May 27: Egypt’s Second Revolution

The Revolution was never finished on February 11th: Egypt is in a continuous revolutionary state since then. So many has to be done, and it is not the new constitution or the first trials of Mubarak ministers that will end this. Now Egyptians are facing a new challenge: the Supreme Council of Armed Forces of Egypt (SCAF) that is ensuring the management of Egypt during this period of transition, is going too far beyond its duties. Arbitrary detention of activists, unability to secure the country, lack of concrete decisions for Egyptians standard of life. And many more. On May 27th, Egyptians are back in the streets, in Tahrir Square and on other squares all over the country, to ask to the SCAF to meet the duties the people entrusted them with.

Here are some of the demands of the Egyptians, like very well discribed here:

1. Setting up a minimum wage for workers in public sector as well as in private sector. Only a decent living for all can make of Egypt the land of free Egyptians.
2. End of military trials, back to civil justice, end of emergency law. The psychological and physical intimidation of activists must end. When protestors are arrested and “kindly” told that they are contributing in unstabilizing the country, they are not doing anything different than what was under the old regime.
3. Transparency in the affairs of the State. It is not a few trials of some personnalities that are going to end the whole systemic corruption. Concrete measures have to be taken to ensure a corruption-free and transparent state.
4. Getting back the police in the streets to secure the country. Police is extremely absent from the streets since the Revolution. The army arrests activists and brings them to military trial, but who arrests thiefs, rapists and thugs?
5. Dismantling the extremists groups. Like we saw with Embaba violent confrontation of Muslims and Christians, the SCAF puts very few effort to identify the extremists among the two communities. How can SCAF let a violent escalade happen in Embaba without intervening, and on the other side the same SCAF violently repress a protest in front of the Israeli Embassy where nobody’s life was ever threatened?
6. Compensation for victims and family of victims of the January 25th Revolution.

None of the Egyptians ignore that we are living a crucial and difficult phase of the revolutionnary process. We know and understand that the SCAF task is not only critical but also essential. The SCAF and the people must cooperate to achieve the goals of the Revolution, but Egyptians cannot let the SCAF take too much power. Egypt will never be a military dictatorship hidden behind a superficial democracy like Turkey, where one can vote but where one can be thrown 10 years in jail if one speaks in kurdish in the Parliament or mentions the Armenian genocide. And when the people sees Egypt’s SCAF taking the same kind of path that Turkey’s,  they say NO.

After Jan25, May27 revolution is our new grant for freedom!

White establishment feel threatened by equality

A recent study led by Harvard and Tuft universities  show that White Americans believe they are more discriminated against than black people. In their paper “Whites See Racism as a Zero-Sum Game That They Are Now Losing” , Norton and Sommers write that “Despite the rush in some quarters to anoint contemporary American society as ‘‘postracial’’ in the wake of Barack Obama’s election as president, a flurry of legal and cultural disputes over the past decade has revealed a new race-related controversy gaining traction: an emerging belief in anti-White prejudice.” The methodology or the survey is simple: researchers asked 209 white and 208 black men and women to rate on a scale on 0 to 10 the racist bias from 1950 to today. Thus each group had to rate the racism against their own ethnic group, as well as the racism against the other ethnic group. The results show that white and black people both perceive that the racism against Black Americans decreased since 1950. The curve of the perception of the black group about the anti-black bias is very similar to the percetpion of the white group of that same bias, only with a versical shift.

On the contrary, the difference in the perception of the anti-White bias by Black and White test groups is dramatic: if both groups consider that the anti-white racism has increased since 1950, the Black group consider it is still extremely low inside the American society today, the White group consider on the contrary that the anti-white bias is quite strong nowadays, and even consider it to be stronger  that the anti-black bias since about the 2000′s. The curves of the anti-black and anti-white bias as perceived by the white group are even anti-correlated: for them, every decrease in the anti-black racism equals directly and automatically to an anti-white racism (this mechanism is called a Zero Sum Game). In other words:   not only the White Americans believe that in today’s American society, a white person is a victim of racism more than a black person is (!), they also believe that the improvement  since the 50s in the fight against the discriminations against black people is in itself a discrimination against the American White people. 

