Are books and movies promoting smoking and drinking? Erdogan thinks so - Al-Monitor: th... - 1 views
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President Recep Tayyip Erdogan created a new controversy on Feb. 9, Turkey's Quit Smoking Day, when he appeared to link addiction to alcohol and tobacco to poetry, literature and cinema. In a country where censorship is already rife, his remark sparked concern that fresh restrictions might be in store.
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Why did Erdogan’s words stir controversy, concern and criticism? To better understand the anxiety, one must examine some practices that became widespread in Turkey after the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power.
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Erdogan is known as a politician who never reads a book from cover to cover, but only summaries written by his aides. He is not known as an avid cinema fan, either, but is famous for reciting poems that mesh with his ideology and worldview
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Arabic literature and the African other - 0 views
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In 1992, Mazrui had a proposal: “The French once examined their special relationship to Africa and came up with the concept EURAFRICA as a basis of special cooperation. We in turn should examine the even older special relationship between Africa and the Arab World and call it AFRABIA.”
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The project of “Afrabia,” as I interpret, would allow Africans to revisit a long history of the Islamic empire in Africa, its intersecting points with colonial projects subcontracted to Arab and South-Asian masters, as well as a shared history of decolonial struggles and anti-capitalist ambitions. For Arabs, it would mean a much-needed and long-overdue revision of their history, as well as of language and artistic expression that deal with Africa, blackness, and Afro-Arabs in reactionary, racist, and apolitical terms
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Arabs, like their western teachers, when discussing anti-black racism and black issues, seem fixated on skin color, ideals of beauty, and visual representations; in a sense they express their own racial anxiety. It is as if anti-black racism has no history, trajectory, or realities beyond the stigma assigned to it, or the rhetoric surrounding it.
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Translation project offers Israelis look into Palestinian literature - 0 views
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Only 0.4% of Israeli Jews under the age of 70 can read the stories in the original Arabic language, he says. He also points to the fact that according to Israel’s National Library, less than 1% of all literature translated into Hebrew was written in Arabic, and 90% of the translators were Jews
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The stories of “Amputated Tongue," which all deal in various ways with language deprivation, is written by 57 Palestinian writers from Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and abroad. The impressive compilation of contemporary Palestinian prose was translated into Hebrew according to a unique model by 36 translators, where one Arab and one Jewish translator collaborated. One-third of them were Palestinians. The short stories by some of the best Palestinian writers provide Israeli readers with more than a glimpse of entire lives lived in this land, and of this land.
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The project lasted three years. Its goal was to give a voice to Palestinian Arabic society in the hostile climate created by Israel’s right-wing regime that views Arabic as an enemy language — as made abundantly clear in the 2018 Nationality Law, which downgraded the status of Arabic as an official language. The anthology targeted those few Israelis who want to know more about Palestinians but have had little exposure to them until now.
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Standard Arabic is on the Decline: Here's What's Worrying About That - 0 views
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Standard Arabic, or Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), is on the decline, and some are happy to see it go. However, it is important to note the factors driving this decline, and what this means for the region.
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Though some rejoice in the strengthening of vernaculars, the so-called colloquials or dialects, as a sign of local identities gaining prominence, the withdrawal of MSA is in fact a warning about the weakening social infrastructure and declining education system.
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When people speak of the decline of MSA, they generally refer to decline in literature, literacy, and increasing predilections to use dialects or foreign languages instead of MSA
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Israeli and Palestinian textbooks: Researchers have conducted a comprehensive study tha... - 0 views
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“Dehumanizing and demonizing characterizations of the other were very rare in both Israeli and Palestinian books.” The research team found 20 extreme negative depictions in the Israeli state books, seven in the ultra-Orthodox books, and six in the Palestinian books. An example of this rare occurrence from an Israeli book: A passage saying that a ruined Arab village “had always been a nest of murderers.” And an example from a Palestinian book: “I was in ‘the slaughterhouse’ for 13 days,” referring to an Israeli interrogation center. This could be a lot worse, right?
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84 percent of the literature pieces in the Palestinian books portray Israelis and Jews negatively, 73 percent of the pieces in the ultra-Orthodox books portray Palestinians and Arabs negatively, and only 49 percent of the pieces in Israeli state schools do the same. In an Israeli state school text, a passage reads: “The Arab countries have accumulated weapons and ammunition and strengthened their armies to wage a total war against Israel.” In the ultra-Orthodox, it ratchets up: “Like a little lamb in a sea of 70 wolves is Israel among the Arab states.” In the Palestinian case: “The enemy turned to the deserted houses, looting and carrying off all they could from the village that had become grave upon grave.” These statements aren’t necessarily false, but they are just one-sided and fearful—and they are rarely balanced by anything sunnier
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The research team found that 58 percent of Palestinian textbooks published after 1967 (the year in which Israel took control of the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, Gaza and Sinai from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syria) made no reference to Israel. Instead, they referred to the entire area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea as Palestine. In the Israeli state system, 65 percent of maps had no borders and made no mention of Palestine or the Palestinian Authority, while in the ultra-Orthodox system that number was a staggering 95 percent.
