Rasheed's World

Expansion of the GCC: Besieged monarchs

noreply@blogger.com (Rasheed's World) — Sat, 21 May 2011 14:41:00 +0000

The announcement last week in Riyadh that the Gulf Cooperation Council welcomed bids by Jordan and Morocco to join the organisation was met first with grunts of derision and then guffaws of mockery across the Arab world. But analysts are now realising that this is serious initiative by the six-nation member states of the GCC to counter the growing influence of Iran in the region and to find alternative ways of defending their common interests, following successful popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, without having to rely on the United States.
"The timing of this announcement has all to do with the upheavals around the Arab world, and this expansion request, whether initiated by the GCC or by the countries concerned, would not have been countenanced under so- called 'normal' circumstances," said Mohamed Ramadi, a professor of economics at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.
Spurring this announcement has been the growing feeling of insecurity on the part of GCC states, which saw their once-staunch ally Hosni Mubarak unceremoniously driven from office by popular street protests in Egypt, with the US seen as having stood by without doing anything, as well as violent street protests by Shia in Bahrain, which were put down by a Saudi-led GCC force of soldiers and policemen, and ongoing street protests in Syria.
"Saudi Arabia will not allow the political unrest in the region to destabilise the Arab monarchies. In Yemen, the Saudis are insisting on an orderly transition of power and a dignified exit for President Ali Abdullah Saleh (a courtesy that was not extended to Hosni Mubarak, despite the former Egyptian president's many years as a strong US ally)," wrote Nawaf Obaid, a security adviser to the Saudi government, this week in the Washington Post.
The benefits of allowing Jordan and Morocco into what has been until now a club of oil-rich Gulf states, would be manifold: the Gulf states would benefit by having access to the political and military capabilities of these two countries, while Jordan and Morocco would benefit from the massive amounts of economic aid that the Gulf countries could pump into their economies.
"Jordan and Morocco are in need of capital investment and both regularly run fiscal deficits, whereas the GCC as a bloc is a significant capital exporter," explained Jane Kinninmont, a senior research fellow on the Middle East and North Africa at Chatham House in London.
Indeed, Samer Al-Tawil, a former minister of tourism in Jordan, told Al-Arabiya that his country's military troops could be deployed in the Gulf if Jordan were allowed to join the GCC.
"Both countries have economic potential, but what makes them more attractive is the fact that they have well-trained Sunni armies which the GCC can use to counter what it sees as the Iranian threat, emanating from local Shia," said Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-Israeli analyst. "The priority for the GCC countries is bolstering security forces with Sunni soldiers, from countries which are headed by monarchs, much like them. Neither Iraq nor Yemen are monarchical. They are also populated by Shia, which makes them much less attractive for the GCC."
If this proposed expansion goes ahead, many observers have pointed out that the regional grouping will become a club of Sunni monarchies (with the exception of Oman which practices the Ibadi form of Islam) versus the Arab republics. But many doubts remain on whether or not the GCC will have the political will to pull off this plan.
Established 30 years ago to group the six Arab monarchies that rim the southern shores of the Persian Gulf, namely Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, the GCC was as much a reaction to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the revolution in Iran, that both took place in 1979, as it was to the eight-year long Iran-Iraq War that started in 1980.
Long on rhetoric but extremely slow in actually achieving much, the GCC set itself ambitious goals of having visa-free travel for its citizens between member states, a common currency and harmonised trade tariffs. Military cooperation was also high on the agenda, with a much-touted Peninsula Shield force composed of soldiers from all six countries, that was supposed to be a quick-reaction force to defend against external and internal threats.
Unfortunately, the GCC never achieved many of its lofty goals. GCC citizens do enjoy visa-free travel in the region, and can invest and work in each other's countries without any red tape. Customs tariffs have also been harmonised, but until the intervention in Bahrain in March, the Peninsula Shield force was by all accounts dead, and a monetary union that was supposed to happen last year has not come to pass. Rivalry between member states is blamed for many of these failures. The UAE and Oman refused to join the common currency, and Saudi Arabia, by far the most influential member of the GCC, has ongoing border disputes with Qatar and the UAE.
The only other country in the Arabian Peninsula that is not a member of the GCC is Yemen, which because of its poverty and political instability has been given only observer status in the GCC. It has formally applied to join the group, and at least on paper, it is poised to become a full member in 2016, but many observers doubt this will ever happen.
"The economic disparities between Yemen and the wealthy GCC states would be too great for financial and monetary union to take place, unless there was a huge amount of fiscal redistribution," said Kinninmont. "Yemen's membership bid has never been thought very likely to succeed and the announcement about Jordan and Morocco makes it seem even less likely. The GCC should see it in their interest to help develop Yemen's economy, as the country's poverty and resource depletion will only contribute to regional instability."
To continue reading my article on the Al-Ahram Weekly website click here.

Many questions remain over death of Osama Bin Laden

noreply@blogger.com (Rasheed's World) — Thu, 05 May 2011 15:59:00 +0000

EARLY Monday morning I woke up to the fantastical news that the world’s most wanted terrorist, Osama Bin Laden, had been found and killed by US Special Forces in Pakistan. Not only that, but that his body had been flown to Afghanistan and then taken to the USS Carl Vinson warship in the north Arabian Sea where his body was buried at sea following the Islamic washing of his body and prayers.

Scenes of jubilant Americans at Ground Zero in New York and gathered outside the White House in Washington, DC, showed them chanting patriotic slogans and holding up signs that read, among other things, “USA 1, OBL 0”. I found this outbreak of patriotism rather distasteful but fully understandable given the 3,000 people killed in the Twin Towers and at the Pentagon when the jets hijacked by the Al-Qaeda terrorists slammed into them on Sept. 11, 2001. (Click here to read Egyptian-American writer Mona Eltahawy’s feelings at Ground Zero following OBL’s death. Click here to read Leon Wieseltier's case for American joy at OBL's death.)

Immediately the media began reporting that OBL had used his youngest wife as a human shield when the Navy Seals burst into his master bedroom on the third floor of a large house inside a fortified compound in the military-town of Abbotabad, just 50 miles north of the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. This later turned out to be false. What does seem to be true is that the US Special Forces flew in under the radar from their base in Afghanistan, landed just outside OBL’s compound and shot their way in a 40-minute gunfight. One of the three helicopters used in the raid was destroyed and left behind after it experienced a mechanical malfunction.

The White House then later released a dramatic photo (above) supposedly showing President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other officials watching a live video feed of the raid on OBL’s compound. Obama is frowning and Clinton is covering her mouth with her right hand as if in horror. It was as if real life were imitating an episode of “24”. This photo was later proved to be staged, as CIA chief Leon Panetta told the press that there was a 20-25 minute blackout in the live video feed from the raid in which he and others at the CIA waited anxiously in a windowless operations room at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, waiting for news on the raid.

President Obama’s decision on Wednesday not to release any photos or video of the dead OBL, because the images were too gruesome and could incite further hatred and violence against the US and Americans in the Muslim world, of course immediately raised the suspicions of conspiracy theorists around the globe that perhaps OBL was not really dead or that he had actually died years ago. Indeed, it was reported as early as 2002 that he suffered from kidney failure and needed regular dialysis of his blood. In a strange interview that former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto gave to David Frost in 2007, only months before her brutal assassination, she claimed that OBL had been murdered in Pakistan by a Pakistani militant.

The most worrying aspect of this whole episode is the level of Pakistani involvement in concealing the presence of OBL in Pakistan for so long. Some accounts say that the Saudi terrorist had been living in that compound in Abbotabad since 2006, right under the noses of a nearby elite military academy and the many retired military officers who live in the area. The support of terrorist groups in Pakistan and of the Afghan Mujahideen by key elements in the Pakistani ISI intelligence services has been well known for years now. The US has provided Pakistan with $7 billion in military and economic aid over the past decade, and the US Congress is surely now going to try and cut back this aid following the discovery and death of OBL deep inside Pakistani territory.

The death of OBL of course does not mean the end of Al-Qaeda. Far from it, the terrorist organization has many cells and commanders. Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who knew OBL when he was fighting the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan in the early 1980s, says that OBL had very little involvement in the daily running of the group’s terrorist actions, and that he functioned more as a charismatic figurehead and fundraiser. Yet it is also a fact that Al-Qaeda has lost much of its support in the Islamic world, especially following its bloody attacks in Saudi Arabia in 2004 and in Iraq. The wave of Arab revolutions this spring in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain and Syria, led mostly by non-militant youths, suggests that Al-Qaeda and its intolerant and religious ideology has been left behind.

The Republican hawks in the US, while being forced to admit that Obama did good in capturing and killing OBL (watching former Vice President Dick Cheney squirm on TV while praising Obama’s win was priceless!), are now trying to link the US success in Pakistan to the intelligence gathered by torturing terror suspects around the world and in Guantanamo Bay. John Woo, the former Justice Department under the Bush administration who gave the legal cover for waterboarding and other forceful methods of interrogation of terror suspects, wrote this week in the Wall Street Journal that the death of OBL at the hands of American forces was indeed due to US interrogation tactics that Obama no longer uses. I find that hard to believe, as it was the tracking of one of OBL’s couriers for several years that finally brought them to the 12-foot high walls of OBL’s compound in Abbotabad, and not torture.

Woo also claims that Obama specifically told his military commanders that OBL should not be captured alive as this would pose a problem in terms of where to hold him while he was being questioned. As Woo points out, Obama certainly did not want to have to place a captured OBL in Guantanamo Bay, and as the US found out, no country wanted OBL when he was dead, let alone alive.

The Obama administration has now admitted that some of the details they initially provided the press about the raid on OBL’s compound were wrong. Some Republican politicians in Washington have pointed out that administration officials should have said they didn’t know for sure when asked questions that they did not have sufficient information to answer correctly.

This whole affair leaves US-Pakistani relations in tatters, with American distrust of Pakistani intentions at a record high. Pakistani officials are now claiming that they have put their government in a difficult position by so openly supporting US military strikes against targets in Pakistan and Afghanistan. And indeed there is much anti-American sentiment in Pakistan, especially in the border areas near Afghanistan. The fact that the Obama administration has tripled the number of drone attacks on targets in Pakistan compared to under the Bush administration, according to Woo, surely does not boost the Pakistani government’s popularity in the more conservative and religious areas of the country.

Obama and the Pakistani government now have a very delicate task of moving forward without relenting on the war against Islamist terrorists, while at the same time winning minds and hearts in the Islamic world by convincing Muslims around the world that the war against terror is not a war against all Muslims but is just against those fanatics who are against the West and the freedoms of pluralistic societies. That has been and will continue to be the hard part.

Viva generic medications!

noreply@blogger.com (Rasheed's World) — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 13:34:00 +0000

I WAS pleasantly surprised on Thursday (28/04/2011) when I discovered at the pharmacy that my anti-cholesterol medicine Crestor is now available in a much cheaper generic form!

I had been paying around R$120 ($76.40) a month for 30 pills of 10mg Crestor, which is manufactured by Astra-Zeneca in Puerto Rico and imported into Brazil. This week I bought the generic brand of rosuvastatina calcica for only R$56.30 ($35.80) a box, a huge savings of R$63.70 ($40.50)!

