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Ed Webb

Is Iran on the Verge of Another Revolution? | Journal of Democracy - 0 views

www.journalofdemocracy.org/he-verge-of-another-revolution

Iran protests revolution analysis uprising

shared by Ed Webb on 10 Mar 23 - No Cached
  • the most severe and sustained political upheaval ever faced by the Islamist regime in Iran. Waves of protests, led mostly by women, broke out immediately, sending some two-million people into the streets of 160 cities and small towns, inspiring extraordinary international support. The Twitter hashtag #MahsaAmini broke the world record of 284 million tweets, and the UN Human Rights Commission voted on November 24 to investigate the regime’s deadly repression, which has claimed five-hundred lives and put thousands of people under arrest and eleven hundred on trial.
  • This is neither a “feminist revolution” per se, nor simply the revolt of generation Z, nor merely a protest against the mandatory hijab. This is a movement to reclaim life, a struggle to liberate free and dignified existence from an internal colonization. As the primary objects of this colonization, women have become the major protagonists of the liberation movement.
  • Since its establishment in 1979, the Islamic Republic has been a battlefield between hard-line Islamists who wished to enforce theocracy in the form of clerical rule (velayat-e faqih), and those who believed in popular will and emphasized the republican tenets of the constitution.
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  • Only popular resistance from below and the reformists’ electoral victories could curb the hard-liners’ drive for total subjugation of the state, society, and culture.
  • The Green revolt and the subsequent nationwide uprisings in 2017 and 2019 against socioeconomic ills and authoritarian rule profoundly challenged the Islamist regime but failed to alter it. The uprisings caused not a revolution but the fear of revolution—a fear that was compounded by the revolutionary uprisings against the allied regimes in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, which Iran helped to quell.
  • once they took over the presidency in 2021 and the parliament in 2022 through rigged elections—specifically, through the arbitrary vetoing of credible rival candidates—the hard-liners moved to subjugate a defiant people once again. Extending the “morality police” into the streets and institutions to enforce the “proper hijab” has been only one measure—but it was the one that unleashed a nationwide uprising in which women came to occupy a central place.
  • the culmination of years of steady struggles against a systemic misogyny that the postrevolution regime established
  • With the emergence of the “people,” a super-collective in which differences of class, gender, ethnicity, and religion temporarily disappear in favor of a greater good, the uprising has assumed a revolutionary character. The abolition of the morality police and the mandatory hijab will no longer suffice. For the first time, a nationwide protest movement has called for a regime change and structural socioeconomic transformation.
  • Over the years, headscarves gradually inched back further and further until finally they fell to the shoulders. Officials felt, time and again, paralyzed by this steady spread of bad-hijabi among millions of women who had to endure daily humiliation and punishment. With the initial jail penalty between ten days and two months, showing inches of hair had ignited decades of daily street battles between defiant women and multiple morality enforcers such as Sarallah (wrath of Allah), Amre beh Ma’ruf va Nahye az Monker (command good and forbid wrong), and EdarehAmaken (management of public places). According to a police report during the crackdown on bad-hijabis in 2013, some 3.6 million women were stopped and humiliated in the streets and issued formal citations. Of these, 180,000 were detained.
  • This is the story of women’s “non-movement”—the collective and connective actions of non-collective actors who pursue not a politics of protest but of redress, through direct actions.
  • the uprising is no longer limited to the mandatory hijab and women’s rights. It has grown to include wider concerns and constituencies—young people, students and teachers, middle-class families and workers, residents of some rural and poor communities, and those religious and ethnic minorities (Kurds, Arabs, Azeris, and Baluchis) who, like women, feel like second-class citizens and seem to identify with “Woman, Life, Freedom.”
  • The thousands of tweets describing why people are protesting point time and again to the longing for a humble normal life denied to them by a regime of clerical and military patriarchs. For these dissenters, the regime appears like a colonial entity—with its alien thinking, feeling, and ruling—that has little to do with the lives and worldviews of the majority.
  • The feminism of the movement, rather, is antisystem; it challenges the systemic control of everyday life and the women at its core. It is precisely this antisystemic feminism that promises to liberate not only women but also the oppressed men—the marginalized, the minorities, and those who are demeaned and emasculated by their failure to provide for their families due to economic misfortune.
  • A segment of Muslim women did support the Islamic state, but others fought back. They took to the streets to protest the mandatory hijab, organized collective campaigns, and lobbied “liberal clerics” to secure a women-centered reinterpretation of religious texts. But when the regime extended its repression, women resorted to the “art of presence”—by which I mean the ability to assert collective will in spite of all odds, by circumventing constraints, utilizing what exists, and discovering new spaces within which to make themselves heard, seen, felt, and realized. Simply, women refused to exit public life, not through collective protests but through such ordinary things as pursuing higher education, working outside the home, engaging in the arts, music, and filmmaking, or practicing sports.
