Author Archives: Arab America

Al-Jazeera journalist Peter Greste has been freed and deported from Egypt and flown to Cyprus, bringing an end to 400 days behind bars.

The Australian ex-BBC correspondent was arrested in December 2013 and tried on charges that included spreading false news and aiding the Muslim Brotherhood.

Two other al-Jazeera men, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed, remain in detention.

Reports said Mr Fahmy would be deported to Canada, but concern remains about Mr Mohamed, who holds no dual nationality.

Mr Fahmy, who holds dual Egyptian and Canadian citizenship, may be freed after having his Egyptian nationality revoked, presidential sources said.

All the defendants denied the charges against them and said their trial was a sham.

They were accused of collaborating with the banned Muslim Brotherhood after the overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi by the military in 2013.

In their defence, the three men said they were simply reporting the news.

Mr Greste’s brother Andrew said in a statement: “We’re ecstatic that Peter has been released and we now ask if the world could respect his privacy, to give him time to appreciate his freedom before he faces the media.”

Source: www.bbc.com

By most accounts, American Sniper depicts its Arab Iraqi subjects in a simplistic and shallow fashion.  No one has accused director Clint Eastwood of portraying the Arab characters of the film in a manner that is nuanced or layered.

And I don’t mean to be too elementary, but that is really all that matters.  When a movie like this, like many others before it, simply treats Arabs and Muslims as either villains or helpless victims, we need not delve any further.  We should simply call American Sniper what it is: racist.

Sure, the acting is good.  The cinematography is good.  There’s a struggle.  There’s a love story.  But it’s racist.  So that’s it.

Earlier this week, in a column for CNN, Dean Obeidallah analyzed the film.  Dean is perhaps the most recognizable Arab American commentator in the media.  He frequently writes for CNN and The Daily Beast, and he periodically appears on cable news networks offering commentary.  Also, he recently debuted a weekly radio show on Sirius.

Source: www.civilarab.com

The international Halal food market, considered one of the fastest growing segments of the worldwide food industry and currently worth $1.1 trillion globally, occupies an integral part of Gulfood 2015 — the 20th anniversary of the food and hospitality trade show.

In all, more than 1,000 international halal food brands and companies will convene at Dubai World Trade Centre (DWTC) from Feb. 8-12 to display thousands of Halal products — from energy drinks, vegan and vegetarian foods to meat and poultry, canned goods, gourmet and fine foods — at the second annual Halal World Food.

With more than 80,000 international food industry professionals expected to attend the largest edition of Gulfood, Halal World Food will cement its standing as the world’s biggest annual halal food sourcing trade show. Beyond the significant, sector-specific commercial and trading opportunities presented at the dedicated show-within-a-show concept, the inaugural Halal Investment Conference on Feb. 10 will debut as part of the three-day Gulfood Leaders Events program.

“The global halal food market now accounts for a fifth of the world’s food trade (Datamonitor, 2014), and as the primary trading hub for halal food in the MENA region, Dubai has both the ambition and world-class infrastructure to become a worldwide halal center,” said Trixie

LohMirmand, SVP, exhibitions and events management, DWTC.
Topics to be covered at the Halal Investment Conference include among others the role of halal in Dubai’s capital of Islamic Economy vision, business opportunities in the global halal marketplace.

“Dubai, with its vision to become the capital of the Islamic economy and the introduction of its halal scheme will level the playing field for all halal manufactures and restore consumer confidence,” said Idris Mohammed, director, Tilly-Sabco Bretagne — a French leader in chicken production and slaughtering, and the title sponsor of the Halal Investment Conference.

Source: www.arabnews.com

There is a significant development taking place for the Palestinian cause in Europe, as a win for the Greek radical-left party SYRIZA in the  elections might not only make the European elite and international markets tremble and galvanize social movements against austerity across the continent, it may also turn out to become a huge blow for European support for the Zionist state of Israel.

The party, that is poised to gain a victory on 25 January and will most probably form a government thereafter, has more consistently than any other party coming to power in Europe clearly alligned itself with the Palestinian struggle against the Israeli occupation. SYRIZA has worked together with different pro-Palestinian groups and migrant organizations that support the resistance.

