All Moroccan schools to have internet connection in three years

Morocco is launching a project aiming at equipping all schools with Internet connections within three years, which will benefit six millions students. The cost, it is said, is only about US $133 millions. This is certainly a good move, and might help our future youth to use the Net in other ways than chatting, which is by far the activity of choice of today’s Moroccans. Besides that, such a decision means, logically, that Morocco should hire a large number of computer application teachers and IT technicians. Logically. Wait and see!

On a different, albeit related, topic, there are 100,000 Moroccan subscribers to Internet, 60% of which using the ADSL. Although the price for having such a service is slightly higher than, say, in the US, and although salaries are by no means comparable between the two countries, it is quite interesting that many people in Morocco assert that ADSL is not expensive. Getting used to expensive life might explain such a difference in price appreciation!

Robin Cook, a man of dignity

"We would have made more progress against terrorism if we had brought peace to Palestine rather than war to Iraq".

These were the words of Robin Cook, who has suddenly passed away this weekend, while he was hiking in the Scottish Highlands. He was a man of great political integrity and "one of the most principled and eloquent politicians of our time", according to The Independent. One of his articles, published in the aftermath of London’s terrorist attacks, is in one of our previous topics.

If we had a sufficient number of politicians of his caliber, we sure would have been living in a better world.

On defining terrorism

Isn’t it ironic that "terrorism", a word in everyone’s mouth now, and arguably the most debated issue over the last five years, has yet to be explicitly defined? Neither the United Nations, nor less prestigious institutions, - let alone individual nations- have ever dared to propose a concise definition of the word “terrorism”.

Owing to the recrudescence of terrorism in the recent weeks, Kofi Annan looks more eager to convince all the protagonists on a single and clear definition. According to this article, he seems to have convinced Amr Moussa the head of Arab League for accepting this definition: Terrorism is "any intentional maiming or killing of civilians as terrorism, regardless of cause". Amr Moussa’s reaction "This is a definition we can agree on", certainly under the pressure of the last bombings in London and Charm Sheikh, is not in line with that of the Arab states, who are not reluctant for condemning terrorism per se but do not want this definition to be applied to Palestinian suicide bombings, because, they say, this should be seen as a "right of national liberation movements to fight foreign occupation".

In my view, this attitude, in addition of being morally unacceptable, is defensive and counterproductive. If anything, it is only fueling the misunderstanding between Muslim and Western civilizations. What are Arab States expecting when they show reluctance to back such a clear statement as "intentional maiming or killing of civilians is terrorism, regardless of cause", other than a further alienation of Muslims and Arabs from the rest of the world? My guess is that Arab leaders fear the anger of the Arab “Street” that a condoning of Annan’s proposal might entail. They will be seen, they think, as “selling the Palestinian cause” and acting as a proxy of Western imperialism. This is nonsense and the kind of things, which are preventing us from moving ahead.

Instead of adopting a hardly defendable stance, Arab states should be much more offensive. They should condemn any Palestinian suicide bombings targeting civilians. They just can’t hide behind the eternal excuse of resistance. After all, Bin Laden and company, use this very argument to justify terrorism, which, they claim, is a response to injustices done to Palestine, Iraq and other Muslim lands. By offensive, I mean they should not only accept without questioning Annan’s proposal, but go beyond. They should say, that yes, Palestinian suicide bombings against Israeli civilians is terrorism. They should insist, moreover, that the definition of terrorism stated above should be as protective of civilians as possible. By this, I mean that any excuse by somebody (or some entity) killing civilians that he (it) intended to kill some “enemy” that happened to be close to them is unacceptable. In this case, any bombing of an enemy is some urban street or place should be considered as terrorism. Accordingly, Sheikh Yassine and Rantissi assassinations should be declared as terrorism because along with them many civilians were assassinated. Otherwise, the definition of terrorism above will be useless. Any suicide bomber might also claim that killing those civilians in Israel was intended to kill the military personnel that happened to be 30 meters away… The moral of the story is that, to effectively fight terrorism, we shouldn’t play games with coherence. Either we decide once for all to be coherent either we must admit that we are fooling ourselves and are acting irresponsibly.

Best and worst articles on London attacks: Jallal's selection

Well, here is my own list of the top ten articles (in decreasing order) regarding the terrorist attacks in London. This post will be edited in order to add new entries and update the ranking according to the quality of the articles. I might also add a list of worst articles.

Top Ten Articles

1. Khaled al-Harrub, Palestinian writer and London resident, in al-Hayat.

2. The struggle against terrorism cannot be won by military means, by Robin Cook.

3. The reaction of Tariq Ramadan, in English et en Français.

4. Ken Livingstone's statement

5. So who was it? First impressions, by Jason Burke

6. Al-Qaida: Wrong answers to real problems, by Soumayya Ghannoushi

7. We rock the boat, by Dilpazier Aslam

8. Challenge to civic society, by Leader (The Guardian). This is a highly respectable reaction to the shocking announcement that the suicide bombers are likely to be four British-born youngsters.

9. The Sun and the terrorists: an unholy alliance, by Oscar Reyes.

10. The label of Catholic terror was never used about the IRA, by Karen Armstrong

Worst Articles

1. Nothing surprising, Why here and why now? by Anthony France (The Sun).

2. Sans surprise, Pascal Bruckner : «Gare à la rhétorique de l'«apaisement !»

3. Du sang et des larmes, par Alain Hertoghe

4. Needless to even mention the likes of Ann Coulter, D. Pipes, Scarborough, Savage, O’Reilly, Bill Maher and many others. I stopped watching/reading them a long time ago.

Saad Hariri triumphs in Beirut vote

A couple of months ago, Saad Hariri, the son of assassinated former Primer minister Rafik Hariri, was known only as a young highly successful businessman in Saudi Arabia, taking care of the empire built by his father. Today, he is on the verge of becoming next Lebanon’s prime minister, nothing less! The bloc of candidates he led won all City of Beirut’s seats in the first elections held in Lebanon after Syrian troops left the country.
As this article points out, Saad Hariri’s list was a strong one. By including among others such prominent forces as Hezbollah and some Christian parties, the chances of losing were quite slim. This kind of coalition built around a wide spectrum of political and ethnical parties shows that this country is much ahead in the Arab world as far as the game of politics and democracy is concerned. The war that devastated the country is certainty one of the reasons for that. Less flattering though, is the fact that Hariri’s campaign rhetoric was mainly an emotional one, being heavily associated with his father “martyrdom”. Worse, the fact that Saad Hariri is keen in becoming the prime minister, although he is a novice in politics, without any experience whatsoever, and the fact that the nation does not seem to oppose what would be an amazing shift in Saad’s career, shows, in my opinion, the fragility of Lebanon’s democracy.

Arab-Latin American summit

Lula, the first leftist president ever of Brazil, is striving, since he was elected a couple of years ago, to help third world and emerging countries to rise up and counter the hegemony of the superpowers on world’s economy. The task is certainly a tremendous one but Lula is showing his pairs that such an endeavor is worth it. He has multiplied visits to Arab states and is organizing now a summit between Latin America and the Arab world. Arab countries would be much inspired if they follow Lula’s steps and look for alternatives markets instead of continuing to be closely tied to the same partners. The latter are certainly not keen on changing the status-quo.

Jallal