Egypt’s post revolution media is more open, but as President Mohammed Morsi’s power spreads, fears grow for the future for a free media.

Ben Gilbert reports.

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Wissam al-Hassan was said to be close to opposition leader Saad Hariri, a leading critic of the government in neighboring Syria.

No group has claimed Friday’s attack, which was condemned by Damascus. Dozens of people were injured.

Tensions in Lebanon have been rising as a result of the Syrian conflict.

Lebanon’s religious communities are divided between those who support the government of Syrian President Bashar-al Assad – notably the Shia – and those, such as many Sunnis, who back the rebels.

Friday’s attack was the deadliest in Beirut since 2008. Read more>>

Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Al-Monitor’s Ben Gilbert, who is in Beirut.

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Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman, and this is The World. A massive car bomb exploded in the center of Beirut today. At least eight people were killed and many more wounded. Among the dead is Lebanon’s top intelligence chief, Wissam al-Hassan. Ben Gilbert is news editor of Al-Monitor. He’s on the line with us from Beirut. Where did this happen, Ben, and just describe the scene.

Ben Gilbert: The explosion happened in the heart of the Christian neighborhood of Beirut called Ashrafieh, near Sassine Square. It’s a neighborhood of eight- and nine-story buildings. This car bomb was on a tiny residential street behind the square. The street was completely devastated. It was a big bomb to assassinate one person, and it really caused a lot of damage in this area.

Werman: You said a big bomb to assassinate one person. That person would be Wissam al-Hassan, but is it certain that he was targeted and assassinated?

Gilbert: It would seem like quite a stroke of bad luck on his part and terrible coincidence if this was a random bombing that was meant to scare people or send some kind of a message and just happened to kill the top intelligence official in Lebanon. It’s pretty clear, Lebanon went through a series of assassinations between 2004 and 2008 that killed people just like him, including one of his deputies, a guy named Wissam Eid, who was killed in January 2008.

Werman: It’s also notable that Wissam al-Hassan was also allied with Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister of Lebanon, who was assassinated in a similar car bombing a number of years ago.

Gilbert: Exactly. Wissam al-Hassan, the intelligence chief who was killed today was his chief of protocol, chief of security, was the former prime minister’s chief of security. And he’s been credited with having developed and improved the investigation techniques that led to the indictment of four Hezbollah members in that assassination of his former boss, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Werman: What’s notable about today’s event is that this car bombing comes as Lebanon is being drawn more and more into Syria’s civil war. Is there speculation that today’s bombing is somehow connected to Syria?

Gilbert: Lebanon and Syria are so closely related and interconnected. As you know, Marco, the Syrians were blamed for killing Hariri. The Sunni community in Lebanon of which Wissam al-Hassan is a part of and Rafik Hariri was the leader of, they still blamed Syria for the assassination. The Sunni community here is also aligned and actively supporting the Syrian resistance against Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. Then you have the guys who were indicted in Rafik Hariri’s assassination. They are Hezbollah members. Hezbollah is allied with Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and there are accusations that say that Hezbollah fighters are even assisting the Syrian regime against the opposition in Syria.

Werman: The largely Sunni opposition, yeah.

Gilbert: The Sunni opposition, exactly. So it’s very hard to draw that line, where does Lebanon begin and Syria end.

Werman: Ben, I’m looking at a Reuters dispatch that says Lebanese Sunni Muslims are taking to the streets burning tires across the country in protest against the killing of Wissam al-Hassan. Where is all this headed?

Gilbert: Perhaps in the future people will look back on this as the day when the Syrian conflict came to downtown Beirut. That’s to be foreseen in the future, but it could appear that way at the moment.

Werman: Ben Gilbert with al-Monitor in Beirut. Good to speak with you, Ben. Thanks.

Gilbert: Thank you, Marco.

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Part fantasy, part musical, the movie tells the tale of Christian and Muslim villagers who live together peacefully, but whose lives are forever changed by sectarian violence elsewhere in Lebanon.

There is a lot more freedom today.

Ben Gilbert reports on one example of that, an English-language news website called “Tunisia Live.”

Map of Lower Churchill Project (Photo: gps.snclavalin.com)

The Churchill is a powerful river that runs more than 500 miles through the largely untouched forests of Labrador, in far northeastern Canada. The interior feels about as far as you can get from just about anywhere, but it’s at the center of the ambitions of the government of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, which includes this huge part of the Canadian mainland as well as the large island just to the east. There’s already one big hydroelectric dam on the Churchill a couple of hundred miles northwest of here, and now the province’s energy authority, NALCOR, plans to build two more, including one at Muskrat Falls.

The two Lower Churchill dams together would produce over 3,000 megawatts of power, as much as 13 average U.S. coal-fired power plants. Gilbert Bennett, a project manager for NALCOR, says the project is the largest single hydroelectric development currently under consideration in North America.

“From our perspective it’s the cornerstone of our province’s energy plan,” Bennett says.

Some of the power from the project would flow east to the province’s population centers on the island of Newfoundland. But even there, the population is pretty small. So after the province takes its share, it would sell the rest of the power to other parts of eastern Canada and the northeastern United States.

