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Ed Webb

The public gets a voice in the 'future of news' - Communication Leadership blog - 0 views

communicationleadershipblog.uscannenberg.org/...ublic-gets-a-voice-in-the.html

shared by Ed Webb on 10 Feb 09 - Cached
  • There are a couple of reasons why many people don't realize how close newspapers are to a meltdown. First, news media executives don't want to paint a depressing picture of the future. Not surprisingly, they're inclined to present an optimistic and hopeful narrative that says they'll ride out the worst and emerge even stronger. Second, so far anyway, news consumers haven't seen anything close to the full impact of the digital revolution.
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 10 Feb 09
       
      Astutely observed
  • The truth is no one knows what the future of news will be
    • Jared Bernhardt
      Jared Bernhardt on 10 Feb 09
       
      I think we can assume that the age of the magazine will be dead in 7-8 years.
  • Let's apply the same model to the present.  In brainstorming the future of news, all hands are needed, those of the amateurs as well as the pros.
  • Jared Bernhardt on 10 Feb 09
     
    With the economy getting deeper and deeper into a hole, and avenues to produce journalism (blogs, twitter, what have you) increasing, will 2009 be the year that citizen journalism takes its place within the 3 pronged formula of news gathering? Corporations rise and fall on a daily basis--The Post begs me to keep subscribing with them--to the point where getting a weekly paper is less than buying the Sunday edition alone. This is not the year for digitizing the paper(via devices like a Kindle) because of the high price point. The Kindle was announced at 359.00--which in my opinion is not consumer friendly.
  • Jared Bernhardt on 10 Feb 09
     
    Economy being in a hole is kind of cliche, but you catch my drift.
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.
Ed Webb

The battle over the memory of Egypt's revolution | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...r-memory-of-egypt-s-revolution

