{"id":8600,"date":"2012-07-05T08:31:11","date_gmt":"2012-07-05T12:31:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=8600"},"modified":"2012-07-05T10:12:28","modified_gmt":"2012-07-05T14:12:28","slug":"algeria-celebrates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/algeria-celebrates\/","title":{"rendered":"Algeria Celebrates"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Fireworks above Sidi Fredj,in Algiers, 4 July 2012. (Photo Louafi Larbi. Reuters)<\/span><\/p>\n

A different 4 July fireworks: this one happened on the evening of 4 July in Algiers to start the celebration of today\u2019s (5 July) 50th anniversary of Independence. Algeria will celebrate for a whole year, the government has so ordered. \u00a0No comments: it would take a full book-length\u00a0essay to so much as approach the complexity, the joys, the horrors of those fifty years. After the state-ordered fireworks (from China), the (Lebanese) entertainment and mantle for president Bouteflika (how old, he? who was already active during the 8-year war of independence\u2026 & still runs the show), after all that, whereto? For when the Algerian spring? (Though the Algerians, having seen \u00a0in the late eighties how a slight \u201cdemocratic\u201d opening can bring in the one organized force worse than the 1-party systen, namely the religious fanatics, which in their case led to a decade of insane blood-letting, are weary of such possibilities. ) Which reminds me of one of the great Algerian\u2019s writers \u2014 poet & novelist Kateb Yacine\u2019s \u2014 \u201clast testament,\u201d a warning that still needs to be heeded even as a active search for more pluralistic democratic means of governing need to be fought for.<\/p>\n