Editors blog

anyMeta 4.6.58 - Atom module 0.3.2 2017-05-11T16:50:31+02:00 http://www.couscousglobal.com/feed/atom/47/en Editors blog http://www.couscousglobal.com/id/4319 2009-11-02T15:08:43+01:00 THEO VAN GOGH

NOVEMBER 2ND, 2004-2009

5 YEARS AGO THEO GOT KILLED IN A HORRIBLE WAY AND WE STARTED OUR FIRST SERIES COUSCOUS AND COLA. THEO AND WE WERE AND STILL ARE ALL PASSIONATE ABOUT HOW TO LIVE IN A MIXED CULTURE. TODAY, ON ALL SOULS DAY, WE REFLECT......... maartje nevejan http://www.couscousglobal.com/id/176 ARTICLE news http://www.couscousglobal.com/id/4252 2009-09-01T15:42:20+02:00 01-09-09 Are we European?

Stop the presses! There's news to be told, we are going erm...... European!

<a href="http://www.beeldengeluid.nl">The Dutch Institute for Image and Sound (aka Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid aka NIBG)</a> has launched a project called <a href="http://www.videoactive.eu">Video Active.</a> Video Active is an attempt of the NIBG and several other European archives to give people like you and me an idea of what television in Europe looks like on one single website. Yes, on the web! This web spot contains tv shows from all over Europe plus a whole lot of articles and other documents about Euro tv history. Here's where we come in: episode seven from the first season of Couscous and Cola has been selected for this project and it can be viewed on <a href="http://www.videoactive.eu/VideoActive/VideoDetails.do?id=VA_SV2009070211505773&sw=&curitem=0&curpage=0">Video Active dot EU.</a> SO! If you're curious to see what kind of tv shows they make in Europania, then you really should take look. Thank youz for having us on board I say and why not place the episode of Couscous and Cola in the spotlight? Yes, on the frontpage! We need all the hits we can get, but then again, who doesn't.... - ARTICLE news http://www.couscousglobal.com/id/4056 2009-07-18T17:48:43+02:00 Obama in Tanzania

Zanzibar 18 july 2009

Tanzania has more obama than Kenya.....posters, bussesm daladala, tangka....he isall over... in the paper in Kenya they are upset about the speech he gave about corruption....why doesn't he focus on the good sides? In Tanzania there is no pain in the papers.... maartje nevejan http://www.couscousglobal.com/id/176 ARTICLE news http://www.couscousglobal.com/id/3912 2009-07-01T11:53:58+02:00 STARS FROM IRAN

FROM ONE OF OUR DEAR FRIENDS IN IRAN: ( WE WILL NOT GIVE NAMES ANYMORE OUT OF SAFETY)