Astra-Zeneca claims that its patent on Crestor is valid until at least 2016, and had succeeded in getting a preliminary judicial injunction stopping local companies from breaking the patent in order to manufacture generic versions. But the Brazilian government thought otherwise and got the injunction overturned, allowing local drug companies to manufacture generic versions of the drug starting in March. I bought generic rosuvastatina calcica made by Germed, but at least three other drug companies will soon have their own versions on the market. Astra-Zeneca said it will take further legal measures to try and protect its patent, but it seems unlikely that any Brazilian court will rule in their favor.

I understand the argument made by big drug companies that they have to be able to charge premium rates for a guaranteed number of years, by having an exclusive patent on drugs, in order to be able to finance the research and development of new drugs, which is expensive to undertake. But I also think that consumers should not be forced to pay through their noses for essential drugs that help them stay healthy just to pad the profits of these firms.

Brazil is on the right path by ending the exclusive patents on drugs that have already been on the market for at least five years. Viva generic drugs!

35-year-old pine tree comes down

noreply@blogger.com (Rasheed's World) — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 00:58:00 +0000

The 98-foot-high pine tree (30 meters) in our garden was chopped down today after my mother decided it had become a danger to us and our neighbors.

More than 30-years-old, our pine tree towered above us with its many branches and pine cones, that used to fall on our grounds and also on our neighbor's property. We often have small, localized wind storms that knock over many trees in Brasilia, so there was the real danger of this tree being blown over, or at the very least losing some large branches in strong winds.

Tiao, the man we hired to cut it down, first lopped off the top 20-feet. Once that was done, he made a large cut near the base of the tree. Ropes were attached to the tree in order to pull it down in the right direction. The first round of tugging on the tree by three men made the tree sway but not come down. It took the added strength of our maid Silvania and another guy to finally bring the tree down. I'll miss the tree and the pretty cones it produced.

Gasoline hits $7.30 a gallon in Brasilia!

noreply@blogger.com (Rasheed's World) — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 13:40:00 +0000

AS you can see from this picture to the right, residents of Brasilia woke up this morning to yet another hike in gasoline prices. According to the Correio Braziliense newspaper some gas stations are already charging from R$3.02 a liter ($7.30 a gallon) for regular gasoline, to R$3.17 a liter ($7.66 a gallon) for "aditivada" gasoline.

Just four days ago I wrote that Petrobras' distribution arm had promised not pass on additional costs to gas station owners given that the new crop of sugar cane was being processed all across the country. Petrobras blamed rising costs of gasoline on the high price of ethanol (made from sugar cane), that by federal law it must blend into all gasoline sold in Brazil. Obviously they cannot be trusted nor believed.

The Correio said that all gasoline stations across the Distrito Federal would be raising their gasoline prices above the R$3 a liter level by next week. With nearly 40 percent of the cost of a liter of gasoline going to federal and local taxes, both the federal and local governments could do something to ease the pain of motorists at the pump. Unfortunately for us, that is highly unlikely as neither wants to see a reduction in revenue that these gas taxes help rake in. Shame on them!

Brazilians in shock at gasoline prices: $7 a gallon!

noreply@blogger.com (Rasheed's World) — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 14:57:00 +0000

GASOLINE prices rose again last week in Brasilia to an eye-watering R$2.94 a liter, or $1.85 a liter. In US gallon terms, that’s a whopping $7.03 a gallon, something that American drivers would never accept.

Here in Brazil, the public has grown accustomed to heavy government taxing of fuels, despite a government program started in the 1970s to use alcohol as fuel for cars in an effort to reduce dependence on petroleum products. All gasoline in Brazil has alcohol added to it, in a 75% gasoline to 25% alcohol mix, and most cars built here have flex engines that can run on either gasoline or alcohol.

Brazil has long touted its self-sufficiency in oil production, importing oil only occasionally to meet spikes in demand. Indeed, its recent find of offshore oil below a four-kilometer wide layer of salt in the seabed, has been heralded as a chance for the country to become an oil exporter.

In the meantime, however, greedy sugar cane growers have been busy exporting huge amounts of Brazil’s sugar and alcohol production because they realized they could get more money for them on the international market than at home. This has pushed local sugar prices to extremely high levels, with a 5-kilo package of refined sugar selling for R$10 ($6.30) in supermarkets. This also pushed alcohol prices for cars to R$2.84 a liter at the pump, making it uneconomical to use in flex cars. Alcohol burns faster in car engines than gasoline does, so to make it worthwhile for car owners to use alcohol as a fuel its price must be less than R$2 a liter.

The administration of President Dilma Rousseff has said that it intends to reclassify alcohol as a fuel so that it can regulate it better. Alcohol is currently classified as an “agricultural” product. It also said it was thinking of taxing sugar exports at R$4 a kilo as a possible emergency measure to force sugar cane growers to export less sugar. Incredibly, Petrobras, the national Brazilian oil company, was forced to import alcohol from the United States this year to mix in with the gasoline it sells in the country. By law all gasoline has to have at least 20% alcohol in it, so fuel distributors were blaming this requirement for the escalating price of gas at the pump.

The price of gasoline in Brasilia has already been hiked three times this year, and gasoline station owners had warned that prices would reach R$3.03 a liter this week. Thankfully, the main fuel distributor in the country, which is owned by Petrobras, announced today (19/04/2011) that it was not going to pass on another increase in gasoline prices to fuel station owners because the new crop of sugar cane has begun to be processed at sugar mills around the country, easing supplies that had been stretched because of record exports and the inter-crop period.

There are two solutions to ending the sky-high prices Brazilians pay for gasoline: Either take out the alcohol that is mixed in to it, or cut the hefty federal and state taxes that are levied on gasoline. According to the Syndicate of Fuel Station Owners of the Distrito Federal, 37.75 percent of the cost of a liter of gasoline sold here goes to taxes: 24.58 percent in local taxes and 13.17 percent in federal taxes. Cutting those taxes would certainly ease the pain at the pump that consumers are feeling, but I doubt that there is any political will to forgo this revenue either on the federal or local level. As for taking the alcohol out of the gasoline, a federal law would have to be amended to do so, which means that Congress would have to agree to this, which would take time and be politically-fraught.

Brazil needs to rethink its commitment to renewable sources of energy, such as alcohol, and make it a national priority it once was. The first step is reclassifying alcohol as a strategic fuel. Then they need to discourage sugar producers from exporting so much sugar and alcohol. Certainly, the strength of the national currency, the real, has to be reigned in by lowering the interest rate, which at 11.75% a year, is sucking in huge amounts of dollars from overseas, further weakening the exchange rate with the US dollar. Higher fuel and sugar prices are already pushing the inflation rate up, and Brazil is therefore not expected to contain inflation to the rates it predicted it would at the beginning of the year.

A Arábia Saudita está ardendo, mas não pegou fogo

noreply@blogger.com (Rasheed's World) — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 21:50:00 +0000

Sauditas xiitas discutam com um policial durante uma passeata

em Al-Qatif, Arabia Saudita, no dia 11 de marco, 2011. (Reuters)

A família real da Arábia Saudita parece estar contendo a onda regional de revoltas contra governos autocráticos, ainda que permaneça a questão: “por quanto tempo?”, escreve Rashid Abualsamh

O “Dia do Ódio”, convocado em 11 de março na Arábia Saudita por ativistas pró-democracia exigindo uma monarquia constitucional, um parlamento eleito, uma constituição escrita e várias liberdades, terminou se esvaindo quase sem qualquer estrondo. Uma presença maciça da polícia nas ruas das principais cidades sauditas, incluindo helicópteros sobrevoando-as, e uma campanha agressiva de relações públicas pelo governo, alertando que potenciais manifestantes enfrentariam a prisão e possível chicoteamento, garantiram que quase ninguém aparecesse nas ruas.

“Acho que os manifestantes estavam enfrentando o desafio de realmente sair para as ruas. Trata-se de uma experiência que eles nunca haviam tido, e eles poderiam ter imaginado que seria como no Egito ou na Tunísia, mas havia uma perversa campanha demonizando qualquer um que ousasse pensar em protestos”, disse Abeer Mishkhas, uma jornalista saudita que mora em Londres.

Outros duvidavam da autenticidade dos organizadores do “Dia do Ódio”, que haviam formado diversos grupos no Facebook para angariar apoio. “Foi difícil, para mim, levar a sério as chamadas para protestos, já que as duas comunidades do Facebook responsáveis por elas simplesmente pareciam muito amadoras. Ninguém sabe quem estava por trás desses grupos. Os grupos também possuíam muitos membros não sauditas”, disse Ahmed Al-Omran, um popular blogueiro saudita, atualmente estudante de pós-graduação em jornalismo em Nova Iorque.

Com efeito, muitos sauditas que apóiam a família real tentaram explicar os não eventos do dia 11 de março como provas da lealdade e amor que a maioria dos sauditas sentiria em relação ao rei Abdullah Ibn Abdul-Aziz Al-Saud, o monarca absoluto do reino. Tareq Al-Homayed, editor-chefe do jornal Asharq Al-Awsat, escreveu em sua coluna que os sauditas mostraram sua aliança com o rei e o país ao não saírem às ruas para protestar na última sexta-feira.

“A realidade é que não houve caos antes de sexta-feira, mas o que vimos de fato foi uma forte onda de incitamento e confusão, bem como uma tentativa desesperada por parte de alguns – que agora foram expostos – em promover uma mentira, qual seja, o ‘Dia do Ódio’ na Arábia Saudita. Todos ficaram surpresos quando este dia do ódio se revelou uma silenciosa bayaa (cerimônia realizada em sociedades islâmicas em que o público endossa formalmente o domínio de um líder), na qual se viu o povo saudita expressar, sem palavras, o apoio à sua liderança”, escreveu Al-Homayed.

No entanto, o rei Abdullah está preocupado com a possibilidade de que as revoluções recentes na Tunísia e no Egito, bem como os violentos protestos xiitas em andamento no vizinho Bahrein, afetem o reino, tanto assim que anunciou um pacote de auxílio econômico de 37 bilhões de dólares após retornar ao país, algumas semanas atrás, de um período de três meses de tratamento médico em Nova Iorque. Funcionários do governo receberam a promessa de um aumento salarial de 15% e bilhões de riais foram destinados para ajudar os sauditas mais pobres a financiarem a construção de novas casas.

Entretanto, muitos sauditas criticaram esse pacote de auxílio econômico como insuficiente e tardio, ressaltando que o que vários sauditas de classe média desejam é um maior poder de fala e influência no modo como o país é administrado, a transparência no governo e a responsabilização de oficiais corruptos.

“O rei Abdullah não percebe. Comprar lealdade é algo que ele cresceu fazendo e continua a fazer a despeito do fato de que já recebeu pressões, muitas vezes antes e desde que se tornou rei, em prol da monarquia constitucional, prestação de contas (accountability), transparência, eleições, liberdade religiosa e direitos para as mulheres”, disse Ali Alyami, diretor executivo do Centro para a Democracia e Direitos Humanos na Arábia Saudita, localizado em Washington.

Mishkhas afirmou ser cético quanto ao pacote de auxílio econômico: “As pessoas descobriram que há muitos furos nesse pacote e, ao final, se deram conta de que ele não dava a elas o que havia sido prometido. O aumento salarial para os funcionários do governo era algo que alguns deles já vinham recebendo ocasionalmente como ajuste de custo de vida. Mas, agora que ele se tornou permanente, as pessoas foram informadas de que deduções seriam feitas em suas pensões e em outras coisas, de maneira que, no fim das contas, o aumento não aconteceu efetivamente”.

