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Ed Webb

Will MBS Bankrupt Saudi Arabia? - Middle East News - Haaretz.com - 0 views

www.haaretz.com/...83-2c38-d963-a9af-fdbba6070000

KSA Saudi MBS infrastructure economy development opinion analysis diversification city Iran

shared by Ed Webb on 02 Dec 22 - Cached
  • five years in and with little progress in sight, cracks are appearing in Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s flagship project to diversify the oil-driven Saudi economy. Neom’s former employees raised concerns that bringing the giga-project out of the realm of science fiction might never happen. Architecture experts have called it “insane.” Sources inside the royal circle no longer shy away from lashing out at MBS’ ever-changing ideas, “mood swings,” “terrible tempers” and fear-based leadership.
  • “The general concern is this will turn out like for the Shah of Iran, developing schemes that become incredibly detached from reality and no one will tell him to refocus,” a source familiar with the dynamics of Saudi Arabia’s royal family told me, on condition of anonymity
  • the risk of the Crown Prince ending up in an echo chamber cemented by yes-men. Power consolidation under MBS is unprecedented in Saudi Arabia’s recent history, moving the kingdom’s system from “one of consensus within the family to one-man rule.”
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  • Leaks reveal insiders’ growing uneasiness, which points to the elephant-in-the-room question: Will MBS’ grandiose venture bankrupt the kingdom?
  • Saudi private investors will also be encouraged to pitch in during a potential public listing of Neom in 2024. That raises questions about how consensual this private investment will be. Indeed, Saudi Arabia reportedly “bullied” several of the kingdom’s wealthiest families to become cornerstone investors out of “patriotic duty” in the IPO of Saudi energy firm Aramco in 2019.
  • a large chunk of Saudi money carefully set aside for decades to fund the transition to a post-oil era will pay for Neom's astronomical price tag. A bet on an unproven vision
  • 60 skyscrapers that were built in Riyadh’s financial center are still standing largely empty.
  • Neom’s initial burst of economic activity, if unsustainable at a similar pace, would simply be "stealing" future economic benefits to create an illusion of growth right now
  • perhaps the motive is not sustainable growth at all, but creating what Pettis calls a "pyramid effect." This would be an attempt to copy monarchs of ancient Egypt who redistributed wealth to the population through jobs – paid laborers built Egyptian pyramids, not slaves. Although Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth is already redistributed to ordinary Saudis through public-sector jobs and subsidies, a large tranche is retained and stored in its sovereign wealth funds and U.S. Treasuries. In theory, flushing Saudi citizens with cash would stimulate the local non-oil economy. But in practice, the pyramid effect is likely to first and foremost cause economic leakages, as the kingdom imports most of what it consumes locally, including labor, despite the “Saudification” of the labor market being one of Vision 2030’s key priorities. Migrant workers account for about 77 percent of private sector jobs. At Neom, highly paid Western consultants are toiling to match MBS’ demands, and Asian low-income workers are building it, remitting Saudi money home.
  • Riyadh sweetened the project’s launch party with a flurry of social reforms, such as lifting the ban on women driving. (Saudi Arabia was the last country in the world to lift this kind of ban, and it didn’t do so as a principled stand on behalf of women’s rights.) The idea was not only creating a buzz among investors and the global public, but whipping up aspirational momentum among Saudis.
  • “Infrastructure spending is like doing lines of cocaine; you have to do bigger and bigger and bigger lines just to feel high,”
  • MBS, high on his visionary self-branding and his concentration of power, may have to pay the costs of bankruptcy – whether by admitting full responsibility or via a renewed deployment of decidedly imperious and despotic tactics to crush dissent. The latter path is, of course, what the late Shah of Iran chose, with notorious results.
Ed Webb

'A mass assassination factory': Inside Israel's calculated bombing of Gaza - 0 views

