Posts Tagged ‘writing’
Where are the natural counter-power intellectuals?
The natural counter-power intellectuals feel helpless when citizens are asked to vote for God or civic laws in the Arab World: The mission has always seemed insurmountable.
The hero is an Intellectual with a jihad mission to go one step further in this 100-year war…It took more than 3 centuries of such kind of “fallen heroes” to gain just a foot-hold…
La pratique intellectuelle a pour mission de s’interroger rationnellement sur le « comment » et le « pourquoi » de toutes choses.
Elle a pour essence le doute ,et le brouillard, et pour objectif le flirt avec la verite’ a travers l’acquisition du savoir pour enfin regarder le monde avec un esprit critique et le penser avec du bon sens.
La pratique intellectuelle a aussi pour mission de questionner et de faire réfléchir, elle est à la fois une gourmandise infinie et un contre-pouvoir.
Elle est même le plus puissant des contre-pouvoirs contre l’obscurantisme et le dogmatisme, l’aveuglement superstitieux et les préjugés.
L’intellectuel, se veut engager.
Or il n’y a d’engagement sans dérangement.
Le confort intellectuel est l’autre nom de la bêtise. Il faut donc frapper là où ça dérange, afin que l’on ait envie de participer activement, ardemment, au débat et finalement à la vie de la cite’.
Le plus scandaleux, c’est quand ceux-la n’alertent plus, n’avertissent plus, ne denoncent plus, gardent leur silence.
Pire c’est quand ils passent d’un cote’ de la barriere a l’autre.
Pendant longtemps, l’intellectuel dit « de gauche » a pris la parole et s’est vu reconnaître le droit de parler en tant que maître de vérité et de justice.
Meme dans notre monde arabe ce fut le cas. On l’écoutait, ou il prétendait se faire écouter comme représentant de l’universel.
Etre intellectuel, c’était être un peu la conscience de tous. (…) Il y a bien des années qu’on ne demande plus à l’intellectuel de jouer ce rôle. (…)
Les intellectuels ont pris l’habitude de travailler non pas dans l’universel, l’exemplaire, le juste-et-le-vrai-pour-tous, mais a ghettoye’ le savoir, de l’instrumentaliser au profit d’une personne, d’un capital, d’un engagement materiel.
Finies les luttes pour l’autre, on lutte pour soi, mais avec quel acharnement.
De generateurs de consciences collectives, de contre-pouvoirs, d’eclaireurs de nouvelles voies, les intellectuels des regimes arabes et ceux du printemps arabe, reduisent leur role a celui de “ la voix de leur maître” et non comme une “Voix” a part.
Ils n’ont garde qu’une cigarette en main et une chemise deboutonnee, et un esprit sclerose.
(Inspire par Bourdieu/ Foucault)
Note: The intellectuals in the Middle-East still are confused about their Nationality. Most of the are sectarians and confine their opinions within their State/regime. Many, and they are majority, implicitly dream of an illusory Islamic/Arabic Nation, just because it is Not founded on any tangible reality and they stay within the realm of daydreaming wishes because they are confused in their political objectives and appease their leaders.
The objective and engaged intellectuals should view the Syrian nation (including the States of Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq) as the most rational and effective strategy of a unified One People to defeat our existential enemies in Israel and expansionist Turkey of Erdogan.
Comparing election law alternatives for Lebanon’s this year Parliamentary election
Posted on: March 27, 2017
Comparing election law alternatives for Lebanon’s Parliamentary election (in 2014)
Note: Mind you that this article was written in 2014.
Since then 17 alternative laws have been presented and none of them were discussed in Parliament, with the tacit intention of renewing their mandate without any election. This parliament renewed their tenure twice and is about to renew it for a few more months.
This year 2017 is witnessing the same process in order Not to change the law. Apparently, a form of proportional is becoming inevitable, though the districts are meant to retain the old feudal and militia leaders.
The new season and collection of political headlines is out in Lebanon, and this year’s theme is the electoral law.
It is all we can read and hear about these days no matter where we turn; national TV, newspapers, facebook, twitter, bakeries, and even coffee shops.
Let’s try to go through our different options together and objectively determine what law to support.
In case you are not familiar with the terms, simple majority means winner takes all.
while proportional representation means you get a seat if your support is just the right size (If small politicians do not support proportional representation then they are not small… they are micro).
The above presents five proposals with coalitions, the government, and independent politicians pushing and shoving for one over the other.
The only thing that is common, and that all our politicians practically agree on, is to keep the sectarian division. This means the Parliament is divided based on religious representation.
