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Ed Webb

How quarrel over tobacco sent Libya into darkness - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...rival-militias-power-cuts.html

Libya energy power infrastructure governance militias state economy

shared by Ed Webb on 07 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • In the past, Libya generated surplus electricity, which it exported to Tunisia and Egypt. Today, it has a power generation deficit of about 75% of its domestic needs, according to some officials. It also has no central government to protect the provision of power it does generate
  • On Dec. 17, a group of young men from Zawiya were taken hostage by Warshefana militias because a cargo of shisha — smoking tobacco — belonging to a Warshefana trader was confiscated. To pressure the government and local authorities into helping free the men, another local militia from Zawiya shut down the pipeline supplying gas to almost every power station in western and southern Libya. Members of the Zawiya militia later appeared in a video explaining what had happened. This episode is not unusual in lawless Libya, where local authority does not exist and what central government there is cannot enforce law and order. In November, an incident involving the antics of a pet monkey and a girl's headscarf sparked one of the worst rounds of violence in Sabha, in southern Libya, leaving some 20 people dead and scores injured.
  • It took the mediation of numerous officials and local tribal leaders to secure the release of the hostages, ensure the return of the tobacco shipment and restore electricity generation to its previous capacity, thus reinstating the “regular” blackout hours prior to the incident — between five and nine hours a day.
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  • Every Libyan city, big and small, is by now accustomed to blackouts during certain hours almost every day of the week. The situation in recent months, however, has become unbearable, with the blackouts becoming longer and less predictable, making it difficult for hospitals and individuals with special needs to cope and carry out their daily routines. Some people have bought generators for personal use during blackouts, but the majority of people cannot afford them and access to cash through the banking system is severely restricted due to the banks' chronic liquidity problems.
  • Power cuts coupled with economic difficulties are exacerbating the fragility of the UN-backed Government of National Accord, which has little authority over the country, including Tripoli, where it is seated. It has been little more than a year since the Libyan Political Agreement was signed in Morocco on December 15, 2015, and nearly a year since the government it established installed itself in Tripoli. Little, however, has changed for the better in terms of daily life. In fact, the security situation and economic situation, including rising prices and lack of access to cash, are getting worse.
Ed Webb

Picking up the pieces - 0 views

www.synaps.network/picking-up-the-pieces

Syria society identities war civil_war

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Apr 19 - Cached
  • Syrians have shown relentless ingenuity in adapting to every stage of a horrendous conflict, salvaging remnants of dignity, solidarity and vitality amid nightmarish circumstances
  • The decimation of Syria’s male population represents, arguably, the most fundamental shift in the country’s social fabric. As a generation of men has been pared down by death, disability, forced displacement and disappearance, those who remain have largely been sucked into a violent and corrupting system centered around armed factions
  • 80 of the village’s men have been killed and 130 wounded—amounting to a third of the male population aged 18-50. The remaining two-thirds have overwhelmingly been absorbed into the army or militias
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  • “If you want to protect yourself and your family, you join a militia,” remarked a middle-aged man in the Jazmati neighborhood. “The area is infested with crime associated with the National Defense militias. Each group has control over a certain quarter, and they sometimes fight each other over the distribution of spoils. Shop owners must pay these militias protection. One owner refused, and they torched his store.”
  • Another resident of the same area explained that he and his family could scrape by thanks to his two sons’ positioning in the Iran-backed Baqir Brigade—which provides not only monthly salaries, but also opportunities to procure household items through looting.
  • Syrians also dip into precious resources to pay officials for information, for instance on disappeared relatives or their own status on Syria’s sprawling lists of “wanted” individuals. For those wishing to confirm that they won’t be detained upon crossing the border to Lebanon, the going rate is about 10 dollars—most often paid to an employee in the Department of Migration and Passports.
  • An industrialist in Aleppo put it simply: “I talk with factory owners and they say they want to reopen their factories, but they can’t find male workers. When they do find them, security services or militiamen come and arrest those workers and extort money from the owners for having hired them in the first place.” With no large scale returns on the horizon for local industries, this economic impasse will take years to resolve.
  • Although virtually every problem that sparked Syria’s 2011 uprising has been exacerbated, society has been beaten down to the point of almost ensuring that no broad-based reformist movement will be able to coalesce for a generation to come
  • the unraveling of Syria’s productive economy, and its replacement by an economy of systematic cannibalization in which impoverished segments of Syrian society increasingly survive by preying upon one another
  • a new term—taafeesh—to describe a practice that goes far beyond stealing furniture to include extremes such as stripping houses, streets and factories of plumbing and electrical wiring
  • “I watched uniformed soldiers using a Syrian army tank to rip out electrical cables from six meters underground,” remarked a fighter with a loyalist Palestinian faction, who was scrambling to retrieve belongings from his apartment before it could be pillaged. “I saw soldiers from elite units looting private hospitals and government offices. This isn’t just looting—it’s sabotage of essential infrastructure.”
  • I returned to my apartment just to retrieve official documents and some hidden pieces of gold. I did so, and then destroyed my own furniture and appliances because I don’t want these people making money at my expense. I was ready to burn down my own apartment, but my wife stopped me—she didn’t want me to cause harm to other apartments in the building.
  • micro-economies in their own right—from the recycling of rubble to the proliferation of taafeesh markets, where people buy second-hand goods stolen from fellow Syrians. Many have no choice but to use these markets in order to replace their own stolen belongings
  • This cannibalistic economy, which encompasses all those who have come to rely on extortion for their own livelihoods, extends to the cohort of lawyers, security officials and civil servants who have positioned themselves as “brokers” in the market for official documents such as birth, marriage and death certificates
  • Just as Syrians are forced to be more self-reliant, they have also come to depend evermore on vital social support structures. Indeed, extreme circumstances have created a paradox: Even as society has splintered in countless ways, the scale of deprivation arguably renders Syrians more closely interdependent than ever before.
  • Today, even the most senior lawyers in our practice are working as document brokers. A well-connected broker makes 30 to 40,000 pounds [60 to 80 dollars] per day; this roughly equals the monthly salary of a university-educated civil servant. As a result, many government employees resign and work as brokers to make more money.And this truly is a business, not a charity: Every broker takes money, even from his own brothers and sisters. Last week a colleague brought me his brother-in-law. I asked him why he needed me, when he could make all the papers himself. He explained that he can’t take money from his own brother-in-law, but I can do so and then give him half.
  • Multiplying forms of predation have accelerated the outflow of Syria’s financial and human capital, leaving behind a country largely populated by an underclass that can aspire to little more than subsistence
  • Syria’s predatory wartime economy is slowly but surely turning into a predatory economy of peace
  • As some Syrians put it, Damascus has been particularly effective in reconstructing one thing amidst the immeasurable destruction: the “wall of fear” which characterized the regime before 2011 and which momentarily broke down at the outset of the uprising
  • active surveillance, intimidation and repression are not the only contributors to this leaden atmosphere. A pervasive exhaustion has settled over Syrians ground down and immiserated by war, disillusioned with all those who purport to lead or protect them, and largely reduced to striving for day-to-day subsistence
  • At one level, the war has wrenched open social and economic fractures that existed long before the conflict. The city of Homs stands as perhaps the starkest microcosm of this trend. A Sunni majority city with sizable Christian and Alawi minorities, Homs was the first major urban center to rise up and the first to devolve into bitter sectarian bloodletting
  • While vast swathes of Syria’s Sunni population feel silenced and brutalized, Alawi communities often carry their own narrative of victimhood, which blends legitimate grievances with vindictive impulses vis-à-vis Sunnis whom they regard as having betrayed the country
  • crude divisions based on sect or class fail to describe a complex and fluid landscape. Some fault lines are less dramatic, all but imperceptible except to those who experience them first-hand. Neighbors, colleagues, friends and kin may have come down on opposing sides, despite having every social marker in common. Each part of the country has its own web of tragic events to untangle.
  • Many Islamic State fighters swapped clothes and joined the [Kurdish-led] Syrian Democratic Forces to protect themselves and their families. But they haven’t changed; those people are bad, and will always be bad. There will be vengeance. Not now, while everyone is busy putting their lives together. But eventually, everyone who suffered under ISIS, whose brother was killed by ISIS, will take revenge.
  • A native of a Damascus suburb remarked: “Charities typically want to help those who fled from elsewhere. So, when I go to a charity, I say I’m displaced.”
  • The divide between conservative and more secular Sunnis has calcified, manifesting itself even in differential treatment at checkpoints. “I have an easier time driving around because I don’t wear the hijab,” remarked a woman from the Damascus suburbs. “If you veil, security assumes you’re with the opposition.”
  • While dialogue is sorely needed, some Syrians warn against emphasising dialogue for its own sake—even at the cost of burying the most substantive issues at stake. A businessman from Damascus described his own abortive experience with talks proposing to link disparate elements of Syria’s private sector: “There’s this whole industry around ‘mediation,’ including between sides that don’t actually disagree on anything. Meanwhile, all the problems that caused the uprising have gotten worse.”
  • Most who can afford to leave the country do so; others benefit from an exemption afforded to university students, while another subset enjoys a reprieve due to their status as the sole male of their generation in their nuclear family. Others may pay exorbitant bribes to skirt the draft, or confine themselves within their homes to avoid being detected—making them invisible both to the army and to broader society. Some endure multiple such ordeals, only to remain in an indefinite state of limbo due to the contingent and precarious nature of these solutions
  • remittances from relatives who live abroad
  • The country’s middle and upper classes have long extended vital forms of solidarity to their needier compatriots, with Syria’s merchant and religious networks playing a leading role. What is unique, today, is the scale of hardship across the country, which is so vast as to have changed the way that Syrians conceptualize the act of receiving charity. A businessman from central Syria noted the extent to which dependency, which once demanded some degree of discretion, has become a straightforward fact of life. “People used to hide it when they were reliant on charity. Not anymore. Today you might hear workers in a factory wondering, ‘Where is the manager?’ And someone will say that he’s out waiting for his food basket. The whole country is living on handouts.”
  • People still do charity the Islamic way, based on the premise that you must assist those closest to you. If there’s someone you should help—say, a neighbor—but you’re unable, then it’s your responsibility to find someone else who can. These circles remain very much intact, and the entire society lives on this. Seven years of war didn’t destroy that aspect of Syrian culture, and that’s something Syrians are proud of.
  • There will be no nationwide recovery, no serious reform, no meaningful reconciliation for the foreseeable future.
Ed Webb

