Nearing the End of a Long American Film

The American president began his last year in office with a visit to a region left more unstable by his administrations short-sighted policies. Unfortunately his sabre-rattling wasn’t limited to the Alartha sword dance he tried his hand at in Bahrain.

While the White House has billed the trip as an effort to reassure his Arab allies in the Gulf that the US will protect them from Iran, it seems the GCC, while it does have concerns about growing Iranian power, prefers constructive dialogue to an exchange of bellicose rhetoric and grandstanding - as in the battle of the videos over the incident in the Strait of Hormuz. As the Saudi foreign minister said at a press conference “I am talking about Saudi Arabia’s point of view. This is not the time for any provocation in the region”.

"Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous and Iran will be dangerous" was Bush’s mantra throughout the trip, and he seemed unfazed by the fact that IAEA chief Muhammad el-Baradei was in Tehran to negotiate on outstanding nuclear issues, or by his own intelligence agencies recent report that said Iran no longer had a nuclear weapons program.

As the Saudi Gazette put it, “If this is the Bush definition of diplomacy, he needs to pick up a dictionary”. Editorials in leading newspapers also lambasted Bush’s much vaunted peace plan, which consigns UN resolutions to the dustbin of history, denying refugees their right of return, and declaring Israel’s West Bank settlements, illegal under international law, “facts on the ground” which must be accommodated by the occupied Palestinians . The “viable state” turns out to be a network of Bantustans with no territorial integrity, with the Palestinians deprived of their best land and water resources.

The other ‘carrot’ to the people of the region was a revival of the short-lived ‘freedom agenda’ in his keynote speech in Abu Dhabi. The speech was in part a repeat of the 2003 state of the union address in the build up to the war on Iraq, substituting Iran as state sponsor of terror on the path to acquiring nukes.

Reeling off a list of democratic elections in the region, he mentioned the Iraqi and Lebanese elections, but skipped the Palestinian election of a Hamas government in favour of the earlier election of Abu Mazen. To Arabs watching the speech live, the glaring omissions was proof, if any were needed, that this wasn’t about universal ideals, but about a Bush principle: with us or against us? Again, the idea that you negotiate not with your allies, but with people who disagree with you, seems an alien concept.

But as this administration is on its way out, perhaps some appreciation is in order. Will the next one provide as much material to satirist?

‘Bush bashing’ has become a spectator sport in some quarters, and the urge to lampoon has even reached Arab video clips, whose Arab spin-offs have reached levels of inanity undreamt of in MTV’s philosophy – as exemplified by the craze for cheesy children’s songs by pop-singers.

You’d think nothing could be more apolitical, but one of Nancy Ajram’s contributions to the genre, “Shater, Shater” (Good Boy, Good Boy) proved to have hidden potential. When the US Secretary of State visited to the region, on a tour as empty of substance on key grievances as Bush’s, the song was adapted to suit the occasion.

Some creative editing replaced the pop-star playing teacher with a digitized version of Ms. Rice. And her pupils? The heads of various Arab states depicted as uniformed pint sized schoolboys. Not very subtle, and the lyrics weren’t either:

Teacher: What do we call the boy who listens to his parents?
Chorus: Good boy, good boy
Teacher: What about the boy who does well at school and doesn’t annoy his teachers?
Chorus: We will love him and always call him a good boy

It’s obviously a simplification of US-Arab relations, but one that struck a cord, as the resulting remix spread like wildfire on the internet.

Bush himself appears in “Ahlan, Ezayak” or ‘Hi, how are you?’ in which a Tunisian-Kuwaiti singer, Shams, reworks an Egyptian song about the breakup of a relationship (with lines like “I’m not your relative, or your darling, I’m someone whose sick and tired of your deeds…buy your safety by getting away from me”). Her version stars the American President as the rejected suitor.

The video features an elderly Rambo spraying bullets everywhere, US soldiers being chased through the desert by an incensed woman wielding a slipper, oil fields and cowboy hats, and the words Guantanamo, Democracy and Liberty appearing as props at various stages.

Having berated Bush for his behavior in front of the international media and squared off with Condi in the boxing ring, the singer climbs up steps in the shape of a graph in the middle of oil rigs, pushes Bush off his perch at the top, and then visits a fortune teller to find out who her destined partner will be. Gazing into the crystal ball, she sees herself in a frothy Western wedding dress walking off into the sunset with Handhala, a cartoon charater who was the signature figure of assasinated Palestinian cartoonist Naji Al Ali.

