Egyptian activists bemoan 'attack on media' - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East - 3 views
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Journalist Khaled El Balshy — a keen defender of freedom of expression and a democracy advocate, deputy head of the Egyptian Press Syndicate and head of the syndicate’s Freedom Committee — has been vigorously campaigning for the release of jailed journalists in Egypt. This week Balshy himself faced prosecution and risked being imprisoned on charges of “inciting protests, insulting the police and inciting to overthrow the regime.”
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On April 6 the Interior Ministry, which had filed the legal complaint against him, was forced to withdraw the lawsuit following an outcry from fellow journalists, free speech advocates and rights organizations
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Minutes after hearing of the warrant for his arrest, he boldly declared in a Facebook post: “If they want to arrest me, I’m in my office. I’m not better than those who are imprisoned.”
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Living-Room Democracy - The New Yorker - 0 views
In Translation: Egyptian minister, the worst job in the world - The Arabist - 0 views
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For weeks, the Egyptian press has reported that prospective ministers are turning down offers to join the cabinet led by Prime Minister Ismail Sherif
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under Sisi, most if not all key decisions are made in the presidency. A kind of shadow government run by intelligence officers holds the real files. And the president – as seen in the long-postponed decision to devalue the currency – waits until the very last moment to make vital decisions, wasting time, public confidence and opportunity in the process
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things are changing fast and people are fed up
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President Morsi of Egypt Is Undercut by State-Run Media - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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Emad Shahin, a political scientist at the American University in Cairo, said the state media’s attacks on the head of state made the situation perfectly clear: Mr. Morsi represented a double threat as the first civilian and the first Islamist to hold the presidency. “This is a deliberate and well-orchestrated campaign to shake Morsi’s image, ensure his failure and frustrate the revolution,” Mr. Shahin said.
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Ahmed Abu Baraka, a lawyer for the Muslim Brotherhood, said the issue was deeper than bias. “It is an incurable disease in state media that needs surgery,” he said, blaming 60 years of parroting the ideology of secular dictatorship.
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Taghrid Wafi, a state television producer, said she and her colleagues were in “confusion.” “They don’t know who is in charge,” she said, noting that in some ways the military’s grip on the news media had loosened since Mr. Morsi’s election. For the first time, she said, she could interview activists who criticized the military for court-martialing civilians. “You know we don’t work on our own; we need approval for our guests.”
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Women, Media, Blasphemy, and the President: Four Constitutional Quarrels Explained : Tu... - 0 views
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current status of various constitutional controversies, such as the status of women, the criminalization of blasphemy, the creation of a government-appointed media regulatory committee, and the system for electing the president
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multi-party support will be necessary to pass these articles
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it remains disputed whether the president will be elected by the people or by the parliament
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In Post-Mubarak Egypt, Journalists Resent New Media Controls | World | TIME.com - 0 views
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optimism crumbled on Aug. 8 when the Shura Council — the upper house of parliament controlled by Morsy’s Muslim Brotherhood — announced dozens of new editors at a host of state-owned newspapers and magazines. The new al-Ahram editor, Abdel Nasser Salama, was just one of the hires that prompted a widespread revolt among Egyptian journalists
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The day after the appointments, a handful of columnists (all at privately owned papers) ran blank columns in protest — objecting to both the individual choices and the idea that Morsy’s government was adopting the Mubarak-era levers of media control. That turned out to be just the opening salvo in a widening conflict that has Morsy’s young government accused of suppressing free speech. A pair of prominent government critics now face charges of incitement to violence and the purely Mubarak-era crime of “insulting the President.” Tawfiq Okasha, a firebrand anti-Brotherhood television host, has had the channel he owns temporarily shut down. And police raided the offices of the privately owned newspaper al-Dostour, confiscated the Aug. 11 edition of the paper and charged its editor in chief, Islam Afify, with incitement.
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Kassem still warned that the Brotherhood had already proved itself too prickly and thin-skinned to rule responsibly over a raucous post-Mubarak Egypt. “They’re a quasi-military organization,” he said. “Internally there’s no such thing as criticism of your superiors.”
