The Gulf Co-operation Council

A club fit for kings

A Gulf club is set to beef itself up

May 19th 2011 | RABAT | from the print edition

The Gulfies want to hug Morocco’s hoodie

BUFFETED by the wind of democratic change but determined not be blown over by it, the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC), consisting of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has surprised the rest of the Arab world by declaring that it would accept a request by Jordan to join the club and would encourage Morocco to do the same.

The reaction, especially in Morocco, which had never asked to join, was one of bemused incomprehension. The government in Rabat was respectful but cool, noting Morocco’s commitment to the Maghreb Arab Union. Jokes were traded on Twitter, with a #funnygcc hashtag, wondering how the different cultures of the Arab world’s easternmost and westernmost people would get on. Moroccan women worried half in jest whether, as in Saudi Arabia, they would no longer be allowed to drive. The republic of Yemen, by contrast, has been asking in vain for membership since 1999.

Abdullatif al-Zayani, the GCC’s secretary-general, a Bahraini who has been trying to mediate an end to the turmoil in Yemen, disclosed few details of the club’s planned enlargement. But the aims were evident. For one thing, the GCC sees itself as a bulwark against Iran, which all the club’s members, led by its most powerful, Saudi Arabia, view as a rising threat. Jordan’s King Abdullah II was the first Arab leader to speak darkly, in 2004, of a “Shia crescent”; Morocco’s King Muhammad VI cut off diplomatic relations with Tehran in 2009, accusing the Islamic Republic of trying to spread its sect of Islam in his stoutly Sunni kingdom. Aside from Oman, whose sultan follows Islam’s Ibadi school, all GCC members are Sunni-ruled. Jordan and Morocco have also given security support to GCC countries. A Jordanian contingent joined the recent Saudi-led intervention to suppress Shia protesters in Bahrain, and Moroccans have long provided brains and brawn to the UAE’s emirs.

Related topics

• Saudi Arabia
• United Arab Emirates
• Gulf Co-operation Council
• Morocco

There is an economic angle, too. Morocco and Jordan are relatively poor—and lack oil. The rich Gulf states have backed both with billions in aid. For Moroccans and Jordanians, many of whom work in the Gulf, the open borders and labour markets enjoyed by the GCC’s current sextet, which plans a customs union by 2015, is another lure, though today’s GCC members will not give the newcomers all the same privileges from the start.

Monarchical solidarity is, of course, the ultimate bond, at a time when the republican dynasties of Egypt, Libya, Syria and Tunisia have come unstuck or look shaky. A common joke these days is that the GCC should be renamed the “Gulf Counter-Revolutionary Club”.

from the print edition | Middle East & Africa

• From The Economist http://www.economist.com/node/18713680 accessed 28/5/2011 11:15 Zulu 

On The Church

There is a Catholic Church in Agadir. It is difficult to imagine a place where you will find more people, with less in common, happily gathered together. Also, the diversity of the congregation makes for a very interesting Mass from a linguistic point of view.

Start with the French. Large parts of the Mass are in French. As the old colonial power it is one of the established languages of Morocco. There are plenty of old French retirees spending their golden years in Agadir. Not only that but lots of Black West Africans, also French speaking, have made there way up there from countries to the South but kept the Catholicism of their home country.

Next the English. English is the international language, widely spoken in all international communities. Not only that but Agadir is a quick flight from London so there are a large number of English speaking tourists who spend their mini-breaks there.

Then the Spanish. Spain is Morocco’s closest European neighbor, separated only by a handful of kilometers of water across the straight of Gibraltar. Spain’s influence on the continent and in Morocco is powerful, from their African held World Cup victory, to the old trading city in Morocco that is still Spanish territory.

Not to mention the Portuguese. Though perhaps not as powerful and widespread as the Spanish, the Portuguese did have their say in the history of Morocco.

Now the German. Wealthy German sunbirds can be found all along the Mediterranean rim. And as anyone who has seen the film Casablanca knows, Germany wielded its influence across the country until that dastardly American, Rick, found the courage to stand up to them.

And the lastly the Polish? Polish was part of the service and there were a number of fluent polish speakers ready to sing when their time came. What a dozen elderly poles were doing at a Catholic mass in Morocco is anyone’s guess.

With so many different people and languages gathered under one roof, there is one simple and obvious solution. Latin. After all it wasn’t that long ago that all Catholic Masses were conducted in Latin. Thus, Latin was also heavily featured during the Mass, leaving everyone equally clueless as to what was going on.

Ridentem dicere verum quid vetat.

Morocco In the News: May 17 - 24

WB grants Morocco $4.35m to address climate change.

Washington - The World Bank's Board of Directors on Tuesday approved a US$ 4.35million grant to Morocco to increase small farmers' resilience to climate change, it said in a press release on Wednesday.

   It pointed out that the grant is designed to strengthen the capacity of institutions and farmers to integrate climate change adaptation measures in projects which are implemented under the Plan Maroc Vert.
    The press release noted that the Government of Morocco will co-finance the grant with an investment of US$27 million.
     The project "Integrating Climate Change in the Implementation of the Plan Maroc Vert" will finance climate change adaptation measures among small farmers in five regions of Morocco.
    It will include a climate change adaptation component in about ten pilots, targeting about 2,500 small farmers, it said.

http://www.map.ma/eng/sections/economy/wb_grants_morocco_4/view

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Morocco to craft youth charter. By Hassan Benmehdi 2011-05-12

As part of a push to heed young people's demands, Morocco seeks to devise a comprehensive youth empowerment strategy.

