It’s a flag which many had not been familiar with, and few would have recognised, before the start of these protests. Before these protests, when I would say “I’m Libyan,” I always knew the response would be either a) Where’s that? b) Lebanon? Or c) Ah! Gaddafi! The last would always be accompanied by a sympathetic grimace. Libya was a country ruled and stifled by a megalomaniac madman so jealous of his power that he had kept all others out of any kind of spot-light. At one point in time, even football players in Libya were known only by their numbers, and the only cultural figures given room to flourish were the “poets” who lauded the “King of Kings” of Africa. Everyone who had any kind of power was a threat.

The independence flag has become more than a symbolic way of erasing and de-legitimising the Gaddafi era, it has become a symbol of the re-invention of Libyans, and with it has come a renewed sense of pride. In the liberated east of Libya, from Benghazi to Tobrok, people raised the flag as they rallied to celebrate their freedom, to support the western region and to reaffirm the unity of Libya. On Friday, the belief that Libya would be freed from the tyranny it had suffered for decades was tangible. The cost was proving to be very high, but the continued struggle of the Libyan people bring a reminder of Omar Al Mukhtar’s words: “we don’t surrender, we are victorious or we die.”

On Friday, I found my mother listening to the old national anthem of Libya and singing it under her breath. Gaddafi had long ago replaced the Libyan anthem with an Egyptian marching song, but my mother still remembered the words. She was 10 years old when Gaddafi came to power in 1969, and she remembered not only the words to the anthem, but her mother teaching her the lines when she entered first grade, and the mispronunciations which her siblings had teased her for.

At six, she had mispronounced the line “May God cast off any hand that would harm you.” Singing the same lines all these years later, it was that same line which she stopped at, praying that God would cast off Gaddafi’s hand soon.

According to reports from those on the ground, live ammunition and anti-aircraft missiles are being used against civilians, including children and teenagers in Benghazi. Children as young as 8 are being shot by snipers. Women and children have leapt from bridges to their deaths trying to escape. Mercenaries are being flown in to kill unarmed protesters. Hospitals are full, medical supplies and blood is running out, and bodies are lying in the streets. Eyewitnesses calling in describe the scene as a massacre, and it is a scene which is being played out all over the country, with Benghazi as the focal point.

Gaddafi has been conducting a campaign of terror and murder against his people, two thirds of whom live under the poverty line, for daring to dream of a better future having witnessed the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. This has gone beyond suppressing demonstrations, this is about taking revenge on those who dared to speak out in that first demonstration in Benghazi, a protest initially demanding the release of Fathi Terbil, human rights lawyer and spokesperson for the families of the 1200 prisoners massacred in Bu Sleem.

Gaddafi has done this before. In Bu Sleem, and when he bombed the Green Mountains in the East, and now in Benghazi. As Libyan State TV said, if you speak out against the “Brother Leader,” you will be crushed, eliminated. People in Benghazi are being eliminated. They know that if they stop fighting, Benghazi will be finished, so they are fighting off battalions of soldiers and mercenaries using rocks and “jalateenas,” small grenades used to catch fish.

I’m imagining the world’s reaction if this was happening in Iran. The images of the shooting of the courageous young Iranian woman Nada Soltan went around the world. The images coming out of Libya contain an endless stream of exactly the same scene, most much more graphic, and among the dead is Zaynab Al Jareeree, a woman killed while documenting the killing, taking photos up to the last minute, and another is a mother who wanted to get her child out of harm’s way, and another is an 18 month old child killed by a sniper.

So why the silence? Yes, Libya is very rich in oil and certain companies have a stake in maintaining “stability” in the country. Yes, Tony Blair came and sat in Gaddafi’s tent, and Hilary Clinton posed for a photo with Mutassim Gaddafi. But this is a situation which is spiralling out of control. As people keep repeating, there is no going back from this.

