Skip to main content

Home/ Media in Middle East & North Africa/ Group items tagged London

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Ed Webb

New Magazine Aims to Improve Education in the Arab World - Global - The Chronicle of Hi... - 0 views

chronicle.com/...137603

education MENA ArabWorld academia freedom expression censorship UAE dubai media magazine

shared by Ed Webb on 01 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • On Wednesday, Mr. Khalil canceled a higher-education conference that was to launch the new online publication because of concerns about academic freedom in the United Arab Emirates, where the event was to be held this weekend. That step came less than a week after a similar move by the London School of Economics and Political Science, which canceled a conference it had planned in Dubai after Emirati authorities requested that a presentation on Bahrain, which is facing political upheaval, be dropped from the program. A scholar on Arab politics from the London institution who was to speak at the event was briefly detained at the Dubai airport and barred from entering the country
  • "We can't talk about upholding academic freedom and launch in Dubai. I don't think it sends the right message."
  • Al Fanar will start as planned on March 3. It is the first major project of the Alexandria Trust, the charity Mr. Khalil founded in 2012 to improve education in the Middle East and North Africa
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • In addition to starting the magazine, the charity, which is based in London, is helping ministries of education in Arab nations work with top consultants to provide advice on teaching, the use of educational technology, and other topics. It also plans to translate some 5,000 textbooks into Arabic and make them available free online. The collection, Mr. Khalil said, contains the "seminal works" in economics, sociology, and 12 other academic disciplines. He estimates it will cost more than $50-million to obtain copyrights and translate the books.
  • The magazine will feature original articles by reporters in the region and aggregated content from other news media. Stories will be in both English and Arabic, and it will offer a biweekly electronic newsletter. In the future, Mr. Wheeler hopes the publication won't have to depend on grants and donations, but will survive largely on money earned from job and other advertisements.
  • I don't think a publication about higher education can really be neutral about academic freedom
Ed Webb

London, Egypt and the complex role of social media - The Washington Post - 1 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...gIQAIoud8I_story.html

media socialmedia censorship Egypt UK Britain riots demonstrations

shared by Ed Webb on 11 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • Confronting these grievances by cutting off or hacking a communication technology, as one British lawmaker said should be done to Blackberry in London, fails to address the deep-rooted dissatisfaction that drove people to take to the streets. The Egypt case shows that when a regime cuts Internet, television, and mobile phone networks, protester numbers may actually increase.
  • Social media are part of a much larger matrix of tools and intentions that rally masses. That said, they are neither necessary nor sufficient to make a revolution possible. By fixating on technologies and the few youth that actively use them, we ignore a much more powerful narrative — the story of how synergies are created between classes to mobilize as a network without depending on social media. In Egypt, these networks may include family connections, neighborhoods, mosques, and historical institutions, such as the previously banned Muslim Brotherhood. New technologies hardly erode or overwhelm these classic models of communication and information sharing.
  • over-generalizing social media’s role could do more to harm our understanding of an uprising than help it
Ed Webb

Al Saqi's landmark London bookshop to close its doors this month - L'Orient Today - 0 views

today.lorientlejour.com/...sing-its-doors-this-month.html

media books UK Britain London Arab ArabWorld publishing publishers

shared by Ed Webb on 05 Dec 22 - Cached
  • Al Saqi Books, the largest European bookstore specialized in Middle Eastern books, is closing its doors at the end of the month due to financial difficulties.
  • In 1983 and 1991, respectively, the team expanded their operations with two publishing houses — the English-language Saqi Books and Arabic-language Dar al Saqi, the latter headquartered in Beirut. Both publishers will remain in business after the bookstore closure.
gweyman