www.972mag.com/israel-calculated-bombing-gaza

war Israel Palestine israelpalestine bombing AI Hamas crimes warcrimes

shared by Ed Webb on 02 Dec 23 - No Cached
  • The Israeli army’s expanded authorization for bombing non-military targets, the loosening of constraints regarding expected civilian casualties, and the use of an artificial intelligence system to generate more potential targets than ever before, appear to have contributed to the destructive nature of the initial stages of Israel’s current war on the Gaza Strip, an investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call reveals
  • The investigation by +972 and Local Call is based on conversations with seven current and former members of Israel’s intelligence community — including military intelligence and air force personnel who were involved in Israeli operations in the besieged Strip — in addition to Palestinian testimonies, data, and documentation from the Gaza Strip, and official statements by the IDF Spokesperson and other Israeli state institutions.
  • The bombing of power targets, according to intelligence sources who had first-hand experience with its application in Gaza in the past, is mainly intended to harm Palestinian civil society: to “create a shock” that, among other things, will reverberate powerfully and “lead civilians to put pressure on Hamas,”
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  • the Israeli army has files on the vast majority of potential targets in Gaza — including homes — which stipulate the number of civilians who are likely to be killed in an attack on a particular target. This number is calculated and known in advance to the army’s intelligence units, who also know shortly before carrying out an attack roughly how many civilians are certain to be killed
  • “The numbers increased from dozens of civilian deaths [permitted] as collateral damage as part of an attack on a senior official in previous operations, to hundreds of civilian deaths as collateral damage,”
  • another reason for the large number of targets, and the extensive harm to civilian life in Gaza, is the widespread use of a system called “Habsora” (“The Gospel”), which is largely built on artificial intelligence and can “generate” targets almost automatically at a rate that far exceeds what was previously possible. This AI system, as described by a former intelligence officer, essentially facilitates a “mass assassination factory.”
  • “The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy,” said IDF Spokesperson Daniel Hagari on Oct. 9.
  • “I remember thinking that it was like if [Palestinian militants] would bomb all the private residences of our families when [Israeli soldiers] go back to sleep at home on the weekend,” one source, who was critical of this practice, recalled.
  • there are “cases in which we shell based on a wide cellular pinpointing of where the target is, killing civilians. This is often done to save time, instead of doing a little more work to get a more accurate pinpointing,”
  • Over 300 families have lost 10 or more family members in Israeli bombings in the past two months — a number that is 15 times higher than the figure from what was previously Israel’s deadliest war on Gaza, in 2014
  • “There is a feeling that senior officials in the army are aware of their failure on October 7, and are busy with the question of how to provide the Israeli public with an image [of victory] that will salvage their reputation.”
  • the increasing use of AI-based systems like Habsora allows the army to carry out strikes on residential homes where a single Hamas member lives on a massive scale, even those who are junior Hamas operatives. Yet testimonies of Palestinians in Gaza suggest that since October 7, the army has also attacked many private residences where there was no known or apparent member of Hamas or any other militant group residing. Such strikes, sources confirmed to +972 and Local Call, can knowingly kill entire families in the process.
  • “Hamas is everywhere in Gaza; there is no building that does not have something of Hamas in it, so if you want to find a way to turn a high-rise into a target, you will be able to do so,”
  • at least until the current war, army protocols allowed for attacking power targets only when the buildings were empty of residents at the time of the strike. However, testimonies and videos from Gaza suggest that since October 7, some of these targets have been attacked without prior notice being given to their occupants, killing entire families as a result.
  • As documented by Al Mezan and numerous images coming out of Gaza, Israel bombed the Islamic University of Gaza, the Palestinian Bar Association, a UN building for an educational program for outstanding students, a building belonging to the Palestine Telecommunications Company, the Ministry of National Economy, the Ministry of Culture, roads, and dozens of high-rise buildings and homes — especially in Gaza’s northern neighborhoods.
  • there is ample evidence that, in many cases, none were military or political operatives belonging to Hamas or Islamic Jihad.
  • for the most part, when it comes to power targets, it is clear that the target doesn’t have military value that justifies an attack that would bring down the entire empty building in the middle of a city, with the help of six planes and bombs weighing several tons
  • Although it is unprecedented for the Israeli army to attack more than 1,000 power targets in five days, the idea of causing mass devastation to civilian areas for strategic purposes was formulated in previous military operations in Gaza, honed by the so-called “Dahiya Doctrine” from the Second Lebanon War of 2006.
  • “We are asked to look for high-rise buildings with half a floor that can be attributed to Hamas,” said one source who took part in previous Israeli offensives in Gaza. “Sometimes it is a militant group’s spokesperson’s office, or a point where operatives meet. I understood that the floor is an excuse that allows the army to cause a lot of destruction in Gaza. That is what they told us. “If they would tell the whole world that the [Islamic Jihad] offices on the 10th floor are not important as a target, but that its existence is a justification to bring down the entire high-rise with the aim of pressuring civilian families who live in it in order to put pressure on terrorist organizations, this would itself be seen as terrorism. So they do not say it,” the source added.
  • Previous operations have also shown how striking these targets is meant not only to harm Palestinian morale, but also to raise the morale inside Israel. Haaretz revealed that during Operation Guardian of the Walls in 2021, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit conducted a psy-op against Israeli citizens in order to boost awareness of the IDF’s operations in Gaza and the damage they caused to Palestinians. Soldiers, who used fake social media accounts to conceal the campaign’s origin, uploaded images and clips of the army’s strikes in Gaza to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok in order to demonstrate the army’s prowess to the Israeli public.
  • since October 7, Israel has attacked high-rises with their residents still inside, or without having taken significant steps to evacuate them, leading to many civilian deaths.
  • evidence from Gaza suggests that some high-rises — which we assume to have been power targets — were toppled without prior warning. +972 and Local Call located at least two cases during the current war in which entire residential high-rises were bombed and collapsed without warning, and one case in which, according to the evidence, a high-rise building collapsed on civilians who were inside.
  • According to intelligence sources, Habsora generates, among other things, automatic recommendations for attacking private residences where people suspected of being Hamas or Islamic Jihad operatives live. Israel then carries out large-scale assassination operations through the heavy shelling of these residential homes.
  • the Habsora system enables the army to run a “mass assassination factory,” in which the “emphasis is on quantity and not on quality.” A human eye “will go over the targets before each attack, but it need not spend a lot of time on them.” Since Israel estimates that there are approximately 30,000 Hamas members in Gaza, and they are all marked for death, the number of potential targets is enormous.
  • A senior military official in charge of the target bank told the Jerusalem Post earlier this year that, thanks to the army’s AI systems, for the first time the military can generate new targets at a faster rate than it attacks. Another source said the drive to automatically generate large numbers of targets is a realization of the Dahiya Doctrine.
  • Five different sources confirmed that the number of civilians who may be killed in attacks on private residences is known in advance to Israeli intelligence, and appears clearly in the target file under the category of “collateral damage.” 
  • “That is a lot of houses. Hamas members who don’t really matter for anything live in homes across Gaza. So they mark the home and bomb the house and kill everyone there.”
  • On Oct. 22, the Israeli Air Force bombed the home of the Palestinian journalist Ahmed Alnaouq in the city of Deir al-Balah. Ahmed is a close friend and colleague of mine; four years ago, we founded a Hebrew Facebook page called “Across the Wall,” with the aim of bringing Palestinian voices from Gaza to the Israeli public. The strike on Oct. 22 collapsed blocks of concrete onto Ahmed’s entire family, killing his father, brothers, sisters, and all of their children, including babies. Only his 12-year-old niece, Malak, survived and remained in a critical condition, her body covered in burns. A few days later, Malak died. Twenty-one members of Ahmed’s family were killed in total, buried under their home. None of them were militants. The youngest was 2 years old; the oldest, his father, was 75. Ahmed, who is currently living in the UK, is now alone out of his entire family.
  • According to former Israeli intelligence officers, in many cases in which a private residence is bombed, the goal is the “assassination of Hamas or Jihad operatives,” and such targets are attacked when the operative enters the home. Intelligence researchers know if the operative’s family members or neighbors may also die in an attack, and they know how to calculate how many of them may die. Each of the sources said that these are private homes, where in the majority of cases, no military activity is carried out.
  • According to the doctrine — developed by former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot, who is now a Knesset member and part of the current war cabinet — in a war against guerrilla groups such as Hamas or Hezbollah, Israel must use disproportionate and overwhelming force while targeting civilian and government infrastructure in order to establish deterrence and force the civilian population to pressure the groups to end their attacks. The concept of “power targets” seems to have emanated from this same logic.
  • The bombing of family homes where Hamas or Islamic Jihad operatives supposedly live likely became a more concerted IDF policy during Operation Protective Edge in 2014. Back then, 606 Palestinians — about a quarter of the civilian deaths during the 51 days of fighting — were members of families whose homes were bombed. A UN report defined it in 2015 as both a potential war crime and “a new pattern” of action that “led to the death of entire families.”
  • according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, by Nov. 29, Israel had killed 50 Palestinian journalists in Gaza, some of them in their homes with their families
  • The intelligence officers interviewed for this article said that the way Hamas designed the tunnel network in Gaza knowingly exploits the civilian population and infrastructure above ground. These claims were also the basis of the media campaign that Israel conducted vis-a-vis the attacks and raids on Al-Shifa Hospital and the tunnels that were discovered under it.
  • Hamas leaders “understand that Israeli harm to civilians gives them legitimacy in fighting.”
  • while it’s hard to imagine now, the idea of dropping a one-ton bomb aimed at killing a Hamas operative yet ending up killing an entire family as “collateral damage” was not always so readily accepted by large swathes of Israeli society. In 2002, for example, the Israeli Air Force bombed the home of Salah Mustafa Muhammad Shehade, then the head of the Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing. The bomb killed him, his wife Eman, his 14-year-old daughter Laila, and 14 other civilians, including 11 children. The killing caused a public uproar in both Israel and the world, and Israel was accused of committing war crimes.
  • Fifteen years after insisting that the army was taking pains to minimize civilian harm, Gallant, now Defense Minister, has clearly changed his tune. “We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly,” he said after October 7.
Ed Webb