A maioria dos protestos recentes no reino foi levada a cabo por membros da minoria xiita na província oriental do país, onde está a maior parte das suas reservas de petróleo. Tais protestos exigiam a libertação de suspeitos de terrorismo há anos presos sem julgamento, bem como a melhoria das condições de vida. Respondendo por cerca de 10 a 15% da população saudita de 27 milhões, os xiitas têm tradicionalmente enfrentado preconceito contra suas práticas religiosas e no acesso a cargos públicos no país de maioria sunita.

Alguns observadores estrangeiros teorizaram que as revoltas populares no Egito e na Tunísia poderiam representar uma ameaça similar à família real no poder na Arábia Saudita. Essa incerteza, somada à perda de 1 milhão de barris produzidos diariamente pela Líbia, que está passando por sua própria rebelião popular, levou os preços do petróleo para acima de 110 dólares por barril nas semanas que passaram. Ainda sim, o apoio ao rei Abdullah é forte entre a maioria dos sauditas. No entanto, muitos estão frustrados diante do rígido código moral mantido pela polícia religiosa com apoio do governo, um índice alto de desemprego que alcançaria 40% dos homens sauditas entre 18 e 25 anos e a falta de liberdade de expressão.

Mas, mesmo com estes significativos problemas, alguns jovens sauditas se ausentaram das ruas por temer o possível caos que acompanha protestos públicos. Eles acreditam que o país não tem uma tradição de manifestações públicas e afirmam que os ativistas pró-democracia estão imitando o Ocidente sem adaptar suas demandas aos costumes locais.

Um deles é blogueiro de Jeddah Qusay Fayoumi, 36 anos, que escreveu recentemente que “os ‘jovens ativistas online’ estão desconectados da realidade. A maior parte deles não mantém relações com as pessoas comuns... Imaginem se Martin Luther King tivesse seu sonho, mas nenhum seguidor…Ainda que alguns ativistas online estejam fazendo um trabalho bom e admirável, a maioria está pressionando por um estilo ocidental de liberdade (o que quer que isso seja), influenciados por aquilo que viram e leram, daí o rótulo de ‘taghrebi’ para aqueles que têm vontade de ser ocidentalizados, uma versão saudita do Tio Tom americano. Entretanto, não é a isto que o saudita comum está exposto, não é isto que ele ou ela desejam, não é isto que o/a atrai”.

Alyami acredita que os sauditas estejam assustados demais para protestarem publicamente devido a décadas de domínio rígido da família real e de seus aliados religiosos. “Medo, segurança pesada e falta de confiança entre manifestantes potenciais desempenharam um papel fundamental no fracasso dos protestos. Os sauditas estão aterrorizados, temerosos quanto a reprimendas governamentais brutais”, disse Alyami.

Os governantes sauditas têm mais uma carta na manga de que devem fazer uso em breve. As eleições municipais, realizadas em todo o país em 2005 em resposta à pressão do governo de Bush pela introdução de alguma democracia no reino, poderiam ser anunciadas para esse ano. Há seis anos, homens sauditas elegeram metade dos conselhos municipais para o que deveria ter sido um mandato de 4 anos. As eleições para a escolha de novos membros em 2009 foram silenciosamente canceladas e pouco foi dito a respeito delas desde então. São abundantes os rumores de que as mulheres terão o direito de votar nessas novas eleições, embora, como nas anteriores, não poderão se candidatar.

Mas a sinceridade da família real no desejo de implantar reformas políticas democráticas é questionada por alguns. “Abdullah não é um reformador. Tudo que ele fez foi legitimar seu comando através da implementação de nomeações e decretos cosméticos”, disse Alyami. “Dada a ampla reforma árabe, Abdullah não terá escolha senão dar alguns passos para apaziguar seu povo irritado e excluído. Sim, penso que as eleições canceladas serão ressuscitadas e que as mulheres terão o direito de votar e permissão para dirigir. Esses passos serão suficientes para aplacar as aspirações de milhões de jovens homens e mulheres sauditas? Não."

Mishkhas tem dúvidas quanto à possibilidade de realização das novas eleições. “Não creio que acontecerão. Parece que o governo está determinado a subornar as pessoas com dinheiro. Não ouvimos nada sobre reforma política, e meu palpite é o de que há uma forte oposição quanto a esta”, explica ela. Um número relativamente pequeno de sauditas continuará a protestar pela libertação de prisioneiros políticos e por reformas políticas. Mohammed Al-Qahtani, fundador da Associação de Direitos Civis e Políticos dos Sauditas, disse a um programa noturno da BBC na semana passada que há 30.000 prisioneiros políticos no reino. O governo saudita afirma haver apenas um terço desse número. “O ódio ainda está lá, e vimos isso em Riade no domingo, quando centenas de cidadãos sunitas se reuniram diante do Ministério do Interior para exigir a libertação dos seus parentes. Eles decidiram se encontrar lá todos os domingos”, disse Ali Al Ahmed, diretor do Instituto para o Golfo, Washington, DC.

Portanto, uma revolução na escala daquela que aconteceu recentemente no Egito e na Tunísia não deve ocorrer em um momento próximo na Arábia Saudita, ainda que, com uma juventude crescentemente conectada e sedenta por um melhor governo e por menos corrupção, o potencial para a revolta permaneça. O fato de que o rei Abdullah está com 88 anos, o príncipe herdeiro Sultan nos seus 80 e poucos e o terceiro na fila para a Coroa, o príncipe Naif, que é também o ministro do interior linha-dura no país, com 80, significa que muitos observadores estão preocupados com quem irá suceder estes homens após sua morte. A família real diz possuir um plano de sucessão bem definido, mas o quão tranquilamente ele será levado a cabo, quando chegar o momento, continua a ser o palpite de cada um.

Traducao: Gabriel Peters

Para ler o texto original em ingles no Al-Ahram Weekly Online, clique aqui.

Bahrein: Revoluções param aqui

noreply@blogger.com (Rasheed's World) — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 13:45:00 +0000

Homens xiitas no Bahrein protestam contra o governo. (AFP)

A hipocrisia dos EUA no Golfo é clara para todos, diz Rasheed Abualsamh

A visão de sorridentes soldados sauditas fazendo o sinal de paz enquanto entravam no Bahrein em veículos blindados leves, no dia 14 de Março, deve ter surpreendido muitos sauditas e bahreinitas, que provavelmente nunca tinham sonhado que iriam testemunhar uma cena dessas em suas vidas.

Mas o rei Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Eissa, o governante sunita do Bahrein cuja família está no poder há 200 anos, havia chamado os estados membros das seis nações do Conselho de Cooperação do Golfo (CCG) para ajudar a sufocar os longos e frequentemente violentos protestos de membros da maioria xiita, que, a essa altura, haviam passado da Praça Pérola para o distrito financeiro.

O Bahrein sempre se orgulhou de sua abertura relativa e de sua facilidade para fazer negócios. Que multidões de manifestantes, compostas de seus próprios cidadãos insatisfeitos, tenham transformado a pequena ilha-estado em algo decididamente menos favorável às empresas foi demais para alguns membros da família real. O fato é que, nos bastidores, uma luta emergia entre o príncipe mais reformista Salman bin Hamad Al-Khalifa, e futuro rei, e o primeiro-ministro linha-dura Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman Al-Khalifa. A chegada das tropas do CCG (os Emirados Árabes Unidos contribuíram com 500 soldados, somados a reforços do Catar e do Kuwait) e a subsequente remoção violenta dos manifestantes do distrito financeiro não deixaram dúvida de que a facção linha-dura estava ganhando.

As cenas televisionadas de manifestantes xiitas sendo baleados à queima-roupa e, em alguns casos, tendo acesso negado a cuidados médicos imediatos mostrou o conflito em sua forma terrível: a elite sunita rica contra os mais pobres e discriminados xiitas, que reclamavam melhores empregos, uma monarquia constitucional e um parlamento totalmente eleito. No início, o rei fez algumas concessões, trocando alguns ministros de seu gabinete, prometendo novas eleições no futuro e concedendo somas de dinheiro para o povo. Mas os partidos xiitas de oposição rejeitaram tais ofertas como insuficientes, e logo os radicais de ambos os lados endureceram suas posições. Mesmo a oposição xiita parecia dividida entre o Partido Wefaq e Mushaima Hassan, que havia recentemente retornado ao país após ser perdoado pelo rei e agora clamava pela abolição da monarquia e formação de uma república.

Essa radicalização das demandas xiitas com certeza enviou ondas de choque através de Riade, Doha, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi e Muscat, as capitais dos países do Golfo que possuem governantes hereditários que nunca tiveram de compartilhar muito poder com ninguém. Mushaima e cinco outros líderes da oposição foram imediatamente detidos e encarcerados.

Estes tristes acontecimentos levaram xiitas no Iraque e no Líbano a realizar comícios para mostrar sua solidariedade em relação a seus irmãos no Bahrein e para pedir a retirada das tropas da Arábia Saudita. No Irã, 700 manifestantes jogaram pedras no Consulado da Arábia Saudita em Mashhad no dia 18 de Março. Na semana passada, em Teerã, o clérigo radical aiatolá Ahmed Jannati exortou os xiitas do Bahrein a resistirem "contra o inimigo até que você morra ou vença". O Irã retirou posteriormente seu embaixador do Bahrein e a ilha-estado, em seguida, expulsou um diplomata iraniano. Finalmente, no dia 20 de março, o rei do Bahrein, numa clara alusão ao Irã, anunciava que seu país havia frustrado um plano de três décadas que uma nação estrangeira havia arquitetado para desestabilizar seu país quando seu exército apertou o cerco contra os manifestantes pró-democracia.

Muitos observadores têm, portanto, caracterizado o confronto no Bahrein como uma batalha por influência na região entre a Arábia Saudita de maioria sunita e o Irã de maioria xiita. Com os xiitas tendo chegado ao poder recentemente no Iraque e no Líbano, o Bahrein tornou-se uma linha vermelha na areia diante da influência crescente do Irã na região, linha que nenhum dos estados governados por sunitas no Golfo permitirá ser cruzada.

"O Bahrein é visto como o quintal da Arábia Saudita, e uma possível derrota dos Al-Khalifa abriria a porta, mais amplamente do que antes, para a influência iraniana", disse Christopher Davidson, pesquisador em política do Oriente Médio na Universidade de Durham, no Reino Unido, e autor de vários livros sobre os Emirados Árabes. "Mais importante, trata-se tanto de uma linha vermelha geopolítica quanto de uma linha vermelha para os regimes autocráticos do Golfo: se os Al-Khalifa forem derrubados, a ‘bolha de invencibilidade’ dos xeiques do Golfo será quebrada."

Toby Jones, professor assistente de história do Oriente Médio na Universidade de Rutgers, em Nova Jersey, e especialista em assuntos da Arábia Saudita, destacou em uma entrevista que os protestos no Bahrein estavam sendo transformados em uma questão sectária pelos governos do Golfo e não pelos próprios manifestantes.

"Nenhum dos países árabes do Golfo quer ver a queda de um vizinho próximo, especialmente com os vários elementos sectários em jogo. Quero deixar claro aqui, porém, que acho que são os governos árabes sunitas do golfo, e não os manifestantes em Bahrein ou em outros lugares, que estão jogando a carta sectária. Minha sensação é que os manifestantes, e eu conheço muitos deles, são sérios quando falam sobre democracia", disse Jones.