Remembering My Grandfather, Who Toppled the Imamate in Yemen | Newlines Magazine - 0 views

newlinesmag.com/...o-toppled-the-imamate-in-yemen

Yemen history revolution military

shared by Ed Webb on 25 May 21 - Cached
  • On his way to Baghdad, Jeddou made a stop in Aden before boarding the ship that would take him to Iraq. He was stunned at what he saw in the city of Aden with its cinema and modern amenities. Because of British colonization of the city from 1937 to 1963, the level of development in Aden far exceeded that of Sanaa, leaving Jeddou with the feeling that he had stepped into a different country
  • When he reached Baghdad, he was, yet again, flabbergasted by the stark difference in the quality of life between Iraq and Yemen. These two trips inspired Jeddou to visit other Arab countries, such as Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon. It seemed that any Arab city in the region had basic necessities that Sanaa lacked, such as asphalted roads, electricity, cars, and access to free health care
  • How could a country considered one of the oldest centers of civilization in the world reach this state? Yemen was home to three powerful and affluent empires: Sabaean, Minaean, and Himyarite. This was the land that was dubbed “Arabia Felix” by the Romans, with its lush greenery, fertile land, and rich profits from its trade of frankincense, spices, and agricultural products. After having seen what was possible, my grandfather was determined to spark a change and pull Yemen out of its isolation and prehistoric way of life
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  • captured and placed in solitary fort confinement for one year. This imprisonment marked only the beginning of a long and dark series of encounters in which Jeddou endured some of Sanaa’s darkest and most horrific prisons.
  • The Free Yemeni Movement began designing the scheme for their first uprising, the Revolution of Feb. 17, 1948. With Vice Imam Abdullah Al-Wazir as their ally, they peacefully called for a reformed constitutional Imamate with Imam Yahya remaining as governor and spiritual leader but with limited, temporal powers. Unfortunately, the Imam instigated a battle that ended in his assassination. His son, Imam Ahmed, subsequently came into power, capturing and executing a large number of Free Officers.
  • During the mid-50s, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser was advocating for Arab unity against Western colonizing forces in the region. He sought a partnership with Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and although Imam Ahmed was against Egypt’s political thinking, he saw this as an opportunity to restrain British forces that were growing beyond Aden.
  • As 1961 approached, schooling and education in the north were still underdeveloped. Electricity was scantily introduced in Sanaa, Ta’izz, and Al Hudaydah, and the bank remained without a local currency system. The government under the Imam’s rule still lacked institutions to run the state, its administration, laws, or justice. All power remained in the hands of the Imam and his deputies.
  • By the time the big moment of change arrived, the Free Officers had garnered the support of many powerful and influential forces, all of which played a pivotal role in preparing for the great revolt.
  • At 11 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 26, 1962, the uprising started. The first step was to take control of the radio station. After some altercation and firing of bullets, the Free Officers were able to seize the building. The next step was to take over Dar Al-Bashayer Palace. This battle, however, was more protracted, and fighting continued through the night
  • As the clock approached 5 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 27, 1962, the revolutionaries had successfully eradicated the Imamite system and took control over Sanaa, including Al-Bashayer Palace. And over at Ta’izz, the brigadier and leader of the Ta’izz army announced their support for the uprising.
  • By Friday, Sept. 28, 1962, the new government of Yemen Arab Republic was formed under the leadership and presidency of Abdullah Al-Sallal.
Ed Webb

Hollow building becomes centre of Iraq's uprising | PLACE - 0 views

www.thisisplace.org/i

Iraq protests politics

shared by Ed Webb on 05 Nov 19 - Cached
  • The skeleton of a high-rise building overlooking Baghdad's central Tahrir Square known as the Turkish Restaurant has become a temporary home and a bustling centre for protesters staging demonstrations against Iraq's ruling elites.
  • "We didn't know each other but here, we became one," said Abu Al-Baqir, wielding a large wooden stick. "We are all Iraqis."
  • Groups of young men have occupied all 18 floors of the building, with its cramped unlit narrow staircases. Inside, they dance, smoke shisha, play backgammon and chant for the downfall of the ruling elites.
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  • The demonstrators want to end the post-2003 political order, which they see as endemically corrupt and which has failed to deliver basic services.
  • Once a commercial centre, the building was bombed in two wars and subsequently abandoned. It has been dubbed the Turkish Restaurant because of the restaurant that occupied its top floor in the 1980s.
  • Protesters said they took over the building to stop security forces who used it to shoot at them in the first wave of protests in early October. More than 250 people have been killed nationwide since the protests started.
  • "They tried more than once to enter, they used violence, they used tear gas, some of us died, but we did not leave this building," said Khalil Ibrahim, a 28-year-old mechanical engineering graduate who introduced himself as the 14th floor spokesman. He has not been able to find work in three years.
  • "I tell them today we are standing here in this building, tomorrow we will be standing in the Green Zone,"
  • On the lower floors, young people handed out flyers listing their demands. Medical volunteers came to check up the wounded and distribute saline, inhalers, and masks for those in need.
  • "If we don't help, who will? Neither the Ministry of Health nor our own hospitals will give us supplies to help treat wounded protesters,"
  • Nearby, engineer Bashir Ghalib, wearing a white construction hat, was instructing young men setting up an electric grid. "We worked with volunteers and donors to install electricity in the Turkish Restaurant in six hours while successive governments have not been able to bring light in 16 years,"
Ed Webb

