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Ed Webb

Italian Fishermen, Caught Amid EU Migrant Politics, Are Being Captured in Libya - 1 views

foreignpolicy.com/...hing-war-sicily-italy-libya-eu

mediterranean Italy Libya migration economy fish resources

shared by Ed Webb on 15 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • The 180-mile stretch of the Mediterranean sea that separates Sicily from Libya has been a diplomatic battleground in Italian-Libyan relations for years
  • allowed Libya to quietly claim a bigger portion of the Mediterranean: a controversial move that has put the lives and livelihoods of Italian fishermen at greater risk for almost a decade
  • Libyans have continued to treat foreign fishing in that 74-mile stretch as a territorial invasion—and as a theft of their natural resources, to be punished through detention and bail payment
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • The maritime dispute dates back to the 1970s, when Libya began using force to protect its self-proclaimed fishing waters off the Gulf of Sidra from foreign fishing vessels, 12 miles from its coast. But it worsened in 2005, when then-Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi unilaterally extended the country’s waters from 12 to 74 miles offshore. Those claims were always formally rejected by main EU member states, and according to Stefano Marcuzzi, a Libya analyst at the NATO Defense College Foundation in Rome, many maritime law experts still consider them illegitimate. “Territorial waters can be extended up to 74 miles, according to the 1982 Montego Bay Convention, but that refers to oceans,” Marcuzzi said. “The extension of that principle to the closed waters of the Mediterranean basin is debatable.”
  • The EU has kept prioritizing migration containment by signing agreements with Libya’s coast guard, which is part of Tripoli’s navy, over proper nation-building and regional-stabilization policies—with mixed results
  • about 40 fishermen have been injured and detained in the past 25 years. More than 50 boats have been seized, and the release of each one has cost up to 50,000 euros, a price usually paid by the fishermen themselves.  
  • since civil war broke out in Libya in 2011, Italy and the EU have lost much of their influence in the country.
  • “Our families’ income has depended on fishing for generations. Despite the risks, we have no choice but to keep sailing these troubled waters, because that’s where red prawns live,” said Asaro, who was among the first Sicilian fishermen to experience detention—and a show trial—in Libya. In 1996, around 50 miles off the coast of the city of Misrata, the Libyan coast guard chased Asaro’s vessel for four hours before they began shooting at his crew, who were then jailed in Libya for six months. He’s since been detained twice more, most recently in 2012, near Benghazi, when he was released after eight days on an 8,000-euro bail he paid out of his own pocket.
  • The EU’s inability to see Libya outside the lens of migration has also allowed the country to take control of a bigger portion of the Mediterranean
  • allowing Libyans to assert larger maritime sovereignty has allowed them the opportunity to advance claims over natural resources, such as in the fishing dispute, and given them a base for potential military and trade movements deeper in the Mediterranean Sea
  • Since Rome and Tripoli signed an EU-backed agreement in 2017 to curb migrant flows across the Mediterranean, vessels from the EU have been barred from operating in the 74 miles off the Libyan coast, and Italy has been helping to train and equip the Libyan coast guard—one of the groups that has been detaining its own fishermen
  • “Before 2011, the Italian navy supported us. Now as soon as we are 50 miles from the Libyan coasts, they also tell us to leave. It seems as if they prefer to leave us with a smaller piece of sea to fish rather than irritating Libyans, who could then retaliate through migration deals,” said Roberto Figuccia, another fisherman from Mazara del Vallo who’s been captured by the Libyan coast guard and detained in Libya twice, in 2015 and 2018.
  • the Italian government’s inability to negotiate a fishing agreement with Libya has led Italian captains to forge their own ties with Haftar
  • “If the Mediterranean has become a battleground, it is not only because of migrants,” said Asaro, who recently ran—and lost—in local elections with the Lega party, which is known for its far-right and anti-EU rhetoric. He believes that Lega, unlike Italy’s other political parties, would stand up for Italian citizens’ rights over EU agreements. “I no longer feel as a European citizen. The EU has left us alone.”
Ed Webb