Dos seis países do CCG, o Bahrein é o único com uma população de maioria xiita.

Contudo, apesar da retórica inflamada vinda de Teerã, muitos analistas acreditam que o Irã está sendo cauteloso na forma como vem se envolvendo no conflito do Bahrein, ciente de que tem muitos problemas internos para administrar e também porque teme entrar em conflito direto com a Arábia Saudita ou os Estados Unidos.

"Apesar do que disse o rei do Bahrein, não há provas conclusivas de que o Irã esteja se armando ou mesmo de que seja o principal fator por trás da oposição. A retórica anti-Khalifa do Irã intensificou-se, no entanto, e isso é de se esperar. Num momento em que os xiitas no Oriente Médio estão visivelmente irritados pela intervenção saudita contra seus irmãos, calar-se não é uma opção para Teerã, autodeclarado protetor dos xiitas no mundo. Dito isto, ainda não vejo nenhuma prova de que o Irã seja logisticamente a força crítica por trás dessa agitação no Bahrein", disse Alex Vatanka, um estudioso do Middle East Institute, em Washington, e especialista em política iraniana.

"Uma razão importante pela qual o Irã não faria isso é porque tal medida iria aproximá-lo de um conflito com os EUA ainda mais do que já foi o caso nos últimos anos. Os EUA não vão cruzar os braços com a sua 5 ª Frota no Bahrein e deixar o Irã executar um campanha armada pró-Teerã. Como no Iraque, o Irã poderia ajudar as forças locais xiitas no futuro, mas não chegamos ainda nesse estágio ", acrescentou Vatanka.

Autoridades sauditas estão alarmadas diante da possível propagação da agitação do Bahrein para a minoria xiita de sua população, que fica a apenas 22 quilômetros de distância ao longo da ponte que liga os dois países, na província oriental onde está a maior parte do petróleo saudita. Xiitas já realizaram protestos reclamando a retirada de tropas sauditas no Bahrein, mas a mensagem vinda de importantes xiitas sauditas tem sido, até agora, de calma e diálogo.

O líder religioso xiita saudita Sheikh Hassan Al-Saffar divulgou, em seu site, um comunicado em que denuncia a violência no Bahrein e pede uma solução política e a reconciliação nacional.

No entanto, permanece o irônico fato de que a chegada dos Sauditas e de outras tropas do CCG no Bahrein levou ambos os lados a polarizarem-se, deixando muito menos espaço para concessões. Quanto tempo essas tropas estrangeiras vão permanecer no Bahrein também não está claro, com alguns analistas prevendo que sua presença pode se estender por tempo indeterminado, já que a oposição poderia reivindicar vitória caso elas fossem para casa mais cedo.

"A estratégia de saída das tropas da Arábia Saudita e do CCG não é clara. Também não é claro como o Bahrein vai definir vitória. A partida das tropas nas próximas semanas ou mesmo nos próximos meses seria provavelmente percebida como uma abertura pela oposição bahreinita. Os sauditas e os bahreinitas sabem disso, e minha intuição é a de que as forças do CCG permanecerão por algum tempo", disse Jones.

"Os Al-Khalifa não estão interessados no diálogo, já que qualquer concessão aos manifestantes será vista como um sinal de fraqueza. Além disso, os Al-Saud e outros xeiques do Golfo também estarão relutantes diante da possibilidade de que os Al-Khalifa se prestem ao diálogo", disse Davidson.

Jones, o professor da Rutgers, concorda, afirmando que a violência desencadeada contra os manifestantes no Bahrein mudou toda a equação. "Nenhum dos lados mostrou-se disposto a ceder. A intransigência da oposição é um resultado direto de como o regime do Bahrein administrou o levante, especialmente de seu recurso à violência. Houve um tempo em que havia mais espaço para o acordo. Wefaq parece preparado a ceder algum terreno quanto a este ponto, mas se Mushaima, Haqq e outros farão o mesmo é uma questão importante", disse Jones.

A administração Obama foi pega em um ato de malabarismo, apoiando publicamente a revolta popular na Líbia e liderando os ataques militares aliados ao regime de Muammar Khadafi, ao mesmo tempo em que permanece solidamente comprometida em apoiar as famílias Al-Khalifa e Al-Saud.

"Os EUA têm garantido confidencialmente para os bahreinitas que desejam que os Al-Khalifa permaneçam no poder, deixando muito claro que, embora não apóiem publicamente a repressão e denunciem a ferocidade desta, eles também não abandonariam os Al-Khalifa a curto prazo", explicou Jones. "Mas os EUA também têm demonstrado um padrão duplo na forma como vêm definindo resultados “justos” – atacando Kadafi na Líbia, mas fechando os olhos para os manifestantes no Bahrein e na Arábia Saudita. Com isso, os EUA continuam a projetar um confuso conjunto de valores para o resto da região e para o mundo".

A bola está agora firmemente na corte dos Al-Khalifa. Será que eles realmente querem compartilhar mais poder com os seus cidadãos? No passado, eles disseram que sim, mas isto acabou por se mostrar retórica vazia.

"Nas primeiras duas semanas de manifestações, a demanda principal dos manifestantes era a restauração da Constituição de 1973, que permite uma monarquia semi-constitucional. Creio que o sentimento de traição por parte do povo foi o principal motivo por trás dos protestos. Uma década atrás, o rei havia prometido uma transição gradual para a democracia. Na realidade, ele agarrou todos os poderes e tirou do conselho eleito quaisquer poderes significativos", disse Tawfiq Alsaif, um dos principais intelectuais xiitas em Dammam, na Arábia Saudita.

O que começou como um inverno de descontentamento árabe na Tunísia e no Egito parece agora estar se transformando em uma primavera de descontentamento na Líbia e no Bahrein, que pode bem se estender para o verão.

Traducao: Gabriel Peters

Para ler o original em ingles no Al-Ahram Weekly Online clique aqui.

Revolutions stop here

noreply@blogger.com (Rasheed's World) — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 00:35:00 +0000

The sight of smiling Saudi soldiers flashing the V-sign of peace as they rolled into Bahrain in light-armoured vehicles on 14 March must have surprised many Saudis and Bahrainis who probably had never dreamed they would witness such a scene in their lives.
But King Hamad bin Eissa Al-Khalifa, the minority Sunni ruler of Bahrain, whose family has been in power for the past 200 years, had called upon fellow member states of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) for help in quelling the unending protests of the majority Shia, which have resulted in the deaths of protesters and were forced from Pearl Square, and are now blocking the entrances to the financial district.
Bahrain has always been proud of its relative openness and ease of doing business. Having mobs of its own dissatisfied citizens turning the tiny island-state into something decidedly less than business-friendly was too much for some in the royal family. For behind the scenes a struggle was emerging between the more reform-minded Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al-Khalifa and the hardline Prime Minister Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman Al-Khalifa. The arrival of GCC troops (the United Arab Emirates contributed 500 soldiers, as well as Qatar and Kuwait) and the subsequent violent removal of the protesters from the financial district left no doubt that the hardliners were winning.
The televised scenes of Shia Bahraini protesters being shot at close range and in some cases being denied access to prompt medical care cast the conflict in a horrific light: The wealthy Sunni elite versus the poorer and discriminated-against Shia who were asking for better jobs, a constitutional monarchy and a fully-elected parliament. At first the king made a few concessions by reshuffling his cabinet, promising new elections down the road and giving cash handouts to the people. But the Shia opposition parties rejected these as not enough, and soon hardliners on both sides had dug in their heels. Even the Shia opposition seemed split between the Wefaq Party and Hassan Mushaima, who recently having been pardoned and let back into the country by the king, was calling for the monarchy to be abolished and a republic to be formed.
This radicalisation of Shia demands must have sent shock waves through Riyadh, Doha, Kuwait City, Abu Dhabi and Muscat, the capitals of Gulf countries with hereditary rulers that have never had to share much power with anyone. Mushaima and five other opposition leaders were promptly arrested and jailed.
These sad events caused Shias in Iraq and Lebanon to hold rallies to show their solidarity with their brethren in Bahrain, and to call for Saudi troops to be withdrawn. In Iran, 700 protesters threw stones at the Saudi Consulate in Mashhad on 18 March, and in Tehran last week radical cleric Ayatollah Ahmed Jannati called on Bahraini Shias to "resist against the enemy until you die or win". Iran later withdrew its ambassador from Bahrain, and the island-state then expelled Iran's charge d'affaires. Finally on 20 March, the king of Bahrain, clearly alluding to Iran, announced that his country had foiled a three-decades long plot by an unnamed foreign nation to destabilise his country when his army clamped down on the pro-democracy protesters.
Many observers have therefore cast the showdown in Bahrain as a proxy battle between Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia and Shia- majority Iran for influence in the region. With Shias having come to power recently in Iraq and Lebanon, Bahrain has become a red-line in the sand for Iran's expanding influence in the region that none of the Sunni-ruled Gulf states will allow to be crossed.
"Bahrain is seen as Saudi Arabia's backyard, and an overthrow of the Al-Khalifa would open the door more widely than before for Iranian influence," said Christopher Davidson, reader in Middle East politics at Durham University in the UK, and the author of several books on the UAE. "More importantly, it's a red line for autocratic Gulf regimes as much as a geopolitical red line: if the Al-Khalifa fall, it will break the 'bubble of invincibility' of Gulf sheikhs."
Toby Jones, an assistant professor of Middle East history at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and a specialist in Saudi affairs, stressed in an interview that it was the Gulf governments that were turning the Bahrain protests into a sectarian issue and not the protesters themselves.
"None of the Arab states in the Gulf want to see a close neighbour fall, particularly with the various sectarian elements at play. I want to be clear here, though, that I think it is the Arab Gulf Sunni governments and not the protesters in Bahrain or elsewhere that are playing the sectarian card. My sense, and I know many of them, is that the protesters are serious about democracy," Jones said.
Of the six GCC states, Bahrain is the only one with a Shia- majority population.
To continue reading this article click here.

Why Obama’s trip to Brazil was a success

noreply@blogger.com (Rasheed's World) — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 17:52:00 +0000

US President Barak Obama and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff in Brasilia
on March 19, 2011. (All photos copyright the US Embassy in Brasilia)

US President Barak Obama’s first official trip to Brazil this past week was a resounding success because most Brazilians love all things American, but more importantly because Obama is the first American president of African descent.

Brazil is a melting pot of ethnicities, with a much higher level of intermarriage between the races than in the United States. And that despite the fact that Brazil was the last country in the West to abolish slavery in 1888!

Unfortunately, Obama did not once mention his blackness in Brazil, perhaps because, as this American commentator wrote here, he’s afraid of the right-wing backlash that would accuse him of favoring ‘black’ Americans over white ones if he did. It is indeed sad that the president felt restrained from fully reveling in all of the joy and pride that Brazilians felt in seeing him everywhere he went in Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro. A 46-year-old businessman in Rio told the New York Times that Obama was “an inspiration”.

Even Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, in the joint press appearance with Obama in Brasilia last Saturday, mentioned the fact that he was the first US president of African descent, and that she was the first female president of Brazil.

Rousseff looked nervous in this her first hosting of a head of state after her swearing in as president on Jan. 1. Obama, an old pro, smiled warmly and waved at everybody. The difference in body language between the two was noticeable.

