Two and half topics today: This month, The Observer celebrated its 220th anniversary. The Observer is the world's oldest continuously published newspaper. The newspaper was a contemporary of Napoleon's defeat in Waterloo, the assassination of a British Prime Minister, the Civil War in America - in which conflict the paper had supported the North-, and the Treaty of Versailles, and is still around this very day. I meant the above as a foreword: As I read London's papers last weekend, the most important news story that they all carried was the veto wielded by Prime Minister David Cameron against the EU treaty change, with a view to protect the financial services sector based in London. I thus found that the papers were divided between those who supported the Prime Minister's position, and those who opposed it, each according to their respective political affiliations. The rightwing papers The Times, The Telegraph and The Daily Mail went with the following headlines: - How Cameron became mouse that roared - Yes, Cameron got it right - Cameron makes his euro stand, in splendid isolation - The day he (Cameron) put Britain first - Cameron was right to back away from this suicide pact By contrast, the liberal papers The Observer, The Guardian and The Independent ran the following headlines: - Angry Clegg (Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg) turns fire on Cameron over Europe veto - Cameron leaves Britain in the wind - The EU leaves Britain - Clegg rages at Cameron's spectacular failure If the prestigious British press no less can interpret the news each in line with its ideology, then I shall excuse the Arab readers who send me messages about Syria, Egypt or other countries, messages that see things from one viewpoint but nothing else. Moving on from their news to ours, there almost are daily news stories in American and British papers, which I read every morning, about the oppression of women in Arab and Muslim countries. I do not ask for such stories, and I do not have a personal crusade for the liberation of Arab women in particular. Instead, I often stumble upon news stories that range between what is disturbing to what is outright awful due to their sheer quantity, which renders them impossible to ignore. Very briefly: - The Washington Post published a story that said that sexual harassment in the streets, schools and workplaces are pushing Arab women to cover themselves and stay at home. - The Guardian said that an Afghan woman was jailed for being raped and then forced to marry her rapist. This resembles a story published by Al-Hayat on 7/1/2011, and my subsequent comments thereon, about how a young Jordanian teenage girl was forced to marry her rapist so that he could avoid jail. - British statistics say that honor killings in Britain rose by 47 percent last year. This was published in conjunction with painful details about female victims from Pakistani, Indian, Afghani and other origins. - A Pakistani woman said that after seven months of marriage, her husband started beating her, before she finally ran away. - Human Rights Watch, which is based in New York, published a report about child marriage in Yemen, and said that this practice denies young Yemeni girls their right to education, harms their health, and puts them in isolation as second-class citizens. The majority of those who oppress women in our countries do so because of outdated traditions or because of their ignorance of religion, and I believe that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and every Arab country are indeed able to start a campaign to grant Arab and Muslim women the freedom they deserve. If there is any consolation for our women, it would be that the British government is currently studying a law to punish men who oppress women, and so this seems to be a global phenomenon, and not just an Arab one. Finally, I had raised the middle finger of my right hand to the Likudniks who shouted against President Mahmoud Abbas in the UN General Assembly. The news agencies published the picture, making it my only act of direct struggle against Israel and her gang. By the way, I am still receiving congratulations because of this. By contrast, the Russian television anchor Tatyana Limanova was fired for raising her middle finger defiantly to President Barack Obama during a newscast; however, the newsreader became an international story after that, and this has only made her more famous. In London, where I live, this gesture is an opinion and a right for all. [email protected]
