Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zanawi publicly accused two imprisoned Swedish journalists of being terrorists on Monday. In an interview with Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, Zenawi said Johan Persson and Martin Schibbye, of Sweden-based photo agency Kontinent, were accomplices to terrorists. “They are, at the very least, messenger boys of a terrorist organisation. They are not journalists,” the prime minister said. Persson and Schibbye were arrested after they crossed with rebels of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) into Ogaden. Zanawi added: “Why would a journalist be involved with a terrorist organisation and enter a country with that terrorist organisation, escorted by armed terrorists?”
Cooperation between the communications industry and governments creates unprecedented opportunities for surveillance. Let’s not repeat the mistakes of the past and allow companies to assume that users are uninterested in what happens to their data, urge Gus Hosein and Eric King of Privacy International (more…)
Earlier this week I was working with the ballet maestro Jean-Pascal Cabardos, who trained Billy for Billy Elliot. Not that Little Black Fish has been dancing en pointe (we were working on texts), though I have indulged in the ballet craze that has swept London and joined classes at Everybody Ballet, dancing whenever it took my mood and wearing whatever I felt like wearing.
This concept of ballet open to everyone is incredible when reading Her life as a Persian Ballerina. It is an insightful account of life as a dancer and choreographer in today’s Iran — the compromises to approach and style required. As well as the more obvious clothing restrictions, the more sensual performances are assigned to male performers. It also touches on the representation of dance and its psychological effects.
It’s hard to imagine a time when things were different. But they were. My introduction to ballet began in 1970s’ Tehran. At the time the Ministry of Culture had established the Iranian National Ballet Company, performing Swan Lake, The Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty among other classics at Tehran’s Roudaki Hall. The company collaborated with dance schools worldwide and Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn visited Iran in 1969 and set up Le Corsaire.
Needless to say the Islamic government terminated the company in 1979. A concise and very interesting history of dance in Iran can be read here, written by Nima Kiann who founded a successor company, Les Ballet Persans, in Sweden in 2001.
As Belarus’s Central Bank devalues the ruble, the European Union has expanded sanctions and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) invokes human rights mechanism. Mike Harris reports (more…)