As Mamoun Asfour said, he encapsulated his creator’s philosophy, the figure of a ten-year old boy with his back to the viewer, whom the Palestinian cartoonist described as “neither beautiful, spoilt, nor even well-fed. He is barefoot like many children in refugee camps...However, those who came to know… [him] adopted him because he is affectionate, honest, outspoken…his hands behind his back are a symbol of rejection of all the present negative tides in our region."

The marriage of pop singer Shams and Handhalah at the end of the video clip is thus a concise and powerful way to indicate a rejection of Americas foreign policy.

“Ahlan, Ezayak” generated a lot of controversy, one contention being that it was empty of any real content, a dumbed-down commercialised version of ‘resistance art’. And it is – a one-off ‘political’ video-clip whose success was down to a desire to vent at being made to live through “a long American film” as Ziad Rabani’s musical puts its.

As Bush’s trip competed for air-time with the frenzied coverage of the early stages of the US elections, one can only hope that the next American film will be less bloody.

Bush in Dubai

Goat brains on the buffet in Dubai
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates
by Mark Silva

They served goat brains on the buffet in the hold for pool reporters here today, but I cannot directly report what it tastes like -- read on for a review.

.....As we were led in we saw Bush arriving from an interior door to the courtyard, where he was greeted by six young girls - they must have been under nine, because at nine they must go under cover and these girls were not covered but rather wearing bright gowns - half of them in fuchsia and half of them in turquoise.

..."Hi girls," said Bush, arriving to their greeting, as they burst into song. Their hands were henna'd with designs and Bush remarked on their "beautiful hands." After the song, two stepped forward with baskets of flowers and said "Welcome to Dubai."

The girls who greeted Bush and the ruler of Dubai are younger than nine, for at nine they must cover their heads.

They walked to the front bench in the center facing the rugs and now 12 girls, all dressed in the hot blue and pink gowns - fuchsia and turquoise, Dana Perino assures me - started dancing on the carpet before them.

....They circled and swayed and made great flourishes to music, and the president smiled broadly, nodded his head to the rhythm and tapped his right black-shoed foot in decent timing. The dance lasted a while and Bush was beaming throughout.


"Shukran," Bush told the girls. Thank you.

The drizzle had ended by the dance's end, and then four robed men came out with hunting falcons on their arms - fabulous big birds of light brown tones with dark markings, and they approached Bush, who briefly took a bird on his arm and handed it back. "Beautiful birds," Bush said.

With this, we were led out and motorcaded to the cultural center past the famous Dubai creek, which was not active on this national holiday - declared so for the Bush visit.

Your pooler dubbed it Freedom Day.

They circled and swayed and made great flourishes to music, and the president smiled broadly, nodded his head to the rhythm and tapped his right black-shoed foot in decent timing. The dance lasted a while and Bush was beaming throughout.

Shukran," Bush told the girls. Thank you.

Covering Countries in Crisis

The international news has recently been dominated by countries in crisis, first Pakistan’s pre-election rioting following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, and the by Kenya’s post-election violence following a disputed presidential poll.

Kenyans and Pakistanis face an uncertain year ahead, but the way these two stories are being reported has raised serious issues. Kenya reports often boiled down to machetes, tribal warriors and rage; and on TV this mantra was accompanied by appropriate images of angry young men confronting each other, the police, and their neighbors. This was strikingly similar to the Pakistan coverage, when video packages of violent mobs shaking their fists, burning tires, and smashing cars were used over and over again.

Without providing adequate background and explanation, a lot of reporting simply perpetuates the idea of black and brown people as inherently savage and barbaric, their modern politics tribalism and feudalism by another name. Kenyan journalist Peter Kimani paints a very different picture by detailing the alliances and rivalries among the countries politicians in the last few decades and how they lead to the current tragic outcome, without ignoring or minimizing the role tribal allegiances play.

Kenyan Pundit (one of the bloggers who have come to the fore during this crisis as sources of information) felt that the way the international media reported the current crisis “only served to reinforce what I have always felt about news that emanates from Africa, we need to really work on news for us by us, we can no longer rely on the international stations and media”, and hoped that A24, a pan-African 24 hour news channel to start broadcasting this year, would change things when it launches. After all China has International CCTV, Germany has DW-TV, there’s Russia Today and France-24 and Jazeera English so it’s high time that Africa gets its own station to with an African perspective.

