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Ed Webb

'Diamond Dust,' a poisonous pleasure for Egyptian moviegoers - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...-in-outlook-toward-nasser.html

Egypt film history politics Nasser

shared by Ed Webb on 07 Jan 19 - Cached
  • Tearing down pillars of modern Egyptian history can be lethal, as author and screenwriter Ahmed Mourad and director Marwan Hamed recently discovered with “Diamond Dust,” a political thriller dealing with the Free Officers Movement and the coup that dethroned King Farouk on July 23, 1952
  • “Diamond Dust” the book, published six months before the 2011 revolution, became a best-seller that year, but was not a source of controversy. Its adaptation for the stage in 2016 premiered without event. This August, however, when the film adaptation by Hamed, known for the daring drama “The Yacoubian Building” (2006), arrived in Egyptian cinemas, it created a stir.
  • “Diamond Dust” is the first Egyptian movie to describe the 1952 change in government as a coup, rather than a revolution, as the state officially recognizes the event. In fact, the film is unapologetically critical of the whole movement. Egyptian cinematic works have criticized the politics of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, one of the leaders of the Free Officers, and of his successors' regimes, but the Free Officers Movement itself had apparently been off-limits.
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  • many Nasserists and supporters of the 1952 revolution have harshly criticized the film. Last month, Magdy Eltayeb, film critic for the newspaper Al-Qahira, posted on his personal Facebook page, “Diamond dust is poisonous. … [The film] adopted a stance against the 1952 revolution. … It showed excessive sympathy with the Jews to the extent that this has undermined this work’s aesthetic value as a film noir.”
  • “Many viewers saw this vision as biased, as it addressed only Abdel Nasser’s flaws and neglected his virtues, while glorifying Mohammad Naguib with no reliable proof,” Shennawi told Al-Monitor. “Egyptian cinema suffered a lot in the era of Abdel Nasser, who exploited cinema to promote the ideas of the July 23 revolution and gradually root out any opposing ideas. Egyptian cinema started breaking free from those restrictions with the film ‘Al-Karnak’ [1975], which criticized Abdel Nasser’s era, and ‘Ahl al-Qima’ [People on the Top, 1981], against [President Anwar] Sadat’s Egypt.”
  • A hit, “Diamond Dust” has so far earned 27.6 million Egyptian pounds ($1.5 million) at the box office.
Ed Webb

State Dept. rejects Davutoglu's denial of media watchdog report - Al-Monitor: the Pulse... - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...ee-report-media-davutoglu.html

Turkey freedomhouse media press censorship AKP politics US USA EU

shared by Ed Webb on 07 May 14 - No Cached
  • Only a day after the US-based watchdog Freedom House, in its "Freedom of the Press 2014" report that was released May 1, relegated Turkey from the league of “partly free” countries to the league of “not free” countries, Davutoglu exploded. Speaking at a joint news conference with Omani Foreign Minister Yousef bin Alawi bin Abdullah in Ankara on May 2, he said, “No one can put Turkey in that category. All kinds of opinions are openly voiced in Turkey. In this sense, the press freedom in Turkey is freer than some countries called 'partly free.'” If he had left it there, there would be no problem. But, he urged Turkish reporters to act against the Freedom House report: “I’m calling on the press and the intellectuals to display a stance against this report. We expect our journalists to reject this report,” he said, and alleged that “a perception operation is being conducted against Turkey.” The term “perception operation” is increasingly used by government officials and pro-government media to describe an alleged smear campaign underway against the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government of Turkey.
  •  “What I think would change the way people look at Turkey is if they unblocked YouTube, if they didn’t block Twitter. I think that’s what drives people other places to say, ‘Hey, maybe freedom of expression isn’t that great in Turkey right now,’”
  • in a manner that would further complicate the AKP’s image in the Western world, the pro-AKP mouthpiece daily Star drew attention to Freedom House President David J. Kramer’s “Jewish origin,” and also alleged that Freedom House is financed by philanthropist George Soros and Jewish lobbies. Mehmet Ocaktan, editor-in-chief of the staunchly pro-AKP daily Aksam (who is also a former MP of the ruling party), was very blunt. He wrote: “Half-witted Turkish friends of proven anti-Turkey foreign sources are quietly skilled in covering up anything good that has been done. For example, they grab as a salvation nothing but a scandalous Turkey report of the Freedom House that is financed by famous speculator Soros, who has made a billion dollar profit from domestic troubles he instigates in various countries, and [the] Israeli financial lobby. For one thing, the data about detained journalists in Turkey [are] old and almost none of them [are] accurate. For Freedom House, [which] always lists Israel among free countries, to put Turkey in the same bracket as Uganda, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Tanzania and Kenya is not only dimwitted but also an indicator of absolute ignorance.”
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  • “Freedom House has noted complaints by the government of Turkey about Turkey being ranked “not free” in our report, "Freedom of the Press 2014." The government’s objection that the ranking does not take into account events occurring in 2014 is misplaced, as made clear by the report. “The report evaluates events that occurred during 2013. The rating does not take into account events that occurred in Turkey since January 1, 2014. They include the government’s recent releases of journalists in the Ergenekon and KCK cases, regressive changes to Turkey’s Internet law 5651, the blocking of Twitter and YouTube, and the law increasing the powers of the National Intelligence Organization (MIT). These and subsequent events occurring in 2014 will be evaluated in Freedom of the Press 2015. “Freedom House also notes with concern that some media outlets resorted to anti-Semitism in criticizing the report. Freedom House calls on the government of Turkey to join us in condemning the use of hate speech.”
Ed Webb