Neom: Saudi Arabia jails tribesmen for 50 years for rejecting displacement | Middle Eas... - 0 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...risoned-rejecting-displacement

KSA Saudi cities MBS repression prison land rights speech expression

shared by Ed Webb on 14 Sep 22 - Cached
  • Two members of the Howeitat, a tribe in Saudi Arabia forcibly displaced to make way for the $500bn Neom megacity, have received lengthy sentences over their protests against the project
  • Two women - Salma al-Shehab, a Leeds University student and mother of two, and Nourah bint Saeed al-Qahtani, a mother of five - were given 34 years and 45 years respectively over tweets critical of the Saudi government. Osama Khaled, a writer, translator and computer programmer, was sentenced to 32 years over "allegations relating to the right of free speech",
  • a dangerous pattern
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  • since US President Joe Biden's visit to Saudi Arabia in July, there had been a "more repressive approach by the Saudi state security and judicial authorities against individuals exercising their right to freedom of speech". 
  • Abdul Rahim al-Howeiti, a 43-year-old Tabuk resident who was shot dead by Saudi special forces in April 2020 after protesting the government's eviction orders
  • Since December, Howeitat tribespeople have reported the Saudi authorities' campaign to drive them from their land has escalated. New measures include cutting water and electricity supplies, and deploying surveillance drones above residences
  • among 150 Howeitat who have been imprisoned over their resistance to the Neom project
  • little has been constructed, but large sums have been paid to consultants and increasingly outlandish plans revealed. Yet Saudi authorities have sought to clear areas along 170km of Tabuk province of its residents, many of whom belong to the Howeitat tribe.
  • drones are being flown regularly over Tabuk province, and that they believe their mobile phone and social media accounts are closely monitored.
  • water and electricity has been cut off from an estimated 15,000 people in an attempt to force them from the region
  • The new Saudi megacity - which organisers claim will be 33 times the size of New York City - is planned to include a 170km straight line city, an eight-sided city that floats on water, and a ski resort with a folded vertical village, among other grandiose and architecturally challenging projects.
Ed Webb

The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer: Algeria: Middle East's next revolt if soccer... - 0 views

mideastsoccer.blogspot.com/...ddle-easts-next-revolt-if.html

Algeria football soccer protests

shared by Ed Webb on 06 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • The most recent protests are part of an upsurge in soccer-related violence in Algeria, an indicator that increased wages and government social spending is failing to compensate for frustration with the failure of the country’s gerontocracy in control since independence to share power with a younger generation, create jobs and address housing problems.
  • The protesters’ retreat into the stadiums amounted to a tacit understanding between Algerian soccer fans and security forces that football supporters could express their grievances as long as they did so within the confines of the stadiums. “Bouteflika is in love with his throne, he wants another term," is a popular anti-government chant in stadiums.
  • Algeria’s domestic fragility is highlighted by almost daily smaller protests in towns across the country sparked by discontent over lack of water, housing, electricity, jobs and salaries. Protests have led to suspension of soccer matches. Soccer was also suspended during last year’s legislative elections.
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  • General Bachir Tartag was recalled from retirement in 2012 to head the Directorate for Internal Security (DSI). Gen. Tartag, who is believed to be in his sixties, made a name for himself during the civil war against the Islamists as one of Algeria’s most notorious hardliners and a brutal military commander.
Ed Webb

The Ouarzazate Solar Plant in Morocco: Triumphal 'Green' Capitalism and the Privatizati... - 0 views

www.jadaliyya.com/...-plant-in-morocco_triumphal-gr

Morocco energy environment neoliberalism globalization land water EU economy

shared by Ed Webb on 26 May 16 - No Cached
  • a solar mega-project that is supposedly going to end Morocco's dependency on energy imports, provide electricity to more than a million Moroccans, and put the country on a “green path.”
  • This analysis examines the project through the lens of the creation of a new commodity chain, revealing its effects as no different from the destructive mining activities taking place in southern Morocco.
  • What seems to unite all the reports and articles written about the solar plant is a deeply erroneous assumption that any move toward renewable energy is to be welcomed. And that any shift from fossil fuels, regardless of how it is carried out, will help us to avert climate chaos. One needs to say it clearly from the start: the climate crisis we are currently facing is not attributable to fossil fuels per se, but rather to their unsustainable and destructive use in order to fuel the capitalist machine. In other words, capitalism is the culprit, and if we are serious in our endeavors to tackle the climate crisis (only one facet of the multi-dimensional crisis of capitalism), we cannot elude questions of radically changing our ways of producing and distributing things, our consumption patterns and fundamental issues of equity and justice. It follows from this that a mere shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy, while remaining in the capitalist framework of commodifying and privatizing nature for the profits of the few, will not solve the problem. In fact, if we continue down this path we will only end up exacerbating, or creating another set of problems, around issues of ownership of land and natural resources.
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  • the acquisition of 3000 hectares of communally owned land to produce energy
  • "green grabbing"
  • the transfer of ownership, use rights and control over resources that were once publicly or privately owned –or not even the subject of ownership– from the poor (or everyone including the poor) into the hands of the powerful
  • This productivist creation of marginality and degradation has a long history that goes back to French colonial times. It was then that degradation narratives were constructed to justify both outright expropriation of land and the establishment of institutional arrangements based on the premise that extensive pastoralism was unproductive at best, and destructive at worst.
  • the discursive framework rendered it "marginal" and open to new "green" market uses: the production of solar power in this case at the expense of an alternative land use - pastoralism - that is deemed unproductive by the decision-makers. This is evident in the land sale that was carried out at a very low price.
  • various deceptive laws with colonial origins that have functioned to concentrate collective land ownership within the hands of an individual land representative, who tends to be under the influence of powerful regional nobles
  • meetings masquerading as a "consultation with the people" were only designed to inform the local communities about a fait accompli rather than seeking their approval
  • The land, sold at a cheap one Moroccan dirham per square meter was clearly worth a lot more. As if things were not bad enough, the duped local population were surprised to find out that the money from the sale was not going to be handed to them, but that it would be deposited into the tribe's account at the Ministry of Interior. Additionally, the money would be used to finance development projects for the whole area. They discovered that their land sale was not a sale at all: it was simply a transfer of funds from one government agency to another.
  • privatizations in the renewable energy sector are not new as of 2005, when a royal holding company called Nareva was created specifically to monopolize markets in the energy and environment sectors and ended up taking the lion's share in wind energy production in the country
  • he government had effectively privatized and confiscated historical popular sovereignty over land and transformed the people into mere recipients of development; development they are literally paying for, provided it would one day materialize, of course
  • There is no surprise regarding the international financial institutions' (IFIs) strong support for this high-cost and capital-intensive project, as Morocco boasts one of the most neoliberal(ized) economies in the region. It is extremely open to foreign capital at the expense of labor rights, and very advanced in its ambition to be fully integrated into the global marketplace (in a subordinate position, that is).
  • The World Bank’s disbursement levels to Morocco reached record levels in 2011 and 2012, with a major emphasis of these loans placed on promoting the use of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) within key sectors
  • It seems that production of energy from the sun will not be different and will be controlled by multinationals only interested in making huge profits at the expense of sovereignty and a decent life for Moroccans.
  • The idea that Morocco is taking out billions of dollars in loans to produce energy, some of which will be exported to Europe when the economic viability of the initiative is hardly assured, raises questions about externalizing the risk of Europe's renewable energy strategy to Morocco and other struggling economies around the region. It ignores entirely what has come to be called "climate debt" or "ecological debt" that is owed by the industrialised North to countries of the Global South, given the historical responsibility of the West in causing climate change
  • The biggest issue with this technology is the extensive use of water that comes with the wet cooling stage. Unlike photovoltaic (PV) technology, CSP needs cooling. This is done either by air cooled condensers (dry cooling) or high water-consumption (wet cooling). Phase I of the project will be using the wet cooling option and is estimated to consume from two to three million cubed meters of water annually (Kouz 2011). Water consumption will be much less in the case of a dry cooling (planned for phase II): between 0.73 and 0.88 million cubed meters. PV technologies require water only for cleaning solar panels. They consume about 200 times less water than CSP technology with wet cooling and forty times less water than CSP with dry cooling.
  • Even if the solar plant is only using one percent of the average dam capacity, the water consumption is still significant and can become a thorny problem at times of extreme drought when the dam contains only fifty-four million cubed meter. At such times, the dam waters will not be sufficient to cover the needs of irrigation and drinking water,  making the water usage for the solar plant deeply problematic and contentious.
  • in an arid region like Ouarzazate, this appropriation of water for a supposedly green agenda constitutes another green grab, which will play into and intensify ongoing agrarian dynamics and livelihood struggles in the region.
  • If the Moroccan state was really serious about its green credentials, why is it then building a coal-fired power plant at the same time, which represents an ecocide in-waiting for the already-polluted town of Safi? Why is it also ignoring the devastating environmental and social effects of the mining industry in the country? One notable example is the long-standing community struggle in Imider (140 kilometres east of Ouarzazate) against the royal holding silver mine (Africa's most productive silver mine), which is polluting their environment, grabbing their water, and pillaging their wealth.
Ed Webb