The complicated legacy of Qatar's World Cup - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...icated-legacy-qatars-world-cup

Qatar sport sports sportswashing football soccer FIFA labor workers rights HRW

shared by Ed Webb on 06 Jan 24 - No Cached
  • perhaps the biggest test case for what happens when a Middle Eastern nation intent on using oil money to enhance its influence through sports emerges on the global stage.
  • Can sports help bring societal progress to a region that has long resisted change? Or are those countries rewarded with reputational prestige despite human rights abuses that they have little intention to address?
  • Owing to its small population of roughly 300,000 citizens, Qatar relies heavily on migrant workers. When it won the World Cup bid, it employed a labor system called kafala. Under kafala, migrant workers, mostly seeking to leave impoverished conditions elsewhere, have to pay exorbitant recruitment fees and cannot change jobs without the consent of their employer. The system led to rampant abuses that included wage theft and unsafe working conditions, ultimately resulting in the deaths of thousands of workers. Qatar also bans homosexuality, which it defends on religious grounds.
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  • “FIFA has a human rights policy that guarantees press freedom, women’s rights and nondiscrimination,” said Minky Worden, the director of global initiatives for Human Rights Watch. “What the Qatar World Cup showed is that, if you have enough money, you can absolutely ignore those requirements.”
  • In 2016, Qatar said it would abide by the United Nations’ human rights code. In 2019, Qatar announced it would abolish kafala. In 2021, Qatar instituted a minimum wage. The Supreme Committee, Qatar’s World Cup host organization, created a workers’ welfare program for those who built World Cup infrastructure. By the sound of the first whistle last November, the country’s labor market was “radically transformed,” a FIFA spokesman said.“Would any of that have happened if they hadn’t hosted the World Cup?” said Mary Harvey, chief executive at the Centre for Sport and Human Rights. “Would kafala still be in place in Qatar if they hadn’t hosted the World Cup? That may not be the question people want to ask, but it’s important. … You don’t just flip the switch with a law change and expect an implementation is going to take hold. It’s going to take a generation probably to get this put in. But it’s still big change, and it’s change that is needed.”
  • Max Tuñón, head of the International Labor Organization’s Qatar office, said he has seen major improvements in working conditions for foreign laborers over the past five years.
  • We work all over the world, and we rarely see change happening at this pace
  • Rothna Begum, a Human Rights Watch researcher, has worked extensively in Qatar and visited with workers. (Unlike Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Qatar’s government allows human rights groups to work in the country.) Begum said it is “not the case” that Qatar dismantled kafala in practice.“They didn’t do it properly, anyway,” Begum said. “They didn’t take away all the elements. They reformed aspects of the kafala system, but they didn’t dismantle the kafala system. The bits that they did reform, they are implementing in such a way that kafala still exists in practice.”
  • While workers can apply to change jobs, Begum said, she has found they must first give notice to their employer. If the employer does not sign a resignation notice, the worker cannot get permission from the government — “employer permission through the back door,”
  • “Qatari authorities — not just Qatari authorities but FIFA — sought to weaponize a narrative of Qatar being an underdog, that they were under attack in this double-standard way that no one else has been under attack before, and it’s because they are a Middle Eastern country,” Begum said. “Rather than dealing with the fact that they just did not come through with reforms and did not protect migrant workers who really contribute to the success of the World Cup and made sure they got their wages and compensated them for it, they instead used this narrative and weaponized it. We’re seeing the Saudis and UAE are moving in that direction.”
  • Qatar’s reforms also did not address the biggest cost of the World Cup: the migrant workers who died — in the thousands according to human rights groups, a number disputed by the Qatari government — while building stadiums and other infrastructure FIFA required after working in extreme heat on strict schedules. Human Rights Watch challenged whether Qatar could move forward with meaningful reform without compensating the families of the workers who died.
  • FIFA instituted its human rights policy in 2017 in response to criticism about Qatar. That policy may receive a more stringent test in coming years. Saudi Arabia, whose government has jailed and executed dissidents, submitted a bid to host the 2034 World Cup and is the favorite to host the tournament. Unlike Qatar, Saudi Arabia has not met with human rights groups.
Ed Webb

