Saleh back to the fore

As intense Yemeni-US attacks on Al-Qaeda continue, former president Saleh appears to be regaining popular support, writes Nasser Arrabyee

Former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh is still plying politics, with millions of supporters around him.

On Monday morning, 3 September, he was driving in the middle of capital, Sanaa, with hundreds of bodyguards and loyal politicians on their way to the country's biggest conference hosting location.

Thousands of men and women and children were carrying his picture and chanting, cheering and trying to get closer to his car when the procession arrived outside the Stadium of 22 May in the northern part of Sanaa.

More than 10,000 members of Saleh's party, the People's General Congress (PGC), and guest politicians and diplomats were waiting inside to start a well-prepared ceremony to celebrate the 30th anniversary of PGC that was founded by Saleh in 1982.

In a lengthy speech being aired live on three TV channels and FM radio owned by members of the PGC, Saleh urged his supporters to stand and cooperate with his successor, newly elected President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, in coming national dialogue in November.

Although President Hadi is the secretary-general and deputy chairman of the PGC, with Saleh still the head, he did not attend the ceremony Monday in an effort to show neutrality.

Saleh strongly criticised the national unity government that is chaired by his opponents (a coalition of Islamists, socialists, and Nasserites) who were behind the 2011 uprising against him.

Although Saleh's party has 17 ministers in the 34-member cabinet, he described the government as "failed and incapable".

Saleh added that the government keeps displacing its failure upon him. "Even if a storm happens in the United States, they will say Saleh did it," he said as his supporters applauded and cheered.

"What did you do to those who bombed the oil and gas, and those who blocked the roads and those who sabotaged the electricity towers? Did you put them on trial?" Saleh, who now plays the role of the figurehead of opposition, asked the government.

The Saudi capital Riyadh is hosting this week (starting Tuesday, 4 September) a conference for donors to Yemen, who include Gulf countries, Europeans, the Americans, and other countries. Yemen needs more than $10 billion to fix the economic problems it is facing during the transitional period.

Saleh thanked particularly Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Kuwait for their support for Yemen. Ironically, he thanked Qatar for "pumping" dollars to his opponents during the protests of last year.

The UN envoy to Yemen, Jamal Bin Omar, is meanwhile scheduled to arrive in Sanaa Thursday, 6 September, to continue helping the conflicting parties implement the Saudi-sponsored and US-backed deal that is supposed to entirely end the country's political crisis by conducting presidential elections in February 2014.

The success of the national dialogue in November will be the most important step of all steps taken so far since the deal was signed by Saleh and his opponents in Riyadh in November 2011.

WAR ON AL-QAEDA: The war on Al-Qaeda conducted by the Yemeni army and US drones is continuing. Al-Qaeda is still exploiting the current chaos and the mistakes of the Yemeni and American governments to recruit more and more angry youth.

On Sunday, a US drone attack missed an Al-Qaeda leader and mistakenly killed more than 12 people in Radaa, one of the strongholds in the southeast of the country.

The drone, seemingly, was targeting the car of Abdel-Raof Al-Dhahab, but its missile hit a car carrying 12 people including three from one family -- a father, mother and daughter -- according to local residents. The two cars were driving in Al-Hema area in Al-Masaneh, the main stronghold of Al-Qaeda in Radaa.

Khaled Musalam Batis, another Al-Qaeda leader, was killed by a US drone attack last Friday in the area of Hawrah in Al-Kutn district of the eastern province of Hudhrmout, according to official statements.

Khaled was killed with eight other operatives while driving their cars. He was the brother of Salah Musalam Batis, a leading member of the Islamist party, Islah (the Yemeni Brotherhood), in Hudhrmout. The Batis family identified their son from among the dead bodies found under the wreckage of the car that was hit by a missile.

A group of clerics said the US drone attacks would turn Yemen to another Waziristan after an anti-Al-Qaeda cleric was mistakenly killed in a drone attack, sparking outrage among the people.

The group to which he belonged, calling themselves the Union of Southern Clerics, said in a statement sent to media that "the drone attacks are violating [Yemeni] sovereignty and [are a] flagrant aggression."