The Lower Churchill project would bring badly needed jobs and income to this remote and sparsely-populated province. But many locals say they want none of it.

“These guys have got tunnel vision and got no concern for Labrador,” says Alex Saunders, a native Inuit whose family was one of the first to settle in the region of Muskrat Falls. Saunders now lives in Labrador’s hub, a town of about 7,500 people called Happy Valley-Goose Bay. He and other opponents here say the project will disrupt water levels below the dam and flood and pollute the river valley above it.

Saunders was recently in the hospital with chest pains, but he got energized talking about the project. He says people on the island of Newfoundland and elsewhere would get most of the benefits, while Labrador would bear all of the costs.

“If the Newfoundland government wants to produce hydropower,” he says, “why don’t they do in on the island of Newfoundland? And if the United States wants to buy power, why don’t they develop their own power? Why are they coming to us?”

Some of the potential customers for the electricity are asking the same questions. New York State could receive a chunk of the renewable power from the project, but some environmental groups there are opposed to it. The state’s chapter of the Sierra Club says it would continue the region’s reliance on huge, concentrated and remote energy production rather than local renewable resources like wind and solar, that can be produced on-site.

But some experts say those new energy sources can’t yet meet the region’s big appetite for electricity.

“It would be nice to have distributed power and have everyone’s house generating all the electricity we would need,” says Peter Wilcoxen, the Director of the Center for Environmental Policy at Syracuse University. “But we’re very far from that point.”

Wilcoxen says it will take decades for enough solar, wind and other local renewable resources to come on line, and that in the interim, the U.S. is going to need more centralized power.

But Wilcoxen says that new power does have to be as low-carbon as possible. And for supporters, that’s one of the biggest arguments in favor of the Lower Churchill project. Gilbert Bennett of the provincial power authority argues the dams represent a big source of clean energy that can fuel the economy while cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

And Bennett says opponents in Labrador who focus on the dams’ impact on the Churchill River may be missing the bigger picture: that climate change caused by pollution from coal and other fossil fuels is already affecting Labrador.

“The winters are later,” Bennett says. “The amount of rainfall in December and January is greater, the freeze of the river is later and the thaw is earlier. In Labrador, where you have consistently expected to see cold winters and warm summers, we do see differences.”

To supporters, that raises the urgency to build a big, new low-carbon source of electricity like the Lower Churchill dams, the first of which could start to come online in about four years.

But opponents are unmoved by the green argument for the project.

Happy Valley-Goose Bay resident Daphne Roberts lives below Muskrat Falls. She hikes and fishes along the Churchill, and she worries the fish and the views will disappear if the dams are built. And she has a message about the river for the power company.

“I go sit on the riverbank and listen to the birds singing,” Roberts says. “I was there just two days ago… and I said you’re not going to get it. We’re going to fight it. It’s not going to happen.”

Opponents of the Lower Churchill dams hope they can block its approval by Canada’s public utilities board. But if the province prevails, construction could start later this year.

Posters for Muslim Brotherhood Candidates over a street in Cairo during Egypt's second round of parliamentary elections in December, 2011. (Photo: Ben Gilbert)

In a special series, The World’s Ben Gilbert reports on how the rise of Islamist parties in post-Mubarak Egypt might impact the country’s delicate balance of religions and its political landscape.

Part I: What the Islamists Want for Egypt

A year ago Egypt was experiencing the early days of life without President Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak ruled Egypt for nearly 30 years. He had always warned that if he left the scene, “the Islamists” would take over. The World’s Ben Gilbert reports on just who the Islamists are and what they want for Egypt. More>>>

Part 2: Egypt’s Salafis Conservative Islamic Movement

Hosni Mubarak’s three-decade-long rule was seen by many as a safeguard against Islamist parties gaining power. Now those parties hold a solid majority of the seats in the country’s new parliament. Here, Ben Gilbert examines the Salafis, who play a major role in Egypt’s conservative Islamic movement. More>>>

Part 3: Coptic Christians in Egypt Fear for the Future Under Islamist Government

Coptic Christians in Egypt had a degree of protection during the reign of Hosni Mubarak, but now that Islamist parties dominate the new parliament, Egypt’s Copts are feeling increasingly vulnerable. More>>>

Old Coptic church in Cairo, Egypt. (Photo Ben Gilbert)

As a Coptic Christian, 24-year-old George Gerges said signs over the past year haven’t been good. This winter, The Muslim Brotherhood and ultraconservative Salafi parties won almost 75 percent of the seats in Egypt’s parliamentary elections. Last October, more than 20 Christians were killed during a demonstration demanding equal rights. And not too long ago, several Christian churches were burned during clashes between Christians and Muslims.

“When we live together, without any political factors, we live in peace,” Gerges said. “But when religion becomes an issue, they burn churches, they burn houses, they kill Christians. There’s a bad history.”