Twitter's role in revolutionary Egypt - isolation or connection? - 25 January: Revoluti... - 1 views

english.ahram.org.eg/...32610.aspx

Egypt socialmedia revolution twitter

shared by Ed Webb on 24 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Social media platforms provide a channel for citizens to report events on the ground in a faster way and without the editorial interference of newspapers’ managements and the state. It is the only completely free and independent outlet to spread information.
  • As long as we have a biased, censored media, which is not just in Egypt but any mainstream media, alternative outlets like Twitter and others will be the tools used by the people and activists to expose the truth.
  • The role will be that of support group, the way it always has been. It's where you get hope, where you know you have people...who share similar views, no matter what those views are, all over Egypt. In a society that is bound to be more isolationist due to fear, Twitter provides a safe mechanism to interact and meet like-minded others and find comfort in that. We will need all the comfort we can get.
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  • it is a consultation and consensus-building platform like no other
  • Twitter is more immune to infiltration and/or electronic committees of security apparatus; when someone from them replies to you he/she can't really reach out to others not following him/her, so it's very hard to create a false consensus or dominant opinion as with Facebook comments and the like.
  • The infrastructure of Twitter is only mildly conducive to exchange of ideas with people outside of our immediate list of friends; accessing strangers' ideas on a given topic is only a hashtag click away but how often do we do that click? It's more comfortable to only follow discussions among people we've pre-approved.
  • Since the first revolution we can say that we're seeing more Twitter-conversation than Twitter-organisation. But I predict we'll see more of a reversion to the organisation use at some point, as the battle with the enemies of democracy intensifies.
  • We need to market the revolution and in that we'll need to teach ourselves how to conduct a constructive Twitter conversation, one that doesn't end in people blocking each other.
  • at the end of the day it's a platform for youth who many times find no other alternative
  • It will continue to play an important role in citizen journalism as it has always done, and delivering independent media to counter the official one.
  • The revolution and its revolutionaries were badly portrayed and have been subjected to intensive campaigns of defamation, despite all the efforts on social media to provide another narrative and defy the propaganda.
  • especially after the start of the revolution, media outlets rely on Twitter to stay on top of events on the ground throughout the major cities in Egypt. In fact, almost all newspapers and TV channels will make daily references to news spread through Twitter one way or the other.
  • If many people join Twitter from different classes and groups to represent the Egyptian street, we can discuss for real what the Egyptian people in the street want.
Ed Webb

"The internet is freedom": Index speaks to Tunisian Internet Agency chief | Index on Ce... - 0 views

www.indexoncensorship.org/...unisia-internet-moez-chakchouk

Tunisia censorship internet

shared by Ed Webb on 04 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Right now there is no internet censorship. I’m against censorship. But in case there is a call for the comeback of censorship, it should be based on legal texts. And for the moment there are no such texts for the Internet in Tunisia. The goal of the agency after the revolution is guaranteeing net neutrality. When we say net neutrality we should not care about the content. Again we do not prefer Internet legislation because we are aware its risks
  • If there is to be Internet control in Tunisia, this control should be smart, transparent and for security reasons. The agency, used to carry out such control secretly. Today we are advocating absolute transparency. It would be better if a new public agency would be established and take charge of such a task. The ATI cannot guarantee internet neutrality and supervise the Internet at the same time. That is a conflict. This is my personal view as the legal representative of the ATI.
  • According to the information that I have; the Tunisian Agency for External Communication [known by its French acronym as the ATCE] was involved in taking such decisions (…) the ATCE had important transactions with the ATI. But these transactions were not documented as practices of censorship, but as website surveillance. But there is nothing documented that proves there were censorship related transactions between the two agencies. The former ruling party, the Constitutional Democratic Party, (now dissolved, and known by its French acronym the as RCD) , the presidential palace and the security apparatus, might have been involved in such practices too. I don’t know exactly. There are no documents that reveal exact names and parties.
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  • This company considered the Tunisian Internet agency a big partner … a technical partner that hosted equipment that does not belong to it, and that was used to undertake censorship and surveillance related tests. For these companies, Tunisia responded to their needs; a country close to Europe, and a place where everything was permitted, and no one dares to raise the question about the 404 error. But now, when a website hosted in Europe, or the USA does no longer exist, and 404 error appears on the computer screen, newspapers immediately report that “censorship is back” , and that “ATI is lying to us”. Truly, there is not a single functioning machine except the local filters, which are functioning for public institutions.
  • I can’t tell you the names of the companies. I read the contracts of these companies with the agency, and they contain confidentiality clauses.
  • the problem of Tunisia is the content. We have an advanced infrastructure but the content and apps are not developing for simple reasons. Before, to create a website there were obstacles — namely waiting for the ATCE approval, and censorship. People did not feel comfortable and safe to create content. It was impossible to create websites in Tunisia; it was a dream.
  • There are no more political constraints. And there is no more censorship. People used to be afraid from authorities tracking them and their families down. This is why Tunisia was behind.
  • people are lodging complaints against each other for defamation. We are overreacting and I have fears that if we over react we will receive censorship orders.
  • The government should not be involved in internet regulation. Instead, an independent authority should take in charge such task. But we don’t have such authorities for the internet in Tunisia
Ed Webb

یک فتحی » آرشیو وبلاگ » Persian blogs on Bluehost will be going down - 0 views

1fathi.com/...on-bluehost-will-be-going-down

blogs bloggers blogging Iran

shared by Ed Webb on 01 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Since last week, Blue Host, the hosting service which is used for this very blog [and Kamangir as well], and the number one recommendation for Wordpress hosting by Wordpress itself, has adopted a policy of suspending its Iranian users. In some cases the bloggers have been given a short notice in order to back up their data and leave. This is despite Bluehost’s good reputation in the blogosphere. The matter of fact is that many of these bloggers, including Arash Kamangir who blogs at kamangir.net, have no connection to the Iranian administration and have had to take use of a foreign hosting service in order to freely express their opinions. The important factor is that Bluehost is not committing any illegal action. What is being done is exactly what article 13 in Bluehost Terms of Service mandates. The article does explicitly mention Iran among the sanctioned countries, Sanctioned Countries presently include, among others, Balkans, Belarus, Burma, Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Iraq, former Liberian Regime of Charles Taylor, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, and Zimbabwe…Each Sanctioned Country, all governmental, commercial, or other entities located therein, and all individuals located in any Sanctioned Country are hereby prohibited from registering or signing up with, subscribing to, or using any service of BlueHost.Com.
  • The Persian Bloggers who use Bluehost are dispersed all over the world and produce content for people from Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and other countries. The action taken by Bluehost, while entirely legal, will harm the Persian blogosphere.
  • Ed Webb on 01 Mar 09
     
