tamazight on moroccan tv ?

royal institute for tamazight (ircam) and the moroccan gov get together to decide what to do about introducing Tamazight in the morocan media. they are talking about “consolidation de tamazight" reported le matin(fr). more programs may be on the second moroccan chanel. Let’s see how that goes.
For a very long time, morocco has two tvs. achievements of our government. now we are opening up for more. we want our air to be free. well we are trying. we good in going round things in morocco. many peope bought satellite dishes and never watched moroccan tv. but we still pay for it in with our electricity bills. we pay for tv with electricity!!.. i always wondered who came up with this idea.
In 1994 late king hassan ii announced the obligation to introduce Tamazight in the tv. Happy were all moroccans, i dare say. expectations were high. achievements 5 ( five) minutes of Tamazight on tv every day for 12 yeas. reactions to this decision. amazigh artists caricatures a woman who said: “oh.. o did not know palistine is accupied by israel” she was caught off for a log time from any news. Not her language. i wonder what she would say now about the war in iraq, darfur, western sahara issues, nuclear eapons, bush admin, free zone, human rights…

Idir back home

Idir- Entre scènes et terres-3
Video sent by algeriemusique

it always feels good to see tham back... Idid back home where he really belongs.
enjoy.

I dont care

“I don’t care how much you know till i know how much you care”
English wise verbiage.

autonomie du sahara occidental

lazy blogers like myself have been navigating to see what is out there on te blog sphere.
In Morocco at least 48 political prisoners will be free today according to Alarabiya tv. the prisons of Kalaa Magouna and Agdez have more than 48 saharaoui prisoners. what is going to happen to them? who decides on the lists and how? where are the others?
a few weeks go the king visits the western sahara hich was a major verb in the moroccan blog community. Mohamed VI announced the "birth" of the 'royal council for wetern sahara affairs' and one of its major tasks is to provide route for autonomy fo WS. Khalihenna oudl rachid, a former minister of sahara affairs, nominated the head of this council. this is one of the most dangerous issues in the modern history of morocco.
i wonder what the moroccan soldiers in the front would think about this. and what would others who lost their family members in this conflict would say? '
in the 1970s and 80s people got jailed and tortured for mentioning autonomy. now it is the whole regime that talks about it.
things change and regimes do as well.

some updates here.

Berber Spring

Spring can be a good thing at times..
flowers and trees blossoming all over the place but it can also be a bloody thing like what happened in 1980 in Algeria when the political regimes censured professor Mouloud Maari from giving a lecture on the Amazigh ancient and poetry. Of course they allow any other things to take place. Maamri was not allowed to speak.
Imazighen were already sick and tired of he oppressions of the algerian regime. More than 200 students started the protests to which La Police reacted violently and there were many people killed and many others injured or arrested.
Now it is a day to remember all those who gave their lives to the case.
Tafsut/ Berber Spring. read more

welcome moroccan government web site

Moroccan government has a website now. Yeh !
before that they were busy looking at what people are posting but now they seem to want to do it . maroc dot ma.. opened yestersay with a big ceremony where the prime minister and other dignitaries. they went to push the start button.
interesting accademic staff about the contry !! for instance:

"Amazighe is the most ancient language of the Maghreb. The coming of Amazighs to Morocco goes back to the Neolithic era. For historians, their origin remains a subject of controversy"(read more)

congratulation madame government.
link: www.maroc.ma

free zone or die

Matqish bladi
"do not touch my country" is always relavent and as time goes by it is evenmore relevent tan before. it is not just terrorism that toutches our beautiful bled. it is also globalization that is oding as much havoc as suicide bombings.
The free zone of tangier and an the maqquilladoras on the borders of usa and mexico. let's see what will happen with the 'moroccan' free zone. when we allow the beast of globalization to settle at home while we keep ourelves busy chasing small scale drug dealers and bearded guys.

Basta Ta3rabt

Basta Ta3rabt

Moroccan Bloging community is doing well and it is all going on the right direction. Now we are talking about an alternative discourse to official corporate globalized media that feeds information to the  Moroccan press agency “la map”. Well it is a good thing that all those of us who live in urban areas and have the means to craft words, blogs and podcasts  to make a change. But i think we are still digging tunnels with coffee spoons we borrowed long ago from the  Almashreq al3arabi: Our beloved Orient. The middle east. Otherwise we would not be preaching affiliation to the Arabic totems.
Anyone can use the language they like to express their views the way they want but please do not force “Al Fus’ha” on anyone if they do not want it. the bottom line is we are not arabs on morocco is the question of identity is to be raised again. Amazigh activists are sick and tired of a discourse where anything  written has to be in Arabic. Anything said has to be in Arabic. The Maghreb is not really Arab.
This is not really about language or anything it is about an cyber-urban sphere that says nothing about our brothers and sisters out there in the mountains who rely on USAID , Peacecorps, and CRS to watch their needs and feed them doses of globalization is impoverishment b-shwiyya. In the big cities we feed the same people the same doses by deciding in their place who they are.
Culture is not just language and ahwash, it is also ways of living and enjoying these ways and appreciating them in a space where knowledge about culture means a little more than just living it.
Blogers of Morocco, invite people to say what they see, and share their knowledge. Please do not force us to swallow “al-3uruba” again. We had enough.