Geroge Gerges (Photo: Ben Gilbert)

He works at a gift shop in the oldest part of the city, called Coptic Cairo. The community, with its seven churches, has been here since Roman times. Copts trace their faith back to the days of Jesus, when their patron saint, St. Mark, proselytized here.

Coptic Cairo is blocked off from the rest of the city by a big steel gate, and by Egyptian police with automatic weapons. It’s nothing new. It’s been like this for years. But before, Islamist groups didn’t dominate the country’s parliament. Gerges said people voted for them because they were afraid that Egypt was losing its “Muslim Identify.”

“The people elected the Islamic parties because they are afraid for the religion,“ Gerges said. “They are afraid for the identity of Egypt. The Islamic identify of Egypt. The Muslims would like to live alone, like Saudi Arabia, in a closed community, only for Muslims. And that will not happen.”

Gerges said Copts were here long before the Muslim conquests of the 7th century.

But since then it hasn’t been easy. Under former president Hosni Mubarak and to this day, Coptic Christians have a much harder time building churches than Muslims do Mosques. The state also makes it very easy for a Christian to convert to Islam, but nearly impossible for Muslims to convert to Christianity.

Although Christians had senior positions in the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party during this winter’s parliamentary elections, the Brotherhood still endorses laws that discriminate between Muslims and Christians. Mohammad Soudan is the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party foreign relations chief in Alexandria.

“The Muslim man can marry from Christian woman. The Christian man cannot marry from a Muslim woman,” Soudan said. “The Islamic law and local law, would prevent my daughter marrying Christian. No body can make this kind of marriage certificate; even a judge. It’s forbidden. The religious law forbid, and local law forbid.”

These types of statements do not give comfort to those Christians who had hoped Egypt’s revolution would mean a chance for equal rights for all citizens. It’s even more disturbing for those Christians who just want security.

At St Mark’s cathedral, the seat of the Coptic pope in Cairo, worshippers attend a noon mass. Rumors have spread in the past few months that thousands of Christians are fleeing Egypt. But there’s no real evidence, beyond the anecdotal, to back up the rumors. Many Christians say there’s no reason to leave, at least not yet.

“We are worried, but not freaked out. There’s a difference,” said Christine Atef Habib, a medical student in Cairo.

Habib and fellow student Carolos Maher Fayez supported the revolution, and say the Islamic parties can’t make the country any worse than it already was under Mubarak. They say they want equal rights with Muslims, and both Christine and Carlos have faith in their fellow Egyptians.

“There are a lot of Muslim Egyptians, liberals, and they are our friends. I was in school with 250 Muslims, we were only 6 Christians, we were living there, sleeping there, eating together, playing together, till today we are best friends in college,” Fayez said.

“We live a normal life. They are my colleagues and friends. We are not killing each other each time we see each other,” said Habib. “The situation isn’t that dark. Even among Christians you will find some people in the extremes. But most people are in between.”

Adel Iskander Abdullah (Photo: Ben Gilbert)

“How can I love the Muslims?” he asked. “I heard them talking about justice, and talking about following the Islamic law. But I don’t see any justice. Do they not have justice, or is there no justice in Islamic law? 25:40 Where is the Christian role? The name they are calling themselves is wrong: the Freedom and Justice Party. Under them there’s no freedom and no justice.”

A few blocks away, merchants opened their shops at an outdoor mall. It’s mixed with Christian and Muslim owned stores, although 40 percent of them have closed in the past year because of the lack of tourists. Hamdi Badr works at one shop that sells tin lanterns and other artisanal gifts. The 22 year old protested in Tahrir Square last Winter. Badr said Islam obliges Muslims to protect Christians, and that the Egyptian government should not make any laws further curtailing their rights.

“The government can’t force can’t force us to do anything we don’t want, because the people now have a voice,” she said. “And if they go and make those Christians wear hijab, I will go protest, because their religion doesn’t say they should.”

But even Badr’s pledge can come across as patronizing to Christians who wonder why they should be dependent on individuals coming to their defense.

At a nearby shop, a Christian woman sums it up succinctly: “we don’t want Christianity or Islam to have anything to do with the law. Keep religion out of politics, and give us all equal rights.”

This is part 3 of a series on religion in Egypt. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here.

In this report he focuses on Egypt’s conservative Islamic movement, the Salafis.

This is part 2 of a series on religion in Egypt. Part 1 is here.Part 3 is here.

Ahmed Aadli and the religious books he tries to give to tourists in downtown Alexandria. (Photo: Ben Gilbert)

Not too long ago, 30-year-old Ahmed Aadli was at a crossroads. He had a steady job working as a dive instructor with a German tour company at Egypt’s Sharm El Sheikh resort. But he wasn’t satisfied.

“I was looking for inner peace, and I thought it would be by book, or girlfriend, or wife, or good work,” Aadli said. “But actually I found inner peace, in the creator. Direct connection, that’s it, you know.”

Aadli found peace and happiness in religion. And he hopes to spread the message. He now sports a long, scraggly beard and volunteers with the “Conveying the Islamic Message Society.” Every morning from 8 to 10 he cheerfully distributes Islamic literature to tourists in front of Alexandria’s main hotel.

