February 2012
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ihya, Syria, the Arab Awakening, Occupy & Change
ihya started out to cover the revolutionary trends shaping the Arab world. There were many ideas about this publication, to report what was happening, and to facilitate debate and discussion. We’ve not been able to fully realise our goals. However, having read about the atrocities being committed in the Arab world, simply reporting what’s happening is just not good enough for me or...
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In a Baghdad E.R., Womens’ Psychological Wounds Go...
Another blog to bring tears to one’s eyes. The blog is written by Lubna Naji for the New York Times, a 25-year-old junior doctor who works in the countryside in Iraq’s Wasit Province.
These women are especially at risk in a health care system in which overworked doctors like me focus only on saving their lives; healing their invisible wounds is another story. Even though Iraqis have been...
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“The Arab Spring, another development of historic importance, might portend at...”
– The Imperial Way: American Decline in Perspective, Part 2
by Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor emeritus in the MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy.
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“In Bashar al-Assad’s Syria, it is not just forbidden to speak, demonstrate...”
– First published in Le Monde. Translated by Charlotte Mandell. (c) Jonathan Littell
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Syria: seven–year–old girl shot as she called...
The bravery of Assad’s regime:
As Syrian troops unleashed the first wave of the week – long barrage against Homs last week, mosques across restive districts of Damascus called citizens to prayers of protest. At 2.30 in the morning, calls of “God is Great” washed across the districts from the minarets and residents took to the streets in angry protest. “Julnar heard the...
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Is Arab cinema on the cusp of a potential...
The Arab spring has focused western attention on the Arab world in an unprecedented way. While events in Bahrain, Libya and Syria have turned progressively more violent, there was a period last year when Arab youth inspired onlookers with their courage and thoroughly modern attitudes. However, for a region of more than 300 million people, and with a rich tradition of folklore and storytelling, the...
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“If the western protests, such as the Occupy movement and the Indignados, are put...”
– A World Divided - or Coming Together?
Paul Rogers January 2012 The Oxford Research Group (ORG)
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“We do trade with governments that are not democratic and have bad human rights...”
– Vince Cable, the UK Business Secretary, quoted in an article by the Sydney Morning Herald, “Britain still supplying arms as Bahrain crushes protests”.
…in the third quarter of last year Britain exported arms to Saudi Arabia, including components for combat vehicles. During last...
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Syria's Info Wars: Branch 225
The Arab Awakening is distinguished by how information and communication technologies have contributed to precipitating change in the Arab world, and how autocratic regimes have tried to use open technologies to crush the people.
Branch 225, a unit within Syria’s intelligence services appears to coordinate the regime’s info war strategy by instructing the country’s mobile...
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“In Syria today, wounded patients and doctors are pursued, and risk torture and...”
– Marie-Pierre Allié, MSF president, on the Syrian regime’s campaign of unrelenting repression against people wounded in demonstrations and the medical workers trying to treat them. (via doctorswithoutborders)
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Deliver Syria So That It Regains the Right to Live...
The following is an open letter by Syrian artists published in Le Monde:
The first reaction of the Syrian regime against the uprising was to kill unarmed civilians. Then he announced reforms and killed thousands of others. Unfortunately, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad can not reform the dead and give life. Only a future ensuring the cessation of violence can reform “life”.
Today,...
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“When I became a rapper, I wasn’t looking for love. I was looking to rap...”
– Hamada Ben Amor, 21, better known as El Général, the Tunisian rap star whose song “Rais Lebled” is credited with helping inspire the uprising in his country that overthrew President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali. The song, which includes blunt allegations of government corruption, also became...
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Pakistan Future Leaders Conference 2012
Over the weekend Oxford University’s Pakistan Society hosted the yearly Pakistan Future Leaders Conference. It is evident that new thinking is required to tackle the challenges facing Pakistan, which makes it all the more disappointing when rehashed thinking is presented to tackle the problems facing Pakistan. It is quite evident that Pakistan needs to invest in developing its vast youth...
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“We need a new revolution…People are still poor. We have no money, and...”
– Interview with George Ishak, an Egyptian democracy activist and founder of the popular “Kifaya” protest movement
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