yemen nuke power

Yemen signs deal to build nuclear power plants to generate electricity?By FAGR QASSIM ALIAssociated Press WriterSAN'A, Yemen (AP) _ The Yemeni government on Monday signed anagreement with a U.S. energy company to build nuclear power plantsover the next 10 years to generate electricity, official said.Yemen's plan to build plants to generate 5,000 megawatts of energyfollows similar announcements made by other Arab Gulf and Middle Eastcountries to develop peaceful nuclear energy programs."The energy issue is a very important issue, and it is the main forcethat drives our developments," said Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Mujurat a ceremony after the signing of the agreement with Houston-basedPowered Corporation.Yemen, one of the poorest countries in Arab world, is looking to buildnuclear plants to generate electricity and to desalinate sea water inorder to meet the needs of its urban population and boost thecountry's industrial development, government officials said.The Gulf Arab country hopes to diversify and expand its energyresources due to declining oil production. Yemen produces 330,000barrels a day, down from 480,000 barrels few years ago."We are going for a build, own and operate model," said Mustafa YahiaBahran, Electricity and Energy Minister, referring to a plan that hasthe company that builds the plants also owning and operating them. Theprojects will abide by international regulations in compliance withguidelines set by the U.N. nuclear watchdog, officials said.Bahran said the project will also attract foreign investment and bringYemen closer to meeting the requirements needed for a full membershipin the Gulf Cooperation Council.The association of energy-rich Arab states in the Persian Gulfincludes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain,Qatar and Oman.The GCC as well as Jordan, Egypt and Turkey in recent months haveannounced that they were interested in developing peaceful nuclearprograms.Iran's progress in building its nuclear facilities has sparked a rushamong Arab countries to look at programs of their own, raising thepossibility of a dangerous proliferation of nuclear technology in thevolatile region.The United States accuses Iran of secretly trying to develop nuclearweapons. Iran denies the claims and says its program is for peacefulpurposes including developing electricity.

egyptian press

Officials: 3 Egyptian journalists sentenced to prison for spreadingfalse judiciary news?By NADIA ABOU EL-MAGDAssociated Press WriterCAIRO, Egypt (AP) _ A Cairo court on Monday sentenced the editor andtwo journalists of an opposition newspaper to two years in prison forallegedly publishing false news about the country's judiciary.The court also ordered Anwar el-Hawary, the outspoken editor ofAl-Wafd daily newspaper, Mahmoud Ghalab and Amir Salem, to pay 5,000Egyptian pounds (US$894, €633.46) in bail and a 2,001 Egyptianpound(US$358, €253.67) fine, a judiciary official said on condition ofanonymity because he was not allowed to speak to the press.El-Harawy said he did not publish false information and will appealthe sentence."The regime's stupidity has no limits. It's unbelievable," el-Hawarytold the Associated Press in a phone interview. "The war they arewaging against us (journalists), they will lose it no matter what theydo, and we will win it even without effort."In January, Al-Wafd, which serves as a mouthpiece for the oldestEgyptian political party under the same name, published a story thatquoted Justice Minister Mamdouh Marei insulting Egyptian judges,especially reformists judges, during a meeting of Egypt's upper houseof parliament. The minister denied he made the comments, and 12lawyers filed a lawsuit against the three journalists in April.Judge Medhat Fawakeh, who issued Monday's sentence, urged the Egyptianpress council to activate code of honor for journalists urging them tobe more professional. The judge said freedom of the press was"enjoying its best time" under President Hosni Mubarak, Egypt'sofficial news agency MENA quoted him as saying.Monday's sentencing comes after four editors of tabloid-stylenewspapers were sentenced earlier this month to a year in prison fordefaming Mubark and his ruling National Democratic Party in variousarticles.One of the four editors also will be put on trial in a separate caseover his paper's recent reports questioning the health of Mubark, whois 79 years old. His trial opens Oct. 1.Journalists, activists and human rights group have complained of a newcrackdown on the freedom of the press after a few years of relativeopenness.Mubarak has ruled Egypt for more than a quarter century and has nodesignated successor, resulting in periodic scares over his health andthe future of the country.Under pressure both at home and by the U.S. Bush administration _Mubarak surprised his country in February 2005 by saying he wouldchange the constitution to allow Egypt's first multi-candidatepresidential elections.He won re-election in September 2005, defeating 10 other candidatesamid charges of voter fraud and intimidation. In follow-upparliamentary elections, however, the Muslim Brotherhood _ thecountry's most powerful opposition group _ stunned the government witha strong showing.Perhaps because of that, Mubarak's regime began sharply pulling back:hundreds of Brotherhood members have been arrested since then, and 40of their leaders are standing trial in a military court. Scores ofactivists were arrested last year for supporting reformist judges whoblew the whistle over vote rigging in 2005 elections.In an editorial in Monday's Washington Post, columnist Jackson Diehlcriticized the recent press arrests and jail sentencings."The press has survived even as Mubarak moved methodically to crushother nascent center of opposition in the past 18 months, includingliberal political parties, a movement of judges seeking greaterindependence for the courts, and the Muslim Brotherhood," Diehl wrote."But this month, irritated by press speculation about his failinghealth, the 79-year-old president turned on the newspapers," he said.

