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An Arabic net address ending has become the first to go live as part of the rollout of more than 1,000 new generic top-level domain (gTLD) name suffixes. The first websites ending in شبكة. - pronounced dot shabaka, and meaning web - went online a day ahead of schedule.

The DotShabaka Registry - the Dubai-based business running the شبكة. gTLD - announced that both its own homepage and that of the United Arab Emirates telecoms provider Etisalat had started using its new suffix, at a conference in Dubai.

"It's monumental, in my opinion, because it means the internet finally speaks in Arabic," Yasmin Omer, general manager of the DotShabaka Registry told the BBC.

A successful Canadian-founded tech company may have helped the Egyptian government block upwards of 34,000 internet domains in Egypt, as part of a co-ordinated state effort to silence opposition during Egypt’s constitutional referendum.

Citizen Lab’s investigation found “devices matching … Sandvine PacketLogic fingerprints were being used to block political, journalistic, and human rights content” in Egypt. Sandvine ultimately denied Citizen Lab’s findings, characterizing the research as “false, misleading, and wrong.” Citizen Lab, however, continued to express confidence in its conclusions, which it claimed had been confirmed by two independent peer reviews.

internet-monitoring organization Netblocks observed the blockage of Batel’s website in realtime. After 12 hours, the website was completely blocked on all four major Egyptian internet-service providers. The speed and efficiency with which the site was blocked rivals censorship regimes only in China and Turkey.

This film industry has been coined Kannywood, after the city it originated in. According to statistics from the National Film and Video Censors Board, its movies make up about 30 percent of the films produced by the Nigerian-based film industry popularly called Nollywood, which is often portrayed as the third-largest in the world, after Hollywood and Bollywood. Kannywood even has its own TV channel, Africa Magic Hausa, showing Hausa-language movies on satellite TV.

stricter guidelines, such as the banning of married women from acting, while also requiring all women in the industry to have a male guardian who would be legally responsible if their ward broke the rules

Their tone is devoutly Muslim, though, and quite often the very last line of the end credits is "Glory be to God". Many of these movies also denounce the hypocrisy of the ruling classes who preach piousness in public while sinning in private.

After naming a few prominent valide sultans — the title of the legal mother of the sultan — from the Ottoman era, Erdogan said, “Valide sultans have been pioneers of their generation and examples to our mothers.” Challenging the Orientalist portrayal of the harem as a place where ambitious women battled with the power of their sexuality, Erdogan praised the harem, saying, “For the members of the Ottoman family, the harem was a school. It was a center of education, where women were prepared for life and organized volunteer activities. This household was led by the valide sultans.”

Indeed, despite harsh criticism by AKP elites, series like “Magnificent Century,” about the lives of prominent sultans and their lovers, such as Hurrem or Kosem Sultan, have become extremely popular in Turkey. These shows have also generated a niche for neo-Ottoman goods. Scents named after powerful women of the Ottoman court along with themed bathrobes, bathroom accessories, jewelry and even hair coloring are being sold. Ottoman-era aphrodisiacs to impress your partner have made a strong comeback and can be found in mainstream markets. Most of these products are not designed for Westerners fascinated by the ways of the East but for contemporary Turks. Today, one also has the option of partaking in the palace experience according to one's budget and tastes. For example, Les Ottomans, a fancy boutique and hotel on the Bosporus, offers rooms decorated to provide the unique atmosphere of the eras and tastes of 10 different sultans. US Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump has even visited the hotel.

While journalists working for pro-government media outlets rigorously tried to prove the harem’s educational value, others asked whether the harem could be called a school simply because the residents were educated in certain trades. Ozlem Kumrular, a historian and author of the book “Kosem Sultan,” about the prominent valide sultan, tweeted an image of a painting depicting nude women around a pool, and wrote, “The artist of this harem painting is the last caliph, Abdulmecid. Odd but true.” It is interesting to note that although Kumrular’s message received hundreds of retweets, no backers of Erdogan’s praise of the harem tried to explain the rationale behind the painting. Most of the replies were satirical. For instance, one read, “Could [Sultan] Abdulmecid know the harem better than Mrs. Erdogan? I wonder what class this was.”

