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Field research is infinitely more difficult. If a researcher wants to conduct a field study or distribute a questionnaire or opinion survey, she needs the approval of the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS). Its very name shows the perceived intimacy of the association between knowledge and the war effort.

The situation at the National Archives is reflected in all public institutions. Their mandate is not to serve the public, but to subject them to constant surveillance.

the security mentality in countries that respect the public is countered by a mentality that pushes back in the opposite direction, that respects the right to privacy, academic research and free expression. This mentality circumscribes the security mentality with numerous legal and administrative regulations.

In Egypt the security mentality runs amok. Just mentioning national security is enough to shut down a conversation instead of initiating it. Voices defending academic freedom and the freedom of research are few and far between (though brave and strong) — most importantly the March 9 Movement (a working group on university independence), the Association of Freedom of Thought and Expression, and the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

The responsible agency treats the National Archives like a state archive, not a national archive owned by and serving the public.

When I first saw Giulio Regeni’s photo on Facebook, when he was still missing, my heart skipped a beat. A foreign researcher who speaks Arabic fluently, living in Dokki and moving about the city at will, one who is working on the extremely sensitive topic of workers’ right to form independent unions, and one who is also a political activist who writes anti-regime articles for a communist paper under a pseudonym. If the security authorities knew of him, I thought, they would consider him a spy.But Giulio wasn’t a spy. He was a doctoral student. I never met or corresponded with him, but I know Giulio and know him well. He’s like the students I’ve taught for 20 years. Having now read and become familiar with his work, I can say that not only is he not a spy, he’s an exemplary student, one who loved Egypt and Egyptians and made efforts to help them.

we know that we’re living one of the worst moments of our modern history and that our rights, liberties and lives are under threat at all times by our own government.We know that our government, in the name of defending national security, has attacked universities and killed students demonstrating on campus. We know that our government, in the name of defending national security, has shut down the public sphere, appropriated political activity, and prevented people from expressing their opinion and peaceful demonstrating — unless the demonstration’s purpose is to give Abdel Fattah al-Sisi a mandate to do whatever he likes.

waging war on civil society organizations, accusing them of foreign collaboration, treason and getting rich off foreign funding. But it’s the government itself, specifically the army, that is the biggest beneficiary of foreign funding. No one dares make a peep about that.

arrested tens of thousands of members of Islamist groups and sentenced hundreds of them to death in trials lasting just a few minutes, trials that dealt a mortal blow to the integrity of the Egyptian judiciary and people’s faith in it

arrested hundreds of journalists, writers and political activists, and sentenced them to years in prison

we, the people, the true owners of this country, are insisting on knowing what happened to Guilio Regeni and are holding on to our right to be consulted about our own national security.

Just 100 years ago this June, armed whites rampaged through East St. Louis, slaughtering more than 100 African-Americans. In Tulsa in 1921, white mobs attacked a wealthy black neighborhood, killing as many as 300 people and leaving 8,000 homeless in what was wrongly labeled a “race riot” and left out of history texts until recently.

after mass attacks perpetrated by brown Muslim assailants, such as the Orlando Pulse massacre or the San Bernardino, California, killings, the media, authorities and politicians were quick to label them “terrorism” even before we had full information

Just because someone’s angry or even mentally ill doesn’t mean their actions aren’t those of a domestic terrorist (see U.S. Code definition above). As Joshua Keating points out in Slate, being distraught and a terrorist are “not mutually exclusive.” A 2013 study of violence by far-right extremists in America in Criminology and Public Policy found 40 percent of “lone wolf” domestic terrorists had a history of mental illness

Fox News dubiously described the shooter’s father’s life as “colorful,” as if it were entertaining that the man’s father robbed a string of banks, was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and busted out of a federal penitentiary. Can you imagine a black, Muslim or Latino’s long criminal record being described in the same way?

Underlying this bias is the implication that Muslims or brown immigrants are more dangerous to Americans’ safety than white attackers. That is provably false, based on government statistics – yet it was the central narrative of President Trump’s campaign

according to an analysis by the Cato Institute’s Alex Nowrasteh of fatal terrorism on U.S. soil from 1975 through 2015 – including the staggeringly high toll of the 9/11 attacks – the chances of an American being killed in a terror attack on U.S. soil by a foreigner was a miniscule 1 in 3.6 million per year. The chances of being killed by an illegal immigrant in the same 41-year period was an infinitesimal 1 in 10.9 billion per year.

free information flow is essential and vital for the press and scientific research. We often hear of difficulties facing journalists in accessing information and sensitive data because official entities refuse to disclose information. We also often hear about academic research stumbling and terminating because of lack of security permits or because the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) objected to a research questionnaire, under the pretext that opinion polls could divulge information to the enemy about the domestic front and thus could be a national security risk. These security caveats caused the quality of the press and scientific research in the country to decline