    Ownership matters. Pay attention to the infrastructure as well as what it carries, to the medium as well as the message.
Ed Webb

Common Knowledge : CJR - 0 views

www.cjr.org/...common_knowledge.php

media identity democracy USA cjr analysis socialmedia newspapers journalism politics

shared by Ed Webb on 21 Sep 09 - Cached
  • Berelson’s analysis documented what we denizens of the burgeoning ecosystem often shorthanded as “the new media landscape” understand instinctively: that news is much more than information. That it is more, even, than a cultural commodity. Berelson highlighted news’s status as a source both of intimacy and anxiety: news is not only a reflection of the world we live in. It is also a reflection of ourselves.
  • Aren’t consumers better served by many outlets that are specialized than by a few outlets that are generalized? And national news, even in its halcyon days—one thinks of Walter Cronkite, the “most trusted man in America”—was never a paragon of cultural comprehensiveness. Master narratives, the closest we’ve ever gotten to macro-communal news, have been, as well, products of oligarchic exclusivity.
  • consumers are increasingly presented with, and made to choose among, an expanding variety of ever-narrowing news sources
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  • the inconvenience of being challenged in our beliefs.
  • Increasingly, we are able to choose not just which opinions to embrace, but also something more foundational: which facts to know in the first place.
  • a troubling paradox: the democratization of information, it turns out, is in some ways at odds with democracy itself.
  • Where is the middle ground between monopoly and chaos? How do we balance the individually empowering elements of the niche—and the passion and participation they encourage—with news that is empowering in a wider sense of civic life? How do we reconcile the intimacy of news consumption with Berelson’s insight that news is, at is core, a solidarity good? How do we structure a system of news that acts, in varying ways, as democracy’s common denominator?
  • news consumption itself has taken on a quality of itinerancy: audiences, per Pew’s most recent State of the News Media report, now “hunt and gather what they want when they want it, use search to comb among destinations and share what they find through a growing network of social media.” And consumption itself has thus taken on an increasingly self-definitional property: to read The New York Times, or to watch Fox News—or MSNBC—or the NewsHour—or to curate a personalized RSS feed, is, of course, to make not merely a commercial decision. It is also to make a declaration about who you are and how you see the world.
  • There has always been more information in the world than there have been news outlets to convey it; but the explosion of outlets, in particular, means that no longer is slant the key self-definitional distinction in news
  • “The news” itself, as a unitary entity, is no longer something we can take for granted. On the contrary: it is increasingly incoherent—“a mass of niches,” Jeff Jarvis has it. Indeed, the notion of a master narrative itself—the communal melody that, even in its exclusivity, also binds us together in its tunes and tones—is slowly dissolving into white noise.
  • echo chambers—even those that many might think of as ‘the good ones’—have an insularity that impedes broader political and cultural discourse. They distort reality through their very presumption of multiple realities. They assume—and, then, foster—a disconnect between sub-truths and, simply, truth.
  • In And Then There’s This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture, Bill Wasik describes the “feedback loop among bloggers and readers,” citing a study finding that 85 percent of blog links led consumers to blogs of the same political bent—“with almost no blog showing any particular respect for any blog on the other side.” In this way, selective exposure becomes a communal activity.
  • “The problem is when extremism emerges from the logic of social interactions”—from, in other words, a system of discourse that allows for self-segregation. And that’s the problem we’re seeing, increasingly, in our journalistic infrastructure. On the one hand, people have access to more dissenting views than ever before; on the other, paradoxically, they are more able to ignore those views than ever before. My reality here. Your reality there.
  • Without “popular information,” we lose not only our baseline of knowledge about the political world, but also our bearings within it. We risk becoming subject, as it were, to subjectivity itself—and ending up with a society, as William James had it, in which “people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”
  • That journalism is crucial to modern democracy seems clear; that it is not by any means sufficient to democracy seems equally clear
  • News serves the public not only by feeding it information; it also fosters, in the phrase of the sociologist C. Wright Mills, the “sociological imagination”—the habit of mind required to connect one’s private concerns to the “public issues” that give rise to them. News itself is thus a self-fulfilling prophecy. In learning about our fellow citizens, we come to see their lives as they are: inextricably linked to ours. News begets empathy—and, in that, social capital. Connection is key: as Robert Putnam notes, “a society of many virtuous but isolated individuals is not necessarily rich in social capital.”
  • Mediated knowledge, in other words, united the country. Not by whitewashing differences among its consumers, but rather by giving those consumers a baseline of shared information and discourse that, eventually, transformed an awkward amalgam of loosely connected states—the experiment—into the United States. The nation.
  • The challenge, as we navigate the chasm between old ways and new, is to find a way to mingle the productive properties of commotion with the enduring value of community.
  • “It is hardly possible,” Mill had it, “to overstate the value in the present state of human improvement of placing people in contact with others dissimilar to themselves, and in contact too with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar.”
  • Ed Webb on 21 Sep 09
     