Egypt Bahrain memory history revolution #jan25 military authoritarianism

shared by Ed Webb on 23 Feb 19 - No Cached
  • The once-embattled ancien regime is back with full force. Not only to consolidate its power in the present, but also to control the past. Yet, since the outbreak of the January 25 Revolution, besides the Islamists, two distinct communities were – and still are – in conflict, among other things, over the revolution’s nature and principles: the regime and the revolutionary activists. What follows is an exploration of these communities’ strategies to permeate the people’s collective consciousness and to enforce their own narratives of the revolution and its memory, across three different domains: Egypt’s public space; Egypt’s online sphere; and outside Egypt.
  • in the revolution’s early years, Egypt’s public space was representative of the young activists’ creativity and rebellion
  • Through graffiti on walls, images, texts and structures, the activists created from the country’s streets and squares memorials to keep the memory of the brave martyrs as well as the revolution’s ideals alive. Walls of Freedom, a 2014 book by Hamdy and Stone, offers thorough insights into the revolution and its artistic works. Young Egyptians’ independent cultural activities, including concerts and exhibitions, played a role in enhancing the historical narrative of the pro-revolution community.
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  • the activists’ 2012 campaign: Askar Kazeebon (Lying Military) whose modus operandi was to broadcast videos and documentaries to pedestrians that falsify the military’s accounts of various events and expose the soldiers’ crimes and human rights violations that official and regime-friendly media ignored
  • the military, Egypt’s central power, endeavoured to restrict the public space and erase the memory of the January 25 revolution. For this power knows that while memories are linked to the past, they determine how many Egyptians will perceive the future. The military pursued 1984’s Orwellian prophecy: ‘he who controls the past controls the future’.
  • the walls of revolutionary graffiti were repainted, CCTV cameras were installed in central spaces, and governmental offices were relocated away from the heart of Cairo
  • in dismantling the revolutionary symbols, the regime intended to construct a collective memory that excludes rival interpretations of events to its own. That is reminiscent to the Bahraini government’s destruction of Pearl Roundabout, the rallying point of the 2011 mass anti-government protests.
  • In November 2013, a few hours after Prime Minister Beblawi inaugurated it, protesters vandalised a memorial that the government built for ‘the martyrs of the revolution’. In his inaugurating speech, Beblawi referred to January 25 and June 30 ‘revolutions’ as well as the martyrs of the police and the army. That was interpreted by the protesters as another attempt to conflate the meanings and disrupt the image and the perceptions of the January 25 Revolution in the Egyptians’ collective consciousness
  • The unprecedented crackdown on dissent and the draconian laws that reportedly imprisoned tens of thousands of activists had prompted many to surrender the public space. Some are silent out of fear or disappointment. Others tried to put the memory of the revolution aside, so that they can go on with their own personal lives
  • Since the 2013 military coup, state and private media outlets – mostly controlled by the regime’s clientele – have kept glorifying the military’s role in recent years as well as defaming the revolution and activists as tools of the west to destroy Egypt
  • tech-savvy young activists already utilised memorialisation to foment the democratic uprising. We Are All Khalid Said, a Facebook page created to commemorate the 28-year old Khalid Said who was brutally tortured and killed by police, in 2010, became the January 25 protests’ virtual rallying point and main coordinator.
  • there are many initiatives to resist forgetting the revolution and silencing its voices. The most recent of which is Mosireen Collective’s 858 archive of resistance. In the Collective’s own words, the archive includes raw photographs, videos and documents that ‘present thousands of histories of revolt told from hundreds of perspectives. While the regime is using every resource to clamp down on public space and public memory the time has come to excavate and remember and re-present our histories.’
  • Wiki-Thawra whose slogan is ‘so we don’t forget’; UCLA’s Tahrir Documents; AUC’s University on the Square; and MIT’s 18 Days in Egypt.
  • After the 2013 military takeover, thousands involuntarily left the country to live in exile abroad. A minority among the exiled are still engaged in telling stories of the revolution and protesting al-Sisi government’s human rights violations and destruction of Egypt’s democratic hopes. Using art and satire, they continue to disturb the regime’s hegemonic revolution-defaming narratives.
  • it is still uncertain whether the regime has successfully dominated the Egyptian collective memory of the January 25 Revolution. That is because collective memory is not a static realm but rather a fluid construct that shapes – and is shaped by – current conditions and future aspirations.
Ed Webb

Standard Arabic is on the Decline: Here's What's Worrying About That - 0 views

www.atlanticcouncil.org/...e-s-what-s-worrying-about-that

Arabic ArabWorld language dialects censorship

shared by Ed Webb on 10 Jun 19 - Cached
  • Standard Arabic, or Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), is on the decline, and some are happy to see it go. However, it is important to note the factors driving this decline, and what this means for the region.
  • Though some rejoice in the strengthening of vernaculars, the so-called colloquials or dialects, as a sign of local identities gaining prominence, the withdrawal of MSA is in fact a warning about the weakening social infrastructure and declining education system.
  • When people speak of the decline of MSA, they generally refer to decline in literature, literacy, and increasing predilections to use dialects or foreign languages instead of MSA
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  • it is not contradictory to say that functional literacy is on the rise, but that access to and use of MSA—such as sophisticated literature and academic texts—is on the decline. The Arab world is now publishing only between 15,000 and 18,000 books annually, as many as Penguin Random House produces on its own. Egypt was once the largest producer of books with an output between 7,000 and 9,000 per year. Although its output was previously on the rise, it dropped by a whopping 70 percent after the 2011 revolution, and as of 2016 was only "showing signs of recovery."
  • Censorship drives intellectuals abroad
  • Syria, once known for its Arabic academy for the study and development of the language, as well as for the fact that its entire education system up through university was in Arabic, is now destroyed. Refugees find themselves in countries where Arabic is not used in education. Even neighboring Lebanon uses English and French in its education system.
  • Even those who are not leaving often favor foreign languages over MSA. They see foreign languages as more functional, prestigious, and likely to guarantee them a job. Youth across the region often work entirely in a foreign language and are not comfortable in MSA
  • With the depletion of educated classes, MSA is more and more limited to political and religious contexts, which are often associated with oppressive and conservative systems
  • the most popular TV shows and movies are done in the vernaculars. On social media, dialect dominates, though MSA is also used.
  • much of the media (articles and videos) that talk about MSA’s decline are in English
  • Local identities are not necessarily national identities, but are often subnational, so rather than showing strong national cohesion, it shows the failure of the Arab states to unite their populations.
  • In the past, when their economies were stronger, Arab states were able to build an educated class that was comfortable with MSA.
  • Hossam Abouzahr is the founder of the Living Arabic Project, a platform devoted to making Arabic more accessible by developing dictionaries for Arabic colloquials and MSA
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
Ed Webb