Libya’s opposition has been decimated from 42 years of suppression. The opposition are all outside the country, they are not the generation driving this, they can only speak in condemnation of what happens. Libya doesn’t have figures that became spokespeople for the Egyptian revolution like Mona El Tahawy, or Wael Ghonim or Gigi Ibrahim. There are no security forces here who will stand still and watch while people chant against them. The security forces in Libya won’t turn their backs out of respect while people pray. After the blood and brutality of the struggle, no heartwarming Tahrir Square scenes beckon. Those scenes will have to wait until the regime falls.

What’s happening in Libya now is not pretty. But that doesn’t mean people should close their eyes.

Please visit www.libyafeb17.com and other sites on this list and do what you can to help.

Libya Feb 17

wlcentral.org

Al Jazeera’s Liveblog

Enough Libya YouTube account

Facebook page

Libyan Youth Movement on Facebook

This page on CrowdVoice.org

Google Map

If you’re on Twitter, Follow @EnoughGaddafi & @ShababLibya.

Some reports say Libyan writer Idris Al Mesmari was detained after he spoke to Al Jazeera last night about the protests. The demonstrations yesterday come ahead of the planned day of rage, February 17.

February 17 is significant because it was on the same day in 1987  when several people were publicly hanged with their executions aired on national television as a way to intimidate the opposition.  February 17th is also the date in 2006 when 18 protesters were killed following demonstrations in Benghazi.

While Benghazi has a history of protests, some are saying that the planned Day of Rage is unlikely to spread across the whole country.

Follow @EnoughGaddafi on Twitter or go to enoughgaddafi.com for the latest from Libya.

The Swedish National Bibliography recently crossed it, reclassifying a book subtitled “A True Story” from factual to fictional, due to questions raised by an ongoing controversy.

Liza Marklund’s book Gömda which was first published in 1995, became an instant hit when it was re-released in 2000, becoming the focal point of a wide-ranging debate on issues of abuse and domestic violence, racism and orientalism, genre and the thin line between fact and fiction.

That debate is now back, with the publication of Monica Atonsson’s book Mia – Sanningen om Gömda (Mia, the Truth About Buried Alive), which the writer describes as a journalistic expose of Marklund’s book, presenting evidence that some facts in Marklund’s book are in fact fiction.

Liza Marklund’s Book:

Gömda, according to Marklund, was born when a woman called her one day from a telephone booth and told her she had been in hiding for two years. Both Gömda, and Asyl – den sanna fortsättningen på Gömda (Asylum – the True Continuation of Gömda) tell the story of this woman, who is given the psuedonym Mia, documenting her struggle to escape from the abuse, threats and irrational violence of her ex-fiance and the father of her firstborn child Emma.

The ex-fiance becomes even more violent when Mia meets Anders, a man from Norrland whom she later marries, and the books end with her and her family going into hiding, and finally being forced to leave Sweden. The ex-fiance, referred to in both books only as “the man with the dark eyes”, is a Lebanese immigrant.

“Mia Erikson” has herself written a series of books on her story: Mia’s Hemlighet (Mia’s Secret), Mias Systrar (Mia’s Sisters), and Emma Mias dotter (Emma, Mias Daughter). The books have touched many readers, and have drawn attention to cases of domestic violence and violence against women in Sweden. Gömda in particular is an intense and sometimes uncomfortable read, the reader’s identification with Mia strengthened by the many trials she undergoes.

Monica Antonsson’s Book:

Given Gömda’s popularity, Antonsson’s book, which was published in December 2008, was bound to receive a lot of attention. Antonsson writes that many of the facts presented by Marklund and Mia are in fact fictional, that some facts have been drastically altered, and that other facts are missing – no mention is made, for example, of Mia’s real firstborn child Michael, who was left behind with Mia’s ex-boyfriend Levy when Mia, Emma and Anders fled Sweden.