All economical and social indicators show clearly that if black people are, its true, less discriminated than they were in the past, they are still far from receiving equal treatment with white people. Access to labour market, housing, education, healthcare, bank loans: very few are the black people who did not experience these forms of daily and ordinary discrimination. So do the White Americans really believe that in today’s America, being white is tougher than being Black? Norton and Summers study does not allow to answer to that question, but the “Zero Sum Game” that is absent from the Black group and present in the White group might well suggest that aquisition of rights is perceived by White people as being a competitive race (due to a confusion between a right and a privilege), while it isn’t for Black people, maybe because fighting discrimination made to ethnic minorities requires the destruction of the paradigms of the White superiority. All at once, White people who were living inside a system where only white values were ruling things find themselves confronted to the existence of other types of values, making theirs non-universal. The White people not having to follow the rules of the others is not even an issue here: nobody ever asked them to; it’s the simple idea that their own rules now apply only to themselves and don’t extend to other that bothers them, basically.

It would be interesting to see if the same “Zero Sum Game” is observed in other societies where the domination of a group on another one existed and was (or still is) progressively abolished. A few cases could be studied, like for example:

1. Men/Women: do men feel that there is a anti-men sexism?
2. Rich/poor: do rich feel poor people have more rights than them?
3. Nationals/foreigners: do nationals feel they are dominated by foreigners?

And the ultimate one combining all others: is the life tougher for a White Rich man than for a Black poor foreign woman? Who knows…

To all the Tahrir Squares in the World

At the end of 2010, with the events of Sidi Bouzid, I felt something had changed in Tunisia, but it took me a few days to me like to most of us to realize that it was more than a local revolt. A Revolution. I remember the tears of joy on January 14 and the pride I felt to be Tunisian, and I remember thinking Tunisians changed Arab History forever. At that time I wished so strongly that it could happen to my other country, Egypt, but I was afraid to be too optimistic: when you walk in Tunisia streets, you are afraid of the police, secret services and a powerful extended presidential family, but when you are in Egypt, you fear an Intelligence agency almost at level of Mossad and an army potentially stronger than Saddam Hussein’s, all in hand of one strong olligarchy. But they did it: a wave of millions of people, on Tahrir Square and everywhere else in Egypt made it, they made the Revolution. And since there is no limit to my optimism. There is an empirical statement that basically says: what happens in Egypt, ends happening in the rest of the Arab World.

I dreamt about two things: first, that the Revolutions spread, second that it’ll breaks enough of Israel’s self-confidence and arrogance to force them to accept a Palestinian State. Both of hopes are “in progress”. Everywhere in the Arab World we are seeing Revolutions, and though it seems sometimes difficult, we know and hope, it’ll end coming. Change Square in Yemen, Pearl Square in Bahrain, inspirations of Tahrir Square (in fact, they are inspirations of simultaneous Egyptian Tahrir Square and Tunisian Qasba events, that took place after January 14 and was for real the second revolution in Tunisia in less than one month).

But once again, things went beyond my hopes: Tunisia and Egypt are inspiring more than the Arab World. An Eritrean Revolution is in preparation and a facebook event annouces a start for the movement in May 28 in Asmara. And now a “Tahrir Square model of revolt” is taking place in Spain. In Puerta del Sol, youth is gathering every day after 7pm or so, for protesting: unemployement, injustice, lack of means, like in Tahrir square and Qasba the crowds were gathering every day to protest through the simple act of civil desobediance consisting in sleeping on the ground of the place, just because it challenges curfews and non-authorizations to protest. They are in revolt actually against a whole European political and economical system that broke their country. Almost half of young people in Spain are unemployed. Yet they don’t call for “toppling the regime” like Arabs (“Al Chaa’b yorid isqat an-nizam“), for they have the chance we didn’t have to be able to change their regimes with free elections, but their demands are so similar to Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions that it is clear that they are part of the same wave of freedom. In fact, Europeans do not live in autocratic states, but the fact that European politics totally escapes the direct control of people makes European citizens almost as powerless as were Tunisians under Ben Ali or Egyptians under Mubarak.

This wave of change begins to sweep Europe and represents the only serious effect to oppose the rise of populist right wing in Europe. With this new wind of freedom, Europeans stand to say their problem is not immigration, but the unsocial policies of the econimical Europe, the big capitalist  machine crushing nations in their lost battle against debt. Belt-tightening policies when the banks are back to profit, bonus and risky markets?

And after Spain, don’t we see it coming? Portugal, Greece, Italy,… And one day, isn’t it going to reach the core of politcal economical Europe: France and Germany? Tahrir Squares will blossom all over Europe. Tunisia and Egypt, you changed Arab History, you also  might have changed the World History.