The once-embattled ancien regime is back with full force. Not only to consolidate its power in the present, but also to control the past. Yet, since the outbreak of the January 25 Revolution, besides the Islamists, two distinct communities were – and still are – in conflict, among other things, over the revolution’s nature and principles: the regime and the revolutionary activists. What follows is an exploration of these communities’ strategies to permeate the people’s collective consciousness and to enforce their own narratives of the revolution and its memory, across three different domains: Egypt’s public space; Egypt’s online sphere; and outside Egypt.

in the revolution’s early years, Egypt’s public space was representative of the young activists’ creativity and rebellion

Through graffiti on walls, images, texts and structures, the activists created from the country’s streets and squares memorials to keep the memory of the brave martyrs as well as the revolution’s ideals alive. Walls of Freedom, a 2014 book by Hamdy and Stone, offers thorough insights into the revolution and its artistic works. Young Egyptians’ independent cultural activities, including concerts and exhibitions, played a role in enhancing the historical narrative of the pro-revolution community.

Aux dires des témoins de l’époque, le chef de l’Etat tunisien entretenait un rapport très ambivalent avec «sa création», l’ATCE. Elle faisait régulièrement office de punching-ball, et le président, dans ses moments de colère, ne cessait de répéter qu’elle avait échoué dans le domaine de la communication politique. En même temps, Ben Ali se refusait obstinément à changer sa manière de faire, rechignait à s’exprimer, refusait les interviews, et refusait que d’autres ne parlent à sa place.

«Avec internet, les réseaux sociaux et l’explosion des chaînes satellitaires, tout décalage entre l’image et la réalité est durement sanctionné. Le public international ne peut plus être dupe. La communication devient propagande si elle n’arrive plus à expliquer les réalités de façon intelligente, crédible et moderne. Il ne sert à rien d’accabler les agences étrangères qui ont travaillé pour son compte. Une agence ne peut pas inventer ses propres éléments de langage en matière de communication politique, ces éléments émanent de l’autorité politique. C’est encore plus vrai dans le cas d’une agence de communication officielle. Il ne faut pas confondre messager et message.»

Pop music in the region today truly represents the Westernization of classical Arabic music defined by traditional elements of improvisation (where songs often last as long as an hour), instruments native to the region like the oud, and maqam, which is a system of melodies and pitches native to Arabic music. Classical Arabic artists like Oum Kulthum and Asmahan thrived on this style and are considered icons of Arabic music because of their ability to evoke emotion through their artistry.But in conjunction with colonization, Arabic music began to shift from its classical roots with the Cairo Congress of Arab Music in 1932, organized by King Fuad of Egypt. This symposium brought together renowned composers and ethnomusicologists from the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe who created a set of proposals for the modernization and standardization of Arabic music, one of which was the incorporation of European instruments into Arabic ensembles because “such instruments possessed tremendously varied, expressive means and depictive powers.”The other notable event that pushed this modernization further was the introduction of the phonograph to the region. Phonographs could only play songs for a limited duration, making the traditional improvisation and hour-long running times of classical Arabic music nearly impossible.The final nail in the coffin was the burgeoning film industry in the 1950s and 1960s, particularly in Egypt, the cultural epicenter for creative output in the Middle East and North Africa. Movies were heavily Westernized at the time, forcing directors and producers to modify accompanying music to incorporate Western-style elements in their instruments and duration.

a new movement is rising in North Africa.Rappers and emcees from the region are boldly approaching hip-hop and the larger Arab music landscape by exploring taboo themes and proactively deconstructing societal markers of North African identity. They are experimenting with beat production and dialect as they go about creating a space for their music and for these conversations to be held in a public domain. This is not a knock on the Levantine or Khaleeji rap scenes; there are many artists who are doing this currently. But North African emcees are using their lyrical flows and melodic rhythms to grapple with the essential question of identity. The music sounds fresh and breathes new life into the pop-dominant Arabic music scene.

