Al Jazeera English - IRAN: AFTER THE REVOLUTION - Iranian Arabs seek equal rights - 0 views
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Ahwazi Arabs have not been included in Iran's economic development and prosperity derived from oil exports, according to a 2007 Human Rights report published by civil rights organisations in Europe in coordination with the Belgium–based Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation.
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I do not think there is an official will to marginalise Iranian Arabs or deny them their basic rights
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administrative inefficiencies are often wrongly blamed on religious or ethnic discrimination
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First draft of the 'Başbuğ doctrine' - 0 views
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İlker Başbuğ suggested ways to build healthy relations between the military and the government, used the phrase “the people of Turkey” instead of “Turks,” stated that cultural identities should be protected and emphasized that the military has never been opposed to religion, only its abuse by politicians.
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The civilian-military relationship in Turkey is often problematic, with the powerful military frequently interfering in politics, staging coups in 1961, 1972 and 1980. The European Union has pressed Turkey to harmonize its rules with those of the EU, finding unsatisfactory the steps the government has taken thus far to decrease the military’s influence in politics.
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The pious parts of our country love their army and trust it," he said. "The army of the Turkish people is the nation itself. It comes from the nation and is for the nation." In the second part of his speech, Başbuğ looked into the fight against terrorism and emphasized that the struggle against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, was not an ethnic conflict
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Archaeology Turns Political to Benefit a Trio of Middle East Strongmen - New Lines Maga... - 0 views
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Going back 10 years to the Arab Spring and eight years before that to the invasion of Iraq, much of the region has experienced terrible loss not only on a human scale, but also of its archaeological heritage. The culmination of both came in 2015 with the brutal murder of the 82-year-old archaeologist Khaled al-Asaad — who had been in charge of the Syrian UNESCO World Heritage site of Palmyra for 40 years — and the destruction of part of the 2,000-year-old site by the Islamic State group
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Three countries — Iraq, Syria and Libya — have an extraordinary heritage of ancient archaeological sites, many of them now endangered, and had in common long-standing dictators, (although in the case of Syria, of course, the Assad regime continues), all of whom used their cultural heritage in various ways to define how they saw their nation
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That dictators draw inspiration from ancient history to shape their nations is nothing new — Mussolini looked back to the Roman empire, while Hitler and the Nazi party developed their mythical, ancient “Aryan” race. The last shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, threw one of the most lavish parties in history at Persepolis in 1971 during national celebrations to illustrate the grandeur of the 2,500-year-old Persian empire founded by Cyrus the Great in the sixth century B.C.
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Iraqi 'Ninth Studio' avoids TV's sectarian divide - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle... - 0 views
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Since 2003, the televised media environment in Iraq has witnessed dramatic changes. Whereas Iraqis were once forced to choose between only two local television stations — one administered by the Ministry of Information and the other run by the son of then-President Saddam Hussein — they now have dozens of satellite channels reporting on national affairs.
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a deep hunger on the part of many Iraqis to learn about the outside world from which they had been cut off by the old regime's extremely strict official censorship. Iraq undertook a rapid and astounding transition from a model of censorship resembling what George Orwell described in his novel 1984 toward what former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld described as a state of "untidy” freedom.
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There is a widespread belief that the official Iraqi channel has lost its independence and been completely reduced to subservience to the will and dictates of the government, even to the point that members of parliament have threatened to block funding for its operating budget. In similar fashion, most other Iraqi channels have become captive to political influences either hostile or sympathetic toward the government. Many have concluded that the media outlets in Iraq are actually deepening the country's ethnic and sectarian divides, rather than working to overcome them.
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Informed Comment: Palestinians: Israeli Attack on Jesus, Mary "Racist," Anti-Semitic - 0 views
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The satirical comedy skits put on by Lior Klein concerning Jesus and Mary on Israel's Channel 10 last week have provoked rallies and protests by Palestinian-Israeli Christians, of whom there are about 120,000. They also drew condemnation from Muslim Palestinian-Israelis, of whom there are over a million. Klein said that since Christians were denying the Holocaust, he was denying Christianity. He and Channel 10 later apologized to a delegation of Israeli Christians, and pledged that the skits would not be rerun.
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the pieces were viewed as racist and not just anti-religious but as ethnic bigotry. They were even called "anti-Semitic," since Arabs are Semites as are Jews
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the show offended Israeli Muslims, as well. I saw them on Aljazeera speaking out against the skits and denouncing them as racist (`unsuri).
