Saudi women only recently gained suffrage rights, and this recent legislation does away with the additional approval restrictions. The first election where women may vote without male guardian approval will take place in 2015, which is also the first time women candidates may run for municipal government.

Saudi Arabia has long been run under the rules and advice of socially conservative religious advisers who share a strict interpretation of religious texts and patriarchical attitudes. Strict restrictions and male guardianship laws are stiffing for women in Saudi Arabia. Women are subject to dress codes, mobility restrictions, segregation, limited access to fields of employment, and limited participation in public sports, etc.

The new law includes some other new rights for women, including the right to work at lingerie stores for the first time in Saudi history. Compared to existing restrictions on the right to drive, right to gain equal inheritance, and many others, these new gains seem like a pittance.

Still, the new laws are a welcome step toward a more equitable society. Small changes can be the catalyst for dramatic changes that follow soon after, and for women’s rights activists, this is the hope.

To protect themselves from the police’s heavy use of tear gas, Moustafa and his friends secured scarves around their faces, gas masks over their mouths, and goggles across their eyes. Some wore bicycle helmets to protect from rubber-coated bullets and birdshots fired by the police. Unfortunately, their makeshift armor offered no protection from the live ammunition fired at them by Egyptian forces intermittently since Tuesday.

Attacks by the police on protesters began last Saturday, after CSF attempted to clear Tahrir Square of peaceful demonstrators, who had united in their call for a quicker transition from military to civilian rule.

After Mubarak’s ouster on 11 February, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) took over, promising to return the country to civilian rule after six months. Yet nine months of military rule have come and gone, characterized by oppressive crackdowns on the media and activists as well as the trial of over 12,000 civilians before military courts. The SCAF’s mismanagement of the post-Mubarak transition to democracy reveals that at best, the SCAF is incompetent; at worst, that it is systematically derailing a proper transition in order to safeguard its own power and interests in the new Egypt.

The young revolutionaries in our Tahrir apartment understand the latest violence as an extension of Egypt’s January revolution. “All we did in January was cut off the head of the regime,” said Ahmed Sabry, age 23. “Now, we’re going for the body.” According to him, the larger aims of the revolution—achieving basic political, personal, and social rights for the Egyptian people—can only be negotiated in the streets.

Although the myth persists that the January revolution was peaceful, Hossam el-Hamalawy, a well-known Egyptian journalist, says that it was not. “The revolution (like any other revolution) witnessed violence by the security forces that led to the killing of at least 846 protesters,” he writes on his blog. “But the people did not sit silent and take this violence with smiles and flowers. We fought back … with rocks, Molotov cocktails, sticks, swords and knives.” In the six-day battle that rocked downtown Cairo last week, the protesters used lessons learned in January to inform their tactics and strategies in confrontations with the police.

“The best way to defend is to attack”

Earlier that night, Moustafa and his friends huddled over a piece of paper, on which he had sketched, hands shaking, a circle with spokes coming out if it—a rough representation of Tahrir Square and surrounding streets.

The brunt of the battle was being waged on Mohammed Mahmoud Street, where protesters and CSF fought for control of the route leading from the square to the Ministry of Interior. The next spoke on the wheel was Tahrir Street, which is connected to Mohammed Mahmoud by a series of alleyways. A main focus of the protesters was to keep the police forces from spilling from Mohammed Mahmoud to Tahrir Street; from there, they could move on to the next spoke, then the next. With control of the surrounding streets, CSF could easily contain protesters in the Square itself, which, for Moustafa and his friends, meant defeat.

“The best way to defend is to attack,” Mohamed Ferghaly, 21, offered, wide-eyed and nervously chain-smoking.

The group decided to weave around to the far side of Tahrir Street, away from the square, and then cross over to Mohammed Mahmoud, surprising the police from behind their own line. They dressed for battle and went out into the street.

Just five minutes later, three of the group surged back into the apartment, keeled over and panting, tear gas residue streaking their faces. Their plan had failed.

The protesters are a diverse group, but the same obstacles facing Moustafa and his friends are reflective of those facing other cells of revolutionaries who were meeting with each other across the square: a lack of organization, a lack of arms, and a lack of numbers. Although experience has taught the protesters methods to mitigate such setbacks, they still face challenges in each area.