In the mean time, the Kenyan blogosphere had some praise for the quality of Aljazeera English’s coverage, which can in part be ascribed to the fact that AE’s reporters (Haru Mutasa, Mohammad Adow and Andrew Sullivan) were not network stars parachuted in for the disaster.

Anchors and reporter without detailed knowledge of the country they’re reporting about tend to extrapolate, and in the case of African nation experiencing a horrific mixture of ethnic, political and criminal gang violence, this means “the specter of Rwanda” is invoked. CNN, the Guardian and Germany’s Der Spiegel for example used the comparison repeatedly.

In the case of Pakistan, meltdown took on a whole different dimension, with the notion of Alqaeda somehow getting hold of the bomb once the country had descended into lawlessness being bandied about frequently, especially in the American media. You’d think the Pakistanis kept the nukes in a shed.

But the real interest in the Pakistan story was of course Bhutto herself, the assassinated leader. She was “pale-skinned” (the phrase was used by The New York Times and the AP news agency, others slipped in references to her “fair complexion” as clarification for her nickname Pinkie), spoke English as her mother tongue, and had been educated in convent schools and then attended Harvard and Oxford. She was good looking, she was a Muslim woman and she said what the west wanted to hear.

How powerful her image had become is made clear by the fact that one of the Republican candidates for president, Rudy Guliani, launched a new advert to try and boost his dismal ratings, and featured Benazir Bhutto. The same man had reprimanded his fellow republican candidates for attempting to make political profit out of a tragic event. The video features a lot of scary brown people while a voice over warns of “a people perverted” “madmen” and “a nuclear power in chaos”. Then archive footage of a younger, prettier Benazir Bhutto as the voice talks of “democracy attacked”.

In a way this posthumous ‘tribute’ is appropriate, Bhutto personifying an embattled democracy in the East, exactly the image she had spent a lot of time and money creating, and consistently repeated in interviews, TV appearances, op-ed pieces. She knew that she needed the US on her side if she was ever to return to power, and like any shrewd political operator, crafted a message to achieve her goal.

But according to Richard Engels the Richard Engel, Middle East bureau chief of the American network MSNBC, “Pakistan’s Ms. Liberty” perfidiously performed a “dance of the seven veils” and should not be trusted. The phrase also turned up in a biography by the NYT company which was printed in other newspapers, though it seems that the original New York Times was induced to change the wording of its online edition after reader’s indignant comments. Benazir Bhutto was a politician not a saint, but her political wheeling and dealing can be described without resorting to a phrase that combines misogyny and orientalism.

The negotiations between her and Musharraf for a power sharing agreement were brokered by Washington and London, which are also involved in negotiations between Kibaki and Odinga, and perhaps that is the most overlooked point in the coverage of both crises: foreign intervention.

Both Kenya and Pakistan were divided and ruled by the British, both became US allies against the Soviets, which meant periods of American backed dictatorship, and both are involved in the current ‘war on terror’, which has proved a divisive issue in both countries. The Pakistani army is pitted against its own people in an unpopular war in the Northern provinces, while Kenyan opposition leader Odinga is being characterized as the ‘Shariah candidate’ by his opponents, and described as a closet Muslim.

While there is no case for blaming the current unrest on the West, it does seem strange that most talking heads and op-ed writers prefer horrified glee over the natives displaying the atavistic urges to analysis of the 20th century history of the countries in question.

'Free Sami' Button

Tasnim from epiphanies has created a new button, linking to the Reporters Without Borders petition, to support Aljazeera cameraman Sami Alhaj.

Stupid Americans - Uncle Sam inspires 3ami 3arabi

افتراء

شعب أمريكا غبي

كف عن هذا الهُراء

لا تدع للحقد

أن يبلغ حد الفتراء

قل بهذا الشعب ما شئت

ولكن لا تقل عنه غبي

اأيقولون غبيا

ًللغباء؟

احمد مطر -

Whether it is calumny, as the title of Ahmad Matar's poem claims (only to be contradicted by the text), to call American's stupid seems a moot point; the world having decided that the its sole Superpower is characterised by this trait above all others.

And the American as voter is particularly afflicted with a lack of brain power, eating up such patent whoppers as in Steve Brodner's cartoon.