A total of eight Al-Qaeda operatives were killed when an airstrike hit two cars in the area of Al-Khashaa, 40 kilometres west of Al-Kutn in the eastern province of Hudhrmout, according to the government-run media.

Local residents believe that all the air attacks are implemented by US drones, not by Yemeni fighter jets, their evidence being the accuracy of the attacks.

The clerics, in their statement, said one of them was killed in a recent attack when a US drone killed four Al-Qaeda operatives who were in a meeting with the cleric.

The cleric, Salem Ahmed Ali Jaber, was a teacher and mosque speaker in Al-Kutn. Jaber is Salafi and studied in the main Salafi centre of Saada. He was outspoken against Al-Qaeda. In recent sermons he said Al-Qaeda is against Islam.

According to local sources, Al-Qaeda sent last week four operatives to the cleric to redress him and while the five were in the meeting a US drone came and killed them all in the area of Al-Khshamer in Al-Kutn.

The Yemeni army in cooperation with US drones intensified attacks on Al-Qaeda operatives who try to regroup in new places after they were driven out from Zinjubar and Jaar and Azzan in June.

Sources said that Yemeni troops are being redeployed in areas close to the mountains of Marakish of Abyan in clear preparation for an attack on the newly established stronghold of Al-Mahfad where Al Qaeda train their fighters.

Earlier in the week, Al-Qaeda threatened to bomb oil and gas installations in the south if the army attacked them in Al-Mahfad, an area between Shabwa and Abyan.

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In Focus: Peace treaty must be revised

Insecurity in Sinai could engulf the whole country, already teetering following the revolution. Egypt must act, which means first untying its hands, writes Galal Nassar

Egypt is in a state of disarray. In spite of the great Egyptian grassroots revolution, anarchy remained the primary trait of the transitional period, regardless of the degree to which it was fed by political developments, constitutional and legal controversies, and major and minor events in the capital, up and down the Nile from Alexandria to Aswan, and along the fringes of the country, in Sinai, Al-Wadi Al-Gadid and Marsa Matrouh. The chaos, aggravated by mounting polarisations between the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), the Muslim Brotherhood, and other political forces, has persisted in spite of the election of a new president. But more than any other locus of tension in the country, the current conflict in Sinai epitomises the crisis of the erosion of central control, security breakdown, and their socio-political and strategic ramifications. The recent events in Sinai, which were triggered by the terrorist attack that killed 16 Egyptian soldiers, cast to the fore numerous crucial domestic and foreign policy questions not least of which are the security of Sinai and Egyptian-Israeli relations.

The situation in Sinai had already begun to deteriorate well before the January Revolution. This was largely due to two factors. The first was the security agencies' mismanagement of a series of difficulties and crises in that area, generating a growing gap between the people of Sinai and the central government. On one side, some entertained doubts as to the patriotism of the Sinai Bedouin in spite of the fact that they bore the burden of the resistance against the Israeli occupation of Sinai following the 1967 war. On the other was mounting resentment against a regime that ignored the developmental needs of Sinai, failed to open job opportunities to Sinai youth in tourist projects that proliferated after control over the area was restored to Egypt, and did not recruit them into military academies as a means to assimilate Sinai's society into national structures. The second factor was the spread of extremist thought in a religious guise during the Sadat and Mubarak eras. Almost intrinsically hostile to many domestic and foreign policy orientations, that type of thought inevitably spread to Sinai.

As the situation in Sinai deteriorated in the Mubarak era, Israel increasingly began to complain that this posed a threat to its own security. While a chief cause of that situation -- the malpractices of the security agencies -- may have been eliminated following the January Revolution, the grip of the central state had weakened at the same time. In Sinai, that grip became almost non-existent. The result was an unprecedented boost to terrorist groups operating in that area. They became increasingly active and more and more audacious until the latest tragic attack. The repercussions of their activities also became increasingly dangerous, especially after Israel was forced to respond to the latest attack when two of the terrorists stormed across the border into Israeli territory. Israel has since seized upon this incident as a pretext for levelling harsh criticisms against Egyptian policy in Sinai and calling into question Egypt's ability to control that peninsula. This, in turn, has stirred suspicions in Egypt that Israel may be planning to reoccupy part of Sinai or to grant itself licence to undertake military operations there or, at the very least, to call for an international force to be stationed on our side of the border.