He’s not especially political, but he voted in Egypt’s elections. And he chose the Islamic parties: the Muslim Brotherhood, and their main competitors, the Salafis, because he said they “are like two faces of one coin.”

Many Egyptians likely felt the same way at the beginning of elections here, both Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood were basically devout Muslims who want to implement Sharia-based law in Egypt. And for most, for them that’s a good thing. But Muslim Brotherhood officials are not happy to be lumped in with Salafis as “Islamists”.

Mohamad Soudan in Alexandria. (Photo: Ben Gilbert)

Soudan says the Salafis’ mistakes are narrowly interpreting Islam, and expecting that all Egyptian Muslims should share their beliefs. And he calls them political amateurs. That’s definitely not an accusation leveled against the Muslim brotherhood: it was founded in Egypt in 1928, under the banner: “Islam is the answer.” The Brother’s have been accused of violent acts in the past, like the attempted assassination of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950’s. There was a massive crackdown and the group was banned. It took years to recover. They renounced the use of violence long ago.

Despite the ban, the Muslim Brotherhood has become a hugely powerful force in Egypt, in large part because of the social programs they’ve run – geared for both rich and poor.

The Muslim Brotherhood was finally permitted to register as a political organization – the Freedom and Justice party – last year. Mohamad Soudan said the party is moderate, and advocates one key thing:

“We believe in democracy, 100 percent. And we are hungry for a democracy in Egypt,” he said.

Posters in downtown Alexandria show Salafist candidates. (Photo: Ben Gilbert)

“These are small things. And this country running likes this for 60 years. You can’t change this in one second. You need to teach the people. You need to feed the 40 percent of the Egyptian people which is suffering from the poverty. And then fix the streets, fix the economy, we have a problem with the economy. Start with this,” he said.

But it’s not like the brothers are liberals. They do want an Islamic state, just in a slower and more moderate way. With alcohol, for instance, Soudan says he’d rather it not be sold, but he recognizes that it’s big business – for producers as well as the tourist industry.

The Brothers are also more moderate – or practical – when it comes to women’s rights, their education, and role in society. The group has accepted in theory that a woman or a Coptic Christian should legally be allowed to be president in Egypt, although either is unlikely to happen. Women and Copts also ran on the Brotherhood’s ticket, and won.

Mahmoud Hegazi, is one of those who voted in Alexandria for some of the Brotherhood’s candidates. He’s a devout Muslim, and Egyptian American. He lived part of his life in New Jersey. He now lives here and works with the “Conveying the Islamic Message Society.” Hegazi says he voted for the Brotherhood’s candidates because he thinks that their brand of Islam – moderate but devout – will make Egypt a better place.

Posters for Muslim Brotherhood Candidates over a street in Cairo during Egypt's second round of parliamentary elections in December, 2011. (Photo: Ben Gilbert)

Still, some secular Egyptian fear their moderate message is a smokescreen, and that the brotherhood will aim to make society more conservative by bringing the Islamic message to Egyptians through domination of education and religious foundations. Hossam Baghat, the director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights in Cairo, is not happy about the success of the Brotherhood, but felt it was a long time coming.

“It’s a painful but necessary part of the process,” Baghat said. “It could prove beneficial in the long run, in our transition toward democracy. It’s a battle we’ve put off for 70 years – the role of religion in politics. The place of the religious parties in a future polity. And now is the time to have it. Because with power there will come accountability and responsibility. And it’s time that the Islamist activists start answering tough questions they’ve been relieved from answering over past few decades of persecution.”

The biggest test comes now on two fronts for the Muslim Brothers. The first is how far they will go in challenging the current military rulers’ attempts to hold onto power. The other question revolves around their main competitor for constituents, the Salafis: Will the Brotherhood be pulled to the right by the hardline Salafis, or might the Brotherhood help moderate the Salafis’ hardline ideas?

This is part 1 of a series on religion in Egypt. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here.

Under the previous authoritarian regime, religious expressions in public were illegal. Women faced arrest if they wore a veil on the street. Men with beards faced harassment.

Now, Tunisia’s practicing Muslims have begun asserting themselves on the streets, in politics and in the media. After Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s regime fell earlier this year, the new government took over a religious radio station previously owned by a relative of Ben Ali’s. The government selected Iqbal Gharbi to manage the station – called Zeitouna Radio. She hoped to inject a bit more professionalism into the place.

“Zeitouna Radio is in a transitional moment,” she said. “It was a private radio and now it became governmental. And the govt has the right to watch over it and to see what’s going on in there.”

The appointment did not go over well at the station.

Now, Gharbi is no stranger to controversy. As a professor of anthropology with a Phd from the Sorbonne, she’s penned provocative essaid on the role of women in Muslim societies, and on feminism and Islam. But even by those standards, what happened at Zeitouna was unique for her.

The staff went on strike. And for days, a recording of the Koran played in place of the usual programming. There are three on-air preachers who usually have programs during the day, talking morality, ethics, and other religious matters. Ahmed Seelie is one of them.