National security and canned sardines - Opinion - Ahram Online - 0 views

english.ahram.org.eg/...64381.aspx

Egypt censorship opinion intelligence security

shared by Ed Webb on 10 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • draft laws currently being prepared by various ministries about the right to information and free circulation of information. As a society, we have come a long way on this subject since the 1960s; Military Intelligence (which today we refer to as “sovereign entities”) has loosened its grip on the media, and we have made huge progress in media freedom after the emergence of independent newspapers and satellite channels, blogs, Facebook and Twitter. Nonetheless, the security mentality still controls much of freedom of publication, and I believe we need to launch a serious dialogue about the relationship between national security on the one hand and freedom of opinion and free circulation of information on the other.
  • Information is vital for the democratic process; if the people don’t know what’s happening and if the actions of government officials and public figures are concealed and secret, then the citizenry would not be able to participate in events in their society.
  • Availability of information also allows the citizenry to oversee state agencies, and thus effectively contribute to curbing corruption and abuse of power. This makes free information flow vital to raising the efficiency of the government apparatus and improving its performance
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  • free information flow is essential and vital for the press and scientific research. We often hear of difficulties facing journalists in accessing information and sensitive data because official entities refuse to disclose information. We also often hear about academic research stumbling and terminating because of lack of security permits or because the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) objected to a research questionnaire, under the pretext that opinion polls could divulge information to the enemy about the domestic front and thus could be a national security risk. These security caveats caused the quality of the press and scientific research in the country to decline
  • Thus, if the intelligence rationale about freedom of information has merits, then the logic of rights also has merits because it argues that access and dissemination of information strengthens national security.
  • we can also say that the mindset of caution and opacity that caused a lack of transparency and negligible public oversight of state institutions was an even greater danger to national security
Ed Webb

Free Speech in the Muslim World? Ask the Egyptian TV Station That First Aired the Anti-... - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...262567

expression television TV Salafists Egypt KSA Saudi blasphemy film

shared by Ed Webb on 19 Sep 12 - Cached
  • Now the new Arab democracies may be forced to consider how to balance speech rights with popular demands for blasphemy restrictions. Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood has repeated its call for an international convention against giving offense to religion. Tunisian leaders said the crisis underlined the need for a blasphemy law, of the sort that already exists in countries such as Pakistan. We're told of a cultural divide between the West, with its traditional freedoms, and majority-Muslim countries extraordinarily sensitive to insults to Islam.
  • A lesson of Al Nas TV is that maybe this divide is not so great after all. The Egyptian station was broadcasting in a manner that Westerners would recognize -- airing a controversy and discussing its implications -- and its staff has reason to hope for Western-style protection of speech.
  • financed by the Saudi government and associated with the conservative Salafist movement
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  • it wasn't until the TV broadcast that things really blew up
  • If Egyptian prosecutors can accuse a filmmaker in the United States of "threatening national unity" or "assaulting Islam," crimes that carry the death penalty, surely they can actually arrest the men in Cairo who propagated the video
  • In presenting the video, the broadcasters explained that they spread offensive speech because the public needed to be informed of in injustice.
  • Al Nas was using the freedom of speech in the same way it is exercised in other countries, including those in the West. Exposing outrages is a central role of the free media, after all. Informing the public is a vital part of democracy, and will be essential in the Arab world as democracy spreads
  • Some public questioning of Al Nas has begun, and the TV station is on the defensive. "We did not mean... to harm the national unity," insisted Essam Ramy, the editor of the program, in an interview with NPR. He said the program merely "monitors what happens on the Egyptian street," and that if Al Nas really wanted to incite riots, the station would have played even more of the video than it did
  • Film producers who were salivating to smear Muslims must have been thrilled when Al Nas became a distributor for their product. If they're going to have a democracy, Egyptians are stuck with free speech -- and also with the responsibility to use it better than Al Nas did this month
Ed Webb

With the world on fire, a cowardly, timid news media is a threat to U.S. democracy - 0 views