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That Ben Rhodes Profile | Joshua Foust - 0 views
Mapping Iran's Online Public: Politics and Culture in the Persian Blogosphere | Berkman... - 1 views
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We label the poles as 1) Secular/Reformist, 2) Conservative/Religious, 3) Persian Poetry and Literature, and 4) Mixed Networks.
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Surprisingly, a minority of bloggers in the secular/reformist pole appear to blog anonymously, even in the more politically-oriented part of it; instead, it is more common for bloggers in the religious/conservative pole to blog anonymously.
How Putin's worldview may be shaping his response in Crimea - 0 views
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The recent literature on Putin is correctly in drawing attention to his pro-Soviet imperialistic views: remember, to Putin the collapse of the USSR the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of 20th century. But what exactly this pro-Soviet worldview means is fairly poorly understood. To get a grasp on one needs to check what Putin’s preferred readings are. Putin’s favorites include a bunch of Russian nationalist philosophers of early 20th century – Berdyaev, Solovyev, Ilyin — whom he often quotes in his public speeches. Moreover, recently the Kremlin has specifically assigned Russia’s regional governors to read the works by these philosophers during 2014 winter holidays. The main message of these authors is Russia’s messianic role in world history, preservation and restoration of Russia’s historical borders and Orthodoxy.
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another Putin’s favorite that was rumored to be very popular in his close circles a few years ago: “The Third Empire: Russia that Ought to Be” by Michael Yuriev. It’s a utopian fantasy written as a history book from a perspective of a 2054 Latin American narrator. The book describes how 2054 world order was established, and the process has a striking resemblance with contemporary Ukrainian events. It begins with a Recovery period of 2000-12, when the Great Russia starts its resurgence under the rule of Vladimir II the Restorer. Importantly the First Expansion that leads to reunification of significant territory occurs when Eastern and Southern Ukrainian regions rebel against west-organized Orange revolution (supported by western Ukraine). To help the revolting Ukrainians (that want to rejoin Russia) Vladimir II offers to include their Eastern territories into Russia. He then passes a referendum on those territories, and replaces the Russian Federation with the Russian Union (refer to the Custom Union) that also includes Belarus, Prednestrovie, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, South Ossetia and Abkhazia
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Again, it may sound implausible but that is exactly what the late Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington predicted in his book “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order“: alignments and wars among various civilizations — Western, Islamic, Chinese, Orthodox/Russian Latin etc. Notice that the Orthodox/Russian unity has already been restored in Russia. In response to the Ukrainian Church’s call to stop the Russian troops, Saturday a representative of Russia’s Orthodox Church suggested that Ukrainians shouldn’t resist the Russian military “peacekeepers.” Their mission – as was pointed out – is “to restore Russia’s historical unity.”
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R22 | News - 0 views
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undeterred by the overwhelming evidence that such policies are always destined to fail, governments continue to announce plans to block access to X-rated websites, often with large scale public support. In 2011, when many thought the days of Ben Ali-style censorship were coming to an end, a Tunisian court decreed that porn sites would henceforth be banned, as they “contravened the values of Arab Islamic society.” And just a few months before its overthrow, the Islamist government of Muhammad Morsi in Egypt thought nothing of dedicating endless hours to discussing a new $3.7 million anti-porn initiative. Clearly they didn’t think their country had bigger priorities
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Put simply, porn is BIG in the Arab world. According to Google AdWords, the 22 Arab states account for over 10% of the world’s searches for “sex”; A total of 55.4 million unique monthly Google “sex” searchers in the 22 (ignoring a further 24 million searches for “sex” transliterated into Arabic) that matches both the United States and India, two countries often cited as world leaders in porn consumption
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when these numbers are adjusted to reflect people’s ready access to the Internet (which ranges from 85% of the population in the UAE to just 1.4% in Somalia) Arab Google searches for “sex” outweigh those from almost anywhere else worldwide. As per AdWords, for every 100 Arab Internet users, an average of 52 searches are made each month, compared to 21 in the United States, 36 in India, 45 in France and 47 in Pakistan
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