“We are having a protest because this manager was appointed,” he said. “She’s a woman, and she’s a professor of psychology, but not of religion. So she cannot be the manager of this radio station. Zeitouna radio is focused only on the Koran and religion.”

Sheikh Mohammad (Photo: Ben Gilbert)

“It was humiliating,” Meshfer said. “This is not normal for someone who graduated from the Sorbonne. I’ve been here these past ten months working to try to fix the radio station, trying to get people to work together as a team. And she comes in here and humiliates me.”

Gharbi admits she could have handled some things better, but she maintains the real reason the staff rejects her is her gender. Zeitouna staffers dispute this, and have said the real disagreement is religious versus secular ideology. Gharbi said, “it’s the same thing.”

“Now we’re in a fight between two kinds of people,” Gharbi said, “those who are reading and looking to Koran in a modern way, analyzing it with modern eyes, and those who are more conservative. And they’re against women in general.”

The staff at Zeitouna have never been raging extremists. The fact that they were allowed on the air at all under Ben Ali is testimony to their moderation. But Manouba University Professor Amel Grami said the dispute at Zeitouna radio is an indication of how Tunisia’s Islamists are using the current weakness of the central government to assert their power in the streets, and at the universities.

“In some universities nowadays we have this type of aspect of conflict, because many students from Salafist groups or Islamist groups they refuse to have unveiled woman teaching Islam, or methodology of works, or comparative religion,” Grami said. “They refuse to know even some religious texts from Judaism or Christianity. So they are trying to impose a new subject. So this is the big challenge for our educational institution.”

“Challenge” is putting it mildly. On exam day, Islamist students shut Manouba University down. They demanded the right for women to wear the “Niqab,” a type of dress that covers the entire body, including the face, and also to have a prayer room in the university.

A YouTube video allegedly from the protest shows Islamist students chanting FROM behind the locked gates of the university, as other students look on from outside. Gharbi said her situation at the radio station is indicative of the Islamists asserting power after years of being stifled. She said the Islamist’s aggression, and sensitivity, is a result of Ben Ali’s repressive policies.

“This is the result of the oppression in the period under Ben Ali,” she said. “Because we used to marginalize these Islamists. Now, we need to accept them, and we need to know how to deal with everyone in society. Otherwise this will be a dictatorship again, and we don’t want that.”

Gharbi said she won’t back down. She’s still locked in the battle with the Zeitouna radio station staff over her management position. Zeitouna staffers would still like the newly elected government to appoint another boss.

Port Said, Egypt (Photo: Ben Gilbert)

Mohsen Abdul Ghaid works as a crane operator at the port. He, like many workers in Egypt, has a lot to complain about these days: wages are low, inflation is high, and unemployment stands at more than 20 percent. So, Ghaid knows exactly why he’s going to the polls.

“I’m voting for better living standards, democracy, and freedom of opinion. I’d also like better pay and better health care.”

But few parliamentary candidates have made these issues front and center. Egypt’s workers were a powerful force in bringing down the government of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt’s revolution. But now those workers are feeling the pinch of economic stagnation, as the country’s instability, and the global recession, have put a halt on Egypt’s once growing economy.

And with the Islamic parties winning a majority of votes in the first round of parliamentary elections, the working class doesn’t appear to have anyone who represents their interests.

It’s surprising, since 20 percent of Egyptians live below the poverty level, and Egypt’s 4 million industrial workers have struggled for years to create a national minimum wage. The Egyptian electoral law even allocates 50 percent of the parliamentary seats to workers and farmers.

“We didn’t have time to make our own party, or to organize behind any one candidate and none of the parties represent workers,” said Bakr Hassan Bakr, a labor activist and lawyer in Port Said. “The parties didn’t consider the labor constituency when making their platforms. The workers haven’t even been part of the political debate.”

The apathy toward workers’ issues isn’t a fluke. While there have been unions here for decades, the country’s dictatorial rulers outlawed organizing in the western sense. The state run labor unions were the only ones allowed until just a few years ago. Hossam el-Hamalawy, a leftist activist and member of the newly created Democratic Workers Party, said from the very beginning, state-run unions offered few benefits.

Port Said Apartment Blocks (Photo: Ben Gilbert)

In 1957 Nasser established the general federation of trade unions that has been acting as the state’s arm when it comes to mobilizing the working class, and states arm in controlling the working class. Membership was obligatory, they deduct the fees from your salary every month.

After Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was ousted earlier this year, the new government allowed independent unions; there are now nearly 150. But human rights activist Hossam Bahgat said they’re still in an embryonic stage and were unable to effect the elections.

“They are fighting for better work conditions, for the right to organize independently, and they have been truly consumed in this fight,” Bahgat said. “And I don’t think they have really contributed in the way we expected to on the wider political scene.”

Organization has been key so far in Egypt’s parliamentary elections, and – as expected – religious parties are dominating. The Muslim Brotherhood has won around 40 percent of the vote, and the ultra-conservative Salafi parties has won 25 percent.

Both groups have long-established social and charitable networks.