A vast majority of North African rappers primarily use their regional Arabic dialects and French in their music. But many artists, specifically North African artists based in Europe, also use Spanish, Dutch, and English on their albums. A few artists will even use all four languages in one song.

Wrongful arrests, an expanding surveillance dragnet, defamation and deep-fake pornography are all actually existing dangers of so-called “artificial intelligence” tools currently on the market. That, and not the imagined potential to wipe out humanity, is the real threat from artificial intelligence.

Beneath the hype from many AI firms, their technology already enables routine discrimination in housing, criminal justice and health care, as well as the spread of hate speech and misinformation in non-English languages. Already, algorithmic management programs subject workers to run-of-the-mill wage theft, and these programs are becoming more prevalent.

Corporate AI labs justify this posturing with pseudoscientific research reports that misdirect regulatory attention to such imaginary scenarios using fear-mongering terminology, such as “existential risk.”

while offering condolences is part of the Islamic faith, a question remains as to what motivates both the need to issue these statements as well as the urgency with which they were thrust into the public domain. For British Muslims, as we know, citizenship has always been conditional. And now, counter-terror and anti-extremism measures such as Prevent work hard to ensure that Muslims stay in line. So an occasion such as the Queen’s death isn’t an opportunity for sincere reflection or honesty – rather it serves as a test of loyalty.

maybe the effect of Prevent’s surveillance and thought-criminalisation is so insidious that Muslims have internalised it, causing them to believe unquestioningly that these are their true feelings

Prevent, and the associated fear of counter-terror surveillance, has caused a throttling of Muslims’ collective and individual voices. Britain wants Muslim immigrants to embrace being British, but without allowing them the rights and freedoms to which white British people have a claim, including freedom of speech

The British government ran a secret “black propaganda” campaign for decades, targeting Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia with leaflets and reports from fake sources aimed at destabilising cold war enemies by encouraging racial tensions, sowing chaos, inciting violence and reinforcing anti-communist ideas, newly declassified documents have revealed.

The campaign also sought to mobilise Muslims against Moscow, promoting greater religious conservatism and radical ideas. To appear authentic, documents encouraged hatred of Israel.

The Information Research Department (IRD) was set up by the post-second world war Labour government to counter Soviet propaganda attacks on Britain. Its activities mirrored the CIA’s cold war propaganda operations and the extensive efforts of the USSR and its satellites.

MAM was a concrete effort to prepare and groom regime-sponsored municipal election candidates. Mandhour and other MAM leaders did not hide it and were openly proclaiming the mission of building a “politically aware” and “responsible” community of young leaders qualified to serve on municipal councils.

the regime padded MAM with the special recipe MWP lacked: the experience and political networks of the former NDP. In other words, for the first time in his reign, Sisi was seriously reckoning with the traditional political classes he once dismissed. The president realized that for the NYP to survive outside of its traditional domains of scripted conventions and invitation-only conferences and to assert influence in formal political life, it would need to work and compromise with the very political notables and insiders he had long shunned

The slogan, Min Agl Masr, riffed off the phrase “‘ashan Masr,”عشان مصر colloquial for MAM, which Sisi frequently invoked whenever pleading with the public to show sacrifice or patience (or both) for the country’s greater good. It was catchy and it caught on until it became the regime’s de facto brand. And as the election season neared, MAM launched a campaign in support of Sisi’s presidential bid under the banner “Kolena Ma‘ak Min Agl Masr” كلنا معاك من اجل مصر (“We Are All with You for the Sake of Egypt) or All-MAM for short. Two years later, as it prepared for parliamentary elections, the regime ended up naming its own sponsored list “The National List-MAM.” The slogan was everywhere, so much so that it even became the title of multiple songs, including ones by Shaaban Abdel Rahim, Mohamed ‘Adawiyya, and Mohamed Fouad.