Does Fareed Zakaria read the news?

Does Fareed Zakaria read the news?

Good News From the Arab World! Don't we all want Good News From the Arab World? Well, Fareed Zakaria is willing to sell the goods! In a Newsweek article entitled "Good News From the Arab World", he writes:

[T]he official Forum for the Future held in Morocco, ended with the foreign ministers of the region endorsing reform, but adding that it couldn't happen until the establishment of a Palestinian state. Some also insisted that Iraq be free of foreign troops. These are the usual, strange excuses for repression and oligarchy in the Arab world. "Until foreign-policy problems are solved," the governments seem to be saying, "we have no choice but to keep punishing our people."
But now there are Arab voices saying, "enough." At Dubai's Arab Strategy Forum a few days later, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, Dubai's ruler, said pointedly in his opening address, "I cannot see why a crisis, no matter how severe, should delay economic reform or plans to eradicate illiteracy." "What is the relation," he asked, "between foreign affairs and corruption?"

Interestingly, these voices are mainly being heard from the Persian Gulf, which has now become the center of reform in the Arab world. Dubai is far ahead of all others in terms of economic openness and efficiency. But Qatar and Bahrain are moving in the same direction with radical plans.

The only fly in the ointment of "Good News From the Arab World" is the weight of the evidence.

In a piece dated 26 Dec 2004 and posted in Albawaba -- never in MSNBC or AP -- we read:

Qatar hosts forum on resisting Arab normalization with Israel

Qatar is hosting, for the first time, the Arab Gulf people's conference to resist normalization with Israel in its 4 th edition, expected to begin Sunday.

Head of the conference-organising Arab Studies Center, Dr. Abdul-Rahman Al-Nuaimi said the two-day event will host20 politicians and academicians from the Arabian Gulf states in addition to Egypt, Jordan and Palestine, KUNA reported.

They will review, he added, the future of the Arab boycott on Israel and consider six relevant work papers.

Some good news! Some reform-minded Arabs! Some Fareed Zakaria!

Posted by Joseph Alexander Norland at December 28, 2004 04:54 PM


Comments

1. BobW [TypeKey Profile Page] said:

At Moracco, did they also discuss the Saharawi Arab Republic? This sovereign nation is under the occupation of Moracco. Saharawi Arab Republic is the former Spanish Sahara.

It's not that Israel lacks a bona fide Ministry of Foreign Affairs - which they do; it's that a modern Parliamentary government is absent.

If our mission was to establish a string of liquor stores in Saudi Arabia, we'd have a problem. If our goal was to discredit Albert Schweitzer and Mother Teresa, we'd have a problem.

To defeat the public political positions of the Arabs is not as difficult as made by Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Of course, Moracco is special because of non-public political positions.

Kol tuv,
BobW

Posted by: BobW [TypeKey Profile Page] on December 29, 2004 04:08 AM

2. Mark said:

So...they're meeting to decide how to put a face up suggesting reform is on the way and at the same time working to deflect it. Sounds perfectly normal. Where are WE on this?

The U.N. was founded on the four freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from fear, freedom from want. Are we ever going to require the general assembly to represent it's own purported goals? Can dictators and tyrants continut to "vote" while their people can not?

We should stop feeding them. Guns or butter. And we keep supplying the butter.

Posted by: Mark on December 30, 2004 08:49 AM

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