John Oliver Takes On the Bleak Future of Journalism | Mother Jones - 0 views

www.motherjones.com/...n-oliver-journalism-newspapers

newspapers journalism media future comedy

shared by Ed Webb on 08 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • Ed Webb on 08 Aug 16
     
    excellent brief summary of state of US newspaper industry
  • Ed Webb on 08 Aug 16
     
    excellent brief summary of state of US newspaper industry
Ed Webb

The New Hybridities of Arab Musical Intifadas - www.jadaliyya.com - Readability - 1 views

www.readability.com/...ia1vllef

music hiphop Arabs MENA uprisings Adorno metal metalmusic

shared by Ed Webb on 31 May 12 - No Cached
  • Both extreme metal and hardcore rap have long featured dissonant, even jarring music that is often marked in equal measure by the sophistication of and difficulty in listening to it. Lyrically, the grittiness, anger and themes such as poverty, unemployment, police brutality, and lack of life opportunities—were at the heart of American hip hop culture before it wase taken over by bling. Similarly, extreme metal’s focus on war, corruption, and chaos played a major role in the genre’s increasing popularity with young people across the Middle East and North Africa in the last twenty years.
  • During the last twenty years in which both heavy metal and hiphop have developed in the Arab and larger Muslim majority worlds, the closed nature of the political spheres in the region helped encourage these scenes to become sites of subcultural and even countercultural production. The music they have produced is the very antithesis of the far more popular, hyper-commercialized and corporatized (or “Rotana-ized”) Arab pop, whose European and American predecessors Adorno so thoroughly despised. They also stand in opposition to the largely depoliticized and musically unchallenging religious pop of stars like Sami Yusuf and Ali Gohar, who as Walter Armbrust points out, tend not merely to leave unchallenged and even reinforce patriarchal values, but offer aesthetic endorsement of the existing system through the themes and locations of their videos
  • whether Adorno would accept it or not, the self-reflexivity and willingness to critique society by its own referents that have characterized the best exemplars of extreme metal and political hip-hop are legitimate heirs of the tradition of critical engagement that have defined Adorno's oeuvre and that of his Frankfurt School colleagues. While critics have long labeled both metal and rap as juvenile, hedonistic, and even nihilistic forms of music, this interpretation is far off the mark when it comes to the more political forms of both genres. They function not merely as the CNN—or in the case of the Arab world, al-Jazeera—of the streets, but as their oped page as well, both educating their audience about political and social realities in their societies and the possibility of creating more positive futures
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  • The best rap and metal in the region succeeds because it manages to avoid both the kind of “extreme consciousness of doom” that leads to aesthetic nihilism, hyper-stylized violence and other forms of artistic “idle chatter,” while also avoiding the kind of surrender to the culture industry which leads even the most well-intentioned of mainstream artists to “collaborate with culture as its salaried and honoured nuisance” rather than challenge it directly from the margins.
  • the ultimate function of immanent criticism: to enable a positive synthesis, or irreducible hybridization of identities. Such identities can not be subsumed under any dominant ideology or political and economic narrative and therefore cannot serve to reinforce them
  • in the Middle East and North Africa region, in the years leading up to the current revolutionary moment, the growing popularity of metal and rap music represents a return of the aura to local music scenes. Both Benjamin and Adorno believed that a remnant, or perhaps better, specter of the original aura remained within works of art even in the mechanical/industrial age. This spector becomes visible in the kind of critical art represented by the groups discussed here, contributing to the continued “excessiveness”, “aesthetic deviance”, and “pointing elsewhere” towards cultural difference and a different future that characterize the best exemplars of the music