The parties did pay lip service to workers issues and ran on platforms of social justice that appealed to many poor and blue-collar voters. Bakr Hassan Bakr, the port Said labor activist and lawyer, said the Islamists’ messaging, networking and years of charity work have distorted voters’ ideas about what’s good for them, and for Egypt.

“These are the slogans that every single party uses and everybody’s saying,” Bakr said. “What do they mean by social justice? The Muslim brotherhood uses that vague slogan like they do their charity. The party gives people cooking oil, rice, bread and social justice. But from the leftist perspective, what I view as the honest way, our vision is to give people work, equal chances of getting good jobs, and equality before the law.”

But the Muslim Brotherhood says they do have plenty of plans to improve Egypt’s economy.

“The first thing we would do is to have schools to teach people industry,” said Mohamad Khodari, a Muslim Brotherhood official. “We tried this with a school called Mubarak school. It used to train the students to work in a factory. And then after that they would go work in factories. It worked well. The students learn something and the factories benefit. It creates a partnership between schools and factories so they can serve each other.”

Khadari said the Muslim Brotherhood also wants to modernize the fishing industry, which is a big part of the local economy. The Brotherhood’s can-do business attitude is not surprising. The group is traditionally pro-business but not necessarily pro-worker. They have historically been critical of strikes.

Labor advocates worry a brotherhood dominated parliament wouldn’t support legislation workers have been pushing for since Egypt’s revolution. Among them are new a labor law, which would dismantle the old state run union and enshrine Egypt’s newly independent unions in the country’s legal codes.

Voting in rural Egypt (Photo: Ben Gilbert)

Election officials have announced some results of the initial stage of the country’s recent elections – the first democratic poll in 60 years.

They said 62 percent of those eligible had voted in the parliamentary poll – lower than the authorities’ estimates of 70 percent – but the outcome is not yet clear.

Islamists are expected to dominate – chiefly the Muslim Brotherhood, but a more radical group may also do well. The World’s Ben Gilbert traveled south of Cairo earlier this week to find out why.

Read tweets about the protests in Egypt

He’s not exactly happy that the moderate Islamic political party, Ennahda, is heading the new government. But he doesn’t see it as the end of the world, either.

“We have to give time, to see what happens on next 8 months, and see where the conductor takes the train,” he said.

Jacob Lellouche is one of 1,200 or so Jews in Tunisia’s population of 10 million people. (Photo: Ben Gilbert)

Lellouche is actually more concerned about issues like preserving women’s rights in one of the Arab world’s most secular countries, than about the status of Jews here.

Lellouche spoke at an old, high ceilinged house that he’s turned into the only kosher restaurant in Tunisia. It’s called Mamie Lily, after his 83 year old mother, who’s the chef.

The kitchen staff clean up the silverware and plates after lunch. Two Muslims work in the kitchen, and people from all religions dine here, Lellouche said. In the dining room, the walls are decorated with black and white family pictures and Jewish “Yad,” or Torah pointers. But Lellouche said most Tunisians don’t even know there’s an indigenous Jewish community in Tunisia, which long precedes Christianity or Islam. His desire to change the idea of what is a “Tunisian” spurred him to run for public office.

“A lot of Tunisians think that when you are not Muslim, you cannot run for anything and not contribute to political life in country. You have to live here and be quiet, and it’s enough,” Lellouche said. “But I want to prove to al the Tunisians,, and in this way, I think that I won my election, because I break something in the Tunisians minds. Even if you are Christian or Jewish or Bahia, or without any faith, you can involve yourself in the Tunisian life.”

Lellouche’s restaurant is located in the seaside town of La Goulette, a suburb of Tunis. He said this area used to be home to thousands of Jews.

“In a city like Goulette, all the restaurants were kosher restaurants. Because before the 60’s, there was one mosque, one church, and 14 synagogues,” Lellouche said.

Eighty percent of the town was Jewish. Now, most have now left. Lellouche called the history of Tunisian Jews “big and sad.” Archeological evidence shows Jews have been in Tunisia since at least the third century B-C. The population peaked just after World War II at more than 100,000. It’s been reduced to just over 1000. Most left in the 1950’s and 60’s when violence flared during the Arab-Israeli wars. Other Jews left for better economic opportunities in Europe or the US. But Lellouche said much still remains.

“We have Jewish schools, synagogues, kosher butcher, and kosher restaurant, even if the last one in the country. And for us it is ok,” he said.

Most of the community, and the synagogues and schools, are located on the island of Jerba, in southeastern Tunisia. But Tunis is home to the country’s “Grand Synagogue.” It’s a few blocks from a massive mosque. There have been no instances of violence against Jews since the revolution that overthrew strongman Zine El Abedine Ben Ali in January. But during one of the anti-government marches, there was a demonstration that briefly turned anti-Jewish in front of the synagogue.

