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Geopolitics

ARABICA - A Daily Shot Of What the Arab World is Saying/Hearing/Sharing

ARABICA - A Daily Shot Of What the Arab World is Saying/Hearing/Sharing


A R A B I C A
ارابيكا

By Kristen Gillespie


TENSION RISING
Lebanon's A-Nahar daily reports on the growing acrimony between the new Hezbollah-backed government and the March 14 opposition faction, headed by former Prime Minister Saad Hariri.

The UN's Special Tribunal for Lebanon last week indicted four men, believed to be members of Hezbollah, in the February 2005 assassination of Saad Hariri's father, ex-Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. Both factions have maintained armed militias, which raises the stakes for all Lebanese as the crisis over whether to proceed with prosecutions in the Hariri cases becomes more contentious.

TENSION EBBING
Bahrain appears to be emerging from months of martial law, while Saudi, Emirati and Kuwait troops sent it to control violent protests slowly begin to withdraw. Still, the Bahrain February 14 Revolution Facebook group is not giving up. The Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, the largest opposition bloc in Bahrain, is holding a "popular festival" this Friday. "Our demand for the nation: elected government" reads the poster advertising the event to be held on July 8th at 5pm in Karaneh village. While the event invitation attracted 120 "likes' in the 20 minutes after it was posted, one commenter wrote, "I probably won't be there because of Al-Wefaq's participation in the national dialogue" with the government.

HIGH SCHOOL SCIENCE
The UAE daily Al Emirat Al Youm reports that Abu Dhabi is considering major changes to its high school curricula. The paper did not elaborate on the changes, but quoted the director of the Abu Dhabi Education Council Mugheer al-Khelee as he spoke on the sidelines of a graduation ceremony at the Institutes of Applied Technology. He said that scientific education has arrived late to the UAE, but that the institutes are moving quickly to fill the gap.

POP STAR
Algerian singer Souad Massi says that the wave of revolutions hitting the Arab world will not happen in Algeria because "the situation is very different." The people "really love the current president and he genuinely changed things," she told Reuters.

July 5, 2011

photo credit: illustir

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Society

Italy's Right-Wing Government Turns Up The Heat On 'Gastronationalism'

Rome has been strongly opposed to synthetic foods, insect-based flours and health warnings on alcohol, and aggressive lobbying by Giorgia Meloni's right-wing government against nutritional labeling has prompted accusations in Brussels of "gastronationalism."

Dough is run through a press to make pasta

Creation of home made pasta

Karl De Meyer et Olivier Tosseri

ROME — On March 23, the Italian Minister of Agriculture and Food Sovereignty, Francesco Lollobrigida, announced that Rome would ask UNESCO to recognize Italian cuisine as a piece of intangible cultural heritage.

On March 28, Lollobrigida, who is also Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's brother-in-law, promised that Italy would ban the production, import and marketing of food made in labs, especially artificial meat — despite the fact that there is still no official request to market it in Europe.

Days later, Italian Eurodeputy Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of fascist leader Benito Mussolini and member of the Forza Italia party, which is part of the governing coalition in Rome, caused a sensation in the European Parliament. On the sidelines of the plenary session, Sophia Loren's niece organized a wine tasting, under the slogan "In Vino Veritas," to show her strong opposition (and that of her government) to an Irish proposal to put health warnings on alcohol bottles. At the end of the press conference, around 11am, she showed her determination by drinking from the neck of a bottle of wine, to great applause.

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