  • As Moe Hamzeh, leader of one of the most talented and successful Arab rock/metal groups, Beriut's The Kordz6, explains, while Arab rock or rap artists obviously want to be successful, the relative lack of interest in the two genres by Rotana and other Arab media conglomerates has been a blessing from an aesthetic perspective. It has saved them from the inevitable fate of all commercialized popular music, whether American hiphop and hair metal to Arab video-clip driven pop. At the same time, the lack of commercialization has made the public performance of the music, usually in small group settings or festivals geared specifically to fans of the genres, the crucial means of creating audiences and building solidarity among their communities of fans.
  • singers and rappers were actually smiling as they performed their music. And so were the crowds surrounding them. This is likely not the vibe Adorno imagined would surround the kind of immanently critical music he felt was necessary to wake people up to the false consciousness they had been mindlessly inhabiting. But it points to a crucial problem with Adorno’s musical aesthetic, at least form the standpoint of reception. The more abstract, atonal, and devoid of recognizable harmonies or rhythmic pulse a piece of music is, the harder it will be for it to inspire a large number of people. Once people are actually on the streets protesting rather than in their smaller subcultural gatherings, they need something catchier and more uplifting to sing along to than brutal vocals and rapid fire rhymes
  • Adorno did not think much of the aesthetic and political potential of folk music, which he tied both to nationalist and fascist sentiments. In its then present-day form (rather than traditional-historical form), he believed it to foster little more than a “pseudo-folk community,” particularly in its cultural and aesthetic historical trajectory in Germany. But in Egypt as in the United States, the music has played a more critical political role in struggles for political freedom and social justice.
  • the band’s popularity is inseparable from its dual role as a voice of protest and a regenerator of traditional styles of music that recently were in danger of disappearing completely because of a combination of market forces and government censorship
  • What the kind of joyful hybridity exemplified by the production style of Armada Bizerta and myriad other rap groups around the Arab and larger Muslim worlds (and across Africa) reveal is that even within one genre of music, such as hip hop, talented artists can create innumerable sonic tapestries to match, and help shape, the national mood—from dissonant anger to joyful creativity—as the political and cultural situation on the ground changes. Their flexibility is key to their function as the kind immanent critique Adorno and other critical theorists hoped would be able to “reliquify” the “congealed” ideologically bounded identities imposed by authoritarian regimes on their citizens
  • The joyful aesthetics of groups such as Amarda Bizerta, Emel Mathlouthi, Ramy Essam, and other artists at the heart of youth-inspired revolutions challenges Adorno’s belief that critical music in the age of mass reproduction and consumption has to be, essentially, hard to listen to in order to make the listener think and perhaps even motivated to take some form of action. It seems that while in the pre-Revolutionary period, when cultural expression was still heavily policed, this indeed was the case—thus the power and popularity of genres like metal and hardcore rap. But with the explosion of political, cultural, and artistic energy of the protests a new aesthetic dynamic was born that, at least as of the time of this writing, remains quite powerful. As important, by drawing people literally closer together, the music brings them closer to its critical and transformational aura, closing a circle that was broken, according to Benjamin, with the mechanical reproduction and commodification of musi a century ago
  • It remains to be seen whether Americans and Europeans, so used to providing the “original” music and culture which others have long sampled, will prove as adept as the “new generation” of Arab revolutionaries in adapting the tools and ideas of others to create their own cultural, political, and economic hybrids. But if the experience of the last year is any indication, without doing so there is little chance of the current wave of protests across the West producing the kind of large-scale transformation now underway, however problematically, in the Arab world.
Ed Webb