Desert Cucumbers: The Sahara Forest Project Comes to Tunisia - Tunisialive - 0 views

www.tunisia-live.net/...desert-cucumbers

Tunisia agriculture economy climate environment food desertification

shared by Ed Webb on 25 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • A $30 million, high-tech agricultural facility covering 10 hectares in the desert in Tunisia’s south is scheduled to open in 2018. The facility, which is a highly sophisticated green house, will use solar energy to power its operations and seawater to irrigate crops and maintain humidity. The extracted salt from the seawater will also be sold commercially.
  • hoped to be a new environmental solution to create green jobs through profitable production of food, water, clean electricity and biomass in desert areas. The first pilot project opened in Qatar in December 2012, and another facility will be launched in Jordan later this year
  • Although there are no numbers or estimates available for Tunisia yet, the Qatar facility directly employs 6,000 people, with a further support staff of 30,000. Tunisian unemployment is estimated around 15 percent countrywide and even higher among young college graduates
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  • It has also become increasingly difficult to maintain a stable agricultural output as the country faces droughts and floods due to climate change
  • 1 percent of Tunisia’s energy supply is based on renewable energy sources, but the Tunisian government has pledged to increase that number to 30 percent by 2030
Ed Webb

"What Killed Egyptian Democracy?" - An Egyptian Friend Says "I would say a deep-seated ... - 0 views

shanfaraa.com/...tate-controlled-by-armed-thugs

Egypt military politics uprising revolution opinion analysis culture education

shared by Ed Webb on 26 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Egypt, to quote Yezid Sayigh, is an “officers’ republic” and contemporary Egyptian culture containes numerous elements diametrically opposed to intellectualism and social progress
  • The Egyptian educational system is in ruins. The value of learning and education is almost nonexistent in Egyptian society. Intellectual consistency is not something that people care about. Critical thinking is absent. I have witnessed this first-hand in electrical engineering students who are supposedly among the most brilliant in the country. You can easily extrapolate this to the rest of society.
  • after a particular demonstration on May 27th, 2011, I began really to question this slogan of الشعب يريد. Who will carry out what the people want? Can mere verbalization turn an idea into objective reality? It seems that this is what Egyptians believe. I later convinced myself of accepting the reformist track because of this issue. If one cannot formalize a clear plan for a genuine revolution, then at least one has to espouse the nascent democratic process hoping for long term change.
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  • Was bequeathing Egypt to Gamal a real issue? Many Egyptians may give you that impression, but this is not the actual reality. Nepotism is a religion in Egypt. It is everywhere including in Egyptian universities. Mubarak was just mirroring a common Egyptian practice.
  • What killed democracy in Egypt? I would say a deep-seated corrupt anti-intellectual culture permeating a mafia state controlled by armed thugs.
sean lyness

Al Jazeera English - CENTRAL/S. ASIA - Kyrgyz president claims control - 0 views

english.aljazeera.net/...201048171131356434.html

shared by sean lyness on 08 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Bakiyev had effectively been removed from power.
  • The unrest followed rising tensions between the opposition and Bakiyev's government, which they accuse of cracking down on independent media and fostering corruption.
  • Recent widespread anger over the 200 per cent increase in electric and heating bills unified opposition factions and galvanised support for them.
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  • Bakiyev had promised to reform the country when he came into office five years ago
  • Bakiyev gave his relatives, including his son, top government and economic posts and faced the same accusations of corruption and cronyism that led to the ouster of Akayev.
  • sean lyness on 08 Apr 10
     
    interview w/ the kyrgyz president on the recent action in Kyrgyzstan
Ed Webb

Bahraini police taking aim at reporters, teachers | McClatchy - 0 views

www.mcclatchydc.com/...aini-police-taking-aim-at.html

teachers journalists Bahrain rights abuses media authoritarianism

shared by Ed Webb on 26 May 11 - No Cached
  • After severely curbing news coverage of its crackdown on opposition groups by foreign reporters, Bahraini authorities have begun an assault on local journalists working for international news agencies — with arrests, beatings and, apparently in one instance, electric shock.
  • Besides ousting the editors of the only independent daily newspaper, Al Wasat, the authorities have arrested local reporters and photographers and expelled the only resident foreign reporter, who worked for the Reuters news agency. Most foreign news reporters, including this one, have been prevented from entering Bahrain.
  • The intimidation campaign appears to be focused on teachers, who report that as many as 30 elementary and secondary school teachers are taken from their classrooms at a time and driven to police stations where they are subjected to hours of verbal and physical abuse before being released.
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  • "They called me a donkey, a cow, a liar. They said I am fat. I am an embarrassment, " said one teacher. Most of the teachers were beaten over the head, and had to give up their cell phones and laptop computers, the teacher said. "The whole thing was laughable," the teacher said, "except that I had all my curriculum plans and grades for my pupils on my computer. I need that back."
  • Ed Webb on 26 May 11
     
    with allies like these, who needs enemies?
Ed Webb

Mohammed bin Salman Isn't Wonky Enough - Foreign Policy - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...d-bin-salman-isnt-wonky-enough