baby, you can drive my car

Saudi women lobby king for right to drive

Morocco election

islamists DON'T win the election!

Don’t rebuild Nahr el-Bared

why not allow palestinian refugees the right to by land in lebanon?

while you're at it, why not remove all limits on their right to work?

"There is no jihad. We are just instruments of death"

Finally, some jihad recruits are opening their eyes. The story below – in a rare case, we have left it as is, not merely linking to it – recounts the fascinating tale of a naïve young Saudi who was lured to Iraq with the promise of glory, only to be deceived into murdering people he neither knew nor hated, and almost gave up his life. Now, back in his own country, he is warning others not to fall for the jihadi sales pitch.

Ahmed al-Shayea’s claim that recruits “are just instruments of death” is more than just sour grapes. For the proponents of jihad, the young men who are sent on suicide missions are simply human materiel – a resource cheaper to develop than the high-precision munitions and armor on which the “infidels” rely.

Judge for yourself:

Wounded and feeling cheated, a ‘holy warrior’ turns against the cause that
lured him to Iraq

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) – The last time Ahmed al-Shayea was in the news,
he was in the hospital at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, being treated for severe burns from the truck bomb he had driven into the Iraqi capital on Christmas Day 2004.

Today, he says, he has changed his mind about waging jihad, or holy war, and wants other young Muslims to know it. He wants them to see his disfigured face and fingerless hands, to hear how he was tricked into driving the truck on a fatal mission, to believe his contrition over having put his family through the agony of believing he was dead.

At 22, the new Ahmed Al-Shayea is the product of a concerted Saudi government effort to counter the ideology that nurtured the 9/11 hijackers and that has lured Saudis in droves to the Iraq insurgency.

The deprogramming, similar to efforts carried out in Egypt and Yemen, is built on
reason, enticements and lengthy talks with psychiatrists, Muslim clerics and
sociologists.

The kingdom still has a way to go in cracking the jihadist mind set. Most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, and Saudis make up nearly half of the foreign detainees held in Iraq, according to Mouwaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq’s national security adviser. They number hundreds, he said this month following a visit to Saudi Arabia. Dozens more arefighting alongside al-Qaida-inspired militants at a Palestinian camp in Lebanon.

Several hundred prisoners, as well as returnees from Guantanamo, are thought to have passed through the rehabilitation program.

Al-Shayea says his change of heart began when he was visited by a cleric at al-Ha’ir Prison in Riyadh following his repatriation from Iraq.

He says he put two questions to the cleric: Was the jihad for which he traveled to Iraq religiously sanctioned? And were the edicts inciting such action correct in saying the militants should not inform their parents or government of their intentions? No and no, came the reply.

“I realized that all along, I was wrong,” al-Shayea told The Associated Press in a two-hour interview at a Riyadh hotel before returning to an Interior Ministry compound that serves as a sort of halfway house for ex-jihadists rejoining Saudi society.

“There is no jihad. We are just instruments of death,” he said.

Saudi Arabia’s campaign against terrorism began in earnest after al-Qaida-linked militants struck three residential expatriate compounds in Riyadh in May 2003, killing 26 people.

The government says it cracked down on charities suspected of using donations to finance terrorism, banned mosques from holding unlicensed religious sessions and warned preachers against inciting youths to jihad. Officials as well as the government-guided media began to clearly and unequivocally refer to suicide bombings as terrorism.

