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Ed Webb

Turkey: Democracy or State of Fear? | Al Akhbar English - 1 views

english.al-akhbar.com/...turkey-democracy-or-state-fear

Turkey censorship journalists state law rights

shared by Ed Webb on 27 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • When I visited them in prison, both were speechless about the allegations, which were, according to them, too absurd to make a defense case against. Like other recently arrested journalists, politicians and students, Şık and Şener were desperate in front of the new upside down logic of the Turkish judiciary system.
  • Dink's case has been the last incident that caused outrage among the supporters of the government. As Dink's family lawyer Fethiye Çetin stated after the verdict: “The government seems to be on good terms with the ‘deep state.’”
  • In all the courtrooms in Turkey, a writing on the wall behind the judge reads: "Justice is the foundation of the state.” That foundation has been shaken seriously in today's Turkey. Not only because of those thousands of political arrests but also because of the severe contradiction between the verdicts. University student Cihan Kırmızıgül can spend months in prison because he passed by a demonstration wearing a kafiyya whereas several rapers of the 13 year old (aka N.Ç) are free. A 16 year old girl can be ordered by court not to talk to her grandmother because the latter happened to join a demonstrations against the hydroelectric centrals while the Islamist writer Hüseyin Üzmez can be freed after his sexual assault on a minor.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • one of my colleagues told me that he is too afraid to go to the court because he knew that his attendance would be recorded by the police
Ed Webb

Mapping Iran's Online Public: Politics and Culture in the Persian Blogosphere | Berkman... - 1 views

cyber.law.harvard.edu/...Mapping_Irans_Online_Public

iran berkman blogosphere mapping blogs bloggers politics

shared by Ed Webb on 04 Jun 09 - Cached
  • We label the poles as 1) Secular/Reformist, 2) Conservative/Religious, 3) Persian Poetry and Literature, and 4) Mixed Networks.
  • Surprisingly, a minority of bloggers in the secular/reformist pole appear to blog anonymously, even in the more politically-oriented part of it; instead, it is more common for bloggers in the religious/conservative pole to blog anonymously.
Ed Webb

Saudi reporter jailed for five years for anti-government tweets | Middle East Eye - 0 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...i-government-tweets-1573325710

journalist Saudi KSA censorship shia minorities

shared by Ed Webb on 27 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • Saudi Arabia has sentenced a journalist to five years in prison and a fine of 50,000 riyals (around $13,300) after being charged for “insulting the rulers (and) inciting public opinion”, said Amnesty International on Friday.Alaa Brinji was also found guilty on 24 March of “accusing security officers of killing protesters in Awamiyya” – a Shia town in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province.He was also slapped with an eight-year travel ban. Brinji, who worked for Saudi newspapers Al-Bilad, Okaz and Al-Sharq, has already spent two years behind bars since May 2014, including a period of incommunicado solitary confinement.
Ed Webb

Monsters of Our Own Imaginings | Foreign Policy - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...russels-bombings-islamic-state