When it comes to organization, the protesters play good defense. For example, they have developed sophisticated systems wherein men, and occasionally women, on motorcycles shuttle the injured from the front lines to one of the many field hospitals set up in the square and surrounding streets. Ferghaly points out that there are two men on each motorbike, between whom victims are sandwiched. “We used to just put one runner, but the injured fell off easily, so now we have two.”

When the street got too crowded and the tear gas too overwhelming, we could see protesters in the street below holding hands and forming two parallel lines, constructing two human walls that created an open pathway for fast access to field hospitals via motorcycles.

But when it comes to offense, the protesters “operate in chaos,” says Moustafa.

If Moustafa and his friends had been more organized, they could have rallied enough people to attack the police as per their original plan. But such organization, Ferghaly explains, requires connections and means of communication that they simply did not have. “We couldn’t rally people from the streets. They thought that we were going to lead them into an ambush.”

Yet at heart, they do not want to hurt the police or soldiers. “They don’t want to attack us; they are following orders.” He adds, “Egyptians: when they want, they do. It’s a fact. But we don’t want more blood. Enough blood.”

Even if they had had proper organizing channels, the protesters faced a wall of police well equipped with shotguns, rifles, and CS gas. The protesters used rocks they had ripped up from the sidewalks.

“There is a 50 meter no-man’s-land separating the protesters and the army,” explains Moustafa. “You can only throw rocks so far.” The Ultras – a hard core group of soccer fans who played an instrumental role in the January and February revolution – are slightly better equipped with fireworks, which can travel much farther. The problem is that the fireworks are expensive: 350 Egyptian pounds for just one, about 58 US dollars. Still, the problem is not just a financial one. “If we asked people for money, they would give it to us,” Moustafa said. “The problem is we don’t have enough fighters.”

“Freedom fighters,” he adds, tongue-in-cheek.

With few resources of their own, the protesters have become experts on how to protect themselves from tear gas—one of the CSF’s most effective tools. “When the officers shoot tear gas bombs, they shoot at a 45 degree angle so it’ll go far into the protesters’ ranks. So the protesters have to look at the bomb, and calculate its trajectory,” explains Ferghaly “Then we have to make the people aware of where the bomb will fall.” Once the tear gas bomb explodes and releases its noxious gasses, protesters chuck the canisters back at police or douse them in a mixture of water and sand. To attenuate the effects of lingering clouds of gas in the streets, they build small fires, the smoke of which heats the air and rises, taking the tear gas with it.

Yet these tactics only go so far. I have heard multiple calls by defeated-looking protesters, having seen many friends “fall around them,” as Sabry put it, to take up arms against the police. But in the end, it was all talk. They are peaceful, but angry, and desperate for the police to cease brutality against their ranks.

The violence has stopped, for now

With the protesters unable to overcome the well-equipped security forces yet unwilling to go home – Ferghaly insisted they would stay in Tahrir until “either the army resigns or a massacre wipes us out” – the battle became a seemingly unwinnable war of attrition.

According to Moustafa, the protesters will go home only in the event of SCAF’s immediate resignation and the formation of a National Salvation Government.  The country’s various revolutionary forces have yet to agree on who exactly would comprise the transitional body, but they have floated the names of well-respected figures such as Nobel Laureate and current presidential candidate Mohamed El-Baradei to lead it.

Not waiting for political solutions, the army rolled in to relieve the police of their duties and declared a truce. The army has set up a giant concrete barrier on Mohammed Mahmoud Street, barring protesters from the Square from entering the corridor. Engulfed just a short while ago in urban warfare, downtown Cairo is calm.

SCAF refuses to give up power

The SCAF is thus far unwilling to yield power, or to even take responsibility for the violence that was committed against civilians under SCAF’s watch.

Field Marshall Tantawi, the head of the SCAF and object of the protesters’ popular chants “Down, down, with the Field Marshall,” announced on Wednesday that the SCAF had accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Essam Sharaf and his government. In his place, the SCAF appointed Kamal el-Ganzoury as Prime Minister and tasked him with the formation of a new government.

Asked what he thought of Tantawi’s response, Moustafa just said, “zift” – the Egyptian word meaning tar. “It’s like bullshit,” he translates. As long as the SCAF remains in power, Ganzoury and whatever cabinet he builds will be just another token civilian government with no real authority or legitimacy.