The Oil Drum | Saudi Arabia's Crude Oil Production Peaked in 2005 - 0 views

www.theoildrum.com/5154

KSA oil future reserves peak

shared by Ed Webb on 03 Mar 09 - Cached
  • In this time of economic crisis, it would appear appropriate for Saudi Arabia's oil fields to be publicly audited. The full disclosure of total remaining reserves, by field, would enable more effective future oil production and consumption planning in this post peak oil age.
  • Many readers will question the validity of my URR estimates, shown in Figure 1, thinking that the true KSA URR must be higher. A perceived high URR is in the national interest of KSA because it needs its customers to continue their demand for oil leading to sustainable high oil prices for KSA. If customers thought that KSA had less than 100 Gb of oil left then conservation and switching to alternatives would increase. KSA has been creating this perception of overabundant oil reserves for at least sixteen years because it believes that this will maximize the price of its remaining oil.
  • Ed Webb on 03 Mar 09
     
    Notice allegation of government of KSA manipulating perceptions of its reserves in order to maintain demand and high price.
Ed Webb

The Death of Journalism? (or journalism in the era of open) | eaves.ca - 0 views

eaves.ca/...journalism-in-an-open-era

newspapers journalism future blogging

shared by Ed Webb on 21 Mar 09 - Cached
  • are we seeing the death of Journalism? I for one, hope so, as it will mean a more profound change may be upon us.
  • What if it is the underlying structure and values of not just the news institutions but also the entities they normally cover that are eroding? What if the value of objectivity and the faith in any opaque structures are dying?
  • Such a transformation, a reshaping of credibility from objectivity to transparency, would have profound implications for every organization – corporate, non-profit and governmental – in our society.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • it is simply becoming harder and harder to keep secrets
  • Those who share information and invite criticism and analysis may be better positioned to survive crises and challenges than those who don’t.
  • in a transparent landscape where huge amounts of information about most organizations is being generated and shared the critical role of the journalist will be that of mystery solving – figuring out how to analyze, synthesize and discover the mystery within the vast quantity of information.
  • this is precisely what many blogs – alone or as part of an emergent network – already do. They take large complex stories, break them down and, by linking back and forth to one another, create a collective analysis that slowly allows the mystery to be decoded.
  • What we will still need in the future is Quality storytelling
Ed Webb

Please pay us for our news - please? » Nieman Journalism Lab » Pushing to the... - 0 views

www.niemanlab.org/...ase-pay-us-for-our-news-please

journalism newspapers future business

shared by Ed Webb on 07 Feb 09 - Cached
  • either by finding material that no one else has, or packaging it in a certain way, or by creating relationships around that content that draw people in
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 07 Feb 09
       
      IS this the way to go?
  • Ed Webb on 07 Feb 09
     
    Interesting to ponder what business model might save the newspapers? Note toward the end the suggestion that papers build community as the way forward. The right solution for the world of the read-write web?
michelle benevento

New Israeli PM says 'extremist Islam' trying to destroy his country - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

Israel palestine peace

shared by michelle benevento on 06 Apr 09 - Cached
  • michelle benevento on 06 Apr 09
     
    Interesting article concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which possibly foreshawdows a future of peace.
Ed Webb

Viral Syndrome: The welcome future of journalism - Al Jazeera English - 2 views

www.aljazeera.com/...ournalism-160221085214112.html

viral literacies literacy digital digital_media content media advertising analysis opinion

