Press release archive: About NPG - 0 views
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Nature Middle East launches today at www.nature.com/naturemiddleeast. The new website from Nature Publishing Group (NPG) showcases scientific and medical research from the Arabic-speaking Middle East region and is continuously updated with articles in English and Arabic. The King Abdullah International Medical Research Center (KAIMRC), at King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences (KSAU-HS), Saudi Arabia, is sponsoring Nature Middle East.
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"We are proud to be launching Nature Middle East, which reflects our growing commitment to a region with a proud scientific history and a promising future," comments David Swinbanks, Publishing Director for NPG. "We believe this launch is particularly timely, as nations from across the region increase their investment in science and medical research facilities and programmes. Nature Middle East will be the place to keep in touch with these exciting new developments."
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Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestinian territories, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen
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El Khabar - 0 views
ONI Releases 2009 Middle East & North Africa Research | OpenNet Initiative - 0 views
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While not all countries in the Middle East and North Africa filter the Internet, censorship across the region is on the rise, and the scope and depth of filtering are increasing. Testing has revealed political filtering to be the common denominator across the region; however, social filtering is on the rise.
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Based on ONI testing results, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, and the West Bank do not currently filter any material; however, none of those are without regulations.
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Bahrain, Iran, Syria and Tunisia have the strictest political filtering practices in the region.
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The West should focus on North Africa - 0 views
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This week, Algeria's president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, will compete for a third term in office. Unlike in 2004, Mr. Bouteflika will run virtually uncontested. The opposition is boycotting because, according to two-time presidential contender Said Saadi, the elections are a "nihilistic folly." Indeed, Bouteflika is only able to run because he engineered a constitutional amendment abolishing term limits.
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Disturbingly, the Algerian experience appears to be echoing across North Africa. In Tunisia, where elections are slated for the fall, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's political style remains highly authoritarian. The US State Department 2008 Human Rights Report, for example, expressed dismay at the "severe restrictions on freedoms of speech, press, assembly, and association" reflected in Mr. Ben Ali's approval ratings. Even in Morocco, where King Mohammad VI has some popular legitimacy, record lows in voter turnouts in 2007 suggest increased apathy and disillusionment with the voting process.
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While the departure of Ben Ali and Bouteflika may not be imminent, in the absence of legitimate institutions, successors will enter their offices with even less credibility and historical legitimacy, potentially fueling further disaffection.
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BBC NEWS | Europe | 'Al-Qaeda-link' Cern worker held - 0 views
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Police believe they had been in contact over the internet with people linked to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and had been planning attacks in France.
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the researcher, whom it did not identify, was working for an outside institute and had no contact with anything that could have been used for terrorism.
Rachid Taha, Singer Who Fused Rock and Algerian Folk, Dead at 59 - Rolling Stone - 0 views
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Rachid Taha, the French-Algerian singer best known for fusing rock with raï, a form of traditional Algerian folk, has died from a heart attack at age 59
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Singing in both English and Arabic, Taha rose to prominence as the frontman of Carte de Sejour, citing the Clash as a chief influence. He famously met the band in 1981 before a gig in Paris and handed them a demo tape – an event that Taha believes may have inspired the Clash’s 1982 hit “Rock the Casbah.”
Dune: An accomplished escape into the realm of cinematic Arab appropriation - 0 views
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the most overriding issue, for this critic at least, is the total lack of significant Middle Eastern and North African representation in the cast despite the very clear influence of MENA, Islamic and Arab culture on the desert planet and this universe in the original book and this film. I’ve written before about the importance of Fremen characters being played by MENA actors not least because their language is mostly made up of Arabic words, like “Mahdi'' (‘the rightly guided one”) and “Lisan al Gaib” (“the voice from the outer world”), respectively. Though it's notable that jihad, the phrase frequently used in the book, has now been replaced with "crusade" and "holy war".
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One can easily observe the Bedouin and Amazigh inspiration behind this nomadic community on the page and the screen, through the Fremen’s penchant for Keffiyeh, group feeling unity and strength in their ability to survive in such a dangerous environment. These ideas, as well as the cyclical nature of dynasties and civilisations, were reflected in Tunisian sociologist, philosopher and historian Ibn Khaldun’s 14th Century book of Islamic History, “The Muqaddimah”, which underpinned much of Herbert’s sci-fi series.
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Jordan’s Wadi Rum and Abu Dhabi in the UAE provided the vast beauty and brutality of this fictional desert planet landscape. The pale, flat-roofed buildings of Arrakeen, the planet’s seat of power which, in the book, was transferred from the city of Carthag (sound familiar?) under Harkonnen rule, is reminiscent of North African architecture. If the overarching storyline about Imperialist colonisers stealing a powerful fuel from the native population doesn't remind you of a certain 20th Century Western conflict with the Middle East, the Knights Templar colour scheme of the Sardaukar certainly hints at a 12th Century one. A holy war no less!
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The dwindling promise of popular uprisings in the Middle East - 0 views
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The scenes emerging from Iran today elicit a mix of reactions across a region still reeling from the dark legacy of the “Arab Spring,” which itself came on the heels of the “Green Movement” protests in the wake of Iran’s 2009 presidential election. Many Arabs cannot help but recall the sense of hope that reverberated from Tunisia to Yemen, only to be shattered by unyielding repression, war, and the resurgence of authoritarianism. Subsequent protest waves, including those that began in 2019 in Lebanon, Iraq, and Sudan, were similarly met with brutality, co-optation, and dissolution.
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Over a decade on from the Arab uprisings, the path toward democracy and freedom for youth across the Middle East has become more treacherous than ever, as liberation movements find themselves fighting against stronger, smarter, and more entrenched regimes that have adapted to modern challenges to their domination.
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Technologies that many hoped would help to evade state censorship and facilitate mobilization have been co-opted as repressive surveillance tools.
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A New History for a New Turkey: What a 12th-grade textbook has to say about T... - 1 views
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Rather than simply serving as crude propaganda for Erdoğan’s regime, Contemporary Turkish and World History aspires to do something more ambitious: embed Turkey’s dominant ideology in a whole new nationalist narrative. Taken in its entirety, the book synthesizes diverse strands of Turkish anti-imperialism to offer an all-too-coherent, which is not to say accurate, account of the last hundred years. It celebrates Atatürk and Erdoğan, a century apart, for their struggles against Western hegemony. It praises Cemal Gürsel and Necmettin Erbakan, on abutting pages, for their efforts to promote Turkish industrial independence. And it explains what the works of both John Steinbeck [Con Şıtaynbek] and 50 Cent [Fifti Sent] have to say about the shortcomings of American society.
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Turkey has long had competing strains of anti-Western, anti-Imperialist and anti-American thought. In the foreign policy realm, Erdogan’s embrace of the Mavi Vatan doctrine showed how his right-wing religious nationalism could make common cause with the left-wing Ulusalcı variety.[5] This book represents a similar alliance in the historiographic realm, demonstrating how the 20th century can be rewritten as a consistent quest for a fully independent Turkey.
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Ankara is currently being praised for sending indigenously developed drones to Ukraine and simultaneously criticized for holding up Sweden and Finland’s NATO membership. Contemporary Turkish and World History sheds light on the intellectual origins of both these policies
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