Although many were initially opposed to the protesters’ fighting back the police, heavy losses among their ranks garnered sympathy from a larger swathe of the Egyptian public. By Friday, a week after the start of clashes, tens of thousands of Egyptians were back on the streets, marching from all corners of the city to gather in Tahrir Square and calling for the military to hand over power to a civilian authority immediately. Thousands remained overnight for an ongoing sit-in.

With the current abatement of violence, Sabry goes home to check in with his parents. Moustafa prepares to re-take university exams he missed. Ferghaly set up camp in the square—equipped with tents, warm blankets, and electricity for night lighting and cell-phone charging.

As they reintegrate limited doses of work and school into their daily routines, their lives transition into a state of balanced normalcy. But the battle is from over.

Today, the first round of post-Mubarak parliamentary elections begins amid much controversy. Even within Moustafa’s group of friends, some will vote, thinking that elections, though highly problematic, are a necessary step forward; others will boycott, convinced that any elections under military rule are inherently illegitimate. In any case, they expect more violence.

For his part, Ferghaly is sticking close to the square. “We hope it will be peaceful,” he says. “But if it’s not, we’re ready to fight.”

Photo Credits: (Left to Right)
Top Row: Hassan Sharaf, Stephanie Figgins, Stephanie Figgins
Bottom Row: Hassan Sharaf, Stephanie Figgins, Hassan Sharaf

The debates, which give us a glimpse into the brains (or lack thereof) behind the potential candidates for the next United States presidency, have become a new source of comedy for many progressives seeking to discredit the Republican nominees. This year, the GOP, or “Grand Old Party” candidates have stood up to their namesake — Herman Cain, Mitt Romney, Michelle Bachmann, and Rick Perry have successfully displayed their affluence (evidence of their intelligence, however, remains to be seen).

“If you are not rich,” Herman Cain told Occupy Wall Street protesters at the October 5th debate, “don’t blame Wall Street. Blame yourself.”

As a corporate executive, Cain has represented a slough of profitable companies, from Coca-Cola to Burger King. Cain resigned from his most recent position, as CEO and Chairman of Godfather’s Pizza, in 1996. But from April of 2010 to April of this year, Cain made between $1.2 and $2.4 million. His net worth is between $2.8 and $6.3 million. (See the full financial disclosure here.)

Romney, like Cain, has said that the American people would benefit from a form of political leadership that ran its government more like a corporation than what it actually is — a social service agency.

Unlike Cain, however, Romney’s net worth is nowhere near a humble $2 million dollars. According to financial records he submitted to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, Romney has amassed a fortune of somewhere between $90 million and $260 million. The former Massachusetts Governor, who has made famous the statement that “corporations are people,” has reaped his rewards not only as manager of a mainstream Boston venture capital firm, but as a major Wall Street investor. In 2007, Romney was criticized by GOP presidential campaign rivals for investing in corporations with interests in Iran and China, countries known for committing recent human rights violations.

At the last debate, which focused on the topic of national security, candidates attempted to address issues including the depiction of terrorists and the protection of the nation’s borders.

When moderator Wolf Blitzer asked the candidates whether the United States should continue to supply Pakistan with economic and military aid, for example, Michelle Bachmann said — in a play on words from the last GOP debate in which Rick Perry said some corporations are “too big to fail” — that Pakistan was “too nuclear to fail.” Perhaps this would not be the case if the U.S. was not the world’s second-largest supplier of military equipment to the country (after China) and its largest source of economic aid.

Cain added, simply, “We know this about terrorists: they want to kill us all.”

Rick Santorum, not to be outdone, pitched in a series of stand-out responses on the issue of racial profiling. Asked if he supported the use of racial profiling at airports as part of an effort to reduce terrorism, Santorum said:

“Obviously, Muslims would be someone you’d look at, absolutely. The radical Muslims are the people committing these crimes, by and large… Not exclusively but these are things you profile to find the most likely candidate.”

Texas congressman Ron Paul responded, “What if they look like Timothy McVeigh?” referring to the white U.S. Army veteran who detonated a truck bomb in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people and injuring over 800.