KSA Saudi economy reform demographics analysis

shared by Ed Webb on 02 Apr 18 - No Cached
  • Like Western investors, the kingdom’s elites are uncertain about what the new order means for the country’s economy. The new Saudi leadership has indeed created new opportunities, but many of the deep structural barriers to diversification remain unchanged. The bulk of the public sector remains bloated by patronage employment, the private sector is still dominated by cheap foreign labor, and private economic activity remains deeply dependent on state spending. Addressing these challenges could take a generation — and it will require patience, creativity, and a clearer sense of priorities.
  • While a band of Al Saud brothers used to rule collectively with the king as a figurehead, decision-making has now become centralized under one man
  • ruthlessness and willingness to take risks radically at odds with the cautious and consensual political culture of the Al Saud clan
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • New policies and programs are announced constantly, while the delivery capacity of the sluggish Saudi bureaucracy continues to lag. Below the upper echelons, the Saudi state remains the deeply fragmented, bloated, and slow-moving machine that I described in my 2010 book. The government seems to have no clear strategy for reforming this bureaucracy
  • While space for political opposition arguably has narrowed, women will soon be allowed to drive and the religious police force that once harassed them has been almost entirely neutered. By relaxing religious controls over the public sphere, the crown prince is seeking to attract more foreign investment and facilitate diversification into tourism and entertainment
  • Saudi Arabia has tackled fiscal reforms more vigorously than most local and international observers expected, introducing unprecedented tax and energy price measures, including the introduction of a 5 percent value added tax, new levies on foreign workers, and increases in electricity and transport fuel prices. The government is now experimenting with new non-oil sectors with an increased sense of urgency, including information technology and defense manufacturing.
  • As limits on government employment kick in, young Saudis will increasingly have no choice but to seek private jobs. But they will face tough competition on the private labor market where employers have become accustomed to recruiting low-wage workers from poorer Arab and Asian countries
  • public sector employment remains the key means of providing income to Saudi nationals. Cheap foreign labor dominates private sector employment, thereby keeping consumer inflation at bay and business owners happy. Citizens, however, are parked in the overstaffed public sector. Out of every three jobs held by Saudis, roughly two are in government. The average ratio around the world is one in five. Public sector wages account for almost half of total government spending, among the highest shares in the world
  • Local economic advisors fear that the majority of private petrochemicals firms — the most developed part of Saudi industry — would lose money if prices of natural gas, their main input, increase to American levels.
  • Saudi wage demands will have to drop further if private job creation is to substitute for the erstwhile government employment guarantee. For the time being, private job creation has stalled as the government has pursued moderate austerity since 2015 in response to deficits and falling oil prices
  • The government has also underestimated how dependent private businesses are on state spending. The share of state spending in the non-oil economy is extremely high compared to other economies. Historically, almost all private sector growth has resulted from increases in public spending
  • As long as oil prices remain below $70 per barrel, the goal of a balanced budget will cause pain for businesses and limit private job creation. This will pose a major political challenge at a time when an estimated 200,000 Saudis are entering the labor market every year. More than 60 percent of the population is under 30, which means that the citizen labor force will grow rapidly for at least the next two decades.
  • It would be far more prudent to gently prepare citizens and businesses for a difficult and protracted adjustment period and to focus on a smaller number of priorities
  • The key structural challenge to non-oil growth is the way the Saudi government currently shares its wealth, most notably through mass public employment — an extremely expensive policy that bloats the bureaucracy, distorts labor markets, and is increasingly inequitable in an era when government jobs can no longer be guaranteed to all citizens. A stagnating economic pie that might even shrink in the coming years must be shared more equitably.
  • A basic income would not only guarantee a basic livelihood for all citizens, but also serve as a grand political gesture that could justify difficult public sector reforms. A universal wealth-sharing scheme would make it easier to freeze government hiring and send a clear signal that, from now on, Saudis need to seek and acquire the skills for private employment and entrepreneurship. The government could supplement this scheme by charging fees to firms that employ foreigners while subsidizing wages for citizens to fully close the wage gap between the two.
  • Focusing on such fundamentals might be less exciting than building new cities in the desert or launching the world’s largest-ever IPO — but they are more important for the kingdom’s economic future. No country as dependent on petroleum as Saudi Arabia has ever effectively diversified away from oil
Ed Webb

Cash and contradictions: On the limits of Middle Eastern influence in Sudan - African A... - 0 views

africanarguments.org/...dle-eastern-influence-in-sudan

Sudan KSA Saudi UAE Egypt politics economy military militia hornofafrica

shared by Ed Webb on 06 Aug 19 - No Cached
  • In Sudan, the revolutionaries who overthrew President Omar al-Bashir and who continue to organise are well aware of the threat posed by neighbouring Arab countries. Protesters’ murals show the people rejecting the interfering hands of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). One of the most popular chants is “Victory or Egypt”, voicing activists’ determination not to succumb to a military counter-revolution as happened in their northern neighbour.
  • many Sudanese believe that the 3 June crackdown in which scores of protesters were killed only came after the green light from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt
  • In this struggle between the “Pax Africana” and Arab authoritarians, there’s no doubt that the democrats have the weaker hand. But not everything is going the Arab troika’s way.
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  • Sudan wasn’t following the script of Bahrain, where the demonstrators dispersed after a single crackdown, or Egypt, where the army took control through co-option and repression.
  • A major split between Saudi Arabia and the UAE was on show in July when the latter abruptly withdrew most of its forces from Yemen. No official explanation was given, but the decision was evidently not coordinated with Saudi Arabia, which remains bogged down in an intractable war. The UAE’s decision also shows it can be mercurial and that its policies towards the Horn of Africa may be less strategic and more opportunistic than commentators have assumed.
  • Egypt prides itself on understanding Sudan and sees Saudi Arabia and UAE as newcomers seeking influence solely by dispensing money. Egypt limited its demands on Sudan to handing over Egyptian Islamists in exile, suspending the deal for Turkey to develop a naval base, and ceding its territorial claim to the Halaib Triangle.
  • As Arab countries find themselves pulled in to the internal negotiations among the Sudanese, they will face another potential point of contention. Sudan doesn’t just need democracy, but peace. This means a role for the Islamists both in Khartoum and the provinces. For a decade, the custodian of the Darfur peace process has been Qatar, the troika’s arch rival, and it will be impossible to ignore Qatar’s role or that of Sudan’s diverse constituency of Islamists. Some of these dynamics are already playing out and reveal the lack of a common strategy among the Arab troika
  • After the secession of South Sudan in 2011, Sudan lost 75% of its oilfields and an even greater proportion of its hard currency earnings. The following year, it literally struck gold and within a few years, gold was providing 40% of Sudan’s exports. As much as a third of it, however, came to be smuggled to Libya, Chad or directly by plane to the region’s biggest gold market in Dubai. The government in Khartoum, desperate to control the commodity, responded by using the Central Bank of Sudan as its sole buying agent, paying above the market price to gold traders and printing money to cover this outlay. Buying gold to convert to hard currency became the engine of Sudan’s inflation, which skyrocketed. By 2018, the price of essential commodities such as bread and fuel was so high relative to stagnant wages that the people across the country took to the streets to protest.
  • Hemedti. His RSF militia controls the gold mines and he personally owns a number of concessions. Through Sudan’s monetary policy, vast resources were transferred from wage earners in the centre of the country to militiamen and gold traders in the peripheries
  • Hemedti has also benefited massively from providing mercenaries, which may be Sudan’s second biggest source of foreign exchange today. A few months after the Saudis launched their war in Yemen in March 2015, Sudan volunteered to send troops. The first contingent was a battalion of the regular army, but then Hemedti struck a parallel deal to dispatch several brigades of RSF fighters. Within a year, the RSF comprised by far the biggest foreign contingent fighting in Yemen with at least 7,000 militiamen. Hemedti was paid directly by Saudi Arabia and the UAE for this service. He says he deposited $350 million in the Central Bank, but has not said how much he kept to himself for his own enrichment or political spending.
  • the Central Bank of Sudan has become an instrument for Hemedti’s political finance. And since becoming the central actor in Sudan’s ruling cabal in April, he has exerted an even tighter grip on gold production and exports while moving aggressively into other commercial areas. He has increased the RSF’s deployment in Yemen and sent a brigade to fight in Libya alongside General Khalifa Haftar, who is backed by Egypt and the UAE, almost certainly in return for Emirati financial rewards. Hemedti is also expanding his family business conglomerate, the Al-Junaid companies, and running his political business on the basis of personally handing out cash to key constituents such as tribal chiefs, the police, and electricity workers.
  • none of this addresses Sudan’s macroeconomic crisis: its rampant inflation, rapidly increasing arrears on international debt, and ostracism from the dollar-based international financial system
  • Sudan’s Gulf patrons are bailing out the country with a $200 million monthly subsidy in cash and commodities, but the bailout amounts needed will quickly become too big even for the oil-rich Gulf States’ deep pockets
  • a clash between Hemedti’s political market logic and Sudan’s macroeconomy is looming.  The Sudanese technocrats associated with the FFC are well aware of this, which is why the economists called upon to put themselves forward for cabinet positions have been reluctant to agree. There is a race between Hemedti’s consolidation of power and a re-run of the economic crisis and protests that led to al-Bashir’s downfall.
  • as Sudan’s economic crisis deepens, they will have to turn to the IMF and western creditors for assistance
Ed Webb