In Antonsson book, “the man with the dark eyes” is named as Osama Awad. Awad is not represented as innocent – as Antonsson points out, he was found guilty of minor assault, at least three times. In Gömda, however, the abuse depicted takes on political overtones – in one incident, “the man with dark eyes” rapes Mia while telling her about murders and rapes he had commited in Sabra and Shatila, as a way to convince her that he can destroy her entire family. This leads to some confusion on Mia’s part as to his religion, when her friend tells her that if he was in Sabra and Shatila he must be Chrisitan. Interestingly this question is left hanging and what precisely his religion is is never quite resolved. In the very beginning of the book, when they first meet, Mia looks surprised to see an Arab man drinking and “the man with dark eyes” asks her jokingly if he looks like a fanatical Muslim. Later on in the story, he tries to make her convert to Islam, asks her not to wear a bikini, and breaks down the door to her flat to clear her kitchen of pork.

Another character in the book is Helena, who has a child with another Arab man called Mohammad, and who in one scene in Marklund’s book is sitting with Mia in a public place when both Mohammad and “the man with the dark eyes” appear and start beating them and trying to take Emma away. This is only one of countless incidents in which “the man with the dark eyes” and his gang threaten, stalk, beat up or harass Mia and her family.

Lena Larsen, the real Helena, says she was angry when the book was first published, but now only wants that Mia’s three children (Michael, Emma and Robin) should be told the truth.
The Truth About Gömda

Popular Orientalism:

In 2006 Anne Heith wrote in “Gömda. En sann historia – romantik, spänning, melodram, och populärorientalism about the sensationalist aspect behind the story’s popularity, and about the use of cultural clichés and orientalist stereotypes in the book. These charges of racism have been reinforced by the fact that Anders, the blond, blue-eyed Swede who represents goodness, stability and security in the book is in reality a Chilean immigrant named Luis.

In one section of her book, Antonsson writes that Luis served a year in prison for trying to run over Awad with his car, and that the family actually fled Mia’s hometown after he was released. This incident is missing in the book.

In response to Antonsson’s charges, Marklund has argued that the books are documentary-novels, rather than reportage or fact books. However, Åsa Linderborg in Aftonbladet sees this shift in the writer’s position regarding the book’s factual status (from true story to documentary-novel) as telling, describing the modification of facts to turn Luis into Anders and Awad into the “man with the dark eyes” as manipulation based on commercialism.

Marklund’s Reaction to Criticism:

Liza Marklund recently apologized to those who took the subtitle “A True Story” to mean the books are factual and correct down to the smallest detail, and said that the books should have been described rather as “based on a true story.” However, she has also pointed out that modifying the facts was a neccessity – she had to alter the story to protect the identity of her source.

In one interview, she meets the criticism directed against her books by arguing that she has told Mia’s story and no one else, that the books present what is essentially a subjective account of the terrible experience Mia underwent, and that her reason for writing the books was to allow a woman who had been abused, threatened and raped to tell her story and to draw attention to similar cases.

Liza Marklund Interview (In Swedish)
The Real Mia:

Until recently, the woman at the center of the controversy has chosen not to step into the spotlight, but Mia, who lives with her new husband in the US under a new identity, has now come forward to support the books and stand behind Liza Marklund. She has also filed a complaint against Antonnson for having violated her right to anonymity as a source.

"I am Mia", Aftonbladet

In answer to a question on whether the book is fact or based on fact, Mia argues that this is not what is relevant: “What difference does it make if the books had been subtitled “based on a true story” , does that mean the writer can lie? There is proof that I was threatened and abused. I was granted asylum. The argument is there.”

xposted

 Shabulla’s new song You’re Useless mocks Bush and the infamous shoe incident, as Egypt’s infamous folk singer salutes the Arab world’s newest folk hero. It’s somehow strangely fitting….that the comedic singer who is both widely ridiculed and immensly popular should commemorate an incident which is both comical slap-stick and political dynamite.

Shaaban’s outrageous tackiness, artless lyrics,  nonsense rhymes, and political one-liners have been a recipe for success. As he says, he might be comedy material, but people still ask for him to sing at their weddings. Which means like what Muntader did, what Shaabullah sings is…what the people want.