Morocco on May 23rd-24th will host the first of a series of youth meetings aimed at adopting a national strategy for the rising generation. The event, set to take place in the small coastal town of Bouznika, comes as a result of young people's heavy involvement in the reform process.

Soap operas and development

Good trash

How television and radio shows can improve behaviour

May 5th 2011 | from the print edition

In the radio drama “Nau em Taim” (“Now is the time” in Pidgin) aired in Papua New Guinea, a widowed father takes up dynamite fishing—profitable but disastrous for the reef. Then he meets a dashing marine scientist who warns him off. The idea is that by the end of the drama, which debuted in February, both he—and the listeners—will renounce dynamite for sustainable fishing.

The show’s producer, the Population Media Center (PMC) in Vermont, has been a pioneer of programmes with the goal of fostering development. But other groups have increasingly followed suit. In Vietnam Khat Vong Song uses radio drama to teach its listeners about domestic violence. In Kenya Mediae promotes civil rights with a television soap called “Makutano Junction”.

Evidence that radio and television soaps can change behaviour was first spotted in the 1970s. But solid academic research was lacking until a few years ago. In 2008 economists at the Inter-American Development Bank, for instance, found that Brazilians receiving Globo, a television network, had fewer children and got divorced more often. Another study discovered that, as cable television spread, the fertility rate in rural India dropped by as much as if women had received five additional years of education.

Related topics

• Papua New Guinea

Some thought that this was because couch potatoes were less likely to make babies. But research in Ethiopia showed that dramas can have a direct effect. Demand for contraceptives rose by 157% among married women who listened to the soap operas “Yeken Kignet” and “Dhimbibba”. Male listeners sought tests for HIV/AIDS four times as much as male non-listeners.

“The best results are when people identify with characters,” says Betty Oala of the PMC. This is why the organisation does extensive research, takes on local writers and uses native languages.

Not only are soaps effective, but they are also cheap. Radio programmes can cost as little as three cents to reach a listener in Africa. Yet trying to influence the poor can be controversial. Although producers do not hide their agendas, Charles Kenny, an economist, thinks that there could be a “quagmire of a debate over morals and a tangle of regulation”. An increase in divorces, say, may seem like good news to a woman activist, but bad to a Catholic priest.

from the print edition | International

• Accessed Sunday May 22, 2011 at 7:23 Zulu from http://www.economist.com/node/18648847

Testimony of Peace Corps Director Aaron S. Williams House Committee on Foreign Affairs “Peace Corps at 50” May 11, 2011

Madam Chairman, Ranking Member Berman, members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today about the steps the Peace Corps has taken to improve the safety, security, support, and care of our Volunteers.

As Director of the Peace Corps, and as a former Volunteer, I am part of the extended Peace Corps family. The health, safety, and support of every member of that family is my number one priority. Peace Corps Volunteers represent the best America has to offer, and we owe them our best in return.

Moroccan’s Facebook profiles

Moroccan’s Facebook profiles are not like other nations Facebook profiles.

To begin with, the profile picture is never of the person whose profile it is. Moreover it generally isn’t even a picture of a person. Typically it is a picture of a flower, a cartoon or a digital character. Sometimes it is a saying or a favorite football team’s logo. The number one all time most likely profile picture? A heart!

Secondly, the name of the person whose profile it is isn’t always the name used. Nothing is odder then getting a Facebook request from someone you know but who, for whatever reason, has decided to name his or her internet persona Hospital.

From all this it is obvious to conclude that Moroccans are not happy with using their own countenances and only sometimes happy with their own names, when interacting on Facebook.

Beyond these important things, the actual profile doesn’t contain much in the way of accurate information either. All the pictures tagged as containing said person in them are actually just pictures that they like, like drawings of hearts. There is no job, next of kin or date of birth information either. This makes sense for the Moroccans whose date of birth wasn’t recorded and so can really only say, “I was born during the harvest.” Facebook doesn’t allow The Harvest as a birthday option. But even though some Moroccans don’t have birthdays, many do, but don’t include them. In fact the only accurate information on a Moroccan’s Facebook profile is generally their favorite music, tv shows and quotes.

The most unexpected difference between Moroccan’s Facebook profiles and other nations Facebook profiles however, is that even though Moroccan’s Facebook profiles contain almost no real information about themselves and seemed to be designed so that they can not be traced back to their originator, they still use them solely for the purpose of communicating with people they know. Rather then trolling the world of Facebook for unsuspecting and naive victims as all this secrecy and misinformation might portend, Moroccans still use Facebook for it’s intended purpose, sharing a digital friendship with someone who is your real life friend.

But what they really share is a bond of mutual understanding that their Internet friendship shouldn’t be burdened with the lesser trivialities of reality.

Morocco In the News: May 9 - 16

Morocco to craft youth charter. By Hassan Benmehdi 2011-05-12

As part of a push to heed young people's demands, Morocco seeks to devise a comprehensive youth empowerment strategy.

Morocco on May 23rd-24th will host the first of a series of youth meetings aimed at adopting a national strategy for the rising generation.