Mideast News & Politics

MENA Bloggers: New Category, Same Challenges in Media Space

Earlier this month, D.C.-based non-profit Freedom House released its 2013 report ranking press freedom around the world. The report measures the level of political and civil liberties, rating each country as ‘Free,’ ‘Partly-Free’ or ‘Not Free.’ According to the report, 63 percent of MENA’s population are ‘Not Free,’ while 35 percent are ‘Partly-Free’. Only 2 percent of the region’s population are deemed as ‘Free’. The report concludes that the “Middle East dramatized two competing trends: demands for change pushed forward by popular democratic movements, and an authoritarian response that combines intransigence with strategic adaptability.” In each trend we find insight into the sometimes competing, sometimes complimentary sub-cultures of bloggers versus journalists.

Star Trek: Into a Darkness We're Already Lost In

With all the buzz on the latest release from the Star Trek franchise, Star Trek: Into Darkness, I entered the theater expecting at least some social commentary to pop up in the movie. What I wasn’t sure about- but which ultimately delivered- was the grace with which that commentary would be woven into the Star Trek universe we know so well and love.

But, then, Gene Roddenberry created the show as an allegory of ourselves, a reflection of our time. And all the past caretakers of Star Trek canon have always understood that. It all just happens to be set in space...and in the future.

Through all the different incarnations, from the show’s original team led by Captain James Tiberius Kirk, to the rise of the incomparable Captain Picard, the lost voyagers of Captain Kathryn Janeway, and the rag tag team of Deep Space Nine- and even the (not as popular) prequel team of pre-Kirk Enterprise, the brand has always tackled the biggest questions of American society, and our world. From racism to sexism to war and peace, the Star Trek brand rarely shies away from exploring the big themes across a wide gamut of human experience.

Algeria: Middle East’s Next Revolt if Soccer is a Barometer

Algeria is competing to be the next Arab nation to witness a popular revolt. That is assuming soccer is a barometer of rising discontent in a region experiencing a wave of mass protests that have already toppled the leaders of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Yemen and sparked civil war in Syria.

In fact, there is increasingly little doubt that soccer, a historic nucleus of protest in Algeria, is signaling that popular discontent could again spill into the streets of Algiers and other major cities. Two years ago, protesters inspired by events in Egypt and Tunisia, ultimately pulled back from the brink despite the toppling of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Now, in circumstances similar to Saudi Arabia, protests are mounting amid uncertainty about the future as Algeria’s aging leadership struggles with a series of natural deaths and the effects of health problems among its remaining key members.

Resurrecting The Arab Peace Initiative

The resurrection of the Arab Peace Initiative (API) by the United States, which was initially introduced by the Arab League in Beirut, Lebanon in 2002, is a strategic and timely move. Sadly, however, the API should have all along been the basis for a negotiated Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

This is not deep insight; the Israelis and the Palestinians could have forged a bilateral agreement had Israel accepted the API as the framework of a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace. Israel’s national security concerns (real and imagined) could have dramatically been allayed had the Arab states- and by extension all Muslim countries- been at peace with Israel. By rejecting the API, successive Israeli governments have made a mistake of historic proportions.

FIFA Anti-Racism Campaign Has Work Cut Out in the Middle East

World soccer body FIFA’s newly established anti-racism committee has its work cut out for it in the Middle East and North Africa where ironically only Israel and Iran have taken some, albeit too few, steps to counter discrimination based on color, religion, ethnicity or sex.

In countering racism and discrimination in the Middle East, FIFA faces not only racist outbursts by fans, players and officials on the pitch but often a structure and unwritten policies that are inherently discriminatory.

In the latest incident of racism, Iran’s soccer federation this month banned Paykan FC coach Firouz Karimi for eight games and fined him $3,000 for calling Dutch player of African descent Sendley Sidney Bito a cannibal and a Negro and refusing to shake his hand.

“Meet a Muslim Person”: Four Minutes of Heartbreak and Honesty After Boston

On April 24, in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings, and the apprehension of two American Muslim suspects, Adam Saleh posted a video clip entitled, “Meet a Muslim Person” on YouTube (posted here below). I’ll be honest – this film broke my heart, many times over. The clip began circulating online, almost immediately—particularly among Muslims- and provoked a wide spectrum of reactions. The four-minute documentary clip is a brilliant success—not in showing the xenophobia many American Muslims face nor the majority of non-Muslims who seem to harbor no generalized ill-will towards a diverse community. The clip’s power comes from what it reveals about the position of the Muslim community in the United States today.

New AFC President Sets About Reform as Battle for Change Looms

A Singapore-based sports marketing company is at the center of a battle for the future of reform within world soccer days after the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), wracked by two years of scandal over ousted president Mohammed Bin Hammam’s management of the group, elected a new head to complete his term.

The newly elected president, Sheikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, the president of the Bahrain Football Association, has little time to implement promised reforms aimed at ensuring transparency, accountability and good governance within the AFC. With less than two years before regularly scheduled presidential elections, Sheikh Salman has inherited an organization that has yet to prove its commitment to change.

As Iraq War Veterans Suffer, Neocons Live Large and Free

"One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror." 
- George W. Bush, interview with CBS Evening News’ Katie Couric, September 6, 2006

War is especially strenuous on those who are called upon to fight. The men and women who unflinchingly turn to defend their nation deserve to be led for a purpose that is real, genuine, and worthwhile. Even then, combat can leave a determined soul dented, no matter how righteous the cause. The ones who survive continue to be haunted, their capacity to be at peace shattered.

The second Iraq War, arguably not just a blunder, but a crime, consumed the lives of over 4,000 American soldiers, leaving thousands of middle class, young veterans with grief and amputated limbs. Today they suffer while their country does little to honor their anguish. They bear all this for a lie that served the interest of only a few, those who always had enough and remain free of any repercussions while countless others are crushed.

Soccer Fans in the Gulf Vote with their Feet

Soccer is defeating efforts by wealthy, football-crazy Gulf states to impregnate themselves against the wave of protests that have swept the Middle East and North Africa in the past two years and sparked a brutal civil war in Syria.

Once a prince’s uncontested playing ground that allowed royals to curry favor, strengthen their families grip on power and ensure that the soccer pitch did not become a platform for social and political protest, the beautiful game is emerging as the one arena that so far has proven immune to efforts by Gulf rulers to keep demands for change at bay.

In fact, fans are voting with their feet. Not in mass protests as those that toppled the leaders of Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen, but by staying away from matches. What effectively amounts to a fan boycott, is most evident in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the one Gulf state that boasts nationals as a majority of its citizens who in the past filled stadiums. At a recent match in a dilapidated stadium in Doha, barely a hundred people showed up to watch.

Players’ Complaints Overshadow Qatari Attempts to Project Improved Workers’ Rights

Employment-related complaints by two international players, one of whom is barred from leaving Qatar, threaten to overshadow the 2022 World Cup organizing committee’s release of a charter of worker’s rights designed to fend off criticism of labor conditions in the Gulf state.

In separate interviews French-Algerian player Zahir Belounis, who is locked into a salary dispute with Al Jaish SC, the club owned by the Qatari military, and Moroccan international Abdessalam Ouadoo, who left Qatar last November to join AS Nancy-Lorraine, complained about failure to honor their contracts and pay their salaries as well as ill treatment.