Weave Blogs

For those who have been following the global cultural tsunami known as “Gangnam Style,” you’ll be interested to know that a group of Palestinians in Gaza have gotten into the act with a “Gangnam Gaza Style” video.  Published on YouTube just a few days ago, the video slyly offers a window into how Palestinians under occupation are forced to improvise (e.g. by riding donkeys when there are fuel shortages) and how they are able to create forms of black humor to help themselves get by.  Take a look:

In addition to fuel shortages, the video references unemployment, poverty, and the trauma that goes with living under Israeli...

There was no surprise that YouTube, after being acquired by Google will make radical steps towards commodification of its content. I guess we all get used to flashing commercials at the beginning of our movies - some that we can skip, and some that abuse our freedoms and cannot be stopped until they want to stop. But, once such media 'animal' tastes big money - it will want more and more... Just today I learned that YouTube has its plans for introducing paid subscriptions for the most viewed channels and instant content coming for example from major events.

Last year, when I watched thousands of young Europeans protesting against the commodification of Internet, against documents like ACTA, I saw also hope...

It doesn’t seem like much of a surprise that Apple is taking some heat after the Iphone 5 flop.  With options such as the Galaxy S by Samsung and other smartphones on the market, consumers finally have something to compare the almighty Iphone to.  It also does not help that most were severely underwhelmed when the product was revealed to be nothing more than a longer screen and multiple glitches.  I...

As I continue to reflect on what can be learned from a close look at the discourse surrounding Israel’s November 2012 “Operation Pillar of Cloud” in Gaza, I want to leave the media discourse aside for a moment and report on something more local.  Back in December I participated in a UVA-style “Flash Seminar” at my university’s new Global Dialogue Center (a project co-sponsored by the Weave).  The topic was Gaza, and the conversation unintentionally revealed yet another way in which our ways of talking about Israel/Palestine often serve to obfuscate as much as they explain.  With that in mind:

Lesson #2: The dominant discourse on Israel/Palestine produces a tendency to defer endlessly any systematic attention to Palestinians themselves, as real human beings – their rights, their experiences, and the real conditions...