Islamist political forces and the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) in particular were quick to accuse Israel of being behind the latest attack, though to be fair a number of non-Islamist forces shared the opinion. Nevertheless, I believe that part of the Islamists' motive for pointing fingers in that direction was to deflect blame from themselves. The terrorists espouse extremist ideas that they erroneously attribute to Islam, upon which Islamist forces presumably base their political legitimacy. Also, in the immediate aftermath of the Rafah attack, President Mohamed Mursi came under fire for his "ill-considered" decision to establish closer relations with Hamas. It was argued that steps taken in this context made it easier for terrorist groups in Gaza to coordinate with and join their counterparts in Sinai in order to carry out the attack. Mursi was simultaneously criticised for his decision to grant amnesties to prisoners who had been found guilty of involvement in terrorist attacks that had claimed the lives of many Egyptians and foreigners. The critics hold that the amnesties helped create a climate conducive to terrorism which encouraged those who carried out the Rafah attack and could inspire similar attacks in the future, and all the more so if the newly released persons turn around and issue supportive "fatwas" or even actively collude in plots.

Naturally, there is always some logical basis for suspecting Israel. It remains the foremost threat to Egypt's national security to which history offers ample testimony. However, if blame is to be cast, at the very least it should be founded upon concrete evidence and clearheaded reasoning so that we do not find ourselves chasing after groundless hypotheses that prevent us from properly attributing responsibility and, hence, from ending the vicious cycle of insecurity and instability in Sinai. Proceeding from this basis, three observations weaken the contention that Israel was behind the recent attack. First, it issued several warnings of an impending attack and sufficiently in advance to give Egyptian security agencies time to take precautions. Second, sources in SCAF mentioned that the terrorists had received support from inside Gaza while they were carrying out their operation. Apparently, mortar bombs were fired from the vicinity of Gaza airport with the purpose of distracting Israeli forces from what was happening in Sinai. Third, there is no denying the already dangerously deteriorating situation that existed in Sinai and the gross negligence on our part in handling that situation. That security breakdown, mismanagement, general anarchy and disintegration at the fringes helped clear the way for the operation, regardless of the ideological or national affiliation of the perpetrators.

So, what needs to be done? Egyptian military command has deployed land and air forces, destroyed tunnels that are often suspected of being used as a transit for terrorists, and laid siege to rugged mountainous areas used as terrorist hideouts. Often such measures produce immediate results. Unfortunately, however, the benefit is temporary because they fail to address the root causes. Recourse to the "iron fist" approach cannot, in and of itself, remedy the security breakdown, the root causes of which are to be found in economic, social and educational problems that lay the grounds for extremism. Simultaneously, the "iron fist" approach will remain a kind of mirage unless the protocols of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty are revised, especially with regards to the deployment of Egyptian forces in Area C in Sinai. The provisions of those protocols were originally devised on the basis of two fallacious assumptions: firstly, that Egypt poses a threat to Israeli security rather than the reverse; and secondly, that the only threat that Egypt faces comes from Israel. Theoretically, under a peace agreement, both assumptions are invalid. Be that as it may, the situation has changed radically since 1979, which should be reason enough for revising the treaty or even abolishing it. We cannot rule out, at this juncture, the possibility that some ultra-extremist forces assume power in Israel and execute a plan to reoccupy all or part of Sinai, or assume the right to send in forces in pursuit of targets or other "security" aims. More immediately, the provisions of the treaty do not reflect the reality that terrorism in Sinai is an immediate threat to Egypt before being a potential threat to Israel. While Israel has certainly given the Egyptian military command the green light to bring in forces that are not necessarily provided for under the arrangements of the peace agreement for the purpose of counterterrorist operations, there is no logical reason why Egypt should remain at the mercy of the whims of this or that Israeli government for permission to deploy our forces as needed on our own territory.

