Google Aims for Bigger Arab Audience

Finally! I spent 3 years learning to read Arabic just to discover that there's nothing written in Arabic that I actually want to read! Ok, I'm exaggerating (a little), but it would be so nice to see the Arabic language carry it's weight on the Internet:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/32053fac-3342-11de-8f1b-00144feabdc0.html

Honestly though, I don't know that young people really want to use Arabic on the Internet. For one, written Arabic is vastly different from spoken Arabic (as different as French and Spanish they say) and among the educated and hip, it’s just not cool. It doesn’t lend itself well to dialogue, it lacks a complete vocabulary for most technical fields (including computers, chemistry, medicine and economics) and most people who want to write professionally would rather publish in a European language so they can reach a wider audience.

Hopefully these new Google tools will help. Now if someone would just open an online bookstore that ships Arabic novels to the U.S., all my problems would be solved.

Children of the Taliban

This is an amazing piece of journalism, and a scary one:

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/pakistan802/video/video_index.html

The gist I take from it is that the Taliban are winning... in Pakistan. Everyone who thinks they have an opinion on the issue of Afghanistan / Pakistan should be required to watch this before commenting. 

Anyone who looks ahead to the next election, the next couple years, the next ten years, has completely missed the point. There are far more children in Taliban training camps than there are on the front line, which means their numbers will grow exponentially. Even the reporter, miss Sharmeen Obaid-Chinnoy, had the wool pulled over her eyes: those young men who said they were ready to join the Taliban and fight when they received training and arms, are likely already experienced killers. They probably had a good laugh when she left. My prediction is a 10+ years of guerllia warfare with the Pakistani government supported by U.S. funds and arms. Eventually the government will capitulate and be forced to broker a power sharing agreement in which they accept Sharia law and the Taliban becomes a legitimate political party, much like Hezbollah in Lebanon. At some point India will be dragged into this war too.

The Earthquake of 2012: Episode One

This is a neat piece of fiction. Anyone who has spent some time in Cairo will be immediately be impressed with its tongue-in-cheek narrative which is somehow completely accurate even though it hasn't actually happened.

http://arabist.net/archives/2009/04/01/the-earthquake-of-2012-episode-one/

On a more serious note, the news from Egypt is not good. The stresses of over-population on a country lacking natural resources continue to burden the infrastructure and population. Their aging leader will get sick soon or die, and his attempts to install his son as the heir apparent may not work. Because they refused to shut down the gas pipeline to Israeli during the siege of Gaza, they are widely seen as traitors and pawns of the Western powers. The food riots of last year have stopped since falling gas prices have made bread cheaper, but falling natural gas prices have also deprived the state of some of their income and I imagine tourism is declining as is shipping through the canal.

Reading the news I get a sinking feeling of dread that the country is about to unravel. Discord between Copts and Muslims, growing alienation between the government and the people, lack of employment, an increasingly audacious Islamist movement: These things are kindling.

Anything could be the spark: the death of President Mubarak; a new war between Hezbollah and Israel; an earthquake; government corruption brought to light.

I hate being depressingly pessimistic, and maybe I shouldn't let my emotions get in the way of what's supposed to be an objective blog but I just don't see any hope of a brighter future for this generation of young Egyptians. They're building on dessert wasteland now. The security apparatus is weak. There are no opportunities to earn for the ambitious and educated. Population growth is still way too high and they're susceptible to the currents of violence emanating from their neighbors. Perhaps worst of all, there are guns now:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090326.wisrael26/BNStory/International/?page=rss&id=RTGAM.20090326.wisrael26

Say these shipments don't quite make it to Gaza, but they're not destroyed en route. Who ends up with them? The highest bidder? friends of the Ayatollah? The guy driving the truck? The guy at the checkpoint who takes the truck? Then what? Who loads them? Who hands them out? Who fires them? Who gets shot? Does it matter who shoots first?

Christopher Hitchens and the Battle of Beirut

This is the kind of thing that infuriates me. 

http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2009/02/christopher-hit.php

For anyone who ever plans to travel to country where the facist thugs are more powerful than the police, be wise and keep your mouth shut. They're lucky they're not dead. All Lebanese militia groups maintain very fast-acting mobile kidnapping squads.

Black Death Kills Al-Qaeda Operatives in Algeria

Be afraid... very afraid:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/algeria/4287469/Black-Death-kills-al-Qaeda-operatives-in-Algeria.html

America's Interests: A Bedside Briefing

This is was published on the Middle East Strategy at Harvard website in October.

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mesh/2008/10/americas_interests_a_bedside_briefing/

I would be surprised to find out what Obama thinks about this piece. Surely he would have some empathy for the humans living there and surely some of his policies will seek to make life better for Middle Easterners, but he can't deny that the end of Middle Eastern oil shipments to us would put America's position as the most powerful force in the world in grave danger. A feverish race to find an alternative source of energy his already begun, but don't expect any major changes in the direction of U.S. policy until we are completely energy independent, which is to say well after Obama is no longer president.

Israel's goal, and Hamas': a cease-fire on better terms

The small war being fought between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip is depressing and pointless. What's clear is Israel's goal: to stop Hamas rocket attacks on the nearby cities of Sderot and Ashkelon. Journalists of all types, but especially critics of Israel, have claimed that Israel is bombing the Gaza Strip for political reasons. Ehud Barak and his Labor Party appear stronger because of their unabashed willingness to bomb Palestinians and that could help them in the upcoming election. I can't give much weight to this theory as a primary reason for these attacks however, because it was Hamas who violated the cease-fire and the immediate Israeli imperatives (as they always have been in these situations) are defensive.

What are less clear are Hamas' motives. Every barrage of rockets they send over the border brings forth unrepentant heavy bombing of Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip. Hamas is lucky if they kill one Israel civilian while every Israeli counter-attack kills dozens or hundreds of Hamas militants, civilians and whole families. Critics rave about the disproportinality of the Israeli response, but there's no better immediate military tactic for stopping the rocket attacks than bombing launch sites and command headquarters. Israel's response is the only logical one for protecting her own people.

Most explanations of Hamas' motives in this conflict revolve around the desire for a fairer cease-fire involving the opening of Gaza's borders. The best such explanation is the one in the Lebanon Daily Star published here:

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=5&article_id=98760

While undoubtedly correct to some degree, the purely political explanation of Hamas' motives ignores the basic fact that humans are emotional creatures who often act impulsively when logic would suggest they do otherwise. Gaza is a city plagued by emotions of deep pride, deep hatred and deep dejection. It is a 25 mile by 4 mile prison in which 1.5 million people languish in the spector of their defeat in 1948 when they were expelled from their homes in the Palestinian countryside by a despised enemy they had no chance of defeating.  They don't control their own borders, their power is routinely cut, their fuel and food supplies are interrupted at will and their economy is in a permanent state of utter collapse. For someone growing up in Gaza there is little hope for a better life.

Launching their peashooter rockets at Israel then hunkering down and waiting for the bombs to fall is an expression of their lack of hope more than it is a political tactic. By inviting death, they are in effect committing suicide. Clearly the young men of the Gaza Strip are so dejected that they would rather go straight to heaven than live without their pride. Indeed the heaven of the Qur'an is a glorious place, what with all the virgins and such merriment. But to claim that their motive in dying is going to heaven is to deny due credit to the stronger reason: escaping hell on earth. 

Coming Up Next: How it got that way, 1948