Pro-Democracy protesters accused the military council of being nothing more than the extension of the Mubarak regime as legislation was put forward to exempt the army from any accountability or oversight by the country’s courts and government. Nine days from a pivotal election in Egypt’s history, Egyptians feared the high-jacking of the 25 January Revolution and turned out in the thousands to the revolution’s heart to make their voices heard.

It is essentially an accumulated burst of anger. The proposed constitutional package was the final straw in a series of questionable practices. Since Mubarak’s downfall, SCAF has been perceived by Egyptians as doing all in its power to maintain its privileges from the previous regime. It has done so by targeting, threatening and even detaining key members of civil society (popular bloggers and political figures for example).

It has done so futhremore by pulling strings amongst political parties behind the scenes to abort any major shift in the country’s power landscape. Egypt’s military leadership wants to retain substantial control over coming civilian governments. Essentially telling Egypt: “revolution, fine; but on our terms.”

As pro-democracy activists regained control over Tahrir Square, establishing similar organizational patterns to those of the revolution (tents, makeshift hospitals and checkpoints etc), riot police and army personnel stepped in to forcefully remove protesters away from the square and its surroundings. Security forces fired tear gas and opened fire on protesters causing over 20 deaths and over 1000 injured. News continued to flood in from Cairo and I, like so many throughout the world, was glued to my television and Twitter. The footage, with images and videos of the police beating defenseless citizens, echoed the painful images from January’s uprising. The situation obviously escalated into all out street battles which lasted well into Monday morning.

The essential question now is: Will this intense flare up postpone or endanger coming elections? Certainly. In the current climate it is very difficult to see how Egypt can return to politics as usual.

One could obviously speak volumes about the complexities of the situation on the ground and how things might play out in the coming days and weeks yet simple conclusions already emerge from the chaotic scenes in Cairo.

The first of these is that despite SCAF’s proximity to Mubarak in his last weeks in power, they took away very little lessons as to how one deals with situations like these. Violence only breeds more resentment, breaks the barrier of fear and rallies more people to the cause.

The second conclusion is that the inspirational message sent by Tahrir’s protesters to the world was their unwillingness to compromise with their freedoms. Rightly so! They sacrificed a great deal to achieve their revolution and should not wait for anyone or anything to see it through. To the military junta unwilling to relinquish power they say: “your time has passed, our time is now, we have nothing to lose.”

 The cloud, which first appeared in 1999, is a mixture of vehicle emissions, industrial pollution, incinerated garbage, and smoke from the annual burning of four million tons of rice chaff in the Nile Delta region. Dr. Saleh El Haggar, professor of the environment and energy at the American University in Cairo and author of several books on the subject, says the cloud is formed by atmospheric inversion. When fall approaches, warmer air is trapped closer to the ground, along with pollution that would normally be dispersed during other months. Heavy smoke from the burning rice fields floats south to combine with the city’s normal high levels of air pollution, creating the eponymous black cloud that damages historic monuments and causes an estimated $2 billion in health problems, according to data provided by El Haggar.

Photo of Qasr Al-Nil Bridge from Garden City, by Daniel Mayer.

“The problem,” says El Haggar, “is lack of awareness.” Farmers in the Nile Delta believe that the rice chaff has no value and that the only way to dispose of it is to burn it. In fact, rice chaff can be transformed into paper, used as animal fodder, converted into electrical energy, or simply turned into compost. El Haggar contends that the only solution is for the government, along with the media, to inform farmers of the waste material’s uses and promote recycling.

El Haggar cites a similar problem that occurred in San Francisco in 2003. There, as in Cairo, a black cloud caused by burning rice chaff in surrounding farms formed over the city. State and federal authorities instituted an aggressive campaign to eliminate the burning of agricultural waste and the problem disappeared within four years. El Haggar believes a similar aggressive program would work in Egypt, but that the government is unwilling or unable to enact it.

However, the solution is not that simple, according to Dr. Mounir Labib, a chemical engineer with the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency who has published a number of papers on the black cloud. “The economy of collecting [the rice chaff] is not worth it,” Labib says. One 50-kilogram bale of compressed chaff brings in only two Egyptian pounds (about 34 cents). That is not nearly enough for the region’s thousands of small farmers to cover labor, equipment rental, and transport of the waste to far-away processing centers, even if they wanted to.