The first lady Michelle Obama as usual was noted for her at times dubious fashion choices, such as when she stepped off Air Force One at the Brasilia air base wearing what looked a red and black, sleeveless cotton dress. It looked like she was going to a picnic and not arriving on an official visit! Later she redeemed herself wearing a cream-colored tailleur to the presidential palace, and then later removing the jacket to reveal a one-shoulder top when she went to watch Brazilian students perform capoeira.

President Obama was distracted by the beginning of the coalition air strikes in Libya, which he announced officially in a televised broadcast from Brasilia last Saturday. This caused most major Brazilian newspapers to headline the next day: “Obama launches Libya attacks from Brazil”.

What is really important about Obama’s visit to Brazil, is that it marks a new chapter in US-Brazil relations which had reached a low point last year when then Brazilian President Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva instructed his ambassador at the UN to vote against further sanctions against Iran. This infuriated the US, which already was not happy with Lula’s close relationship with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his support of the Castro brothers in Cuba.

President Rousseff immediately began to distance herself from some of Lula’s policies last year by publicly criticizing the mistreatment of women in Iran and sending signals to Washington that she wanted a new start to their relationship.

Lula was invited to the official luncheon that President Rousseff held for Obama last Saturday at the Brazilian Foreign Ministry, but did not attend claiming a prior engagement, which was probably best for all concerned. For while there are still many disagreements between Brazil and the US, especially on trade and tariff issues, both presidents seem intent on building a better relationship than the one left by their predecessors.

Saudi smoulders but is not on fire

noreply@blogger.com (Rasheed's World) — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 01:17:00 +0000

Saudi Shiite protesters wearing masks chant slogans during a protest in Qatif, Saudi Arabia, on March 10, 2011. (AP)

The "Day of Rage" called for 11 March in Saudi Arabia by democracy activists demanding a constitutional monarchy, an elected parliament, a written constitution and various freedoms fizzled out with barely a bang A heavy police presence on the streets of major Saudi cities, including helicopters flying above, and an aggressive public relations campaign by the Saudi government warning would-be protesters that they faced imprisonment and possible flogging, made sure that hardly anyone appeared in the streets.

"I think the protesters were facing the challenge of actually going out on the streets. It is an experience they have never had before, and they might have imagined it to be like Egypt or Tunisia, but there was a vicious campaign vilifying anyone who dared think about protesting," said Abeer Mishkhas, a London- based Saudi journalist.
Others doubted the authenticity of the organisers of the "Day of Rage", who had set up several groups on Facebook to gather support. "It was hard for me to take the calls to protest seriously because the two Facebook groups that called for them simply looked too sketchy. Nobody knows who was behind these groups. The groups also had many non-Saudi members," said Ahmed Al-Omran, a popular Saudi blogger and currently a graduate student of journalism in New York.
Indeed, many Saudis supportive of the royal family tried to spin the non- events of 11 March as proof of the loyalty and love that most Saudis feel towards King Abdullah Ibn Abdul-Aziz Al-Saud, the absolute monarch of the kingdom. Tareq Al-Homayed, editor-in-chief of Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, wrote in his column that Saudis had shown their allegiance to king and country by not appearing on the streets last Friday to protest.
"The reality is there was no chaos prior to Friday, but rather what we did see was a strong wave of incitement and confusion, and a desperate attempt by some -- who have now been exposed -- to promote a lie, namely the Saudi Arabian 'day of rage'. Everybody was surprised when this day of rage turned into a silent bayaa (ceremony performed in Islamic societies where the public formally endorse the rule of a leader), which saw the Saudi public wordlessly express their support for their leadership," wrote Al-Homayed.
Yet King Abdullah is worried that the recent revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, and the ongoing violent demonstrations by Shias in neighbouring Bahrain, will affect the kingdom, so much so that he announced an economic aid package worth $37 billion upon his return to the country a few weeks ago after undergoing medical treatment in New York for three months. Government workers were promised a 15 per cent pay rise and billions of riyals were earmarked to help poorer Saudis finance the building of new homes.
Yet many Saudis have criticised this aid package as too little and too late, noting that what many middle class Saudis want is a greater say in how the country is ruled, transparency in governance and accountability for corrupt officials.
"King Abdullah is not getting it. Buying loyalty is what he grew up with and continues to do despite the fact that he has been petitioned for a constitutional monarchy, accountability, transparency, elections, religious freedom and women's rights many times before and since he became king," said Ali Alyami, executive director of the Washington-based Centre for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia.
Click here to continue reading my article on the Al-Ahram Weekly site.

Hip replacements, moving to Georgia and chocolate-dipped strawberries at the Qatar national day

noreply@blogger.com (Rasheed's World) — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 23:51:00 +0000

ON FRIDAY night my mom and I went to the Qatar national day reception at the Naval Club in Brasilia. The club is beautiful, with a huge swimming pool and cascading waterfalls that lead down to the main function hall at the shore of the Paranoa Lake.

The invitation arrived a week earlier addressed as usual to "Sr. Rasheed Abualsamh e mae", which tickled my mother no end. Driving up to the entrance of the club, military police waved us in when I stopped to ask if we were going in the right direction. Free valet parking right at the entrance took the drudgery of having to find a parking place and walking down the slope to the venue.

Now, the invitation said full regalia/national dress, which was obviously totally lost on many of the Brazilian female guests, some of whom arrived as if straight from their offices or else were shockingly too casual. I spied two women wearing sleeveless dresses, which I thought was totally inappropriate for such a formal event given by a conservative Muslim nation. But then Brazil is a country where women often wear short-shorts and skimpy tops to school and to work, so nothing much here shocks me anymore.

The waiters at this affair were quite aggressive and kept asking us every 30-seconds or so if we wanted another soft drink, cod fish salad, or a couscous salad with shrimp, which they were carrying around the room on trays.

"This looks just like the same food they had at another event I went to recently," my mother observed as we plunged into our cod fish salad.

"They must be using the same caterers," I said.

Huge maroon and white flower displays were placed at the center of all the round tables that were set for dinner. Video screens had images of a Qatari man displayed vertically which was strange, and a small area had been set-up to serve dates and Arabic coffee.

An elderly Brazilian woman with hair dyed a deep maroon-red color waved at my mother and hobbled over with the aid of a cane to say hello to her.

"Is Estelle on vacation?" she asked my mother. When she noticed my mother's puzzlement, she added, "you know the American ambassador's wife."

"Oh I don't know," my mom said.

"But you are American and are a member of the American Women's Club aren't you?" she protested.

"Yes, but I'm not a close friend of the ambassadress," my mom tried to explain.

It seems she had had a hip replacement, and explained to us that her unoperated leg was hurting now because of the extra pressure she put on it after her other hip was operated on.

To kick off the event the Brazilian national anthem was played, forcing all of us to stand up. And they played the full, extended version of the anthem, which most Brazilians don't even do nowadays. The ambassador and his Spanish wife stood on a stage facing their guests while the anthems played. When the Qatari one was played, the ambassadress sang along heartily, and near the end of it the recording of the song abruptly stopped and we heard her mellifluous voice continue singing for a few words.

"She should have sung the anthem acapella," I whispered to my mom.

After the Qatari's envoy's speech delivered in Portuguese, and a raffle of tickets to Qatar and souvenir nicknacks, of which we won a bag, we rushed over to the dinner buffet and were disappointed by the food. "The food was much better last year, wasn't it?" I said to my mother, and she readily agreed. I had some ravioli stuffed with dried tomatoes and another pasta dish, taking advantage of the fact that I was off of my usual low-carbohydrate diet that I follow during the week.

After eating I went over to say hello to an Iraqi friend who also graduated from the American School here, though many years after I did. She has been working as an assistant at the Embassy of Georgia here, and half-way into our conversation she stunned me when she said that her parents and herself had decided to move to Georgia in March.

"Georgia? Why Georgia?!" I asked, failing to see any connection between them and that former territory of the Soviet Union. It isn't even an Arab country.

"No, I mean Jordan," she explained.

"Oh, as in Amman, Jordan, right?" I said.

"Exactly!" she replied.

Which is a totally logical choice for them. Several of her aunts, a grandmother and various other relatives live there, along with at least one million Iraqis who have fled Iraq since the 2003 invasion by the United States.

Shortly after 9pm, with no sign of dessert being served, my mother and I made our way to the exit to go home, stopping at the little coffee bar at the exit where my mom had a cafezinho and I dipped strawberries into a vat of melted chocolate.

People think that diplomatic receptions are glamorous and exciting, but the truth is rather more mundane. The best parts for me were people-watching and talking to my Iraqi friend. The rest quite frankly was rather a bore.

Many twists and turns in 113 Sul murder case

noreply@blogger.com (Rasheed's World) — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 13:33:00 +0000

Adriana Villela: She remains the main suspect in the brutal murder
of her parents in August 2009.

THE INVESTIGATION into the brutal August 2009 murder of the rich elderly Villela couple and their maid in their sixth floor apartment in the 113 Sul quadra of Brasilia, has so many twists and turns that it is becoming hard to follow at times.

The case remains unsolved more than a year after it was committed, and four police chief investigators have handled the case, the latest one bringing back to Brasilia a surprise confession from the former doorman of the Villela’s building, saying he had murdered the couple because he held a grudge against them.

Leonardo Alves, the former doorman in question, but who was no longer working in Brasilia when the murders took place, initially told police that he had committed the crime with his two nephews, that they had not used gloves, and that they did not clean up the crime scene afterwards. Given that Jose Guilherme Villela, 73, a former judge on the Superior Electoral Court, his wife Maria Carvalho Mendes Villela, 69, and their maid Francisca Nascimento da Silva, 58, had all been savagely stabbed more than 74 times, and that police found the bodies in the apartment without pools of blood, puts his testimony into serious doubt. Investigators at the time said the crime scene had looked like it had been professionally cleaned up, and that they did not find the fingerprints of the murderers in the apartment, which means that gloves were most likely used.

Alves, 44, was tracked down in a small town of Minas Gerais after a police investigator listening into a wiretap overheard two prisoners in the Papuda jail talk about the murders. Police found that the former doorman had opened several shops and allegedly sold some of Mrs. Villela’s gold jewelry to persons in that state.

The 46-year-old daughter of the Villelas, Adriana, who is an architect, has been the main suspect as the mastermind of the murders from the beginning, though she maintains her innocence. Police investigators found out that she was receiving a monthly allowance of R$8,500 a month (around $5,000) from her parents, and that she often argued with her mother over money when she would ask her for more. Her father headed his own law firm, which was a lucrative practice that made millions for him in legal fees from famous clients, which included former Brazilian President Fernando Collor, who was impeached in 1992 for corruption only two years into his term.

Now in a new twist, the ex-doorman Alves this week told police that Adriana had indeed paid him and his accomplices to murder her parents, and most horrifyingly, had been present in the apartment when they were executed. The police say they believe him and are trying to put together a case against the daughter. She had been previously arrested and held for a few weeks during the course of the investigation, but was eventually let go for lack of evidence against her.

The civil police of Brasilia have bungled the investigation from the start, with the first police investigator being yanked off the case by her superiors after she listened to a fortune-teller and followed false clues that she had planted. Police later found out that the fortune-teller was a friend of Adriana, and that the daughter of the Villela’s had told her to go to the police with her clues.