It follows that our primary concern, now, should be to push for a revision of the unfair conditions of the protocols of the peace treaty. Indeed, President Mursi should declare this as one of his foremost priorities. The treaty does provide for the possibility of amendment, but it requires the agreement of both sides in order to set the process into motion. Therefore, as a first step, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry should submit an official request to Israel for this purpose and the president should form a negotiating team, reminiscent of our "Taba team", consisting of our best legal, military and diplomatic experts. At the same time, we should pre-empt possible Israeli intransigence by bringing in reinforcements into Area C in sufficient force to confront the threat of terrorism in Sinai, for otherwise we will be laying ourselves open to the likelihood that intermittent terrorist attacks will escalate into a flood that could overflow the bounds of Sinai and threaten the entire country.

We cannot overstate the need to succeed in restoring security to Sinai. Success there will reverse the trend of deterioration and mounting anarchy and herald the restoration of stability throughout the country.

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Squaring up on Syria

With Egypt stepping into the Syrian quagmire, Shia-Sunni rivalries are increasing as a result of the Syrian civil war, writes Salah Nasrawi

With Syria's civil war degenerating into a sectarian showdown, tensions are building across the Middle East over its fallout, with growing signs that key regional players are increasingly taking sides in the conflict.

Regional rivalries over Syria's protracted war, which is pitching the country's Sunni majority against the minority Alawite-dominated regime of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, is complicating the conflict and raising alarms about its potential for Middle East instability.

New signs have emerged that Iraq and Iran are now teaming up to increase their help to the embattled Al-Assad regime, in stark contrast with Egypt, whose newly installed Islamist leadership is joining other Arab Sunni governments in seeking to get rid of the Syrian regime.

Last week, the Iraqi Shia-led government and Iranian leaders renewed pledges to support Al-Assad, who is facing a mostly Sunni uprising backed by Sunni governments in Turkey and the Gulf.

The new development came after Egyptian president Mohamed Mursi announced that Al-Assad had "lost legitimacy" in his fight to crush the 17-month-old revolt and bluntly called on him to go.

Mursi, a senior leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the Muslim Sunni world's most powerful Islamist organisation, stunned his Iranian hosts at a Non-Aligned Movement summit in Tehran last Thursday by likening the uprising in Syria to the struggle of the Palestinians.

That contradicts the line put out by Iran and Iraq, who have resisted efforts to oust Al-Assad and fear that the fall of the Alawite-dominated regime in Syria would embolden the country's Sunnis and upset the region's shaky sectarian geopolitics.

In response, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose Shia nation is Al-Assad's main ally, described the anti-Assad uprising as "a proxy war" waged by governments that "provide money and arms to irresponsible groups."

Syria and its allies accuse Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey of giving financial support and arms supplies to the armed insurgent groups on the ground in Syria. The three countries are reportedly running a clandestine base in Turkey that is working to topple Al-Assad.

Khamenei, who appeared to criticise Mursi for being too harsh on Al-Assad, said the Syrian uprising was led by the United States "with the aim of serving the interests of the Zionists against the resistance in the region."

In a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki who had traveled to Iran to participate in the summit, Khamenei said Iran, which has assumed the presidency of the Non-Aligned Movement, and Iraq, which holds the presidency of the Arab League, can play effective roles in resolving regional issues.

In addressing the summit, Al-Maliki submitted a plan to end the conflict in Syria based on a halt to the violence and the formation of a national unity government that could include Al-Assad.

Under the plan, the Syrian regime would negotiate with opposition groups and elections would take place under international and Arab League supervision.

The proposal rejected foreign military intervention, included an agreement by all parties in Syria to end the violence, and incorporated calls for all countries to "stop interfering in Syria's internal affairs."

Iraq, which shares a 375-mile (600-kilometre) border with Syria, has repeatedly cautioned that the crisis in Syria could spill over into other regional and neighbouring states if they do not work seriously to stop the violence and promote talks.

Last month, Iraq's military dispatched additional troops to tighten border controls with Syria in an attempt to staunch the spillover from the Syrian crisis. Thousands of Sunni Muslim fighters, including Al-Qaeda jihadists from Iraq, are believed to be fighting alongside the rebels in Syria.

They are widely expected to turn their guns against Shia-ruled Iraq once the Al-Assad regime has been removed in Syria.