Comparing Obama’s speech on the Middle-East with his Cairo Speech

The communication with the Arab and/or Muslim World looks like being a conundrum for the Western World. The way George W. Bush adressed some issues related to the Arabs/Muslims is maybe the perfect example on what to not say to them. Obama speeches were always clean of the obvious mistakes of his predecessors and this 2011 speech on the Middle-East was even cleaner. The 2009 Cairo speech was actually so brillantly written that it really raised hopes in the Middle-East for a change. But alas, from 2009 to 2011, these high expectations were disappointed, not only because of Iraq and Afghanistan wars or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also because of the attitude towards the Arab dictators facing street protests: the support to the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt came too late, only when it was clear to the US that they can dump their dear allies (Mubarak, Ben Ali, Gaddafi,…) because they were already almost toppled.

Thus, it is in this mindframe of scepticism that most of us, Arabs, listened to this Middle-East Speech. We kind of all had our “checklist”: some were waiting how Obama will mention Bahrain, some others how is he to address about Israel and Palestine, etc. None of us was really waiting for anything interesting and special to be said, most of us were just looking for a renewed confirmation of a new form of the good old hypocrisy: same old routine, only covered with more elegant words than his predecessors would have used.

What I was personnally interested in was in fact the difference between the Cairo speech of 2009 and this speech of 2011 on Middle-East, not in terms of the content itself, but in terms of the form, the strategy of communication. Although the latter was pronounced from the White House, it is quite obvious that it was prepared with the intention to address to the Arab World. The decision to not hold this speech in front of an Arab audiance in an Arab country proves there is a hesitation to face directly Arabs, as there is no certainty on the welcoming it would have had (after all Clinton was boycotted in Egypt by youth and hooted by Tunisians to the point she had to cancell her speach in Tunis). As the changes go in the North African and Middle Eastern region, the”West” adapts its communication.They are totally aware the Arab revolutions were the occasion of multiple  failures in communication and decisions, and that this caused a great damage on the trust the Arab and Muslim World have on them. Not only they want to restore that trust (surprisingly they seem to think that regaining it needs only to adapt the way of speaking, instead of admitting it needs a complete change of policy, what will apparently never happen), but also they are in high need of understanding the new Arab references.

The main differences between the two speeches are:

1. The Storytelling: in Obama 2009 speech, there were very few of the “storytelling” US rethoric is normally full of (emphazing arguments with an example of a person’s life story), besides the very brief mention to his own story linking him to Africa, while in the 2011 Speech, many mentions were done: Rosa Parks, Muhammad Bouazizi, Wael Ghonim (indirectly, by mentionning his position at Google), some Israeli father whose son was killed by Hamas starting a peace NGO. The Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions certainly made realize to Obama, Clinton and their team how important will be now the ordinary people of the Arab World. Instead of talking about elites, refering to great places or figures of History, the ‘normal’ people (including women) that achieved great things with almost nothing were mentioned. The storytelling, that ensured Ronald Reagan with a great popularity in his country as a president and was so to say the standard of communication of George W. Bush (and Nicolas Sarkozy), is a very classical technique to reach the very general audiances: (over)simplifying in talking with images instead of building a consistant chain of arguments.
2. Erasing American references: only with the “told stories” one can see that they refer all but one (Rosa Parks) to Arabs. But the shift goes beyond this. In 2009 speech, there was a point about stressing on the fact that Islam was part of American History, about the fight for civic rights of African Americans, about the Cold War, etc, while in 2011 speech the direct references to American History are completely erased (except for the reference to the American Revolution where Patriots refused to pay taxes to a king). Even the cited locations were chosen to fit to the Arab perspective (Cairo, Benghazi, Sanaa). In two words, we are moving here from speeches where we talk about “American values to export” to speeches where we talk about “universal values”, that happen to be shared by America as well as by other parts of the world, worth fighting for, although America didn’t create these values. US want to give a more “modest” image of themselves, they don’t  anymore commit the mistake to pretend they are  bringing democracy/peace/hope as global leader (although Hillary Clinton in the few words preceding Obama speech expressed her views about the need of an American strong “leadership”). On the contrary they emphazise on the fact that these values are wanted and activelly won by the Arabs themselves. Americans want now to endorse the more “neutral” role (in surface only of course) of those who will just propose help (economical, G20, technological, etc) and let free the Arabs to decide if they want that help or not (of course it is just a very hypocrit way of presenting things).
3. Avoiding religious references: of course, 2009 was technically a speech to the Muslim World, while 2011 is a speech on the Middle-East, but no one will deny how much entangled are Middle-East and Islam. 2009 was not only refering to Al-Azhar, the Quran or Obama’s own Christianity, it was also speaking the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in terms of Jews and Shoah, Muslims and Christians. In the 2011 speech, he prefered to talk Israel-Palestine in terms of frontiers, security and official mutual recognition, Bahrain in terms of Iranian strategic political interest, and Arab revolutions in general in mentionning freedom, economy, technology, information. The only explicit references were made were the “region that was the birthplace of three world religions” and the Muslim/Copt violence in Egypt and the offered solution to take the Iraqi “multi-ethnic multi-sectarian democracy” as an example (what a strange idea by the way to take this as an example). In erasing the reference to religion and particularely to Islam, it is quite clear that the United States want to enter in a new phase of their relation with Arabs where they can close the Islamism/extremism/Al-Qaeda chapter. In a way, by saying that Al-Qaeda was against democracy, that it lost its revelancy in the region, that more has been done in six months of civil unrest  than in decades by terrorists, but also by not referring to the recent choice  of a new head for Al-Qaeda and denying the Ossama Ben Laden’s posthume message praising Arab revolutions, US call for having the right to “move to something else”: US wants to make known that they want to make politics, business (a lot of business in fact), partnerships; they don’t want anymore to be seen as the oppressor of Muslims around the World. As if there was any chance that Arabs could forget the military support of Israel anyway (clearly mentionned in the 2011 speech).
4. Adopting Arabic rethoric: the only concession done to arabic language in 2009 speech was the opening “Salam Aleikom“. In 2011, there is a will to “speak the way Arabs speak”. Some linguistic specifities of the Arabic language are adopted. For example, the repetition of terms, very classic in arabic, but avoided as much as possible in english is clear in a sentence like “Square by square, town by town, country by country” (unfortunately for Obama, his advisors do not seem to have noticed the similarity that each Arab will notice with Gaddafi murderous speech “Zenga zenga, bit bit, dar dar“, meaning “street by street, house by house, room by room“). Another flagrant example is the sentence (actually the answer to the non-asked question) where he says: “Bin Laden was no martyr“, the word martyr being extremely often used not only in Islamic lexical field, but also in general Arab’s (for example, the people killed on Tahrir Square, regardless of their religion, are referred as martyrs by Egyptians), while it is totally absent from previous American official speeches. Adapting arabic rethoric is a way of looking “more familiar”, or “more comprehensive”.