terror terrorism foreignpolicy IR analysis opinion GWOT walt Belgium ISIS Qaeda

shared by Ed Webb on 03 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • Terrorist attacks have occurred in Europe, America, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and many other places, and no level of surveillance, police presence, border controls, drone strikes, targeted killings, or enhanced interrogation is going to prevent every one of them. Even if we could provide absolutely air-tight protection around one type of target, others targets would remain exposed
  • the belief that we could eliminate the danger entirely is no more realistic than thinking better health care will grant you eternal life. For this reason, condemning politicians for failing to prevent every single attack is counterproductive — and possibly dangerous — because it encourages leaders to go overboard in the pursuit of perfect security and to waste time and money that could be better spent on other things. Even worse, the fear of being blamed for “not doing enough” will lead some leaders to take steps that make the problem worse — like bombing distant countries — merely to look and sound tough and resolute.
  • there is no magic key to stopping terrorism because the motivations for it are so varied. Sometimes it stems from anger and opposition to foreign occupation or perceived foreign interference — as with the Tamil Tigers, Irish Republican Army, al Qaeda, Hezbollah, or Hamas. In other cases, it arises from opposition to a corrupt and despised ruling elite. Or it could be both: Osama bin Laden was equally angry at “crusader” nations for interfering in the Muslim world and at the Arab governments he believed were in cahoots with them. In the West, homegrown terrorists such as Anders Breivik or Timothy McVeigh are driven to mass murder by misguided anger at political systems they (falsely) believe are betraying their nation’s core values. Sometimes terrorism arises from perverted religious beliefs; at other times the motivating ideology is wholly secular. Because so many different grievances can lead individuals or groups to employ terrorist methods, there is no single policy response that could make the problem disappear forever.
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  • Compared with other risks to human life and well-being, contemporary international terrorism remains a minor problem
  • The Islamic State killed 31 people in Brussels on Tuesday, but more than half a billion people in Europe were just fine on that day. So when the British government raised the “threat level” and told its citizens to avoid “all but essential travel” to Belgium following Tuesday’s attacks, it is demonstrating a decidedly non-Churchillian panic. Needless to say, that is precisely what groups like the Islamic State want to provoke.
  • the same toxic blend of media and politics that brought us Donald Trump’s candidacy makes it nearly impossible to have a rational assessment of terrorism
  • Newspapers, radio, cable news channels, and assorted websites all live for events like this, and they know that hyping the danger will keep people reading, listening, and watching. The Islamic State and its partners really couldn’t ask for a better ally, because overheated media coverage makes weak groups seem more powerful than they really are and helps convince the public they are at greater risk than is in fact the case. As long as media coverage continues to provide the Islamic State et al. with such free and effective publicity, why should these groups ever abandon such tactics?
  • The Islamic State wouldn’t have to use terrorism if it were strong enough to advance its cause through normal means or if its message were attractive enough to command the loyalty of more than a miniscule fraction of the world’s population (or the world’s Muslims, for that matter). Because it lacks abundant resources and its message is toxic to most people, the Islamic State has to rely on suicide attacks, beheadings, and violent videos to try to scare us into doing something stupid. The Islamic State cannot conquer Europe and impose its weird version of Islam on the more than 500 million people who live there; the most it can hope for is to get European countries to do self-destructive things to themselves in response. Similarly, neither al Qaeda, the Islamic State, nor other extremists could destroy the U.S. economy, undermine the U.S. military, or weaken American resolve directly; but they did achieve some of their goals when they provoked us into invading Iraq and when they convinced two presidents to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into the bottomless pit in Afghanistan.
  • Terrorism is not really the problem; the problem is how we respond to it
  • At the moment, the challenge of contemporary terrorism seems to be bringing out not the best in the West — but the worst. Instead of resolution and grit, we get bluster and hyperbole. Instead of measured threat assessments, patient and careful strategizing, and a realistic sense of what can and cannot be achieved, we get symbolic gestures, the abandonment of our own principles, and political posturing.
  • how would a grown-up like Marshall or Dwight D. Eisenhower respond to this danger? No doubt they’d see it as a serious problem, but anyone who had witnessed the carnage of a world war would not be cowed by intermittent acts of extremist violence, no matter how shocking they are to our sensibilities. They’d use the bully pulpit to shame the fearmongers on Fox and CNN, and they’d never miss an opportunity to remind us that the danger is not, in fact, that great and that we should not, and cannot, live our lives in fear of every shadow and in thrall to monsters of our own imaginings. They would encourage us to live our daily lives as we always have, confident that our societies possess a strength and resilience that will easily outlast the weak and timorous groups that are trying to disrupt us. And then, this summer, they’d take a European vacation.
Ed Webb