Official documents of SYRIZA as well as calls by the party platform have proposed the end of Greek cooperation with Israel regarding matters of defense of Israeli aggression. During the bombing last summer, party leader Alex Tsipras, wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh, attended a rally that marched on the European Commission Representation offices in Greece and then to the United States Embassy to protest the Israeli army military campaign in the Gaza Strip and unilaterally demanding an end to the brutality in Palestine by Israel, saying that “we cannot remain passive, because if this happens on the other side of the Mediterranean today, it can happen on our own side tomorrow.”

Party members have repeatedly criticized the Zionist aggression and advocated for international pressure on Israel. SYRIZA’s youth wing that is active in the pro-Palestine movement in Greece put out a call “to stop the genocide”. A SYRIZA spokesperson from Athens said that the party will make “support to Palestine a permanent feature of Greek politics” when in power. The party has a substantial number of active members among Muslims and migrants, especially from Turkey and lately also East Europe; groups that together with the pro-Palestine left have generally formed the backbone of the growing solidarity movements all over the world.

Though it was in Greece under the social-democrat Andreas Papandeou that the first Palestinian embassy in any Western country was opened, his son George has disgracefully shifted Athens towards Tel Aviv during his term in power. The dramatic decline of the social-democrat party PASOK and the stunning rise of SYRIZA may significantly help reorientate the Greek left and the country in general back to a principled tradition of international solidarity against imperialism and colonial domination, something the Greeks both historically and now more recently under the Troika have been the victim of themselves.

Although the proposal of SYRIZA to create a democratic Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, in agreement with the UN resolutions, might not go far enough yet (and it is up to the members to keep pushing for the right party line on this matter), a victory for SYRIZA nonetheless may come together with the first anti-Zionist prime minister in Europe. Hopefully the rest of Europe will follow suit, so that after taking Athens, and Madrid, and Berlin, and Paris, and London, one day we might take back Gaza and Al-Quds.”

Source: daily-struggles.tumblr.com

Arab business leaders attending the Davos summit have highlighted that investing in technology entrepreneurs is a solution for youth unemployment and economic and social inequality in the Middle East.

Some of the regional attendees of this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos stated that investments in the digital economy in the Arab world were significantly less than in other regions although it could solve problems related to the regional youth unemployment, which currently stands at 25 percent.

The Arab region has circa 10 times less than India, 15 times less than China, 35 times less than Europe and 200 times less than the USA, invested in venture capital per capita per annum, explained Dany Farha, CEO of BECO Capital, a regional venture capital firm focused on technology investments in the Arab region.

“If unemployment maintains its current rate, the Arab region, which is expected to have a population of 598 million in 2050, will have 149.5 million people out of jobs,” he said.

“It’s time we close the gap with the rest of the world and increase investment in the technology sector by backing the firms who can invest, coach, support and unlock tremendous value, create valuable white-collar jobs and contribute to improving lives and humanity in our region.

“To me, what is really imposing is the tremendous contribution of technology to employment and GDP growth at the national level.”

According to Farha the technology sector is one of the few sectors that can create a positive impact quickly and with modest amounts of capital.

He stated that 10 technology companies based in the Arab region, which didn’t exist five years ago, now had a collective workforce of 2,600, a combined enterprise value of over $2.5 billion, and generated over $800 million in combined annualised revenues.

He said: “Compounding is a very powerful mathematical characteristic, when all these companies are growing at between 50 to 150 percent annually, and more such companies are being built and succeeding today, you can see how $800 million can get to several billion dollars in annual revenues in just a few years from now, growing their headcounts and enterprise values in similar fashion.

“These technology companies create jobs and are accretive to the economy, again, a unique characteristic of the technology sector.”

This year’s World Economic Forum, an annual conference attracting business and government leaders to discuss pressing global economic issues, was held from 21 to 24 January in Davos, Switzerland.

Source: www.arabianbusiness.com

President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi issued a decision from a military unit headed by General Osama Askar to be in charge of the eastside of the Suez Canal, comprising Sinai, in an important meeting with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) Saturday.