One World Media :: One World Media Week - 1 views

oneworldmedia.org.uk/...owmw

media middle_east syria egypt #jan25 twitter conference social_media

shared by gweyman on 06 May 11 - No Cached
  • gweyman on 06 May 11
     
    RT@Tahrir_Square: Social Media Lessons for Development from the #Arab Spring 6.30-8pm Overseas Development Institute 111 Westminster Bridge Road, London SE1 7JD Three months on from the dramatic events in Egypt, ODI and One World Media bring together an expert panel to explore what changes to the media landscape in developing countries could mean for the future of development. Social media opens up new possibilities for getting around restrictive media laws, disseminating information and mobilising political movements. More established forms of media will also continue to empower citizens and encourage accountability. Access to technology is giving millions of people a chance to communicate beyond long established boundaries, but what will this mean for the role of media in developing societies? Chair Bettina Peters, Director, Global Forum For Media Development Panel James Deane, Head of Policy, BBC World Service Trust Mark Harvey, Executive Director, Internews Europe Ian Douglas, Technology Writer, The Telegraph Jonathan Glennie, Research Fellow,ODI and blogger, Guardian Development
Monica Grandy

Quoting Mishap Puts Both an Iraqi Newspaper and TV Station in Danger - 0 views

www.myfoxdc.com/...r_TV_Station_in_Baghdad_566401

shared by Monica Grandy on 13 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Monica Grandy on 13 Apr 09
     
    The Iraqi military wants to shut down the London based Al-Hayat newspaper and Al-Sharqiya satellite station after both mis-reported that detainees recently released by the United States were to be arrested for potential ties to bombings in Baghdad
Ed Webb

Qatar's Gulf Allies Have Had Enough of Doha's Broken Promises - 0 views

www.newsweek.com/inks-its-gulf-neighbors-620948

GCC Qatar KSA Saudi UAE Bahrain diplomacy media analysis

shared by Ed Webb on 05 Jun 17 - No Cached
  • Citizens of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states woke up on Monday morning to what is the most severe crisis in the regional block’s 38 year history to date. In a closely coordinated series of statements, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE, along with Egypt, announced the severing of ties with the peninsular state of Qatar.
  • In what may be the most debilitating move, Qatar’s border with Saudi Arabia—which is its only land border —has been shut and all flights over Saudi and UAE airspace has been closed off to Qatar bound flights and Qatar Airways. Qatari citizens have been given two weeks to leave Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE and all travel by these countries citizens to Qatar is now prohibited.
  • It is likely that this time the Gulf States will demand the complete shuttering of the Al Jazeera TV Network before any mediation can take place. Additionally, the plug will have to be pulled on networks funded by Qatar such as Al Araby Al Jadeed (The New Arab), originally set up to compete with Al Jazeera and headed by former Arab Israeli politician Azmi Bishara.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Other Qatar backed networks that were accused of incitement on official Gulf TV channels include Al Quds Al Arabi (Arab Jerusalem) newspaper which was founded in London in 1989, online Arabic news portal Arabi 21, the London based website Middle East Eye, the Arabic version of Huffington Post which is headed by former Al Jazeera boss Waddah Khanfar and Al Khaleej Al Jadeed (the New Gulf).
  • will also demand the expulsion of all Muslim Brotherhood leaders and their Hamas affiliate figures from Qatar, along with Azmi Bishara and Islamist writer Yasser Al-Za'atra. Other demands will include the sacking of Al Arab newspaper editor Abdullah Al Athba
  • It seems though the initial pressure has already somewhat worked on Qatar. Last week Doha deported Saudi activist Mohammed Al-Otaibi who arrived in Qatar in March, while a number of Hamas officials have left Qatar at the country’s request.
  • Qatar imports over 90 percent of its food, and by one estimate about 40 percent of that comes from the its only land border, which is now closed. Within hours photos started circulating on social media of Qatari supermarket aisles that have been emptied by panicked shoppers. Furthermore Gulf media has hinted at an escalation of the dispute with Qatari commercial and trade ties being severed next.
Ed Webb