The Interior Ministry sponsored programs on government-run TV stations showing repentant jihadists warning youths against joining al-Qaida and clergymen trying to correct misconceptions about jihad and dealing with non-Muslims. Al-Shayea has appeared on Al-Majd, a Saudi religious TV channel. Three years ago it set up the prison program.

“The aim is to reform the youths, to listen to them and talk to them,” said Ahmed Jailan, one of the clerics. “We also try to instill a sense of hope in them by telling them they still have the chance to make up for what they lost if they follow true
Islam.”

The prisoners later appear before a panel of judges who decide whether they can move from prison to the Interior Ministry compound, where activities include reading, civic and religious courses, sports and family visits. They get help finding jobs and wives, and after release they get free medical care, monthly stipends and sometimes cars.

At the time he was first approached to join the insurgency, al-Shayea was already becoming a devout Muslim in his ultraconservative town of Buraida. He grew a beard, prayed five times a day and stopped listening to Arabic love songs he used to enjoy. He was 19 and jobless. Then he was contacted by a school friend whom he doesn’t identify.

“My friend started telling me about Iraq, how Muslims are getting killed there and how we should go there for jihad,” said al-Shayea. “He told me there were fatwas (edicts) and DVDs issued by Saudi and Iraqi clergymen that called for jihad.”

“We didn’t think of jihad as something that would lead to our death. It was a fight againstoccupiers,” said al-Shayea.Finally, the friend told him he was going to Iraq, and invited al-Shayea to join him.

He was told to shave his beard and pack Western clothes to avoid looking like a would-be jihadist. He got a passport and an airline ticket to Syria. And he managed to save $1,600 – travel fees, he was told, that would go to smugglers, weapons training and al-Qaida’s coffers.

On a cool November night toward the end of the holy month of Ramadan, he
donned a black T-shirt and jeans and told his parents he was going camping in
the desert with his friends.

He and his friend flew to Syria, a favored transit point for Iraq-bound fighters because Syria doesn’t ask visiting Arabs for visas, and its 360-mile (580-kilometer) border with Iraq is thinly policed. A network of al-Qaida operatives sheltered him in Damascus, Aleppo and the border town of Abu-Kamal, and about two weeks later he and 23 other men were smuggled into Iraq.

Four Iraqi teenagers guided them to the Iraqi border town of al-Qaim. They saw Syrian border guards in the distance who fired in the air.

“They didn’t try to stop us. We were already in Iraq,” al-Shayea said.

At al-Qaim, the men were split into two groups. Al-Shayea said his group of 12 met
an al-Qaida leader who had direct links with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida
chief in Iraq who was later killed by a US airstrike. He took the men’s money
and gave each $100.

“Then he asked us a question: ‘Those who want to carry out martyrdom (suicide) attacks, raise your hands,’” said al-Shayea. “No one did.”

Al-Shayea’s group then spent a week at the Sunni fundamentalist stronghold of Rawa before al-Shayea and another Saudi man were taken to Ramadi and finally
Baghdad.

Al-Shayea met his new “emir,” or leader, an Iraqi who told him his first assignment was to take a fuel tanker to a Baghdad neighborhood to be collected by others.

“I felt scared. I didn’t know Baghdad at all, and I also didn’t know how to drive heavy vehicles,” he said.

Also, he says, he was never told that the truck would contain 26 tons of butane gas, rigged to explode outside the Jordanian Embassy. “That evening, we performed the last prayer of the day and had dinner – a dish of chicken and aubergines (eggplants),” said al-Shayea. “The emir gave me a crude map of my route.”

Two al-Qaida militants drove with al-Shayea, but then jumped out 1,000 yards (meters) from where he was supposed to park the truck and fled in a waiting car.

“I felt something bad was about to happen,” he said.

The farther he drove, the more nervous he got until, 60 feet (20 meters) from the embassy, an explosion – believed triggered from afar – turned the back of the tanker into a fireball.

“I saw the fire and I started to scream and pray,” he said. “I looked around me and I saw everything had melted. My hands had turned black. I jumped from the window and started running without thinking of what I was doing.”

The blast killed nine people.

Thinking he was an innocent victim and a Shi’ite by his fake ID card, passers-by took al-Shayea to a Shi’ite-run hospital. There he kept silent for several days until he finally told his doctors the truth.

