Lebanon and Arabic

We had mentioned this in one of our previous posts. This is an interesting video from LBC.



BG

Arabic Sound Bite n° 5 - From the Archives

Remember this?

Vintage Ragheb Alama!

The song in called "3alamtini"



Great video--classic 90s, before all the cool high-techness of today's videos

Arabic videos were just cheesy corny lovefests, but also much more innocent

Here it is:




~LZ

Jihadists Don't Blog

BG, we are "bridge bloggers," oh, and apparently jihadists don't blog (i have this great image right now of a jihadist with a giant beard, osama like turban and sandals squinting at c omputer screen trying to pour out his emotions on a blog...haha)

The BBC just published an article about blogging in the Arab World

The studied, organized by the Berkman Center for the Internet and Society at Harvard, looked at 35,000 active Arabic blogs (ie that are written in Arabic)

Their goal "was to produce a baseline assessment of the networked public sphere in the Arab Middle East, and its relationship to a range of emergent issues, including politics, religion, culture and international affairs."

They concluded: (1) the Arabic blogosphere is organized primarily around countries, (2) Egypt formed the largest cluster on the Arabic blogging map. The study also singled out Saudi Arabia, Kuwait & Syria (3) That within a given country, the make-up of the blogging cluster is varied,

and

(4)

The report also identified two large cross-national groups of what the authors call "bridge bloggers." One group is located in the countries of the eastern Mediterranean and frequently blogs in English in addition to, or instead of, Arabic. ...

Report co-author John Palfrey noted that these bridge bloggers were important because they serve as cultural interpreters for many in the West. Bridge blogs, he said, are often where "the water-cooler chatter" of the Arabic-speaking world gets into the wider public domain.

:P

I was a bit surprised that Egypt would be the top considering the arrests of bloggers that have been taking place there, but I guess when you live in a repressive society, blogging (provided it's not blocked by the governement) is the best way to express your anger and connect to the public...

Check it out here

~LZ

Arabic Sound Bite n° 1

So I know that there are significantly more important things happening now in Lebanon like the release of 4 of the suspected murderers of Hariri, but forgive me for not wanting to get into that right now.

Instead, I am sure everyone would benefit much more for from watching this monstrosity, and then proceeding to mark it on Youtube as Inappropriate Content so that it gets permanently removed and minimal damage is done to the reputation of Lebanese music.

I give you "Funky Arabs" by il moutrib Jad Choueiri:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4D6hJA846M

My god man, what were you thinking??? REALLY?

How did this man come out of the same country as Fairouz?

~LZ