Nevertheless, the government has made efforts to collect and process the chaff which are reducing the effects of the black cloud, according to a recent study Labib undertook in 2010 in conjunction with the Desert Research Institute in Nevada. El Haggar disputes this claim, saying efforts are not enough and the black cloud is appearing sooner and sooner every year. But both scientists do agree that the solution is a long way off and that the black cloud shall make its annual visit to Cairo for years to come.

Conal Darcy is a writer and student living in Cairo

The Western Sahara, an arid territory caught between Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania, is often considered to be Africa’s ‘Last Colony’.  Yet with the international community’s inability to solve this dispute, it would perhaps be more appropriate to refer to Western Sahara as ‘Africa’s Forgotten Colony’.

This conflict, unlike others in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region suffers, as I mentioned, from the almost total indifference of the international community. Unlike the Palestinian issue, the Western Sahara is unknown to wider international audiences.

This indifference explains, in many ways, the extent to which the Saharawi people’s rights to self-determination have been sidelined from the international organizations’ agendas, priorities and debates over the past four decades. More recently, the consistent and deafening silence with which Western states have responded to excessive Moroccan repression and military occupation, threatens to re-ignite the guerilla warfare that had plagued the Maghreb in the past and destabilize a region in urgent need of tranquility to move forward.

Following the colonial rush for Africa in the late 1800s, Western Sahara, then referred to by its new colonisers as the ‘Rio de Oro’, became a Spanish colonial territory. By the 1960s and 1970s, the decolonization process taking place throughout the continent saw the Polisario Front, the Saharawi liberation movement, articulate the territory’s right to self-determination. Whilst the Spanish occupiers initially rejected the Polisario’s call for independence, they later relented and, indeed, agreed to hold a referendum. However, this did little to discourage neighbouring Morocco’s territorial ambitions of ‘absorbing’ the Western Sahara.

Indeed, anticipating Spanish withdrawal, Morocco and Mauritania each argued that the Western Sahara had always been attached to their respective pre-colonial kingdoms. These claims have nevertheless been rebuked by a 1975 International Court of Justice’s opinion that decreed that, despite cultural or historical ties to both nations, the people of the territory were, nonetheless, entitled to self-determination in accordance with resolution 1541 and the principles enshrined in the UN charter. Irrespective of this opinion, then Moroccan King Hassan II moved to secure the land through a “Green March” whereby hundreds of thousands of Moroccans marched on the territory thereby “claiming” it.

The Mauritanian state promptly followed suit and also occupied the territory, with equal disregard for international law. Perhaps it is important to note here that it is at this very point in the conflict’s history that one begins to observe how the international community, rather than solve a relatively simple problem at its inception, chose to evade its responsibilities. Madrid, embroiled in its own domestic unrest, saw it best to completely withdraw from the territory, leaving the two neighbouring states to engage in an unbalanced and costly war against the Polisario Guerillas. Though the war with Morocco continued well into 1991, by 1979, however, the Polisario’s effective tactics had managed to push the Mauritanians to withdraw their claims.

The best example of international pressure thus far, has come from the most unexpected of places. The 12th of November 1984 saw the recognition of the Polisario and the Western Saharawi Republic by the Organization of African Unity (Later to become the ‘African Union’). The organization expressed its solidarity with the desert nation and justified its decision by drawing on parallels with Africa’s own still recent liberation struggles. Morocco, logically enough, promptly withdrew from the organization in protest.

In 1991, signs of international involvement started to emerge, but only following a fifteen year period of avoidable war which had by then cost the lives of far too many on all sides. A UN-brokered ceasefire that year saw both sides agree to put an end to armed conflict and engage in full dialogue, with the aim of achieving a peaceful solution. The latter would never truly take place, however, with Morocco blocking all avenues for progress ever since.

For instance, MINURSO, the UN mission tasked with maintaining peace and overseeing the organization of a free and fair referendum has, to this day, never been allowed to carry out its mission. Why is this case? To put it plainly, Morocco, benefiting from a manifest disengagement of the international community simply continues to sabotage these efforts.