I see the 2011 speech on the Middle-East as being a “grammatical contortion”: US diplomacy makes moves that are unnatural to them, not because they are taking a new orientation with us, Arabs, but because they think that if they want to continue to pursue the goals they always pursued in the region (oil, Israel and capitalism), they just have to make it a bit more subtly. With this Obama speech we officially entered in the era where the United States understand Arabs are not just parameters to adjust and fine tune, but a whole part of the world with 400 million people with real personal expectations and real intention to be sovereign. Let’s be clear: that’s only plastic surgery. If there was any real consideration to Arab aspirations, a word would have been adressed to the aspirations of the people living in the most repressive country of the region governed by a medieval feodal system, Saudi Arabia, and more firm positions would have been taken to condemn what happens in Syria and Bahrain.

Mimmicking our way of building sentences and arguments and using our own references is not enough and will never be; in fact it is even almost a bad idea from an American perspective for it makes it even easier for us  to detect where exactly there is hypocrisy,emptiness or offense. It is as if President Obama tried to cook for us a couscous or any other Arab dish and really thought we won’t be able to make the difference with our own cooking. The thing is, sadly for Americans and luckily for Arabs, very, very few of us were fooled by this new way of addressing us.

DSK’s sex assault case: and who cares about the cleaning lady, anyway?

The IMF chief Dominique Stauss-Khan (DSK) sexual assault case has turned into a political hurricane in France. Much of the comments held by journalists and politicians were about being careful with any assertion given the fact DSK still benefits of the “présomption d’innocence“, without dismissing opinions about what impact on the French presidential election of 2012, what other person in DSK’s “parti socialiste” could be promoted as candidate at his place, what comes now for the IMF leadership.

Martine Aubry (head of Parti Socialiste), François Hollande (PS) or Ségolène Royal (PS); Roseline Bachelot (Minister), François Baroin (spokesman of the government); Frédéric Mitterand (the pedophile Minister of Culture), Daniel Cohn-Bendict (deputee, author of a manifesto on less constraints on sexuality between adults/children), Bernard-Henry Levy (essayist; the only one in the Universe who knows who killed Daniel Pearl and why exactly the pacifists on the flotilla for Gaza were worth killing): all comments saying again and again “présomption d’innocence”, attacks on how the NYPD treated discracefully their friend DSK, shared thoughts to his family (a wife continuously cheated by her husband since the beginning of their wedding and 4 children) and to DSK himself. They also, to more or less extent, all mentionned the possibility of a conspiracy against the IMF Chief. But no compassion with the presumed victim of the rape. In talking about a conspiracy, the cleaning lady changes her status from presumed victim to presumed accused. But after all… who cares about the cleaning lady anyway?