Police investigators say that Alves and his two accomplices used at least 15 mobile phones in conjunction with stolen SIM cards, to cover their tracks. Knives that were supposedly used in the murders have never been found; with police even diving in a river in Minas that one of Alves’ nephews said he had thrown it in.

Adriana’s lawyers have insisted that Alves was motivated to kill the Villela couple because he had several heated arguments with them when he was still the doorman of their building, with an especially heated one after he brought a locksmith to break into their apartment, without their approval, to fix a leaking pipe when the couple were away on a trip.

But police investigators have a long list of suspicious behavior committed by Adriana, and the rebuttal of these doubts by her lawyers has not been very convincing.

Police say they found a partial fingerprint of Adriana’s from her parent’s apartment that will be able to place her having been there between the 28^th and 31^st of August, 2009, when the murders took place. Adriana emailed the Correio Braziliense newspaper last week to insist that she had never been to her parent’s apartment during that period. She claims her last visit to the apartment was on Aug. 13, 2009, to have breakfast with her parents and give her father a birthday present.

Investigators also point out that Adriana went out of her way to create an alibi for herself on the night of Aug. 28 by calling several friends at night to have dinner with her, and they also noted her absence that night a party that she had been invited to. Adriana claims that she did eat dinner with a friend in the Vila Planalto, but that she went home at 8:30pm because she was tired.

Adriana’s strange behavior in relation to her daughter Carolina was also noticed by the police, who said that Adriana tried to dissuade her daughter from going to her grandparents’ apartment to have lunch with them as she did once a week, after Aug. 28 but before the bodies were discovered. Carolina had repeatedly asked Adriana where her grandparents were since they were not answering their phones. Investigators note that Adriana did not call her parents or attempt to visit them in their apartment from Aug. 28 to 31.

Adriana’s lawyers have pointed to the changing testimony of Alves as proof that the police are coaching him in what to say in order to bolster their premature conclusions. Unfortunately for Adriana, her alibis are not very good ones and she continues to be the main suspect as she remains to benefit the most financially from the brutal murder of her parents if she is found innocent.

Erik de Castro talks about his new film ‘Federal’

noreply@blogger.com (Rasheed's World) — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 13:45:00 +0000

SOME cinema-goers in Brazil were surprised last month when Erik de Castro's new film “Federal” was released just days after the blockbuster “Tropa de Elite 2” had opened. They rightly believed that “Federal” would be unfairly compared to “Tropa”, which had a much bigger budget and opened on nearly ten times more screens than Castro's film.

In the following interview, Castro, who studied filmmaking in Los Angeles in the 1990s, talks about the timing of the release of his film; what it was like working with Selton Mello, one of Brazil’s most popular actors; why he thinks the sex scenes in “Federal” were not excessive, and why he thinks Brasilia is the capital of cocaine.

QUESTION: Why was your movie released shortly after “Tropa de Elite 2” in Brazil? Didn’t your distributor realize that it would face stiff competition since it is a police/action movie too?

ANSWER: That's a long story. To make it short: we had no option. “Tropa” is a blockbuster. “Federal,” which was called "a masterpiece" by a film critic in Rio shortly after its first screening at the Rio International Film Festival, is more in the path of a cult movie now. That's okay, though. “Blade Runner” was indeed one of my influences!

Q: Why did it take so long, from the inception of the script in 2001, to the filming of “Federal” in 2006, and then finally to its release this year? Was it because of a lack of funds?

A: Film production in Brazil is a tough endeavor. Also “Federal” was a completely independent production, from a first time feature filmmaker, out of the Rio/São Paulo axis — and it had a lot of action. We shot in 2006, than it took us a few years raising the money for its conclusion and proper release.

Q: At the beginning of “Federal”, the opening credits say that the movie was made with the support of the Prefeitura do Rio, which confused me. For a moment I thought I may have come into the wrong room and was about to watch “Tropa de Elite 2”. Was your movie edited in Rio?

A: No, but the whole sound editing and mixing process was done in Rio. Riofilme invested in the production, as a co-producer. Jose Wilker was the president of the company and he liked the screenplay a lot.

Q: How was it as a director to work with Selton Mello, who is considered a star in Brazil? Was he difficult to direct? Why isn’t he promoting the film right now? Is it because it took so long after the film was finished for it to be launched that may have lessened Mello’s enthusiasm?

A: The same as it was with any of the almost forty actors and actresses that I had on my cast on “Federal”: a creative collaboration. Also, I just didn't see him as a star. I've known Selton since 1995 when I invited him and he accepted to be in my first short film shot in Brazil — I had a few others shot during my student period in Los Angeles — called "Reason to Believe" (1996). I showed 'Federal's script to him in 2001, right before the Sundance Lab Institute selection, and he promptly accepted. He was not difficult to direct at all. Like I said, filmmaking is all about creative collaboration.

As for the last question, why don't you ask him about it? He's currently dedicated to his own projects that he is producing and directing and that is happening at the same time of “Federal's” release.

Q: Some viewers of “Federal” have complained about the various sex scenes in the film, saying they were gratuitous and too explicit. Did you include them on purpose to “spice” up the story?

A: To me they're very organic. Sex is something that is part of our lives. So some cops in “Federal” do have a lot of love to give to their ladies...and vice-versa! I think people should relax more with sex scenes in films — and enjoy it. Truth is I've heard a lot of people who loved them in “Federal”!

The “spiciest” one, the scene of the character Rocha (Christovam Neto) and his “blonde” is the favorite of a lot of people, including my film professor Tom Stempel who defined it as: “My kind of sex scene: fast, funny and keeps the story going.”

Q: In the movie one of the characters says that Brasilia is “the capital of the powder,” a reference to the trafficking and consumption of cocaine here. Don’t you think that cocaine as a drug was more widely consumed here in the 1980s, and that nowadays, at least among the younger generation, ecstasy and crack have taken over as the drugs of choice?

A: Other drugs come and go, but cocaine is always there. I don't see a character like the diplomat Sophia consuming crack or ecstasy. Cocaine made our point. Cocaine is the classic drug. And that phrase (“the capital of the powder”) didn't come from me. It came from UnB Professor Argemiro Procópio, PhD, one of the consultants of the script. He's the author of many books about drug trafficking and how it affects our society. One of them “O Brasil no Mundo das Drogas” (“Brazil in the World of the Drugs”) points out Brasília as one of the cities where drug consumption, especially cocaine, has grown more than elsewhere in the entire country.

And that has a reason: cocaine is an expensive drug and Brasilia has a lot of rich people. Period. Big shopping malls brands come here, great fashion stores, hip and very expensive concerts, and cocaine too. That's historical in this city but no one seems to care or talk about it. Professor Argemiro dared me: “I dare you to put that phrase in your film.” Well, it's there.

Q: I found many of Michael Madsen’s lines as a corrupt DEA agent to be very cliché! Him saying that Brazil has the best coffee in the world and that he needed to “fuck” a Brazilian woman made me squirm. Were these the original lines in the script or did he improvise?

A: Original lines and Michael loved it! Sam Gibson originally was a one-scene character, who was supposed to be a kind of a comic relief in the story, with all those lines and purposely cliché. His character grew in the story and some of the cliché lines stayed. That's all. We had a ball on the set with Michael.

I've heard different opinions about Sam's sense of humor and for me that's what “Federal” and any good film — or art form for that matter — is all about: Not having consensus.

Q: Some viewers of “Federal” have complained that the storyline is not coherent, and that you failed to adequately link the various scenes. How do you respond?

A: I don't. Others have congratulated me for the script and the way that the edited film kept them tight in their sits, waiting for what was going to happen next. These people understood the film thoroughly.

I had as an editing consultant on this film — and who is also a dear friend — Roman Polanski's editor, Academy Award nominee Hervé deLuze (“The Pianist”). He had read the script and appreciated very much the way Heber Trigueiro (“Federal's” editor) and myself were conducting the rhythm and pace of the film.

Again, film is a very complex art form. Either it hits you, or not. If everyone understood it the same way, it would be too boring. That's why cinema is so great: cinema is disagreement. I might like a film that you hate and vice-versa.

Q: In the scene of “Federal” where the federal police surround the chacara of the head of the NGO, the police shoot a stream of bullets into one of the cars trying to escape from the scene. Is this standard procedure for the police? To me it seemed like overkill. I would have thought that they would just shoot out the tires to get the car to stop so that they could get the passengers alive. Instead, they stop the car but have also killed everyone in it!

A: Come on, give me a break! It's a cop movie! They were being shot at. So, let's kill the bastards!!

At some point in a movie like this, it is a matter of kill or be killed. This was one of those moments. It's like a modern Western.

Q: What was the reaction of the Federal Police to your film? I read the comment of one policeman online who said that your movie shamed the Federal Police for showing them to be so corrupt.

Do you agree with this, or do you think “Federal” showed them in a more nuanced light?

A: Again the arrow hits you according to your own perceptions and thoughts. If this guy felt this way, who am I to disagree?

There were a lot of people at the Federal Police who knew about this project ever since its screenplay was written back in 2001. One retired deputy, to whom I showed the script in 2002, said to me that everything that was there was true.

I've heard about federal policemen who saw it and liked it very much. I just think that I've shown the cops, their wives and even the criminals in a humane way.

The Federal Police Department is a very big place and I'm sure you would get a lot of different opinions there.

Q: What are your next projects that you are working on?

A: I'm working right now on a romantic vampire thriller called “A Lenda de Cândida” (“Candida's Tale”), which I wrote with my “Federal” co-writer Érico Beduschi back in 1999. Diler Trindade will produce this one.

Also, I have yet another police story called “BR-306” (“Route 306”), written by myself, which is being developed with producer Marcus Ligocki, from Brasilia, for his company Ligocki Z Entretenimento.

Currently I'm finishing my production company's (BSB Cinema) third World War II documentary, called “Brazil and the Battle of the Atlantic”.

The previous ones were “Senta a Pua!” (directed by myself), about the first Brazilian fighter squadron in WWII and “A Cobra Fumou”, about the Brazilian Expeditionary Force (FEB) in WWII, directed by Vinícius Reis.

Selton Mello in a scene from "Federal"

‘Federal’ fails to make plausible link between drug traffickers and politicians

noreply@blogger.com (Rasheed's World) — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 16:25:00 +0000

By Rasheed Abou-Alsamh

THE new Brazilian film “Federal” by Erik de Castro, that opened nationwide on more than 70 screens across Brazil on Oct. 29, is a labor of love that had been percolating in the head of its director since he was 16 in 1987.

Twenty-three years later and after several rewrites at the Sundance Institute in the US, “Federal” has finally made it to the big screen. It is the story of a small group of federal and civil police officers in Brasilia who are hot on the trail of international drug trafficker Carlos ‘Beque’ Batista (Eduardo Dussek). Led by a serious yet affable Vital (Carlos Alberto Riccelli), the group includes a young and idealistic federal agent Dani (Selton Mello), a street cop called Lua (Cesario Augusto) and a feisty federal agent named Rocha (Christovam Neto).

De Castro is wildly ambitious in trying to set out telling a story that will illustrate how drug dealers are linked to corrupt politicians in high places, but he fails to paint a convincing picture. Instead, he has produced an interesting look into the lives of policemen, some good others corrupt, in their daily fight against the menace of drugs.