Right-Wing Media Outlets Duped by a Middle East Propaganda Campaign - 0 views

www.thedailybeast.com/iddle-east-propaganda-campaign

media politics socialmedia disinformation propaganda UAE Qatar GCC Iran

shared by Ed Webb on 06 Jul 20 - Cached
  • Badani is part of a network of at least 19 fake personas that has spent the past year placing more than 90 opinion pieces in 46 different publications. The articles heaped praise on the United Arab Emirates and advocated for a tougher approach to Qatar, Turkey, Iran and its proxy groups in Iraq and Lebanon. 
  • “This vast influence operation highlights the ease with which malicious actors can exploit the identity of real people, dupe international news outlets, and have propaganda of unknown provenance legitimized through reputable media,” Marc Owen Jones, an assistant professor at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar who first noticed suspicious posts by members of the network, told The Daily Beast. “It’s not just fake news we need to be wary of, but fake journalists.”
  • placed articles critical of Qatar and supportive of tougher sanctions on Iran in conservative North American outlets like Human Events and conservative writer Andy Ngo’s The Post Millennial, as well as Israeli and Middle Eastern newspapers like The Jerusalem Post and Al Arabiya, and Asian newspapers like the South China Morning Post.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • a series of shared behavioral patterns. The personas identified by The Daily Beast were generally contributors to two linked sites, The Arab Eye and Persia Now; had Twitter accounts created in March or April 2020; presented themselves as political consultants and freelance journalists mostly based in European capitals; lied about their academic or professional credentials in phony LinkedIn accounts; used fake or stolen avatars manipulated to defeat reverse image searches; and linked to or amplified each others’ work. 
  • In February, two websites, The Arab Eye and Persia Now, were registered on the same day and began to acquire a host of contributors. 
  • both sites share the same Google Analytics account, are hosted at the same IP address, and are linked through a series of shared encryption certificates
  • Persia Now lists a non-existent London mailing address and an unanswered phone number on its contact form. The apparent editors of the outlets, Sharif O'Neill and Taimur Hall, have virtually no online footprints or records in journalism.
  • They’re critical of Qatar and, in particular, its state-funded news outlet Al Jazeera. They’re no big fans of Turkey’s role backing one of the factions in Libya’s civil war
  • constant editorial lines like arguing for more sanctions on Iran or using international leverage to weaken Iran’s proxy groups in Lebanon and Iraq. The personas are also big fans of the United Arab Emirates and have heaped praise on the Gulf nation for its “exemplary resilience” to the COVID-19 pandemic, its “strong diplomatic ties” to the European Union, and supposedly supporting gender equality through the Expo 2020 in Dubai.
  • criticizing Facebook for its decision to appoint Tawakkol Karman, a 2011 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, to its oversight board. Media outlets in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates have criicized the appointment of Karman, a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood affiliated Islah Party in Yemen, for her association with the group.
  • None of the Twitter accounts associated with the network ever passed more than a few dozen followers, but a few still managed to garner high profile endorsements for their work. An article by “Joyce Toledano” in Human Events about how Qatar is “destabilizing the Middle East” got a shout-out from Students for Trump co-founder Ryan Fournier’s nearly million-follower Twitter account and French senator Nathalie Goulet high-fived Lin Nguyen’s broadside about Facebook and Tawakkol Karman.
  • All of the stolen avatars were mirror image reversed and cropped from their originals, making them difficult to find through common Google reverse image searches
  • On her LinkedIn page, “Salma Mohamed” claimed to be a former reporter for the AP based in London, though no public record of an AP journalist matching Salma Mohamed’s description is available.
  • Another persona, Amani Shahan, described herself in bios for Global Villages and Persia Now as being a contributor to and “ghostwriting articles” for The Daily Beast. No one by that name has ever written for The Daily Beast and The Daily Beast does not employ ghostwriters. (Shahan also referred to herself with both male and female pronouns in different author bios.) 
Ed Webb

IRGC warns Saudi Arabia it must 'control' media 'provoking our youth' | Amwaj.media - 0 views

