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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". 

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.

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!

I’d like to argue that Television functions as a distancing technology while social media works in the opposite direction: through transparency of the process of narrative construction, through immediacy of the intermediaries, through removal of censorship over images and stories (television never shows the truly horrific pictures of war), and through person-to-person interactivity, social media news curation creates a sense of visceral and intimate connectivity, in direct contrast to television, which is explicitly constructed to separate the viewer from the events.

the construction of the role of the anchor or the curator, and the role of content filtering.

a very surreal and disorienting experience unless one has been thoroughly conditioned into accepting them as normal. All this positions the anchor between us and the event and signals to the viewer that the event is merely something to be watched, and then you move on.

The world is really not a global village. It is only so for those who are able to go anywhere without visas, have almost all the world’s knowledge production translated into their language, and the most important art institutions just around the corner from where they live. The rest only live under this pretense of globalism, internationalism and many other ism(s) that conceal the way power works in the world.

What exists is a hand-picking of a few films from all over the global south to be taken to world festivals to fulfill a quota of “world cinema,” African cinema, Arab cinema, Iranian cinema or whichever one is in vogue depending on the political climate.

with these exhibition circuits in mind, many filmmakers consciously or unconsciously tweak their narratives to appeal to the imaginary spectators located in this ambiguous global realm. Strategies deployed include explaining that which need not be explained if the film was targeted primarily to a familiar audience (including a phrase such as “Hosni Mubarak ruled Egypt for 30 years” is an example), having the film speak in a language other than its subjects’ native tongue rather than just adding subtitles, and opting for the consolidation of a narrative at the expense of maintaining the almost always deeply fragmented political nuances of their story. These strategies often result in films that are simplistic, clichéd, and politically problematic.

a new bill that would ban blasphemy in Tunisia. The draft bill, proposed to the Constituent Assembly on Wednesday by Tunisia’s ruling moderate Islamist party Ennahdha, would criminalize “insults, profanity, derision, and representation of Allah and Mohammed.”

” If passed, the draft law would punish such violations of “sacred values” with prison terms of up to two years and fines of up to 2,000 dinars (U.S. $1,236) through an additional article to the Tunisian Penal Code.

Mrad justified the bill’s proposal by explaining that the protection of religious symbols does not inherently represent an attack on freedom of expression. “In all societies, you will always find limits and things that you cannot say,” he said, adding, “We [Ennahdha] are committed to granting freedom of expression, but this law is just to set limits for this freedom.”

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.

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.

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.

Economic man . . . has given way to the psychological man of our times—the final product of bourgeois individualism. The new narcissist is haunted not by guilt but by anxiety. His sexual attitudes are permissive rather than puritanical, even though his emancipation from ancient taboos brings him no sexual peace. He extols cooperation and teamwork while harboring deeply antisocial impulses. He praises respect for rules and regulations in the secret belief that they do not apply to himself. Acquisitive in the sense that his cravings have no limits, he does not accumulate goods and provisions against the future, in the manner of the acquisitive individualist of 19th-century political economy, but demands immediate gratification and lives in a state of restless, perpetually unsatisfied desire.

The contemporary climate is therapeutic, not religious. People today hunger not for personal salvation, let alone for the restoration of an earlier golden age, but for the feeling, the momentary illusion, of personal well-being, health, and psychic security.

Today Americans are overcome not by the sense of endless possibility but by the banality of the social order they have erected against it. People nowadays complain of an inability to feel. They cultivate more vivid experiences, seek to beat sluggish flesh to life, attempt to revive jaded appetites. Outwardly bland, submissive, and sociable, they seethe with an inner anger for which a dense, overpopulated bureaucratic society can devise few legitimate outlets.

Journalists have rarely done justice to indigenous communities because the language of journalism has rarely done justice to indigenous peoples.

Indigenous people know that their representation has failed before they've even begun speaking, because the medium through which they are represented - a hard, sharp language rooted in ideas rather than feeling - has rarely granted them territory.

The language that media uses today does not heed silence and self-interpretation. It does not respect the power of conjured stories. It does not favour the collective over the individual. And this does not fit with indigenous perspectives.

