Links: Week20’16

You may have read an old post I wrote during the last presidential elections. It was after I watched a video with one of Bouteflika’s supporters comparing him to a prophet. The video has unfortunately been deleted but I just watched a newly posted video from that period. Here, another man invents new verses of Quran and explains that he’d vote for Bouteflika, dead or alive.

That is to show how corrupt people are, in so many ways. In this interview on Libre Algerie (which is not as good as La Nation),  Mohammed Hachemaoui talks about how corruption colonises the state (cf. his book “Changement institutionnel vs durabilité autoritaire. La trajectoire algérienne en perspective comparée“). The interview was given in 2011 and the author spoke of Khalifa, etc. but it is still applicable to today’s Algeria. Khelil and his wife, Bedjaoui, Bouchouareb, Saipem, Sonatrach, Panama Papers, Grine, Rebrab, Elkhabar are the names that people will remember when they will think of Bouteflika’s fourth term… if this term is remembered at all that is. God forbid.

Some periods are indeed too dark to be remembered (I can’t believe I am saying this) while others may be brighter. In Algeria, Mecca of Revolution, you will read an interview with Jeffrey James Byrne about his new book “Mecca of Revolution – Algeria, Decolonization, and the Third World Order“. The author apparently had access to some FLN and Algerian foreign affairs ministry’s archives and the book looks interesting.

And if you are as interested in history as I am, you could go ahead and read this interesting interview with historian Benjamin Stora: Benjamin Stora : la mémoire blessée de l’Algérie perdue.

Still with history, and as people commemorate the Nakba, Al Jazeera offers us a nine-part series tackling issues of Arab identity, nationalism and unity.

And speaking of Arab unity, I cannot resist sharing this video where Algerian president Bouteflika is awarded a humanitarian knight’s shield by the Arab Red Crescent and Red Cross Organization. I’d comment further but I am trying to have a more humanitarian behaviour…