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Why isn't the tent protest in Israel covered in the global news? | openDemocracy - 0 views
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In the post-war period in Britain, and especially in the 1960s, Commonwealth immigrants were often excluded from the social movement for housing rights discussions. This was not because these immigrants lacked housing problems. In fact many immigrants experienced housing difficulties and suffered from the housing shortage, not only because of financial hardship but also because they were denied council housing or because private landlords did not want to let them rent their property. And yet representations of ethnic minorities were never at the centre of this social outcry against the British welfare state. At the heart of the 1960s protest was the symbol of white, working class Cathy, not her West Indies equivalent. Although some groups such as Shelter tried to assist and solve the housing difficulties of recent immigrants, the fact remained that within a very lively discussions about Labour’s failure to find a solution for housing and the result of what they called “homeless families,” the hardship of recent immigrants was barely discussed by the public. Similarly, in Israel of 2011 the protest focuses on young, Jewish (mostly Ashkenazi) citizens and not on any of the other ethnic minorities. The tent movement – which I fully support and respect – can only exist through a clear demarcation of who is part of the imaginary whole and who is not; who deserves housing from the state and who doesn’t; who is part of the national home and who isn’t. And we don’t even have to go to the occupied territories for that. In other words, in both cases this is a protest about a right for citizens and not a universal right to a home. Even within the so-called “social agenda” there are many who are excluded.
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This is the first time I have felt a glimmer of optimism about Israeli politics since attending the rally where Rabin was shot in 1995.
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This Israeli protest is on the scale of ordinary (= not 1968) European protests and about European issues. It just shows how not-Middle East and not-revolutionary Israel is.
Hip Hop Finds Its Groove in North Africa | Newlines Magazine - 0 views
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Is Iran on the Verge of Another Revolution? | Journal of Democracy - 0 views
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the most severe and sustained political upheaval ever faced by the Islamist regime in Iran. Waves of protests, led mostly by women, broke out immediately, sending some two-million people into the streets of 160 cities and small towns, inspiring extraordinary international support. The Twitter hashtag #MahsaAmini broke the world record of 284 million tweets, and the UN Human Rights Commission voted on November 24 to investigate the regime’s deadly repression, which has claimed five-hundred lives and put thousands of people under arrest and eleven hundred on trial.
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This is neither a “feminist revolution” per se, nor simply the revolt of generation Z, nor merely a protest against the mandatory hijab. This is a movement to reclaim life, a struggle to liberate free and dignified existence from an internal colonization. As the primary objects of this colonization, women have become the major protagonists of the liberation movement.
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Since its establishment in 1979, the Islamic Republic has been a battlefield between hard-line Islamists who wished to enforce theocracy in the form of clerical rule (velayat-e faqih), and those who believed in popular will and emphasized the republican tenets of the constitution.
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Cinema and the Arab spring: the revolution starts here | Film | The Guardian - 1 views
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"If you want to understand the emotive universe from which the Arab spring arose, cinema is a good place to start. Look at a film like Elia Suleiman's Divine Intervention: there the director spits out an apricot pit at an Israeli tank and blows it up. The scene is both fantasy and prophecy."
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I don't think the idea of Islamic cinema even exists in the west. Islam is presumed not to have a modern culture. I'd argue it's important that these films don't insist on any kind of stylistic unity – and that in nearly all of them Islam is portrayed as quite marginal. They argue against religiosity as a determining force. They're all about change, too, about modernity, which neocons like Francis Fukuyama say the Islamic world is incapable of
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"If you want to be thought of as an auteur, you don't want to be categorised according to ethnicity or religion," Ahmad says. "By calling someone 'Islamic', you're meant to be taking away from their universal appeal."
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Parents protest as dream of bilingual education in Israel turns sour | Middle East Eye - 0 views
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Hand in Hand operates four bilingual schools across Israel and two kindergartens. Jaffa’s primary school classes are the most recent addition.The idea of children from different cultural backgrounds learning together and speaking each other’s language may seem uncontroversial. But it has prompted a fierce backlash from right-wing Jewish groups in Israel.In late 2014 Hand in Hand’s flagship school in Jerusalem was torched by activists from Lehava, an organisation that opposes integration between Jewish and Palestinian citizens. Graffiti daubed on the walls read “Death to the Arabs” and “There can be no coexistence with cancer”.Three of the group’s members were jailed last year. In January Israel’s high court increased the sentences of two brothers involved in the arson attack.Although Lehava is a fringe group, it draws on ideas that have found favour with much larger numbers of Israeli Jews, especially over the past 15 years as the country has lurched to the right.A survey by the Pew polling organisation this month found that half of Israeli Jews wanted Arabs expelled from the state, and 79 percent believed Jews should have more rights than their Palestinian compatriots.
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1,350 children are currently in bilingual education, out of a total Israeli school population of some 1.5 million children.
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The Jaffa parents argue that their coastal city of 50,000 residents, which is incorporated into the Tel Aviv municipal area, is the natural location for a bilingual school.A third of Jaffa’s residents are Palestinian, reflecting the fact that, before Israel’s creation in 1948, it was Palestine’s commercial centre.Although Israelis mostly live in separate communities, based on their ethnicity, Jaffa is one of half a dozen urban areas where Jewish and Palestinian citizens live close to each other.