www.inquirer.com/...s-gaza-extremism-20231105.html

US USA media opinion Israel israelpalestine Palestine Gaza war democracy

shared by Ed Webb on 07 Jan 24 - Cached
  • In one of the most perilous moments of crisis the world has seen in 75 years, and with the basic notions of free speech under assault, most newsrooms aren’t fighting back. They are, instead, pulling their punches in a defensive, “rope-a-dope” crouch, and thus failing to truly inform — when democracy itself is at risk.
  • the push not to offend with Middle East news coverage is emblematic of a bigger trend of newsroom timidity and even rank cowardice that also permeates domestic news coverage, at a moment when right-wing extremists are controlling the U.S. House and are on track to regain the White House and full governmental control in a chaotic election year
  • deference to authority is already bleeding into serious policy coverage. Far too many news outlets uncritically repeated Johnson’s first major pronouncement — that $14 billion for Israel could be paid for by cutting the number of IRS agents (who audit the GOP’s millionaire donors) when even a third-grade math student would know that reducing revenue agents would cost the government money. Getting it right isn’t only important because Johnson is now the most powerful Republican in Washington, but also because he’s a kind of a John the Baptist prophecy of an even more dangerous Trump 47 in 14-plus months
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  • Growing threats to press freedom in America have metastasized in the weeks since Oct. 7, with pressure not to make any controversial comments about Israel or Palestine causing some editors and reporters to get fired or resign, which has a chilling effect on others. And my bigger fear is that this growing climate of fear is bleeding into coverage of the 2024 election and the threat to democracy.
  • The world is staring into an abyss, much as it did in the 1930s. Now, as then, the global rise of right-wing authoritarians like Vladimir Putin in Russia and Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel is linked to aggressive militarism that targets civilians and risks a world war. Here at home, the growing sense of chaos abroad and a broken government on Capitol Hill, with Republican Johnson poised to make matters worse, has imperiled the flawed small-d democratic government of President Joe Biden and has primed too many voters to fall into the waiting arms of a wannabe dictator.
  • the institutional caution that frames their work has been getting a lot worse. Some of it is probably business-driven — to avoid offending readers who might cancel a subscription. A lot of it seems to be a desire in newsrooms, after Trump’s whirlwind, lie-filled first term, to return to normalcy and the kind of balance that treats the two parties equally, which means ignoring that one has become an authoritarian cult.
  • things will get worse in less than two years if journalists — as individuals, as newsrooms, and as a profession — can’t stop cowering and won’t adopt a much more aggressive posture in defending democracy, the only political system that makes a functioning news media possible. Some of it is basic stuff — more boldness in calling out a blatant lie, like Johnson’s IRS claim, or making it clear when someone is to blame, like Israel’s killing of journalists.
  • I’m terrified that many angry, apathetic, or ill-informed voters will wake up on Jan. 21, 2025, in a country they no longer recognize ... and didn’t see coming.
Ed Webb

Donald Trump's Media Attacks Should Be Viewed as Brilliant | Time.com - 0 views

time.com/...donald-trump-fake-news-attacks

media journalism epistemology facts opinion politics US USA Trump

shared by Ed Webb on 19 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • the central idea of journalism — the conviction, as my old boss Peter Kann once said, “that facts are facts; that they are ascertainable through honest, open-minded and diligent reporting; that truth is attainable by laying fact upon fact, much like the construction of a cathedral; and that truth is not merely in the eye of the beholder.”
  • the responsibility to separate truth from falsehood, which is never more important than when powerful people insist that falsehoods are truths, or that there is no such thing as truth to begin with
  • a period in which the executive branch of government is engaged in a systematic effort to create a climate of opinion against the news business
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  • Ideologically, the president is trying to depose so-called mainstream media in favor of the media he likes — Breitbart News and the rest. Another way of making this point is to say that he’s trying to substitute news for propaganda, information for boosterism.
  • “Many people say” is what’s known as an argumentum ad populum. If we were a nation of logicians, we would dismiss the argument as dumb.We are not a nation of logicians.
  • The president is responding to a claim of fact not by denying the fact, but by denying the claim that facts are supposed to have on an argument
  • This is a version of Thrasymachus’s argument in Plato’s Republic that justice is the advantage of the stronger and that injustice “if it is on a large enough scale, is stronger, freer, and more masterly than justice.”
  • Truth is what you can get away with.
  • The interesting conversation concerns how we come to accept those lies.
  • If a public figure tells a whopping lie once in his life, it’ll haunt him into his grave. If he lies morning, noon and night, it will become almost impossible to remember any one particular lie. Outrage will fall victim to its own ubiquity. It’s the same truth contained in Stalin’s famous remark that the death of one man is a tragedy but the death of a million is a statistic.
  • explanation becomes rationalization, which in turn becomes justification
  • Here’s a simple truth about a politics of dishonesty, insult and scandal: It’s entertaining. Politics as we’ve had it for most of my life has, with just a few exceptions, been distant and dull.
  • it’s exhilarating. Haven’t all of us noticed that everything feels speeded up, more vivid, more intense and consequential? One of the benefits of an alternative-facts administration is that fiction can take you anywhere.
  • we adopt new metrics of judgment, in which politics becomes more about perceptions than performance—of how a given action is perceived as being perceived. If a reporter for the New York Times says that Trump’s press conference probably plays well in Peoria, then that increases the chances that it will play well in Peoria.
  • Some people became desensitized by the never-ending assaults on what was once quaintly known as “human decency.” Others seemed to positively admire the comments as refreshing examples of personal authenticity and political incorrectness.
  • anxiety and anger are their own justifications these days
  • In his 1953 masterpiece, “The Captive Mind,” the Polish poet and dissident Czeslaw Milosz analyzed the psychological and intellectual pathways through which some of his former colleagues in Poland’s post-war Communist regime allowed themselves to be converted into ardent Stalinists. In none of the cases that Milosz analyzed was coercion the main reason for the conversion.They wanted to believe. They were willing to adapt. They thought they could do more good from the inside. They convinced themselves that their former principles didn’t fit with the march of history, or that to hold fast to one’s beliefs was a sign of priggishness and pig-headedness. They felt that to reject the new order of things was to relegate themselves to irrelevance and oblivion. They mocked their former friends who refused to join the new order as morally vain reactionaries. They convinced themselves that, brutal and capricious as Stalinism might be, it couldn’t possibly be worse than the exploitative capitalism of the West.
  • I fear we are witnessing a similar process unfold among many conservative intellectuals on the right. It has been stunning to watch a movement that once believed in the benefits of free trade and free enterprise merrily give itself over to a champion of protectionism whose economic instincts recall the corporatism of 1930s Italy or 1950s Argentina. It is no less stunning to watch people once mocked Obama for being too soft on Russia suddenly discover the virtues of Trump’s “pragmatism” on the subject.
  • George Orwell wrote, “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”
  • Not to look around, or beyond, or away from the facts, but to look straight at them, to recognize and call them for what they are, nothing more or less. To see things as they are before we re-interpret them into what we’d like them to be. To believe in an epistemology that can distinguish between truth and falsity, facts and opinions, evidence and wishes. To defend habits of mind and institutions of society, above all a free press, which preserve that epistemology. To hold fast to a set of intellectual standards and moral convictions that won’t waver amid changes of political fashion or tides of unfavorable opinion. To speak the truth irrespective of what it means for our popularity or influence.
  • Ed Webb on 19 Feb 17
     