Adam’s children are the limbs of one body In their creation they are made of the same essence If one limb is in pain the whole body will be restless “ Saadi, Persian poet, 13th century” Today the limb in pain is Iran . Iranians have gone through a revolution; ten years imposed war, sanction and oppression. However we endured them all with patience and pride. All of the crises have made us stronger, wiser and more united The time to test our wisdom came a few weeks ago by Iran ’s presidential election; We all decided to vote regardless of our differences. We voted to cry out for change. We voted to say “No” to the government of lies and deception. We voted to say “No” to the government that had embarrassed us in front of International community. We voted to say “No” to the government that had stolen our confidence. Yet, they ignored our votes by rigging the election and silent our cries by the sound of their weapons. Now time has come to test our strength and unity: Thus, we followed Dr. Luther king’s and Gandhi’s way by becoming green and peaceful. We mourn peacefully for more than 100 martyrs who demanded their rights, a very basic right of “being counted, being counted as human being” We keep our fury and desperation like a lump in our throat and let our tears roll in silence This is not politics. This is life. Adding one more democratic country to this world will make the world a better place for all of us and for our children. This is what Iranians are fighting for. Iranian government has imprisoned us in our own country by clamping down all the communication means. And this is where you can play an important role. You as a human being regardless of your nationality, gender, religion or race. You can be our peace ambassador: By wearing green By posting any of the attachments to the emails you send out By translating this message in any other language and forwarding it to as many people as possible By demanding your government not to recognize the Iranian Coup government By isolating the government of Mahmoud Ahmadi Nejad financially By... Be creative in supporting us! Join our green wave, together we can make our world as green and as peaceful as possible. We have many strong links in our green chain from Joan Baez , Bon Jovi and Kasparov to JieJek and Naom CHamski Join us before it is too late. Join us before they silence us. Join us in crying out our common pain “I am the common pain, cry me out!” Check these links to find more about Iranian government’s brutality. Then make your choice to be neutral or take the side of freedom fighters. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neda_%28Iranian_protester%29">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neda_%28Iranian_protester%29</a> (Warning: the video is graphical.) <a href="http://studentactivism.net/2009/06/16/attack-on-tehran-university/">studentactivism.net/2009/06/16/attack-on-tehran-university/</a> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/arasmus/3639783499/">www.flickr.com/photos/arasmus/3639783499/</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFHTBte8zZw">www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFHTBte8zZw</a> <a href="http://helpiranelection.com/">helpiranelection.com/</a> <a href="http://tribes.tribe.net/rawadvice/thread/4bc55924-44a9-4d6a-bf4d-f6be66d51aab">tribes.tribe.net/rawadvice/thread/4bc55924-44a9-4d6a-bf4d-f6be66d51aab</a> Reminder : While you are reading this message hundreds of Iranians are being tortured in prisons and forced to make false confession. Support them! “They bring down a star every night, yet this sad sky is still full of stars” Shafi Kadkani, Iranian contemporary poet maartje nevejan http://www.couscousglobal.com/id/176 ARTICLE news http://www.couscousglobal.com/id/3907 2009-07-01T11:54:59+02:00 Filmdirector Mohsen Makhmalbaf Mohsen Makhmalbaf guardian.co.uk, Friday 19 June 2009 I have been given the responsibility of telling the world what is happening in Iran. The office of Mir Hossein Mousavi, who the Iranian people truly want as their leader, has asked me to do so. They have asked me to tell how Mousavi's headquarters was wrecked by plainclothes police officers. To tell how the commanders of the revolutionary guard ordered him to stay silent. To urge people to take to the streets because Mousavi could not do so directly. The people in the streets don't want a recount of last week's vote. They want it annulled. This is a crucial moment in our history. Since the 1979 revolution Iran has had 80% dictatorship and 20% democracy. We have dictatorship because one person is in charge, the supreme leader – first Khomeini, now Khamenei. He controls the army and the clergy, the justice system and the media, as well as our oil money. There are some examples of democracy – reformers elected to parliament, and the very fact that a person like Mousavi could stand for election. But, since the day of the election, this element of democracy has vanished. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei announced that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won, and that whoever opposed this will be suppressed – a position he affirmed speaking today in Tehran. People wanted to have demonstrations within the law, but the authorities would not let them. This is the first time we have seen millions on the streets without the permission of the supreme leader. Now they are gathering to mourn those who have died. The people of Iran have a culture that elevates martyrdom. In the period running up to the revolution, when people were killed at demonstrations, others would gather again in the days following the death. This cycle carried on for six months, and culminated in the revolution. Today they are gathering in Tehran for those who were shot on Tuesday, and if there are more killings, this will continue. So why do the Iranian people not want Ahmadinejad as their leader? Because he is nothing but a loudspeaker for Khamenei. Under Ahmadinejad, economic problems have grown worse, despite $280bn of oil revenue. Social and literary freedom is much more restricted than under his predecessor, Mohammad Khatami. The world views us as a terrorist nation on the lookout for war. When Khatami was president of Iran, Bush was president of the US. Now the Americans have Obama and we have our version of Bush. We need an Obama who can find solutions for Iran's problems. Although power would remain in the hands of Khamenei, a president like Mousavi could weaken the supreme leader. Some suggest the protests will fade because nobody is leading them. All those close to Mousavi have been arrested, and his contact with the outside world has been restricted. People rely on word of mouth, because their mobile phones and the internet have been closed down. That they continue to gather shows they want something more than an election. They want freedom, and if they are not granted it we will be faced with another revolution. Thirty years ago we supported each other. When police used tear gas, fires would be lit to neutralise its effects. People would set their own cars on fire to save others. Since then, the government has tried to separate people from one other. What we lost was our togetherness, and in the past month we have found that again. All the armed forces in Iran are only enough to repress one city, not the whole country. The people are like drops of water coming together in a sea. People say that Mousavi won't change anything as he is part of the establishment. That is correct to a degree because they wouldn't let anyone who is not in their circle rise to seniority. But not all members of a family are alike, and for Mousavi it is useful to understand how he has changed over time. Before the revolution, Mousavi was a religious intellectual and an artist, who supported radical change but did not support the mullahs. After the revolution, when all religious intellectuals and even leftists backed Khomeini, he served as prime minister for eight years. The economy was stable, and he did not order the killings of opponents, or become corrupt. In order to neuralise his power, the position of prime minister was eliminated from the constitution and he was pushed out of politics. So Mousavi returned to the world of artists because in a country where there are no real political parties, artists can act as a party. The artists supported Khatami and now they support Mousavi. Previously, he was revolutionary, because everyone inside the system was a revolutionary. But now he's a reformer. Now he knows Gandhi – before he knew only Che Guevara. If we gain power through aggression we would have to keep it through aggression. That is why we're having a green revolution, defined by peace and democracy. maartje nevejan http://www.couscousglobal.com/id/176 ARTICLE news http://www.couscousglobal.com/id/3901 2009-07-01T11:55:34+02:00 Netizens from China and Iran