خلاص مالكش لازمة .. يا بوش يا بن اللذينه

تستاهل ألف جزمة على اللي انت عملته فينا

الله وجه اليوم يا واطي ووشك إتفضح

وشافوك الناس مطاطي من جزمتين شبح

الجزمة كانت مفاجئة .. تمام زي الزيارة
والدنيا بحالها فرحت والناس فضلت سهارى

يا قلوب كتير حزينة قومي ياله اتبسمي

شوفي بوش وهو خايف والجزمة بتترمي

بصراحة ما قدرش أغشك وأقول زعلت عليك

ياريتها جت في وشك وخزقت عينيك

صدام اللي دبحته في أول يوم العيد

أهو ربك خد بتاره وفي نفس المواعيد

تحية عشان منتظر وتحية لجزمته

فرحنا في بوش أخيراً على آخر خدمته

بجزمتين في وشك هتسيب أمريكا على نارك

ويا عيني مش هتلحق يا بوش تاخد بتارك

في ناس كتير بسببك في الدنيا متبهدلة

بتقول يا ريتها كانت صاروخ أو قنبلة

العالم ده كله شافك وبالسعادة حس

والجزمة زي الكورة وداخلة في المقص

ليون شهيد وأكتر في الجنة فرحانين

ربك كبير وقادر يهد المتفرعنين

ضيعت شعوب كتيرة من هنا ومن هنا

بصراحة مش خسارة فيك جزمة معفنة

****

that’s it, you are now useless,

O Bush, O son of ****

you deserve a thousand shoes

for what you’ve done to us,

and I swear with today’s face

your face has been revealed,

and the people have seen you bowing

in the face of two flying shoes,

and the shoe was a surprise

exactly like the visit…

and the whole world was happy,

and people stayed up all night,

and countless hearts which are sad,

woke up and smiled

seeing Bush afraid,

from a the shoe being thrown!

to be honest I cannot lie to you

and say I felt sorry…

I wish it had hit you in the face,

and right between the eyes!

remember Saddam who you slaughtered

on the first day of Eid?

well, here’s your god taking revenge,

and around the same time!

a salute to Muntader, and a salute to his shoe,

Bush has gladdened us at last,

at the very end of his term!

with two shoes in your face,

you leave America on the heat,

and poor thing you won’t have time,

O Bush, to take your revenge!

there’s a lot of people who

because of you have suffered

who wished the shoe was a rocket

who wished the shoe was a bomb

and this whole world saw you

and felt happiness
as though the shoe was a football
shot into the corner of the goal

a million martyrs and more,
in heaven celebrated,

your god is great and able,
to tear down the pharaohized!

and you’ve brought loss to so many nations,
from here and from there,
that honestly, its not wasted on you…
you’re worth one filthy shoe!

* some liberties have been taken with the translation!

xposted

Actress Saba Mubarak praised the “courageous” decision to produce the series, pointing out that this an issue producers usually avoid. She rejected the argument that it was the drama’s storyline that won the Emmy, arguing that Al-Ijtiah won because it was “important and perfectly produced from the artistic point of view.” Her opinion was that looking at the Palestinian-Israeli struggle from the Arab point of view is more likely to have harmed than aided their chances of winning.

It could be argued however, that referring to Al-Ijtiah as presenting ‘the Arab point of view’ could be seen as a little simplistic. For one thing, there is a clear difference between the message behind Al-Ijtiah and for example, Al-Taghribya, another series on Palestine which aired a few years ago. Although both are clearly from an Arab point of view, their approaches are vastly different.