shared by Ed Webb on 02 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • News organisations both big and small hire these tech-savvy, often worldly young people with multidisciplinary backgrounds to ensure that, in an ever-changing media environment, their content can compete. But why is such competition necessary?
  • Today's media industry is still trying to find a solid revenue model.
  • In order for advertisers to get eyes on their products and services, they must turn to an increasingly sophisticated suite of ­­­­­- analytics tools
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  • Twenty-two years after Tiananmen and a lifetime away from the journalism of the 1980s, the 2011 uprising in Tahrir Square brought not only mainstream news crews, but smaller outlets, freelancers, and even bloggers to the table. These varied actors were able to challenge the often Orientalist mainstream narrative, and - thanks to social media - share their content with the world.
  • virality requires consent
  • We should be more concerned with the amount of advertising content masquerading as journalism
  • It seems highly unlikely that, in the days before the internet, #BlackLivesMatter would have made it to the front page of the New York Times - or, for that matter, that it would've happened on such a large scale at all
  • This is in great contrast to the compelling stereotypes unleashed by the corporate-controlled media following the 1992 Los Angeles riots
  • we simply have to understand virality for what it really is: A means through which truly great content and cute cat video alike have become available to the world, as well as the means by which news organisations now make money
  • We must therefore make digital literacy a priority - so as to ensure readers know how to responsibly consume the media that surrounds them
Ed Webb

They Made Him a Moron | The Baffler - 0 views

thebaffler.com/...made-a-moron

USA US internet technology book review diplomacy publicdiplomacy opinion future futures morozov socialmedia

shared by Ed Webb on 27 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • Ed Webb on 27 Mar 16
     
    Great fun. Morozov takes down Alec Ross's book on technology, globalization etc.
Ed Webb

Online Photo Archive in Amman Is Making Thousands of Images Public, Showing Pluralistic... - 0 views

muftah.org/c-histories-of-the-middle-east

Jordan research history culture heritage images photographs photos archive

shared by Ed Webb on 01 Jan 18 - Cached
  • ACOR Photo Archive’s material is a unique collection due to the diversity of subjects it includes. It currently provides a representative record of Jordan’s archeological and social history spanning from 1955 to the early 2000s. Photos soon-to-be-digitized will feature subjects from the 1970s onwards in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Palestine, and Iran. Its historic photos of important sites are free to use and could be mobilized to support research proposals and grant applications.
  • The ACOR’s archival images are valuable as records of change for both archaeological-cultural heritage sites (more than two-hundred are represented in Jordan alone), as well as daily life in the Middle East over the past seventy years. Indeed, this record of change means that the archive has the potential to impact future heritage preservation projects across the region. They allow visual comparison with the past, thereby illustrating recent damage and helping experts and local communities decide how sites should be managed in the future.
  • NYU Abu Dhabi’s archive has an extensive collection of historic photos featured on its Instagram page (widening its popular appeal through more tongue-in-cheek posts). Darat al-Funun, an art gallery housed in Amman’s fashionable Jabal al-Webdeih district, also hosts an exhaustive online archive of video and images relating to the gallery’s exhibitions. It also features artist talks and musical performances over its almost thirty-year history. On a smaller scale, there are commendable efforts at documenting the modern visual heritage of the region, such as the Sultan-al-Qassemi-managed Instagram dedicated to highlighting the architectural heritage of the Emirate of Sharjah in the UAE. (You can check out ACOR’s instagram here.)
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  • the imperative to document and preserve the heritage of the Middle East, as it goes through another decade of dramatic aesthetic and political change. The stakes involved in these transformations are highlighted by the saddening example of Khaled Assad, director of antiquities at Palmyra Museum in Syria. Assad went to his grave in 2015 protecting the location of priceless artifacts under his care from ISIS
  • The ACOR Photo Archive also depicts the very forces threatening cultural heritage in the region. For example, it includes photographs of the archaeological digs of 1982 and 1983, in which the Ayn Ghazal statues – among the earliest large-scale depictions of human forms in the world (from the mid-7th millennia) – were unearthed in Jordan. As the photographs illustrate, the excavation site lay mere feet from the highway, highlighting the threats to physical cultural heritage posed by routine urbanization. Archeologist Gary Rollefson, a key member of the team that discovered the Ayn Ghazal statues, has participated in the digitization project, providing extensive background information on the digs catalogued in the archive.
  • By encouraging people to see their old family photographs as intimately connected to the public history of Jordan, Palestine, and the rest of the region, the archive aims to encourage citizens to take steps to preserve and digitize their own personal collections.
Ed Webb