Fearful of the potential rise of a hard-line Sunni regime next door, Iraq's Shia groups are reportedly rearming in southern Iraq. Reports in the local media suggest that Iraqi Sunni groups are setting up a "Free Iraqi Army" that would be ready to operate following Al-Assad's downfall.

Several top Shia religious leaders have also issued fatwas, or religious rulings, banning their followers in southern Iraq from selling their weapons after local media reports said there have been massive transfers of weapons to Syrian opposition groups throughout the area.

These are unconfirmed reports, but they send chilling signs of how ugly the Syrian conflict could turn out to be.

The new wrangling that involves Iraq, Iran and Egypt shows how sharply different visions of Syria's future could increase polarisation and fan the flames of religious tension in the region.

For now, the row could forestall proposals made by Mursi earlier to end the conflict in Syria that would include Iran together with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

The quartet idea was seen as a good option for resolving the conflict, as it seemed to transcend the regional sectarian divide. However, it is far from guaranteed to succeed because both Al-Assad and his opponents see victory as the only desirable outcome in Syria.

Though it was hazy on many details, the idea meant that Mursi should have worked much more actively in order to win Iran's cooperation in mediating an end to the Syrian crisis that would avoid terrible sectarian conflict in the region.

Moreover, Mursi's efforts were hoped to bring the region's crucial Sunni and Shia players together as events in Syria unfold, especially with a view to the aftermath of the crisis.

The initiative was hailed by many inside and outside Egypt as a major diplomatic bid by Egypt's first elected president and first Islamist leader to recapture Egypt's leadership that many believe had been ceded to Saudi Arabia and even the tiny Gulf emirate of Qatar.

Now Mursi has backed himself into a corner in Syria, and there are few good options for a breakthrough as regional and international diplomacy scrambles to contain the violence and keep the conflict from spilling across borders.

Given that his plan for regional mediation had little chance to succeed, it's hard to know whether by annoying Iran and Iraq in his Tehran speech Mursi has changed his calculus on Syria.

By slamming Al-Assad and berating Shia Iran for its support of the regime, Mursi seems to have been appeasing many of his own sceptics. Turkey had been cautious about his overture, apparently for fear that it could undermine its own assumed leadership role in the crisis.

It was also always doubtful that Saudi Arabia would sit down with its arch enemy, Shia Iran, while Washington had killed off a previous bid to involve Iran by the UN's former Syria envoy Kofi Annan.

Inside Egypt, Sunni Muslim Salafis who do not hide their hatred of Shias and staunchly support efforts to oust Syria's Alawite regime were quick to welcome Mursi's denunciation of Al-Assad.

Whatever the calculations may be, Mursi seems to have shot down his own Syrian initiative and probably lost his chance to reassert Egypt's role as a key Middle Eastern player.

That could give a new push to regional polarisation. Some Iranian officials have warned that Tehran, which has signed a military cooperation pact with Damascus, will do what ever it takes to prevent Al-Assad's downfall.

By floating his spoiler plan that includes Al-Assad in the resolution of the Syrian conflict, Iraq's Al-Maliki is showing his solidarity with Al-Assad. Lebanon's Shia group Hizbullah has also showed strong backing for the Syrian leader.

In the meantime, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar continue to fund arms for the Syrian opposition. None of this augurs well for a breakthrough in the standoff in Syria, or for Middle Eastern sectarian harmony.

With each camp throwing its weight behind one of the warring parties in Syria, the region looks to be plunging into a sharper divide than ever along sectarian lines.

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Ex-Mexican official to be sentenced in San Diego

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Jesus Quinonez traveled often to San Diego to discuss cross-border investigations of organized crime with U.S. law enforcement officials. He didn't know he was the target of one himself.

The former Mexican law enforcement official faces a possible sentence of life in federal prison Monday when he is sentenced for racketeering conspiracy, more than two years after he and 42 others were charged in a far-reaching indictment that targeted remnants of Tijuana-based Arellano Felix cartel. Prosecutors have recommended that Quinonez be sentenced to eight years, one month in prison.

Quinonez was the international liaison for Baja California Attorney General Rommel Moreno, serving as his primary contact with U.S. federal, state and local law enforcement agencies in an area that includes the border cities of Tijuana and Mexicali. He pleaded guilty in May, weeks before he was scheduled for trial.