    Helpful in thinking about how people adapt to authoritarian regimes and societies, or don't
Ed Webb

Egypt: Military Intensifies Clampdown on Free Expression | Human Rights Watch - 0 views

www.hrw.org/...fies-clampdown-free-expression

censorship Egypt military expression law rights

shared by Ed Webb on 17 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • “The decision to try Asmaa Mahfouz is a major attack on free expression and fair trials, using the same abusive laws the Mubarak government used against its critics,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The military is using her to silence potential critics, sending the message that criticizing the current military government will land them in jail.”
  • The military prosecutor questioned her for over three hours about her comments on Twitter and media interviews during protests on July 23 in which she criticized the military for failing to intervene to protect protesters.
  • Abu Bakr, a lawyer representing victims in the Mubarak trial and a Kifaya activist, received her summons to appear before the military prosecutor on charges of “insulting the military” on August 16. During the questioning, the prosecutor showed her video footage from the July 23 demonstration in Abbasiya, Cairo, of a protester who, the prosecutor told her, was “insulting” the military. The prosecutor dropped the charges against her when he realized the footage was not of her. Lawyer Ahmed Ragheb told Human Rights Watch that this footage was not filmed by the media, which would suggest that the military is filming protesters during demonstrations.
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  • In an August 15 case, six protesters faced charges of “insulting the military” before a military tribunal for chanting “antagonistic” slogans about Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the de facto ruler of the country, in addition to charges of assaulting a police officer. The military court sentenced Hassan Bahgat to six months in prison in another case, 3779/2011, for insulting the military in Tahrir square on August 6
  • Military courts have sentenced at least 10,000 civilians since January 2011 after unfair proceedings, Human Rights Watch said. All of them should be retried before regular civilian courts.
  • The Mubarak government frequently used overly broad provisions in the penal code to crack down on legitimate criticism of the government’s human rights record or criticism of the political situation, trying editors, opposition leaders, and activists on charges of “insulting the president” or “insulting public institutions.” The military government and courts are using the same provisions.
  • Military prosecutors have summoned at least seven activists and journalists, including Mahfouz, to question them on charges of criminal defamation after they publicly criticized the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), the military leadership, or alleged abuses by the army. The labor activist and blogger Hossam al-Hamalawy was summoned after he said on television that he held the head of the military police, Gen. Hamdy Badeen, personally responsible for acts of torture by the military police.
  • The United Nations Human Rights Committee, the expert body that provides authoritative interpretations of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Egypt is a party, states categorically in its recently-issued General Comment No. 34, on Article 19 on Freedom of Expression, that, “States parties should not prohibit criticism of institutions, such as the army or the administration.” By this standard, article 184 of the Egyptian penal code, which criminalizes “insulting the People’s Assembly, the Shura Council or any State Authority, or the Army or the Courts,” is incompatible with international law and should be amended accordingly, Human Rights Watch said
Michael Toler

Wizards Productions' Online Multiplayer Arabic Games Experiences Viral Growth - 0 views

arabcrunch.com/...-experiences-viral-growth.html

Arabic Gaming Language Teaching Wizards Production nitle-arabic nitle_arabic nitle-musharaka nitle_musharaka Multiplayer Online Games ArabCrunch

shared by Michael Toler on 13 Sep 09 - Cached
  • Michael Toler on 13 Sep 09
     
    With its current network of 4 Arabic games, Wizards Production has achieved healthy growth with over 30 million page views and 500,000 visits, according to Sohaib. The company used viral marketing methods to increase its members base, such as giving points to players ones they invite their friends. Might such games be useful in teaching upper level Arabic? Wizards Productions's games are all free, the revenue model is based on optional premium accounts and upgrades that the member can buy to progress faster in the game, members can do that through prepaid cards, credit cards and soon through SMS payments, as Sohaib told ArabCrunch. The startup plans to launch more games in coming future.
  • Michael Toler on 13 Sep 09
     