"Media literacy has long focused on personal responsibility, which can not only imbue individuals with a false sense of confidence in their skills, but also put the onus of monitoring media effects on the audience, rather than media creators, social media platforms, or regulators,"

the need to better understand the modern media environment, which is heavily driven by algorithm-based personalization on social-media platforms, and the need to be more systematic about evaluating the impact of various media-literacy strategies and interventions

In response, bills to promote media literacy in schools have been introduced or passed in more than a dozen states. A range of nonprofit, corporate, and media organizations have stepped up efforts to promote related curricula and programs. Such efforts should be applauded—but not viewed as a "panacea," the Data & Society researchers argue.

The Avant TV video, released on social media five days after protests erupted in Iran, which have thus far spread to dozens of cities and almost every province, carefully stitches together an emotional array of interviews of people unhappy with the economic situation and President Hassan Rouhani’s policies. With scarce public information available about Avant TV, and with the great pains its producers have taken to present it as an independent station, the video is intended to appear to be transparent, a true representation of the will of the Iranian people. Glaringly absent from the video are any criticism of the political establishment as a whole, which has been one of the main themes of the current demonstrations. Avant TV is in fact not independent at all. Al-Monitor has not been able to contact it, but two pro-regime media producers confirmed that it is only the latest example of a new media outlet backed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) seeking to reinforce the narrative of the supreme leader above the politics of Iran.

Avant TV stems from the media wars at the heart of political factionalism both inside and outside Iran

In revealing new details of his budget bill, Rouhani named, for the first time, the variety of state institutions, including cultural centers, that have received enormous funds and unconditional support from the regime. He attributed the move to a desire for transparency and an attempt to curtail corrupt use of state funds. The reaction on Iranian social media and in the local press was quick and harsh. People began attacking conservative and hard-line centers and clerics for taking so much from government coffers. “We couldn’t allow him to cut off our lifeline,” a producer at the regime production studios said after Rouhani revealed his new budget. “He and his supporters want to silence us by taking away our funding. But we will not be silenced. We will show him that people don’t agree with him.”

14 emerging Moroccan photographers recently decided to form Noorseen, an art collective they hope will help them harness resources and share insights through the collaborative process

“A lot of visible works of photographers on Morocco have similar tropes; the picturesque medina, the traditional costumes, the portrait of an elder,” says 22-year-old Noorseen member Mehdi Aït El Mallali. “We want to show the other side, which is an expression of the Moroccan youth. We show Morocco through our own eyes, as a member of this society.”

“Throughout national and international exhibitions or festivals, the same few names represent Moroccan contemporary photography. Why can't we? Young photographers could take over, and we want to amplify our voice."

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.”

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

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.

Erdoğan’s brand is waning in the cities, the coasts, and among young people. Neither the new Erdoğan-shaped presidential system, nor his expansionist foreign policy are popular in these parts. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, chronic unemployment and inflation extinguished any hope of him bouncing back in the polls. Despite his total control over the state, mainstream media, and major capital groups, the president is unlikely to ever get much more than half of the popular vote.

The Erdoğan government now faced a question that all successful populist regimes must solve: What to do with the minority? They certainly can’t be granted free and fair elections, lest they attain the means to exact revenge. Nor can they be deprived of all their rights of representation, lest they be driven to revolt or treason. So how does a very slim majority of a country suppress the other half indefinitely? How does it rest easy, knowing that its hegemony is locked in?

The Erdoğan government surely knows that an attempt to “nationalize” all of the 30 million would be unrealistic. Rather, it seeks to separate the leftists and Kurds among them and brand them as terrorists, then turn around and securely pull the center opposition into the nationalist opposition.

The End (El-Nehaya), the Egyptian dystopian science fiction thriller series, has captured the imagination of audiences throughout the Arab world this Ramadan TV season. It is ranked the third most popular series this season, and has generated a lot of discussion in social media about its futuristic technology and debt to Hollywood science fiction and dystopian films.The End was also lumped into the debate over normalisation in this year’s Ramadanic TV programming and was attacked by the Israeli Foreign Ministry for its anti-normalisation stance. The End is premised on the fictional idea that the Arab world would become a superpower and that Israel would be destroyed less than a century into its establishment — that is, in less than thirty years. In its place, Al-Quds conglomerate will be created and will be under total Arab control.

Some contrasted the daring futuristic scenario with the utter impotence of the Arab world today, to offer any viable solution to the Palestinian struggle for freedom and the ongoing Nakba. Others thought it was enough that the series managed to provoke and infuriate Israel.

The series does not only substitute one form of domination in Al-Quds conglomerate for another. More importantly, the Palestinians are completely erased from Al-Quds conglomerate itself.

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.

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.

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.