Of what we know, the presumed victim, Nafissatou Diallo, a 32 years old beautiful lady, ghanean, single mother of a teenager, works for 3 years now in the Sofitel, benefits from an excellent reputation, has no known affair, satisfies in both competence and behaviour her employer and colleagues, has a blank record, never skips attending to Mass… and didn’t even know who DSK was before this sunday. Not exactly the profile of a mastermind of a global conspiracy. But of course, you never know?

A presumed victim, a presumed accused denying, is that different of the millions and trillions of rape cases we see everyday? Is every presumed victim accused that way of conspiracy and every presumed accused pitied that way? I don’t think so… If the same amount of reactions would rise from French politicians and journalists everytime the “présemption d’innocence” is scorned in any case, one could feel satisfied with the fact that the french political scene is concerned with justice. But it is not the case. Justice is a concern only when it becomes political enough to get attention. Even the “blindness” of the justice is attacked, when commentators express their displeasure about how DSK was arrested and handcuffed like any other presumed rapist! Can you imagine, like any other! Still believing in the “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité“? I don’t.

The Second Nakba

Nakba is the arabic word for “catastrophe”. For Palestinians, it refers to the events that took place in 1948 resulting in the creation of Israel, causing the destruction of 418 towns and villages, the ethnical cleansing in cities like Haifa and the deportation of more than 700’000 Palestinian refugees. Backed by western forces, the Nakba is a large-scale tragedy commited to escape the guiltiness of another large-scale tragedy.

Every May 15th, the Palestinians commemorate the Nakba. Since the context of the Arab revolutions, this year’s commemoration sounded different: unlike the 62 last times, today there was hope for a better future. The Facebook event called “Third Intifada” appointed to coincide with the Nakba commemoration gathered 500’000 people before to be censored. A march from Cairo to Rafah, a breakthrough the Golan and a massive protest in South Lebanon, a wave of Egyptians, Syrians, Jordan, Lebanese, all together with the Palestinians stood like one man and surrounded Israel. Israel was no more a country but a besieged city, behind walls, behind heavy weaponery, behind fear. Al Jazeera broadcasted live images of the crowds clashing with the Israeli Army. And there were the first shohada (martyrs) of the Nakba commemoration/third Intifada.

Clashes and Israeli borders, clashes in front of the Israeli Embassy in Cairo; the Arabs made clear they will not be silent anymore. Is it the beginning of the Second Nakba, not the Palestinian Nakba, but the Israeli one? Is it for real the beginning of the end for Israel? Israel still has a chance to save itself from the 63 years contained anger of hundreds of millions of Arabs: building peace, based upon fairness. Stop colonizing, stop occupying, stop the blocus, allow the return of the Palestinian refugees, recognize a Palestinian State, accept the borders of 67. Israeli still have the opportunity and capacity to avoid living their own Nakba. Too bad this opportunity was denied to Palestinians in 1948, when the Western World through the UN simply took the decision to erase from the map a country called Palestine and put another one at its place called Israel.

Egyptians living abroad want their right to vote!

The following text was written for the petition I lauched for asking to the High Council of Armed Forces of Egypt to reconsider their decision of deniying the right to vote for Egyptians living abroad. If you are an Egyptian living abroad and feel concerned about the denial of your rights, feel free to sign the petition here and share it with your contacts.

Indeed, The Egypt’s Military Council, in charge of leading the country since February 11th 2011 after putting an end to 30 years of Mubarak’s autocratic regime, decided to deprive Egyptians abroad from their right to vote. The Egyptian diaspora represents 4 million people living in 139 countries. Their rights as citizens were denied to them for the very arbitrary reason of the possibility of their votes being “sold” to non-Egyptian interests. The Egyptian diaspora is fully part of Egypt, and the Egyptians living abroad are therefore asking for their rights as citizen to be respected.

To: the High Council of the Armed Forces of Egypt

We, Egyptians living abroad, consider ourselves as fully Egyptians.Our reasons for migration are very different from one person to another, and very few of us consider living outside of Egypt as a deep aspiration. For many of us, it was merely a necessity: some had to migrate to look for a better living, sometimes being simply denied the opportunity to live decently in Egypt under the 30 years of autocratic regime, some others were forced to look for a safe place for they were haunted for their subversive opinions, some even work from abroad for the improvement of their country of origin (in International Organizations for example), some were also born abroad from Egyptian parents. What we have all in common is our love for Egypt and our concern for the future of our country.

