Why? The simplest answer is -without having to get into too much politics and/or ethics- he would’ve done the same for me.

From Egypt:

Some governEgyptments think they can trampEgyptle the rights of those that oppEgyptose them and noEgyptone will notEgyptice. Well, that fact is changEgypting and we are changEgypting it.

read more.

The story:

Egyptian security officials arrested 11 more political reform activists, including an award-winning blogger, Alaa Ahmed Seif al-Islam, Human Rights Watch said today. This brings to more than 100 the number of people detained over the past two weeks for exercising their rights to freedom of assembly and expression.

…

They initially faced charges of blocking traffic, but the authorities later transferred their cases to state security prosecutors. Yesterday, authorities extended the detention of 28 activists arrested on April 26 and 27 for another 15 days. All those arrested between April 24 and May 7 for demonstrating now face charges of “insulting the president,” “spreading false rumors,” and “disturbing public order” under the parallel state security legal system set up under the Emergency Law.

Now, by show of hands, who amongst you, Egyptians, has not indulged recently in at least one of those “charges”? … Certainly, not I!

What would happen if China and India consumed the same amount of oil per capita as North America … ?

This question was spurred by a recent interview with Pankaj Mishra, journalist and author of An End to Suffering: the Buddha in the World, conducted by Krista Tippett, host of NPR’s Speaking of faith:

Ms. Tippett:

All right. So I think the problem is that an American, a modern American, might look at this history you tell and might still compare someone like Alexander and Ashoka, or 21st-century America and India, and say it’s clear which version of reality, which ethos is on the winning side. Right? They would say simply this ethos of acquisition and building and progress and power is what, in fact, works in this world we inhabit. Now, how would you respond to that?

Mr. Mishra:

Well, I’d very quickly challenge the notion that it works. Where is the evidence that it works? I mean, the 21st century has not started off very well. What I do see is a whole lot of confusion, a whole lot of bewilderment and a whole lot of hatred, a whole lot of violence out there. And, you know, even people, even societies that are supposedly doing extremely well, such as China or India, when you actually start thinking about 20, even 20, 30 years in the future, you wonder about their big populations, you wonder about their great needs. What will these societies need once they come into their own as middle class consumers of the kind people in America are? The amount of oil they would need, amount of energy resources they will have to find to sustain their populations at the standard of living they will have arrived at at that point, if they do arrive at that standard of living. And where is that oil going to come from? You know, I think it’s unsustainable, and that’s why we’re heading towards, and we already have, we already live in such, sort of, violent times. So I’m completely unpersuaded by the notion that the systems we have are working. The fact of power obscures the failures, but the fact that you have to use violence all the time, you know, really points to the failure of all these systems in many ways.

So, first, I set out to find a ballpark answer to this question: If China and India consumed the same amount of oil per capita as North America (excluding Mexico), how much would they need?

Well, as it stands, the numbers are simple enough, China would need more than 13 times as much oil as it consumes today, and India would need close to 29 times its current consumption. These would add up to twice the amount consumed by the whole world today.

Fantastic! Now, I am not even going to attempt estimating the ecological impact of these numbers, for there is a simpler and scarier question that needs to be answered first: where is all that oil going to come from? Looking at the map of oil reserves, I’d say all of us middle-easterns don’t even know how many more ways we’re going to get fucked up — so maybe we better brace ourselves and start thinking about things we want to learn to say in Mandarin.

This image landed* in my inbox accompanied with others showing some graffiti on the Westbank separation barrier (B’Tselem / wikipedia are good places to learn about the barrier). A quick search finds the British graffiti artist Banksy responsible for these creations. Here’s a report by the Guardian, with a link to a gallery of the images.

This is certainly my favorite, or was, before Banksy’s exchange with an old man threw me off balance:
Old man: You paint the wall, you make it look beautiful.
Banksy: Thanks
Old man: We don’t want it to be beautiful, we hate this wall, go home.

Banksy has a link to StopTheWall campaign.

*Thanks A.

Can’t get myself to read about the campaign kick-off, but when it happens, I would like to check Baheyya’s analysis, Levinson’s review on arabist, El Amrani’s report in Cairo magazine, and Shaw’s analysis of Mubarak’s twisted image.

*see “The Interpreter”

via crooks and liars:
The daily show reports the end of “the war on terror” phase phrase.

If peace does not come to Aceh…I’m afraid we will be destroyed worse than by the tsunami…Everything here begins with peace.”

Rufriadi,
a prominent Acehnese human rights lawyer. (via KAIROS)

The news of a peace deal between Aceh (Gam) rebels and the Indonesian goverenment, after about 6 months of talks, is being received with cautious optimism. After all, the last deal lasted for mere 6 months. This time around, however, things should be different. For one thing, last year’s tsunami (undoubtly) has factored in the priorities for people in the region. Below are excerpts from news articles shedding some light on the role of the tsunami (and the reconstruction effort in its wake) in forcing peace:
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