Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label algeria

Resistance is not a Democratic Option

Resistance doesn’t follow electoral cycles or await the results of public opinion polls. Those who resist occupation do not ask whether their defiance is “appropriate” or “palatable”. That question itself reflects a deep ethical confusion — one that equates a subjugated people with the very power that oppresses them .

Quote of the Week: Killing Innocent People

Journalist : M. Ben M'Hidi, don't you think it's a bit cowardly to use women's baskets and handbags to carry explosive devices that kill so many innocent people? Ben M'Hidi :  And doesn't it seem to you even more cowardly to drop napalm bombs on defenseless villages, so that there are a thousand times more innocent victims? Of course, if we had your airplanes it would be a lot easier for us. Give us your bombers, and you can have our baskets. — The Battle of Algiers ,  a 1966 movie   Related The Rebel’s Clinic

Algeria in the Archives

How much of the war in Ukraine or the one on Gaza will be known in the future? Looking at the example of ‘ Algeria in the Archives ’ or the British empire, can inform us that information and records could be buried for decades. What we know now is just some of what is happening. The article is behind a paywall unless one has an institution subscription, for example, with NLR.

France’s Failed Attempt to Save Its Empire

“At the heart of Peterson’s book is a counterargument to traditional narratives of postwar social reform. The very same rhetoric that justified the construction of a supposed top-down progressive modernity after 1945 was simultaneously used to justify the entrenchment of colonial rule in North Africa .”

Documentary: Frantz Fanon – Black Skin White Mask

 But why a British actor as Fanon? Related A review of Concerning Violence

French in Algeria and Morocco

Algeria: Primary schools to teach English in 'overdue' move away from 'colonial' French French is on the verge of disappearing in Morocco “Algerian children will be left unable to academically master a single language due to the lack of provisions for this transition into English in schools.”  Moving from French to English won't resolve the country's problems

France’s Far Right and Immigration

“A survey for French television found that almost six out of 10 people thought those living in France without permission should be put in administrative detention.” No surprise here . Related Le Pen consistently received her best scores  [in  la France périphérique small towns, rural municipalities and declining former industrial belts, the ‘France of the Gilets Jaunes’],  precisely because she offered a discourse that resonated with the demands for security and protection found in parts of France that have most suffered from the consequences of market-led globalization. Having accepted the mantra of There Is No Alternative, the forces of ‘progressive neoliberalism’ have been signally unable to speak to these demands, instead viewing them as obstacles to modernization. This laid the terrain for the Front National to frame them in nationalist-xenophobic terms, and present itself as the ‘voice of the people’. Us and them

France, a Settler Postcolony?

“ In this perverse upending of the very meaning of decolonization, to decolonize France is to rid the nation of the immigrants who are “colonizing” it . Paradoxically, the most vocal advocates of decolonization today are not formerly colonized subjects, but the nativist guardians of the borders of France against the purported invasion of immigrants.”

Djamila Boupacha

on wikipedia