amwaj.media/...trol-media-provoking-our-youth

Iran Saudi KSA UK Britain media protests IRGC television networks

shared by Ed Webb on 19 Oct 22 - Cached
  • The commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has warned the Saudi royal family that it will “pay the price” unless it reins in the media outlets it allegedly funds. The warning comes as Tehran accuses foreign-based Persian-language networks—and especially the TV channel Iran International—of spreading fake news and inciting unrest.
  • the IRGC-linked Tasnim News Agency reported hours after his speech that the main target was Iran International. Tasnim maintained that there is "no doubt" that London-based Iran International "is linked to the crown prince," referring to Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (MbS). Tasnim also named Dubai-based Al-Arabiya and Al-Hadath as other news networks funded by the Kingdom and targeted by Salami in his speech.
  • MP Mohammad Ali Naqdali—the secretary of the parliament’s legal and judicial commission—urged Iranian authorities on Oct. 8 to file a complaint against Iran International with the UK media regulator, Ofcom. The lawmaker called on the foreign ministry and judiciary to complain about Iran International over its alleged role in "encouraging further protests” in Iran. Naqdali also criticized other Persian-language outlets based in the UK, describing them as "lie-producing factories."
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Tehran has previously lodged a complaint against Iran International over its programming, but Ofcom ruled that the London-based television network had not broken any rules.
  • British newspaper The Guardian reported in Oct. 2018 that Iran International had financial ties to MbS. The Guardian charged that the TV network was "being funded through a secretive offshore entity and a company whose director is a Saudi Arabian businessman with close links to the Saudi crown prince." A month later, Iran International issued a statement denying any links to any governments, including Saudi Arabia, and insisted that it "does not advocate any movement or party or government." Some of Iran International's high-profile staff have stirred controversy for often expressing opinions on social media that may be in contravention of the outlet's editorial guidelines.
  • Iranian authorities have long taken issued with foreign-based Persian-language news networks, accusing them of being tasked with attacking the Islamic Republic. Salami's warning to the Saudi royal family comes as Tehran and Riyadh are working toward mending relations and re-establishing diplomatic ties. The IRGC commander's apparent criticism of Saudi media indicates that it will be brought up in the anticipated next round of talks between the two sides in Iraq.
Ed Webb

Social Media Made the Arab Spring, But Couldn't Save It | WIRED - 3 views

www.wired.com/...rab-spring-but-couldnt-save-it

socialmedia ArabSpring ISIS authoritarianism propaganda censorship activism activists

shared by Ed Webb on 29 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Activists were able to organize and mobilize in 2011 partly because authoritarian governments didn’t yet understand very much about how to use social media
  • “The activists’ accounts on Twitter and Facebook are very active and they have a lot of followers, but they cannot drive masses,”
  • governments have also become adept at using those same channels to spread misinformation. “You can now create a narrative saying a democracy activist was a traitor and a pedophile,” says Anne Applebaum, an author who directs a program on radical political and economic change at the Legatum Institute in London. “The possibility of creating an alternative narrative is one people didn’t consider, and it turns out people in authoritarian regimes are quite good at it.”
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • bad people are also very good at social media
Ed Webb

Turkish TV station aims to switch western views - FT.com - 1 views

www.ft.com/...7c-11e5-a09b-1f8b0d268c39.html

Turkey media TV television AKP Erdogan satellite internet

shared by Ed Webb on 11 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • The fledgling TV news channel, under the wing of the state-run Turkish Radio and Television Corporation, is at the forefront of an ambitious effort by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president, to shape how the country is viewed around the world. With sleek graphics, English-speaking foreign journalists and funded from the deep pockets of the taxpayer, it follows the blueprint of Qatar’s Al Jazeera and Russia’s RT, formerly Russia Today.
  • “There has [for many years] been a need for a broadcast channel delivering the events to the world from a different perspective, which presents Turkey’s own viewpoint,” says Ibrahim Eren, head of broadcasting for TRT. Ankara’s growing influence, not least in Syria and the migrant crisis, had created the need for a station showing non-Turkish viewers “how we see the world”
  • foreign journalists whom he views as an extension of western influence over Turkish internal affairs
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • public insults to reporters from CNN, the Economist and the BBC, notably when the 2013 Gezi Park protests provided media outlets with gripping images of tear-gassed protesters
  • While TRT World has hired expensive expatriate talent and technical staff, other Turkish journalists have been jailed, their newspapers closed and their careers ended over material the government deems offensive. In 2015 Reporters without Borders ranked Turkey 149th in the world for press freedom, behind South Sudan and Palestine
  • most of the foreign employees contacted by the FT privately expressed concern they had signed up to a project that would become halfway between state propaganda and an expression of Turkish soft power. “If we’re not careful, we end up a joke,” says a senior news staffer who is already considering quitting
  • Mr van Meek, a veteran of Fox News and Al Jazeera, rejects such criticism and says the channel’s coverage will be a measure of its independence: “Watch the content. I think we are fair and objective and credible.”
  • live broadcasts that are available online and as part of Turkish cable bundles. Yet almost nobody outside the country can yet watch it on television.
  • The benefits of being under the public broadcaster’s umbrella are apparent. During two recent high-profile terrorism incidents, TRT World was able to break a nationwide ban and broadcast live from the scene, while others had to rely on studio interviews.
  • its headcount has swelled to at least 220 in Istanbul, with additional centers in London, Singapore and Washington
  • Industry analysts estimate annual running costs at £50m-£100m, rising further if the channel develops a large network of correspondents. RT’s annual budget is about £125m.
  • “If you had $100m to improve the state of Turkish media, would you spend it on a glasshouse in the middle of Istanbul?” says Andrew Finkel, founder of P24, an organisation that aims to strengthen independent reporting in Turkey. “Why are public funds being used this way?”
  • Ed Webb on 11 Mar 16
     