Saudi officials sweep the streets. Labour shortages and random arrests in crackdown on ... - 0 views

www.al-bab.com/...fficials-sweep-the-streets.htm

Saudi KSA migrants labor labour workers

shared by Ed Webb on 08 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • it appears that some over-zealous inspectors may be rounding up foreigners on the mere suspicion of working illegally – contrary to the assurances given by officials when the crackdown began. In Makkah, a police spokesman appeared to admit that random arrests were taking place when he said the campaign in the city was focusing "on main squares and public places" and well as places that had previously been identified by investigators. Some members of the public have also joined in, raising fears of community-based violence directed at migrants. Yesterday Tawakkol Karman, Yemen's Nobel Peace Prize laureate, posted a photo on her Facebook page (below) which is said to show a Saudi man attempting to detain a Yemeni expatriate while waiting for police to arrive.
  • it appears that some over-zealous inspectors may be rounding up foreigners on the mere suspicion of working illegally – contrary to the assurances given by officials when the crackdown began. In Makkah, a police spokesman appeared to admit that random arrests were taking place when he said the campaign in the city was focusing "on main squares and public places" and well as places that had previously been identified by investigators. Some members of the public have also joined in, raising fears of community-based violence directed at migrants. Yesterday Tawakkol Karman, Yemen's Nobel Peace Prize laureate, posted a photo on her Facebook page (below) which is said to show a Saudi man attempting to detain a Yemeni expatriate while waiting for police to arrive.
  • it appears that some over-zealous inspectors may be rounding up foreigners on the mere suspicion of working illegally – contrary to the assurances given by officials when the crackdown began. In Makkah, a police spokesman appeared to admit that random arrests were taking place when he said the campaign in the city was focusing "on main squares and public places" and well as places that had previously been identified by investigators. Some members of the public have also joined in, raising fears of community-based violence directed at migrants. Yesterday Tawakkol Karman, Yemen's Nobel Peace Prize laureate, posted a photo on her Facebook page (below) which is said to show a Saudi man attempting to detain a Yemeni expatriate while waiting for police to arrive.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • it appears that some over-zealous inspectors may be rounding up foreigners on the mere suspicion of working illegally
  • fears of community-based violence directed at migrants
  • The crackdown has caused a shortage of workers in the construction industry which is said to be driving up labour costs by  as much as 30%. Recruiting new workers to fill the vacancies is a long and complicated business because of the kingdom's labour laws. Small construction firms have been especially hard-hit and 40% of them have now stopped operating, according to Khalaf al-Otaibi, president of the World Federation of Trade, Industry and Economics in the Middle East. Otaibi also pointed out that small and medium-sized firms account for about 75% of Saudi Arabia's construction industry.
  • About 300,000 Sudanese living in Saudi Arabia are facing deportation, according to reports from Khartoum.  The Sudanese government says it has no intention of helping them because it is too busy dealing with its own economic problems.
Sherry Lowrance

Amid transition, more Egyptians cling to safety of long-hated emergency law - The Washi... - 1 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...AFAm5gEE_story.html

Egypt protests emergency_law transition

shared by Sherry Lowrance on 21 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • A broad swath of society — from glassworkers to accountants, Christians to Islamists — say the emergency law is one of the few things keeping them safe.
  • “We’ve taken the emergency law for 30 years. One more year won’t make a difference.”
  • symptom of a deeper problem
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Many police officers have withdrawn from the streets; tales of theft and violence sweep neighborhoods, and in Imbaba, an impoverished area of Cairo on the west bank of the Nile, some residents say they don’t dare walk the streets unarmed.
  • Now, many residents say, the few police who are on the streets are polite, even cautious. And the military has taken over the security functions of the country — something its soldiers aren’t trained to do.
  • military justice
  • rights groups here estimate that at least 5,000 people have been detained since the military took over the criminal justice system at the end of January.
  • In a sign of how much tables have turned, one human rights group recently went to the police to initiate a complaint against a military officer.
  • Sherry Lowrance on 21 Apr 11
     
    The protests that toppled President Hosni Mubarak were driven in large part by hatred of the 30-year-old emergency law that gives the government broad powers to censor and detain citizens. But in a sign of the topsy-turvy world that Egyptians now live in, many here say they want the law to stay for the time being.
  • Ed Webb on 22 Apr 11
     
    This seems more comparative politics than international politics, which is why there isn't much in this group about similar topics. I have another group that you might find useful if you are interested in such topics: http://groups.diigo.com/group/authoritarianism-in-mena
Ed Webb

State Department Considers Cutting Aid to Egypt After Death of U.S. Citizen Mustafa Kassem - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...ssem-american-citizen-detained