18-06-2009

<a href="http://shanghaiist.com/2009/06/16/chinese_netizens_reactions_to_iran.php">shanghaiist.com/2009/06/16/chinese_netizens_reactions_to_iran.php</a> On June 12, the tenth ever Iranian presidential elections were held in Iran and two days later, the publicized outcome catalyzed an explosive reaction. Sitting President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had won the election over his main competitor, Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Several analysts and journalists from the U.S. and U.K. expressed doubts about the authenticity of the results. So, it seems, did many of Mousavi's backers - who have been fighting what they called a "deeply flawed" election through protest demonstrations. Aka lots and lots of rioting. So what does this have to do with China? As always, the curiosity of democracy evoked a strong reaction within the Chinese netizen community, especially when it seems to have failed. And after scouring the web for what was being said, it looks like a pretty huge proportion are in agreement that not only is Iran flawed, democracy is as well. Is it a case of 50 cent armies jumping on the chance to influence public debate, or really the thoughts of the bulk of the Chinese net-surfing peoples? maartje nevejan http://www.couscousglobal.com/id/176 ARTICLE news http://www.couscousglobal.com/id/3900 2009-07-01T11:56:08+02:00 America and Iran washingtonpost.com NEWS Obama, Siding With the Regime By Robert Kagan Wednesday, June 17, 2009 The turmoil in Iran since last week's election has confused the foreign policy debate here in the United States in interesting ways. Supporters of President Obama, who until very recently had railed against the Bush administration's "freedom agenda" and who insisted on a new "realism," have suddenly found themselves rooting for freedom and democracy in Iran. And in their desire to attribute all good things to the work of President Obama, they have even suggested that the ferment in Iran is due to Obama's public appeals to Iranians and Muslims. If so, this will be one of those great ironies of history. For, in fact, Obama never meant to spark political upheaval in Iran, much less encourage the Iranian people to take to the streets. That they are doing so is not good news for the president but, rather, an unwelcome complication in his strategy of engaging and seeking rapprochement with the Iranian government on nuclear issues. One of the great innovations in the Obama administration's approach to Iran, after all, was supposed to be its deliberate embrace of the Tehran rulers' legitimacy. In his opening diplomatic gambit, his statement to Iran on the Persian new year in March, Obama went out of his way to speak directly to Iran's rulers, a notable departure from George W. Bush's habit of speaking to the Iranian people over their leaders' heads. As former Clinton official Martin Indyk put it at the time, the wording was carefully designed "to demonstrate acceptance of the government of Iran." This approach had always been a key element of a "grand bargain" with Iran. The United States had to provide some guarantee to the regime that it would no longer support opposition forces or in any way seek its removal. The idea was that the United States could hardly expect the Iranian regime to negotiate on core issues of national security, such as its nuclear program, so long as Washington gave any encouragement to the government's opponents. Obama had to make a choice, and he made it. This was widely applauded as a "realist" departure from the Bush administration's quixotic and counterproductive idealism. It would be surprising if Obama departed from this realist strategy now, and he hasn't. His extremely guarded response to the outburst of popular anger at the regime has been widely misinterpreted as reflecting concern that too overt an American embrace of the opposition will hurt it, or that he wants to avoid American "moralizing." (Obama himself claimed yesterday that he didn't want the United States to appear to be "meddling.") But Obama's calculations are quite different. Whatever his personal sympathies may be, if he is intent on sticking to his original strategy, then he can have no interest in helping the opposition. His strategy toward Iran places him objectively on the side of the government's efforts to return to normalcy as quickly as possible, not in league with the opposition's efforts to prolong the crisis. It's not that Obama preferred a victory by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He probably would have been happy to do business with Mir Hossein Mousavi, even if there was little reason to believe Mousavi would have pursued a different approach to the nuclear issue. But once Mousavi lost, however fairly or unfairly, Obama objectively had no use for him or his followers. If Obama appears to lend support to the Iranian opposition in any way, he will appear hostile to the regime, which is precisely what he hoped to avoid. Obama's policy now requires getting past the election controversies quickly so that he can soon begin negotiations with the reelected Ahmadinejad government. This will be difficult as long as opposition protests continue and the government appears to be either unsettled or too brutal to do business with. What Obama needs is a rapid return to peace and quiet in Iran, not continued ferment. His goal must be to deflate the opposition, not to encourage it. And that, by and large, is what he has been doing. If you find all this disturbing, you should. The worst thing is that this approach will probably not prevent the Iranians from getting a nuclear weapon. But this is what "realism" is all about. It is what sent Brent Scowcroft to raise a champagne toast to China's leaders in the wake of Tiananmen Square. It is what convinced Gerald Ford not to meet with Alexander Solzhenitsyn at the height of detente. Republicans have traditionally been better at it than Democrats -- though they have rarely been rewarded by the American people at the ballot box, as Ford and George H.W. Bush can attest. We'll see whether President Obama can be just as cold-blooded in pursuit of better relations with an ugly regime, without suffering the same political fate. Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes a monthly column for The Post. maartje nevejan http://www.couscousglobal.com/id/176 ARTICLE news http://www.couscousglobal.com/id/3899 2009-06-15T17:16:39+02:00 So confused About Iran government is now playing a masterpiece mind game, all people here are so confused about what is real and who to trust about 5 hours ago from web now in the ~Times maartje nevejan http://www.couscousglobal.com/id/176 ARTICLE news http://www.couscousglobal.com/id/3875 2009-07-01T11:57:41+02:00 Our hearts and thoughts are with our friends in Iran

