Morocco 25th May 2011 March

Morocco 25th May 2011 March

Circle Oil kicks off work in Morocco

International oil and gas explorer Circle Oil (COP) has kicked off surveying work and mobilisation for its new seismic acquisition campaign in Morocco.

In its hunt for drill targets within the Rharb Basin, it will acquire a further 120 square kilometres of 3D data, as well as 24 full fold line kilometres of 2D and is expected to take between four and five months to complete.

The AIM-traded company said it would use the data in identifying and prioritising drilling targets for the third drilling campaign, expected to get underway in early 2012.

Circle Oil, which also has assets in Egypt, Oman and Tunisia, has said newly appointed operations manager Mohamed El Mostaine will initially manage the new seismic acquisition campaign and contribute to both the planning and technical studies to be produced ahead of the drilling campaign.

Chief executive Chris Green said: "We welcome Mohamed to Circle. With his extensive experience and knowledge of North Africa we look forward to his contribution to Circle's growth."

The announcement comes just six weeks after Circle Oil announced that the KSR-11 exploration well in the Sebou Permit, Rharb Basin, has been drilled, logged and successfully tested.

It confirmed a gas discovery in the main Intra Hoot target and secondary targets available for future testing in the Mid and Base Guebbas sands.

Showdown in Morocco

Posted By Hisham al-Miraat  Thursday, May 26, 2011 - 5:59 PM

The makhzen refers to an ancient institution in Morocco -- the extended power apparatus close to the Moroccan monarchy, made up of a network of power and privilege. It allows the King to act as an absolute monarch and the de facto head of the executive. Beneath the give and take of everyday politics, the makhzen has always been the ultimate guarantor of the status quo.   For three months, the pro-democracy youth movement, known as "February 20," has been advocating against that status quo. Protests have not been targeting the monarchy directly, but instead have been urging for reform that would yield a system in which the King reigns but does not rule.

What started as a small group on Facebook earlier this year, has since grown into a nationwide movement made up of a loose coalition of leftists, liberals and members of the conservative Islamist right. Inspired by the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings and powered by new media, the movement convinced hundreds of thousands to take to the streets. The demonstrations held week in, week out, were remarkably peaceful. In response, King Mohammed VI promised a package of constitutional reforms to be submitted to a referendum in June. But as protesters, unconvinced by the King's promise, vow to keep up pressure on the regime, authorities seem increasingly impatient and determined to break up protests violently, paving the way toward escalation and confrontation with the street. The middle class is joining the mass of demonstrators, moving the protests beyond the core of mobilized youth. Their target is the makhzen -- which has become a code word for the monarchy's abuses of power and monopoly over large sectors of the economy.

Protests are not new in Morocco. During the Cold War years, leftists who dared to stand up and denounce the regime's abuses of power saw the wrath of the makhzen befall them. Those who were lucky enough not to have disappeared suffered the worst abuses, or were thrown into secret prisons in the middle of the desert. But in the age of Internet and new information technologies, the regime knows well that its actions are closely watched and that the indiscriminate repression of the "Years of Lead" (a name commonly used in Morocco to refer to the dark era of repression under late King Hassan II) are virtually impossible to hide from the public eye. This partly explains the inconsistency of its handling of the tension in the street.

From the start, the protest movement indentified key areas where reform is much needed: poverty, corruption, injustice and the control of political and economic life by the monarch's close entourage and some privileged families accused of misuse of public funds. The regime's response was tempered and conciliatory at first. In an attempt to quell popular anger, King Mohammed VI gave a speech on March 9 in which he announced the appointment of a committee to revise the Moroccan Constitution, pledging to relinquish parts of his prerogatives, while setting the outlines of permissible change. The status of the monarchy was to remain untouched, while the King was to supervise the reform process.

The proposed reform plan did not convince everyone and many decided to continue their protests. Skeptical youth doubted that the process initiated by the King was compatible with fundamental popular demands, such as the drafting of a whole new constitution by an elected assembly. Protesters have also been calling for the dissolution of the parliament, the dismissal of the current government, the release of all political prisoners, the clear separation of powers and the trial of officials involved in cases of torture and corruption. Amid continuing street protests, the palace offered a series of reforms, including the release of 190 political prisoners, mainly Islamist and human rights activists.

But then on April 28 a terrorist bomb attack hit a popular restaurant in the heart of Marrakech, killing 17 people. The country was plunged into a state of shock. Beyond the unanimous condemnation, the timing of the attack raised many questions. The fear of a security clampdown and a freeze of liberties were the main concerns of pro-democracy advocates. Their fear is justified. The makhzen has traditionally actively sought to nurture an image of stability -- an exception to the turmoil in the Arab world. That strategy has worked for a time for the regime: Morocco is routinely praised by western officials as an ally of the West in a rather hostile region. The country holds an advanced status with the European Union; it has signed a free trade agreement with the U.S.; it is actively cooperating with the Americans in their global "War on Terror," and it enjoys the status of a Major Non-NATO Ally. The specter of terrorism has long been a useful card for gaining external support.