It has done so using two primary methods: First, by framing the conflict falsely. Moroccan authorities have demonized Algeria for welcoming Saharawi refugees and the Polisario Front in its south-western town of Tindouf, accusing their neighbour of orchestrating and even ‘imprisoning’ (to use the Moroccan media’s vocabulary) those refugees against their will. In so doing, Morocco has done its best to turn an issue of self-determination, i.e. of a multi-lateral nature, into a bi-lateral one between Algeria and itself. Second, the Kingdom has repeatedly rejected all UN peace-envoys’ proposals involving the detachment of W. Sahara from its tutelage.

Unfortunately no pressure came from the UN to see the proposals carried through. This blind eye has in fact served Moroccan interests by stalling all serious efforts to hold a referendum. In the meanwhile, Rabat has not hesitated to implement policies of population transfer (Moroccans are encouraged to migrate south in exchange for financial rewards). The purpose is clear – to alter eventual electoral lists thus affecting the outcomes of any future referendum. Consequently, the demographic map of the territory has been gravely altered since the conflict’s beginnings and a just solution to the problem seems ever distant as it grows in complexity.

The important fact to take from all of this is that Western states have done nothing to dissuade the kingdom from practices that obstruct dialogue. If anything, states such as France have encouraged or protected said practices by using its Security Council seat to convince its peers to keep this important issue to the confines of the General Assembly’s somewhat empty-shelled committees.

Additionally, Morocco’s latest crackdown on many human rights/independence activists within the occupied territories has made negotiation a difficult task for the Polisario Front. The liberation movement finds itself fighting on external as well as internal fronts, the latter due to its growing inability to convince its restless population that a peaceful settlement is possible. Whilst the European Union adamantly pressures Cuba to release its prisoners of conscience, where are the equivalent condemnations when it comes to the hundreds of Saharawi political prisoners left to suffer in Moroccan jails for their opinion? Are the latter not worthy of similar efforts or attention?

In November 2010, large sections of the Sahrawi population of Layoune (estimated at 12 000) set up Gdeim Izik, a makeshift camp outside the city itself, as a means of showing the International Community their rejection of the Moroccan occupation. Moroccan forces entered the camp and forcefully dismantled the tents, thus forcing the thousands of men, women and children sheltering there to flee. With hundreds of casualties and a camp left burnt and in ruins, one cannot help but ask ‘surely this is bound to horrify a few officials and heads of state in Europe?” think again.

This issue presents us with a recurring phenomenon in international politics: the sad reality is that Morocco’s privileged position in the eyes of the European Union, both as a sought-after tourist location and an ally in various international forums, have made it immune to criticism despite repeated calls for action by respected international human rights NGOs.

Indeed, the case of Aminatu Haidar, an internationally recognized human rights activist, forcefully expelled and prevented from returning to the occupied territories, is a compelling example of how international pressure can make Morocco change its ways.

Above: Aminatou Haidar, the ‘African Gandhi’, speaks during her month long hunger strike

Using a month-long hunger strike at Lanzarote Airport, to protest her ill-treatment, Haidar attracted the attention of the international media and eventually won her battle against the Moroccan Kingdom. Evidently, King Mohamed VI, pressured by his Western counterparts including President Sarkozy, was made to understand the possibly devastating consequences of letting the ‘African Ghandi’ die. She was allowed to return to her land and family.

The Saharawi cause for freedom is a simple and noble one.  The Saharawis also remind us that despite not having overwhelming economic resources at their disposal or the media recognition afforded to other causes worldwide, they have shown immense resilience and restraint in the face of the daily humiliation they face.

They have fought occupation since the proclamation of the ceasefire, by simply being Saharawi. Dressing in their traditional garments, talking in their dialect, listening to their music and eating their own food, they send a powerful message to the world that they are not Moroccan. It is up to all of us to demand of our representatives, congressmen/women, senators and leaders in general to act on this matter in a just and timely manner.

One wonders why it is so difficult for Western powers to respect this land and see to it that a referendum is held by Morocco and under UN supervision to carry out the wishes of its inhabitants. If Morocco is so certain of an outcome positive to its interests, why does it present such reticence at holding the referendum today?

Now more than ever, negotiations remain at a standstill. Do we really want another Gaza in North-Africa? Desperation if left to fester amongst the Saharawi youth will surely result in another avoidable upsurge in violence. As exasperation and impatience grow within the ranks of the Polisario, the current inclination towards a negotiated solution might be replaced by an all out Saharawi Intifada. I think it’s fair to say that this would undoubtedly have disastrous consequences for an already troubled region.