    With its current network of 4 Arabic games, Wizards Production has achieved healthy growth with over 30 million page views and 500,000 visits, according to Sohaib. The company used viral marketing methods to increase its members base, such as giving points to players ones they invite their friends. Wizards Productions's games are all free, the revenue model is based on optional premium accounts and upgrades that the member can buy to progress faster in the game, members can do that through prepaid cards, credit cards and soon through SMS payments, as Sohaib told ArabCrunch. The startup plans to launch more games in coming future.
Tom Trewinnard

Daily News Egypt - Full Article - 0 views

www.thedailynewsegypt.com/article.aspx

internet Egypt news _for_meedan for_meedan

shared by Tom Trewinnard on 17 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Tom Trewinnard on 17 Nov 09
     
    From the article: "Egypt's legitimacy to host such a meeting is questionable as it has repeatedly been guilty of violations of online free expression," Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said in a statement issued last week.
  • Tom Trewinnard on 17 Nov 09
     
    "Egypt's legitimacy to host such a meeting is questionable as it has repeatedly been guilty of violations of online free expression," Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said in a statement issued last week.
gweyman

Libya | Bernard-Henri Levy | Muammar Gaddafi - 0 views

www.globalpost.com/...ipoli-bernard-henri-levy-video

libya gaddafi authoritarianism conflict revolution protest

shared by gweyman on 28 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • "Faced with the threats weighing on the unity of our country, faced with the maneuvers and propaganda of the dictator and his family, we solemnly declare nothing will divide us," the statement, drawn up in Benghazi on Apr. 12, reportedly said. "We share the same ideal of a free, democratic and united Libya."
  • gweyman on 28 Apr 11
     
    "Faced with the threats weighing on the unity of our country, faced with the maneuvers and propaganda of the dictator and his family, we solemnly declare nothing will divide us," the statement, drawn up in Benghazi on Apr. 12, reportedly said. "We share the same ideal of a free, democratic and united Libya."
Ed Webb

Women journalists seize the initiative in Gaza | Middle East Eye - 0 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...ize-initiative-gaza-1951489932

media Gaza Palestine journalists women

shared by Ed Webb on 11 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Filastiniyat, a non-governmental advocacy organisation committed to ensuring and supporting the equitable participation of Palestinian women and youth at all levels of the public sphere. Filastiniyat workshops offer a platform for vivid discussion and varied viewpoints, and such events never fail to draw media attention.
  • Although the activists of the volunteer organisation do not put it this way, it seems that the women journalists’ club aims at freeing journalism from narrow-minded party politics and taking it back to its roots, to informing the public in a spirit of free speech and right to information. In the journalism field in Gaza, telling the truth can be life-threatening and the attack against free speech comes both from the Israeli occupation forces and from the domestic political leadership.
  • Women journalists in Gaza are not only struggling with basic necessities for existence for themselves and their families, but also for employment. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the unemployment rate in 2012 among Palestinian journalism graduates aged 20-29 was 52 percent: 38 percent among male graduates and a striking 82 percent among female graduates. UNESCO and Birzeit University’s Media Development Centre are about to release an in-depth Media Development Indicators Report, which analyses different factors of freedom of speech and media freedom in Palestine. According to this study, discrimination of women journalists is deeply rooted in media houses and union life, and the rights of all journalists are constantly violated both by the Israeli occupational authorities and the Palestinian authorities.
Ed Webb

POMED Statement: Egypt Unjustly Detains Journalist in Another Example of Crackdown on F... - 0 views

mailchi.mp/...ziada-detainment

Egypt media journalist censorship repression authoritarianism Sisi

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Feb 19 - No Cached
  • POMED is increasingly concerned about the detention of Ahmed Gamal Ziada, and calls for his immediate and unconditional release. He was originally detained on January 29, 2019, after traveling from Tunis to Cairo in order to complete his membership in the Egyptian Press Syndicate. Upon arrival at the Cairo International Airport, Ziada was detained for two weeks without charge. He has since been accepted by the Syndicate as an official member.
  • If convicted, Ziada could face up to a year in prison.
  • yet another example of the Egyptian government’s ongoing crackdown on a free press, behavior that has earned it a Freedom House ranking of “Not Free” each year since 2013. Most recently, Egypt denied entry to New York Times correspondent David D. Kirkpatrick when he tried to enter the country on February 18. Prior to Ziada's detention, the Committee to Protect Journalists identified at least 25 journalists who were in prison as of December 2018, 19 on charges of “false news”—more than any other country in the world.
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  • Ziada was previously arrested by Egyptian authorities in December 2013 while filming arbitrary arrests prior to protests at al-Azhar University in Cairo. He was held in pre-trial detention for 16 months, where he was subjected to physical violence and torture. He was finally released in May 2015 after being acquitted of all charges. Later that year, Ziada was severely wounded when two unidentified individuals stabbed him repeatedly near the Cairo University metro station in an attack that Egyptian human rights groups widely believe was connected to his journalism.
Ed Webb

