Bilal Randeree

Bilal Randeree's picture
Bilal Randeree
Journalist | Qatar
Biography

Bilal Randeree is an online journalist for Al Jazeera English, based in the Middle East.

You can follow his latest updates on Twitter: @bilalr

Latest posts by Bilal Randeree

By Bilal Randeree in Europe on July 14th, 2011
Nadia al-Sakkaf, editor-in-chief of Yemen Times, speaks at TEDGlobal in Edinburgh [James Duncan Davidson/TED]

Nadia al-Sakkaf is the editor-in-chief of the Yemen Times, the most widely read English-language newspaper in Yemen.

She was a speaker at the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she spoke about the challenges of her job, especially as a woman, in the media and in the Arab world.

Al-Sakkaf became the chief editor of the newspaper in March 2005, and has become a leading voice in Yemen and global media on issues of media, gender, development and politics.

She said that her role at the paper was to "build bridges", both within Yemeni society, as well as between her country and the rest of the world.

Yemen has been embroiled in a leadership crisis for the past few months, with pro-democracy protesters demanding the removal of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

In the past, her

By Bilal Randeree in Europe on July 14th, 2011
JR speaks about his art and photography project at the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh, Scotland. [James Duncan Davidson/TED]

JR, a semi-anonymous French street artist, uses his camera to show the world its true face, by pasting photos of the human face across massive canvases.

After winning the TED Prize earlier this year, he started a new project, insideoutproject, that is apparently taking the world by storm.

His art has been 'exhibited' in slums around Paris, along the separation wall between Israeli and Palestinian lands, and across Brazil's favelas.

I spoke to him at the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh, Scotland.

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By Bilal Randeree in Europe on July 13th, 2011
Historian Niall Ferguson shared thoughts on the rise and fall of the West [James Duncan Davidson / TED]

"Our generation is witnessing the end of western dominance," British historian Niall Ferguson told the audience at the TEDGlobal conference on Wednesday.

Ferguson took the audience through a few hundred years of history, describing the rise of what came to be known as 'the West'.

As argued in his recent book, Civilization: the West and the Rest, he explained six ideas and institutions that gave the West an advantage, not only economically, but also strategically over the rest of the world.

Labelled the six "killer apps", to hold the attention of the TED audience, he explained how the West succeeded due to superior science, medicine, work ethic, competition, property rights and consumer society.

However, the fact that these "apps" can now be downloaded by other countries, like China and India, Ferguson said that the time of Western dominance would soon be coming to an end.

By Bilal Randeree in Europe on July 13th, 2011
Jose Gomez Marquez, speaking at the TEDGlobal 2011 TED Fellows Talks in Edinburgh, Scotland. [James Duncan Davidson/TED]

Jose Gomez-Marquez is the program director for the Innovations in International Health initiative at MIT, and was selected as a TED Fellow for 2011.

Gomez-Marquez is a medical device designer who creates medical health technologies for people in developing countries.

Noting that medical donations from developed to developing nations do not usually work out of context, he works to create solutions.

One of these is the Aerovax Drug Delivery System, a device for mass delivery of inhalable drugs and vaccines, and "Lego" kits that allow medics on the field to put together mobile labs.

Gomez-Marquez explains here how these toys are being used to develop innovative technologies.

By Bilal Randeree in Europe on July 12th, 2011
Brazilian-filmmaker Julia Bacha talks at TEDGlobal about Palestinian non-violent movements [James Duncan Davidson/TED]

"I spend my days filming dozens of Palestinian groups that use non-violence against Israeli occupation, but most of you have not heard of them," Julia Bacha, a Brazilian-filmmaker, told the audience at Tuesday's session of the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh, Scotland.

"Only violence is given front page attention on stories about the Palestinian struggle ... Non-violent struggle is not being covered by mass media."

Bacha showed a trailer for her film, Budrus, which was shot in a West Bank village that had mounted peaceful resistance to the Israeli separation barrier that was capturing Palestinian land and isolating towns and villages.

"What's missing for nonviolence to grow is for us to pay attention to Palestinians that are already adopting non-violence.

By Bilal Randeree in Asia on July 11th, 2011

Serge Mouangue is a cross-cultural designer who merges African influences with Japanese traditional designs. Born in Cameroon, Mouangue moved to France at the age of six where he studied art and design in Paris.

He switched between being an artist and designer and eventually worked as a car designer with Renault Motor Company. This led him to Japan, where he joined Nissan as a designer of concept cars.

What are the similarities between Japan and Africa? Mouangue tackles this question through the most traditional and structured of Japanese garments: the kimono.

He combines the colour, vibration, and "beat" of his native Africa to the kimono, combining vibrant coloured fabrics with the kimono’s tailoring.

By Bilal Randeree in Europe on July 11th, 2011
Jodie Wu, speaking at the TEDGlobal 2011 in Edinburgh, Scotland. [Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED]

As the "coolest conference in the world" officially kicks off in Edinburgh, and people pour in from across the globe, various side events exhibit the sharing of ideas and the showcasing of interesting work and projects.

The TED Fellows programme was one of the pre-conference events.

By Bilal Randeree in Europe on July 9th, 2011
Bonnie Bassler gave a TED talk on bacterial communication [Flickr/Steve Jurvetson]

With colleagues reporting from the jubilant but tense newly formed South Sudan, the world's biggest refugee camp on the Kenya-Somalia border, and on the aborted "Freedom Flotila" with activists trying to draw attention to Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories, my trip to the highlands of Scotland, may not seem that interesting to many.

But if TED is more than a simple English name for you, then you're probably wishing you had a flight to Edinburgh and a very expensive entrance ticket to TEDGlobal, the exclusive conference that hosts thinkers and doers from around the world.

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By Bilal Randeree in Middle East on March 18th, 2011
Activists in the region have used social media to organise themselves (Reuters)

Lina Ben Mhenni, a Tunisian blogger and university assistant, was one of many young Tunisians that used social media to organise pro-democracy rallies and protests that eventually brought down the regime of president Ben Ali.

In December, while covering the Tunisian protests, I was able to make contact with her via Twitter, and then regularly called and emailed her for our continous coverage. She was in Doha, at the Al Jazeera Forum, where I caught up with her.

By Bilal Randeree in Africa on March 15th, 2011
Al Jazeera's Al Jaber was killed in Libya last week.

Ali Hassan Al Jaber, an Al Jazeera cameraman, was killed in Libya last Saturday, the first known journalist to be killed in the current Libyan conflict. 

Al Jaber was returning to the eastern city of Benghazi from a nearby town after filing a report, when unknown fighters opened fire on a car he and his colleagues were travelling in.

Two others were also shot in the apparent ambush, with three bullets hitting Al Jaber - one through the heart. 

Wadah Khanfar, the director-general of Al Jazeera, said that the network "will not remain silent" and will pursue those behind the ambush through legal channels.

Mohamed Abdel Dayem, Middle East coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, told Al Jazeera that in recent days, the w

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Bilal Randeree's picture
Bilal Randeree
Journalist
Bilal Randeree is an online producer for Al Jazeera English. Follow him on Twitter: @bilalr

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