Skip to main content

Home/ Media in Middle East & North Africa/ Group items tagged mercenaries

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Ed Webb

Al Jazeera English - IRAN: AFTER THE REVOLUTION - Iranian Arabs seek equal rights - 0 views

english.aljazeera.net/...200812691745418706.html

shared by Ed Webb on 13 Feb 09 - No Cached
  • Ahwazi Arabs have not been included in Iran's economic development and prosperity derived from oil exports, according to a 2007 Human Rights report published by civil rights organisations in Europe in coordination with the Belgium–based Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation.
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 13 Feb 09
  • I do not think there is an official will to marginalise Iranian Arabs or deny them their basic rights
  • administrative inefficiencies are often wrongly blamed on religious or ethnic discrimination
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • "In Iran for example, this problem is not only with Arabs but with Kurds ... and other ethnicities as well, and all these groups live in far rural areas, and their complaints are usually taken from [a] political point of view."
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 13 Feb 09
       
      Is this a case of essentially class struggles, or rural-urban divides, being mapped onto identity politics as a mobilizable issue? If so, why? Is it the international discourse of human rights and self-determination? Is it the primordial connection or glue of ethnic and other groups?
  • rumoured that Tehran wanted to disperse the Arab communities throughout Iran.
  • Amir al-Musawi, an Iranian political analyst and former consultant to the ministry of defence, says foreign governments have been fuelling dissent in Ahwaz. "The Ahwazi people are supporters of the Iranian revolution, but there are some mercenaries who have been funded by foreign powers to create a situation where it appears there is a falling out between Iranian Arabs and the government," he said. "We know the British in Basra are fuelling some Ahwazi mercenary acts but we are sure they will get nowhere."
  • a mixed Shia and Sunni community
  • Ahwazi Arabs have traditionally attempted to mark Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar in which Muslims fast from dawn to dusk, in conjunction with Sunni Arab countries.
  • "Iran's history is characterised by rich debate over the meaning of Shia doctrine and the implications of theology, and much of this diversity has been suffocated in the Islamic Republic,"
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 13 Feb 09
       
      States tend to prefer a single orthodoxy over a 'rich debate.'
  • "Iranians believe that Arabs led the Muslim nation for 1,000 years, and the Turks had that opportunity for several centuries until World War One. Tehran thinks the time has come for it to lead the Muslim world."
  • "In 1980 when the Iraqi army attacked Ahwazi cities, Ahwazi Arabs defended their cities despite the fact they had the chance to get annexed to an Arab country, Iraq. It is true the idea appealed to some Ahwazis but they were [a] minority," al-Musawi told Al Jazeera. Al-Seyed Nima denied that Ahwazis willingly fought with the Iranian army and said they had been hired as mercenaries or forced to enlist.
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 13 Feb 09
       
      Notice that history matters hugely in these debates about identity, and becomes mobilized in particular causes.
  • Zhaleh United States 11/02/2009 I was born and raised in Khouzestan and this is the first time I hear iranian arabs being refered to as Ahwazi. Ahwaz is a city with mix population. If you see less improvement in Khouzestan than rest of the country is because this area was worst hit by 8 years of Iran/Iraq war and not because half of the population are arabs. Amnesty International needs to define what they see as discrimination. In Iran arabs can dress in their traditional attire, free to speak their language. Pure nonsense....
  • Chris Sweden 11/02/2009 To Mike, Canada Persian 51%, Azeri 24%, Gilaki and Mazandarani 8%, Kurd 7%, Arab 3%, Lur 2%, Baloch 2%, Turkmen 2%, other 1% Simple facts is stupid to lie about
  • minorities are not able to have equal rights in any country
  • I am an Azeri (Turkish Iranian) and I do NOT feel culturaly repressed!
Ed Webb