Is a Truly Free Press Emerging in the Wake of the Arab Spring? | Fast Forward | OZY - 0 views

www.ozy.com/...94499

MENA ArabWorld Egypt Jordan Lebanon journalism media journalists

shared by Ed Webb on 06 Jun 19 - Cached
  • Attalah is the chief editor of Egypt’s only independent media outlet, with 124,000 followers on Twitter and 241,000 on Facebook. But Mada Masr isn’t alone. It’s among a growing number of independent Arabic digital outlets that are emerging as fresh sources of news in a region where tyrants and oligarchs have for decades controlled the media.
  • Some, like Al Jumhuriya (The Republic) and Syria Untold, are run by exiled Syrian intellectuals from Germany, Turkey and Lebanon. Others, like Daraj (Stairs) — with 135,000 followers on Facebook — are providing pan-Arab coverage from Lebanon, where most traditional newspapers are party-affiliated. Still others, like 7iber (pronounced “hiber,” and meaning Ink) and Sowt (Voice), are offering nuanced coverage to readers in Jordan despite the threat of censorship. 7iber has 120,000 followers on Twitter and 341,000 on Facebook.
  • grief, limited resources and threat of censorship haven’t dissuaded these outlets from revolutionizing Arabic-language journalism
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  • These outlets offer their content for free and generate money from grants or by providing research and translation services. Mada Masr depends on the latter two streams. The business model is precarious, but so far it’s working. The outlet has gradually expanded to 32 employees.
  • 7iber now has 14 staffers and has built a credible reputation for providing in-depth reporting and nuanced analysis. In September 2017, it published an in-depth piece about the fate of 70 Sudanese refugees who were swiftly deported from Jordan in December 2015. The piece won an award for the best multimedia investigation at the Arab Investigative Journalism Awards in 2017.
  • On Dec. 10, 2018 — ironically, Human Rights Day — Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces entered the office of Daraj and detained editor-in-chief Hazem el-Amin, based on a complaint regarding a story they had published some months earlier, even though the plaintiff had already withdrawn the complaint. The editor was released within hours, but the incident was “reflective of the ways of a typical police state,” wrote el-Amin on Twitter.
  • In May 2017, Egyptian authorities blocked access to Mada Masr and 20 other websites. That makes it difficult for Mada Masr to measure its audience, but its followers still access the site through a VPN. Despite the risk of being shut down, Attalah says that Mada Masr concentrates on reporting fairly and accurately. One of Mada Masr’s articles this May, for instance, revealed how a majority of new television shows launched in Egypt during Ramadan have links to an intelligence agency.
  • The next challenge for outlets like 7iber and Mada Masr is to expand beyond their core followers of young progressive millennials and activists, says Ayman Mhanna, executive director of the Lebanese Samir Kassir Foundation, which defends press freedom across the Middle East. “When you ask most people on the streets of Egypt, Jordan or Lebanon about these platforms, they don’t even know they exist,”
  • Mada Masr, 7iber, Sowt and Al Jumhuriya have banded together to provide a one-year fellowship called the Alternative Academy for Arab Journalism. The fellowship begins in September and aims to train 25 young journalists each year in critical thinking and in-depth storytelling.
Ed Webb

Erdoğan's Turkey and the Problem of the 30 Million - War on the Rocks - 0 views

warontherocks.com/...-the-problem-of-the-30-million

Turkey AKP Erdogan politics media authoritarianism parties minorities Kurds left nationalism xenophobia