Some politicians might claim one proposal is “more sectarian” than the other, but that is just because they will lose a couple of seats in Parliament, not because of their ideals.
The sad truth is that the politicians today are negotiating the results of the elections. They are simply re-dividing the seats among each other and negotiating the distribution of power in Lebanon.
Most voters will continue to vote for the same leader they have been voting for during the past couple of decades.
What we are looking at is a simple game of rotating thrones between lords. The only difference is that we have more than 30 lords seeking the throne, and the Realm is one twelfth the size of New York State.
(Actually, only 5 leaders are deciding of everything in Lebanon. Once they agree, the process follow through)
So to answer the question I posed in the beginning of the article on which electoral law to choose, my answer is none.
I refuse to enter a selection process that is completely separated from the notion of freedom.
I will not wait for the results of the brokered deal to know how free the electoral law will make me. I am free today by making my own choices based on my reason, emotions, and beliefs.
I choose to do what is right for me and for the people in my society. That is the electoral law I will support.
Cedric Choukeir is the regional director of the the World Youth Alliance in the Middle East and North Africa.
5 Broken Cameras, Oscar-nominated, and controversy on Palestinian Documentary?
Posted on: February 13, 2013
Controversy engulfs Oscar-nominated Palestine documentary
Oscar-nominated “5 Broken Cameras” has become a source of controversy among this year’s Oscar nominations, following Israel’s apparent appropriation of ownership in the wake of its nomination in the Best Feature-Length Documentary category.
The film collects together years’ worth of footage of demonstrations surrounding the struggle of the Palestinian villagers of Bilin, near the West Bank apartheid wall, which Palestinian film maker Emad Burnat originally collected together for Electronic Intifada.
Immediately following the film’s nomination, Burnat issued a statement saying: “This is one of the happiest moments of my life.
Chris Newbould posted on Jan 28, 2013 in Middle East digital production
The village of Bilin is celebrating because of international support of my film. As a child I remember watching the Oscars on TV … I don’t recall seeing films about Palestine, the occupation or our struggles. Times have changed.”
It wasn’t long before the situation became more complicated.
Almost immediately following the nomination, the Israeli press, as well as sections of the US media, began referring to the film as an ‘Israeli’ one, with even the Israeli Embassy in Washington describing it as such when Tweeting its delight at the film’s nomination.
Burnat, unsurprisingly, disagreed, stating on his Facebook page that the film is a: “Palestinian film … My story, my village story, my people’s story, seven years I was working on the film.”
Certainly the subject matter is hardly one you would expect Israel to be queueing up to applaud in the absence of an Oscar nomination, but things become yet more complicated as the film did indeed receive Israeli funding, as well as Palestinian and French funding, and also had two directors – Burnat himself, and Israeli co-director Guy Davidi.
Davidi seems to have attempted to play down the furor, conceding that the film is both Palestinian and Israeli, and stating that he does not feel films should come with citizenship.
Indeed, technically the film’s citizenship should be of no relevance in this case.
It has not been nominated in the ‘Foreign Film’ categories, so no origin needs attaching to it for Oscar purposes, while both the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and the Palestinian Boycotts, Divestments and Sanctions National Committee have confirmed it is not boycottable under their own regulations, which do not require the boycotting of artists who receive Israeli funding, providing their work is independent from the will of the Israeli state and government.
However, it seems the battle lines over ownership of the film have well and truly been drawn now, and indeed Burnat was quoted recently by a journalist at Australia’s Middle east News Service as saying: “If Israel continues to state that it is an Israeli film, I will pull the film from the Oscars. If Academy awards organizers would present Five Broken Cameras as an Israeli film – I won’t not there … all said and done it’s a Palestinian film. It was filmed here and presents the story of the village.
People in Bil’in say ‘we made a film that documents a seven years’ struggle to remove fence, and in the end you go to Israel and hand them over a gift?’ On the street they do not understand what is a co-production.”
The story seem set to run and run right up to the Oscar’s and beyond”.
The point is that this is not in a category where the national origin of the film is an issue, like in the Foreign Film category. For the Israelis to go around saying this is an “Israeli” production while in fact it is a Palestinian film about the struggle of a Palestinian village against Israel is total hypocrisy meant basically to steal the film’s thunder.
Note: The interview on CNN of Palestinian film maker Emad Burnat https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2013/02/14/five-broken-cameras-film-director-speaks-up-on-cnn-who-is-emad-burnat/
Adonis Diaries 