    WIll it be as credible as Al Jazeera is (in some quarters, at least), or dismissed as propaganda, as RT mostly is, and Iran's Press TV generally is?
Ed Webb

Iranian Police Seizing Dissidents Get Aid Of Western Companies - Bloomberg - 0 views

www.bloomberg.com/...-aid-of-western-companies.html

Iran surveillance technology middleeast ICT

shared by Ed Webb on 06 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • About half the political prisoners he met in jail told him police had tracked their communications and movements through their cell phones
  • Stockholm-based Ericsson AB, Creativity Software Ltd. of the U.K. and Dublin-based AdaptiveMobile Security Ltd. marketed or provided gear over the past two years that Iran’s law enforcement or state security agencies would have access to, according to more than 100 documents and interviews with more than two dozen technicians and managers who worked on the systems.
  • When Iranian security officers needed to locate a target one night in late 2009, one former Ericsson employee says he got an emergency call to come into the office to fix a glitch in an Ericsson positioning center.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • AdaptiveMobile, backed by the investment arm of Intel Corp. (INTC), proposed a system in partnership with Ericsson for Iran’s largest mobile provider in 2010 that would filter, block and store cell phone text messages, according to two people familiar with the discussions. An Ericsson spokesman confirmed the proposal. The Irish company still services commercial gear for a similar system it sold in 2008 to Irancell. Police have access to the system, say two former Irancell managers.
  • Texting has become the predominant means of digital communications because more than 70 percent of Iranian households have a mobile phone -- four-times greater than the percentage with internet access.
  • Hundreds of people have been convicted by Iranian courts for offenses related to election protests, according to New York-based nonprofit group Human Rights Watch.
  • “My mobile phone was my enemy, my laptop was my enemy, my landline was my enemy,” says Shojaee, who turned to using pay phones.
  • Iran is one of many authoritarian countries across the Mideast and North Africa employing Western surveillance tools for political repression. In Bahrain, for instance, communications monitoring centers sold by Siemens AG (SIE), and maintained by Espoo, Finland-based Nokia Siemens Networks and then its divested unit, Trovicor GmbH, have been used to track and arrest activists, according to a Bloomberg News investigation.
  • Much of NSN’s gear in Iran has since been swapped out in favor of China’s Huawei Technologies Co.
  • A rapidly growing global business, the “lawful interception” and information intelligence market now generates more than $3 billion in annual sales
  • The 3.9 million-euro ($5.5 million) system AdaptiveMobile proposed could handle more than 10,000 messages per second and archive them for a period of 180 days, according to a company proposal. The archive would contain 54 terabytes of storage, according to the document. That’s big enough for all the data gathered by the Hubble Space Telescope over 20 years.
  • “Ultimately, telecom is a force for good in society,”
  • Police arrested him on the outskirts of a rally that December, beating him with fists and a baton and jailing him for 52 days. Security agents interrogated him 14 times, presenting transcripts of text messages plus an elaborate diagram showing all the people he’d called -- and then everyone they’d called.
  • The system can record a person’s location every 15 seconds -- eight times more frequently than a similar system the company sold in Yemen, according to company documents. A tool called “geofences” triggers an alarm when two targets come in close proximity to each other. The system also stores the data and can generate reports of a person’s movements. A former Creativity Software manager said the Iran system was far more sophisticated than any other systems the company had sold in the Middle East.
  • “A lot of people were not happy they were working on a project in Iran,” he says. “They were worried about how the product was going to be used.” Gokaram says he worked only on commercial products and didn’t share those concerns. He declined to discuss specifics about any technology deployed in Iran. Creativity Software, which is privately-held and partly funded by London-based venture capital firm MMC Ventures, announced last November that it had made four sales in six months in the Middle East for law enforcement purposes without identifying the mobile operator clients. Saul Olivares, market development director at Creativity Software, declined to discuss sales of law enforcement technology, but in an e-mail he pointed to its practical benefits, such as locating individuals during disasters, for ambulance crews and in other emergencies.
  • The European Union took aim at Iran’s growing surveillance capabilities in October 2010, enacting new sanctions that include prohibitions for goods that can be used for “internal repression.” The regulations, however, focused mostly on low- tech items, such as vehicles equipped with water cannons and razor barbed wire. In September, the European Parliament broadened its surveillance concerns beyond Iran, voting for a block on exports of systems if the purchasing country uses the gear “in connection with a violation of human rights.”
  • After his arrest early last year, Pourheydar, the opposition journalist, says police accused him of speaking to foreign media such as BBC and Voice of America. Their evidence: unbroadcast mobile phone calls captured, recorded and transcribed, he says. They also had transcripts of his e-mails and text messages. He never learned which companies provided the technology that made it possible.
  • “All these companies, which sell telecommunications services and listening devices to Iran, directly have roles in keeping this regime in power,”
Ed Webb