Sex, Social Mores, and Keyword Filtering: Microsoft Bing in the "Arabian Countries" | O... - 0 views

opennet.net/crosoft-bing-arabian-countries

internet censorship filtering search MENA ArabWorld microsoft Bing

shared by Ed Webb on 06 Jan 12 - Cached
  • There is no filtering by keywords if a user chooses another country (e.g., United States, Canada) as their location even if they are physically located in an Arab country. - One anomaly we found when probing filtering by keywords is that filtering does not work if a filtered Arabic keyword is used together with another non-filtered keyword. For example, a search using the Arabic word for “sex” is banned, but using the Arabic term for “sex stories” is not banned.
  • We found no evidence of filtering of keywords in Arabic or English that could return results in other content categories. We tested keywords that could yield politically sensitive content (e.g., “democracy”, “freedom”, “opposition”), content related to violence and terrorism (e.g., “torture”, terror”, “explosive”), Web sites related to minority and religious rights (e.g., “Shiite”, “Baha’i”, “Christian”, “Jews”), and content related to women’s rights (e.g., “gender”, “equality”). None of the tested keywords were found banned.
  • It is interesting that Microsoft’s implementation of this type of wholesale social content censorship for the entire “Arabian countries” region is in fact not being practiced by many of the Arab government censors themselves. That is, although political filtering is widespread in the MENA region, social filtering, including keyword filtering, is not practiced by all countries in MENA. ONI 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 testing and research found no evidence of social content filtering (e.g., sex, nudity, and homosexuality) at the national level in countries such as Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Libya.10
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  • filtering at the keyword level results in overblocking, as banning the use of certain keywords to search for Web sites, not just images, prevents users from accessing—based on Microsoft’s definition of objectionable content—legitimate content such as sex education and encyclopedic information about homosexuality.
  • The current approach uses a region-wide standard for filtering content as opposed to the more targeted, granular, and country-specific policy. A more targeted approach—either country-based or preferably, defined by the user—is more generally consistent with minimizing the impact on freedom of speech. Through its involvement in the Global Network Initiative, Microsoft has signaled its willingness to be at the forefront in protecting freedom of expression around the world. It is difficult to reconcile this position with Bing’s current filtering standards.
Ed Webb

Egyptian Judge Speaks Against Islamist Victory Before Presidential Runoff - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...efore-presidential-runoff.html

Egypt politics media propaganda ikhwan MB SCAF judiciary presidentialelections

shared by Ed Webb on 08 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • The president of the association of Egyptian judges said Thursday that they were abandoning their neutrality toward the coming presidential runoff in an effort to guard against an Islamist monopoly of power.
  • if the group’s members had known Islamists would win most of the seats in Parliament after elections that ended in January, they would not have supervised the voting
  • the effect of Judge Zend’s appearance was a public pitch for the presidential campaign of Ahmed Shafik, the last prime minister under Mr. Mubarak, who is now squaring off against the Brotherhood’s nominee, Mohamed Morsi
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  • now Egypt is falling. We won’t leave matters for those who can’t manage them, with the excuse that we’re not people of politics. No, we are people of politics.
  • Judge Zend appears to be giving voice to a panic that has seized much of Egypt’s old elite about the prospect of a president from the Brotherhood, demonized under Mr. Mubarak despite its 25-year record of moderation as a minority bloc in Parliament
  • “I think it is a message more or less justifying a crackdown,” said Omar Ashour, an Egyptian professor of political science at the University of Exeter, in England, who is now in Cairo. “At minimum it is a smear attempt days before the election, to try to scare voters who might be leaning toward the Muslim Brotherhood.”
  • Mr. Shafik, for his part, praised Judge Zend for his “important news conference.” But he also urged the judges not to sit out the runoff in order to avoid confusion that might lead to an Islamist victory, “for the sake of protecting Egypt from the disintegration, disorder and chaos the rogues want for the country.”
  • the chorus of alarms rising from the political establishment, including both officials of the Mubarak government and the liberals it tolerated. Many say they are still more afraid of the Brotherhood than Mr. Shafik, the former prime minister, despite his deep ties to Mr. Mubarak and reputation as a strongman
  • Osama el-Ghazali-Harb, the leader of the Democratic Front Party and one of the most credible liberal voices tolerated under Mr. Mubarak, published a column in the flagship state newspaper, Al Ahram, endorsing Mr. Shafik
  • on Thursday, Al Ahram published a column by a retired general, Hussam Seilam, arguing that if the Brotherhood came to power, Egypt would resemble Iran. “God forbid, the world will treat Egypt as a terrorist state,” he wrote
Ed Webb