The demonstrators chanted “Go Jews, the Army of Mohammad has returned!” for about a minute, then moved on. Roger Bismuth, the head of the Jewish community, said the chants were started by Ben Ali’s undercover police posing as Islamic extremists to make people afraid OF Ennahda and other Islamic political parties. The Ennahda party, which won most seats in the current constitutional assembly, condemned the incident. Since then, Bismuth said, the party’s leaders have gone out of their way to reassure Tunisia’s Jews.

“I was promised by the people from Ennahda,” Bismuth said. “They said ‘no, don’t worry, there will be no change.’”

Bismuth said the Jewish community has not expressed serious fear to him about their future in Tunisia, at least no more so than what he hears from his Muslim friends.

“I’m not worried, as a Jew, but I’m worried as a Tunisian,” Bismuth said, “because our country is in a difficult position. We need to rebuild. If we don’t start having calm, and having tourism comeback here, it’s a big job to make a country start all over again, it’s not that easy. We all share the same worries.”

The 85-year-old Bismuth is no foreigner to anti-Jewish sentiment. He was 16 in 1943when the Germans occupied Tunisia, the only Arab country to be directly ruled by the Nazis during World War 2. He was forced to work in a Nazi labor camp.

In the decades since the war, the strongly secular and tolerant tendencies in Tunisian society have helped to keep the Jewish population here. Though small, it is the largest Jewish community, by percentage, in the Arab World. Gilles Jacob Lellouche hopes things will stay that way. With the fall of Ben Ali’s government came the lifting of restrictions on starting non-governmental and cultural organizations. So, Lelouche has founded a cultural center called “house of memory” to preserve the history of Jews in Tunisia.

And he hopes to open a Jewish museum in Tunis next year.

Many city dwellers have the habit of checking the traffic report before getting in their cars to go somewhere. In northeastern Mexico, some people check their local Twitter hashtags to avoid shootouts.

A shootout in the border city of Matamoros was one of the multiple attacks in four cities on September 27, 2011 in the state of Tamaulipas. Local media made no mention of the violence.

Journalists in some areas are often under severe pressure from the drug cartels not to report the violence. Some government officials also prefer that the media stay silent so as to avoid bad publicity.

The recent gunfights and grenade attacks in Tamaulipas were, however, documented in real time on Twitter using city-specific hash tags.

A Tamaulipas resident who asked to be identied only with his Twitter handle, @MrCruzStar, said the purpose behind these real time reports is to minimize panic by providing information to residents about which parts of the city to avoid. He said timely alerts also allow people to notify relatives who may be on the streets to get out of harm’s way.

It is the kind of information Tamaulipas residents don’t have access to via traditional outlets. Media in the northeastern border state is likely the most censored in all of Mexico. When the split between the Gulf Cartel and its former enforcement wing, Los Zetas, erupted in all-out street battles between rival bands in early 2010, authorities in Tamaulipas dismissed reports on social media sites as “panic” and “collective psychosis”.

@MrCruzStar said when the government began to deny the situation on-the-ground, people started posting video, photo and audio evidence online. That, he said, is when the local government began to acknowledge acts of violence.

A similar situation exists in other parts of Mexico like the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz.

Gilberto Martinez Vera opened a Twitter account in May in order to keep up with security risk reports using the “verfollow” hash tag, which covers the port city of Veracruz. He said he recalls signing in once on his phone after he came out of a movie theater with this family and hailed a taxi. When he saw news of a shooting – as his taxi driver headed for the area – he asked the driver to change course.

Martinez Vera and another social media user, Maria Bravo Pagola, were arrested in late August, for spreading unconfirmed information online about an attack on local schools. Both were charged with terrorism and sabotage.
“When they took me before the judge and I saw the paper, it really scared me,” Vera said. “I thought ‘My God; thirty years for 140 letters! It’s not possible’. It was just too severe, excessive and unfair.”

Veracruz authorities say the information they put on Twitter, which turned out to be a rumor – reportedly caused more than 20 car crashes as parents rushed to pick up their kids from schools. Both of the so-called “Twitter terrorists” say they were only repeating information that had already circulated by phone and in the streets.

As the pair sat in jail, Veracruz lawmakers modified the state’s penal code to make spreading unverified information via social media a criminal offense.

During the floor debate, state representative Karime Aguilera spoke in favor of the bill saying penalties are needed to punish those who damage society by causing alarm, panic, and the unnecessary movement of people and resources.

False information spread online deemed to have caused a disturbance of the peace and provoked damage is now punishable in Veracruz with up to 4 years in jail and a fine equal to more than $4,000.

The two Twitter users were released the same day state lawmakers passed the so-called “Anti-Rumor” law. At least two other Mexican states are reportedly considering similar legislation. While he no longer faces terrorism charges, Gilberto Martinez Vera says the new law is a restriction on free expression.

“I recognize that it’s wrong for someone to act with the intent to cause harm, but that’s not what we did at all,” Vera said. “The #VerFollow hash tag wouldn’t even be necessary if the government would give information or alerts about which areas to avoid due to security issues. There are ways for them to let people know.”

Hours after legislators passed the “anti-rumor” law, gunmen dumped 35 bodies of murder victims near an underpass in a commercial district of Veracruz during rush hour traffic. The news, along with photographic evidence, was first reported on Twitter by local residents using the #Verfollow hashtag.