We consider the denial made to our right to vote, based on the enventuality that our votes might well be “bought” by foreign interests is not only discriminatory towards us, but is also against the principles of the New Egypt we all wish to see blossoming. Besides being based on an unjustified and subjective preconception, it also sends a strong message to Egyptians living abroad: “You are unworthy to Egypt”.

We are aware of the technical difficulty to coordinate polling stations in 139 countries, but we don’t consider it as a reason for the denial of our rights as citizens. Not only many countries offer to their diaspora the possibility to vote, thus proving it is possible, but also this would mean that a minor technical constraint is stronger than our noble principles of freedom, democracy and unity.

We urge the Marshal Mohammed Tantawi, Chairman of the High Council of Armed Forces of Egypt to consider our determination to participate to the political life of our country and to give us our right to vote, regardless of our country of residence.

Thank you for your time and attention to this matter.

Dying of thirst in the middle of the Sea: a history of indifference

As war goes on in Libya, the flow of refugees to the neighbouring countries doesn’t stop. Estimations are difficult to do, but we know that besides the massive number (nearly one million) of foreign workers who left Libya at the beginning of the conflit and already went back to their country (let it be in Subsaharian Africa, North Africa or Asia), more than 150’000 Libyans crossed the frontiers with Tunisia, Egypt or Niger (for example nearly 40’000 Libyans have been quickly “absorbed” by the South Tunisian population , most of them hosted and provided in essential needs in Tunisian families although they are themselves in need, with such a fluency that even the International Organizations and the NGOs were amazed of the solidarity of the local population). A few thousands fled to Europe, generally through the Italian island of Lampedusa with their boats from Mistrata or other local ports. Men, women and children take board in overcrowded boats that sometimes fail in crossing the Mediterranean Sea and sink.

The sadest of these stories was reported by the guardian two days ago, about a boat that left Misrata with 72 refugees on board that came to visual contact with a NATO aircraft carrier, supposed to be the french Charles-de-Gaulle, and that made several attempts to drag attention (including a phone call to a Erithrean priest in Rome that alerted the italian coastguards that launched an alarm to urge any vessel in the neighbourhood of the boat of the refugees to rescue, following the law o the Sea that applies as well to military ships). Although these signals to the aircraft carrier and the two military planes/helicopters passing over the boat at low altitude, no help was given to the refugees. Ater the fuel tank emptied and the food and water stock finished, the boat drifted backwards towards Libya, and meanwhile 61 from the initial 72 people on bord died of hunger and thirst.

The NATO investigation is going on. Regardless of the details it will reveal, the conclusion will forever stay the same: 72 people escaped for saving their lives from the madness of war and 61 of them ended dying because of the indifference of those who were mobilized to protect them, because although they clearly saw them and have clearly received the signal of their presence, somewhere, the decision to not rescue them was taken. Let it be a dysfunctional  procedure or not, it is very likely that the ship’s company didn’t intend to let the refugees die but just weren’t keen to endorse the responsability of these 72 people. One can imagine they might well have thought the boat would have easily reached Lampedusa or any other Italian shore, letting to the staff on the ground take care of welcoming the refugees; in consequence they reached the conclusion that they can avoid dealing with a boat full of refugees. At every stage of the concerned hierarchy, then, there wasn’t the will – or the courage – to endorse the responsability of the migrants. Were simply the members of the staff of the aircraft carrier “afraid” to become a plateform used by Africans to reach Europe? After all, indifference to dramatic situations is sometimes no more than a shunning, a strategy to avoid the answers to the questions we fear.

If it is to be stated that, indeed, the aircraft carrier envolved in this event was the french Charles-de-Gaulles, it would become extremely revelant. France called for a freeze of the Schengen Agreement in order to close their frontiers to the Tunisian migrants given 6-months visas by the italian authorities, and the denial of assistance to the 72 refugees escaping Libya would be simply the continuation on sea of the official new French policy towards migrants. If the refugees were to be saved by the Charles-de-Gaulle, in stepping on the aircraft carrier, according to the International Law of the Sea, they would be considered as under the French law; in short France would have been forced to welcome the refugees, given the fact they cannot send them back to their country at war (a war to which France is participating). By letting the refugees on the Sea, thinking they’d continue to Lampedusa, they certainly hoped that the migrants would be welcomed by the Italian authorities. The question that remains would then be simple: were the members of the staff fully responsible of the decision of ignoring the refugees, or were they told/forced to ignore them?

