As women’s rights group, human rights groups and others protest the rushed, Islamist-dominated draft Egyptian constitution, Egypt Independent has published a complete English text. And the BBC has a useful parallel comparison of the 1971 Constitution and the proposed draft.
I’m sure e’l see ore detailed analyses coming, and I may make a few comments of my own. Stand by.
Poster in Tripoli, Lebanon; photography by Estella Carpi
Unearthing a misconceived “normalization” of violence in Beirut. The October car bomb in relation to generalized insecurity.
The 19th October 2012 car bomb in Beirut’s Ashrafiyye, within the Eastern district of the Lebanese capital, shed light on the re-articulation of the relations between the State, allegedly “inexistent” in the Lebanese context, and its society that lives in the constant effort to subjectively reformulate their citizenship, in the lack of a commonly shared nationhood.
New outbursts of violence seem to give a reason to the state to promote its technology of control, as Michel Foucault would put it. This complex re-articulation of relations has come to the fore with the October 26 White March from Martyrs Square (Beirut Downtown) to Sassine Square (Ashrafiyye, where the explosion was one week before). The “White March”, in which no political flag but the national Lebanese was waved, wanted to be considered as an act of social refusal of further violence and national solidarity, in addition to their political contestation of both the 14 and 8 March coalitions, which have politically and socially polarized the country into two sections after Hariri’s murder in February 2005. The White March mainly had the implicit aim of contesting the taken for granted watershed between what is “normal” and what is not in Lebanese parameters.
Social fear, as well as the perception of risk in Beirut, has specific historical explanations. Lebanese society seems to be doomed to live in a not-war-not-peace state, as Jeffrey Sluka used to define Northern Ireland during the clashes between Protestants and Catholics. Such an unstable state has engendered a social attitude towards violence that has been named by political scientists and journalists as “normalization”, which, in light of the Lebanese reaction to the last explosion, begs for a re-conceptualization.
Israel is to build 3,000 settler homes in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, a day after the UN upgraded the Palestinians’ status.
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Protesters angry about sweeping new powers for Egypt’s president fill Cairo’s Tahrir Square, hours after a new constitution was hastily approved.
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Syrian rebels battled regime troops south of Damascus Friday and Internet and most telephone lines were cut for a second day, but the government reopened the road to the capital's airport in a sign that the fighting could be calming, activists said.
The drama of Kuwait's parliamentary elections has nothing to do with the ballot count. It's what may come afterward that has the country on edge as a broad coalition of conservative Islamists, liberal reformers and others vow to boycott Saturday's vote.
Islamists approved a draft constitution for Egypt early Friday without the participation of liberal and Christian members, seeking to pre-empt a court ruling that could dissolve their panel with a rushed, marathon vote that further inflames the conflict between the opposition and President Mohammed Morsi.
? Egypt: Dictatorship, democracy, dictatorship? | The Economist
Bottom line in this good overview:
Mr Morsi seems to have forgotten the sensitivity that a country freshly freed from decades of despotism might feel towards anything with an odour of dictatorship. Secretive and inward-looking, the Brotherhood appears surprised by the depth of mistrust that many Egyptians, including pious Muslims of every social class, feel towards them. The Islamists’ constituency remains large and their organising power formidable. “They will rally the poor with the slogan: to be a Muslim, vote yes for the constitution and confound the infidels,” predicts Muhammad Nour Farahat, a law professor at Cairo’s Zagazig University. Yet even if Mr Morsi and his Brothers manage to pull this off, a heavy cloud will remain over their rule.
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