Russian reporters receive threats after investigating secret military group: Editor - I... - 0 views

english.ahram.org.eg/...-threats-after-investigat.aspx

Russia Libya media journalists harassment censorship mercenaries

shared by Ed Webb on 15 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • "Proekt," an independent Moscow-based online news outlet which specialises in investigations, began to publish a series of articles in March looking into the role of a shadowy group of mercenaries known as Wagner. Around the same time, Roman Badanin, its editor-in-chief, said his journalists began to get emailed threats promising physical retribution for their work. Unknown individuals tried to break into his staff's personal accounts on Facebook, the Telegram messenger service and Google mail, he said, and one of his journalists was followed in the street by an unknown man who filmed her with a video camera.
  • Badanin said he could not prove who was behind the harassment campaign, which he said peaked last month when Proekt ran an investigation into Wagner's alleged activities in Libya.
  • People with ties to the Wagner group have previously told Reuters that it has carried out clandestine combat missions on the Kremlin's behalf in Ukraine and Syria. Russian authorities deny Wagner contractors carry out their orders.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The Wagner group was thrust into the spotlight last year when three Russian journalists were killed in Central African Republic while investigating its alleged presence there.
  • Committee to Protect Journalists says 28 journalists have been killed in Russia since 2000
Ed Webb

Tunisian president criticizes rioters, urges calm - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2010122803085.html

Tunisia riots

shared by Ed Webb on 29 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • image released by the Tunisian Presidency office
  • accusing rioters of hurting Tunisia's image
  • a minority of extremists and mercenaries
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • pledged to "respect freedom of opinion and expression." Human rights groups routinely criticize Tunisia for abuses including a lack of media freedom.
Ed Webb

Is this company saving newspapers or profiting from their demise? - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...9-8e21-59a09ff1e2a1_story.html

newspapers media US USA business capitalism

shared by Ed Webb on 12 Feb 19 - No Cached
  • Alden Global Capital, the New York City hedge fund that backed the purchase of and dramatic cost-cutting at more than 100 newspapers — causing more than 1,000 lost jobs.
  • The hedge fund’s newspaper business, Digital First Media, is bidding to buy Gannett, operator of the nation’s largest chain of daily newspapers by circulation, including USA Today — as well as its $900 million in remaining property and equipment — for more than $1.3 billion.
  • They buy newspapers already in financial distress, including big-city dailies such as the San Jose Mercury News and the Denver Post, reap the cash flow and lay off editors, reporters and photographers to boost profits.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • After The Post sent inquiries to the company’s executives, the website for Twenty Lake Holdings was replaced with a page saying “Our website is under construction.” Company president Joseph E. Miller declined to comment.
  • Alden has moved more aggressively to make money off its real estate than competing media companies. For Alden, the Commercial Appeal’s building may not have been an afterthought but its main target.
  • While Gannett is resistant to Alden’s hostile bid for the company’s newspapers, Gannett has already sold at least six of its buildings — at least five of them within the past year — to Twenty Lake Holdings or an affiliate
  • Gannett sold Twenty Lake the headquarters of the Asheville Citizen-Times in North Carolina for $3.2 million. In a transaction the county recorded on the same day, Twenty Lake flipped the property to a local developer for $5.3 million
  • the newspaper industry, which lost 45 percent of newsroom positions between 2008 and 2017
  • At several Digital First newspapers, employees now must work at home or from coffee shops, their brick-and-mortar newsrooms sold and replaced with the most profitable alternative: nothing.
  • At the dozen Digital First publications represented by the NewsGuild, the number of union jobs has declined nearly 70 percent, from 1,552 in 2012 to 487 in 2018. University of North Carolina researchers found, based on 12 newspapers, that Digital First has cut staff at a rate more than twice the national average during that time.
  • a pure liquidation strategy
  • After Alden acquires a newspaper, the team of companies it backs moves to monetize every square foot of its real estate.
  • In January, layoffs at BuzzFeed and HuffPost accentuated the difficulty of growing a digital news business. On Jan. 24, Gannett began laying off dozens more newsroom staffers around the country.
  • At the Delaware County Daily Times in Pennsylvania, the staff shrunk from 125 people to 25 in six years, said Bill Ross, executive director of the NewsGuild of Greater Philadelphia. Digital First sold the paper’s old building for $2 million in 2016; reporters and editors now work out of a converted CVS and bicycle repair shop.
  • The union that represents reporters at Digital First has tried to persuade Duke — to which his family has been a major donor — to remove Heath Freeman from the advisory board of the Freeman Center for Jewish Life because of his role in “weakening American news collection and disserving American democracy.”
  • “You’re going to take the profits that you reap as a result of cutting our staff and hurting the community that we serve, and you’re going to use it to buy stock in Fred’s pharmacy and then lose all that money?” Brandt said. “That’s what our purpose is? That’s what our sacrifice was for?”
1 - 6 of 6
Showing 20▼ items per page