Damon Albarn (of Britpop bands Blur and Gorillaz fame) is producing a kind of Buena Vista Social Club album, instead of Cuban masters you have Algerian chaabi masters: Once more, with El Gusto.
Luc Cherki is a big man. Carrying his guitar, he approaches the microphone with the swagger of Johnny Cash and sings a folk [...]

Le Monde.fr : En Algérie, des adolescents sont les proies des recruteurs d’Al-Qaida:
Treize adolescents algériens ont été condamnés le 23 septembre à trois ans de prison avec sursis pour avoir entretenu des contacts avec Al-Qaida au Maghreb islamique, l’ex-Groupe salafiste pour la prédication et le combat (GSPC). Un suivi psychologique a été ordonné, et leurs [...]

Bizarre little story in today’s Le Monde: last Friday 12 swimmers drowned on a beach in northern Algeria after a giant wave suddenly appeared on a beach near Mostaganem, in Western Algeria. No one knows what caused the wave, which only appeared at that particular beach and was not part of a larger tsunami or [...]

How dare they?
Amine Azaoui outrages Egypt
on Monday, June 25 @ 13:40:53 CDT
The head of the National library , M Amine Zaoui sparked a wave of controversy after his statement to one the Egyptian daily newspapers “Al Watani al yaoum” in which he reconsidered the idea of “Egypt, mother of the world” and the wagon of [...]

Has been made in Algeria:
ALGIERS (Reuters) - Algeria has translated the Koran into the Berber language, Tamazight, for the first time, to promote Islam among a community that has long campaigned for more language and cultural rights, an official said on Monday.
Religious Affairs Ministry spokesman Abdellah Tamine said the ministry had funded the printing this [...]

Ali Bilhaj, the deputy head of the Algerian Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), called on Algerian security to disclose the whereabouts of his 18-year-old “disappeared” son, in a statement circulated by London-based Islamic Observation Center. The Algerian Islamist complained of security hassles against him and his family, following an anti-Pope protest they attended in front of [...]

If you read French, go immediately check out Bakchich, an excellent webzine/blog about sub-Saharan Africa, the Maghreb and the Middle East (but it’s especially good on the Maghreb and Muslim Africa.) They have a handsomely designed PDF magazine (a kind of Canard Enchainé or Private Eye for the region) as well as a blog, and [...]

A new report by Amnesty International on Algeria’s secret torture chambers is out. The full 44-page report could be found here.
Algerian security services have inherited the French school of torture and counterinsurgency that was ironically developed by Frech colonialists against Algerians themeselves… and sure the jackboots gained more expertise in their dirty war against Islamist [...]

The New York Times published today a touching story on the rendition of an Algerian suspect from Tanzania to Afghanistan. The man was held for 16 months in the US-run gulag, before he was freed and flown back to Algiers without being tried or charged.
Algerian Tells of Dark Odyssey in U.S. Hands
By CRAIG S. SMITH [...]

Unfortunate beginning to this NYT story on Algeria:
ALGIERS — In the 1990’s, Algeria was the Iraq of the Arab world, ripping out its own heart in a bloodbath that pitted a rising Islamist movement against military death squads, killing more than 100,000 people. It was a model of hell on earth.
Er… in the 1990s, Iraq [...]

Something I thought I’d never see: a Moroccan court convicts a newspaper for printing an article and a cartoon insulting to Algerian President Abdel Aziz Bouteflika. This is the just the latest in what’s starting to look like a systematic attack on one of the freest press in the Arab world:
Morocco’s press code provides an [...]

Jean-Pierre Tuquoi, Le Monde’s Maghreb correspondent, has the first interview in years with Ali Benhadj, the co-founder of the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS, Islamic Salvation Front). Nicknamed “The Grand Inquisitor” by his detractors, he is officially forbidden from any contact with the media since he was released from prison in mid-2003. This interview could [...]

Algerian President Abdel Aziz Bouteflika has ordered 42 private French-language schools to be closed for “linguistic deviation,” Le Figaro reports. Algerian police have been told to enforce a presidential decree that stated that “any private institution which does not give absolute priority to the Arabic language is bound to disappear.” The policy is revival of [...]

Algeria’s national TV channel has decided to take Star Academy, the Lebanese remake of France’s show of the same name and the equivalent to American Idol, off the air. According the newspaper El Watan, this effort at banning the show was led by the president of the Islamist party MSP, Bouguerra Soltani, but ultimately was [...]

So Algerian President Abdel Aziz Bouteflika decided to resurface [Le Monde, subscription] after weeks of rumors that he was on his deathbed. Bouteflika chose the 8pm newscast of the state TV channel on Saturday, during which he only appeared for a few minutes and looked haggard. His doctor, Messaoud Zitouni, a former minister of health, [...]

Bouteflika’s situation seems to be worsening in light of the absence of information about his health. Today’s Le Monde has a report from Algiers:
In the absence of television footage of the recovering president, alarmist rumors are spreading. Memories of the long months of whispering that accompanied the sickness and death of Houari Boumedienne at the [...]

Arab leaders are notoriously cagey about their personal health, and right now, Algeria has not one but two top officials receiving treatment from French doctors amidst high levels of secrecy, says Le Figaro.
Yazid Zehrouni, 67, the minister of interior, has been in a French hospital since October, ostensibly for a kidney transplant. He has appeared [...]

This story about Algeria’s Harkat Al-Islah Islamist party brought a smile…
Algerian Islamists Rattled by Sexual Scandals, Resignation of Leaders
Scandals surrounding the party broke out earlier this week when a member of the leadership, who must remain anonymous for legal reasons, filed a lawsuit claiming that his wife had been “sexually assaulted” by Sadiq Sulayemah, another [...]

Adam Shatz penned an excellent review piece on Yasmina Khadra’s work in the London Review of Books. Khadra — his real name is Mohammed Moulessehoul — wrote several extremely successful books in French under his wife’s name before being coming out openly to a massive fanfare in the French literary world. In his review, Shatz [...]

The BBC reports that Algerian opposition figures are calling for the creation of an interim government and an independent body to supervise the upcoming elections.
The statement was signed by 11 members of the opposition parties.
It accuses the incumbent Prime Minister, Ahmed Ouyahyia, of supporting President Bouteflika and alleges that he cannot be trusted [...]