You have to wonder though, with a media driven by the bottom line parroting the same message, if it isn't what they want to hear. And if the leaders the rest of the world find so ridiculous might be elected because their policies, and even the annoying mannerism, are what appeals.

The nation of shopkeepers appreciates a Tom Brownian PM who quotes his school motto in his inaugural speech, and the Americans prefer a straight-talking cowboy. To each his own.

And as to foreign policy, those who celebrate the fall from grace of neo-cons as the awakening of the gullible and naive seem to ignore the fact that their detractors feel the need to compete.

With Iraq burning, and the rest of the region apparently gearing up for a similar inferno, we have more than our share of certified experts in the global phenomena of Yankee bashing, most of whom have a sub-speciality in attention-deficiency, short-term fixation and sheer stupidity studies.

From the perspective of a local groundling, watching the US of A's military and diplomatic [sic] machine wreak havoc across it's current stomping ground, America appears as a lobotomised blindfolded colossus on the rampage.

Seeing such a monster - and the destruction it leaves in it's wake - up close and personal gives an intensity to the anti-US rants, and enough emotion to inspire poetry on their stupidity- as in the Iraqi Ahmad Matar's poem above, and the Lebanese Khaled El-habir's below:

ابانا الذي في السما

ابانا الذي في السما انت عراسي انما عندي كلام
في كم سؤال بها لعمر اجتمعوا براسي من القهر والانهزام
ما هيدا مبارح كان ولد كيف تبلع كل البلد... اول سؤال
مبارح اخونا كان فقير وهلق تيابو من حرير... تاني سؤال
ليش العرب بعد النفط صارت حضارتهن زفت... تالت سؤال
كيف العدالة بنعدم والحرية بتنحرم... رابع سؤال
كيف بيخلق واحد زعيم والتاني ما عندو ملّيم... خامس سؤال
كيف اليهودي مضطهد، ما هوّي سارقلي بلد... هوني السؤال
كيف العراقي بينقتل ما قالوا حرية وعدل... سابع سؤال
ليش الضمير بيحتضر عنا وبيضلو مستتر... تامن سؤال
كيف الامركاني حكم، هيدا الغبي بين الامم... تاسع سؤال
ليش الفتك فينا حلال، فكرلي بهذا السؤال... عاشر سؤال
هيدي وصايا يا ابي... ارشف وصفها بمكتبي كي لا تزال

ابانا الذي في السما انتا عراسي انما عندي كلام
ابانا الذي في السما انت الهي انما هذا حرام
اخيراً ليس آخراً ما يطلع حكيي نافراً... ولا تعتبرني كافراً
اطلع فيي يا ابي... ساعدني خطيّ يا ابي ...عليك السلام

خالد الهبر -

Not since their Southern neighbours gave vent to their furious anti-gringo rage amid uncivil proxy wars, a sting of coups, and a plethora of military dictators have Americans been reviled in verse so frequently.

Ahmad Matar and Khaled El-habir are not among the more passionate practitioners of this art form though.

افتراء (Calumny) is one of Matar's shortest, and in comparison with the rest of his poetry is positively mild...which is probably why it's also one of his worst, since his genius is for Swiftian humour. He reserves his venom for certain Arab rulers, and is perhaps even harsher with their people, who seem to have resigned themselves to endure oppression as their inevitable lot.

I must say his Lafitat is a bit extreme, and although I can understand the frustration that prompts it, blanket statements regarding ALL Arab rulers and the Arab people as a whole don't seem to leave the all important chink of possibility open.

Khaled El-habir's ابانا الذي في السما (Our Father which art in heaven) has a confused speaker questioning injustice, and specifically asking ten questions (for which no answers are provided, although something like Naji Al3ali's cartoon is implied) out of which only three (Palestine, Iraq and "how the stupid American rules the world") acknowledges the American elephant in the Arab living room.

The rest deal mostly with issues of reform and good governance, as talked up but not practised by various Western leaders.

For example:"how is it that he has swallowed the country, only yesterday he was a boy", which just conjures up that memorable Saad Hariri Jack Straw moment (to my mind anyway).

Neither Matar nor El-habir ignore America's role, but they realise that العيب فينا the main problem is not with America, but with us.

In the words of Abu Al-qasim Al-shabi, as taught to every schoolchild:

إذا الشعب يوماً اراد الحياة فلابد ان يستجيب القدر