Jeffrey Goldberg Doesn't Speak for the Jews - 0 views

jewishcurrents.org/berg-doesnt-speak-for-the-jews

USA US media journalist Jews Jewishness Zionism opinion analysis

shared by Ed Webb on 11 Dec 20 - Cached
  • For some members of the tribe, Sanders’ commitment to social justice, his family’s experience with the Holocaust, his distinctive old-Brooklyn accent, his childhood memories of stickball and Ebbets Field, and even his visits to a kibbutz are all insufficient proofs of Jewishness. Why doesn’t he belong to a synagogue? Why did he marry a Catholic? Why is he so critical of the mainstream consensus on Israel? Why isn’t he a Jew the way Goldberg wants him to be a Jew?
  • Goldberg continues to edit one of the most important magazines in the country, and is a fixture of its star-studded annual Aspen Ideas Festival. As such, he is easily one of the most powerful arbiters of elite opinion, and representative of the establishment that has led the country to the brink of ruin.
  • If you’re a Jew who matters inside the Beltway, there’s a decent chance you hang out with Goldberg.
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • He gets to decide, for instance, that Peter Beinart (J Street-aligned liberal Zionists) and David Frum (respectable #NeverTrump neoconservatives) should represent the poles of acceptable Jewish discourse. Meanwhile, the emerging generation of American Jews who supported Sanders, and who in many cases feel totally alienated from Zionism, are shut out. Goldberg’s project is to define the center, both for politics in general and for Jews specifically. And as that center buckles and shifts leftward, it’s worth reevaluating the macher who for so long has set the terms of debate.
  • The story of Jeffrey Goldberg is one of hypermasculinity, nationalism, and careerism, a steady ascension facilitated by the right friendships and the right positions at the right times. Along the way he has drawn many harsh critics, none of whom have successfully held him back. But his disproportionate influence on the conversation and his vigorous policing of Jewish communal politics merit a closer look.
  • After enduring antisemitic bullying as a suburban child, he fell in love with Israel on his first visit at age 13.
  • At 20, he dropped out of Penn and made aliyah. As an Israel Defense Force volunteer during the First Intifada, he worked as a guard (or “prisoner counselor,” as he later insisted) at the overcrowded Ketziot prison camp, which was condemned by human rights groups at the time for violating the Geneva Conventions. There, he witnessed a fellow guard beating a Palestinian prisoner for talking back. In Goldberg’s account, he tried to stop his friend but then helped cover the incident up (“‘He fell,’ I lied”).
  • The odd human rights violation, pointless imperial war, or botched hire notwithstanding, no one can deny that he has done well for himself, and it seems likely he’ll be shaping the national conversation for years to come. But in the Jewish world, Goldberg wields perhaps even more influence than outside of it, and by patrolling its borders he defines a narrow center of opinion antithetical to dissent.
  • If there is any justice, Goldberg’s career will be remembered primarily for a long, award-winning reported piece from Iraq that ran in The New Yorker in March 2002, at the height of the post-9/11 jingoistic fervor, which informed that magazine’s readership that Saddam Hussein had both an active WMD program and ties to Al-Qaeda. Goldberg endorsed George W. Bush’s catastrophic war of choice in an article for Slate later that year, in which he wrote, “I believe that the coming invasion of Iraq will be remembered as an act of profound morality.” He was hardly the only high-profile journalist to help launder what turned out to be false intelligence into the mainstream media, but whereas Judith Miller was pushed out by the New York Times in 2005 and has since become persona non grata in liberal elite circles, Goldberg’s status and influence have only grown.
  • palpable distaste for Diaspora Jewry features frequently in Goldberg’s writing
  • a conservative minority of us has accepted a faustian bargain with Trump’s white supremacist base in order to support the right-wing coalition in Israel