Thus, if the intelligence rationale about freedom of information has merits, then the logic of rights also has merits because it argues that access and dissemination of information strengthens national security.

we can also say that the mindset of caution and opacity that caused a lack of transparency and negligible public oversight of state institutions was an even greater danger to national security

“What I fear is that this pool of currently unemployed talent will switch careers, which will come at the longtime expense of the industry since these are trained professionals. I do not believe that the military [Synergy] sees this; they simply have one clear goal: to control the industry. The government has effectively, through the institutions it runs, carried out the first monopolization process in the history of neoliberalism.”

In June 2018, the authorities banned a film examining a love affair between a Muslim man and a Christian woman before it hit the cinemas, although director Khaled Youssef said he obtained the necessary licenses. The decision was later revoked, but was alarming to many given rising censorship levels

While over fifty shows typically aired during the peak Ramadan season, even during economically turbulent years as in 2017 and 2018, only twenty-four shows aired last Ramadan, and over two-thirds of them are produced by Synergy. Production powerhouses like El Adl Group and Beelink Productions were notably absent this season from their regular Ramadan run, while regionally acclaimed megastars like Yossra, Adel Imam and Laila Elwy uncharacteristically did not star in any shows during the peak season either, likely due to the dramatic, forced budget cuts which make casting an A-lister virtually impossible. Compensation levels for many of these lead faces could often be as high as EGP 50 million (~USD 3 million), the currently imposed budget cap for aggregate production costs of a Ramadan soap opera’s full season

“For a producer, the direct client of drama series is television channels, and several factors have negatively impacted their purchasing power. The GCC-owned channels are struggling in light of the economic difficulties there, primarily due to the war in Yemen, so the main overseas market for selling television series is not that great. Add to this that privately owned channels in Egypt were never highly profitable, and media budgets generally were slashed with Egypt’s high inflation levels [during the past couple of years], and you have a situation where many production companies are struggling to stay afloat.”

Over the course of the past year, EMC CEO Tamer Morsy also gradually gained majority ownership of key television networks such as CBC, ONTV, DMC and Al-Hayat, a move facilitated through the recent launch of EMC affiliate United Group for Media Services. Moreover, state-owned entities effectively gained control of both the production and purchasing sides of the business as these unprecedented levels of regulation and government ownership were put in place.

in early May United Group for Media Services launched paid streaming app WatchiT and prohibited the longtime convention of shows airing online on YouTube for those who couldn’t catch them on satellite television channels. Widely accessed streaming app EgyBest, among other free online streaming services, were also blocked to allegedly mitigate “piracy”, granting government intelligence-affiliated WatchiT a monopoly over streaming services. Since digital finance and financial inclusion levels are low in the most populous Arab country, the decision came to the dismay of throes of viewers regardless of political affiliations or regulation concerns. For those following television series on satellite channels, short broadcast announcements interrupt episodes to denounce a May 28 Human Rights Watch report on enforced disappearances, killings and torture in North Sinai. Other broadcasts order audiences to pay heed to “threats to terrorism and national security.”

“Because these people [Synergy and EMC] are military men, their mentality is to cut off what doesn’t work, with little concern for the consequences. The military don’t understand or love the arts; they see it as just another industry they can profit off by minimizing losses.”

“It’s understandable that they [the military] would be more concerned with penetrating television production as opposed to the cinema industry, because viewership numbers are higher for television series in comparison to films. Not everyone can afford a cinema ticket, but most Egyptians, be they rich or poor, have access to a television set. There’s nothing to stop them from gaining as much control of the film industry as they have with television, but I believe they’re not investing in it [as much] because it isn’t as lucrative,”

Saudi Arabia is once again opening cinema theaters following a 35-year ban, creating a significant potential box office market for Egyptian films, particularly since plans for the inauguration of 2,000 theatres in the kingdom before 2020 are in the works

our country was once the Hollywood of the Middle East,”

There was a time when everyone in the Arab world recognized Umm Kalthoum and Ismail Yassin, even more so than [our own president] Nasser. We need to work towards reestablishing that, and understanding how entertainment can be used as a tool for soft power

“You know, bin Laden got you this. You should put a big picture of him on the building, like the Colonel Sanders logo.” That’s the joke underpinning “The Day Shall Come”: Far from being enemies, the FBI has benefited from its biggest bogeymen, developing a symbiotic relationship with Islamist extremists while pursuing hundreds of targets who never posed much of a threat at all.

