Arab News Blog

The radio program The World just ran a piece I did on the Cairo arts scene and particularly on how artists are taking advantage of the current chaos/freedom to use public spaces they were barred from before and to connect with new audiences.

The piece discusses the recent Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival and an installation by Ganzeer and Yasmine El Ayat.

I also spoke to several other artists, but due to time constraints, those conversations didn’t make it into the piece. 

Artist Hady Kamar, for example, took time to chat with me about the difficulties of defining “revolutionary” art and the reasons behind the (modest but noticeable) increase in new arts spaces and initiatives in Cairo. 

“I think a lot of people are doing more now on their own because a lot of the promises of the revolution weren’t fulfilled, ” Kamar said. “For example, openness — societal openness or just a political openness. You can only rely on yourself and you can’t sit around relying on [the fact that] the government is going to assist with this or we’re going to become a place where there are going to be a lot of cultural spaces,  without people taking it on themselves and doing it themselves. “

Kamar is one of the artists behind the charming new Nile Sunset Annex, a one-room exhibition space (in an apartment/studio in Garden City) that puts on a monthly show of physical (as opposed to digital) work and that, in my view, plays with the boundaries between professional art-making and other forms of creativity and craftsmanship, as well as those between genres (in the two shows I’ve gone to I’ve seen drawing, music, furniture replicas and embroidery).

The other artists I had the pleasure of meeting recently is Amira Hanafy, who did a piece entitled Mahdy’s Walk for the gallery Art Ellewa (in the informal neighborhood of Ard Ellewa). In fact, I am part of Hanafy’s piece, an aural portrait of the area made up of conversations with residents and visitors, recorded while following a circuit through the neighborhood. The walk took in one of the remaining open fields in the area, a patch of emerald-green barsoum that will undoubtedly be gone in a few years (there are already half-built apartment blocks standing on its edge) and the sound collage features conversations about the area’s history, break-neck development and problems: land speculation, security, garbage collection. 

Graffiti featuring kids from Ard Ellewa

While not all art can (or need) be socially or politically engaged, this particular moment in Egypt is such that many artists are both looking for new models to organize and sustain themselves and for ways to break out of Cairo’s small alternative gallery scene and engage wider audiences. Hanafy’s piece and the work at Art Ellewa generally is a great example of art that is embedded in, and relevant to, the community that surrounds it. 

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Iran’s President Ahmadinejad says he will contest the disqualification of his ally Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei from next month’s presidential poll.
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I just wrote something for the NYTimes’ Latitude blog about the Tamarrud (“Rebel”) campaign — a petition calling for early presidential elections, which according to the youth groups behind it has gained 3 million signatures.

In my piece I noted that the petition has no legal power to end Morsi’s term. I consider it part of the ongoing tug of war between revolutionary and conventional politics, and evidence of how dissatisfying and alienating the political process of the last 2 years as been for so many. I did note how extraordinary it is that “Egyptians today can organize a street campaign to dismiss the president — a president they freely elected last year.”

I may have spoken too soon, however. This morning there are reports that Rebel campaigners were shot at in Beni Suef (several others have already been detained and attacked) and that Morsi’s prosecutor general has opened an investigation into whether the organizers are  ”inciting and mobilising people to overthrow an elected government, inciting hatred against the regime, and promoting a group suspected of violating the law.” 

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PBS declined to show “Citizen Koch, a documentary about the Wisconsin public union issue, treating the influence of the dirty energy magnates who are destroying the world through climate change and funding climate change denial, among the various other nefarious things they do. This according to the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer. It points to the dangers of declining public funding for institutions such as PBS in favor of corporate sponsorships and the donations of the rich. No wonder investigative journalism is an endangered species!

Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films on the other hand is crowdsourced and can’t be so easily deterred:

Robert Greenwald’s “Koch Brothers Exposed”:

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The Increasingly desperate Baath regime in Syria appears to be seeking skirmishes with Israel as a way of shoring up its nationalist credentials. If the regime were under fire from Israel, that would put the rebels in the position of acting as allies of Tel Aviv and so discrediting them. Hence, Syria’s troops fired at an Israeli jeep in the Occupied Golan Heights (Syrian territory grabbed by Israel in the 1967 war). It was the fifth such Syrian provocation in the territory. Israel’s top general warned that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would “pay the price” if he undermined security in the area.

According to the USG Open Source Center, ‘Voice of Israel Network B in Hebrew adds at 1500 GMT that addressing a Haifa University conference, [Israeli Chief of Staff Gen. Benny] Gantz said that Syrian President Al-Asad “encourages action against Israel in the Golan Heights.” He asserted that Al-Asad will pay the price if he undermines stability in the area and that Israel will not let him to turn the Golan Heights into what he termed Al-Asad’s comfort zone. Gantz denied Syrian claims that its men destroyed an IDF jeep that had entered its territory. According to him, fire was opened several times at an IDF patrol driving along the border fence from a Syrian position, but none of the soldiers was hurt.”‘

Euronews reports:

At Haaretz, Ahiqam Moshe David observed (via Israel News Today):