As part of the plea agreement, Quinonez admitted that he agreed to smuggle help smuggle $13 million into Mexico for a group headed by Fernando Sanchez Arellano, a nephew of the Arellano Felix brothers. The Arellano Felix cartel was once one of the world's most powerful drug cartels but its power began to erode in 2002 when its leaders began getting killed or captured.

Quinonez also admitted sharing information with a reputed Sanchez Arellano lieutenant, Jose Alfredo Najera Gil, about an investigation of a double-homicide in Tijuana in March 2010. According to the plea agreement, the murders were committed by the Sanchez Arellano gang.

The episode has been an embarrassment for Moreno, who took office in late 2007 when Tijuana was in the throes of a fierce battle between Sanchez Arellano and a rival that horrified residents with bodies hung from bridges, daytime shootouts and decapitated bodies found around town. Such gruesome displays of violence have largely disappeared in Tijuana since the Sinaloa cartel expanded its presence in the last few years.

Quinonez has been in custody since his arrest on a San Diego traffic stop in July 2010, less than a month after he attended a U.S. Independence Day party at the home of the U.S. consul general in Tijuana.

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The Merchants of Venice

Samir Farid reports from the centre of the world

The 69th round of the Venice Film Festival (29 Augest-8 September) ?ê" the most prestigious in the world, and the third to take place annually after Berlin in February and Cannes in May ?ê" is this year celebrating 80 years since its first round.

Among the most memorable rounds in the history of Venice was that of 1983, which saw the first ever history-of-cinema programme in the world, curated by Francesco Bassinini, and that of 1949, when the grand prix was first called the Golden Lion after the lion of Saint Mark, the emblem of the city. Following years of disruption, the festival became established in 1980, competing with Cannes and Berlin.

The 2012 round is the first to be directed by the celebrated film scholar Alberto Barbera, taking over from the brilliant Marco Muller, who directed the festival for the last eight years. Barbera directed the festival in the period 1999-2002, after which he directed the National Film Museum in Turin. Barbera might see the festival differently to Muller, but a quick look at the programme is all it takes to realise he will maintain the success achieved by his predecessor. As is immediately evident, where Muller pays as much attention to quantity as quality and likes all kinds of films, Barbera is rather more interested in quality; and he prefers auteur films to others.

To celebrate 80 years since the first round, besides selections from the institution's archives entitled "80!", Barbera introduced a programme named Venice Classics, which will screen 20 restored films produced in the period 1974-84 in the US, the UK, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Japan and the Philippines as well as nine new feature-length documentaries on cinema from the US, Italy, France and Mexico.

Aside from films by Terrence Malick and Paul-Thomas Anderson, Marco Bellocchio, Brian de Palma and Takishi Kitano, the festival opened with the Qatari-American production The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mira Nair ?ê" an out-of-competition screening. This was the first time in film history that any of the three major festivals opened with an Arab coproduction; it reflects Qatar's ambition to establish itself as a powerful state with international influence despite its small size and population, capitalising on its oil revenues to interact with contemporary world civilisation. The coproduction took place through the Doha Film Institute, headed by Princess Al-Mayyassa bint Hamad Al-Thani who is well-known for her love of the arts, which also organises the annual Doha-Tribeca Film Festival.

In fact, thanks to the Arab Spring, there is a remarkable Arab contribution to Venice this year, from Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Palestine and, for the first time, Libya and Saudi Arabia as well: feature-length documentaries by Libyan filmmaker Abdalla Omaish's (Witness: Libya, an American production, the first on the Libyan revolution by a Libyan) and Tunisian filmmaker Hinde Boujemaa (Ya man aach or "It was better tomorrow") outside the competition; the Egyptian filmmaker Ibrahim El-Batout's El-Sheita Elli Fat (Winter of Discontent) in the Orizzonte or "Horizons" section; and, also outside the competition, Algerian filmmaker Djamila Sahraoui's Yema and Saudi filmmaker Haifaa Al Mansour's Wadjda, a French and German production, respectively: the first fiction feature ever to be shot in Saudi territory.

