Climatic catastrophes lend colour to the Arab press, while Egyptian pundits dwell on even less ethereal subjects such as sex, write Gamal Nkrumah and Mohamed El-Sayed

Downpours, outpours

Floods and the incompetence of Arab governments, the US presidential elections and racial discrimination in the Arab world interested the pundits

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Humanitarian relief assistance in Arab countries, assert the pundits, ends up cascading in government coffers. What Arabs hope for after the torrential torrents swept away ancient settlements and villages in Arab countries as far afield as Yemen and Morocco is a more coordinated governmental response to such natural disasters. The performance of the respective governments to the flood victims was deemed inadequate and was received angrily by a high contemptuous public.

The row over relief to the victims of floods in Yemen and Morocco is now over the most appropriate way to mitigate the long-term impact of the catastrophe. Floods in Morocco and Yemen and drought in Syria preoccupied the commentators for a change. Indeed, climate change has become a hot topic of discussion among Arab political commentators. Characteristically, Arab writers have focussed on political matters such as the Arab-Israeli conflict, the American occupation of Iraq and the political situation in Lebanon.

Most of the gloom has been widely unpredicted. The torrential downpours took the unsuspecting Arab countries concerned by surprise, and the political commentators left it to government officials to pick up the pieces. In actual effect, the hapless victims of Mahra and Hadramout, the two most devastated Yemeni provinces, and northern Morocco and northwestern Algeria were left no choice but to etch out a meagre living in water-clogged ravines of a dirty brown colour wrinkled with crevasses and dotted with unsightly puddles. These eyesores threaten the health and livelihood of millions.

The Yemeni paper Al-Tagheer poured scorn over the controversy concerning the real number of victims of the floods in Hadramout and Mahra. "The number of victims put forward by officials and municipalities, humanitarian relief organisations and donor agencies are contradictory and do not add up," the paper noted. Al-Tagheer also observed that the price of food and commodities have skyrocketed in the Hadrami provincial capital of Mukallah. Food shortages have enraged the desperate public.

However, the paper had space to tackle another serious social ill in Yemeni society: racial discrimination. The celebrated Yemeni poet Ali Al-Maquarri warned that Yemen's blacks, pejoratively called Al-Akhdam (servants), are ill- treated and suffer a fate far worse than slavery and that they have to contend with systematic racial discrimination. His novel "Black tastes, black odours", was received with much critical acclaim in his native Yemen and elsewhere in the Arab world. Al-Maquarri's views, the paper said, will hopefully prompt others -- media workers, writers and human rights activists -- in the Arab world to be more sensitised to the cause of blacks.

The American presidential poll still remains a major preoccupation of the pundits. Most Arab commentators favour the black Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama. The white Republican presidential hopeful John McCain is not the most popular American politician in Arab circles. Arab bias in favour of Obama is ironic for Arab societies in which racism prevails.

Writing in the London-based daily Al-Hayat, Ghassan Cherbel argued that "people are counting the days to see George W Bush out of the White House. The weeks are passing so slowly, while people are glued to TV screens [to watch the presidential race.]." However, he argued that "Bush should not be blamed for all the misfortunes of the world. There have been some crises that emerged before he took office, and there have been some conflicts that erupted not because of his uncalculated way of leading America and the world. However, the man who took the responsibility of the most powerful country in the world behaved like a pixilated driver and entered into adventures that could have been avoided." He added, "the picture would have been totally different had he not committed the grave mistake of invading Iraq. By waging two wars [in Iraq and Afghanistan] he exhausted the American economy." He argued that, "Bush's policies wore out America and the world. "Therefore, the world looks for a window [of hope] in the American elections and pins high hopes on Obama in creating less tension in international relations." Cherbel argued that "Bush's departure from the White House will be a good thing for the peoples of the Middle East, for some extremist forces are living on criticising his policies, and some governments [in the region] justified their dereliction of their duties by spending their efforts and time on warding off the neocon machinations."

Cherbel added that, "we wait for Obama hoping that he offers us such a window... however, we should not pin high hopes, for the first task of the coming US president will be defending American interests. America has never been a charity, and never will be."

The challenges facing the Arab-American voters interested several pundits in the Arab world. In a feature published in the daily London- based Pan-Arab Asharq Al-Awsat, the writer reported that "the economic situation tops the priorities of the Arab-American voters." The writer added that "the mortgage crisis and loss of jobs in Michigan are guiding voters to [Obama]. Most Arab-Americans blame the economic deterioration on Bush."

The paper added that "Arab-Americans are infatuated with Obama and hope that he understands their fears."

What other Arab commentators insinuated in their analytical pieces was that the Middle Eastern policy of the US is highly unlikely to change whether Obama or McCain wins.