The meeting follows a series of deadly attacks in North Sinai Thursday.

“The attacks were not the first and will not be the last,” Al-Sisi said in a televised speech addressing the nation on Saturday afternoon.

“It is a long way that people chose to take since 30 June and 3 July, and after that agreed to delegate the army to launch a war on those terrorist groups,” Al-Sisi said.

While final figures remain unannounced, attacks in North Sinai targeted police and military personnel and strategic security installations, leaving at least 30 dead. It had been one of the most violent operations since November.

“Egypt is facing the strongest secret organisation in the world,” Al-Sisi said. Sinai-based militant group ‘State of Sinai’ claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Al-Sisi added that he “was well aware that this was going to happen, and you knew as well that we this organization was strong, trained, funded”, in a clear reference to the Muslim Brotherhood banned organisation and former president Mohamed Morsi’s ouster.

On 30 June and 3 July 2014, the Egyptian people made a tough and dangerous choice. “You made the choice, not somebody else,”  Al-Sisi said addressing the public. “This is why I asked for your support in fighting terrorism on 21 July because I was sure this was the path we were going to take.”

On 26 July, thousands took the streets to express their support for the former minister of defence’s call to become their official delegate in the war on terrorism. Since then, continuous operations have been ongoing mostly in North Sinai cities Al-Arish, Sheikh Zuweid and Rafah, closer to the Gaza and Israeli borders.

The president concluded by stating that the war on terrorism was tough, would take a long time and all Egyptians are paying the price during that time. “The army is willing to continue paying the price for Sinai, which will never abandon. You chose and when the Egyptian people choose I strictly abide, whatever that choice is.”

Al-Sisi also stressed upon the importance for Egypt to hold the March Economic Forum calling on people to “work together and unite” in the face of terrorism.

Al-Sisi’s response to the army’s lack of media transparency is that there were times where there was no information circulation in the media about the army for security reasons, such as during the past wars.

Ayman Al-Sissi, researcher in terrorism affairs at the Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies (ACPSS) commented in an interview with ONtv Live channel Saturday that there was a problem between public information and news coverage about the army. Some journalists, he said, can publish details about the army’s moves they know of which can be harmful.

Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb and Minister of  Defence Sedky Sobhy headed a delegation of government officials in a military funeral held for the victims of the attacks, the official military spokesperson reported on his Facebook account.

However, none of the spokesperson’s statements referred to the death toll. Similarly, in a phone call with Daily News Egypt Saturday evening, the Ministry of Health’s official spokesperson Hossam Abdel Ghaffar also denied having announced any of the media’s reported figures in the past two days which ranged between 25 and 30.

Source: www.dailynewsegypt.com

“In an action that has already made headlines around the world, Code Pink  stole the show yesterday with an attempted citizen’s arrest of Henry Kissinger for War Crimes committed during his tenure as Secretary of State from 1973-1977.

As the 91 year old Kissinger took to his seat at the witness table alongside former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and George Shultz for a hearing by the Senate Armed Services Committee on global threats and national security strategy, chants of “Arrest Henry Kissinger for War Crimes, arrest Henry Kissinger for War Crimes, arrest Henry Kissinger for War Crimes” began pulsating throughout the chambers. Press hovered over the scene, and Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin began speaking for the voiceless, calling for the citizen’s arrest of Kissinger for war crimes:

In the name of the people of Chile

In the name of the people of Vietnam

In the name of the people of East Timor

In the name of the people of Cambodia

In the name of the people of Laos

Activists then read aloud a citizen’s arrest (text below). Senator John McCain, chairman of the Armed Services Committee (currently facing charges of being a “war monger” himself from critics in his own party) bent to the microphone and announced that in all his years on the committee he had “never seen anything as disgraceful, and outrageous, as despicable”.  Then he told Code Pink protestors to “get outta here” and called them “you low life scum.”

–

Source: mondoweiss.net

In 2008, Imad Mughniyah, Hezbollah’s international operations chief, was killed when a bomb planted in an SUV in Damascus was detonated as he walked by. Although Israel’s intelligence organization was believed to be behind the attack, The Washington Post has revealed that the bombing, which killed Mughniyah instantly, was a joint CIA-Mossad operation.