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THE DAILY STAR :: Culture :: Art :: Syrian cartoonist Ali Farzat named journalist of th... - 0 views
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Syrian cartoonist Ali Farzat was named journalist of the year at the 2011 Prize for Press Freedom for his defense of press freedom. “This year we are honoring a courageous journalist who has been the victim of brutal repression by an obsolete government,” Reporters Without Borders secretary general Jean-François Julliard said. Reporters Without Borders awarded the prize along with the French newspaper Le Monde. “Ali Farzat fully deserves this award. His cartoons target the abuses of a desperate regime with its back to the wall and encourage Syrians to demand their rights and to express themselves freely.”
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“I dedicate this award to the martyrs, to those who have been injured and to those who struggle for freedom. May thanks be given to all those who have turned the Arab Spring into a victory over darkness and repression.”
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This October, Farzat received the Sakharov prize from the European parliament, which is awarded to campaigners for freedom.
No to Military Trials for Civilians: Half an Hour With Khaled - 0 views
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they do not kill us to restore their state; they kill us because killing and jailing are normal behaviours in their state
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It wasn’t only the police of their state who let us down; did the deans of their colleges not share in running over our children? Were we not let down by the bakeries and the gas depots of their state? By the ferries and ports of their state? Were we not let down by its wheel of production that lavishes millions on the director and the consultant while at a standstill but cannot spare a crumb for the worker when turning? Were we not let down by its economy that closes down the textiles factories while the cotton is piled high in the farmers home but keeps the fertilizer plant pouring poison into our water? Were we not let down by its football clubs that let security brutalize the fans if they cheer too noisily but intervenes to shield players when they raise arms? We are let down by all its institutions and every leader in it and tomorrow we will be let down by its parliament and its president.
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That you should bury your son rather than he bury you? Is there a worse injustice? Is there a worse imbalance? We kid ourselves and pretend it’s an exceptional event and that it is possible to reform that state, but all the evidence shows that it is a normal event and there is no hope except in the fall of that state.
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Iranian Police Seizing Dissidents Get Aid Of Western Companies - Bloomberg - 0 views
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About half the political prisoners he met in jail told him police had tracked their communications and movements through their cell phones
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Stockholm-based Ericsson AB, Creativity Software Ltd. of the U.K. and Dublin-based AdaptiveMobile Security Ltd. marketed or provided gear over the past two years that Iran’s law enforcement or state security agencies would have access to, according to more than 100 documents and interviews with more than two dozen technicians and managers who worked on the systems.
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When Iranian security officers needed to locate a target one night in late 2009, one former Ericsson employee says he got an emergency call to come into the office to fix a glitch in an Ericsson positioning center.
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Bad News for the Brotherhood - By Mirette F. Mabrouk | The Middle East Channel - 0 views
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Over the 30 years leading up to the 2011 popular uprising, state media took its cue from Hosni Mubarak's gatekeeper, the diminutive but terrifying Safwat el-Sherif, former minister of information. Post January 25, state media and papers backed the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), the country's ruling military council. Last week, in a nod to the democratic process, it was the turn of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). Egypt's upper house of parliament, the Shura Council, announced the appointments of the new editors, setting off a storm of angry protest among journalists, led by the Journalists' Syndicate, who insisted that the Islamist-dominated council had essentially rigged the selection process and assigned their own men to do its bidding.
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Gamal Fahmy, secretary general of the Journalists' Syndicate, also told Egypt Independent that he thought the majority of the new editors were weak, professionally speaking, and certainly not qualified to lead the kind of large staffs involved in these papers. Professional competence is an especially sore point; Yasser Rizk, the former editor of Al-Akhbar is generally acknowledged to have worked wonders with the ailing publication. However, he has not been supportive of the Islamists and was replaced during the shuffle.
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The appointments were followed by a rash of blank editorial pages in national newspapers, a favored means of protest. One of the most prominent protesters was Gamal Fahmy, whose column in in Al-Tahrir newspaper simply read: "This space is blank to protest the hereditary system that did not fall with the ousting of Mubarak and his son. It seems that the Muslim Brotherhood is trying to revive it after it was blinded by arrogance. This protest is against their control of the public owned media."