***

El-Batout's El-Sheita Elli Fat is an example of the kind of western interest the Arab Spring has generated in Arab cinema. For even though such momentous events in one of the world's most important sources of energy and the site of fundamentalist-secular conflict can encourage attention to the work of such a young artist on the topic, it is also true that films are selected for screening at the major festivals based on artistic merit alone. If Youssri Nassrallah is among the icons of innovation in Egyptian cinema through the 1980s, then Ibrahim El-Batout is an icon of the independent cinema movement that emerged as the most important development in the 1990s; it may in fact be said that El-Batout is the godfather of independent cinema.

He arrived on the film scene from outside it and in 1996 began to make documentaries in some of the world's hottest spots. He made his first full-length fiction feature, Ithaka, named after CP Cavafy's poem, in 2004. With his second film, Ain Shams (Heliopolis), he managed to cross the Mediterranean and make a name for himself in the world at large ?ê" a reputation he confirmed with Hawi (Conjuror) in 2010. With his present, fourth film, El-Batout arrives at the world's most prestigious film festival.

The independent movements in art, music, theatre and literature as well as film played an essential role in forging the consciousness that led to the 25 January revolution. They were paralleled by political initiatives, notably Kifaya which started in 2004. With actors Amr Waked and Farah Youssef ?ê" the stars of El-Sheita Elli Fat ?ê" El-Batout was among those who took part in the 18-day sit-in that toppled former president Hosny Mubarak in 25 January-11 February, 2011; the closing scene was shot on 10 February in Tahrir Square. Here as elsewhere in El-Batout's work, the film does not follow a pre-written script; it emerges, rather, from place and time through the characters, gradually taking holistic form until it reaches completion. Like any postmodern filmmaker, El-Batout makes no distinction between fiction and documentary.

This is particularly true of El-Sheita Elli Fat, which documents the revolution subjectively and expresses an equally subjective, sharp position against the regime the revolution sought to change ?ê" the artist's absolute support for the revolution. This is achieved through three pivotal characters: Amr (Amr Waked), a computer wiz; his girlfriend Farah (Farah Youssef), a government TV anchor; and Adel (Saleh El-Hanafi), a State Security officer. Instead of a story with a beginning, a middle and an end, here as elsewhere El-Batout presents interpersonal relations whose dynamics determine the destiny of each. The situation is presented without apparent artifice: While Amr lives with his mother in an average middle-class apartment, Adel lives in a luxurious home with his wife, son and daughter and their Filipina maid.

The film opens on 25 January while Amr, on his computer screen, is watching a State Security detainee recount what happened to him in the way of torture by electric shock, among other means. At the same time Farah, on air, is trying to truthfully describe what is happening on the street while her colleague, in the same show, is misleading viewers to please his boss who demands that they should downplay the significance of the demonstrations. In the first half of the film, the action moves between January 2009 and January 2011, when Amr is arrested once again. As he watches the internet video, Amr remembers what happened to him in January 2009, when ?ê" unannounced and without trial ?ê" he was arrested and detained indefinitely for demonstrating against the Israeli war on Gaza that year. In the detention centre he too was subjected to torture, and there he made the acquaintance of Adel ?ê" who will not release him until he is convinced that Amr will cooperate with State Security, planting in him the doubt that Farah too cooperates; otherwise should couldn't have been a successful anchor. Amr leaves the detention centre with a broken spirit to find out that his mother has died of grief after looking for him everywhere and failing to find him.

On 28 January we hear portions of Mubarak's first address, sound only. Farah revolts against her employers' pro-regime policies, leaving her work to join the revolution. On 1 February Mubarak's second speech is heard, once again without pictures; we see the "popular committees" that have cropped up to replace the police throughout Cairo; we also see how State Security begins to deploy thugs against the protesters, with Adel overseeing the storage of knives and canes in an apartment near Tahrir Square. Thus begin the cycles of violence: protesters kill a thug in retaliation. On 10 February comes Mubarak's third ?ê" and last ?ê" address, followed by Omar Soliman's speech on 11 February in which he announces Mubarak's stepping down. Once again, the picture does not accompany the sound. Throughout the film the viewer sees the events of the revolution on non-Egyptian satellite channels through television sets in houses and in Adel's office. El-Batout uses subtitles to specify dates. Documentary footage of demonstrations in Tahrir Square accompany Soliman's speech.

