For those of us who need to watch Arabic news but don't want to pay for a subscription service or a satellite dish, YouTube comes to the rescue.
After some research, below is my list of Arabic news channels that stream for free on YouTube. If you've got a smart TV or a Roku/AppleTV/ChromeCast etc., you can watch these on your TV, just like normal channels, via the YouTube app.
Al-Jazeera: Wasn't streaming free in the US until 3-4 months ago. Now it's free, awesome! A smart decision by Qatar, who should probably take any chance it can get to have its voice heard in the US. Streams live.
Al-Jazeera Mubasher: Al-Jazeera's "live all the time" news channel. Streams live, of course.
BBC Arabic: Not the most exciting channel, but dependably objective. Streams live.
Al-Mayadeen: 24-7 news and commentary, follows the Iran-Asad axis. Reasonably entertaining coverage and shows. Streams live.
Ro2ya TV: Jordanian channel, younger feel, some news but mostly social commentary and young/hip documentary-ish shorts. Fun channel.
Al-Manar: Hizbollah's channel. Mix of news and random programming. Entertaining to watch LH's point of view. Streams live
CBC: Egyptian channel with random mix of shows and then some news. One of the few free Egyptian channels that has a reasonably functional stream. Streams live.
Syria News: Syria's state TV channel. Not as entertaining as you think it would be. Was a lot better back during the first few years of the war. Streams live.
Al-Hayah: Egyptian channel, some news but also lots of shows. Good if you want to hear Egyptian.
France 24 Arabic: Arabic news, French-funded. Streams live.
Russia Today Arabic: Infamous, just as weird as the English channel. Streams live.
There are channels I've missed, but these are my favorite. I'll continuously update this list when new ones come live. Where are the Yemeni channels, you ask? I'll have an exhaustive list of Yemeni media outlets posted soon. Right now, the only Yemeni TV station streaming live on YouTube is Belqees TV, whose YouTube feed can be found here.
We've seen him before in another YouTube video. This new video confirms that this guy is definitely not an Arabic speaker - his accent is way off. However, this video may prove that the guy is actually fighting with a brigade on the ground. Here, you can see him and his comrades riding up to what a crashed Syrian helicopter, what looks like an old Russian Hind model.
The kid is definitely having a good time. Money quotes:
"Smoke 'em!!"
"Suriya Jaysh, helicopter shot down!" (mix of Arabic and English, I personally find it hilarious)
"Every day, all day!"
What's also worth noting is that the other fighters are calling the American "Shishani," which means "Chechen" in English. He might be from a Chechen background, but I have also seen that term used to describe a generic, white, Western Muslim. Another is that he is wearing a Marine Corps Combat Utility Uniform, the current combat uniform worn by the United States Marine Corps. How did he get that shirt?
Check back for updates on this crazy American mujahid in Syria.
The blogosphere was beset with stories last week of a speech by American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who claimed that the State Department hacked Yemeni tribal websites, replacing Al-Qaeda propaganda that bragged about killing Americans.
Clinton's words:
"Within 48 hours, our team plastered the same sites with altered versions of the ads that showed the toll al-Qaida attacks have taken on the Yemeni people...Within 48 hours, our team plastered the same sites with altered versions of the ads that showed the toll al-Qaida attacks have taken on the Yemeni people," "Extremists are publicly venting their frustration and asking supporters not to believe everything they read on the Internet." The story was everywhere: Huffington Post, Slate, Washington Post, Politico, Times of India, New York Magazine, etc. It was picked up by the AP - everyone carried it. We were pretty surprised to hear such news, considering our previous experience with فريق التواصل الالكتروني , the State Dept's Digital Outreach Team. They're the folks who go onto Arabic (and presumably other language) forums to comment officially in the name of the USA. They may not have a lot of resources behind them, which would explain why they have sometimes been rather inept. A great example of that can be found here on Abu Mahjoob forums, where several users demonstrate their frustrations with the team's lack of dialogue and with the fact that they constantly bring up terrorism and Al-Qaeda in any given subject. This team really deserves their own post....maybe later. Anyway, we've never seen the team do anything near actually HACKING into websites. The only offensive action noticed by us here at the blog was a video they made at the beginning of the Arab Spring, comparing Al-Qaeda ideology to the peaceful action of the Arab revolutions by splicing an Ayman Al-Zawahiri video with scenes from Tunis and Cairo. That video was actually pretty awesome. It was hard to believe that they had moved on to hacking websites. And we were right - they didn't. Wired got the story right - their piece on the story gives a great summary of what went wrong: either Clinton misspoke or the story was misreported, but either way, State did not "hack" websites, it simply posted their ads on forums. Now that sounds more like the tactics of the good old فريق التواصل الالكتروني. However, making parodies of AQ banners/ads was new....we decided to check it out. We looked at المجلس اليمني Ye1.org/vb , the largest Yemeni focused forum, and we would argue, the largest and most active Arabic forum in the game right now. It didn't take too long to find the State Department's handywork. Enjoy:
Image reads: "Ansar Al-Sharia Al-Qaeda: This is our gift to the Yemeni people, if you are part of the popular committees*, we are Al-Qaeda, we bring mercenaries to steal your sons and destroy your homes."
