The "best democracy in the region" is to be established in Iraq, US civil administration Paul Bremer announced this week.
US President George W. Bush meanwhile called on the other Arab nations to democratic reforms -- at the same time conceding that it had been wrong of the West to support for 60 years undemocratic regimes in the Middle East.
All these words have not won the Americans any applause from those who have suffered under this lack of democracy.
Quite the opposite. Even the critics of Arab regimes and opposition politicians, who in principle are fighting for exactly what Bush has been calling on Arab regimes to allow -- freedom of opinion, women's rights and more political participation -- even they want nothing to do with this vision of democracy coming out of Washington.
"The Americans' offer of democracy is not going down well here," says Egyptian Mamduh Habashi, who together with other Arab globalization opponents and anti-war activists is organizing a conference in Cairo next month "against US aggression."
"Because of the actions of the US in Iraq and its stance on Israel, even liberal pro-Western circles in the Arab world have turned away from Washington," he said.
Bush's renunciation of US support for undemocratic regimes, while a nice idea Habashi says, will not be followed by action.
Furthermore, the example of the US occupation in Iraq has repulsed many liberal and leftist Arab intellectuals, for instance in Syria and Saudi Arabia. They would rather force minimal reforms from within than do battle with Washington's help.
Asmi Bishara, an Israeli Arab parliament member, formulates his rejection even more harshly.
"The majority of democrats and non-democrats, who are sitting in jails [as political prisoners], are not waiting to be freed by the United States, above all because some of them are rotting in jails of the United States' partners," Bishara wrote in the daily al-Hayat.
Even Ibrahim Nafie, the head of the semi-official Egyptian publisher al-Ahram who is an honored guest in Washington, has a hard time seeing the attractions of the Bush government's suggestions.
Nafie praises the fact that Bush sees no contradiction between the belief system of Islam and the democratic form of government.
At the same time, he asks: "Must not Arabs come to the impression, that democracy [as Bush defines it] means for them nothing more that the right to elect people that Washington likes?"
The 91-year-old Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz writes a column which is transcribed owing to the author's frailty by a friend every week. The literature Nobel Prize laureate recently expressed his interpretation of America's new vision.
"The dumbest thing we could do would be to measure democracy by what we are currently witnessing in Iraq," Mahfouz said.
"That would then mean we have finally lost every hope of democracy."
Indonesia and Malaysia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The moves reflect growing global concern over generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, while existing safeguards fail to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children. Regulators in the two Southeast Asian
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
The Chinese Embassy in Manila yesterday said it has filed a diplomatic protest against a Philippine Coast Guard spokesman over a social media post that included cartoonish images of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Jay Tarriela and an embassy official had been trading barbs since last week over issues concerning the disputed South China Sea. The crucial waterway, which Beijing claims historic rights to despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis, has been the site of repeated clashes between Chinese and Philippine vessels. Tarriela’s Facebook post on Wednesday included a photo of him giving a
Yemen’s separatist leader has vowed to keep working for an independent state in the country’s south, in his first social media post since he disappeared earlier this month after his group briefly seized swathes of territory. Aidarous al-Zubaidi’s United Arab Emirates (UAE)-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces last month captured two Yemeni provinces in an offensive that was rolled back by Saudi strikes and Riyadh’s allied forces on the ground. Al-Zubaidi then disappeared after he failed to board a flight to Riyadh for talks earlier this month, with Saudi Arabia accusing him of fleeing to Abu Dhabi, while supporters insisted he was
RSS