Ben Laden’s death has fed America’s appetite for blood, not for justice

President Obama’s “Justice has been done” is trending: on TV, in papers, on the web, even in casual conversations. Ossama Ben Laden’s arrest/death was wished by most of the Americans for now a decade. The outburst of joy depicted us an indecent at ease with itself thirst of blood within Americans.The American President was not the only one to see his approval rating jumping: following results of a poll held after Ben Laden’s death, 1/3 of the Americans are now in favor of detention of innocents in Guantanamo, more than half of Americans believe their mission in Afghanistan is not complete and about 44% think is winning its “War on Terror”.

The conclusion we can draw here is horrific in itself: we wrongly interpreted these last years’ growing opposition of Americans to the murderous wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan as ideological humanist positions of people becoming progressively aware of the fact that these wars are slaughtering civilians and unhappy they were fooled on the reality on the battlefield; now we see that they were disapproving them not because the wars were ethically wrong but only because they were losing them. In short: a dominating opportunistic point of view, not an ethical one.Those who wanted their “boys” back, were not asking for it in purpose of stopping this continuous rape of countries sovereignty and peoples lives: it was merely a “hunger strike” to protest against the fact that their thirst of blood was not adequately satisfied; consumers were unhappy to have been promised the finest beef tournedos and are brought only cheap industrial poultry. And now that they tasted Ben Laden’s blood, the appetite for destruction is just increasing. The lowest part of the being needs to be fed with revenge, humiliation inflicted to others.

America learnt nothing on why in the first place the rest of the World is so keen to be fed with anti-American feelings: their attitude consisting of making prevail their interests and profits over anything else, including any form of ethics, careless of the protests and opposition their acts might encounter, as long as they have enough weapons to crush them. After all, did Barack Obama mean anything else when he says during his announcement on Ben Laden’s death: “ tonight, we are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to. “.

And what comes next? I mean after Muslims paid with 900’000 lives the price of “justice”, will people of Afghanistan, Iraq or Pakistan be given the right to live a normal life, without US troops on their territories? Families of the World Trade Center had their “justice” when Al-Qaeda leader passed away, will the Muslims have right to relief (yes, just relief, since “justice” is affordable only for those who own drones), in seeing the end of the “War on Terror” that was imposed on them? The US have given their answer: no.

First because US officials notified it extremely clearly: Ben Laden’s death is not the end of the war. It is understood that it was much of a high psychological impact, but as this assassination does not disrupt the organizational scheme of Al-Qaeda, a lot has still to be done to fulfill the goals of the “War on Terror”.

Second, this “victory”, by justifying the massive investment of Bush and Obama into the wars, opens the door to a more aggressive global military policy. A first clear sign was given in this direction, when on May 7th a drone attack was launched in Yemen targetting the leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabic Peninsula, the American-Yemeni Anwar Al-Awqali, failing in killing him but causing the death of two men. For now like for the last 10years, US is nor bothered nor concerned about this kind “collateral damages”. If it is to kill 5 or 10 millions Muslims around the world in addition just to reach their targets and pursue their agenda, so be it. People of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan (and soon Iran?) are, for the US foreign policy, no more than insects they can crush without any apology, without any shame. Americans will slowly reconciliate with torture as now it was proven that “it works“, Obama promise to close Guantanamo Bay camp became secondary. Fundings will continue to be granted. Muslims will continue to be killed.

When looking back to the last decade, one has the bitter feeling that US did not understand anything during this war on terror: if efforts were engaged to suppress the roots of the hatred they inspire to Al-Qaeda as well as to the rest of Muslims, even the moderates (even the modern educated revolutionnary egyptian and tunisian youth praised by all worldwide medias have shown their rejection of US strategy in the Arab World in boycotting Hillary Clinton’s visit in Egypt and Tunisia), they would have won the war. If they had fought the aggressive imperialism they submit the world with, they would have gained the sympathy of all. We wanted to believe in a change. All throughout Africa and the Muslim world, we have seen people celebrating Barack Obama’s election in 2008 and Cairo speech in 2009, simply because somewhere, we all thought that a half-African man could be the perfect person to understand what it is to stand on the other side of the barrier, to understand the expressions of despair from populations starving, not accessing education or medication, living in unstable or tyrannic state… for the unique reason that most of the policies that rule our countries are not decided in our parliaments, but in the White House, following interests far from the local population wishes and needs. It didn’t take long for the optimists we all were  to be disappointed.