  • Goldberg is not part of the ascendant right. Rather, he is perhaps the single most representative figure of the liberal Zionist establishment in all of media, voicing the anxieties of a rapidly collapsing order. And with at least the passive approval of an elite network, Goldberg has spent years passing harsh, biblical judgment on both Jews and gentiles who dare to weigh in on issues related to Israel, from authors to organizations to U.S. presidents.
  • Goldberg started out as a police reporter but achieved greater renown as a national security correspondent, with dispatches from Gaza, Cairo, and Iraqi Kurdistan in the months before and after 9/11. This period is crucial to understanding Goldberg’s influence—he had already become one of the most widely read reporters on the Middle East at precisely the moment when the Washington establishment became single-mindedly focused on terrorist and extremist threats from the region. This gave him an outsized role in shaping liberal elite discourse, with outsized consequences.
  • it fit in perfectly with Goldberg’s longstanding project to deny the very obvious influence of pro-Israel advocates over U.S. politics.
  • Obama successfully pandered to Goldberg, who noted, “speaking in a kind of code Jews readily understand, Obama also made sure to mention that he was fond of the writer Leon Uris, the author of [the 1958 Zionist pulp bestseller] Exodus.”
  • In 2009, Goldberg referred to “the rather circumscribed universe of anti-Zionists-with-Jewish parents”, neatly ostracizing Jews he disagrees with from the tribe
  • For Goldberg and the tribe he leads, a reactionary gentile who unapologetically supports Israel is preferable to a progressive Jew who expresses hesitation, discomfort, or outrage.
  • an epically sleazy hit job
  • Goldberg has spent most of his adult life in affluent Northwest DC, so it would be absurd for him to directly question the legitimacy of American Jews, but he has had no such reservations about European Jews, and especially the largest such community, the Jews of France. In 2015, he wrote a long reported essay in The Atlantic entitled, “Is It Time for the Jews to Leave Europe?”, accompanied by a 20-minute video conversation with Leon Wieseltier and James Bennet, in which he concluded, “I am predisposed to believe that there is no great future for the Jews in Europe, because evidence to support this belief is accumulating so quickly.”
  • Goldberg represents what, at least until recently, was an influential set of attitudes among mainstream Jewish liberals. But his approach seems exhausted, unable to respond to the scale of the disaster Jewish liberals now confront, from the ultra-orthodox, pro-settlement coalition firmly in charge of Israel to White House-approved antisemitism in the U.S.
  • superficially curious and open-minded about big ideas, yet forever bound within a narrow establishment consensus averse to channeling any kind of populist anger
  • to whatever extent my own Jewish identity has been stunted, I blame Jews like Goldberg. Of course I don’t blame him personally or exclusively, but he’s representative of, and has worked hard to reinforce, a set of attitudes that have made institutional Judaism and Jewish communal identity seem unattractive or unattainable. I’m certain I’m not alone in feeling this way. Membership in non-Orthodox synagogues is in steady decline, as is American Jews’ attachment to Israel, especially among millennials. Jewishness as defined by Goldberg is not our community’s future; it isn’t even our present
  • Goldberg embodies the worst contradictions of American Zionism: on the one hand, the phony machismo, the insistence that Israel is the bedrock of a meaningful Jewish identity, and the morally bankrupt defense of Israel’s routine violence against its Arab subjects; and on the other hand, the smug, comfortable, coddled daily existence of the Beltway elite
  • It’s taken me well into my thirties to grasp that there is a Jewishness to be located between the synagogue-attending, aggressively Zionist establishment that Goldberg presents to the most powerful people on Earth as definitive, and the superficial bagels-and-Seinfeld gloss on basic American whiteness that often seems like the only alternative. Jewishness can be righteous, confrontational, progressive, maybe even cool. It doesn’t have to be defined as a religion, a nationality, or a vaguely embarrassing set of quirks; it can be a way of asserting one’s humanity and moral fervor as America, Israel, and the world descend into a crude parody of fascism.
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