Disinformation flies in Syria's growing cyber war - Yahoo! News - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/owing-cyber-war-113420342.html

Syria Russia KSA Saudi Qatar cyberwar socialmedia propaganda hacking

shared by Ed Webb on 07 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • "Cyber attacks are the new reality of modern warfare," said Hayat Alvi, lecturer in Middle Eastern studies at the US Naval War College. "We can expect more... from all directions. In war, the greatest casualty is the truth. Each side will try to manipulate information to make their own side look like it is gaining while the other is losing."
  • In April, Saudi-based broadcaster Al Arabiya briefly lost control of one of its twitter accounts, which was then used to spread a string of stories suggesting a political crisis in Qatar. Tweets included claims that the Qatari prime minister had been sacked, his daughter arrested in London and that a coup orchestrated by the army chief was underway.
  • there seems little sign such incidents made a significant difference either on the ground in Syria or to the wider geopolitical picture
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Some believe Assad may be getting technical support from his long-term allies in Tehran, who successfully crushed their own post-election protests that were in part organized over the Internet. China and Russia too are has amongst the world leaders in managing online political activism and dissent, with the latter at least also seen likely helping out in Syria.
Ed Webb

Radio Beijing in the Middle East | Joseph Braude - 1 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...ing-in-the-midd_b_4673076.html

China Arabs Arabic media radio publicdiplomacy Egypt

shared by Ed Webb on 07 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • The decision to expose Egyptians to the show was the outcome of a protocol signed by the Chinese government and the Egyptian Radio and Television Union (ERTU), a division of Egypt's information ministry, for the express purpose of using mass media to prepare the population for a stronger alliance between the two states. China gave ERTU the rights to the program for free and paid for the translation and overdubbing. Egyptian Information Minister Duraya Sharaf al-Din, toasting the program's premiere during a visit to the Chinese embassy in Cairo, told Chinese radio that her government wants the series to instill an emotional connection with China that will popularize political and economic ties.
  • The show falls outside the news cycle and offers little entertainment value, but for the narrow purpose of inducing Egyptian and Tunisian youth to enroll in their local Confucius Institutes it strikes precisely the right chords. Young listeners in an unstable country with high unemployment hear that they can study Chinese for free and dramatically boost their job prospects. The show's guests manage to preempt defensive reactions from the kind of nationalistic listeners who would bristle at such an overture from a foreign power: They are assured that Egypt, too, is a great civilization and only lags behind China owing to its history of exploitation by the West. A step toward China is a step toward liberation and progress. Beijing comes across as a refreshingly hospitable destination for study abroad, moreover. Its people honor guests and reject the anti-Arab stereotypes widespread in Europe and the United States.
  • Who listens to such a broadcast? Unlike America's Radio Sawa or the BBC from London, CRI Arabic isn't available on local radio in the region (with the exception of what appears to be a pilot project on FM radio in the sparsely populated North African republic of Mauritania). Nor does it figure prominently among Arabic stations hyped online. One finds it advertised in venues where Arabs already curious about China are likely to go. For example, the website of the Chinese embassy in Cairo features a link on its home page, while in person the embassy's cultural attaché encourages the young people he meets to tune in. Some Confucius Institute chapters also disseminate links to prospective students as a kind of audio brochure.
Ed Webb