Unlearning Moroccan Arabism

Finally there are people who start to question some of the “general academic comforts” about Moroccan identities. Is Morocco an Arab country? ( oui bien sure )
For many decades the Moroccan visitors, guests, students, scholars, anthropologists bought into the old story of the Moorish world successfully sculptures to fit the needs of an “Orient” full of dreams, harem, and desert camels.
Moroccans helped.
The foreign language craftsmen like T.Benjelloun, Berrada, Chraibi … and crafts women like Lalla Fatima Mernissi recreated the image of the Harem and sold it to the west. A return policy based on dexterity and the craft of verbiage.
When students of Morocco are given these stories as required readings, they have to read and reproduced the stories. They recreated the narrative patterns. But as they still travel round the country and usually run head into the question and find it hard to go round it. Michelle Medina in her article publishe at Glimps dotcom had the courage to ask the question. She concludes:

Moroccan identities confuse our desire to simplify culture and fixate on color. Ultimately for me, the beauty of this country is its fluidity, its seamless ability to be many things at once.

Some ignore it and keep going through the tunnel of denial others stop and ask for directions. Is Morocco an Arab country?
Why do you care, it is Morocco and we are an Muslim and Arab country. This has been decided long ago and it has been written on the books. Go to any University in the UK, France or the US of A. look at the book shelves. Look at the nice achievements and awards these skilful craftsmen had harvested from others like them in appreciation of the hard work they do.
Now what’s new?
“Ait debrouille” , "Les Sindbads marocains"? a move towards civil society the fashion of development and women empowerment strategies a white burden a la marocaine. This is where the Moroccans lost contact of their “literates”. How asks what question? When did Fatima go to Ait Iktel to find answers for what sells best the Harem or “l'intelligence de miser”? it is easy to schedule the move now that the world of letters calls it “Development”
Now is a good time to start thinking the Berbers of Morocco might sell better. they might be a good material for crafting without abandoning the old “academic comfort” established by old pan-arabs, old second-hand-pan-arab friends from the west.
Some of the Moroccans of the blog sphere are still behind… “witness”(n arabic)

Voice again

how much staff has to happen before we really do anything about it.
Read etat des lieu of RSF (english)
how much of real freedom of speech can we talk about.

Me, her and my mother

Literature:

Moh and his amazigh mother at the famous offices entering the country of Uncle Tom. issues of language and intelegibility that created an absurd reality that is very real. Is Tamazight a language? is it in the lists?... Moh's mother is a person everyone should read about.
Moi Elle at Ma Mere

enjoy.

the right to information

What is really happening all over the world is intimidating.

We know about it when it happens, do we? We don’t hear everything. The big 5 media corporations in the US of A do the work and monopolize everything not caring about our rights to information. Well it is not the right to access infos anymore, it is the right to access accurate, true.. the right information. freedom of expression i sa differetn story

When they chose the verbiage that works for them, they all set references for frames of though and build successfully mentalities of submission and dependence. We will depend on them to get informed.

There are times when we get corrections for all the junk information we are fed. However how many of us are ready to check back and correct these information. For instance events happening on France, the civil war in Iraq, the war in Iraq, Iran and the USA. the Western Sahara, Palestine, Darfur.

Who sets the hot spots and the breaking news and why? Who sets the rules of forgetting issues of war and disasters, Afghanistan, Serbia, Rwanda, etc.

Sam Graham-Felsen revisits france. Please read.

Matkhemmem-sh / Think Not

when it hurts to think...

‘Depressing , gone crazy’ is the reaction of many of us who try hard to catch up with what is commonly called top news. The world seems to have lost its mnd . And is going somewhere not known to anyone.

In politics the US is leading (hurding) the world and people isworried about anti-anything sentiments growing all over the place and who initiates that and...

I am thinking about all the possible ways of understanding but it is not right when understanding means nothing but finding out how ‘wrong’ justifies itself. It hurts to think.. and i know how painful it is to think outside ones head. it does not matter if any one gets it or not..
i feel for those who make a living out of "planning" to explain to their students how things happen in politics..

Some will say: ‘but all the thinkers and big heads of the past have done that and thought about all the possible ways for humanity to progress and seek progress. I agree.. except that we can categorize them now and have them packaged in books and anthologies. we can show parts of them and hide others. How many of us know Ibn Khaldoune and why would not they know Ali Azayku or Sidati Ould Abba. How and why would we care about Max Weber and not Sidi Ahmed Belmadani.

How many people think 'reframing organizations' is diametrically opposite to any social change when the frames have been prefabricated to fit forcefull anywhere. And whydo frames imply square-ness.

I learned like in a dream that history unfolds slowly and all the things we think we learn are going to be worthless a few days later. Actions that we think are past still go on in a world governed by war-lords and all those thirsty for money and power. There is no immediate answer to the questions that start with a “why” at a time where the WH-question has maybe as an answer.

I am worried about knowledge and the right to information. We are packaging more and more our thought in frames of emptiness. How fast can political science go to catch up with politics and how much can sociology can go before society changes face. How are the anthropology students doing with a depressed discipline where native anthropologists are no more welcome in a field where all the findings tell them how their favorite professors have all conspired with corporations to forge stories and publish them in English and German. This is the authority of science that people pay loans to learn. People put themselves in a life time debt enslavement to learn what makes them more depressed. all the interest goes to the same pockets.

Wars and power are the currency of the age. Enlightenment that gave some people hope in the future no-more counts. There are bumps everywhere. Chomsky abandons his generative linguistics and all the sentence trees to focus on real trees we log everyday and people we hunt in every corner.

Globalization is a genocide backed up by classrooms, prisons, garrisons and chicken souks and lesson plans.