Al-Ijtiah, which is produced by Arab Telemedia Productions (ATP) and directed by (Tunisian) Shawqi Majiri, stars actors from Jordan, Syria and Palestine, including Abbas Al Nouri, Saba Mubarak, Iyad Nassar, and Nadera Emran. As the title indicates, it is about the invasion of Jenin, but it also tackles several “sensitive” love stories against this backdrop, including the relationship between a Palestinian called Mustafa and an Israeli called Yael. As the badly-translated information on Al-Ijtiah’s site makes clear, this is a story of love and war and “expressions of humanity.” So, although the argument for the artistic merit of the series is reasonable, it is also difficult to escape the fact that the story does seem to be, just a little bit, pitched towards the West, or at least, towards the Western-leaning Arab ‘moderate’.

This impression is only deepened by the producers stating that they had expected that the series would not be bought by most Arab TV channels. In fact, Yasser Qbeilat of ATP recently said that “we were right, the series was not marketed for Arab channels.” Given that, the fact that it was screened twice by LBC might be significant. As is usually the case in the Arab world, behind every drama there’s a broadcaster and behind every broadcaster there’s government funding and behind government funding, there’s that very important ingredient: an agenda. So, in comparison to the Taghribah, Al-Ijtiah seems to be quite the moderate Arab axis drama – a juxtaposition of David and Goliath and Romeo and Juliet. Or Mustafa and Yael.

Inevitably, Yael (who is a Peace Now activist) becomes something of a Pocahontas – woman as symbol for country - and the series successfully represents an Israeli heroine who is as two-dimensional as a cardboard cutout.

More broadly, most if not all of the scenes with Israeli characters are predicatably abysmal and cringe-worthy, and the drama more often that not falls into melodrama. This is unsurpising, seeing as when it comes to the artisitc merit of Arab drama, the preceding two words often render the melo prefix superfluous. But, on the other hand… the way this series is shot is also somewhat reminiscent of another Jordanian series, minus the historically inaccurate gaffes, because as in Asmahan, there’s less of the usual rising crescendo of music and sudden zoom-in syndrome which afflicts countless Egyptian series. There’s also less of the characters walking around each other in elliptical orbits while arguing and/or bleating about their lot in life and life in general. Moreover, the drama is significantly less needlessly tear-soaked than the average Arab soap, which is an acheivement, considering.

It is true that the opening of Al-Ijtiah includes numerous sad faces, but you can’t really tell a story like this without emotion, as is evident from the director’s description of the work as an attempt to represent the Palestinian people as more than just numbers in news bulletins. “The series talks about the human being with feelings and passions… the human being about whom no one talks any more,” Majiri said.

There were several scenes in the first episode which I feel accomplised that ‘humanization’ goal through effective understatement rather than overstatement. One was the scene with Mustafa’s group turning from the news to listening to Fairouz. The other was the scene with the children playing in the street the morning after the raid. This last scene is more almost-understated than understated. I feel it could have done without the tacked-on eulogy on resilience, as the episode as a whole could have benefited from more in the show rather than in the tell mode.

These criticisms aside, “Al-Ijtiah” (like the abruptly truncated Road to Kabul) deserves a wider audience -  at least, its a change from Turkish romances, Egyptian melodramas and Kuwaiti dysfunctional families. Optimistically, and rather bizarrely, the director believes the Emmy means that “All Arabs now have the right to watch the series.”

Every humanitarian campaign needs advertising. Otherwise how will people know they need to drink more water in order to quench the thirst of people in Africa? How will people know that they can magically fill someone else’s glass by filling their own? Oasis Water has chosen to let people know through this cute little animation, featuring Lila and Sara.

Sara is a European-looking, but presumably Arab girl. It seems that hallmark of Arab advertising carries over into animation, and extends to the surrounding environment. She waters a flowering garden, wears a flowery dress and opens an over-crowded fridge. She drinks bottled water out of a glass.

Lila is an African girl in vaguely Native American getup, playing in a patch of dirt by a well. She drinks water magically provided by the benevolent Oasis consumer and she drinks it from a jar while the nasal-voiced woman encourages consumers to “drink water, provide water.”

I think humanitarian adverts make me cynical.