Police violence in recent days has escalated. On May 15, peaceful demonstrators who wanted to protest in front of an alleged secret detention center in Temara (dubbed Guan-Temara by protesters) near the capital Rabat faced repression. A week later, anti-riot police systematically and violently disrupted peaceful gatherings in public squares. This may be the sign that the regime is shifting its attitude toward the street and taking a much more hardline stance. As with other Arab regimes, the makhzen faces a dilemma: if it clamps down hard on peaceful protesters, it risks loosing its reputation as a model of democratic reform in a region often perceived in the West as averse to the liberal ideals of democracy. If it loosens up, then it will have to face the challenge to its own existence posed by a determined and organized street.

The "February 20" youth movement is vowing to keep up street pressure, rejecting the King's offer of token reform. If the regime insists on denying the people their rights of assembly and free expression, then the country will be heading toward the unknown. Against the backdrop of the Arab revolutions, change looks inevitable. It is still in the power of the monarchy to ensure a peaceful transition and at the same time ensure its own survival. The more the makhzen drags its feet, the more it runs the risk of undermining the stability of the country and, at the end of the day, its own existence.

Hisham al-Miraat is the co-founder of Talk Morocco and a contributing author for Global Voices.

Arab Spring needs more supports

The world is transfixed as the unprecedented events in the Middle East and North Africa unfold. And foreign policy aficionados are equally transfixed as the U.S. government maneuvers between its stated values and sometimes short-sighted security policies. With targeted airstrikes and lofty rhetoric supporting some, but not all, of the brave activists seeking respect for their rights, Washington's relations and approach with the region are inconsistent and off the mark.
This is a seminal opportunity that the United States can't afford to miss. The Arab Spring requires a consistent approach to the shared clarion call of freedom from the 300 million-plus people in the 11 countries where significant protests are unfolding.
The U.S. government has a critical role to play in protecting the virtual town square. Access to Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and the Internet fueled and documented the Arab Spring. But since January, the governments of Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Libya, Syria, and United Arab Emirates have either tried to restrict Internet access or have detained bloggers. The Obama administration should step up its efforts to promote expanded and unrestricted Internet access and forcefully condemn efforts by other governments to undermine this freedom.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has been a forceful advocate for women's rights her entire career. The Obama administration can build on that legacy by consistently and unequivocally insisting that the only credible reform processes will be those that fully integrate women. Washington should also press the Senate to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, a treaty that's already in force in 186 countries.
Words and actions are important, but money talks. Congress should fully fund Obama's foreign aid budget, which funds programs that alleviate extreme poverty, prevent violence against women, and support democratic institutions. At just 1 percent of the entire federal budget, it's a smart and cost-effective way to promote the rule of law and human rights in a region fighting for those rights.

The so-called Twitter revolution didn't happen overnight. Brave human-rights defenders have been working for years, under threats, harassment, and worse. Since mid-January, Amnesty International has issued more than 48 global appeals to protect the people who have peacefully advocated for change in at least 11 countries during the Arab Spring. The U.S. government should support human rights groups that protect activists' safety and security, and speak out strongly when human rights defenders are harassed or detained.

Not since the Berlin Wall's demise have core U.S. values been on the line like this. There's much that Washington can do to have a powerful, positive impact in the Middle East and North Africa. The Obama administration's diplomacy should be as bold as the extraordinary events unfolding in the Middle East and North Africa.

Morocco's uphill struggle for media reform

The February 20 movement in Morocco has had to deal with state censorship while international media attention focused elsewhere, as the Arab Spring unfolds [EPA]

Source:

Al Jazeera

On February 17, as Egypt became the second Arab country to topple a dictator in just one month's time, the Arab Spring seemed eternal and unstoppable. Young activists in several countries across the region, believing that anything was possible, put forth calls for demonstrations on YouTube and Facebook, emulating their Tunisian and Egyptian counterparts before them.

On February 20 - just three days after the fall of Mubarak - thousands of Moroccans poured into the streets of Rabat, Tangier, Casablanca, and elsewhere, responding to calls from civil society and human rights groups. A viral video campaign created by a group called 'Democracy and Freedom Now' just a week prior outlined protesters' demands: an increase in the minimum wage, labour rights, minority rights, education reform, and equality.