Informed Comment: Iraq: Kurdish-Arab War in the Offing? - 0 views

www.juancole.com/...urdish-arab-war-in-offing.html

Iraq Kurds Arabs minorities elections

shared by Ed Webb on 21 Feb 09 - Cached
  • Open Source Center of the USG
  • statements made by Nechirvan Barzani, Kurdistan Region prime minister, about a war breaking out between Arabs and Kurds after the American withdrawal from Iraq
  • Kamal Kirkuki, Kurdistan Region Parliament Deputy Speaker, has described Al-Maliki as a "dangerous man", and said that the Kurds are trying to stand up to him, adding: "Al-Maliki is a danger to Iraq and to democracy; he is a second Saddam."'
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  • If the Kurdish-Arab hostity rises futher,the US could be drawn right back in to Iraq. The Eastern Mediterranean and the meeting-point of Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq, is too important to allow it to fall into substantial and long-term violence.
  • There was a great deal of empathy towards the Kurdish people in the rest of Iraq before the invasion. But their bizarre arrogance and fascist behavior has turned the Iraqis against them.
  • the final solution, barring the toppling the Kurdish warlords by their own people, is either the full independence of Kurdistan, or a symbolic confideration between two economically and politiacally separate states.
  • Recently, the Kurds have demanded Baghdad's intervention/protection from the "incursions" by Turkey. For that to occur, Iraq must have a stronger central government than the Kurds desire.
  • hundreds of thousands of Assyrians
  • the KDP spent so much effort on controlling the Assyrians that for the first time, the independent Yezidi slate won a seat in the provincial government.
Ed Webb

Media, Old and New at 3arabawy - 0 views

arabist.net/...media-old-and-new

3arabawy bloggers blogging Egypt India

shared by Ed Webb on 10 Mar 09 - Cached
  • The number of those who have cyberaccess in Egypt, according to a 2008 government report, reached 9.17 million citizens, out of roughly 80 millions. This is a huge leap from the only 650,000 users we had in 2000. Still, this is a minority in the present time. But just like its Indian counterpart, the Egyptian mainstream media is obssessed with what goes on in the blogosphere. Local media outlets–whether they are Independent, opposition, governement owned, or privately run–regularly monitor blogs, facebook groups, web forums, and report on what goes on for their newspapers, TV and radio stations. Journalists are also hooking themselves up to Twitter and Jaiku to follow what the activists are tweeting and texting about. Many bloggers are also journalists, who have access to the mainstream media and can push for their stories and campaigns to get wider coverage. Of course this means we get on occasions tons of bullshit, negative and sensationalist reporting, but in all cases if a story now goes on some blog, or you launch a campaign on some website, you are more or less assured this will be picked up by journalists in the mainstream media who still have a wider audience than internet browsers.
Amira AlTahawi

اليوم السابع تترجم اكاذيب عن البدو | التايم: البدو.. التحدى الجديد للحكومة ال... - 0 views

www.youm7.com/News.asp

watchdog MEDIA egypt minorities

shared by Amira AlTahawi on 24 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Amira AlTahawi on 24 Feb 10
     
    "شجعوا الجزائر فى مباراتها مع مصر وأكدوا أنهم سيقفون ضد مصر فى حال أى عدوان عليها.."
Ed Webb

Swiss ban on minarets was a vote for tolerance and inclusion | csmonitor.com - 1 views

www.csmonitor.com/...p09s01-coop.html

Switzerland minarets Islamophobia hirsiali opinion

shared by Ed Webb on 06 Dec 09 - Cached
  • By Ayaan Hirsi Ali
  • There are two ways to interpret the vote.
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 06 Dec 09
       
      Actually, I can think of many more than two ways to interpret it. This is a very limited way of framing the issue.
  • Imams can then preach a message of self-segregation and a bold rejection of the ways of the non-Muslims.
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 06 Dec 09
       
