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HASSAN MASIKY
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Wednesday, March 17 2010 15:50 |
Algerian Foreign Minister Murad Medelci speaking at Conference of the Sahara-Sahel States |
Washington / Morocco Board News / To show off its” lead role” in the war against terrorism, Algeria is organizing a regional conference on terror threats in the Sahel. The Algerian government invited foreign ministers from Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Chad, Niger and Burkina Faso to discuss the deteriorating security satiation in the Sahel and to coordinate responses to the threats posed by the Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
However, Morocco, intentionally excluded by the Algerian authorities, was the elephant in the room... |
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HASSAN MASIKY
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The Maghreb Union without the "A"
Dr. Hussein Ben Kirat
 03/03/2010 / Oxford, UK The EU- Moroccan Meeting is not a Moroccan-Spanish meeting, and should have been a MU-EU meeting, if it weren’t for the stubbornness of the Algerian military regime. Without the Union du Maghreb, without the "A", because the Maghreb is far from being Arab, as they do not either master standard Arabic; ...
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 March 3, 2010 / Washington / Morocco Board News Service /As the Moroccan delegation gets ready to land in Granada, Spain, for an unprecedented summit meeting with the European Union, several European critics are questioning Morocco’s commitments to implementing a new Press Code and reforming its judicial system. Recent actions by the Moroccan government to close down independent magazines, to jail bloggers and journalists, and to use the judicial system to silence internal critics are giving anxiety to some of Rabat supporters in the EU, namely France.
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HASSAN MASIKY
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 Washington, March 2, 2010 - Morocco Board News Service - - The Spanish government is pulling out all the stops to ensure the success of the first Morocco-European Union (EU) summit, scheduled to be held on March 7 and 8 in Granada, Spain. Madrid is undertaking a massive diplomatic effort to assure the presence of King Mohammed IV during this highly important meeting. For now, the Royal Palace is not commenting on the event. Spain, which is currently holding the rotating EU presidency, is trying to cement its image as a bridge between the two sides of the Mediterranean.
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HASSAN MASIKY
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 Washington, 02/19/2010 - ( Morocco Board News Service )- During the thirty five years of the Moroccan-Algerian conflict over the Western Sahara, one constant has been gravely neglected and grossly overlooked: the thousands of civilians living under deplorable subhuman conditions in the Polisario run camps in Tindouf, Algeria.
Since the start of the Western Sahara conflict, it has been a common occurrence to dismiss reports about the exploitation and other abusive conditions in the camps as a propaganda tool used by the Moroccan government to embarrass its Algerian rival. To their credit, the Polisario leaders did a descent job in framing any discussion of human and civil rights abuses in the Tindouf camp as a Moroccan white noise within the Western Sahara conflict. On the opposite end of this spectrum is a weak Moroccan diplomacy that missed an array of opportunities to spotlight the miserable condition under which thousands of civilians live in Tindouf.
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HASSAN MASIKY
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 Washington DC—Feb 03, 2009--The most challenging appointment in the Moroccan government is the job of the Minister of Communications and spokesman for the government. This impossible task goes to Mr. Khalid Naciri. Mr. Naciri’s assignment has been made difficult because of few recent perplexing actions undertaken by the Moroccan government.
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SARAH ALAOUI
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 I'm not white. I'm not black. I'm not Asian. I'm not Hispanic.
*groan*. Is this going to be one of those cliché articles discussing the multiracial citizen's struggle to check a race box? Well, not exactly. It's not about a mixed citizen, and it's not really cliché because it becomes relevant again every ten years when we have to fill out the U.S. Census 2010, and roughly every four years when applying to schools, and every time one fills out a job application, or a survey (but remember, it's just for "statistical purposes"...please.) or pretty much for almost every single piece of paperwork we have to fill out. Cliché? I think not.
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Issandr El Amrani
The Guardian
 About six or seven years ago, I began returning regularly to my birthplace of Morocco, a country I left as a child in 1989.  The Morocco of my childhood was an isolated, quasi-feudal dictatorship in which the regime of the late King Hassan II brooked no dissent. During the 1990s, in the face of global changes after the fall of the Soviet Union and a greater concern for human rights among the governments and publics of Morocco's western allies, King Hassan began a slow transformation of his ossified regime. By the time he died in 1999, he handed over to his son a political system that had the long-shunned opposition in government, a much-improved human rights record, clearer economic governance and one of the freest press in the Arab world.
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SARAH ZAAIMI
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 In a traditional café in old Amman we were a band of friends laughing around apple chicha and lemon mint juice. The conversation is about identity and local dialects and each one of the Moroccan, Lebanese, Egyptian, Turkish and Palestinian friends are making jokes about how classical Arabic is becoming sterile in expressing our emotions and our changing identities, until Karim, an Egyptian film maker, took out his green Egyptian passport and tears off a page and start writing on it all the funny jokes we were making. What Karim did was a symbolic action that made me think about my identity and question the notion of reducing all what I am in a miserable travel document.