    Essential reading on media, identity, democracy, community.
Michael Fisher

Texting Toward Utopia - 0 views

bostonreview.net/...morozov.php

New Media Web 2.0

shared by Michael Fisher on 02 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Many such dissenters have, indeed, made great use of the Web. In Ukraine young activists relied on new–media technologies to mobilize supporters during the Orange Revolution. Colombian protesters used Facebook to organize massive rallies against FARC, the leftist guerrillas. The shocking and powerful pictures that surfaced from Burma during the 2007 anti–government protests—many of them shot by local bloggers with cell phones—quickly traveled around the globe. Democratic activists in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe used the Web to track vote rigging in last year’s elections and used mobile phones to take photos of election results that were temporarily displayed outside the voting booths (later, a useful proof of the irregularities). Plenty of other examples—from Iran, Egypt, Russia, Belarus, and, above all, China—attest to the growing importance of technology in facilitating dissent.
  • But drawing conclusions about the democratizing nature of the Internet may still be premature. The major challenge in understanding the relationship between democracy and the Internet— aside from developing good measures of democratic improvement—has been to distinguish cause and effect. That is always hard, but it is especially difficult in this case because the grandiose promise of technological determinism—the idealistic belief in the Internet’s transformative power—has often blinded even the most sober analysts.
  • investing in new media infrastructure might also embolden the conservatives, nationalists, and extremists, posing an even greater challenge to democratization. A brief look at the emerging cyber–nationalism in Russia and China provides a taste of things to come.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The problem with building public spheres from above, online or offline, is much like that of building Frankenstein’s monsters: we may not like the end product. This does not mean we should give up on the Internet as a force for democratization, only that we should ditch the blinding ideology of technological determinism and focus on practical tasks. Figuring out how the Internet could benefit existing democratic forces and organizations—very few of which have exhibited much creativity on the Web—would not be a bad place to start.
  • Michael Fisher on 02 Apr 09
     
    Does the Internet spread democracy? Evgeny Morozov seeks to answer this question. He shows both the pros and cons of new media and criticizes certain people and works for exaggerating the Internet's present capabilities. While he agrees that the Internet has an enormous potential for building public spheres and having positive effects (among other things), he cautions observers from expecting too much, too soon.
Ed Webb

Georgian woman cuts off web access to whole of Armenia | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...georgian-woman-cuts-web-access

internet infrastructure Georgia Armenia

shared by Ed Webb on 08 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • Ed Webb on 08 Apr 11
     
    oops!
Ed Webb

Egypt's big disconnect | Andrew McLaughlin | Comment is free | The Guardian - 1 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...t-uncensored-cutoff-disconnect

#jan25 Egypt protests authoritarianism censorship technology internet

shared by Ed Webb on 05 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • The internet cutoff shows how the details of infrastructure matter. Despite having no large-scale or centralised censorship apparatus, Egypt was still able to shut down its communications in a matter of minutes. This was possible because Egypt permitted only three wireless carriers to operate, and required all internet service providers (ISPs) to funnel their traffic through a handful of international links. Confronted with mass demonstrations and fearful about a populace able to organise itself, the government had to order fewer than a dozen companies to shut down their networks and disconnect their routers from the global internet.
Ed Webb

Egypt's Nubians continue to demand right of return - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middl... - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...a-displace-culture-people.html

Egypt minorities minority Nubia water infrastructure history memory politics

shared by Ed Webb on 02 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • they called for the need to introduce Nubian history to the school curriculum, from primary school to university, in order to teach society about the importance, customs and traditions of Nubian civilization and put an end to racist attacks against them
Ed Webb