When comparing the size of this negative association with other predictors of cognitive decline, watching television for >3.5 hours a day had a greater sized negative association (standardised beta = −0.034) than being in the lowest wealth quintile (as compared with the median quintile: standardised beta −0.027), while watching television for >7 hours a day had a greater sized association (standardized beta = −0.048) as being in the highest wealth quintile (compared with the median quintile: standardised beta = 0.043) or having no educational qualifications (standardized beta = −0.058).

associations between television viewing and verbal memory remained even when considering a range of variables relating to sedentary behaviours, suggesting that it is not just the sedentary nature of television watching that is responsible for its relationship with cognition.

Television involves fast-paced changes in images, sounds and action and, unlike other screen-based activities such as internet use and gaming, television is the most passive way of receiving such stimuli

television leads to a more alert but less focused brain

In addition to any potential cognitive stress created through the alert-passive interaction while watching television, the content of the programme itself can be stressful, such as through the depiction of graphic scenes, violence or the creation of suspense. Analyses of UK television from 2001–2013 (covering the country and much of the period of the data collection for the study reported here) have shown between 2.1 and 11.5 violent scenes per hour in UK soap operas, with 40% of these being categorised as moderate or strong violence22. It has even been proposed that the vividness of such experiences is greater than real-world experiences of events such as violence, conflict or disasters, as the drama is enhanced for entertainment purposes23. Chronic stress is known to lead to increased levels of glucocorticoids, which can have a direct effect on the hippocampus due to the presence of glucocorticoid receptors in that region of the brain. Consequently, stress has been shown to lead to atrophy of the hippocampus and impaired neurogenesis24, alongside impairments in cognition25.

excessive television could be linked with verbal memory through displacing other, cognitively beneficial activities such as playing board games, reading and engaging with cultural activities11,26. This theory implies that the relationship between television viewing and memory is not entirely down to television having negative effects per se, but rather television reducing the amount of time that people spend on more activities that could contribute to cognitive preservation

This study is not suggesting that watching television in older adulthood confers no benefits. Indeed, research with adults has suggested that TV dramas in comparison with TV documentaries can increase performance in tests of theory of mind, suggesting that television can enhance understanding of others27. Educational television can be an efficient way of learning when programmes are designed appropriately28. Television has also been shown to be a form of escapism from difficult life circumstances29. Further, research investing the effects of television viewing in the context of people’s daily lives has found that adults routinely report television as a means of relaxing30 (although this should be considered in relation to the potentially stress-inducing effects of television viewing discussed earlier). Nevertheless, this study suggests that watching substantial amounts of television is longitudinally associated with poorer verbal memory in older adults.

it remains unclear whether television viewing might affect other components of executive function

Psychiatrists have warned that the repeated viewing of such visceral imagery can lead to what’s known as “vicarious trauma,” damaging people’s mental health

Some commenters there say the videos offer a grisly lesson. They have “basically taken all the ‘glory’ out of war,” one Redditor said in a thread discussing a video of an injured Russian soldier taking his own life. “I wish politicians would watch these vids as they had their morning coffee.”Others there celebrate the violence or riff on the strange banality of seeing such carnage from home. “I’m eating coco puffs watching this,” one Redditor said on a video showing Russians soldiers killed with grenades.

The Ukrainian government last year began posting photos and videos of captured and killed Russian soldiers to Telegram, Twitter and YouTube in hopes of inflaming Russian protests over the war’s human costs. Military-justice experts told The Post that some of the images likely violated the Geneva Conventions, which demand governments shield prisoners of war from “insults and public curiosity.”

White supremacists have for years spread videos showing violent acts committed by people of color to inflame racial animus in hopes of winning potential recruits, Henry said. In recent conflicts, such gruesome videos have been used to dehumanize the enemy and get international viewers feeling more invested in the fight

“When any of the various Ukraine war influencers share videos of Russian soldiers dying from drone attacks, part of the strategy is to appeal to American or European audiences who see Russian soldiers as part of a wider hated out-group and Ukrainian soldiers as sort of like themselves.”

such videos have also been used to sow terror and provoke an emotional overreaction that could enrage onlookers, expand a conflict or play into the attackers’ hands, said Amanda E. Rogers, a research fellow at the Century Foundation think tank who has studied extremist propaganda. Nearly a decade ago, she said, the Islamic State’s video-recorded beheadings of aid workers, journalists and others helped mark a turning point for terrorists who saw the value in publishing footage so heinous many viewers felt they couldn’t ignore it.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry has adopted a similar tactic to enrage Western audiences by running hundreds of haunting YouTube ads, including videos in which Israeli medical examiners describe what they saw in their autopsies of the bodies of children purportedly killed during the Hamas attack, according to YouTube’s ad library.