The opening scenes of policemen looking over the body of a murdered drug dealer in the garden of a posh house could have been filmed anywhere in Brazil, but soon De Castro has policemen chasing after another suspect in the satellite city of Ceilandia in an action sequence that involves the traditional dance/martial art that originated with Brazilian slaves called “capoeira”.

The director, who is a native of Brasilia, filmed the entire movie on location in super-16mm that was later blown-up to 35mm. This shows. At the Parkshopping cinema that I watched “Federal” at, the screen was left with a blank space on either side, as the projected film did not fill up the screen entirely. The use of traditional film, instead of digital video, gives the film a cinematic feel that De Castro was aiming for. One reviewer of the film however complained that the scenes looked washed-out and monochromatic, compared to the sweeping and brighter shots of Brasilia’s famous skyline that the director scatters throughout the movie to constantly remind us just where this police thriller is taking place. I found his lighting to be very naturalistic, giving the film a realism that is often missing from other Brazilian films, especially those produced by Globo Filmes that tend to be super-glossy and perfect looking.

Unfortunately, the film’s acting and script deserve less praise. Some of the actors either overacted their parts, such as Michael Madsen as the American Drug Enforcement Agency agent Sam Gibson, or under-acted their parts such as Selton Mello did with Dani. Here the script is also very much to blame, with Madsen saying such clichéd things as: “Brazil has the best coffee in the world!” and “I’ve been in Brazil for several days now and I haven’t even fucked a Brazilian woman yet!” His forced hilarity was over the top and made me squirm in embarrassment. He came across as the stereotypical obnoxious American: Loud, tacky and over-confident.

On the other side of the spectrum, Melo played Dani so low-key that at times it seemed like he was on tranquilizers and sleep-walking his way through the story. Melo is a big star in Brazil, so having him in an independent and relatively low budget film like “Federal”, which was produced on a budget of R$5 million (approximately $2.9 million), is considered a coup of sorts. But not only is Dani moping throughout the movie, he also has an annoying conversation with Vital near the beginning of the film after he sees that a suspect has been tortured for hours by his civilian police colleagues.

“How can we justify this torture?” Dani asks Vital.
“I think that if I had been a policeman during the military dictatorship I would have joined the guerrillas and fought on their side,” he says, referring to the 1964-1985 period during which Brazil was under strict military control and Marxist guerrillas robbed banks and kidnapped diplomats.

“This is our job, this is what we do as policemen,” Vital replies.

I felt like Dani needed a slap in the face from Vital, and a good tongue-lashing. While I’m sure the Federal Police is full of principled and honest agents, Dani’s constant whining and depression throughout the movie made one want someone in the film to suggest to him that maybe he wasn’t cut-out to be a federal agent after all!

Script problems aside, it is clear from seeing “Federal” and from talking with the director (see my interview with him in the next entry), that De Castro loves Brasilia and is trying to showcase the city in this film. I like the capital too but it would have been better if De Castro had been subtler in including shots of the city in the story.

For instance, twice in the film Dani is shown standing next to his motorcycle at the JK Bridge that links the Plano Piloto to the Lago Sul district of Brasilia. This is the most beautiful bridge in Brasilia, and one of the most unique in the world. Its graceful white arches stretching across the Paranoa Lake have become an iconic landmark of the capital. But we already know that Dani lives in a small apartment, which if you live here would know that the superquadras that house most apartments here are not really near the bridge. Which brings me to my point: The shots of the bridge seem gratuitous and do not appear as a convincing part of the narrative.

De Castro also finds it necessary to show us just how human each of our policemen are by showing that each one either has a vigorous sex life or not. At the cinema that I watched “Federal” at, I heard teenagers behind me groan in desperation at some of the protracted and rather explicit sex scenes, which seemed gratuitous and did not do much to advance the story.

I did not mind those scenes so much. What bothered me were the rather sketchy performances of the bad guys: The head of the NGO, Eliezer Gallo (Adriano Siri), who also funded a church (in which he hid a drug manufacturing lab in its basement) seemed to me like a flimsy caricature of shadowy power brokers in the capital. And the reverend of the church, played by Andre Amaro, was cartoonishly funny in the way he led prayers, raising his arms and uttering foolish words. It just made me laugh.

The point that “Federal” makes very well though is that Brazil has become a major trans-shipment point for drugs going from South America to Europe. The country has thousands of kilometers of extremely porous borders with Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, and Paraguay. Much of that border is in the Amazon jungle, and as such is very difficult to be policed effectively by Brazilian border guards. Just last week, Italian police announced they had seized several tons of cocaine that had been smuggled from Brazil into Italy by sea, hidden in a container of agricultural machines.

While De Castro succeeds in showing us just how corrupt or honest various anti-drug smuggling policemen can be, he utterly fails to paint a convincing picture of the relationship between international drug dealers and political leaders in Brasilia. Which is a shame really. Perhaps he can do that in “Federal 2”.

From left to right: Selton Mello as Dani and Carlos Alberto Riccelli (Vital), with Christovam Neto (Rocha) in the middle, and Cesario Augusto (Lua) behind him, in a scene from "Federal".

Brazil election goes to 2nd round as Marina Silva bags 20 million votes!

noreply@blogger.com (Rasheed's World) — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 14:18:00 +0000

THE Brazilian presidential elections will go to a second round on October 31 after Dilma Rousseff of the Workers Party (PT) failed to win an absolute majority of 51% of the popular vote in yesterday's nationwide elections. The final tally gave her 46.8% of the vote, with her runoff opponent Jose Serra winning 32.6% of the vote. Marina Silva of the Green Party (PV) did exceptionally well, garnering nearly 20 million votes across Brazil. Surprisingly she came in only third place in her home state of Acre, but came in first in the Federal District (home of the capital Brasilia) with 41.9% of the votes.

Dilma spent Sunday night holed up in the presidential palace with President Luis Inacio 'Lula' da Silva watching the election returns. She and the president were reportedly disappointed that she didn't make it in the first round, but Lula had repeatedly said during the campaign that he would not be surprised if she did not make in the first round, noting that he too had never made it in the first round the two times he was elected. Dilma delivered a statement to the press at around 11pm last night, thanking her opponents for a good fight and said she would reply to questions today at a press conference in Brasilia at 4:30pm. A last minute corruption scandal involving Lula's now former chief of staff, Erenice Guerra, which was brought to light by Veja magazine just two weeks before the elections, is thought to have put off some voters who were going to vote for Dilma. The big question now is who are the voters who voted for Marina in the first round going to vote for next?

Marina Silva's political trajectory has been nothing if not amazing. She grew up in the Amazon jungle, the daughter of a poor rubber tapper. She only learned how to read and write at the age of 16, and then worked as a domestic helper to support herself as she put herself through university. She became an environmental activist alongside her friend Chico Mendes, who would later be murdered on the orders of a rich farmer who disliked their activism. Elected first as a city councilor in Rio Branco, the capital of Acre, Marina was eventually elected senator. Lula then picked her to be his environment minister, where she often clashed with big land owners who wanted to be able to cut down more trees to make more pasture land for their cattle. She eventually resigned from her post after clashing with Dilma Rousseff, who at the time was the chief of staff of President Lula. Marina then left the PT and joined the Partido Verde. She will definately go far, so look for this fighter to be a candidate in Brazil's next presidential elections in 2014.

In the Federal District, the race for governor is also going to a second round after Agnelo Queiroz of the PT won 48.8% of the vote and Weslian Roriz (PSC) won 31.5%. Mrs Roriz is the wife of the disgraced former governor of the DF Joaquim Roriz, and has zero political experience. Her husband dropped out of the gubernatorial race just days before yesterday's elections after the Brazilian Supreme Court came to a tie when voting on whether or not he could run this year based on a new anti-corruption law called Ficha Limpa which disqualifies candidates who have been found guilty of corruption, or who have in the past resigned from positions in order to avoid losing their political rights to run for office in the future. Roriz resigned from his position as a senator in 2002 when it looked like he was about to be found guilty by the Senate of corruption and would have been banned from holding public office for eight years. His wife Weslian performed so badly in the only televised debate she participated in with other candidates for governor before the election, that clips of it have become a hit on YouTube.

While Joaquim Roriz will be remembred for encouraging thousands of poorer Brazilians to come to the Federal District by giving them land to live on, and which have now become full-fledged satellite cities of Brasilia, he is also known for building the JK bridge and the metro system in Brasilia, which both had significant cost overruns (or superfaturamento in Portuguese).

The fate of other corrupt politicians in these elections is also uncertain as they wait to hear whether the Supreme Court will clear them or not. Paulo Maluf of Sao Paulo, who received 500,000 votes on Sunday to return to Brasilia as a congressman for his state, could be barred from being sworn in again if the court rules against him. He is accused of hiding millions of dollars from the tax agency by laundering it abroad through his private company, and for the superfaturamento of chicken for school lunches when he was the governor of the state of Sao Paulo in the 1980s.

On a lighter note, a comedian who goes by the stage name of Tiririca, and whose elections ads on TV featured him saying "vote for Tiririca, as it cannot get any worse," while wearing a blond wig, outraged many Brazilians, with a judge demanding that he submit himself to a literacy test to make sure that he could read and write. Not surprisingly, as the ultimate anti-candidate, Tiririca won 1.3 million votes to be a federal deputy for Sao Paulo in Brasilia, the highest number of votes ever in Brazil's history for such a post!

Mercado Cobogó: Trendy design in Brasilia

noreply@blogger.com (Rasheed's World) — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 22:34:00 +0000

HAVE you been looking for a shop in Brasilia that sells beautiful, design-progressive decorative objects, leather goods, stationary and jewelry? Then look no further than the Mercado Cobogó located in the 704/705 quadra of the Asa Norte.

The store-cum-café will be one year old in January, and is run by the thirty something couple of Mariana Dap and Ph Caovilla.

“I’m an artist and always wanted to have a space like this,” Mariana told me on Saturday when I visited the store for the first time.

Installed in a large and airy space, with exposed concrete beams and high ceilings, the store has many fun and pretty objects to tempt one. Delicate, lace-like necklaces and bracelets made of thinly-cut silicone in gold, silver, green, black and purple hues would make elegant gifts for any woman. A glass stand showcases the avant-garde silver and gold jewelry of a Brasilia-based designer, with prices in the R$200-400 ($117-235) range.

I especially liked a colorful bed throw from India, which in the single-bed size was priced at R$195 ($114), and a pair of black and white ceramic salt and pepper shakers in the form of Miró-esque women with huge breasts and butts for R$35 ($20). I also liked a white woodcarving of Saint George slaying the dragon, which was priced at R$197 ($115).

I bought a Zoot rollerball pen in navy blue resin with canary-yellow accents for R$45 ($26), a cute, pocket-size Monjojo Cahier notebook with a illustration of Little Red Riding Hood on the cover, and a 3-D bookmark with a moose on it.

The store also features a Brazilian line of feather-light necklaces and bags made from recycled fishing nets in a surprising range of colors. I especially liked the small-leather goods of the São Paulo-based Dafna Edery, who had beautifully finished wallets in red, aqua blue, green and brown leathers. I bought a small wallet for R$78 ($45), and highly recommend her goods which rival anything you would find in Europe or the US.

Once you’ve tired of shopping you can sit down at one of Cobogó’s outside tables and order an espresso and a slice of homemade chocolate cake.

In the basement of the store, Mariana showed me the communal workspace that she shares with a web designer, consultants and various other small businesses.

