News

The Levantine Center is a Los Angeles-based organization that brings the arts, literatures, and films of the Middle East and North Africa to American audiences. It regularly puts together wonderful events (some of which I’ve written about in this space) and now they are in need of your support. This month, a generous donor has offered to match every pledge up to $10,000, so every penny you give the Levantine Center will be doubled. Please: Reach out for that checkbook or credit card and go here.

A Moroccan man by the name of Fouad Mourtada has been arrested and put in jail because he created a fake Facebook profile for the king’s brother, crown prince Moulay Rachid. The official Moroccan news agency MAP did not even bother with the presumption of innocence:

Les services de sécurité marocains ont procédé à l’arrestation, mercredi à Casablanca, pour pratiques crapuleuses d’un individu qui a usurpé l’identité de Son Altesse Royale le Prince Moulay Rachid sur le site Internet www.facebook.com, a-t-on appris de source policière.

The accused is referred to as having “villainous practices.” The release has since been taken down from the site, but you can read its Google cache. It’s unclear how the police found the man, and whether Facebook released his IP address.

Just the other day, a New York Times reporter called to ask me about blogging in Morocco, and the relationship between new media and traditional media. The Moroccan government has so far–and wisely–left bloggers alone, but if someone can get put in jail for something as silly as a fake Facebook profile, then bloggers should be worried.

For your amusement: Facebook profiles for George W. Bush, Tony Blair, King Juan Carlos, and King Abdullah.

(Via Larbi.)

A few weeks ago in my non-fiction class, we discussed James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son. Here is how the essay “Stranger in the Village” concludes:

One of the things that distinguishes Americans from other people is that no other people has ever been so deeply involved in the lives of black men, and vice versa. This fact faced with all its implications, it can be seen that the history of the American Negro problem is not merely shameful, it is something of an achievement. For even when the worst has been said, it must also be added that the perpetual challenge posed by this problem was always, somehow, perpetually met. It is precisely this black-white experience which may prove of indispensable value to us in the world we face today. The world is white no longer, and it will never be white again.

Published originally in Harper’s Magazine in 1953.

(Photo credit: Mottke Weissman)

There’s a great profile of Francisco Goldman in last weekend’s Guardian Review. His latest book, The Art of Political Murder, is just now coming out in the U.K.

A recent World Bank reports finds that the Arab World is falling behind other regions in terms of education. And the worst performers? Read this:

The region had not seen the increasing literacy and school enrollment witnessed in Asia and Latin America, they said.

Djibouti, Yemen, Iraq and Morocco were ranked the worst educational reformers.

Iraq had to contend with a U.S. military invasion. What, exactly, is Morocco’s excuse?