USA US Egypt death prisoners prisoner aid military politics diplomacy

shared by Ed Webb on 31 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • In a memo sent to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo by the agency’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs in early March and described to Foreign Policy, the nation’s most senior diplomat was given the option to cut up to $300 million in U.S. military aid to Egypt over the death of Mustafa Kassem, a dual American and Egyptian citizen who appealed unsuccessfully to U.S. President Donald Trump to secure his release in his final days.
  • In a letter sent late last month, Democratic Sens. Patrick Leahy and Chris Van Hollen also urged Pompeo to withhold $300 million in military assistance to Cairo and to sanction any Egyptian official “directly or indirectly responsible” for Kassem’s imprisonment and death
  • In two years on the job, Pompeo has twice decided to overlook human rights considerations to greenlight military aid to Egypt, leading some experts to cast doubt on whether the Trump administration will make cuts even after the death of a U.S. citizen.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Under Trump, the United States has been largely reluctant to challenge Egypt, the second-largest recipient of U.S. military aid, which provides the Department of Defense with overflight rights and the ability to navigate the Suez Canal.
  • Kassem had been on a liquid-only hunger strike and had not received proper medical treatment before dying of heart failure in January.
  • a State Department official said the agency would not comment on internal deliberations. “We remain deeply saddened by the needless death in custody of Moustafa Kassem and we are reviewing our options and consulting with Congress,” the official said. “In the wake of the tragic and avoidable death of Moustafa Kassem, we will continue to emphasize to Egypt our concerns regarding the treatment of detainees, including U.S. citizens.”
  • In his role as the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, Leahy, a long-standing critic of Egypt’s human rights record, has held up $105 million in military aid to Cairo to purchase Apache helicopters and Hellfire missiles. Leahy imposed the funding freeze on Egypt two years ago in response to its detention of Kassem, its failure to fully cover the medical costs for an American citizen wounded in a botched 2015 Apache helicopter raid, and its refusal to permit adequate U.S. oversight of its use of American military assistance in its counterterrorism operations in Sinai.
  • The dual citizen—held without charges for much of his six-year detention—insisted he had been wrongly arrested during an August 2013 visit to his birth country that coincided with the deadly Rabaa Square massacre against demonstrators protesting the ouster of Muslim Brotherhood-backed President Mohamed Morsi. Kassem’s advocates said he was not involved in the Rabaa Square demonstrations. He was in prison for over five years before an Egyptian court, without due process, sentenced him to 15 years in prison in 2018.
  • There are at least three other American citizens—Reem Dessouky, Khaled Hassan, and Mohammed al-Amash—and two permanent residents—Ola Qaradawi and Hossam Khalaf—detained in Egypt on charges related to their political views, according to a bipartisan group of foreign-policy experts called the Working Group on Egypt that tracks the issue
  • “It is incomprehensible that Egypt, a close ally of the United States that receives some $1.5 billion annually in assistance from American taxpayers, would be less responsive than Iran, Lebanon, and other countries to repeated calls for the humanitarian release of detained Americans,”
  • Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham stopped a provision in the final version of the State Department’s appropriations bill last year that would have withheld nearly $14 million in military aid until Egypt paid off the medical expenses for April Corley, an American mistakenly injured in an attack by Egyptian military forces in the nation’s western desert in 2015.
  • The United States and Egypt set up a structured process of defense meetings to properly resource the nation’s military after the Obama administration suspended aid amid massacres after Morsi’s ouster, but the forum “has long devolved into a grab bag of weapons requests,”
  • “By sending this amount of military assistance for such a long time—when you add it up its $40 billion over decades—what the United States has ended up doing is feeding the beast that’s devouring the whole country,” she said, referring to the Egyptian military.
Sana Usman

Syria lists foreign fighters involved in rebellion - 0 views

www.newsspeedchannel.eu/ters-involve-in-rebellion.html

Nonstop Violence Syria people of Rastan central government security forces suburbs the capital Damascus UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights Assad UN and Arab League special envoy Kofi Annan ceasefire monitoring team northern Adlib province parlia

shared by Sana Usman on 18 May 12 - No Cached
  • Sana Usman on 18 May 12
     
    Nonstop Violence continued inside Syria, as people of Rastan in central Syria said government forces shelled the city, and an opponent group said government security forces carry out a campaign of detains in suburbs of the capital Damascus, and clashed with rebels
Ed Webb

American citizens are detained in Hebron for wearing hijab on a 'Jewish street' - 1 views

mondoweiss.net/...-hijab-on-a-jewish-street.html

Israel Palestine israelpalestine occupation citizenship hijab Palestinians nationalism racism

shared by Ed Webb on 07 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Ed Webb on 07 Jul 12
     
    A description of what borders, identities, citizenships etc can look and feel like at the micro-level in the Israel-Palestine context.
Ed Webb