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Assasinated Algerian National Police Chief Mr. Ali Tounsi
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03/05/2010 17:11 / Washington / Morocco Board News Service / Even by Algerian standards, the assassination of the head of the National Police (le directeur général de la sûreté nationale or DGSN for short) in his office was a shocker for Algerians. According to one official version, as there are several official accounts, Mr. Ali Tounsi was shot by one of his close collaborators and the chief of the Police Helicopters Unit, Colonel Chaïb Oultache. The first accounts issued by the Ministry of Interior, which supervises the National Police including the DGSN, reported that the Colonel shot Mr. Tounsi in a “fit of madness”, and then turned his weapon on himself. The Algerian public has been skeptical of the official reports on the incident. As one Algerian blogger wrote before the Ministry of Interior’s announcement: “They [ Government officials] will use the madness theory again to justify a political assassination as they did before in the case of the assassinated President Boudiaf, they must think we[Algerian public] are so stupid.”
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AHMED TAIBI
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 02-03-2010- Washington--Someone’s negligence, not rain, is what killed forty-one people and injured over seventy in the collapse of the Bab Berdieyinne Mosque, Meknes.
There are nagging questions that lurk in the background of the Meknes tragedy. When Ahmed Al-Tawfiq, Morocco’s minister of Awqaf and religious Affairs, appeared on “Hiwar – Dialogue,“ a Morocco’s channel One news program, I thought we were getting answers; instead, he described, with lamentable detachment, the collapse of the wind-whipped and rain saturated minaret and a three-thirds of the Bab Berdieyinne Mosque as being “Allah’s will and unexpected;” |
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JAMES ZOGHBY
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 The last Administration displayed a rather perverse and dangerous penchant for dressing up their behavior, providing it with religious or patriotic intent. President Bush packaged the Iraq war, for example, as America’s mission – having been charged by God to bring the gift of freedom to the world. The “war on terror” was presented through the lens of World War II and the Cold War and transformed into a battle of cosmic proportions against those who “hate our freedom” and “our way of life”. U.S. troops who were sent into battle in Iraq were seen as “defending our freedom” or “making America safe”.
One could, of course, argue with this crass manipulation of potent symbols, though, at the time, few did. Politicians were especially hesitant to criticize this hyper-inflated rhetoric not wanting to appear insensitive to the public’s fear or disrespectful of the sacrifices of those who had died or been maimed in the Iraq war.
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HASSAN MASIKY
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 Washington, February 17, 2010- - As the two days of informal talks over the final status of the western Sahara was winding down, it was evident that the parties involved are no where closer to an agreement than they were when the United Nations started the mediation efforts to settle the longest running conflict in Africa. Morocco and the Algeria backed and controlled Polisario separarist movement have not changed their initial positions on how to proceed with implementing a resolution to this devastating conflict.
The Polisario movement, with the political backing of the Algerian diplomacy, is not budging from its demand to have independence as a possible resolution for the future of the Western Sahara, while the Moroccans, who control most of the territory, are pushing for the adoption of a local autonomy under the Kingdom's sovereignty as the only plausible solution.
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HASSAN MASIKY
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 Washington, Feb 02, 2010 (Morocco Board News Service) --- Facebook group versus Al-Fassi-Fihri part II is on! Following the decision by the social networking website Facebook to shutdown the original Facebook group denouncing “the nepotism” and “over influence” of Morocco’s Prime Minister Abbas Al-Fassi and his extended family, a group of young Moroccans decided to restart a “new” similar group but with a slightly different name.
The original Facebook group’s wall contained various posting that were racists and prejudice. In fact, the administrator censored several legitimate comments while tolerating few unsavory comments. It is ironic to see a group pretending to denounce unfairness exhibits the same practice.
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SARAH ZAAIMI
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 01/30/10 (Morocco Board News Service)-- On that morning, I was heading to the newspaper with no new stories or article projects in mind when my editor-in-chief called me to ask whether I’ll be interested in interviewing a very special person, and to publish her memories on a daily basis in the newspaper. This very special person was a young student who became a professional prostitute. The editor-in-chief of course was only interested in raising the sales, because the golden rule in journalism is that “When there is no news, you should create the news”. And what’s better than dealing with one of the society’s prime taboos to make the news. I only had one answer to give: I’ll do it!
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HAMID MERNISSI
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 Washington, 01/26/10 (Morocco Board News Service)--In general when a nation opens its borders to attract foreign visitors, this nation has to prepare itself for an extended hospitality from a closed society to an open one. In other words, to be ready to accept and embrace other cultures as they are with their pluses and minuses. Prepares an infrastructure based on what kind of tourism this nation wishes to host. This nation should  identify localities with profound studies to present its products to a targeted audience. Then run it like a business, where your best tangibles should be your products and most valuable intangibles will be your services. Create a net work and benefit from an extra income and keep the product intact. If you cannot improve it, you should not one should not lose it in the process. This is how Spain for example prospered in 70s and 80s. |
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