the kingdom’s longtime ban on women driving, despite the fact that the government has promised to lift the ban next month, associates of the detainees said on Friday.

    The Saudi government has billed the lifting of the driving ban as part of a reform push spearheaded by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The changes have also included curtailing the powers of the religious authorities and expanding the entertainment options available in the conservative kingdom.

    But those efforts have coincided with waves of arrests that have scooped up clerics, businessmen, members of the royal family and activists who have a history of challenging the government’s positions. Many of them have not been officially charged with crimes despite having been held for months.

    The Saudi government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new detentions, and it remained unclear whether those detained had been charged with anything.

    #réformes #MBS #arabie_saoudite

  • CCTV footage shows Prince visiting doctor the day before his death | Music | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/apr/20/prince-cctv-footage-sinead-o-connor

    The archive comprises what attorney Mark Metz described as the “vast majority” of evidence in the case, and contains a police interview with the singer Sinéad O’Connor from 2 May 2016 in which she alleges Prince “used hard drugs commonly”. The Irish musician, who rose to fame in 1990 with the single Nothing Compares 2 U – a song written by Prince – claimed: “I’ve seen him in very frightening conditions after using drugs.” She alleged that he was abusive towards women while intoxicated: *“He had been extremely violent to a number of women in his life, including myself, and several women were put in the hospital while Prince was under the effects of these medications.

    *

    #Prince