The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama, by Tom Junod - Esquire - 0 views

www.esquire.com/...obama-lethal-presidency-0812-5

drones Yemen Pakistan US USA politics military opinion

shared by Ed Webb on 12 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • "President Bush would never have been able to scale this up the way President Obama has because he wouldn't have had the trust of the public and the Congress and the international community," says the former administration official familiar with the targeting process. "That trust has been enabling."
  • It is only human to have faith in the "human intelligence" generated by the agents, operatives, and assets of the CIA. But that's the point: What's human is always only human, and often wrong. America invaded Iraq on the pretext of intelligence that was fallacious if not dishonest. It confidently asserted that the detainees in Guantánamo were the "worst of the worst" and left them to the devices of CIA interrogators before admitting that hundreds were hapless victims of circumstance and letting them go. You, Mr. President, do not have a Guantánamo. But you are making the same characterization of those you target that the Bush administration made of those it detained, based on the same sources. The difference is that all your sentences are final, and you will never let anybody go. To put it as simply as possible: Six hundred men have been released uncharged from Guantánamo since its inception, which amounts to an admission of a terrible mistake. What if they had never even been detained? What if, under the precepts of the Lethal Presidency, they had simply been killed?
  • Collateral damage used to be anyone killed who was not targeted. Now the term "collateral damage" applies only to women and children. "My understanding is that able-bodied males of military age are considered fair game," says the former administration official, "if they're in the proximity of a known militant."
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  • This is what Senator Carl Levin, who receives regular briefings on "clandestine activities" as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, says about the death of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki: "My understanding is that there was adequate justification." How? "It was justified by the presence of a high-value target."This is what his aunt says about his death in an e-mail: "We were all afraid that Abdulrahman would get caught up in the turmoil in Yemen. However, none of us thought that Abdulrahman will face a danger from the sky. We thought that the American administration, the world leader and superpower will be far and wide from such cruelty. Some may say Abdulrahman was collateral damage; some said he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. We say that Abdulrahman was in his father's land and was dining under the moon light, it looked to him, us and the rest of the world to be the right time and place. He was not in a cave in Waziristan or Tora Bora, he was simply a kid enjoying his time in the country side. The ones that were in the wrong place and time were the American drones, nothing else."
  • You have been free to keep the American people safe by expanding the Lethal Presidency — by approving the expanded use of signature strikes in Yemen and by defying an edict of the Pakistani parliament and continuing drone strikes in Pakistan. You have even begun thinking of using the Lethal Presidency as an example for other countries that want Lethal Presidencies of their own.
  • the danger of the Lethal Presidency is that the precedent you establish is hardly ever the precedent you think you are establishing, and whenever you seem to be describing a program that is limited and temporary, you are really describing a program that is expansive and permanent. You are a very controlled man, and as Lethal President, it's natural for you to think that you can control the Lethal Presidency. It's even natural for you to think that you can control the Lethal Presidencies of other countries, simply by the power of your example. But the Lethal Presidency incorporates not just drone technology but a way of thinking about drone technology, and this way of thinking will be your ultimate export. You have anticipated the problem of proliferation. But an arms race involving drones would be very different from an arms race involving nuclear arms, because the message that spread with nuclear arms was that these weapons must never be used. The message that you are spreading with drones is that they must be — that using them amounts to nothing less than our moral duty.
Ed Webb

Syria Comment » Archives » "Bush White House Wanted to Destroy the Syrian Sta... - 0 views

www.joshualandis.com/blog

US USA Cheney Blair Syria Lebanon Iraq analysis

shared by Ed Webb on 05 Sep 10 - Cached
  • Ed Webb on 05 Sep 10
     
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Ed Webb

Pakistan detains 11 Iranian Guards on the border | Special Coverage | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...idUSTRE59P2D620091026

Iran Pakistan IRGC border Jundollah

shared by Ed Webb on 26 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Pakistani forces detained 11 Iranian Revolutionary Guards on Monday for crossing into Pakistan days after an Iranian commander was reported saying his men should be allowed to confront terrorists in Pakistan. The Guards were arrested in the Mashkhel area on the border with Iran eight days after a suicide bomber killed 42 people, including six Revolutionary Guard commanders, in Iran's southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan province. A Sunni Muslim group Jundollah (God's soldiers), claimed responsibility for the blast. Iran says the group operates from across the border in Pakistan.
  • Iranian border officials had told them that the encroachment was accidental and happened after the Guards launched an operation against Jundollah militants near the border.
  • the rise of Jundollah coincided with an explosion in drug smuggling from which it earned much of its funding
Ed Webb