ALSO FILMDIRECTOR MOHSEN MAKHMALBAF : GO TO EDITORS BLOG

We are getting lots of emails from our friends in Iran and Iranian peoiple abroad about how difficult the situation is at the moment. here is one: " Dear Friends, As you know we had an election on Friday which turned out to be nothing but a great fraud. There are thousands of people on streets demonstrating against this government and regime. You can watch the videos and pictures everywhere on the web. It's a real coup here : The SMS system has been completely cut off since Thursday, cellphones are not available since last night, internet connections are slow, may websites have been blocked including : Youtube,Facebook,Twitter,..... , many people have been arrested, police is attacking people on the streets, beating them with batons, stones, electric shock ,etc and using all different kinds on gases , tear gas,pepper gas.,.. They have killed a couple of young people. All foreign reporters have been told to leave, Mousavi and Karroubi and many others under home arrest.... I can tell you about the situation for as long as you want, but that would be a real bother to you, I know. We are all in a shock, I have been crying all the time about the current situation of our country. We're experiencing a very bad situation and are expecting support from both inside and outside Iran. We hope to change the regime through a revolution, it has already begun. Please, spread these news so that everyone is well informed about the difficult situation we're currently having." maartje nevejan http://www.couscousglobal.com/id/176 ARTICLE news http://www.couscousglobal.com/id/3832 2009-06-04T14:56:33+02:00 Performing Arts Lab in England

june 2009 www.pallab.org

We did a Performing Arts Lab in Kent, the UK. Theme was this website and more specifically 2 questions: Is there such a thing as Global Intimacy, and if there is can I get it on camera? And since we are launching our application Lypo this week, we had lots of discussions and inquiries about the Opposite: your perfect opponent in life and debate. LYPO (Love Your Perfect Opposite) has been created because we believe you learn the most about yourself by talking to people who are different than you and who disagree with you. It's the technological translation of the famous sentence: "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to death your right of saying that." We are bored with just finding friends on social networks, we want to find our opposites and join the debate! You will find some clips of the participants on the front page these days, later just search Opposites and you will find them.www.LYPO.org In the lab we worked with 28 mostly young artist/journalists and campaigners, from different art-disciplines, different religious backgrounds and of very mixed identities. We did exercises, made new work, discussed it, had great dinners outside (yes, UK has sun as well...and we got lots of it!). We talked about how different we were, and in what ways we are the same. Also about whether you should solve conflicts as an artist or make work about it and let it be. To much political correctness going on..... Everybody is struggling in the arts-world to find a place and survive, but at the same time everyone is highly motivated to find new forms and ways in theatre, film, dance, hip-hop music and visual arts. We do not know what will come out of it yet, but we will keep you posted. Thanks Susan, Jenny and Kathy for your spectacular hospitality! maartje nevejan http://www.couscousglobal.com/id/176 ARTICLE news