While criminal violence, media silence, and possible legal penalities can make social media users Iin Mexico feel trapped in a catch-22, the situation does have an unexpected benefit.

Tamaulipas blogger and Twitter user Mr. Cruz Star says the group experience of people looking after each other’s safety has created a sense of civic awareness and community. It’s a sense he hopes will one day be reflected not just online, but in real life as well.

Sgt. Chester Thompson, scans the mountains around Haki Kalay, Afghanistan in May 2010 (Photo: Ben Gilbert)

Following the attacks on the United States on September 11th, 2001, directed by al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, US military operations inside Afghanistan got underway on October 7th 2001. The Taliban leadership which had hosted al-Qaeda in Afghanistan was swiftly ousted but al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden could not be captured or killed at the time. Working with a NATO coalition and UN support, the US has sought to safeguard Afghan nation building efforts in the country.

Ten years later, there are still around 100,000 American troops in Afghanistan and the situation on the ground remains difficult. Parts of the country are under the sway of a resurgent Taliban, especially in the south and east. The country’s second-largest city, Kandahar, remains a hotbed of Taliban support.

In June, President Barack Obama announced that at least 68,000 US troops would remain in Afghanistan after a first tranche of 33,000 withdraw in the following months. If all goes to plan, most US combat troops will be out by 2013.

BBC Afghanistan Coverage
Map of international deployments (ISAF)

On The World:

Afghanistan Working to Rebuild its Shattered Justice System

October 7, 2011

Kabul prison (Photo: Laura Lynch)

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Doing Business in Afghanistan

October 5, 2011

Chelsea Supermarket in Kabul (Photo: Laura Lynch)

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Children Surviving in War Torn Afghanistan

October 3, 2011

Fawad Mohammadi selling his maps in Kabul (Photo: Laural Lynch)

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Graffiti Artists of Kabul

September 30, 2011

Graffiti by Shamsia Hassani (Photo: Shamsia Hassani)

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Women in Afghanistan 10 Years After US Invasion

September 29, 2011

US Army Maj. Bobbie Mayes hands over supplies to a graduate of a two-day beekeeping course. (Photo: US Army)

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Afghanistan’s History of War on Display

September 28, 2011

Kabul Mine Museum (Photo: Iqbal Sapand)

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A Strange Rhythm to Life in Troubled Kabul

September 26, 2011

Laura Lynch interviewing in Kabul, Afghanistan

Widows in War-Torn Afghanistan

September 26, 2011

Afghan woman and her son in Kabul, Afghanistan (Photo: Laura Lynch)

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Afghanistan Links:
• Council on Foreign Relations Interactive: US War in Afghanistan
• Global Post Analysis: 10 years on, Afghanistan isn’t far from where it started
• Photography from Afghanistan on boston.com
• International Security Assistance Force (ISAF): Key Facts and Figures (pdf)

Afghans Mourn The Death Of Rabbani

September 21, 2011

Banner commemorating Rabbani who had been meeting Taliban commanders. (Photo: Laura Lynch)

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Afghanistan’s Peace Process After Rabbani Assassination

September 21, 2011
Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks with Candace Rondeaux, senior analyst for the International Crisis Group in Afghanistan, about the impact of Peace Council head Berhanuddin Rabbani’s assassination on the country’s bid for peace. More …

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Afghan Peace Council Head Rabbani Killed in Bomb Blast

September 20, 2011

Burhanuddin Rabbani (Photo: Pajhwok Afghan News/Wikipedia)

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Insurgents Attack US Embassy in Kabul

September 13, 2011

US Embassy in Kabul (Photo: BBC)

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Taliban Strength and Strategy

September 13, 2011

Caroline Wadhams (Photo: Center for American Progress)

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Rebuilding Kabul

September 6, 2011

Peacock House (Photo: Turquoise Mountain Foundation)

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Obama Orders Afghanistan Drawdown

June 22, 2011
In June, President Barack Obama announced the withdrawal of 10,000 US troops from Afghanistan this year and another 23,000 by September 2012. Speaking from the White House, Mr Obama told Americans that it was “time to focus on nation-building here at home”. More …

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The War In Afghanistan, Nine Years On

Oct. 6, 2010
On the ninth anniversary of US military operations in Afghanistan, Lisa Mullins talked with reporter Ben Gilbert in Kandahar. More …

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October 2010

July 2010

President Obama’s Afghanistan ‘surge’

December 2009
In 2009, President Barack Obama ordered 30,000 more US troops to Afghanistan but warned America would begin to withdraw its military forces by 2011. Soldiers would be deployed as quickly as possible, bringing US troop strength in the country to more than 100,000. More …

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How We Got Here Podcast: Afghanistan’s precarious moment

August 19, 2009
In this edition of her podcast, The World’s Jeb Sharp looks at the history of warlordism in Afghanistan after the return of the notorious Uzbek leader General Abdul Rashid Dostum. More …

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Read tweets about the Afghanistan