BBC News - Extremist websites skyrocketing, says Interpol - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...world-europe-11382124

internet radicalism extremism Islamists interpol security

shared by Ed Webb on 22 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • A researcher at the London-based International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation told the BBC that the number of radical websites was now far higher than the figure given by Interpol. "It's well into the thousands in English alone,"
Ed Webb

The End of Solitude - ChronicleReview.com - 0 views

chronicle.com/...21b00601.htm

shared by Ed Webb on 09 Feb 09 - Cached
  • if the property that grounded the self, in Romanticism, was sincerity, and in modernism it was authenticity, then in postmodernism it is visibility
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 09 Feb 09
       
      Discuss!
  • Reading, as Robinson puts it, "is an act of great inwardness and subjectivity." "The soul encountered itself in response to a text, first Genesis or Matthew and then Paradise Lost or Leaves of Grass." With Protestantism and printing, the quest for the divine voice became available to, even incumbent upon, everyone.
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 09 Feb 09
       
      Mark Edmundson makes a similar argument in "Why Read?" - http://the-ed-rush.blogspot.com/2009/01/book-review-why-read-by-mark-edmundson.html - he believes reading has the potential to be life-changing.
  • The world was now understood as an assault on the self, and with good reason.
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • The Romantic ideal of solitude developed in part as a reaction to the emergence of the modern city. In modernism, the city is not only more menacing than ever, it has become inescapable, a labyrinth: Eliot's London, Joyce's Dublin. The mob, the human mass, presses in. Hell is other people
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 09 Feb 09
       
      "Hell is other people" - L'enfer c'est les autres - is one of the more famous utterances of Jean-Paul Sartre.
  • authenticity
  • heroic self-discovery, a voyage through interior realms made vast and terrifying by Nietzschean and Freudian insights
  • the universal threat of loneliness
  • But through the 70s and 80s, our isolation grew. Suburbs, sprawling ever farther, became exurbs. Families grew smaller or splintered apart, mothers left the home to work. The electronic hearth became the television in every room. Even in childhood, certainly in adolescence, we were each trapped inside our own cocoon. Soaring crime rates, and even more sharply escalating rates of moral panic, pulled children off the streets. The idea that you could go outside and run around the neighborhood with your friends, once unquestionable, has now become unthinkable. The child who grew up between the world wars as part of an extended family within a tight-knit urban community became the grandparent of a kid who sat alone in front of a big television, in a big house, on a big lot. We were lost in space.
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 09 Feb 09
       
      This begins to veer into conservative reaction - compare to Rothman on television. Is all so gloomy, really? Would we all be happier if things were more like the 1950s? I really don't think so. Only the rich white men would be happier.
  • A constant stream of mediated contact, virtual, notional, or simulated, keeps us wired in to the electronic hive — though contact, or at least two-way contact, seems increasingly beside the point.
  • Visibility secures our self-esteem, becoming a substitute, twice removed, for genuine connection
  • My students told me they have little time for intimacy. And of course, they have no time at all for solitude
  • The two emotions, loneliness and boredom, are closely allied. They are also both characteristically modern
  • Boredom is not a necessary consequence of having nothing to do, it is only the negative experience of that state. Television, by obviating the need to learn how to make use of one's lack of occupation, precludes one from ever discovering how to enjoy it. In fact, it renders that condition fearsome, its prospect intolerable. You are terrified of being bored — so you turn on the television.
  • consumer society wants to condition us to feel bored, since boredom creates a market for stimulation.
  • has been said
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 09 Feb 09
       