Initially, the protests garnered significant international attention. But as the world's attention turned first to Libya, then the rest of the region, and more recently - particularly in the Francophone world, the Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair - continuing demonstrations in Morocco have fallen low on the priority list of mainstream media, leaving supporters of the February 20 movement flailing. A terrorist attack on a popular Marrakesh cafe has complicated the matter, giving Morocco a reason to beef up security and justify crackdowns.

Nevertheless, the protests have indeed continued over the past three months, with large-scale demonstrations attracting thousands on March 20, April 24, and May 8 in cities across the country. And while the sizable Moroccan blogosphere has historically been only marginally political, citizen journalism has found a strong point of entry in the absence of mainstream coverage, emboldened by the emergence of professional journalists online, and with the sudden courage to criticise the monarchy.

That kind of fortitude is new in Morocco, where publications have been shut down and journalists blacklisted for crossing the country's three red lines: Islam, the Western Sahara, and the monarchy. Though the Moroccan government blocks only a few websites, bloggers have in the past been arrested for content posted online.

One citizen media initiative that arose out of the protests is Mamfakinch. Co-founded by blogger Hisham Almiraat (the site's other bloggers write anonymously), a Moroccan doctor who lives and works in France, Mamfakinch is a collective blog dedicated to countering what they view as propaganda from state-run media, with free access to information at the core of their work.

Almiraat, who on his blog recently called this a "make or break moment" for Morocco, says that "at some point, the official news agency declared that the protests were cancelled. None of that was true." That spurred Almiraat and his partners to start a new platform. Studying the work of friends in Tunisia and Egypt, they identified Tunisian news collective Nawaat.org as a "gold standard for curating", says Almiraat, "so we decided to create an alternative media entity."

Citizen journalism often serves as a major source for mainstream media. Nawaat's reporting during the Tunisian uprising often help inform major publications, as did the reporting of bloggers and Twitter users in Egypt in elsewhere. Almiraat says that his collective "hopes to serve as a link between citizen reporters and journalists in the mainstream media. We believe that both citizen and traditional media can serve the cause of free access to information and free expression."

Like Nawaat, Mamfakinch uses the relatively small-scale San Francisco based platform Posterous, which allows users to post via multiple methods, including by e-mail, making it filtering-resistant. At a recent event held at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Sachin Agarwal, founder of CEO of Posterous, noted that they recognise their role in the revolution, and have worked to ensure that sites remain accessible; for example, they have developed mitigation techniques to protect against distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.

Despite the secure hosting and role model, Mamfakinch and sites like it in Morocco are still up against considerable challenges, from the fear of detention to the sheer fact that the world's eyes are elsewhere.  The question for citizen journalists, then, is how to sustain global attention during times of protest. It is a question that Tunisians and Egyptians fortunately didn't have to face as they worked to bring down their regimes; Ben Ali fell in less than a month, Mubarak fled after twenty three days. Nevertheless, citizen journalists and activists in Tunisia and Egypt, currently working to ensure the change they worked so hard for truly happens, struggle for attention and cohesion as well.

The model that Mamfakinch aspires to- promoting local viewpoints that will later be amplified by larger media -only works when the mainstream media is paying attention. As Almiraat points out: "The Moroccan regime has nurtured the reputation of stability and is very sensitive to its image abroad."

With that in mind, it will be very difficult for citizen media to captivate a global audience on its own. What is needed is a trust model in which traditional media - from television to print journalism - focuses not just on social media like Twitter and Facebook, but also works with trusted citizen journalism sites to get the local scoop. As mainstream media moves further from a model in which professional journalists are embedded in foreign countries and fixers become virtually a thing of the past, mainstream media would do well to look toward innovative initiatives that combine original reporting from local experts with more opinionated content.

Jillian York is director for International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. She writes a regular column for Al Jazeera focusing on free expression and Internet freedom. She also writes for and is on the Board of Directors of Global Voices Online.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

Ancient Predator Lasted Longer Than Thought

By Jesse Emspak | May 26, 2011 10:54 AM EDT

A lobster-like animal that was the biggest predator of its kind survived much longer and gota  lot bigger than anyone thought.


Based on a set of fossils found in Morocco, paleontologists from Yale University found that anomalocaridids, survived 30 million years past the date when they were originally thought to have died out.
Anomalocaridids are arthropods, related to crabs, insects and spiders. The creatures appeared between 540 and 488 million years ago, in what is called the "Cambrian explosion." The period is so named because at that time there was the sudden appearance of many major animal groups that exist today (and a few that no longer do).


