The governments of Morocco and Spain have agreed (finally) to create hosting centers for unaccompanied minors who are deported after trying to migrate illegally to Europe. The first center will open in Tangier in the first quarter of 2007 and the second in Marrakesh at the end of that year.
A brief article in the Economist gives an overview of the current political situation in Morocco: The Equity and Reconciliation Commission, the changes to family law, the harassment of liberal journalists, and the rise of the Islamist parties. But:
By keeping most of the levers of power in his hands, King Mohammed has perpetuated the emasculation of the body politic established by his father. The king, and not the government, controls the ministries of defence, foreign affairs and the interior as well as countless commissions and authorities. He is the country’s most important farmer, biggest banker and most active venture capitalist. Most of the innovative ideas over the past few years–the Equity and Reconciliation Commission’s investigation into human-rights abuses under King Hassan, an ambitious human-development initiative designed to eradicate poverty, a report marking last month’s 50th anniversary of Moroccan independence that offered an unprecedented independent critique of government policy–have been royal projects.
In countless public buildings, cafés and shops, gold-framed portraits of King Hassan still dwarf those of the present monarch. In the 1990s, Moroccans eagerly awaited Mohammed’s accession, hoping he would usher in a real transition to democracy, as had Spain’s King Juan Carlos, just across the straits of Gibraltar, two decades earlier. Morocco has no blueprint for its transition. The king is a notoriously bad communicator, granting few interviews and seeming ill at ease when delivering royal speeches. A Juan Carlos may have been a bit too much to expect, but Moroccans would at least like a clear a vision of future governance–if only to know where they stand.
Read it all here.
I hadn’t heard about Stephen Kinzer’s new book, Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change From Hawaii to Iraq, but it certainly seems as though the people now beating the drums of war could use a book like this. Here’s a snippet from Kelly McEvers’ review in the San Francisco Chronicle:
The book is more than just a retelling of American intervention abroad: rogue diplomats and covert agents, a malleable press, ignorance of local cultures, the influence of multinational corporations, the rhetoric of American righteousness. What’s new here is how adeptly Kinzer draws the dotted line from each story to the next.
The result is that while it may seem as if a new foreign-policy doctrine fueled the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, justifications for American-sponsored “regime change” date back more than 100 years. Each of the book’s cautionary tales — set in the Pacific, the Caribbean, Central and South America, Southeast Asia and the Middle East — repeat the same suspect themes and in some cases the same suspect characters.
Kinzer begins his indictment in 1893, when American diplomats, missionaries and sugar planters orchestrated the overthrow of Hawaii’s monarchy and installed as president Sanford Dole, who later helped build a family fruit empire. It was the beginning of America’s expansionist-imperialist age, an age “propelled largely by the search for resources, markets, and commercial opportunities” and the “missionary instinct” to improve the lives of faraway people.
More here.
Writing in the Washington Post, Ron Charles praises David Mitchell’s new novel, Black Swan Green:
Mitchell’s previous work has shown how much language matters to him, and now he’s created a character who lives and dies on the battlefield of words. Jason speaks with a heavy stammer — the kind of disability, he realizes, that people still feel comfortable mocking, long after they’ve given up making fun of “cripples” and “spastics.” (“It’s easier to change your eyeballs than to change your nickname,” he notes.) Every utterance offers the fresh danger of humiliation among a group of boys on the lookout for any sign of weakness or difference: “My billion problems kept bobbing up like corpses in a flooded city.” Speaking is always an elaborate contest with the “hangman” in his mind, the demon who colonizes the alphabet, grabbing the letter “s” and then “n.” Jason races ahead of each sentence, scanning for forbidden words and making quick substitutions before he gets snared in a contorted pause. “Reading dictionaries like I do helps you do these ducks and dives, but you have to remember who you’re talking to. (If I was speaking to another thirteen-year-old and said the word melancholy to avoid stammering on sad, for example, I’d be a laughingstock ’cause kids aren’t s’posed to use adult words like melancholy.”)
Oh, I want to read this book.
This week, a live performance of work by some excellent writers opens in San Francisco. HAZE is based on stories, novels, essays and other writings by Junot Diaz, Dave Eggers, Denis Johnson and Vendela Vida.
HAZE
Directed by Sean San Jose
April 13 – April 29, 2006
Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 PM – $9-$20
All Thursdays are pay-what-you-can
Special benefit evening: Sunday, April 16, 7 PM, $25
Performance, post-show reading, and reception with authors Junot Diaz & Vendela Vida
Reserve by calling 415.626.3311
I wish that I could be there! If you go, send me a review and I’ll post it here.