Iran confirms it has detained US Navy veteran Michael White | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ion-navy-veteran-michael-white

Iran US USA politics diplomacy detention

shared by Ed Webb on 09 Jan 19 - No Cached
  • Iran has confirmed it is holding a US Navy veteran, Michael R White at a prison in the country, making him the first American known to be detained under Donald Trump’s administration. White’s detention adds new pressure to the rising tension between Iran and the US, which under Trump has pursued a maximalist campaign against Tehran that includes pulling out of its nuclear deal with world powers. While the circumstances of White’s detention remain unclear, Iran in the past has used its detention of Westerners and dual nationals as leverage in negotiations. The semi-official Tasnim news agency, believed to be close to the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, reported the confirmation, citing Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi.
Ed Webb

Jordan, Facing Royal Crisis, Is a Banana Monarchy Falling Apart on America's Watch - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...-hashemites-us-banana-monarchy

USA US monarchy Jordan opinion analysis military diplomacy aid USAID

shared by Ed Webb on 29 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • While some allege a real conspiracy tied to Saudi meddling, most analysts believe that the entire affair was a manufactured crisis designed to distract a public enraged about the ruling monarchy’s worsening mismanagement over the past decade. The pandemic made the already-stagnant economy worse, spiking unemployment from 15 to 25 percent and raising the poverty rate from 16 to a staggering 37 percent. Fruitless promises of democratic reform from Abdullah have led nowhere. With tribal activists regularly criticizing the king—the ultimate act of transgression—the monarchy is responding not with better policies and more transparency, but by doubling down with heightened repression.
  • Like all autocracies, Jordan has little tolerance for popular opposition. Moreover, most of the Arab monarchies suffer from dynastic infighting. Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Bahrain have all seen powerful hard-liners muffle dissident princes over the last decade. Kuwait’s Sabah monarchy has been rocked by coup conspiracies and succession disputes
  • It has surrendered much of its sovereignty with a new defense treaty—inked in January without the Jordanian public’s knowledge—giving the U.S. military such untrammeled operational rights that the entire kingdom is now cleared to become a giant U.S. base.
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  • History shows that when sponsoring a client dictatorship becomes a sacred pillar of Washington’s foreign policy, client rulers become extremely dependent upon U.S. support, prioritizing their relationship with Washington over their own people. In Jordan’s case, the government has preserved U.S. dominance in the Middle East and protected Israel while neglecting Jordanians’ own woes.
  • Policymakers fear that reducing any part of their support will destabilize their client state, which could not survive without it. The only option is to perpetuate the current system, even though that regime’s own policies are clearly destabilizing it.
  • Jordan’s transformation into a U.S. dependency began during the Cold War. Washington replaced the fading British in the late 1950s as its great protector, a logical move given the need to back anti-Soviet regimes everywhere. Jordan had no oil. However, so long as Jordan endured, it could be a geopolitical firebreak insulating Israel and the oil-rich Arabian Peninsula from the radical forces of communism and Arab nationalism.
  • Washington helped build the Jordanian state. Foreign aid was one mechanism. In many years, U.S. economic aid exceeded all domestic tax revenues, the only thing keeping “Fortress Jordan” from collapsing into insolvency. While Jordan today receives support from many donors, including the International Monetary Fund, U.S. economic support remains uniquely fungible: It comes mostly in cash, it is guaranteed, and it now exceeds $1 billion annually.
  • the U.S. Agency for International Development began designing and operating much of Jordan’s physical infrastructure in the 1960s, doing the basic task of governance—providing public goods to society—for the monarchy. When Jordanians get water from the tap, no small feat in the bone-dry country, it is because of USAID. Even the Aqaba Special Economic Zone, a mega-project aimed at turning the Red Sea port city of Aqaba into a regional commercial hub, was funded and designed by U.S. technocrats.
  • The General Intelligence Directorate, glorified by Western journalists as an Arab version of Mossad, spends as much time smothering Jordanian dissent as battling terrorism. It owes much of its skills and resources to the CIA.
  • Of course, being a U.S. protectorate brings occasional costs. Dependency upon Washington’s goodwill, for instance, gave Abdullah little room to halt the Trump administration’s “deal of the century.” That provocative plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dilemma incensed Abdullah, as it favored Israel’s land claims while sidelining Jordan’s traditional front-line role as mediator to the conflict.
  • Washington cannot imagine any other kind of Jordan, because it never had to. It may yet learn the hard way.
  • The Middle East remains a revolutionary place, as six of its autocratic rulers have lost power to mass uprisings in the last decade. Whether Jordan is next depends upon if the monarchy can fundamentally rethink its approach, rather than fall back upon the United States for affirmation.
  • Ed Webb on 29 Apr 21
     