Picking up the pieces - 0 views

www.synaps.network/picking-up-the-pieces

Syria society identities war civil_war

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Apr 19 - No Cached
  • Syrians have shown relentless ingenuity in adapting to every stage of a horrendous conflict, salvaging remnants of dignity, solidarity and vitality amid nightmarish circumstances
  • The decimation of Syria’s male population represents, arguably, the most fundamental shift in the country’s social fabric. As a generation of men has been pared down by death, disability, forced displacement and disappearance, those who remain have largely been sucked into a violent and corrupting system centered around armed factions
  • 80 of the village’s men have been killed and 130 wounded—amounting to a third of the male population aged 18-50. The remaining two-thirds have overwhelmingly been absorbed into the army or militias
  • ...29 more annotations...
  • “If you want to protect yourself and your family, you join a militia,” remarked a middle-aged man in the Jazmati neighborhood. “The area is infested with crime associated with the National Defense militias. Each group has control over a certain quarter, and they sometimes fight each other over the distribution of spoils. Shop owners must pay these militias protection. One owner refused, and they torched his store.”
  • Another resident of the same area explained that he and his family could scrape by thanks to his two sons’ positioning in the Iran-backed Baqir Brigade—which provides not only monthly salaries, but also opportunities to procure household items through looting.
  • Most who can afford to leave the country do so; others benefit from an exemption afforded to university students, while another subset enjoys a reprieve due to their status as the sole male of their generation in their nuclear family. Others may pay exorbitant bribes to skirt the draft, or confine themselves within their homes to avoid being detected—making them invisible both to the army and to broader society. Some endure multiple such ordeals, only to remain in an indefinite state of limbo due to the contingent and precarious nature of these solutions
  • I returned to my apartment just to retrieve official documents and some hidden pieces of gold. I did so, and then destroyed my own furniture and appliances because I don’t want these people making money at my expense. I was ready to burn down my own apartment, but my wife stopped me—she didn’t want me to cause harm to other apartments in the building.
  • Although virtually every problem that sparked Syria’s 2011 uprising has been exacerbated, society has been beaten down to the point of almost ensuring that no broad-based reformist movement will be able to coalesce for a generation to come
  • the unraveling of Syria’s productive economy, and its replacement by an economy of systematic cannibalization in which impoverished segments of Syrian society increasingly survive by preying upon one another
  • a new term—taafeesh—to describe a practice that goes far beyond stealing furniture to include extremes such as stripping houses, streets and factories of plumbing and electrical wiring
  • “I watched uniformed soldiers using a Syrian army tank to rip out electrical cables from six meters underground,” remarked a fighter with a loyalist Palestinian faction, who was scrambling to retrieve belongings from his apartment before it could be pillaged. “I saw soldiers from elite units looting private hospitals and government offices. This isn’t just looting—it’s sabotage of essential infrastructure.”
  • An industrialist in Aleppo put it simply: “I talk with factory owners and they say they want to reopen their factories, but they can’t find male workers. When they do find them, security services or militiamen come and arrest those workers and extort money from the owners for having hired them in the first place.” With no large scale returns on the horizon for local industries, this economic impasse will take years to resolve.
  • micro-economies in their own right—from the recycling of rubble to the proliferation of taafeesh markets, where people buy second-hand goods stolen from fellow Syrians. Many have no choice but to use these markets in order to replace their own stolen belongings
  • Syrians also dip into precious resources to pay officials for information, for instance on disappeared relatives or their own status on Syria’s sprawling lists of “wanted” individuals. For those wishing to confirm that they won’t be detained upon crossing the border to Lebanon, the going rate is about 10 dollars—most often paid to an employee in the Department of Migration and Passports.
  • This cannibalistic economy, which encompasses all those who have come to rely on extortion for their own livelihoods, extends to the cohort of lawyers, security officials and civil servants who have positioned themselves as “brokers” in the market for official documents such as birth, marriage and death certificates
  • Today, even the most senior lawyers in our practice are working as document brokers. A well-connected broker makes 30 to 40,000 pounds [60 to 80 dollars] per day; this roughly equals the monthly salary of a university-educated civil servant. As a result, many government employees resign and work as brokers to make more money.And this truly is a business, not a charity: Every broker takes money, even from his own brothers and sisters. Last week a colleague brought me his brother-in-law. I asked him why he needed me, when he could make all the papers himself. He explained that he can’t take money from his own brother-in-law, but I can do so and then give him half.
  • Multiplying forms of predation have accelerated the outflow of Syria’s financial and human capital, leaving behind a country largely populated by an underclass that can aspire to little more than subsistence
  • Syria’s predatory wartime economy is slowly but surely turning into a predatory economy of peace
  • As some Syrians put it, Damascus has been particularly effective in reconstructing one thing amidst the immeasurable destruction: the “wall of fear” which characterized the regime before 2011 and which momentarily broke down at the outset of the uprising
  • active surveillance, intimidation and repression are not the only contributors to this leaden atmosphere. A pervasive exhaustion has settled over Syrians ground down and immiserated by war, disillusioned with all those who purport to lead or protect them, and largely reduced to striving for day-to-day subsistence
  • At one level, the war has wrenched open social and economic fractures that existed long before the conflict. The city of Homs stands as perhaps the starkest microcosm of this trend. A Sunni majority city with sizable Christian and Alawi minorities, Homs was the first major urban center to rise up and the first to devolve into bitter sectarian bloodletting
  • While vast swathes of Syria’s Sunni population feel silenced and brutalized, Alawi communities often carry their own narrative of victimhood, which blends legitimate grievances with vindictive impulses vis-à-vis Sunnis whom they regard as having betrayed the country
  • crude divisions based on sect or class fail to describe a complex and fluid landscape. Some fault lines are less dramatic, all but imperceptible except to those who experience them first-hand. Neighbors, colleagues, friends and kin may have come down on opposing sides, despite having every social marker in common. Each part of the country has its own web of tragic events to untangle.
  • Many Islamic State fighters swapped clothes and joined the [Kurdish-led] Syrian Democratic Forces to protect themselves and their families. But they haven’t changed; those people are bad, and will always be bad. There will be vengeance. Not now, while everyone is busy putting their lives together. But eventually, everyone who suffered under ISIS, whose brother was killed by ISIS, will take revenge.
  • A native of a Damascus suburb remarked: “Charities typically want to help those who fled from elsewhere. So, when I go to a charity, I say I’m displaced.”
  • The divide between conservative and more secular Sunnis has calcified, manifesting itself even in differential treatment at checkpoints. “I have an easier time driving around because I don’t wear the hijab,” remarked a woman from the Damascus suburbs. “If you veil, security assumes you’re with the opposition.”
  • While dialogue is sorely needed, some Syrians warn against emphasising dialogue for its own sake—even at the cost of burying the most substantive issues at stake. A businessman from Damascus described his own abortive experience with talks proposing to link disparate elements of Syria’s private sector: “There’s this whole industry around ‘mediation,’ including between sides that don’t actually disagree on anything. Meanwhile, all the problems that caused the uprising have gotten worse.”
  • Just as Syrians are forced to be more self-reliant, they have also come to depend evermore on vital social support structures. Indeed, extreme circumstances have created a paradox: Even as society has splintered in countless ways, the scale of deprivation arguably renders Syrians more closely interdependent than ever before.
  • remittances from relatives who live abroad
  • The country’s middle and upper classes have long extended vital forms of solidarity to their needier compatriots, with Syria’s merchant and religious networks playing a leading role. What is unique, today, is the scale of hardship across the country, which is so vast as to have changed the way that Syrians conceptualize the act of receiving charity. A businessman from central Syria noted the extent to which dependency, which once demanded some degree of discretion, has become a straightforward fact of life. “People used to hide it when they were reliant on charity. Not anymore. Today you might hear workers in a factory wondering, ‘Where is the manager?’ And someone will say that he’s out waiting for his food basket. The whole country is living on handouts.”
  • People still do charity the Islamic way, based on the premise that you must assist those closest to you. If there’s someone you should help—say, a neighbor—but you’re unable, then it’s your responsibility to find someone else who can. These circles remain very much intact, and the entire society lives on this. Seven years of war didn’t destroy that aspect of Syrian culture, and that’s something Syrians are proud of.
  • There will be no nationwide recovery, no serious reform, no meaningful reconciliation for the foreseeable future.
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
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • 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
  • 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.
  • 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."
  • 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
Ed Webb

Saudi snitching app appears to have been used against jailed Leeds student | Saudi Arab... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-leeds-student-salma-al-shehab

twitter censorship KSA Saudi rights authoritarianism repression student UK Britain