Rights group: Jailed Egyptian activist's conditions worsen - 0 views

apnews.com/28f010a2712e6fbe751f09e34f50d1

Egypt authoritarianism Italy Sisi politics student repression

shared by Ed Webb on 14 Feb 20 - Cached
  • Police transferred an Egyptian activist who was arrested upon arrival at the Cairo airport from Italy to a “less favorable” detention facility Thursday, a local rights group said, just as his parents showed up for visiting hours.Officials detained Patrick George Zaki, 28, a human rights advocate and student at the University of Bologna in Italy, after he landed in Cairo for a brief trip home.When Zaki’s parents arrived at the police station to catch a first glimpse of their son, police directed them to another, more crowded facility a short drive away. By the time they found Zaki, less than a minute remained of visiting hours, his lawyer said.
  • Zaki has told his lawyers that while in custody he has been blindfolded, beaten and tortured with electric shocks while interrogated about his activism. There was no immediate response from Egypt’s Interior Ministry about the allegations.
  • accusations of spreading fake news and calling for unauthorized protests
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  • Recent laws in Egypt have expanded the definition of terrorism to include all political dissent, granting prosecutors broad power to keep people detained for months and even years without ever filing charges or presenting evidence
  • Egypt outlawed all unauthorized protests in 2013, months after President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, then defense minister, led the military’s ouster of the country’s first democratically elected but divisive president, M ohamed Morsi
  • The move against Zaki is the latest in el-Sissi’s unprecedented crackdown on opposition. The government has arrested thousands —both secular-leaning activists and Islamists — and rolled back freedoms won after the 2011 uprising.
  • deeply rattled Italy, where Zaki is pursuing a master’s in Gender and Women’s Studies, dredging up painful memories of the disappearance of 28-year-old Italian researcher Giulio Regeni.
  • Regeni’s battered body was found on a roadside on the outskirts of Cairo in 2016. Italy’s public prosecutor has opened an investigation into several Egyptian police and secret service members in connection with Regeni’s torture and murder.His death remains a source of simmering tension between the countries
  • Bologna’s streets, where hundreds took part in rallies this week to call for his release
Ed Webb

Trapped in Iran | 1843 - 0 views

www.1843magazine.com/...trapped-in-iran

Iran IRGC media journalist repression culture religion minorities Jews Muslims Islam