The world’s first encounter with al-Shayea was on footage of his interrogation which was sent to Arab TV stations. Back in Buraida, his parents saw their son, face charred, head heavily bandaged, but alive. They were stunned. They had been notified he was dead and had held a wake for him.

Al-Shayea said he told his interrogators where to find a senior al-Zarqawi aide in Baghdad, revealed all he knew about al-Qaida, and denounced al-Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden as killers of innocents. He says he hasn’t seen nor heard from the friend who accompanied him since they parted soon after entering Iraq.

Today, his hair has grown back, he sports a thick black beard and he can move without difficulty. He credits the medical care he received, including 30 operations, at the hospital of US-run Abu Ghraib prison. He says that when he was handed over to the Americans a couple of days after his interrogation at the Iraqi Interior Ministry, he was scared because he had heard about the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.

“But the care with which the American officers carried me down to the car when they came to take me made me relax,” said al-Shayea. “One spoke Arabic and tried to put me at ease.”

After almost six months of medical care and interrogations during which al-Shayea said he was treated well, he was visited by three Saudi officers.

“They told me they were there for my sake,” said al-Shayea. “They allowed me to write a letter to my parents.”

They also asked him if he would tell his story publicly. He says he replied that he
would have volunteered to do so even if they hadn’t asked.

A couple of weeks later, in mid-2005, al-Shayea was flown home. His parents were at the airport. “I took my dad in my arms, crying, and kept asking for forgiveness,” he said.

Now, Saudi Arabia encouraging young Muslims not to follow al-Qaida may be a little like RJ Reynolds telling teens not to smoke – the fierce brand of Islam the kingdom is spreading around the world isn’t exactly the antidote to global jihad – but it’s a start.

Freedom on the march... maybe

Italian commentator Emanuele Ottolenghi, writing for Beirut's Daily Star, makes a case for the inevitability of freedom in the Arab world.

First, though, he explains why freedom has not come to most of the region, and why it is unlikely to do so anytime soon. What is holding things back, Ottolenghi says, is the short-sighted focus on elections as equal to, rather than part of, freedom.

"Our civilization," he writes, "demands a universal commitment – and our failure to live up to
it in the Arab world demands a reckoning. Is it the case that democracy cannot work there? Or is it just that the way democracy was promoted made one forget that its very essence is freedom, not elections?"

Before elections can begin to serve their function in a politically pluralistic society, he points out, that society must first be religiously pluralistic – or, in the case of the overwhelmingly Muslim countries of the Middle East, at least be tolerant of those who do not wish to observe religion.

Only then there came elections. But if people are afraid to openly disagree with conventional views, either because the state will punish them or because social pressure will silence them, there can be no freedom. Hence, the acid test of
democracy is not elections, but the ability to express one’s dissent on religion and politics without fear of the consequences. If going against the mainstream makes one an outcast and life and property can be lost, no ballot will ever generate democracy, only the illusion of it.

By rushing to elections without first creating the conditions for freedom to resist intimidation, democracy in the Middle East has been dealt a near death blow. Instead, the West should have recognized long ago that as long as the average Arab citizen is afraid to express his beliefs and convictions, thoughts, opinions, yearnings and aspirations, as long as Arabs live in fear of state repression and under social pressure to conform, they will not be free.

Although most of the article is pessimistic, Ottolenghi chooses to stress his belief that “freedom’s advance... can be delayed, but not ultimately denied.”

Of course, examples of the denial of freedom of personal expression still abound.

Such as in Iran (admittedly not Arab, but still very much tied to the Middle East and very relevant to this discussion), where the government is cracking down on anyone brazen enough to wear clothes or hairstyles considered unIslamic.

Or in Syria, where anyone lucky enough to have access to the Internet (only 6 percent of the populace!), already severly limited, are no longer allowed to read the web site of the Lebanese newspaper Al-Mustaqbal – owned by the family of former prime minister Rafik Hariri, assassinated in all likelihood by Damascus – or thousands of other sites that are blocked by the government.

...And, in case anyone needs a reminder that freedom of expression and religious pluralism are far, far from the norm, there is the whole fiasco surrounding the Muhammad cartoons to ponder.

To make a real change in the Middle East, Western powers ought to focus as much as possible on pressuring repressive regimes in the region to guarantee free expression. The rest will take care of itself.