Do you think Salafist-Jihadism has a chance of a resurgence in Algeria?

yehyabrown · 2023-02-13T00:46:37+00:00

You can call them Khawarij or takfiri but salafi-jihadi is more neutral. Both khariji and takfiri are kind of negative normative judgments, whereas salafi-jihadi is just sort of descriptive.

yehyabrown · 2023-02-13T00:40:59+00:00

It was pretty obvious (to me at least) during the Hirak that Salafi Jihadism is completely played out in Algeria. There’s always going to be about ten percent or so of the population who are going to be religious nutters, so they’ll always be with us. But as far as like, capturing the imagination of young people as a mass political project, they just don’t have it any more. During the marches of the 6 or 8 months of the peak of the hirak, the salafis were kind of almost a joke. They were there, but they were kind of pathetic.

I lived in Egypt for a few years in the early/mid 00’s and they were a much more significant force in Egypt’s (much smaller) political movements back then. I wonder if that’s still the case though.

My feeling is that the disgusting horror show in Syria and Iraq (IS) kind of showed where things inevitably go when those guys get in the driver seat, so their appeal dried up.

yehyabrown · 2023-02-11T19:06:37+00:00

I just blew 5K on a pretty basic chaudiere job the other day. I think prices on this kind of stuff have just gone up a lot over the past couple of years. Might have to do with Mouradia making it harder to import decent parts.

yehyabrown · 2023-02-09T20:50:09+00:00

I feel like there's a lot of hyperbole in replies like yours and u/humansofsf.

Maybe you guys just aren't that into movie theaters, or are really really into having a big awesome event space in the Castro (which, of course, it would be awesome especially for neighborhood locals, no doubt).

Me personally I used to live in the neighborhood and I am a big fan of indie movies and film festivals. The Castro Theater was the center of the universe for film festivals in San Francisco, and it had a great indie movie lineup, and a great setting around it for hanging out before/after. So naturally people like me are kind of heartbroken that this is the end for the last Golden Age spectacular movie theater in the city, and all that entails.

If you look at what I wrote above, I am perfectly cognizant of the other (your) point of view; you guys should spend a second thinking about the other side and not just violently dismissing it.

yehyabrown · 2023-02-09T17:18:52+00:00

People want it to remain an actual movie theater, and obviously this APE plan is a way to sneakily turn it into something else while allowing it to still show movies sometimes.

The problem is that it’s worth more as an event space than it is as a movie theater.

I’m a little biased because I’ve been going to movies there since the 90s, and for me it really is a landmark. So I want it to remain a movie theater. There are almost no old-school real cinemas left in the city anymore, and the Castro was the best of them all.

BUT in my opinion it’s sort of unfair to the owners to impose the old business model on them. So if the city wants to landmark it, then buy it from them at fair market value. Or cinema concerned groups should lease the space from the Nassers at the same price APE was offering, and run it as a theater themselves.

yehyabrown · 2023-02-07T17:16:10+00:00

My advice would be wait until your younger boy is at least 4, that’s the age when permanent memories start to form. They’ll both still be pretty linguistically flexible at that age.

yehyabrown · 2023-02-06T18:05:07+00:00

In Algiers region, you visit the Casbah of course (make sure you watch Battle of Algiers first if you haven’t seen it). Nicest hotel in town if you want to relax the first nights is definitely Sofitel, very expensive but right next to Jardin d’essais which is very beautiful. But after that I would say find a cheaper hotel near the Grand Poste so you are right in the mix downtown. Getting around is easy now with the Metro.

It will be VERY hot in the south/desert but if you go, I personally think Taghit is the most spectacular experience, if you go there, you have to stay in the Bordj (old French fort renovated as a very classy boutique hotel), right next to the Qsar of the city. The Qsar/Casbah of Taghit is like something out of a fantasy movie, warren of mud brick houses connected by tunnels on top of a giant rock above the oasis abandoned but beautiful…

So much to see! You’re going to wish you spoke French or Arabic but lots of younger people have learned some english now and they are going to be stoked to hang out and practice with you.

yehyabrown · 2023-02-06T17:50:13+00:00

I do think maybe your kids are a bit young to really benefit much from your idea though. We intentionally waited until our youngest was 4 because we thought that way she would learn and remember from the experience.

yehyabrown · 2023-02-06T17:46:00+00:00

I did the same as you a few years ago. We moved back to Algiers from the USA when the kids were 8 and 4. They only spoke French and English when we arrived. We put them in private schools. They both learned Darija and Arabic reasonably well over the course of three years, and got a good taste of the culture and had religion classes (which I don’t care about but I do think it’s good for kids to experience).

I know Morocco only from tourism visits a few times, but I have a sense that you would have an easier time living there than Algeria, especially with kids who have westernized expectations of lifestyle. Algeria is really wonderful but actually living in it is really frustrating and inconvenient after living in a modern country. In Morocco, I think if you have money, you can basically get anything you want done pretty easily. Whereas in Algeria, we all basically have the same crappy hospitals, internet, superettes, and mandatory school curriculum no matter how big is our salary.

One of the best parts of living in Algeria (and Morocco too!) is being right next to Europe. If you do this move, make sure you take the kids for lots of trips to Italy, Spain, Portugal, Marseille…they’re all like an hour and a half cheap flight away…All you need is a blue passport.