shared by Ed Webb on 02 Mar 20 - Cached
  • Iran has a complicated, and at times paranoid, government. Elected parliamentarians give a veneer of democracy but power ultimately resides with the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the regime’s most powerful security force, answers directly to him. Rival arms of the state, including the security forces, jostle for influence. And the rules are unclear.
  • I had gone to report on the impact of American-imposed sanctions. Some news stories were claiming that Tehran was on the brink of collapse, but I saw few signs of it. There was no panic buying. The city looked cleaner and more modern than on my visit three years before. It has the best underground in the Middle East, with locally made trains. Parks and museums were abundant and well-tended, pavements were scrubbed and the city’s many flower-beds immaculately maintained.
  • My captors wore no identifying uniforms, but on the second day the doctor told me that he was an officer in the intelligence arm of the Revolutionary Guards. Iran’s security agencies are many tentacled. In 1979 the new Islamic Republic retained much of the existing state apparatus, including the army and a good part of the bureaucracy, but it added another tier to keep existing institutions in check, and the parallel systems have competed ever since. The government’s own intelligence ministry would be unlikely to detain a Western journalist whose entry it had approved. My accusers were from its more powerful rival.
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  • America’s sanctions had hurt people, of course. Average monthly salaries were worth less than a pair of imported shoes. I saw people sleeping rough or hawking junk on the streets. One former university lecturer I met had been reduced to busking. But few people went hungry and there seemed to be a joie de vivre among many of those I talked to. Cafés, theatres and music halls were packed. An earlier bout of sanctions had forced Tehran’s Symphony Orchestra to disband but I wangled a ticket for the opening night of the reconstituted Philharmonic.
  • as well as being an intelligence officer, he was an academic and wrote a newspaper column
  • Self-censorship ranks as one of an authoritarian regime’s strongest tools, and I was complicit.
  • Despite Iran’s pious reputation, Tehran may well be the least religious capital in the Middle East. Clerics dominate the news headlines and play the communal elders in soap operas, but I never saw them on the street, except on billboards. Unlike most Muslim countries, the call to prayer is almost inaudible. There has been a rampant campaign to build new mosques, yet more people flock to art galleries on Fridays than religious services. With the exception, perhaps, of Tel Aviv, I had visited nowhere in the Middle East where people read as voraciously as Tehran. “The Handmaid’s Tale”, Margaret Atwood’s dystopian fable of women enslaved to a theocratic caste, is a particular favourite, the owner of one bookstore told me.
  • Life in Iran has always swung both ways. Nothing goes and everything goes. Alcohol is banned but home delivery is faster for wine than for pizza.
  • The space for veil-free living had grown since I last visited. In the safety of their homes, women often removed their head coverings when chatting over the internet. Darkened cinema halls offered respite from the morality police who enforce discipline. In cafés women let their scarves fall languorously. The more brazen simply walked uncovered in the streets, risking imprisonment. And, in an unusual inversion of rebellion, ties have made a reappearance some 40 years after Ayatollah Khomeini denounced them as a symbol of British imperialism.
  • The listing of plays in Tehran was almost as long as London’s West End and I devoured them. Directors are adept at finding ways to evade the censors. A striking number of plays and films I saw were set in prisons – a commentary on the Iranian condition – but under bygone regimes. Opera was taboo, but a performance one evening in the red-cushioned opera house of the former shah, which was billed as Kurdish folk music, included Verdi. Beneath a vast glittering chandelier the audience threw bouquets of flowers at the Iranian singer, who is acclaimed in both Rome and Berlin; for an encore, she finally dared to sing a solo.
  • Of course not everyone got away with pushing at the strictures. In my first week in Tehran the authorities pulled a production of Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler” – the play is about suicide, which is forbidden in Islam – and another about poor women reduced to hawking to feed their families. Cafés that hosted live bands risked closure until they had paid off fines. Women without head-coverings who were spotted on one of Tehran’s many surveillance cameras received police summons by text. But the morality police, who drove around town in new green-and-white vans, seemed too stretched to suppress every challenge.
  • It was liberating to have the run of Tehran, without minders, deadlines or chores. But of course, I wasn’t truly free. I policed myself on behalf of the regime, becoming my own jailer and censor, aware that any lapse could have consequences. Sometimes I tried to speak over colleagues or relatives who were saying things that I feared might enrage my captors. I felt the presence of hundreds of electronic eyes. The friendliest faces who greeted me might be informers. And I could not leave Iran. It is an odd experience to know that you can be caught out at any time. But this was the way of Tehran. Some avenues open up, others close. Everyone feels like a captive. There are those who say that it is all a grand plan of the ayatollahs to keep people on edge.
  • There was a Jewish café, two kosher restaurants and a maternity hospital funded by the Jewish community in the south of Tehran, where less than 5% of those born were Jewish. A Jewish sports centre was also under construction
  • I was caught in a political game involving high-seas tankers and international diplomacy that far exceeded my ability to influence it.
  • I feared either that the Revolutionary Guards thought they could use my presence to negotiate some kind of deal, or that I was becoming a pawn in the internal rivalry within the Iranian government. I was beginning to see at first hand the glaring tensions between the two arms of the state. My hotel seemed increasingly nervous about hosting an over-stayer without a passport. In an attempt to evict me one evening, they cut the lights and blamed an unfixable electrical fault. The following morning the Guards arrived to transfer me to another location. En route we were chased by two motorbikes and careened up and down the alleyways of northern Tehran. Only when we pulled into a cul-de-sac did the Guards succeed in shaking them off.
  • A new interrogator – toad-like and clad in leather – told me that the Guards had found incriminating material on my laptop that touched on matters of national security: he had found a note from a conversation I’d had with a government flunkie about smuggling rings connected to the offspring of senior Iranian officials. This proved, he said, that I had crossed the line from journalism to espionage. They were reopening the case.
  • Notes he had discovered on Iran’s spiralling brain drain confirmed, to his mind, that I was seeking to undermine national morale.
  • I wasn’t even sure how genuinely religious many of those I had met were. When we drove about town, Ali talked of his student days, his young family and his passion for British football. Ideology rarely came up. Within the parameters set by the vice squads, Tehran’s dominant culture was defiantly secular. Iran called itself a theocracy, yet religion felt frustratingly hard to locate and the truly religious seemed sidelined, like a minority.
  • For ten nights in Muharram these passion plays were performed with growing fervour. Even an irreverent man who taught me Farsi, who devoted much of his spare time to picking up waitresses in cafés, said Muharram was the one religious occasion he observed. The streets were lined with mokebs, stalls offering tea and dates and decorated with tragic representations of the battlefield using decapitated toy soldiers. At one mokeb, I came across a camel being readied for sacrifice. Many of these rites drew on ancient folklore rather than Muslim practice, akin to the celebration of Easter in the West. Since its inception the clerical regime had sought – and failed – to purify Iran of its non-Islamic elements.
  • “You feel a direct connection between people and God here,” a 40-year-old programme manager told me. He had stopped going to government mosques altogether, he said. Like some other pious Iranians I met, he feared that politics had sullied their religion rather than elevating it.
  • Panahian preached from a cushioned, teak throne beneath a vast chandelier while his acolytes crowded around him on the floor. He projected so much power, I got the feeling that if he’d read from a phone directory his disciples would still have sobbed. “Are you a servant of God or of man?” he said, scanning the crowd for suspects. “Choose between the tyranny of westernisation and God.” After he’d left a woman in a black chador took me aside. I steeled myself for an ideological harangue. Instead, she held up a plastic bag of bread and a plastic container of beans that the Husseiniya distributed after the sermon. “That’s why we came,” she said. “If you ask about the contents of the sermon, no one can tell you. If you ask about the contents of breakfast, they’ll all remember.”
  • the largest and most vibrant Jewish community in the Muslim world. Since the ayatollahs toppled the shah, Iran’s Jewish population has shrunk from 80,000 to around a tenth of that number. The ayatollahs have largely kept the remaining Jews safe, but they have also confiscated some of their property, particularly that of those who have left the country. Tensions between Iran’s Jews and the regime ebb and rise depending on the country’s relationship with Israel. But over time the Islamic Republic seems to have grown more at ease with the community
  • Iran has 22 mikva’ot – pools for ritual immersion. Many of Tehran’s dozen active synagogues are vast and packed with worshippers
  • Over the course of four days the men spent most of their time glued to phone-screens, watching Bollywood films, or American or Chinese schlock full of street fights, which they accessed through virtual private networks to evade the censorship they were supposed to enforce.
  • By rare coincidence the first service of selichot, the penitential prayers recited for a month in the run up to the High Holidays, began on the first day of the solemn month of Muharram. The synagogues were packed. At 1am Iran’s largest synagogue still teemed with families. At 2am the congregation swayed in prayer for Israel and its people. The communal chest-beating was gentler than in the Husseiniya, but more ardent than in Western congregations. Women walked up to the ark and kissed the smooth Isfahani tiles painted with menorahs and stars of David, acting like Shia pilgrims at their shrines. People milled around on the street outside chatting. I must have recited my prayers for forgiveness with conviction.
  • two men in black entered and introduced themselves as officers from another branch of intelligence. They apologised profusely for the difficulties I had faced and blamed the Guards for the inconvenience. They hoped that I had been well treated and expressed outrage that the Guards had made me pay my own hotel bill. They assured me that they’d been working strenuously for weeks to fix matters. My ordeal was over, they said. But could they just ask a few questions first?After 40 minutes of interrogation, they disappeared. Ten minutes later they were back with embarrassed smiles. One awkward matter needed resolving. Because I had overstayed my visa, I needed to pay a fine of 4m toman, about  $200.“Of course, the Guards should be paying since the delay was of their making,” they said.I called Ali and asked him to clear the fine.“No way,” he replied. “Can’t they waive it?”The intelligence officers apologised again but remained insistent. There were regulations. They couldn’t foot the bill for a mistake of the Guards.
  • Only when the flight map on my seat-back screen showed the plane nosing out of Iranian airspace did I begin to breathe normally.
Ed Webb

Is Oman's model of governance about to shift? - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...ft-oil-prices-coronavirus.html

