Ports of Call
Digital inflections from humanscapes of the Mediterranean, the Middle East and Central Asia from regionally based journalist, Iason Athanasiadis.
on :
Wednesday, 2 Mar, 2011
The last time Benghazi exploded against the Libyan regime, it all kicked off during a Bob Geldof gig. It was 2008 and the ageing British musician had been brought in by a regime anxious to introduce western music to its people for what was touted as Libya’s first rock concert.
Sir Bob, as he is known in the UK, is dismissed in music circles as an ageing has-been. So he was just perfect for a regime anxious not to appear too radical in its western musical choices even while its ruling fa...
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on :
Tuesday, 22 Feb, 2011
What exactly is going down in the proverbial Arab street? Is it a high-minded expression of people power? Or an example of suddenly released egos running amok in demanding more benefits, more freedom, more acknowledgement of the individual in the age of self-empowerment?
The fundamental definitional cleavage between East and West used to be the cliché that life in the West is self-absorbed, whim-fulfilling and solitary, while an eastern existence tended towards community and the collecti...
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on :
Thursday, 17 Feb, 2011
Tahrir Square is full of noise—no longer that of revolutionary crowds but the honks of cars piling into the historic square for the first time after three weeks of protests. ...
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on :
Tuesday, 8 Feb, 2011
The first call to prayer sails through an occupied Liberation Square in a Cairo wrapped in darkness. Hundreds stand up, bowing, kneeling and rising in pools of yellow light cas...
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on :
Wednesday, 2 Feb, 2011
“When you get here you won’t recognize the streets,” the Egyptian students flying home from Chicago were told by their friends in a burning Cairo. “Street roadblocks, b...
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