[Read the full story: CIA and Mossad killed senior Hezbollah figure in car bombing]

Mughnniyah was on the FBI’s most-wanted terrorists list and was sought by the authorities in 42 other countries as well. Here are some of the major attacks Mughniyah was allegedly involved in:

Bombing of U.S. Embassy in Beirut, 1983: The suicide bombing of  the U.S. Embassy in Beirut killed 63 people, including eight CIA officers.

Source: www.washingtonpost.com

When the lights dim at the Comedy Club, a theater-cum-bar in central Paris, stand-up comedians Younes and Bambi rush onstage for their act, “The Arab and the Jew.” The comic duo portrays two young Frenchmen — one Muslim, the other Jewish — from the banlieues, the suburbs where poorer people and many immigrants live.

Predictably, it’s clichés galore. A rude Younes (aka Younes Arbouja) interrupts Bambi (Samuel Djian) bowing before an imaginary Western Wall. “You’re praying in the wrong direction,” he quips. “Wall St. is thataway.”

Bambi eventually pushes Younes away. “Your breath stinks!” he screeches. “Do you do Ramadan year round?”

While perpetuating stereotypes, the jokes underscore that France is made up of minorities, even visible ones — a term seldom heard in a country that prides itself on its rejection of multiculturalism.

But the Comedy Club fans are lapping it up, with many in the audience shouting “Oui!” when the performers ask if any Algerians, Moroccans or Tunisians are in the audience. For this crowd, these jokes are funny — and within the bounds of free speech.

But in France, not all wordplay is.

Franco-Cameroonian comedian and activist Dieudonné M’bala M’bala (usually referred to by his first name) is set to appear in a Paris criminal court on Feb. 4 on defense of terrorism charges for a Facebook post lampooning the ubiquitous “Je suis Charlie” slogan.

“I feel like Charlie … Coulibaly,” it read, suggesting that he identified with Ahmedy Coulibaly, the man who killed four Jewish hostages at a supermarket and a 27-year-old policewoman from Martinique before being shot dead by police.

A free speech paradox

Dieudonné, often accused of anti-Semitism, is a controversial character. He is already facing incitement to hatred charges in a separate case for insinuating that Patrick Cohen, a radio host, should have been sent to a gas chamber.

Are French humorists free to mock Islam, including its prophet, while others cannot legally crack a joke about the Holocaust? Short answer: yes.

Although Dieudonné’s name was never mentioned at the Comedy Club, this paradox was the subject of an exchange between Younes and Bambi.

Source: america.aljazeera.com

“We will have to put together the collabos’ dossiers, those of Charlie’s assassins. I will name them: they are the Indivisibles of Mrs Rokhaya Diallo who awarded the Y’a Bon Awards to Charlie Hebdo, I got it, Luc Ferry got it too, Christophe Barbier, many people, Finkielkraut, they are the Indigenous People of the Republic (PIR), there is the Nekfeu rapper who wanted to do a ‘burning by fire for these Charlie Hebdo sons of bitches,’ Guy Bedos, who we have known to be better inspired. It will require a systematic and historical report on all those who have ideologically justified the death of the twelve Charlie Hebdo journalists.” Pascal Bruckner, January 15, 2015 (28 minutes on Arte).

“What bothers us, it’s not to live with bodyguards and death threats,” it’s the other attacks, “from people who call you Islamophobic while you are anti-racist and you are fighting for freedom. The most painful are these pernicious attacks that can arm a Kalashnikov!” Caroline Fourest, January 8, 2015 (Special Envoy speaking on France 2).

I despise these people. I would almost agree that they have the right to be racist, if indeed they would assume it as does the National Front (FN). But they are too cowardly for that. I despise them because they love war and claim to love peace. They justify the West and its crimes and wear the mask of noble souls. They trample millions of corpses and lives pulverized through Civilization while they stage, lewd and obscene as they are, their feigned anger and overplayed grief. Objectively, they are the links of this infernal chain at the end of which are the Kouachi brothers. Do they know about their responsibility in the death of their fellow travelers? Regardless, they unsheathe. The culprits? The “Islamo-leftists”! I despise them because they are spineless. So small, you need a magnifying glass to see them. Irresponsible individuals already in the dustbin of history. Let’s move on.

