Thirty year old Merzoug Touati, has been detained since he was arrested in Bejaia in January 2017, after protesting against the new finance law, by posting a video interview on his Facebook page, showing a spokesman from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The Vgayet criminal court found him guilty and sentenced him to ten years in prison, as well as a fine of 50,000.00 DA for “mingling with the agents of a foreign intelligence power, likely to harm the military or diplomatic position of Algeria or its essential economic interests”. A crime which is punishable by up to twenty years in prison.
In this trial, the prosecution had required life imprisonment against the blogger.
The conviction is considerably unfair, given that Merrzoug has never held a position of responsibility which could give him access to information that he could have communicated to any foreign power. He has only had precarious jobs since he graduated from college. It is a one-way trial, solely against him. There have been no defense witnesses. The witnesses cited by the defense, are not summoned. It is a disproportionate file, with very serious charges in relation to the content.
Merzoug Touati was really down at the time of the verdict and very weak, recalling that the blogger had led seven hunger strikes since his imprisonment. Hamaïli, his lawyer, who pleaded the acquittal, said he was going to talk with his client on Sunday to find out if he decided to appeal.
]]>The Turkish Armed Forces have conducted Operation Olive Branch with little apparent concern for the laws of war, dropping bombs and shelling towns indiscriminately. Hundreds of civilians around Afrin, including religious minorities displaced by the Syrian War and by Da’esh, have been killed. There is evidence that suggests that Turkish forces may have intentionally targeted civilians.
The Turkish government and media have characterized the YPG as a “terrorist organization,” casting its invasion of Syria as an anti-terror operation. It has also referred to its aggression against its southern neighbor as “jihad,” echoing language used by ISIS and other extremist groups. The term “terrorist” is used in Turkey as a catch-all phrase to dehumanize opponents and legitimize the suppression of human rights and freedoms. Since the attempted coup of 2015, the Turkish government has dismissed thousands of civil servants and jailed hundreds of teachers, professors, journalists, politicians, human rights workers and other cultural leaders for being suspected supporters of “the opposition.” Many of these detainees have been charged with terrorism. The term “terrorist” has also been used to justify military-style violence against the Kurdish minority populations in the country’s South East, where the PKK presence is strong. The Afrin operation is not unlike “anti-terror” operations conducted in South East Turkey since 2015, where, in towns like Cizre, Turkish security forces have displaced much of the population, imposed harsh curfews (sometime lasting twenty-four hours a day for weeks and even months), cut off water and electricity supplies, killed dozens of civilians, destroyed cultural institutions (including mosques), desecrated cemeteries, and laid waste to homes by defecating on furniture and bedding, destroying cooking implements, and killing domestic and farm animals. Soldiers have also written racist slogans on buildings and have hung the Turkish flag from windows. In Cizre — as in Afrin — the bodies of killed female fighters have been mutilated, videotaped, and shared widely on social media. These life force atrocities are strongly suggestive of genocidal intent.
In Syria, the Turkish military and the forces under its leadership (which may include Da’esh fighters), declared total control of Afrin on March 25, 2018. They have been accused of pursuing a policy of “demographic change” in the Afrin district by settling villages with Turkmen and Arab families originally from outside of the area. The majority of Afrin’s population, an estimated 150,000 people, had already retreated from the town along with YPG fighters before the arrival of Turkish troops. Recent reports from inside occupied Afrin tell of dozens of girls and young women being kidnapped by Turkish and jihadi forces and subjected to systematic rape. There are also reports of the forced conversion of Yazidis. Erdoğan has vowed to continue further east to Manbij and Kobane in Syria as well as to the Sinjar and Nineveh regions of Iraq, ostensibly to destroy the PKK, which has bases in Iraq’s northern mountains. In the wake of a Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) referendum on independence in Northern Iraq in September 2017, which angered neighboring countries with significant Kurdish minority populations, and to which they responded with the harsh and coordinated economic isolation of the KRG, Turkey’s aggression into neighboring states threatens the long-term security and viability of all Kurdish populations in the region.
]]>According to the official history of Islam written by Catholic and Muslim fanatics, the Sarazens were those who were cited as the conquerors who spread the Islamic faith in the 700 hundreds. A faith whose sacred book would only exist a century later.
It seems that the Europeans took ingredients they had at home and made a great story for Islam. Let’s see whom the sarazins were in the middle ages.
In his book “The Sarazins were from the area” (Les Sarazins étaient du coin), the French historian Joseph Henriet demonstrates that those whom history has named Sarazens were not Arabs. They would be, more generally, pagans, peoples who had not converted to Christianity, and assimilated to Muslims by a confusion due to the idea, formerly believed, that Islam adapted certain traits estimated prior to Christianity. Heresy was generally regarded as a superficial garment given to old beliefs; this was also the case of Arianism, which had been adopted by the Burgundians. In the heart of the Alps, according to Henriet, different heretics and pagans could live side by side, but at the end of the day, they were no stranger to the area: it was a native people, settled in places since the beginning. They are those whom we today call Ligures, whose language was no doubt close to Basque. In opposite from the Allobroges, they remained at the top of the mountains or in the depths of the valleys.
According to Henriet, the description of “Sarazins” by medieval authors refers to indigenous peoples, not Eastern invaders.
These natives would have preserved for a long time, in the Middle Ages, their pagan cults, their way of mountainlife, and also their habits of plundering the convoys of travelers when their productions were insufficient. Christian writers, living in the cities, would therefore have claimed them to be “Sarazins”, referring both to the terror they inspired, and to their ignorance of the Christian religion.
One day, perhaps soon, thanks to the rapid progress of genetic sience, honorable scientists should be able to determine with certainty whom the Sarazins of the Alps were. In the meantime, Joseph Henriet’s hypothesis seems to be particularly convincing …
]]>* Economic Power: zero
* Political Power: zero
* Military power: zero
* Strategic Power: zero
* Culture: zero
* Arts: none
* Exports and foreign trade excluding hydrocarbons: none
* Science and Technology: zero
Citizens of neighboring countries (Morocco,Tunisia) do not rush to settle in Algeria, work and live there. They do not even rush to visit this unattractive country.
Algeria is not in a simple slump, but in deep shit since independence and for many centuries, if one believes that this country has existed before. Outside the Mediterranean, Algeria says nothing to anyone and very few people are able to locate it on the map. At first I thought that the people of these remote countries were stupid and uneducated because they did not know where Algeria was. I later discovered that I myself am unable to locate exactly where Botswana is on the map of my continent, Africa.
This is because Botswana is a small insignificant country that has no reason to catch my attention. It’s the same for the average North European who knows nothing about Algeria.
It is called an underdeveloped country. A country without human resources, without economic resources, without political resources and without cultural resources. People around the wold only talk about this country when there is a civil war or the massacres, an election tainted by fraud or a demonstration that results in deaths, not otherwise.
A country under oil infusion who expect that the serum bag hanging from the bed is empty to convulse and die on its deathbed after horrific civil wars (the 200,000 victims after FIS will only be trifles). Morocco and Tunisia have a much better chance to survive than Algeria.
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