Egypt's New Leaders Press Media to Muzzle Dissent - www.nytimes.com - Readability - 0 views
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After the military removed Mr. Morsi from power while promising that it was not “excluding” any party from participating in Egypt’s future, the leadership moved forcefully to control the narrative of the takeover by exerting pressure on the news media. The authorities shuttered some television stations, including a local Al Jazeera3 channel and one run by the Muslim Brotherhood4, confiscated their equipment and arrested their journalists. The tone of some state news media also seemed to shift, to reflect the interests of those now in charge.
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the military started accusing foreign news media of spreading “misinformation”
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After the BBC5 and other outlets reported that pro-Morsi protesters had been killed by soldiers outside the Republican Guard club, an unnamed military source told the state newspaper, Al Ahram, that “foreign media outlets” were “inciting sedition between the people and its army.”
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Facebook Officials Keep Quiet on Its Role in Revolts - NYTimes.com - 3 views
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The social media giant finds itself under countervailing pressures after the uprisings in the Middle East. While it has become one of the primary tools for activists to mobilize protests and share information, Facebook does not want to be seen as picking sides for fear that some countries — like Syria, where it just gained a foothold — would impose restrictions on its use or more closely monitor users, according to some company executives who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing internal business.
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Last week, Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, urged Facebook to take “immediate and tangible steps” to help protect democracy and human rights activists who use its services, including addressing concerns about not being able to use pseudonyms. In a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, Mr. Durbin said the recent events in Egypt and Tunisia had highlighted the costs and benefits of social tools to democracy and human rights advocates. “I am concerned that the company does not have adequate safeguards in place to protect human rights and avoid being exploited by repressive governments,” he wrote.
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This is an incredible challenge and an incredible opportunity for Facebook, Twitter and Google,” said Ethan Zuckerman, a senior researcher at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, where he works on projects about the use of technology and media in the developing world. “It might be tougher for Facebook than anyone else. Facebook has been ambivalent about the use of their platform by activists.
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Israel, Mired in Ideological Battles, Fights on Cultural Fronts - The New York Times - 2 views
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Miri Regev, the divisive and conservative minister of culture and sport, who wants to deny state money to institutions that do not express “loyalty” to the state, including those that show disrespect for the flag, incite racism or violence, or subvert Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.
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For one well-known poet, Meir Wieseltier, the law “brings us closer to the rise of fascism and exposes its true face.” But Isi Leibler argued in The Jerusalem Post that the government is “not obliged to subsidize the demonization of the nation” and should instead support “the inculcation of love of Israel.”
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such conflicts, over what cultural works the state should promote for schoolchildren to read or for citizens to see and hear, is part of a political drama in which the politicians of a new generation are jockeying for position as leader of the so-called nationalist camp
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Officials Lay Out Details of How Pakistan's Spy Agency Supports Militant Groups - NYTim... - 0 views
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The Taliban’s widening campaign in southern Afghanistan is made possible in part by direct support from operatives in Pakistan’s military intelligence agency
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The support consists of money, military supplies and strategic planning guidance to Taliban commanders who are gearing up to confront the international force in Afghanistan that will soon include some 17,000 American reinforcements.
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There is even evidence that ISI operatives meet regularly with Taliban commanders to discuss whether to intensify or scale back violence before the Afghan elections.
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Iran's Politics Open a Generational Chasm - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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the generational chasm
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Because of the growing alienation of young Iranians, family dynamics could be complex, particularly among the families of elite government officials. “These children are more affected by society and even Facebook and Twitter on the Internet than their families,”
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“This was an explosion of 30 years of suppression and intimidations of my generation,” she said of the protests. “I am happy that we finally found the courage to speak up.”
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Radio Reporter From the U.S. Is Held by Iran - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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Iran has arrested an Iranian-American reporter who worked for National Public Radio and other news organizations out of Iran, her father told N.P.R. on Sunday.
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“She said that she had bought a bottle of wine and the person that sold it had reported it and then they came and arrested her,” he said, adding that the wine purchase was just an excuse to arrest her.
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The authorities also destroyed the place of worship of members of a Sufi group called the Gonabadi Dervishes on Feb. 19 in the central city of Isfahan.
Death Toll in Libya Is Most Likely More Than 1,000, Italy Says - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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On Tuesday the Libyan ruler, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, called Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, his first known direct outreach to a European leader.
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Libya supplies much of Italy’s natural gas. In 2008, under Mr. Berlusconi, the two countries signed an accord in which Italy pledged $5 billion over 20 years in exchange for Libya’s help in blocking the flow of illegal immigrants toward Europe and granting favorable treatment for Italian companies seeking to do business in Libya.
Permission to Narrate: Picking Apart the NYT/Zionist Narrative on the Nakba - 0 views
Which Came First -- Orhan Pamuk's Museum or His New Novel? - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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The story of how a Nobel Prize-winning novelist would come to open a museum
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Among the objects: 4,213 cigarette butts, 237 hair barrettes, 419 national lottery tickets and 1 quince grinder.
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“My novel honors the museums that no one goes to, the ones in which you can hear your own footsteps.” Over the years, he visited hundreds of these queer, lesser-known monuments to collecting — from the Chinese Traditional Medicine Museum in Hangzhou, China, to the Ava Gardner Museum in Smithfield, N.C. His character Kemal visits museums, too — 5,723 of them, we learn from the novel. The similarities between Kemal and Orhan inspire a question that never fails to exasperate the author. He threw his voice, a complicated musical instrument, into the rhetorical query: “Mr. Pamuk, are you Kemal? Enough. No, I am not Kemal, but I cannot convince you that I am not Kemal. That is being a novelist.”
Arab Leaders Keep a Wary Eye on Tunisia - NYTimes.com - 1 views
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In Egypt, where the leadership continues to rely on a decades-old emergency law that allows arrest without charge, there is a lot of room for free and critical speech, offering a safety valve for expression that did not exist in Tunisia, he said.
Egyptian Judge Speaks Against Islamist Victory Before Presidential Runoff - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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The president of the association of Egyptian judges said Thursday that they were abandoning their neutrality toward the coming presidential runoff in an effort to guard against an Islamist monopoly of power.
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if the group’s members had known Islamists would win most of the seats in Parliament after elections that ended in January, they would not have supervised the voting
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the effect of Judge Zend’s appearance was a public pitch for the presidential campaign of Ahmed Shafik, the last prime minister under Mr. Mubarak, who is now squaring off against the Brotherhood’s nominee, Mohamed Morsi
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Music Stirs the Embers of Protest in Iran - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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The government has tried all manner of methods to mute what has become known as “resistance music.” It has blocked Web sites used to download songs and shut down social networking sites, which the opposition also used to organize protests and distribute videos of government and paramilitary violence.
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lamping down on music in the digital age is like squeezing a wet sponge. Protest songs are downloaded on the Internet, sold in the black market or shared via Bluetooth, a wireless technology that Iranians have adapted to share files on cellphones, bypassing the Internet altogether. Fans have also made dozens of homemade videos, setting montages of protest images to music and posting them online.
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“Music has become a tool for resisting the regime,” said Abbas Milani, the director of Iranian studies at Stanford University. “Music has never been as extensive and diverse as it is today.”
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U.A.E. Moves to Block BlackBerry Services - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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the southeastern corner
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Saudi Arabia has been closely studying the issue and may follow suit. Other countries, including Kuwait and Bahrain, have also raised concerns.
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the BlackBerry’s highly encrypted data system, which offers security to users but makes it more difficult for governments to monitor communications.
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