shared by Ed Webb on 05 Jun 20 - No Cached
  • Erdoğan’s brand is waning in the cities, the coasts, and among young people. Neither the new Erdoğan-shaped presidential system, nor his expansionist foreign policy are popular in these parts. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, chronic unemployment and inflation extinguished any hope of him bouncing back in the polls. Despite his total control over the state, mainstream media, and major capital groups, the president is unlikely to ever get much more than half of the popular vote.
  • The Erdoğan government now faced a question that all successful populist regimes must solve: What to do with the minority? They certainly can’t be granted free and fair elections, lest they attain the means to exact revenge. Nor can they be deprived of all their rights of representation, lest they be driven to revolt or treason. So how does a very slim majority of a country suppress the other half indefinitely? How does it rest easy, knowing that its hegemony is locked in?
  • The Erdoğan government surely knows that an attempt to “nationalize” all of the 30 million would be unrealistic. Rather, it seeks to separate the leftists and Kurds among them and brand them as terrorists, then turn around and securely pull the center opposition into the nationalist opposition.
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  • the government first needs to contain the spread of the left
  • The left, however, puts up genuine systemic resistance: They reject the idea that the Turkish nation is pure and infallible. Like leftists elsewhere, they deconstruct official history, focusing on massacres of minorities and exploitation of the working classes. There is also an inextricable tie to the Kurdish movement, which in turn is linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) — an insurgency that has been waging war on the Turkish state for over four decades. The connection between the non-Kurdish left and the Kurdish movement is complicated and has gone through various stages in the recent past. For the Turkish right, there is little difference between leftist subversion and Kurdish insurrection. “I joined the police to beat up Communists” a crescent-mustached officer once told me, and he was talking about arresting Kurdish protesters.
  • Many in the urban middle class, who are fairly indifferent about Kurdish rights, wanted to see Demirtas grow the HDP into a Turkish-Kurdish version of the European Greens. The idea at the time was to also expand into a grand center-left coalition that would prevent Erdoğan from establishing his hyper-centralized presidential system. Their momentum was cut short when months after the coup attempt, in December 2016, the government detained Demirtas on charges of terrorism and began a ruthless crackdown on the HDP’s activities that has since only gained in intensity.
  • The second part of the government’s strategy is to keep the left — crippled and branded as terrorists — within the political system. While Turkey’s politics is polarized between the government and the opposition, this creates a second polarization, this time within the opposition camp. It is this second polarity where the vast majority of political discourse takes place. From the perspective of a nationalistic system of valuation, in which being “local and national” reigns supreme, this is a fatal flaw. On the one hand, the various factions of the opposition can’t win a national vote unless they partner with the HDP to form a 50 percent bloc against Erdoğan. On the other, the nationalists within the opposition cannot be seen working with the “terrorists” of the pro-Kurdish left.
  • the People’s Republican Party (CHP), Turkey’s founding and currently main opposition party, has tried to contain this “patriot-terrorist” polarity. Its umbrella candidates for the presidency, ranging from the soporific Ekmeleddin Ihsanoğlu in 2014, to the firebrand Muharrem Ince in 2018, have failed. In the 2019 municipal elections, however, the CHP’s mayoral candidates did well, uniting the Kemalist-nationalist camp, Islamists, liberal cosmopolitans, as well as leftists and even some sympathizers of the Kurdish movement. These candidates won against Erdoğan’s men in all major cities, including Ankara and (in a repeat election) Istanbul. This was the first, and so far only, time Erdoğan’s containment of the left had been breached.
  • the Erdoğan government finally seeks to pull the entire bloc to the right. This means focusing on liberal-minded urbanites whose nationalism has lapsed, and rekindling their faith in the national mythos. This is the most challenging aspect of its effort, and where it has done most poorly.
  • restructuring of the media. For the past few years, the government has been taking over media channels that centrist voters traditionally follow, then gradually shifting their tone to favor the government. The Dogan Media Group, owner of Hurriyet (Turkey’s former newspaper of record) and CNN Turk (a 24-hour TV news channel) used to cater to a secular, urban, and increasingly progressive audience. The group’s main audience overlapped with the centrist-opposition CHP’s voter base, whose older members are secularist-nationalists and younger members (often their children) are leftist-progressives. In March 2018, the media group was sold to an Erdoğan-friendly conglomerate, which fired many of its veteran journalists and changed editorial guidelines. The result has been a desensitized, less colorful version of the jingoist carnival running across Erdoğan’s formal channels. CNN Turk, especially, became a tool for the government to enter the living rooms of CHP voters and tell them that they were voting for terrorist collaborators. So insidious were these attacks that the CHP had to ban its members from getting on the channel, and call upon its electorate to boycott it.
  •  Erdoğan said “We have 18 martyrs and close to 200 wounded. In our country, we have the terror group’s so-called political organism. Aside from that, our nation is now in a state of Yekvücut.” The term is a favorite of the president. It is a combination of the Farsi term “Yek” meaning “single” and the Arabic word “vücut” meaning “existence,” or in the Turkish use, “body.” Erdoğan was thinking of the nation as a single biological organism, with the leftists and the Kurdish movement as foreign bodies
  • The opposition media — largely relegated to the internet — was reporting on the plight of the working class and the brewing economic crisis. Like free media across the West, they also questioned the quality and veracity of their government’s COVID-19 data. In a speech delivered in May, Erdoğan was unusually angry. He had clearly expected a Yekvücut moment and was struggling to understand why it hadn’t come about. His strategy to create a “local and national” opposition wasn’t working, and the frustration of it seemed to hit him head on. “I want to warn once again the media and other representatives who are in league with the CHP’s leaders,” he said, before launching into what was — even for him — an unusually vituperative attack: “You are not national, and your localness is in question,” he said, “you have always sided with whoever was treacherous [bozguncu], whoever was perverted, whoever was depraved” adding, “you are like the creatures in mythology that only feed on enmity, hate, fear, confusion and pain.”
  • The absurd accusations of fraud and coup-abetting aside, there is something to the idea that the opposition wants things to get worse. The Erdoğan government’s consolidation over the past decade has been so suffocating for opposition voters that many do look for deliverance in economic or natural disaster.
  • The Erdoğan government may have cut short the HDP’s rise, but it hasn’t been able to prevent leftist ideas from spreading. The CHP’s youth wings today are highly class-conscious and hostile to militant nationalism. Figures like the CHP’s Istanbul provincial head Canan Kaftancıoğlu , who campaign on a mix of feminism, workers’ rights, and anti-fascist slogans, are gaining a national following. The polarization within the opposition is likely deepening, with part of the 30 million become more “national,” while another part is becoming more leftist. This means that the great mass of right-wing sentiment is growing, but so is the left-wing minority. The “problem,” in the government’s view, may no longer be 30 million strong, but it is more acute, and perhaps more vexing, than before.
  • (gun ownership has soared since the 2016 coup attempt)
  • To Turkey’s governing class, the military coup of their imagination is not a matter of defending against an armed force trying to take over the government. Rather, it is a night of free-for-all, in which politics is stripped down to its violent core, and a majority at the height of its powers can finally put down the enemy within: the haters, the doubters, the creatures of mythology.
  • “Turkey will not only reach its 2023 goals [the centennial of the Republic], it will also be rid of the representatives of this diseased politics,” he said in May, hinting that he might cut the left out of the political system entirely. If this should happen, politics would be an uneven contest between Islamist, pan-Turkic, and secularist hues of Turkish nationalism. Far off, in the back streets of the big cities and in the Kurdish provinces, in second-hand bookshops and hidden corners of the internet, there would be a progressive left, weathering out what is surely going to be a violent storm.
Ed Webb