Imad Mesdoua is a freelance journalist specializing in African, Maghreb and Middle Eastern affairs.

On the evening of Sunday October 9^th, clashes between protestors and the Egyptian army left at least 36 dead and over 300 injured, according to Egypt’s health ministry.

Earlier Sunday, approximately 200 marched from Shuobra, a large neighborhood on the outskirts of the city, toward downtown Cairo. Although there are variant reports regarding who organized the march, the protest was, in part, a response to an attack against a Coptic church in Aswan, a segment of which was burned down by Muslims who said it lacked the proper license to build a dome. The ensuring exchange over whether proper permission had been granted prior to building the dome culminated when Egypt’s state television, referred to as Maspero, reported that Aswan mayor Mustafa al-Seyyed declared the church had not received a building permit for the dome.

On Sunday night, Coptic Christians and Muslims together marched from Shoubra, denouncing mercurial statements from Egyptian authorities, decrying Maspero’s larger role as a propaganda tool, and calling for the downfall of Field Marshall Mohamed Hussein Tantawi.

When the protestors reached the Maspero headquarters around 6:00pm, they were met with brutal force by the Egyptian army. Sarah Carr, a journalist for Al-Masry Al-Youm, reported seeing armored personnel carriers suddenly drive “at a frightening speed through protestors… shooting at random,” brutally killing several protestors.

Around 10:00pm, a curfew was imposed over Tahrir Square and surrounding areas downtown to begin at 2:00am and end at 7:00am on October 10.

Through Twitter, Facebook and email listservs, activists on the ground called for needed blood donations from anyone willing and able to travel to the downtown Coptic hospital where victims were being treated. Adding to the maelstrom, thugs outside the hospital attacked wounded civilians seeking medical aid, as well as potential blood donors attempting to make their way inside, according to eyewitness reports.

Many in Egypt view this protest-turned-violent as the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces’ (SCAF’s), extension of Mubarak’s tactics: inciting sectarian strife in order to legitimize military rule over a country painted chaotic.

Suspicion was reinforced when interim Prime Minister Essam Sharaf criticized the demonstrators the next day. “Instead of advancing to build a modern state of democratic principles,” Sharaf said, “we are back searching for security and stability, worrying that there are hidden hands, both domestic and foreign, seeking to obstruct the will of Egyptians in establishing a democracy.”

With respect to intermittent unrest, such as Sunday’s violence, it’s the “hidden hands” of SCAF’s seditious tactics that threaten stability and self-determination for the Egyptian people.

Importantly, NASA has also been making big strides in terms of improving our relationship with our own planet.

In November of 2010, as an intern for the United States Department of the Interior, I attended an Ecocloud Conference along with several representatives of Silicon Valley companies. As our aim was to brainstorm ways to make their businesses eco-friendly, I heard many interesting and charismatic speakers describe sustainable business models. Later, a representative of the NASA bioengineering department, Dr. John Hogan, spoke of how NASA is currently exploring the idea of creating a permanent civilization on Mars. Because Mars offers no natural resources except for sunlight, he said, every single resource that would be needed by the Mars civilization would have to be exported from Earth. Because of the cost and labor that would be associated with the interplanetary transportation of resources, his team would need to minimize the number and frequency of trips taken from Mars to Earth. Dr. Hogan said that the civilization on Mars would require a “closed-looped system,” meaning that every drop of water, scrap of food, and piece of material would need to be reused and recycled over and over until its use is completely exhausted.

This situation calls for the most intensively sustainable society that modern humans have ever seen. Interestingly, the creation of a closed-loop system on Mars mirrors what many environmentalists have been pushing to create on Earth for many years — because humans are presently living beyond their means, they will eventually exhaust the finite resources Earth has to offer. NASA has made extensive discoveries regarding how humans can maintain a similar lifestyle while recognizing the limitations of the planet’s resources:

The Reverse Osmosis System

For water to be purified again and again, NASA has created a reverse osmosis system that would take dirty water and put it through:

While reverse osmosis is not new technology, NASA has been making leaps and bounds to make what was once a complicated, expensive system quicker and more efficient.