The truth is that since the end of the second World War, the United States won every battle but lost every war (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan). Operations were always fulfilled, targets were always reached. But because their outrageous imperialism/neo-colonialism  inspired each day more new opponents than it could kill, making the distance to go to the finishing line of their quest increasing after each step instead of decreasing. Now in killing Ossama Ben Laden, they just added one more item on their list of shameful records during their lost War on Terror. Terror was not eliminated, it only changed its location: the crowds celebrating the death of one man are showing how much terrorized they are from the inside, to the point to “need” that blood to reassure themselves, to simulate their lost sense of justice, while the Muslim and Arab World experiencing the first days of the “Arab Spring” ousting the Oriental puppets of an Almighty West that lost track on the too numerous files they try to handle, the first and only targets in number of victims of the War on Terror, only increase in courage to claim their opposition to an unfair world, building nations where “justice has been done” won’t be just an empty statement.

Tunisian Economy needs to evolve to something else than tourism

Last September (2010), as I was wandering through the roman and punic relics of the Tunisian Antique city of Utica, enjoying one of my favorite hobbies, photography, my solitude was broken by a man, seemingly the only other person than me at the archeologic site. We talked a bit as our ways crossed; he was a touristic guide and was preoccupied by the lack of tourists – he was sometimes spending one week without seeing more than one group of tourists coming to visit and in need of a guide. “The economical crisis in Europe, you know“, he concluded. Indeed, tourism depends by nature of the economical conjuncture of other countries.

The JasmineRevolution particularly threatens the attractivity of Tunisia as a touristic destination. Tourism is one of the main economical sectors of the country, representing 7% of the GDP and employing about half a million people. The desperate need of tourists is then almost vital to the Tunisian economy. The Tunisian transitional Minister of Tourism, Mehdi Haouas, is currently leading a restless campaign to promote tourism from European countries – meeting European Ministers, European travel agencies representants, launching events in France or Italy. But the expectations were not met in terms of bookings: due to the political instability of the North African region, a decrease of 43% was observed in the first quarter 2011. Outstanding discounts reaching sometimes 50% of the usual prices are proposed in travel agencies, but planes and hotels bookings remain very low.

The economical critical situation might well be saved by the 125 million dollars worth loan the World Bank will grant to Tunisia (the World Bank President, Robert Zoellick, visited Tunisia on May 2nd). Nevertheless, the drop of the tourism economy in 2011 is a warning to be taken seriously: it clearly shows how fragile is an economy too much depending on tourism. A winning strategy would be to make the most of the situation to evolve to more sustainable and more stable sectors.

Services sectors (tourism is only one of them) are in general more volatile than others sectors. For example, the real-estate speculation highly endangered the prosperity  Dubai after the American subprimes crisis. When we know that the services sector account for 45.5% of the Tunisian GDP, developping the economy  following this axis represents a too hasardous bet. Better solutions would imply more concrete “creation of wealth”, essentially by empowering industry and agriculture, qualitatively and quantitatively.

Tunisian soil do not contain oil, gold or any other rough material in sufficient quantity to feed a whole economy; the Tunisian economy has then no other choice than to develop towards excellence to enchance economical growth. Rationalization of production techniques, technology, innovation and auspicious policy should help entrepreneurs in industry, currently representing 31% of the GDP. Agronomic engineering, high quality standards and respectful policy towards the environment should lead the reform of agriculture sector, that currently represents 7.9% of the Tunisian GDP. One of the major problems of industry and agriculture in Tunisia is the very high price of transportation, up to 4-5times more expensive than in industrial countries, due to an extremely bad management of the the transportation logistics (trucks, trains, boats, travelling partly empty). A whole concept revolutionning Tunisian maritime transportation inspired by the exemple of the Moroccan TangerMed project could increase the attractivity of Tunisian exportations. If the cost of transportation (internal transportation and exportation) are adjusted, the Tunisian agriculture and industry market would gain in attractivity, without damping the salaries of workers, thus would probably gaining markets in these sectors less volatile than services.

Tourism cannot be the pillar of an economy: depending too much on external factors, as well as non-rational trends (how people “feel” confortable about a certain destination), it had maybe already reached and passed the peak of rentability; there is not much development to be made about it, when the existing touristic infrastructure is already offering much more than what is demanded, without attracting necesseraly more. Efforts have to be carried out to add a plus value to Tunisian production capacities; the existing industrial and agricultural tissue and the prospectives of evolution are likely to bring back Tunisia on the path of economical growth.