    I hate the "banana monarchy" label, but otherwise Sean makes some good points here.
Sana Usman

Sudan will take back its territories: General Omar Al-Bashir - 0 views

www.newsspeedchannel.eu/?p=352

KHARTOUM Reuters Sudan's President General Omar Hassan Al-Bashir Heglig area South Sudan African neighbors detained United Nations Al Bashir Sudanese military uniform state of North Kordofan is in El-Obeid capital national war faith beliefs civilization a

shared by Sana Usman on 19 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Sana Usman on 19 Apr 12
     
    KHARTOUM (Reuters): Sudan's President General Omar Hassan Al-Bashir said he would take back the undecided oil-producing Heglig area after boundary conflict with South Sudan that have edged the two African neighbors nearer to all-out fighting.
Ed Webb

BBC News - Egyptian protests over detained lawyer shut Saudi embassy - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...world-middle-east-17881733

Egypt Saudi KSA diplomacy rights

shared by Ed Webb on 29 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Observers say it is the worst diplomatic falling-out between the two regional powers since Saudi Arabia severed ties after Egypt signed a peace deal with Israel in 1979.
Jim Franklin

Israel Arrests Settlers Fighting Freeze - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...03mideast.html

Israel diplomacy settlements politics peace process Netanyahu

shared by Jim Franklin on 03 Dec 09 - Cached
  • The Israeli police made their first arrests on Wednesday as part of the state’s effort to enforce a temporary construction freeze in Jewish settlements in the West Bank, briefly detaining the mayor of a settler council and at least two Jewish protesters.
  • The settlers, however, view the pause as a grave threat. Scuffles have broken out in the past two days at numerous settlements as residents have tried to block inspectors sent by the Israeli Defense Ministry from reaching construction sites and handing out stop-work orders.
Ed Webb

Palestinians, Israelis face off on Facebook - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...ial-media-israel-facebook.html

Israel Palestine israelpalestine intifada socialmedia facebook censorship politics

shared by Ed Webb on 09 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • “Ever since the intifada broke out in Jerusalem, there has been an online virtual war between Palestinians and Israelis. Social networks are flooded with firsthand field news, while campaigns are launched on Twitter on a daily basis to put pressure on Israel and its supporters around the world.”
  • Raji al-Hams, a prominent presenter at Al-Aqsa TV, said his original Facebook page was closed down after it garnered 90,000 followers. He told Al-Monitor he received “a message Jan. 15 from the Facebook administration saying I had violated the website’s rules by posting [slogans] about the intifada along with pictures of armed Palestinians."
  • Israel has been urging dozens of Israeli Facebook users to submit reports to the Facebook administration claiming that Palestinian pages are inciting murder. These users mention the name of these pages in the reports and the Facebook administration shuts them down, as they contain posts inciting murder and violence, which violate Facebook’s conditions.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • On Nov. 24, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Google, YouTube and some other social networks agreed to fight incitement posted on their pages.
  • Israel uses a number of measures to counter the postings, most notably by creating around 5,000 fake Facebook accounts, Quds Press reported Oct. 29. Those who operate these accounts are fluent in English and Arabic, and their mission is to hack into and shut down Palestinian pages by submitting reports to the Facebook administration. Israel also has arrested of a number of Palestinians during the past three months on charges of inciting to kill Israelis in their Facebook posts.
  • the Authority for Palestinian Prisoners' Affairs reported the Israeli army has detained 27 Palestinians on charges of incitement since October, due to their activities on social networks
  • there are Israeli pages in Hebrew that call Palestinians terrorists, among other bad names, but they are not being closed down
Ed Webb

Briton imprisoned in UAE since May 'on suspicion of spying' | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...nce-may-on-suspicion-of-spying

UAE UK Britain security academia rights

shared by Ed Webb on 12 Oct 18 - No Cached
  • a PhD student accused of being a spy
  • The man is a Durham university PhD student named Matthew Hedges, according to the Times. The 31-year-old has been held in solitary confinement since he was detained at Dubai airport in May as he tried to leave the country following a research trip
  • was studying Emirati security policies after the Arab spring and was aware of the risks as he had lived in Dubai when he was younger.
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