What are the top ten most censored countries? According to new analysis by the Committe to Protect Journalists, they are:
- Eritrea
- North Korea
- Syria
- Iran
- Equatorial Guinea
- Uzbekistan
- Burma
- Saudi Arabia
- Cuba
- Belarus
Happy World Press Freedom Day….
(Source: cpj.org)
Adventures of Prince Achmed, 1926. by Eye magazine
The Adventures of Prince Achmed(German: Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed) is a 1926 German animated fairytale film by Lotte Reiniger. It is the oldest surviving animated feature film; two earlier ones were made in Argentina by Quirino Cristiani, but they are considered lost.
The Adventures of Prince Achmed features a silhouette animation technique Reiniger had invented which involved manipulated cutouts made from cardboard and thin sheets of lead under a camera. The technique she used for the camera is similar to Wayang shadow puppets, though hers were animated frame by frame, not manipulated in live action.
German writer/director, Lotte Reiniger spent three years making this silent animated film, based on the Arabian Nights legends.
Making the rounds on FB…
(Source: occidentalorientalist)
I am often asked about my feelings regarding the war in Iraq. My response, inevitably, is reflective of my own experience growing up in Baghdad. I’m aware that other Iraqis hold different feelings based on their own backgrounds and socio-economical, religious and educational influences. In this series I attempt to convey those various feelings by placing myself in their shoes and walking their path.
I view the portraits as interviews, wherein Baghdad citizens express their feelings about post-occupation Iraq. The portraits are all tightly shot and so close-up that you have no choice but to listen to what they have to tell you. The faces are the same since they are united in nationality and under the same umbrella of circumstance. Yet each is representative of different slices of Baghdad’s social and political system.
The layers of calligraphy that are imposed on the faces express the individual feelings of each person. It is up to you to interpret those feelings.
Sudan aircraft ‘bomb’ targets inside South |
Border town of Bentiu in Unity State bombed leaving one dead and three others wounded, an official said.
Red Cross official kidnapped in Yemen |
French national working for agency seized by armed men while military continues campaign against al-Qaeda in the south.
60 Minutes on the Plight of Palestinian Christians
Last night’s 60 Minutes segment about the plight of Christians in the West Bank has gotten a lot of attention, in part because of the attempt by Israeli ambassador Michael Oren to intervene with CBS brass while the segment was being put together. (See the 11-minute point in the video above, where CBS correspondent Bob Simon confronts Oren with this fact.)
You can see why Oren might rather the piece hadn’t aired. Things that Palestinian Muslims routinely say about the Israeli occupation may get more traction in America when Palestinian Christians say them. Such as this, from a Christian clergyman: “The West Bank is becoming more and more like a piece of Swiss cheese, where Israel gets the cheese — that is, the land the water resources, the archaeological sites, and the Palestinians are pushed in the holes.”
Also, Oren clearly doesn’t want this document, mentioned by Simon, to get attention. In it an interdominational group of Middle Eastern Christian clergy — Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant — refer to the occupation as “clear apartheid.” (Oren hints that they’re anti-Semitic.)
Finally, the 60 Minutes piece complicates the post-9/11 Israeli narrative according to which Israel and Judeo-Christian America are involved in a common struggle against Islamic radicals, and the occupation should be viewed in that context. Hence the importance of the moment when Oren insists Christians are leaving the West Bank under duress from Islamic radicals, not because of the occupation, and Simon presents testimony to the contrary.
“How awesome is that? The guy who’s a radical who hates America is getting tripped up by an Egyptian birth controversy!”
-Jon Stewart, reflecting on the “Mama Amreeka” debate around Islamist candidate Hazem Abu Ismail in Egypt’s first post-Mubarak presidential election.
Sana’a, Yemen: A boy pushes his bicycle in front of a bullet-scarred building in a neighbourhood where heavy fighting has occurred between warring factions Photograph: Yahya Arhab/EPA
Ominous, and being passed around.
Easter in Palestine (read more about it here )
Albert Camus:
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
HM
A march for change in the Egyptian military
For the win, a profile of growing discontent within the ranks of the superstructure that holds the SCAF up in the Mother of the World, by Reuters’ Marwa Awad
Cairo is “bright-and-center” in NASA’s latest pictures of the Middle East. Via the fine folks at Green Prophet.
Iranian (Female) Ninjas Sue Reuters?
The question mark is there because we didn’t know that Iran even had ninjas, much less female ones.