      Passive mood raises questions: said by whom? in what context?
  • the Internet is as powerful a machine for the production of loneliness as television is for the manufacture of boredom
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 09 Feb 09
       
      Wow - now, that is nicely written, whether one agrees with it or not.
  • Lost, too, is the related propensity for sustained reading
  • Reading now means skipping and skimming; five minutes on the same Web page is considered an eternity. This is not reading as Marilynne Robinson described it: the encounter with a second self in the silence of mental solitude
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 09 Feb 09
       
      Are both kinds of reading not possible?
  • there is no mental space that is not social (contemporary social science dovetailing here with postmodern critical theory). One of the most striking things about the way young people relate to one another today is that they no longer seem to believe in the existence of Thoreau's "darkness."
  • The MySpace page, with its shrieking typography and clamorous imagery, has replaced the journal and the letter as a way of creating and communicating one's sense of self
  • The suggestion is not only that such communication is to be made to the world at large rather than to oneself or one's intimates, or graphically rather than verbally, or performatively rather than narratively or analytically, but also that it can be made completely
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 09 Feb 09
       
      Do we really buy that suggestion? Does anybody? I know what Facebook et al are selling, but am not convinced too many are buying it.
  • We are not merely social beings. We are each also separate, each solitary, each alone in our own room, each miraculously our unique selves and mysteriously enclosed in that selfhood.
  • One must protect oneself from the momentum of intellectual and moral consensus — especially, Emerson added, during youth.
  • Today, of course, universities do everything they can to keep their students from being alone, lest they perpetrate self-destructive acts, and also, perhaps, unfashionable thoughts. But no real excellence, personal or social, artistic, philosophical, scientific or moral, can arise without solitude. "The saint and poet seek privacy," Emerson said, "to ends the most public and universal."
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 09 Feb 09
       
      Harsh, dude. But possibly fair. Does this mean universities are broken? Beyond redemption? Or is the argument too sweeping here? Not everybody has the talent or inclination to be a seer. Those that do, will find their solitude, surely?
  • Solitude isn't easy, and isn't for everyone.
  • But it takes a willingness to be unpopular.
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 09 Feb 09
       
      Almost anything worthwhile takes that willingness.
  • Not for nothing does "gregarious" mean "part of the herd."
Ed Webb

A Compass That Can Clash With Modern Life - New York Times - 0 views

eduwebb.pbwiki.com/Fatwas.htm

fatwa Islam egypt NYT MENA

shared by Ed Webb on 07 Apr 09 - No Cached
  • 'We were very angered when we heard about the Danish cartoons concerning our prophet; however, these two fatwas are harming our Islamic religion and our prophet more than the cartoons,''
  • The complaint has been the subject of recent conferences as government-appointed arbiters of Islamic standards say the fatwa free-for-all has led to the promotion of extremism and intolerance. The conflict in Egypt served as a difficult reminder of a central challenge facing Islamic communities as they debate the true nature of the faith and how to accommodate modernity. The fatwa is the front line in the theological battle between often opposing worldviews. It is where interpretation meets daily life.
  • In a faith with no central doctrinal authority, there has been an explosion of places offering fatwas, from Web sites that respond to written queries, to satellite television shows that take phone calls, to radical and terrorist organizations that set up their own fatwa committees.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Governments have tried to guide and control the process, but as they struggled with their own legitimacy, they have often undermined the perceived legitimacy of those they appoint as religious leaders.
  • combines the role of social worker, therapist, lawyer and religious adviser.
  • 'We are the conscience of the nation,'' said Abdel Moety Bayoumi, a member of Al Azhar Research Committee, a state-sanctioned body that issues religious opinions and is often behind decisions over which books should be stripped from store shelves and banned. In Egypt, and other Muslim countries, where laws must abide by the Koran, fatwas by government-appointed officials can have the weight of law. ''We have to be clear what is at stake here,'' said Egypt's grand mufti, Sheik Ali Gomaa, in a recent speech in London. ''When each and every person's unqualified opinion is considered a fatwa, we have lost a tool that is of the utmost importance to rein in extremism and preserve the flexibility and balance of Islamic law.''
1 - 20 of 33 Next ›
Showing 20▼ items per page