Solar Panel Innovation

Ideally, no time would be wasted on transporting oil or coal to Mars; with the sun being Mars’s only natural resource, NASA would want to harness the powerful UV rays to power buildings, lights, hot water heaters, anything that requires electricity. Since Mars’s atmosphere is different from Earth’s atmosphere, solar panels would need to be engineered differently to be able to capture UV rays without degrading the panel at a fast rate due to rough weather conditions. Creating a panel that would be able to withstand severe situations would help maintain a longer lifetime for solar panels for Earth, decreasing the amount of materials that would need to be manufactured to maintain our lifestyles.

Machine Lifetime Preservation

Lastly, a more abstract form of sustainable practices involves being able to make the lifetime of a machine last as long as possible. When we are aware of repairs that need to be made, we are able to repair the system by replacing parts and extending the lifetime of the system, necessitating the use of less materials. NASA is currently working on intelligence programs that would be able to detect the repairs and maintenance of machines in advance, so we can replace parts and increase the lifetime of our machines.

Our Earth life system is complicated, intricate, and delicate. NASA’s careful and precise measurements to imitate this complex ecological web inadvertently helps us to realize how to make our present lives more efficient.  These solutions are needed now more than ever. With the Earth’s population reaching 7 billion by the end of this month, we need all the help we can get. If we do not reduce the amount of natural resources we use,  we will run out. Imagining life on a planet with no natural resources has given us a fresh perspective on how to increase the sustainability of our own.

An unforeseen outcome of smoking ban policies are associated with the sharp rise in the use of hookah (also referred to as shisha or gallion). Since 2005, the quantity and demographic of hookah consumption has changed substantially — overall hookah use has jumped 40%.

As an Iranian-American, I am no stranger to hookah. My first hookah “sessions” took place at Persian “mehmoonies,” or parties during my early teenage years; I spent hours at a time sharing stories over fruit-flavored tobacco.

I have also observed a shift in practices of hookah-smoking: no longer a strictly Middle-Eastern practice reserved for special occassions, hookah has become a trendy pastime among the majority of my college-age peers, many of them Caucasian males between the ages of 18 and 24.

Amongst the general trends, it has also been found that hookah is most popular amongst those with some college education as well as those who currently smoke or recently quit cigarettes. These statistics beg the following question: Why would a well-educated group of Americans recently become engaged in an activity with no domestic cultural roots, especially when that activity involves a high amount of health risk? Researchers of the American Lung Association suggest that this recent rise in hookah use is, in part, a consequence of the recent bans on cigarette smoking. Because many people may be using hookah to help them quit cigarettes, it is wrongly adopting a reputation of a “safe” way to get a tobacco fix.

This mistake is often made because hookah smoke passes through water, which some incorrectly perceive to act as an effective filter. But the many contaminants of tobacco remain in the smoke regardless of its passage through water. The charcoal that fuels the hookah also releases carbon monoxide, a toxic gas. Because of these factors, and because hookah smoking sessions last much longer than a cigarette, hookah smoking is a deadly hobby.

Perhaps it is time for young people to realize that hookah does count as smoking. Hookah is associated with all of the same health consequences as cigarette smoke. Smoking bans were implemented to help eliminate these diseases. By replacing cigarettes with hookah we are merely continuing towards a future with an elderly population swarming with lung, bladder, and throat cancers.

Although smoking ban policies primarily aim to protect non-smokers from the health hazards associated with second-hand smoke, many who support the bans also cite discouragement of cigarette use as a benefit of the prohibitory policy. Unfortunately, it appears that smoking bans actually exacerbate the health conditions of some smokers. This is a commonly overlooked fact that should, perhaps, be included in smoking ban discussions in the future.

Saudi Arabia enforces a strict policy of gender segregation in many areas of public life, including schools, public transit, and some types of employment. Saudi treatment of women has long been a subject of strong criticism from both the “western” and “eastern” worlds, particularly given the Saudi judicial system’s history of gruesome punishments for women who challenge or offend the patriarchal structures of the current establishment.

Whether suffrage alone will prove a significant step forward for women under a government where other elementary rights (such as the right to drive a car, or travel abroad without male permission) are not secure, remains to be seen.