I am over fourty years of age. During my whole indigenous life, I have never heard anyone insult our prophet. My whole life, I swear. It is neither prohibited nor taboo. This thought does not cross our minds. This thought does not exist, period. It is a relationship with the sacred that assembles the consent of more than one billion souls, including atheists, agnostics, and “free thinkers.” This happens even though a thousand contradictions traverse the Ummah and our divisions are innumerable.

Historically, we did not know this radical separation of church and State, as we did not know this type of distinction between the sacred and the profane, the public sphere and the private sphere, faith and reason [1]. It took the advent of Western capitalist modernity and its outrageous and arrogant narcissism to universalize historical processes (i.e., secularism, the Enlightenment, Cartesianism) that were geographically and historically located in Western Europe. This is a specificity that became universal through self-declaration and the power of arms and bayonets. As for other specificities that are not worthy enough to enter history, either they abdicate or they are barbarian. But it seems that, with the father figure of the prophet, French coloniality stumbled upon a bone. When Charlie Hebdo published the caricatures, some of which being racist and others obscene, I was shocked at first. I said to myself, “They will not spare us.” Racism in all its forms: contempt, paternalism, Orientalism. Discrimination in all its forms: railway sidings, police crimes, racial profiling, untimely death of our parents because of working conditions, criminalization of our struggles, clientelism, jail… Hogra (contempt) again and again. But then, a line was crossed. It was not mere insults or violence to a person. It was sacrilege.

Source: mondoweiss.net

The word “Timbuktu” is slang in the West for East of Nowhere, but in the film Timbuktu, this city in Mali on the edge of the Sahara is an epicenter, a volatile crossroads for several distinct cultures. There are African women in radiant colors, white-garbed Muslim men in mosques, fishermen who live along the river and nomadic herders who pitch their tents on dunes. And then there are the most recent arrivals: an al-Qaida-affiliated group called Ansar Dine that in 2012 took over Timbuktu and announced the enforcement of Sharia, or Islamic law.

That’s the film in a nutshell: Sharia meets multiculturalism.

A remarkable thing about Timbuktu is that it’s often on the verge of being a comedy. It’s in five languages: French, a legacy of 20th-century colonialism; Arabic; Bambara, an African language; Songhay, a group of dialects heard around the Niger River; and, finally, English, though that’s used in desperation when one man can’t make sense of another man’s Arabic. An Islamist judge must interrogate a man in Arabic and wait impatiently as his words are translated into French for the offender and Bambara for the victim’s family — funny even if the outcome is an execution.

You have to laugh when an eccentric diva in resplendent colors sashays down the street and blocks a convoy of gun-toting jihadis, her arms spread wide as if casting a spell, while the young men clearly think, “What the hell do we do now?” It’s amusing to watch jihadis stumble over rooftops looking for the source of forbidden music — but the lashings that follow strangle the laugh in your throat. Moderate Muslims, meanwhile, look on in disapproval. This is not their Islam.

Writer-director Abderrahmane Sissako grew up in nearby Mauritania, where the film was actually shot, and reportedly decided to make Timbuktu following news of a Mali couple buried to their necks and stoned to death for having children without being married. That event is in the film, but those two aren’t the protagonists — if they were, I think, this would be too conventional a melodrama.

The protagonists are Kidane, played by Ibrahim Ahmed, and his wife, Satima, played by Toulou Kiki, who live in a tent on a dune outside the city with their daughter and a boy orphaned by war, raising cows. Their neighbors either fled or were killed when the Ansar Dine arrived, but Kidane won’t budge. Under a desert moon, he strums his guitar, cuddles his wife and arrogantly maintains the danger will pass. He’s tired of running away and being humiliated.

Source: capeandislands.org

Speed Sisters tells the story of the first female racing team in the Middle East.

Source: www.aquila-style.com