Oman economy GCC rentierism reform pandemics oil energy policy

shared by Ed Webb on 10 Apr 20 - Cached
  • Like other Gulf states, Oman does not grant citizens freedom of expression or the right to choose their leader, but it does provide citizens a range of material advantages: public sector jobs, subsidies, free health care and education, a free plot of land, a pension and no income tax.
  • Oman’s public debt has skyrocketed since oil prices declined in 2014, going from less than 5% of Oman's gross domestic product to nearly 60% last year. Until 2023, annual budgets were already expected to be in the red. But the 2020 fiscal deficit is expected to be four times higher than previously forecasted because of the double shock of the COVID-19 pandemic and plunging oil prices, credit rating agency Fitch estimated.
  • the cash-strapped Omani government is expected to cut down on public expenditures and impose austerity measures. But such a move would revamp the model of governance that has prevailed since the late Qaboos bin Said ascended to the throne in 1970
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  • Public taxation is also increasing. A sin tax was implemented in June 2019 on products like sugary carbonated drinks and tobacco, and a serially delayed 5% value-added tax is expected in 2021. According to Salmi, electricity and water subsidies could soon be slashed and, in the long term, Omanis could see an income tax.
  • Above all, reforming the labor market — an unpopular move — would be the cornerstone of a post-Qaboos welfare state. About 43% of Omanis work for public entities. Abousleiman recommended economic diversification to foster private sector job creation and to further "relieve the expectations on the government to provide employment."
  • Following a field visit to Oman in 2019, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) suggested that the wages and benefits of the private sector need to align more closely with the public sector to make employment in the former more appealing.
  • Omanis who talked to Al-Monitor, as well as Mukhaini, believe any upcoming austerity measures "should not make the poor poorer and the rich richer," Mukhaini said.
  • According to rating firm S&P, the new ruler will face “a difficult trade-off” in the coming months to address high unemployment among youths, weak growth, and fiscal and funding pressures
  • Defense and security expenses account for over a quarter of Oman's annual budge
  • Oman — rated junk by the three major rating agencies — has several other options to fund its short-term ballooning deficit: Go further into debt; deplete its sovereign wealth fund; sell state assets; devalue its currency; and seek assistance from neighboring countries or international organizations.
  • Analysts believe Oman should build a model of governance tailored to the post-oil era. Along with a more stringent budget environment, the new leadership pledged to implement structural reforms to diversify the rentier economy and foster private sector-led growth.
  • To ensure political and social stability, Sultan Qaboos avoided controversial measures that could have triggered short-term political unrest
  • In 2011, at the height of the Arab uprisings, Sultan Qaboos promised to create 50,000 jobs and institute unemployment benefits in an attempt to defuse unprecedented nationwide protests.
  • the lack of economic reforms did not stop Omanis from loving the monarch, who built a modern state out of a medieval-like society he inherited in the early 1970s
  • Sultan Haitham bin Tariq "is already planting the seeds by cutting the royal expenditures tremendously,"
  • The relationship between state and society that Omanis have known for decades will likely never be the same
Ed Webb

IS extremists step up as Iraq, Syria, grapple with virus - 0 views

apnews.com/cf69f5f7ab4a3268fd224107fadc61

ISIS Iraq Syria US USA pandemics security Kurds extremists violence Ramadan

shared by Ed Webb on 03 May 20 - Cached
  • a resurgence of attacks by the Islamic State group in northern Iraq
  • In neighboring Syria, IS attacks on security forces, oil fields and civilian sites have also intensified.
  • the militant group is taking advantage of governments absorbed in tackling the coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing slide into economic chaos.
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  • In Iraq, militants also exploit security gaps at a time of an ongoing territorial dispute and a U.S. troop drawdown.
  • IS was benefiting from a “gap” between Kurdish forces and federal armed forces caused by political infighting.
  • In northeast Syria, Kurdish-dominated police have become a more visible target for IS as they patrol the streets to implement anti-virus measures,
  • Iraqi military officials believe the improved, organized nature of the attacks serves to cement the influence of new IS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Quraishi, who was named after his predecessor was killed in a U.S. raid late last year. One military official said more operations are expected during Ramadan to demonstrate the new leader’s strength.
  • more IED attacks, shootings and ambushes of police and military
  • The number of Iraqi military personnel on duty has dropped 50% because of virus prevention measures
  • territorial disputes between Baghdad and authorities from the northern Kurdish autonomy zone have left parts of three provinces without law enforcement
  • “Before the emergence of the virus and before the American withdrawal, the operations were negligible, numbering only one operation per week,” said a senior intelligence official. Now, he said, security forces are seeing an average of 20 operations a month.
  • IS fighters in late March launched a campaign of attacks in government-held parts of Syria, from the central province of Homs all the way to Deir el-Zour to the east, bordering Iraq. Some 500 fighters, including some who had escaped from prison, recently slipped from Syria into Iraq, helping fuel the surge in violence there, Iraqi intelligence officials said.
  • because of the security situation in the desert several gas wells in the fields of Shaer and Hayan were damaged, leading to a 30% drop in electricity production.
Ed Webb

The Tourism Crash | Foreign Policy - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...tunisias-tourism-crash

Tunisia politics transition economy tourism

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Sep 17 - Cached
  • the country’s tourism sector has slumped dramatically. Foreign travelers booked 29 million nights in Tunisian hotels in 2014, but a year later that figure had plummeted to 16 million. In a country where 11.5 percent of workers are employed in the tourism sector, and the livelihoods of many more are affected by its performance, the impact has been devastating.
  • pervasive cronyism, which allows well-connected insiders to seek rents in lucrative markets while using bureaucratic allies to prevent potential competitors from challenging them
  • A 2014 World Bank report found that the Tunisian tourism sector accounts for a whopping 25 percent of the country’s non-performing loans — which, as the authors noted, “mask the problems in the tourism sector and contribute to them by channeling credit to less productive entrepreneurs and by freezing liquidity that would otherwise have circulated.
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  • After the 2015 killings, the government once again bailed out floundering big hotel owners with money from the public budget by forgiving their debts, waiving their social security taxes, and covering their electricity bills. The justification many legislators gave at the time was that they needed to help hotel owners keep people employed at a time of crisis. Yet Karboul, the former tourism minister, says that the excuse doesn’t entirely wash. “A lot of people say it’s about jobs, but these bad hotels didn’t create jobs,” she says, noting that only a small fraction of the sector — some 20 percent — have the successful business model, high profits, and professional management needed to create value and jobs.
  • industry that continues to be dominated by large, well-connected, state-subsidized hotels and tour operators. And that, in turn, has tended to encourage an extremely narrow and fragile business model: mass package tourism. In some ways this was also a logical choice in light of the country’s chronically high unemployment and the workers’ relatively low levels of skills and education. But the reliance on quantity over quality brought problems of its own. Above all, as the political scientist Robert Poirier pointed out in a 1995 analysis of Tunisia’s tourism sector, it’s an approach that is sensitive to “political instability, both regional and Tunisia-specific.”
  • boutique hotels continued to thrive after the revolution, while hotel operators who relied on mass tourism began to have problems due to fears of political instability. “This shows that diversification of products can really help,”
  • Turkey has seen great success in recent years partly by capitalizing on unique, personalized tourism services available at all price ranges, including penny-pinching backpackers and students. Such flexibility could well pay off for Tunisia — especially at a time when competitors like Egypt are also hurting
  • structural challenges remain. One of the biggest, says Karboul, is access to credit, a problem that bedevils entrepreneurs in all sectors. That should serve as yet another reminder that the best way to revive the fortunes of Tunisia’s sagging tourism sector is by tackling the problems of the broader economy
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