Adel goes to see his family in the Red Sea resort of Ain Sokhna, where he has asked them to stay. We see the doctor Rafik William, who was arrested with Amr Waked on 28 January and testified that he did join the revolution because he wanted a better life for his as yet unborn son; subtitles tell us that Rafik was killed in the wake of the revolution, a month after the birth of his son. On Qaserelnil Bridge, near Tahrir Square, the actors-characters gather after they have finished making their film; the final shot shows Amr and Farah together again. Subtitles give figures for the dead, the injured, the lost and those in custody with the phrase "Still counting".

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Man with scissors arrested at Miley Cyrus' house

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A man allegedly clutching a pair of scissors was arrested after police say he tried to force himself inside the Los Angeles home of Miley Cyrus.

Los Angeles police Lt. Brian Wendling says that employees inside the house in the Studio City area called police around 4 a.m. Saturday after the man came to the door and claimed to be a friend of the 19-year-old singer-actress.

Wendling says the suspect then repeatedly threw himself against an outside wall as if he was trying to break into the house. Cyrus was not home at the time.

The man, who was not identified, was arrested after officers saw him jump behind some bushes. He was carrying a pair of scissors.

Wendling says charges have not yet been filed.

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Mayor of New Jersey's capital arrested on corruption charge

TRENTON, New Jersey (Reuters) - The mayor of Trenton, New Jersey's state capital, was arrested at his home early on Monday and charged with public corruption in connection with a proposed parking garage on city-owned property, the FBI said.

Mayor Tony Mack, along with his brother Ralphiel Mack and longtime associate Joseph Giorgianni, are accused of plotting to accept $119,000 from a man posing as a developer, according to a copy of the criminal complaint obtained by the Star-Ledger newspaper and posted on its website.

The mayor's brother and Giorgianni acted as intermediaries to the purported parking garage developer and to his consultant, who were both cooperating with authorities, the complaint said.

Tony Mack, Ralphiel Mack and Giorgianni took $54,000 in cash bribes and anticipated getting the balance of $65,000, the complaint said.

Tony Mack was arrested at about 6:30 a.m. on Monday at his home in Trenton, said Barbara Woodruff, FBI spokeswoman in Newark, New Jersey. Giorgianni also was arrested on Monday, the FBI said. Ralphiel Mack turned himself in to authorities on Monday morning.

Giorgianni, who goes by the nicknames "JoJo" and "the Fat Man," told the purported consultant that the men were "'all looking to, uh, get healthy,' meaning make money, and that 'we been sick too long here,'" the complaint said.

The mayor has been under investigation since September 2010 by federal agents who used wiretaps to record meetings at JoJo's Steakhouse in Trenton, run by Giorgianni, and wiretaps on their telephones, the complaint said.

In July, FBI agents staged an early morning raid on Tony Mack's home and searched offices in City Hall.

Tony Mack, who the complaint said goes by the nicknames "the Little Guy" and "Napoleon," has been accused by critics of nepotism and mismanagement since taking office in 2010 in the crime-plagued, economically depressed city of 85,000.

After the FBI raid on his home in July, Tony Mack said he had done nothing wrong.

"We have not violated the public trust in any way," he said at the time. The mayor in July also denied to federal agents that he accepted any illegal cash, the complaint said.

In a search of Ralphiel Mack's home in July, federal agents found $2,500 in $100 bills with the same serial numbers as bills Giorgianni accepted from the purported consultant a month earlier, the complaint said.

In April, according to the complaint, Giorgianni told the purported consultant that the mayor was pleased with a bribe that had been paid.

"Yeah, oh yeah ... listen, you know money makes a blind man see," Giorgianni is quoted as saying.

Giorgianni also said the mayor could not be directly involved in the plot because he was "'under a microscope' due to public scrutiny," the complaint said.

An effort to recall Mack, a Democrat, failed last year when organizers did not get enough support to force a special election.

Mack was slated to appear before a federal magistrate in Trenton later on Monday, the FBI said.

(Writing by Ellen Wulfhorst, Editing by Eric Beech)

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