      Sure. But they can also preach about, you know, pretty much anything. They can preach a message of tolerance and inclusion, too, and having a minaret doesn't actually change things either way.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • None of those Western academics, diplomats, and politicians who condemn the Swiss vote to ban the minaret address, let alone dispute, these facts.
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 06 Dec 09
       
      I'm a Western academic, and former diplomat, and I'm disputing these 'facts'.
  • And this is what the Swiss vote shows us. This is a confrontation between local, working-class voters (and some middle-class feminists) and Muslim immigrant newcomers who feel that they are entitled, not only to practice their religion, but also to replace the local political order with that of their own.
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 06 Dec 09
       
      This may be what the vote shows you. But you have shown no scrap of evidence that the small minority of Swiss who are Muslims have any such agenda. All there is so far is a tendentious Islamophobic narrative backed by the coarsest of generalizations. Where's the substance?
  • It is remarkable that the Swedish foreign minister, Carl Bildt, said in public that the Swiss vote is a poor act of diplomacy
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 06 Dec 09
       
      I'm with you there. Very odd and poor choice of words there. The UN condemnation of the vote as intolerance was more to the point.
  • There is indeed a wider international confrontation between Islam and the West. The Iraq and Afghan wars are part of that, not to mention the ongoing struggle between Israelis and Palestinians and the nuclear ambitions of Iran. That confrontation should never be confused with the local problem of absorbing those Muslims who have been permitted to become permanent residents and citizens into European societies.
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 06 Dec 09
       
      The problem here is that if you're going to accept the Huntington master-narrative of clash of civilizations, then you cannot really separate these things. If you want to see a confrontation between "Islam" and the "West" then you have to accept that it is within as well as across borders. It is much easier to separate out the domestic and foreign policy issues if you abandon the narrative of the 'clash' - I recommend it.
  • Ed Webb on 06 Dec 09
     
    Hirsi Ali's opinion.
Amira AlTahawi

"مطران اللاتين في بغداد: كسر حاجز الصمت حول قتل المسيحيين " - 0 views

sotaliraq.com/iraqnews.php

iraq انلاصت media assyrians minorities death&dying

shared by Amira AlTahawi on 26 Jan 10 - Cached
  • Amira AlTahawi on 26 Jan 10
     
    "مطران اللاتين في بغداد: كسر حاجز الصمت حول قتل المسيحيين "
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

My first take on The Speech | Marc Lynch - 0 views

lynch.foreignpolicy.com/...the_speech

lynch Obama Cairo Islam diplomacy publicdiplomacy

shared by Ed Webb on 05 Jun 09 - No Cached
  • the rollout of the speech already stands as one of the most successful public diplomacy and strategic communications campaigns I can ever remember -- and hopefully a harbinger of what is to come.  This wasn't a one-off Presidential speech.  The succession of statements (al-Arabiya interview, Turkish Parliament, message to the Iranians) and the engagement on the Israeli-Palestinian policy front set the stage.  Then the White House unleashed the full spectrum of new media engagement for this speech -- SMS and Twitter updates, online video, and online chatroom environment, and more.  This will likely be followed up upon to put substance on the notion of this as a "conversation" rather than an "address" -- which along with concrete policy progress will be the key to its long-term impact, if any. 
  • It's not like Bush left a legacy of active democratization which Obama is supposedly abandoning.  Rather than repeat the old buzzwords to please those invested in the democracy promotion industry, Obama did something more important by addressing head on some of the most vexing issues which have plagued American thinking about democracy in the region. This, to my eye, was the key statement:  America respects the right of all peaceful and law-abiding voices to be heard around the world, even if we disagree with them. And we will welcome all elected, peaceful governments - provided they govern with respect for all their people.  As I noted yesterday, that suggests clearly that the U.S. will accept the democratic participation of peaceful Islamist movements as long as they abstain from violence --and respect their electoral victories provided that they commit to the democratic process.  He made a passionate defense of that latter point, that victors must demonstrate tolerance and respect for minorities and that elections alone are not enough.  But he clearly did not prejudge participants in the electoral game -- the old canard about Islamists wanting "one man, one vote, one time" thankfully, and significantly, did not appear.
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