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Reporting on Corruption in Tunisia: The Price Journalists Pay : Nawaat de Tunisie - Tun... - 1 views
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as a journalist you have to go to official sources but most of the time they just don’t respond. I have my sources and obtain different information about corruption at the municipal level. I know those who are on the municipal council and sometimes receive information about mismanagement and corruption, but when you ask for information from other sources you get total silence.” He added: “When you write about corruption and you have checked all your facts, the newspaper doesn’t want to publish the story. Recently I did an investigative report on how a leading sports figure is involved in corruption and when I had finished it no Tunisian newspaper would publish it. Unfortunately websites and blogs do not have the same impact on readers. On them we can sometimes post articles on corruption but they do not have the same impact as daily and weekly newspapers.”
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The pressure exerted by the Tunisian authorities on journalists who attempt to cover corruption has taken its toll. The editor-in-chief of one opposition newspaper said that his newspaper refrained from making accusations of corruption. “We seek compromise within the constraints imposed upon us,” he said, in a clear reference to self-censorship, although he claimed that his newspaper differed from others, which, in return for “financing,” have “changed their tune.” The editor of another opposition newspaper, who is also an MP, said his newspaper does cover corruption and mismanagement. It is possible, he said, that he is given slightly more leeway by the authorities because his political party is legal and therefore has a right to state funding. Nonetheless, his paper is put under significant pressure. Tunisia’s Agency for Exterior Communication controls public advertising – which it apportions only to newspapers it approves of. This translates into considerable financial difficulties for any newspapers that don’t toe the line.
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authorities employ two broad means to prevent unfavorable news from getting out: Sometimes they employ a legal ruling banning a particular issue or issues; this was the case when his newspaper published details about a court hearing related to social protests in the south of the country, when activists were on trial. On other occasions, the authorities don’t use the law; instead plainclothes police go to the stands and order them not to sell the issue.
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Ah Ahram chairman fired - The Arabist - 0 views
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There was intense lobbying against Hani Shukrallah (in ahram and outside of it) whose policy many have discovered today, was not acceptable. He was not informed of that previously and he wasn't informed of his replacement.
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There was intense lobbying against Hani Shukrallah (in ahram and outside of it) whose policy many have discovered today, was not acceptable. He was not informed of that previously and he wasn't informed of his replacement. This development is an exception to the changes that took place yesterday because all the other editors were above 65 and thus had to go. All the editors under 65 remained, except Shukrallah who is 55.
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There was intense lobbying against Hani Shukrallah (in ahram and outside of it) whose policy many have discovered today, was not acceptable. He was not informed of that previously and he wasn't informed of his replacement. This development is an exception to the changes that took place yesterday because all the other editors were above 65 and thus had to go. All the editors under 65 remained, except Shukrallah who is 55.
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Iraqi 'Ninth Studio' avoids TV's sectarian divide - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle... - 0 views
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Since 2003, the televised media environment in Iraq has witnessed dramatic changes. Whereas Iraqis were once forced to choose between only two local television stations — one administered by the Ministry of Information and the other run by the son of then-President Saddam Hussein — they now have dozens of satellite channels reporting on national affairs.
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a deep hunger on the part of many Iraqis to learn about the outside world from which they had been cut off by the old regime's extremely strict official censorship. Iraq undertook a rapid and astounding transition from a model of censorship resembling what George Orwell described in his novel 1984 toward what former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld described as a state of "untidy” freedom.
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There is a widespread belief that the official Iraqi channel has lost its independence and been completely reduced to subservience to the will and dictates of the government, even to the point that members of parliament have threatened to block funding for its operating budget. In similar fashion, most other Iraqi channels have become captive to political influences either hostile or sympathetic toward the government. Many have concluded that the media outlets in Iraq are actually deepening the country's ethnic and sectarian divides, rather than working to overcome them.