We're not sure, but we think the above State Dept ad was designed to counter this ad made by Ansar Al-Sharia (Al-Qaeda in Yemen):
Image reads: "Popular Committees: We made your masters cry. How can you be such mercenaries to America? For God we've moved and for his religion we fight. But you, what are you fighting for, you committees of shame?" As you can see, the soldier on the left is clearly meant to be an American soldier. Jihadi authors on Ye1 claim that the popular committees are slaves of the Americans.
There's more State Dept. images online. We'll bring them to you...more on that in a later post.
*Note: "Popular Committees" refers to groups of local, tribal forces who are currently fighting AQ in Yemen. They're civilians who are against AQ's rule of territory there...reminiscent of the Anbar Awakening Sunnis in Iraq.
UPDATE: More accurately, the State Dept.'s image may have been in response to this particular image from Ansar Al-Sharia:
After a late night, we at the blog came home and did what anyone else would do….put on some Arabic satellite TV and relax. What channel did we put on? Well, after checking out Dream 1, Dream 2, and OTV (the three channels with those best coverage of the most interesting topic currently, the Egyptian elections) we realized that they were playing either soap operas or boring morning religious programing.
With Arabic satellite, when all else fails, put on the music channels. We checked out Mazzika Zoom, an Egyptian music channel. After a few popular music videos (best of which was طال السهر by Dina Hayek and Tony Hena) the channel showed a rather interesting video by Sandy, an Egyptian singer.
In Sandy's videoعايز اقولك A3iz A2olek "I Want to Tell You," there were a number of things that caught our eye. The overall theme of the music video is not unusual: it's a high school type of scene, with Sandy playing a nerdy-type of student and a blonde/American-looking type of guy playing her love interest. The look of the male character was the first unusual element…most Arabic videos don't include main characters that are obviously non-Arab, especially as a love interest (3aib!).
Another thing was that Sandy's love interest wears a letterman jacket, an almost exclusively American style of jacket worn during the high school years. When Sandy goes home to her bedroom, we notice she has a Taylor Swift poster on her wall and an Angry Birds doll on her bed. Her blonde crush (who happens to live next door) has a Cincinatti Bengals poster hanging on his wall.
What's with all of the American paraphernalia in this video? After some quick Arabic social media research, we learned that her director is American…and that her videos with him have received criticism for imitating the styles of American artists.
Although the actual footage is from December, this thread just popped up on Iraqcenter.
In the thread, a user posts a video featuring the famous Egyptian TV presenter Hala Sarhan on NasBook, her popular TV show. NasBook is a talk show aired on Rotana Masriya (Egyptian Rotana), in which Sarhan hosts famous Egyptian and Arab politicians, stars, etc. to talk about current affairs. As it's on Rotana, the show leans toward a younger look and feel, and it's one of my favorite talk shows to watch.
In this video, watch as Sarhan discusses a particularly unusual fatwa from a Yemeni sheikh. The sheikh apparently forbids the use of chairs by women, saying that evil spirits enter women when they sit on chairs. He notes that chairs (and anything similar to them, like couches) are an unusual, Western invention, and how can we enjoy an invention from our enemy, the West? He notes that the original followers of prophet Muhammad never used chairs - they sat on the floor, so we should too. According to Sarhan, the sheikh even said that for women, sitting on chairs is equivalent to adultery.
Interestingly, Sarhan, who is not very overtly religious and pretty liberal in her outlook, doesn't lay into the fatwa with sarcasm as much as I thought she would. She actually interprets it in various ways. In my opinion they're ridiculous, but they are definitely worth noting:
1. She says that originally, she thought the fatwa was an attack on حزبالكنبة (Party of the Couch) in Egypt. The 'Party of the Couch' is a term used to describe apathetic Egyptians that aren't involved in protests or don't actively participate in politics. She says she thought that the fatwa was meant to get them to vote and prevent them from 'sitting on their couches' during the elections.
2. She then says that wait, this guy isn't Egyptian, he's Yemeni, so he can't be attacking the Party of the Couch. He must be talking about the Yemeni protestors, who 'stood' (i.e. not sitting) in public squares, protesting their revolution. They never sat until their ruler was kicked out of his throne (the word in Arabic for chair is the same one used for throne).
3. She then says that this fatwa can be interpreted as a warning to all Egyptian presidential candidates that Satan is calling them to the seat of power, basically noting the dangers of too much power and how, I assume, it can erase gains made by the revolution.
Honestly, Sarhan's interpretations at the end definitely make this clip worth watching, but I really just thought she was going to rip into this guy.
According to forum reports on Hanein and some others, Dubai's police chief Dahi Khalfan has threatened prominent Islamic cleric Yusuf Al-Qardawi, with Khalfan saying that he will request an Interpol arrest warrant against the sheikh.
Khalfan's threat comes after Qardawi's appearance on "As-Sharia w Al-Hayat" (Sharia and Life) on Al-Jazeera, in which Qardawi criticized the UAE government for deporting Syrians who protested against the Asad regime at the Syrian consulate in Dubai. You can see the video here below....the good stuff starts at around 2:15
Not much commentary so far. As would be expected, most users are praising Qardawi for his defense of the Syrian opposition.
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