“Incidents on Saturday and Sunday nights saw bullets fired at the vicinity of Tel Hazeqa, one of the best-known IDF outposts on the Golan Heights. The IDF believes that that gunfire was accidental, the result of battles between the rebel forces and the Syrian army. Either way, no fewer than five incidents of gunfire at the Golan Heights have been recorded since the beginning of May, more than the number of attacks out of the Gaza Strip at southern Israel communities…

That said, in the aftermath of the attack in Damascus on missiles that were earmarked for Hizballah — an attack that, according to foreign reports, was carried out by Israel — the Israeli policy of retaliation was revised, as IDF officials admit. If in the past the instructions were to retaliate to all fire out of Syrian territory, regardless of whether it was intentional or unintentional, now the army is no longer in any rush to respond with firepower, as part of the effort to reduce tensions. “We’re more cautious and are less interested in clashes,” said one military official. “That’s manifested itself in taking a step back…”

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My column is out at Truthdig, looking at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s muscular new role in the Eastern Mediterranean and Syria:

Excerpt:

“Even as Damascus pushes back against the rebels militarily, Putin has swung into action on the international and regional stages. The Russian government persuaded U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to support an international conference aimed at a negotiated settlement. Putin upbraided Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his country’s air attacks on Damascus. Moscow is sending sophisticated anti-aircraft batteries, anti-submarine missiles and other munitions to beleaguered Assad, and has just announced that 12 Russian warships will patrol the Mediterranean. The Russian actions have raised alarums in Tel Aviv and Washington, even as they have been praised in Damascus and Tehran. . .

When sources in the Pentagon leaked the information that explosions in Damascus on May 5 were an Israeli airstrike, Putin appears to have been livid. He tracked down Netanyahu on the prime minister’s visit to Shanghai and harangued him on the phone. The two met last week in Moscow, where Putin is alleged to have read Netanyahu the riot act. Subsequently, the Likud government leaked to The New York Times that its aim in the airstrike had been only to prevent Syrian munitions from being transferred to Hezbollah in Lebanon, not to help in overthrowing the Baath government. The Israelis were clearly attempting to avoid further provoking Moscow’s ire, and wanted to send a signal to Damascus that they would remain neutral on Syria but not on further arming of Hezbollah.

Putin, not visibly mollified by Netanyahu’s clarification, responded by announcing forcefully that he had sent to Syria Yakhont anti-ship cruise missiles and was planning to dispatch sophisticated S-300 anti-aircraft batteries. Both U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey and Israeli military analysts protested the Russian shipments.”

Read the whole thing

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“… In blunt language marking a turn away from diplomatic caution, Israel warned the Syrian government Tuesday that it “would suffer the consequences” if it continued to press attacks, hours after Syrian and Israeli troops exchanged fire along the cease-fire line in the occupied Golan Heights….”

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“…The military’s still-robust fighting ability — apparently bolstered in Qusair by the presence of combatants from Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group — has confounded predictions from experts and foreign capitals that the Syrian government’s days were numbered.Some are recalibrating their forecasts of the regime’s certain demise (smorgasbord) even as Russia and the United States try to organize an international conference meant to jump-start peace talks and create a transitional government in Syria.
In recent weeks, forces loyal to President Bashar Assad have scored significant victories in the south and north, while pushing back rebel forces who not long ago seemed poised to storm the capital. The fractured opposition complains that weapons and ammunition are becoming scarce and money is drying up.
Qusair had been a rebel bastion for more than a year, a way station for weapons and supplies destined for combatants in nearby Homs, a city long at the heart of the rebellion.
The government has thrown troops, air power and artillery against the rebel forces arrayed in Qusair, demonstrating its continued dominance in firepower. Assertions that the regime’s armor and aircraft would wear down from steady action and a lack of spare parts do not appear to have been borne out.
“It forces us to really reconsider this thing that everyone has been taking for gospel for these two years now, that the regime’s fall is inevitable,” said Joseph Holliday, a fellow at the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank. “From a pure sustainment standpoint, they’ve been more impressive than anyone gave them credit for.”
The fall of Qusair would be a severe blow for rebels in Homs and other nearby opposition-controlled cities, such as Rastan, and would solidify government control of the main highways between the capital and the Mediterranean coast, …
“The weapons and aid to Homs are coming through us,” said Muhammad Raed, a rebel reached viaSkype in Qusair. “So if Qusair falls, then Homs falls.”…
Still, just a few months ago it seemed that rebels were poised to cut key routes across the country and isolate government forces in places such as the northern city of Aleppo, where the military has hung on through almost nine months of fighting. ..
In mid-April, however, the military broke a six-month rebel siege of a pair of military bases in the northern province of Idlib, reopening a key overland supply line to troops in Aleppo. That freed up the use of aircraft that had previously been resupplying the Aleppo garrison. The government has recorded a series of victories since then…
“The fact that Hezbollah has joined the fight has given the regime the flexibility to go on the offensive,” said Holliday of the Institute for the Study of War. “It provides an extra bump in manpower.” …”

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CAIRO (AP) — Egyptian troops and police mistakenly fired on a Bedouin funeral in the Sinai Peninsula on Tuesday, security officials said, in the opening salvo of a sweep searching for security personnel kidnapped by suspected militants.

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