Previously, scientists thought that the anomalocaridids hadn't survived past the end of the Cambrian, though during that 62 million-year span they diversified into many different types. The fossils that were found seemed to show that the biggest they ever got was about two feet long, but the new discovery is a creature that was about 3 feet. The fossil the Yale team found dates to the Ordovican, a period that followed the Cambrian which was also marked by a lot of diversification.
Anomalocaridids had two spiny, tentacle-like front limbs, with the front half of their bodies covered in a shell and the rear half segmented. They also had a series of blade-like filaments on their backs, which might have functioned as gills. They are rather like shrimp or lobsters, though they appear long before either one. Another major difference is modern crustaceans have gills that are on their undersides, rather than on their backs.
Most paleontologists think the two limbs would snag prey which was then drawn into a circular mouth that was lined with plates. "It is something like a combination of a parrot's beak and a nutcracker," said Derek Briggs, director of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and one of the lead researchers. It was probably one of the single largest predators in the world at the time - there were not yet any fish big enough to tackle it.
Anomalocaridids aren't ancestors to anything living, as they are a branch of the arthropod family that died out, much like the trilobites (who they shared the seas with).


The specimens are just part of a new trove of fossils that includes thousands of examples of soft-bodied marine fauna dating back to the early Ordovician period, 488 to 472 million years ago. Briggs said such finds are rare. "Only about 40 percent of species have shells that fossilize," he said. Anomalocaridids - like modern lobsters and horseshoe crabs - had a shell made of chitin, which decays unless it gets buried in silt very quickly. "The rest of the animals don't have anything like that." That, Briggs said, means a lot of the time you only get a very incomplete picture of what life was like millions of years ago. The animals found in Morocco inhabited a muddy sea floor, and were trapped by sediment that buried them and preserved their soft bodies.

Army Medics Conduct African Lion 11 MEDEVAC to Guelmim, Morocco

By Specialist Cody Campana
301st Public Affairs Detachment

CAP DRAA, Morocco, May 25, 2011 — Soldiers of the 848th Forward Surgical Team participating in exercise African Lion 11 organized a rehearsal medical evacuation with the Moroccan military May 8, 2011. 

Exercise African Lion is a joint exercise involving U.S. Army, Navy and Marines, and the Royal Moroccan Armed Forces that consists of peacekeeping operations, humanitarian civic assistance operations and construction projects. 

The rehearsal was part of the 848th's mission to "conduct level-two care for Marines, the Navy, and soldiers, and to provide trauma support in order to stabilize them, or if unstable to make it possible to move them to a hospital," said Staff Sergeant Darren Ladouceur, an Army nurse and detachment sergeant of the 848th FST. 

"The purpose for the MEDEVAC rehearsal was to get an orientation of a Moroccan helicopter, and to get the soldiers and medical providers on the ground familiar with the helicopter and how we can load the patient and best organize our medical providers in route," said Ladouceur. 

If the case of an injury, the MEDEVAC helicopter would take the casualties to Guelmim, about 200 kilometers from Cap Draa. Guelmim has a military hospital, which employs medical specialists, general surgeons and emergency medical technicians, where they can give anesthesia and perform surgical procedures, said Lieutenant Colonel Ali S. Zaza, a general and trauma surgeon with the 848th FST since 1986, a Syrian-American also serving as an Arabic-English translator in the course of the exercise. 

After inspecting the helicopter, a Huey, some soldiers and Navy personnel took a ride around the surrounding area. Directly after the flight and rehearsal, Zaza and a group of other medical personnel traveled to the nearby Moroccan military base. 

"We went to the battalion aid station. They can take care of lacerations, provide immediate treatment of major injuries, and can tracheal incubate. They could administer a lot of medications intravenously for nausea, vomiting, pain, antibiotics and I.V. fluids," Zaza said. "The battalion aid station has everything you would expect a battalion aid station in the United States to have." 

While inspecting the aid station, Zaza interacted closely with his Moroccan counterparts. 

"I enjoyed it. I had a chance to speak to them in Arabic, in many situations where I thought I was helpful. It was a chance for me to use the language and take a look at the culture," he said. "The [Moroccan] surgeon here seems to be very knowledgeable. He seems to be very good." 

Zaza, an Army reservist, is a general surgeon as a civilian and has been deployed as an Army surgeon. "I have been deployed four times, twice to Iraq, once to Germany and once to Louisiana," he said. "The two deployments to Iraq were during combat operations." 

Zaza said his civilian career benefits from his Army experiences because there are various types of injuries in both fields. 

"Military injuries from high speed projectiles are always different than civilian trauma situations," he said. "It [the military] adds to your scope of knowledge and experience." 

So far, exercise African Lion 11 has had no major injuries, but the 848th are vigilant and continue to train just in case. 

"The medics on the ground are the first responders ready to help every soldier, sailor, Marine, or Moroccan military member that may be injured," Ladouceur said. "It is very important that we stay ready." 

Source: U.S. Army Africa