shared by Ed Webb on 17 Aug 22 - Cached
  • The Saudi woman who was sentenced to 34 years in prison for using Twitter appears to have been denounced to Saudi authorities through a crime-reporting app that users in the kingdom can download to Apple and Android phones.
  • The user told Shehab that he had reported her on the Saudi app, which is called Kollona Amn, or All Are Safe. It is not clear whether the Saudi officials responded directly to the report, but the 34-year-old mother was arrested two months later.
  • Her alleged crimes including using a website to “cause public unrest” and “assisting those who seek to cause public unrest and destabilise civil and national security by following their Twitter accounts” and by retweeting their tweets.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • on 8 October 2019, Shehab responded to a tweet by a verified Saudi account that reports on developments in the kingdom’s infrastructure projects. When the account tweeted about the launch of a new network of buses, she tweeted the word “finally!”.
  • Recalling her own experience in Syria, Aljizawi described the phenomenon of citizens being unable to trust their own neighbours.“Sometimes people find themselves in trouble. They need a promotion or need to prove their loyalty to the state, so they do something like this. It’s enough to just take a screenshot and report it,”
  • “new phase of digital authoritarianism”.
  • “It is very concerning because people who post something cannot predict the risk or who is going to report them, and who is going to go back and search their feed for posts that don’t align with government propaganda,”
  • On official Saudi websites, Kollona Amn – which also has a Twitter account – is described as an app that allows citizens and expatriates to submit security and criminal reports related to personal life attacks, threats, impersonation, extortion, penetration of social media accounts, defamation, fraud and other criminal offences and security reports.
  • in the hands of a dictatorship targeting human rights defenders, technology transforms into a terrifying tool which fast tracks repression
  • Shehab would regularly tweet to support the rights of others but believed it went unnoticed because she did not have many Twitter followers.“She [would] always stand with all human rights in Saudi or outside of Saudi
  • Shehab, who has been studying in the UK since 2017, was not especially critical of the government and was a supporter of Vision 2030, Prince Mohammed’s plan to diversify the Saudi economy away from oil and towards services such as health and tourism.
Ed Webb

Climate migration in Iraq's south brings cities to crisis - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...q-climate-crisis-drought-basra

Iraq water energy urbanization urban migration economy unemployment politics climate

shared by Ed Webb on 10 Sep 22 - No Cached
  • Iraq as the fifth-most-vulnerable country to climate change. Temperatures have increased by 1.8 degrees Celsius (3.2 degrees Fahrenheit) in three decades, according to Berkeley Earth, well above the global average, and in the summers, the mercury now regularly hits 50 Celsius (122 Fahrenheit)
  • burning crops and desiccating marshes
  • As upstream dams in Turkey and Iran weaken the flows of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, a salty tide is creeping north from the Persian Gulf, poisoning the land
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • changing climate is forcing families to sell off their livestock and pack up for urban centers such as the region’s largest city, Basra, in search of jobs and better services
  • As hotter, more-crowded cities become the future of a warming world, a lack of preparedness will only exacerbate the discontent already fraying the social fabric
  • decades of U.S.-backed sanctions and war, combined with the weight of corruption and neglect, have left Basra’s infrastructure unable to adequately support the 2 million people the city already houses — let alone the rising tide of newcomers.
  • According to official figures, Basra province has a population of over 3 million — an increase of at least 20 percent in 10 years. And most of that growth has been in its urban areas
  • nearly 40 percent of farmers across the country reported an almost total loss of their wheat crop.
  • Social media has been awash with photos showing water buffaloes lying dead on the cracked mudflats of southern Iraq’s dried-out marshlands
  • 12 percent of residents were newcomers who had settled in Basra over the past decade, mostly because of water scarcity and a lack of economic opportunities. The number is even higher in other southern Iraqi cities, such as Shatrah and Amarah.
  • water degradation in the province cost Iraq $400 million in lost animals, palm trees and crops in 2018 alone
  • As he saw it, migration was only making the situation worse, and he felt that the slow tide of arrivals was changing his city. “Their mind-set is different; we don’t know how to deal with them,” he said. “They don’t respect the laws here.”
  • Decades of government neglect in rural areas, particularly in the education sector, have left many of the migrants illiterate.
  • often struggle to access the city’s formal labor market and instead rely on temporary employment as construction workers or truck drivers, or hawking goods from carts in the street. And their habits and attitudes clash with those of their urban cousins.
  • political leaders in southern Iraq have started blaming the city’s crime rate — as well as other problems — on its migrants.
  • A few years ago, huge demonstrations decrying corruption and unemployment were crushed with deadly force. Since then, every summer has brought scattered daily protests over authorities’ failure to provide basic services.
  • “This is how you drive these people into criminality, by discriminating,” she said. “They move to irregular neighborhoods where there’s no proper public services and no employment. And then social issues will emerge.”
  • When a heat wave forced the shutdown of Basra’s power grid in August, the homes of newcomers and longtime residents alike were plunged into darkness as millions spent sleepless nights drenched in sweat
  • “My dreams in this country are being lived by a dog in Europe,”
Ed Webb

Dented plaque, creaking hospital and Queen's complex legacy in Aden - Al-Monitor: Indep... - 1 views

www.al-monitor.com/...and-queens-complex-legacy-aden

Britain UK colonialism history politics empire Yemen monarchy separatism

shared by Ed Webb on 19 Sep 22 - No Cached
  • A battered plaque in a rundown hospital and a crackly, black-and-white newsreel are all that remain of Queen Elizabeth II's 1954 visit to Aden, the war-torn Yemeni city whose troubles are a reminder of Britain's complicated legacy in the Middle East.
  • mildew, emaciated children and the stench of urine, as the under-equipped facility grapples with an impossible workload in the face of a long-running conflict.
  • British colonialism is inextricably linked with the Middle East partly because of the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, when Britain and France carved up much of the region between them amid the collapse of Ottoman rule during World War I. Many Arab leaders remain close to British royalty, however. After the queen's death this month at 96, sombre tributes were offered by monarchies that thrived under British protection.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • A lesser-noticed tribute also arrived from the separatist leader of Aden, the southwestern port city and the seat of the British colony that later became South Yemen until unification with North Yemen in 1990.
  • Aidarus al-Zubaidi, president of the Southern Transitional Council, tweeted that he was "deeply saddened" by the queen's death and extended his "heartfelt condolences".The sentiments were incongruous in a city that, nine years after the young queen's visit, orchestrated an armed revolution that eventually won independence in 1967, an uprising that is celebrated each October 14.
  • "Those who glorify the period where the British were in Aden, either are young and are unaware of the reality of what was happening in Aden and in the south back then, or are old people reacting to the reality we are living right now which is very tiring,"
  • There was never a form of colonialism that respected humanity,
  • the policies "didn't focus on the aspirations of Adeni people"
  • Aden bears the scars of conflict. Homes are pockmarked by bullet holes, buildings lie in rubble and water and electricity are intermittent, the result of infrastructure trashed by fighting.
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