“Critical storm before the program begins” the headline reads, and that, it seems to me, is exactly what happens whenever a head-scarf wearing Muslim woman makes up her little hijabied head to step into the public sphere, the limelight, the media, and presume to take on a role that contradicts the cherished stereotype of the “quiet Muslim wife”. It was what happened over Asma Abdul Hamid, the first hijab-clad presenter on Danish TV, and it is also what has happened now that SVT has decided that Dalia Azzam Kasseem, Kadiga El-Khabiry and Cherin Awad should be the presenters, or to use the less contentious words of the project leader, the “main characters” of Halal TV.

This critical storm response seems a little contradictory, considering the very many efforts exerted to encourage the supposedly too-secluded and sequestered veiled Muslim woman to step out of the private enclosure of her home. It is not, however, as strange as it seems, because in most cases, the criticism focuses not at all on that much-discussed creature, the Muslim Woman, but rather on the effect she will have on others, should she appear on TV.

For example: Dilsa Demirbag-Steen compares Halal TV to letting three Nazis write the script of a documentary, or letting a priest present it. Basically, ‘veiled’ women come with their agendas wrapped round their heads and she wants her TV visually agenda-less.

I’m not so unbalanced that I will not admit her point of view is convincing, though in this particular instance a very little bit offensively phrased. However, it is a point of view that comes with assumptions attached. Demirbag-Steen evidently feels that everyone everywhere will share her own opinion on what kind of people are presenter-material and that everyone everywhere will react to the same type of person as obviously neutral.

Except, I would argue that in doing so, they would only be reacting to a carefully modulated appearance in keeping with the latest memo on how to look neutral – that is, as western, secular and uniform as possible.

But of course, like the colour white, to be western/secular is a point of invisibility. The key words here are conforming and assimilation, and that type of multiculturalism seen exclusively from the melting-pot, subsume-all-difference into WASP-equivalence angle.

Veiled women, unlike “ethnic” dress or pink hair, are especially galling because, in addition to looking so full of hidden agendas and secret plots and covered hair, they obliquely commit that worst of atrocities in a postmodern world. They announce that they believe they have found the truth. That is, you can identify their religion, as well as their skin colour, just by looking at them. This is apparently offensive, to some.

Because, as Luis Bunel said: “I would give my life for a man who is looking for the truth. But I would gladly kill a man who thinks that he has found the truth” – a sentiment he shares with the executioners of Al Hallaj, who in 922 announced: ana/ara alhaq, I am/I see the Truth, and was promptly despatched for this outrageoust presumption.

There’s just no escaping the glorification of doubt, the popularity of forever questing and questioning. I have nothing to say against that. That’s fine. Although it seems to me that “to choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation”, I  like the open-minded open-endedness doubt-glorification aspires to as much as I like to quote Life of Pi.

Seriously though, if in a postmodern world all truths are equal, why can’t a discipline of one particular truth be a TV presenter? Why kick up such a fuss over a woman whose religion you can identify appearing onscreen? Over, basically, a piece of cloth?

The critical storm has, as usual, shoved the attention away from the subject to the object. Halal TV is supposed to take up questions of equality and immigration. Not, or not exclusively, hijab. The three headscarf-clad presenters say, as they always say, that they are weary of negativity and want to change things. Just as this show seeks to make use of the shock value of three headscarf-clad women with “orthodox” Islamic values as presenters, the three headscarf-clad women seek to make use of the opportunity the show gives them to speak for themselves, and perhaps, alter misconceptions. 

It doesn’t seem they have much of a chance, judging from this article, which begins with Demirbag-Steen’s full scale Nazi-comparison attack, mentions a worried woman who says that she “fled from this sort of thing in Iran” and demands the presenters tell her why Muslim women inherit less than men. The article ends disappointingly with the defensive project leader muttering that he honestly fully understands those who have “grim experiences of Islam”, but that he also thinks people should be “allowed to say they think Islam is good”. Note the “should be allowed to say they think.” Now that’s neutrality.