“We decided to try and have a communal work space that we shared with other small businesses,” Mariana told me. “But it was difficult in the beginning because some people were suspicious that the rent for such a work space was so cheap.”

For around R$450 a month ($264), one can get a small workspace in which to put a desk, chair and laptop. The rent includes free Wi-Fi Internet access, electricity, water, a bathroom upstairs, security and a discount at the Cobogó café.

There are only a few spaces left, so if you’re interested contact Mariana on tel. 3039-6333.

“We don’t have any stock, so what you see on the shelves is what we’ve got, so things do move fast here,” explained Mariana. “But we get new things every week, so it’s always worth it to pop in regularly to see what ‘s new.”

— Mercado Cobogó is located at 704/705 Norte, bloco E, lojas 51 to 56, and is open from Monday to Saturday from 9am to 7pm. Driving on W3 Norte, turn into the 704/705 quadra at the intersection with the Carrefour supermarket. Head towards the 900 block and you’ll see one of the biggest trees in Brasilia. The store is to the left of it.

On the gay Saudi diplomat

noreply@blogger.com (Rasheed's World) — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 23:02:00 +0000

MUCH has been written about the Saudi diplomat in Los Angeles, Ali Ahmad Asseri, who has gone into hiding in the US after applying for political asylum for being gay and fearing execution if he returns to Saudi Arabia.

Michael Issikoff broke the story for NBC News on Sept. 11, reporting that Asseri had claimed in an interview by email that he felt his life was in danger after the Saudi Consulate found out he was gay, had a female Israeli Jewish friend and subsequently refused to renew his diplomatic passport. According to the diplomat, employees of the consulate followed him to gay bars and presumably were monitoring his every move.

Issikoff quotes Ali Al-Ahmad of the Gulf Institue in Washington, D.C., who is a Saudi dissident, as saying that Asseri did have cause for grave concern over his own security if he returned to the kingdom because of his criticism of four Saudi princes living in the Los Angeles area and receiving salaries from the consulate, in an open letter to King Abdullah. “This statement is enough to put Mr. Asseri in danger if he returns to Saudi Arabia,” said Ahmad. I disagree because most Saudis are well aware that there are numerous members of the royal family that get stipends and do nothing very constructive with their lives. The fact that Asseri did not name any names in his open letter that he posted online, seems to indicate that he is more desperate to gain asylum in the US, then to cause real embarrassment to the Al-Saud family.

A later story in the Los Angeles Times blog quotes Ahmad as saying that the consulate would probably be more concerned about Asseri's friendship with the Israeli woman, as they would be afraid that she might be a spy for Israel. That makes sense to me.

As former US diplomat John Burgess noted on his blog Crossroads Arabia, "The Saudi government certainly does not want gay diplomats representing the country. It has gay diplomats representing it already. Most are smart enough to not draw attention to themselves."

Asseri claimed in his email interview that he would killed "in broad daylight" if he returned to Saudi. I highly doubt this, as do Berger and Saudi blogger Qusay Fayoumi. The death penalty has been rarely used against gay men in Saudi, unlike in neighboring Iran. The Saudi men who were executed in 2002 for having been in a gay situation were killed for allegedly raping underage boys. But this is not to say that gay men do not get punished in the kingdom. The more masculine and well-connected ones can get away with being gay for all of their lives, mostly by avoiding the notorious religious police who love to prey on poorer Saudi gay men, the more feminine ones and foreign gay workers.

Qusay, like many younger and more educated Saudis of his generation (he's thirtysomething), believes that gay men have it easy in Saudi. "Saudi never went all Cuba on gays..." he wrote in his post on Asseri. Unfortunately, Qusay is mistaken in his rosy-tinted vision of life in Saudi Arabia. Many Filipino, Arab and Saudi gay men are regularly arrested by the religious police, who after torturing them and extracting confessions of being "gay" or "acting like women", are handed over to regular police and put on trial. The average sentence handed down is nine months to a year imprisonment with 90-120 lashes and deportation at the end of the jail term for the foreigners. How this is better than how gays were treated in Cuba in the 1960s and 1970s is hard to tell. (For a glimpse of gay life in Cuba watch Julian Schnabel's excellent 2000 film Before Night Falls, which is the autobiography of the Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas, who was imprisoned for two years for being gay.)

The Saudi Embassy in Washington claims that Asseri was never fired but merely transfered back to the Minstry of Foreign Affairs in Riyadh after his four-year tour (and one-year extension) in the US ended.

If Asseri returned to the kingdom I doubt he would be imprisoned or killed. He could have found himself without a job and had his right to travel abroad revoked. Even so I think the US should grant him asylum. I hardly think that doing so would seriously dent Saudi-US relations. At most it would cause a tiny blip that would soon be forgotten by both sides.

SAUDI ARABIA: Gay diplomat in Los Angeles may have a case, but little support in the Arab world

noreply@blogger.com (Rasheed's World) — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 22:40:00 +0000

SAUDI ARABIA: Gay diplomat in Los Angeles may have a case, but little support in the Arab world

Saudi Rescue Team Saves 136 Pakistanis from Drowning

noreply@blogger.com (Rasheed's World) — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 23:55:00 +0000

Saudi Rescue Team Saves 136 Pakistanis from Drowning

Stupid marketing calls

noreply@blogger.com (Rasheed's World) — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:07:00 +0000

EVERYONE has experienced one of those idiotic and highly annoying marketing calls that phone companies and other firms like to torture us with.

The latest one I received yesterday was from Oi, the operator of our two landlines. They charge us R$42 ($24) a month for each line, which is rather expensive. I told my mom that I saw an ad for a TIM fixed-line that was only R$20 a month, and which included 1,000 minutes of local calls.

Now I know that many of you will say that many people today survive with only a cellphone, which is what I did when I lived in Saudi and the UAE. But here in Brazil whenever you make a doctor's appointment, or buy something major in a store, they always ask for a fixed-line phone number. Some doctors' offices even refuse to call a cell number because it costs them more! So having a fixed number is something of a necessity here.

Anyway, here is how my annoying call went, which I've translated from Portuguese:

ME: Hello?

ANNOYING MARKETING WOMAN: Can I speak to Mrs. Joyce Abualsamh?

ME: Who is calling?

ANNOYING MARKETING WOMAN: I'm calling on behalf of Oi and would like to offer her some promotions.

ME: You can talk to me, I'm her son.

ANNOYING MARKETING WOMAN: I'm sorry, I can only talk to the owner of the line. Is she there?

ME: Yes she's here but she lives in the house next to mine. So go ahead and tell me about your offers.

ANNOYING MARKETING WOMAN: I can't, I can only talk to the owner of the line.

ME: But I pay this bill!

ANNOYING MARKETING WOMAN: I can only divulge this information to the owner of this line.

ME: X@!!!!!*&^%$!!!! We don't want your offers!

Upon which I hung up. The woman's tone of voice and accent were extremely grating, which just made the conversation even more annoying. If only she had been kinder, used her mind and told me what offers they had, I could have passed on the information to my mother. But here once again big business fails yet one more time in connecting with one of its customers, creating a negative impression instead of a positive one. Perhaps we may just switch to a TIM landline after all.

Brasilia sunsets, fires and flowers

noreply@blogger.com (Rasheed's World) — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:03:00 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Rasheed's World) — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 00:14:00 +0000

I write like
Chuck Palahniuk

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Emirates goes stingy with economy passengers

noreply@blogger.com (Rasheed's World) — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 23:16:00 +0000

IF YOU'RE going to fly economy class on Emirates Airlines long haul anytime soon be forewarned: They're cutting back on expenses so bring some of your own snacks and drinks.

Despite making a record profit of more than $900 million in their last year of operations, Emirates is cutting back so much in its economy class that its affecting their catering on board long flights. I experienced this a few weeks ago flying with them from Sao Paulo to Dubai and back. The flight is more than 14 hours nonstop and is usually packed. So it is obvious that Emirates is not losing money on this route, but is in fact making a good profit on it.

But one certainly would not think so by the attitude of their inflight crew. When I asked for a second glass of mineral water, both flight attendants who were doling out the drinks said: "Oh! That will be five dirhams extra, please!"

I was so shocked by their bad taste joke that I could only chuckle along with them, but they seemed rather embarrassed to have to say that.

Next, around three hours after dinner had been served I felt peckish and went to the back of the plane to get something to eat. The crew were placing sandwiches, fruit, chocolate and drinks out to allow passengers to eat at their will, as was pointed out in their inflight menu card. I asked an attendant if I could have a sandwich, and she said yes. Around 45 minutes when they were handing out sandwiches down the aisle I made the mistake of asking for another sandwich.

"I'm sorry, but you already took a sandwich, I remember," said the same flight attendant in an accusatory tone.

When I protested that Emirates was becoming stingy, she said she would come back and give me another sandwich if there were any left over. "We have to make sure everyone gets one first before we allow anyone to have seconds," was her weak excuse.

Sure enough, around 20 minutes later she returned to my seat and gave me a sandwich. When I later wandered to the back to get a drink, I saw that there were a good number of leftover sandwiches, fruit and chocolates.

Flying back from Dubai to Sao Paulo it was the same drill. This time I asked to speak to whoever was in charge of the cabin crew. Several hours later a flight attendant came to me and asked if they could use my name and seat number on a form they were filing about my complaint.

"I'm sorry sir, but we need you passengers to complain to the airline or they won't change their policy," said the clearly apologetic and embarrassed flight attendant.

Three hours into my more than 14-hour flight back to Sao Paulo I went to the back of the plane to get a soft drink. The flight attendant served it to me lukewarm without any ice.

"I'm sorry we've already run out of ice," he told me. "We'll try to get some from the front for our next service."

So, it seems its okay to let economy passengers go without ice while not even halfway into the flight, and food must be rationed too. Of course that would never happen to business and first class passengers.

Maybe I will fly on Qatar Airways next time I have to go to Saudi Arabia. It's just a thought.

The headache-inducing heat of Arabia

noreply@blogger.com (Rasheed's World) — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 13:41:00 +0000

JEDDAH — I used to always make fun of Saudis who were wealthy enough to escape the blistering summer heat of Arabia. But on this trip back to Saudi Arabia, I finally realized why they do it: They don't want to have the horrible headaches that the unrelenting heat produces.

Yesterday morning, I foolishly decided to walk from the Red Sea Palace Hotel to the Corniche Center and then on to the Mahmal Shopping Center. The walk only took five minutes, but with the temperature in the 40s, that was enough to leave me with a blazing headache that lasted the whole day.

I told my friend Thiago before I left Brazil on this trip that I always got diarrhea when I lived in Saudi, and he said that it was probably because of the combination of extreme heat of the outdoors and the extreme cold of air-conditioning in cars and buildings. He's probably right.

My friend Angelo kindly gave me two Advils, which helped turn my headache into a dull throb, but I was still left feeling slightly unwell the whole day.

Now that I think about it, I was a Panadol addict when I lived in Jeddah. I had constant headaches the whole year round, as did my friend Marvin. We used to buy boxes of the stuff in all of its variations: Extra, long-lasting, for sinuses, sleep-inducing, you name it, we popped it!

When I arrived in Jeddah on this trip I sent messages to various Saudi friends that I was in town and wanted to see them. One told me that she was in Los Angeles doing a summer course, another said she was in London and the other friend's mobile was shut off. Good for them, they'll certainly be healthier and headache-free far from the heat of Arabia.