Khaled and the myth of rai | The Middle East Channel - 0 views
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it was not the opposition of "fundamentalists" that kept rai music (not just Khaled's) off of Algerian state radio. It was rather the Algerian (secular) regime's cultural policies. The state promoted classical Arabic culture and language and denied Algeria's multi-cultural nature. Expressive culture in Arabic dialect or Berber was therefore mostly excluded from the state-controlled media. Rai is sung in the distinctive colloquial Arabic of Wahran, which is not only very different from "classical" or literary Arabic but is also full of borrowings from Spanish, French and Berber. This official national-cultural politics, which was particularly severe during the regime of Houari Boumediene (1965-1978), began to loosen during Chadly Benjadid's regime (1979-1992). In his 1998 autobiography, "Derrière la sourire," Khaled recounts how he managed to break the official embargo in the early 1980s. He was invited to appear on a television show in Algiers, which he knew couldn't be censored because it was to be broadcast live. Khaled was warned ahead of time: no vulgarities, no sex. So he sang three songs: the first, about the Prophet Muhammad; the second, a "poetic" song, one that was artistically acceptable; and the third, about alcohol and women.
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Khaled, and other rai stars, came to play at this festival due to the efforts of the "liberal" wing of the Algerian regime -- and particularly to Lieutenant-Colonel Hosni Snoussi, director of the state-supported arts and culture organization, Office Riadh el Feth in Algiers, who had taken Cheb Khaled under his wing. The regime's liberal wing became interested in promoting rai in the wake of a spate of unrest that erupted during the early 1980s. Most notably, the 1980 riots in Tizi Ouzou, Kabylia (the "Berber Spring"); the 1985 riots in Algiers, which broke out following rumors that housing being built for the poor would be allocated to state bureaucrats; and the 1986 student riots in Constantine that resulted in the deaths of four protesters and spread to other cities. Young Algerians played a leading role in all these protests. The liberal wing of the regime determined that, to deter further unrest, the state should focus on promoting the interests of youth and on developing the market economy. Rai was very popular with Algerian youth, and so the "liberals" determined that promoting it was to be an important element of these reform efforts. It was changes in state policy toward rai, pushed by Snoussi, that got Khaled and other rai stars onto the stage in Algiers in 1985.
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The French government had a stake in trying to control and channel the energies of the rai scene.
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Brian Whitaker's blog, October 2010 - 0 views
TBS 16 Whose Voice? Nasser, the Arabs, and 'Sawt al-Arab' Radio by Laura M. James - 0 views
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Boyd argues that Saudi broadcasting developed largely in order to balance such attacks
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The Voice of the Arabs had been very carefully designed to become a regional phenomenon
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There is absolutely no supporting evidence for the contention that Nasser intended to allow The Voice of the Arabs to criticise his own regime. However, it is true that Cairo’s deliberate escalation of pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist rhetoric in order to mobilise the Arab masses eventually turned into a trap from which Egypt could not escape.
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Starting at home, Iran's women fight for rights - International Herald Tribune - 1 views
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divorce
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male supremacy is still enscribed in the legal code
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Internet and satellite television have opened windows into the lives of women in the West
The Arab world's (uneven) progress - 0 views
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Five years ago, the United Nations published the Arab Human Development Report on Building a Knowledge Society. That widely read – and highly controversial – report found a "knowledge deficit" that threatens human development, economic growth, and the future potential of Arab societies. This week the Brookings Institution published a new study, in Arabic, that evaluates what has and has not changed since 2003.
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Access to education has expanded markedly over the past five years
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Arabs are embracing new technologies, such as the Internet and mobile phones.
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Clinton Announces Million-Dollar Scholarship Program for Palestinian Students... - 0 views
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Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has announced a new million-dollar scholarship program to help Palestinian students enroll at Palestinian and American universities.
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“a larger pool of capable young men and women from places like the West Bank and Gaza”
BBC News - Israel denies US academic Chomsky West Bank entry - 1 views
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"I asked them if they could find any government in the world that likes the things I say."
Why the Internet Is a Great Tool for Totalitarians | Magazine - 0 views
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Modern communications technologies are already being deployed as new forms of repression.
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not all blogs are revolutionary. China, Iran, and Russia all have bloggers who are more authoritarian in their views than their governments are. Some of these governments are even beginning to follow the path laid by Western corporations, actively deploying regime-friendly bloggers to spread talking points. Is this “samizdat”? Cold War baggage, in short, severely limits the imagination of do-gooders in the West. They assume that the Internet is too big to control without significant economic losses. But governments don’t need to control every text message or email. There’s a special irony when Google CEO Eric Schmidt suggests—as he did in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations last November—that China’s government will find it impossible to censor “a billion phones that are trying to express themselves.” Schmidt is rich because his company sells precisely targeted ads against hundreds of millions of search requests per day. If Google can zero in like that, so can China’s censors.
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modern authoritarian governments control the web in ways more sophisticated than guard towers
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ei: Israel investing $1.6 million in "new media warriors" - 0 views
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Speaking on a panel called "New Media as a Strategic Weapon," Benayahu told the audience in Herzliya that Israeli soldiers are now forced to be more aware of the fact that new media users can be documenting their actions at all times.
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"Visual material is what is most compelling online. It's evidence. It's proof in a way that a written statement isn't. If there is a big operation going on and we can provide visual evidence of what's happening, then other people can use that to make arguments and discuss things."
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"Our version is supported by named sources and with medical documents. In a properly functioning society, the army's version, which has been spread by anonymous sources, would not be considered worthy of publication,"
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Twitter - 0 views
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.
Finding Bibi » Humanizing Hijabis, One Wall at a Time - 0 views
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The veil changes in different countries, and here comes the sociological aspect of my work: I am very careful in rendering the different types of veil, the Maghrebi veil, the Afghani burga and the Iranian chador.”
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n important element to negotiating all the areas of culture clash between “Islam” and “the West” is to be able to find a way to humanize each other.
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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Mohammad Khatami, a Former President, Criticizes Iran's Government - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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opposition leaders — much like their hard-line foes — are girding supporters for a long-term battle to be waged as much through ideas and quiet social organizing as through the public protests that followed Iran’s disputed presidential election on June 12. Both Mr. Khatami and members of the group he addressed, the Islamic Society of University Professors, expressed deep concerns about threats to academic freedom in the coming school year. On Saturday, after days of calls by conservatives to purge Iran’s universities of professors and curriculums deemed “un-Islamic,” the government announced the start of a high-level investigation on how the humanities are taught.
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a “soft war” against internal enemies. Anyone in the field of culture must now recognize important distinctions between “friends and enemies,” “attack and defense” and “explanation and propaganda,”
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He warned that the West, with its sophisticated media outlets, is better equipped for soft war than Iran.
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Al-Qaida Media Blitz Has Some On Alert : NPR - 0 views
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While certainly any message from bin Laden is parsed for information and intelligence, it was a third video — that was released from one of al-Qaida's media arms — that made counterterrorism analysts sit up and take notice. The video came out of Somalia last week, and it was a slick recruitment tape complete with its own original rap music score that played under the opening sequence of the half-hour-long film. The production was made by a Somali militia group called al-Shabab, which has ties to al-Qaida.
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In one part of the video he appears to be preparing recruits — who also speak English — for battle.
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During the battle, Abu Mansour orders the small group of fighters who are with him to retreat. But here's what's important: He says it in English. "Let's go, let's go," he yells as a shaking video camera appears to record their retreat.
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