Category Archives: YouTube Watch

Gezi Park and the Sound of Music

"Arab Spring", Music and Dance, Turkey, YouTube Watch

Omid Safi has a fine post (Sounds of Protest: Les Miserables, Gezi Park, and the Power of Music) on his blog at Religious News on the music in the recent protests in Turkey. Check it out for a nostalgic journey through protest songs since Joan Baez. Here is one of the songs he discusses, made at Gezi Park by Kardeş Türküler and called Sounds of Pots and Pans. Check out his commentary for far more. There is also a Turkish website with many tracks of protest music at http://capulcular.bandcamp.com/

Displaced in Yemen: A Life on Hold

"Arab Spring", Film and Video, Huthis, Yemen, YouTube Watch

IRIN’s film, A Life on Hold, tells the story of Qasim and his family, who for the past three years have been living in a camp for internally displaced people (IDPs) in northwestern Yemen.

Years of conflict in the region between the Houthi tribe and government forces has led to the displacement of more than 300,000 civilians, who have to cope with a decline in health and educational services. Malnutrition is common in the IDPs camps, as well as in the apartments, mosques and schools where many have found shelter.

Authorities have tried to encourage the displaced to go back to their homes, but renewed clashes in 2012 actually increased the IDP numbers in the north. Extensive damage to houses and infrastructure, continuing insecurity, fear of reprisals and the lack of livelihood opportunities and basic services all serve as deterrents to return.

For more information on the situation in Yemen, please visit:

http://www.irinnews.org/Country/YE/Yemen

Deep Purple for your hijab

Gender and Sexuality, Music and Dance, United Arab Emirates, YouTube Watch


The Al-Ain-based Rock Band “Random Stars”

Where there is youthful fire, there is Smoke on the Water. I remember the first Deep Purple record I bought: Machine Head from 1972. The cover featured a blurry, almost metallic image of the long-haired heads of the band. The song that has since been immortalized describes a fire that destroyed a recording studio in Geneva. Where were these Deep Purple-ites to stay, since Frank Zappa was at the best place in town and the “Rolling truck Stones” were outside the Grand Hotel, which was empty and bare, but obviously full enough to record one of the classics of Rock.

Rock is about as Western as a person can get: sound tracks that serve as neoliberal commercialized crumbs that feed rebellious young people the idea that songs can substitute for real protest. And sex and drugs, of course. It is hard to imagine the band without the groupies, who at least in those days flocked like moths to a flame at every concert. Fundamentalist Christians were appalled, warned by their pastors that Rock songs played backwards held secret Satanic messages. The 1960s auto de fe had already consumed Beatles albums in Alabama. Janis Joplin was dead in 1970; the Lord finally gave her a Mercedes Benz as a hearse. Jimi Hendrix joined her the same year. Jim Morrison walked out of the door of life in 1971. Continue reading Deep Purple for your hijab →

The Killing of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki

Journalism and Media, Obama Administration, Terrorism Issue, Yemen, YouTube Watch


For a brief introduction to a report on the killing of the 16-year old son of Anwar al-Awlaki, check out this brief Youtube video. Here are the details on the video:

Watch the full 50-minute interview with Jeremy Scahill at http://owl.li/klnWN. Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was a 16-year-old boy, born in Colorado, who liked listening to hip-hop and posed as a rapper in pictures posted on Facebook. He was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen two weeks after the Obama administration assassinated his father, the U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, in a separate strike. Abdulrahman’s death is a central part of Jeremy Scahill’s new book, “Dirty Wars: The World Is A Battlefield.” While the Obama administration has defended the killing of Anwar, it has never publicly explained why his son was targeted. Scahill reveals CIA Director John Brennan, Obama’s former senior adviser on counterterrorism and homeland security, suspected that the teenager had been killed “intentionally.” “I understand from a former senior official of the administration who worked on this program at the time, that when it became clear that Abdulrahman al-Awlaki had been killed, that President Obama was furious, and that John Brennan, who at the time was … the guy running all of these operations, that Brennan believed or suspected that it was an intentional hit … against this 16-year-old kid,” Scahill says.

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