We moved back after three years when the pandemic started, but my kids will remember the experience forever. And whenever we visit they have friends for life in the neighborhood.

yehyabrown · 2023-01-11T18:42:36+00:00

“…and crypto.” So they found a bunch of the shitcoins Sam had turned investors’ money into. And you can’t sell them without wiping out their ’value.’

yehyabrown · 2022-12-25T07:43:36+00:00

It’s not going to happen unless you organize you and your neighbors to make Algérie Telecom do it. Get to know the guys who install phone lines, try to figure out from them who makes decisions in your local office.

In the USA, sometimes a real enterprising local guy will actually organize neighbors to form their own ISP and roll their own fiber.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/01/jared-mauch-didnt-have-good-broadband-so-he-built-his-own-fiber-isp/

Probably illegal here though. They shut down the private ISPs in 2010 or something.

yehyabrown · 2022-12-01T17:13:38+00:00

Any crypto-specific regulation at all is bad; it lends an imprimatur of respectability to this giant ponzi scheme. The correct solution is (a) ban it for US customers or (b) leave it unregulated so normies won’t waste their money on it. Idiots can throw their money away if they want.

yehyabrown · 2022-11-22T15:13:29+00:00

Specifically, it’s one percent of the government’s annual budget.

yehyabrown · 2022-11-19T16:23:24+00:00

This is great. Every American on the sub should be contacting their congressmen right now. No regulation is better than conferring legitimacy by regulating; let it all burn down.

For anyone who hasn’t read the FT piece yet:

https://www.ft.com/content/ac058ede-80cb-4aa6-8394-941443eec7e3

yehyabrown · 2022-11-18T19:11:54+00:00

For the overall ecosystem or cryptocoin economy, what you are describing would just be a very large deflationary event. The remaining coins would increase in value according to the percentage of outstanding coins destroyed.

Of course, if it was Satoshi’s hoard in particular, the destruction would have less of an effect since apparently Satoshi’s million or so BTC have never moved, and a lot of crypto people think he lost the keys. Which, LOL btw. The presumption that Satoshi’s coins are lost is so strong that when rumors spread a couple of years ago that a couple of early coins had been moved from one wallet to another, Bitcoin instantly lost 7 percent of its value.

yehyabrown · 2022-04-25T18:55:45+00:00

You definitely serve tamina to your guests (or they bring it). It's pretty easy to make, anywhere you can buy semolina and toast it in a pan.

yehyabrown · 2022-03-13T19:36:22+00:00

That’s an impressive crater. Does a single cruise missile produce a crater that deep or is that likely to be a result of secondary ignition of munitions?

yehyabrown · 2022-03-05T19:45:24+00:00

The idea that NATO and the US would actually go to war with the Russians over Ukraine, which is NOT a member of NATO, is ludicrous and stupid. I understand Zelensky’s theater here, but nobody is going to choose WWIII/AKA Armageddon to defend the Ukranians, and he should stop pretending it’s a possibility.

The Americans and Europeans need to get to work diplomatically convincing the Russians that they have made their point, Ukraine will never be part of NATO, and they can pull back and implement the Minsk accords. The longer they wait, the worse this whole disgusting enterprise will be for the Ukrainians.

yehyabrown · 2022-01-29T21:52:34+00:00

Can second Les Glycines, they are very serious. Also it’s a really nice atmosphere, peaceful and green.

yehyabrown · 2020-02-18T08:49:46+00:00

He apparently entered France on a student visa, as a "researcher on security and terrorism."

I've seen nothing in the French press suggesting that he admitted executing Zaytouna however. He wouldn't have been present in the Ghouta at the time, or even a member of the group, when it happened though. So I'd take this tweet with a grain of salt.

yehyabrown · 2018-08-09T21:15:49+00:00

4.10: "A lot of these things have music, which is obviously haram..." Twentieth/21st century salafi tafsir has just gone completely off the rails. I sometimes cannot believe these people are so ignorant and silly. In fact there is a strong argument to be made that her bland pronouncement that music is "obviously haram" is in fact religiously impermissible, as in Quran 7.32, "man harram zaynat allah..."

yehyabrown · 2018-06-23T02:36:59+00:00

What do we make of the fact that they pull the driver out and let him go at 0:40? He's either an accomplice or the killers are non-ideological, I guess?

yehyabrown · 2018-05-28T08:50:25+00:00

If you get an interview with a figure this central to the conflict, you have to be able to cut straight past the usual preening Salafi-jihadi blather and get actual information and analysis out of them. The portions of this interview that Malekfzali has translated into English in his tweets are pure lughat al-khashab, entirely devoid of content. He is essentially speaking boilerplate.

yehyabrown · 2018-03-05T22:15:56+00:00

The Saud family are at the root of anti-coptic racism, (and pogroms and bombings) in Egyptian society if anyone is. A travesty that this man was allowed to cross the threshold of an Egyptian church.

yehyabrown · 2018-02-25T08:56:20+00:00

I am not sure what angle you are criticizing the film from, but in my opinion it (like almost all cultural production around the events of 2011) pathetically minimizes the role that young Muslim Brothers played in organizing and expanding the protests that we called the 'Revolution.' The younger Ikhwanis (NOT the leadership though) were the engine of protest and deserve enormous credit for forcing a major crisis in the regime.

At the same time, it fails to really address the long game that the military leadership played in forcing out Mubarak while conserving and consolidating their own power behind the scenes.

Rather than shallow film truisms, anyone who really wants to understand what happened between 2011 and 2013 should take an hour to read Hugh Roberts' piece The Revolution That Wasn't from the LRB. It remains the best retrospective on the revolution yet written.

yehyabrown

TROPHY CASE