Elon Musk: Good for MENA Twitter? - by Marc Lynch - 0 views

abuaardvark.substack.com/...lon-musk-good-for-mena-twitter

authoritarianism media opinion analysis twitter MENA socialmedia censorship

shared by Ed Webb on 05 May 22 - No Cached
  • The MENA online ecosystem is not a good place for freedoms or civil debate right now, to say the least. The Digital Authoritarianism collection I edited last year makes for grim reading. Many MENA states have set in place legal frameworks criminalizing online dissent (and a lot more than just dissent). The pervasive use of Israeli-designed digital surveillance tools has turbocharged the ability of autocratic regimes to spy on their citizens (or on anyone else). Online discourse is plagued by armies of bots and trolls. And the suppression of Palestinian activist content shows how social media platforms have proven an uneven playing field when it comes to content moderation. Apocalyptic takes on what Musk might do really do need to grapple with how terrible things already are.
  • Musk explained his approach to free speech in a recent tweet: “By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law.” That may sound good to some people in an American context, I suppose. But in the MENA, it would play directly into the hands of authoritarian regimes which have spent years constructing elaborate legal and normative frameworks to criminalize online dissent. Those laws don’t just ban violent hate speech, but range from political dissent, criticism of royal family members or the military, human rights monitoring, even dancing on TikTok. Following these cybercrime laws as a guide to content moderation would entail censoring a wide range of legitimate political speech - the opposite, presumably, of what an avowed free speech advocate would want to see.
  • If new Twitter policies drawn from the right wing understanding of the American online arena were applied consistently in the MENA context, it could potentially ease the suppression of Palestinian voices. I mean, that wouldn’t be the intention and it probably wouldn’t, but it’s worth thinking about.
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  • if he really means requiring users to authenticate their identity with some form of legal ID, that would mean a world of trouble for users in highly repressive MENA states. Many activists and dissidents face extreme consequences should their identities be discovered. So do many LGBTQ, atheist, or other users from marginalized or even criminalized communities
  • The bot armies really are annoying, and if Musk could figure out a way to remove them then the MENA region would benefit greatly. Disinformation, harrassment and abuse (especially of women), polluting hashtags to make conversation impossible, obnoxious trolling, intimidation… all of these have contributed to making MENA Twitter at worst almost unusable, and at best a highly distorted reflection of reality. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Iran are among the worst offenders among states, but the problem is endemic
  • Sure, if Musk actually does end up taking over and running Twitter (big ifs, still), he probably wouldn’t actually have those positive effects, at least not intentionally. But it’s still tempting to read some real significance into his intriguing little public spat with Waleed bin Talal, where he asked “What are the Kingdom’s views on journalistic freedom of speech?”
Ed Webb

Political Party Leader Buys Tunisia's Most-Watched TV Station - Tunisia Live : Tunisia ... - 1 views

www.tunisia-live.net/...ys-tunisias-leading-tv-station

Tunisia media politics regulation ownership television TV

shared by Ed Webb on 17 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • questions about the relationship between political parties and Tunisian media
  • He asserted that the channel will maintain editorial freedom, and emphasized that it will be a wholly Tunisian-owned enterprise
  • Ettounisya is a popular television station that, like most of its Tunisian competitors, devotes a large amount of airtime to political talk shows
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  • established shortly after the 2011 revolution and now is the most-watched channel in Tunisia
  • ongoing legal proceedings against the channel’s director, Sami Fehri, who has been held in jail for months on corruption charges
  • Riahi is the leader of the Free Patriotic Union party, which he founded in 2011. It has a secular, pro-business agenda and gained one seat in National Constituent Assembly (NCA)
  • symptomatic of the problems regarding regulation of Tunisian media. “The government has created a legislative vacuum,”
  • advertising revenue for Tunisian television stations is too meager to actually fund their operations. He questioned why a businessman such as Riahi would want to enter such an unprofitable sector, suggesting that the real motivation is to gain control over a powerful tool to disseminate one’s own messages to the public
  • The creation of the High Authority for Audiovisual Communication (HAICA) was called for in a November 2011 law. The statute calls for a nine-person body representing the Tunisian government, the journalists’ union, and the audiovisual communications industry. The HAICA would be tasked with regulating the Tunisian media sector, supervising the media during electoral campaigns, and nominating directors of public radio and television stations. The announcement of this body has been repeatedly delayed, however, leaving the sector largely free from regulatory restrictions.
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