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Tajikistan Blocks British, Russian News Websites | World | RIA Novosti - 0 views
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Tajikistan’s government has blocked the websites of the British Broadcasting Corporation and Russian TV channel Vesti, local internet providers told RIA Novosti on Monday. “The decision has been taken by the Governmental Communications Service,”
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Experts link the move to a controversial armed conflict in the east of the republic that took place on July 24. At least nine Tajik security officers were killed and another 25 others injured in a special operation in Tajikistan’s eastern city of Khorog against a mafia-style group believed to be behind the murder of a top Tajik security general, Abdullo Nazarov. Dushanbe denies any casualties among civilians, but the opposition media reported some 200 dead, including security officers and civilians.
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pretext for an ethnic cleansing campaign
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Turks intolerant of religious diversity, says poll - 1 views
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Turks intolerant of religious diversity, says poll A survey conducted by a private research company has shown that a great majority of the public does not want atheists, Jews or Christians for neighbors and also disapproves of their employment at top state institutions, the Radikal daily reported yesterday.
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Fifty-seven percent of 1,108 people surveyed in the poll said they did not want to have atheist neighbors, while 42 percent said they did not want Jewish neighbors and 35 percent of respondents were reluctant to have Christian neighbors
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When participants were asked whether they have close friends who are Alevi, Kurd, atheist, Greek, Armenian or Jewish, 64 percent stated that they had a Kurdish friend, while 53 percent said they had a friend from the Alevi community.
U.S. Army captain learning new skills in war-torn Afghanistan | McClatchy Washington Bu... - 0 views
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U.S. Army Capt. Matthew Crowe trained to obliterate distant foes with high-explosive shellfire. But in this mud-washed, mountain-framed provincial capital in eastern Afghanistan, he is learning to be a diplomat, urban planner, construction manager, humanitarian worker and politician.
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There was virtually no Taliban presence in Maydan Shahr until last year. Insurgent leaders believed to be wintering in Pakistan's nearby tribal region have been recruiting among the area's dominant Pashtun ethnic group. Even some senior city officials are now said to support the guerrillas, who often target public workers.
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"I want to focus on Maydan Shahr," he said, "because it becomes a very visible sign of how we are here to help."
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Bridges TV, News Online, Advertisment, Bridges Blog, Bridges Yahoo Group, Global Forum,... - 0 views
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This appears to be the most tragic of domestic violence incidents and, although statistics suggest that more than three fatal cases of domestic violence occur every day in the US, no one here could ever imagine that this may happen to our beloved colleague. Several times each day in America, a woman is abused or assaulted. Domestic violence is a behavior that knows no boundaries of religion, race, ethnicity, or social status, and occurs in every community.
A Religious War in Israel's Army - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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For Mr. Halbertal, like for the vast majority of Israelis, the army is an especially sensitive institution because it has always functioned as a social cauldron, throwing together people from all walks of life and scores of ethnic and national backgrounds, and helping form them into a cohesive society with social networks that carry on throughout their lives.
Jewish Horror, Monotheism, and the Origins of Evil - Tablet Magazine - 0 views
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the new horror film The Golem, from directors Doron and Yoav Paz
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The directors of The Golem, who are Israeli brothers
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Reasons for the dearth of Jewish horror fiction are varied, ranging from producers possibly fearing that the ethnic particularism of these themes wouldn’t draw in as wide an audience, to the (incorrect) sense that Judaism doesn’t offer the same baroque supernatural possibilities that Christianity does.
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Freelancing abroad in a world obsessed with Trump - Columbia Journalism Review - 0 views
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“I can’t make a living reporting from the Middle East anymore,” said Sulome in mid-December. “I just can’t justify doing this to myself.” The day we spoke, she heard that Foreign Policy, one of the most reliable destinations for freelancers writing on-the-ground, deeply reported international pieces, would be closing its foreign bureaus. (CJR independently confirmed this, though it has not been publicly announced.) “They are one of the only publications that publish these kinds of stories,” she said, letting out a defeated sigh.
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Sulome blames a news cycle dominated by Donald Trump. Newspapers, magazines, and TV news programs simply have less space for freelance international stories than before—unless, of course, they directly involve Trump.
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Trump was the focus of 41 percent of American news coverage in his first 100 days in office. That’s three times the amount of coverage showered on previous presidents
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Where Countries Are Tinderboxes and Facebook Is a Match - The New York Times - 0 views
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they had shared and could recite the viral Facebook memes constructing an alternate reality of nefarious Muslim plots. Mr. Lal called them “the embers beneath the ashes” of Sinhalese anger
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the forces of social disruption that have followed Facebook’s rapid expansion in the developing world, whose markets represent the company’s financial future. For months, we had been tracking riots and lynchings around the world linked to misinformation and hate speech on Facebook, which pushes whatever content keeps users on the site longest — a potentially damaging practice in countries with weak institutions.
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Time and again, communal hatreds overrun the newsfeed — the primary portal for news and information for many users — unchecked as local media are displaced by Facebook and governments find themselves with little leverage over the company. Some users, energized by hate speech and misinformation, plot real-world attacks.
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