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Iraqi law recognizes Kurdish, other languages - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East - 0 views
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The law voted on by parliament a few weeks ago — eight years after the constitution entered into force — serves as a means to implement what is specified in the Constitution, without adding anything other than clarifications. For example, it notes that Turkmen, Assyrian or Armenian citizens have the right to ask the administration of the government school where their children study to provide the latter with lessons in their mother tongue. In this respect, Iraq is following in the footsteps of developed countries that have realized the importance of teaching a person his or her mother tongue if they so desire. Lawmakers have confirmed the importance of spreading "linguistic awareness" and bringing the various components of the country closer together. Today, this is now an issue of law, budget and implementation, especially when it comes to the employees who should be appointed in official circles and schools so that this law can come into effect. [To truly implement the law], thousands of employees are needed.
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the law confirms — without directly mentioning it — the idea that was expressed in Article 3 of the Constitution: that Iraq is a country of many nationalities, religions and sects. This is one of the most important issues that the Iraq state has refused to recognize since its inception. In Iraq, there are languages that can be traced back to completely different linguistic families. These include Semitic languages, Indo-Iranian languages (from which Farsi and Kurdish originated), Altaic languages (from which Turkish languages originated), Indo-European languages (from which Armenian originated) and Caucasian languages (from which Circassian originated). There are also some Iraqis who speak languages that are Slavic in origin
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in spite of the sacrifices made by Kurds in Iran, Turkey and Syria, the type of recognition achieved by Iraq's Kurds in January of 2013 still remains a dream
Veteran US diplomat tackles Middle East 'mess' - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East - 0 views
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Al-Monitor: In the old days, the Iranians and the Saudis used to talk to each other and resolve issues. Now, this is a missing piece. Patterson: It goes back 20 years [to Lebanon]. This is a missing piece. And so the proxy war has gotten a lot worse and you see it all over now in frankly scary dimensions. But it wasn’t that long ago when they had some kind of relationship. … They never liked each other, but they weren’t at this level of animosity.
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Al-Monitor: Let’s turn to Egypt. General, now Field Marshal [Abdel Fattah] al-Sisi seems on his way to becoming Egypt’s next president. How would you characterize our relationship with him and the Egyptian government at this point? Patterson: Personal relationships with him have been good — certainly with ambassadors, including me and with [Defense] Secretary [Chuck] Hagel and with Secretary Kerry and a lot of people on the Hill. But it’s certainly no secret that we’re concerned about freedom of the press, freedom of association, all the fundamentals that are being thrown into question right now in Egypt, not to mention the huge economic issues.
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Al-Monitor: There have been some incredibly anti-American statements lately in Egypt. [Former parliament member and current Al-Osboa editor] Mustafa Bakri openly called last week for attacks against Americans. What are we doing to counter this? Patterson: We complain to the government. Mr. Bakri did sort of back off that statement. But now there has been a rash of hugely anti-American stuff in the press. This ebbs and flows, … [but] it’s really a quite dangerous game, because you fan up public opinion and then you’re hostage to public opinion.
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Erdogan: Turkey freer than some EU states - Europe - Al Jazeera English - 0 views
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"These regulations do not impose any censorship at all on the internet. On the contrary, they make it safer and freer."
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Human Rights Watch said the restrictions raised concerns that a "defensive government is seeking to increase its power to silence critics and to arbitrarily limit politically damaging material online". Martin Schulz, European Parliament chief, called them a "step back in an already suffocating environment for media freedom", while the US also expressed misgivings. 460
Secular Parties and Premier Lead in Iraq - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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“This really reflects that Iraqi society is looking for alternatives — they do not necessarily believe that the Islamists should lead the country,” said Qassim Daoud, a member of Parliament and one of the leaders of an independent, secular-leaning party. “The public are interested in services, and this election has shown them that they can change anything by democratic means if they are not satisfied.”
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The Falluja area of Anbar Province had one of the lowest turnouts in the country, with some estimates that only 25 percent of eligible voters went to the polls. Over all, the province had extremely low turnout and the new tribal parties that believed they would do well were furious that their main competitor, the religious Iraqi Islamic Party, appeared to have once again won a large number of seats.
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