  • At this point in time, Iran is far from a “revolutionary situation,” meaning a condition of “dual power” where an organized revolutionary force backed by millions would come to confront a crumbling government and divided security forces. What we are witnessing today, however, is the rise of a revolutionary movement—with its own protest repertoires, language, and identity—that may open Iranian society to a “revolutionary course.”
  • The disproportionate presence of the young—women and men, university and high school students—in the streets of the uprising has led some to interpret it as the revolt of generation-Z against a regime that is woefully out of touch. But this view overlooks the dissidence of older generations, the parents and families that have raised, if not politicized, these children and mostly share their sentiments. A leaked government survey from November 2022 found that 84 percent of Iranians expressed a positive view of the uprising. If the regime allowed peaceful public protests, we would likely see more older people on the streets.
  • Although some workers have joined the protests through demonstrations and labor strikes, a widespread labor showdown has yet to materialize. This may not be easy, because the neoliberal restructuring of the 2000s has fragmented the working class, undermined workers’ job security (including the oil sector), and diminished much of their collective power. In their place, teachers have emerged as a potentially powerful dissenting force with a good degree of organization and protest experience.
  • Shopkeepers and bazaar merchants have also joined the opposition. In fact, they surprised the authorities when at least 70 percent of them, according to a leaked official report, went on strike in Tehran and 21 provinces on 15 November 2022 to mark the 2019 uprising. Not surprisingly, security forces have increasingly been threatening to shut down their businesses.
  • Protesters in the Arab Spring fully utilized existing cultural resources, such as religious rituals and funeral processions, to sustain mass protests. Most critical were the Friday prayers, with their fixed times and places, from which the largest rallies and demonstrations originated. But Friday prayer is not part of the current culture of Iran’s Shia Muslims (unlike the Sunni Baluchies). Most Iranian Muslims rarely even pray at noon, whether on Fridays or any day. In Iran, the Friday prayer sermons are the invented ritual of the Islamist regime and thus the theater of the regime’s power. Consequently, protesters would have to turn to other cultural and religious spaces such as funerals and mourning ceremonies or the Shia rituals of Moharram and Ramadan.
  • During the Green revolt of 2009, the ruling hard-liners banned funerals and prevented families from holding mourning ceremonies for their loved ones
  • the hard-line parliament passed an emergency bill on 9 October 2022 “adjusting” the salaries of civil servants, including 700,000 pensioners who in late 2017 had turned out in force during a wave of protests. Newly employed teachers were to receive more secure contracts, sugarcane workers their unpaid wages, and poor families a 50 percent increase in the basic-needs subsidy.
  • beating, killing, mass detention, torture, execution, drone surveillance, and marking the businesses and homes of dissenters. The regime’s clampdown has reportedly left 525 dead, including 71 minors, 1,100 on trial, and some 30,000 detained. The security forces and Basij militia have lost 68 members in the unrest.
  • The regime’s suppression and the protesters’ pause are likely to diminish the protests. But this does not mean the end of the movement. It means the end of a cycle of protest before a trigger ignites a new one. We have seen these cycles at least since 2017. What is distinct about this time is that it has set Iranian society on a “revolutionary course,” meaning that a large part of society continues to think, imagine, talk, and act in terms of a different future. Here, people’s judgment about public matters is often shaped by a lingering echo of “revolution” and a brewing belief that “they [the regime] will go.” So, any trouble or crisis—for instance, a water shortage— is considered a failure of the regime, and any show of discontent—say, over delayed wages—a revolutionary act. In such a mindset, the status quo is temporary and change only a matter of time.
  • There are, of course, local leaders and ad hoc collectives that communicate ideas and coordinate actions in the neighborhoods, workplaces, and universities. Thanks to their horizontal, networked, and fluid character, their operations are less prone to police repression than a conventional movement organization would be. This kind of decentralized networked activism is also more versatile, allows for multiple voices and ideas, and can use digital media to mobilize larger crowds in less time. But networked movements can also suffer from weaker commitment, unruly decisionmaking, and tenuous structure and sustainability. For instance, who will address a wrongdoing, such as violence, committed in the name of the movement? As a result, movements tend to deploy a hybrid structure by linking the decentralized and fluid activism to a central body. The “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement has yet to take up this consideration.
  • a leadership organization—in the vein of Polish Solidarity, South Africa’s ANC, or Sudan’s Forces of Freedom and Change—is not just about articulating a strategic vision and coordinating actions. It also signals responsibility, representation, popular trust, and tactical unity.
  • if the revolutionary movement is unwilling or unable to pick up the power, others will. This, in fact, is the story of most of the Arab Spring uprisings—Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen, for instance. In these experiences, the protagonists, those who had initiated and carried the uprisings forward, remained mostly marginal to the process of critical decisionmaking while the free-riders, counterrevolutionaries, and custodians of the status quo moved to the center.
  • Things are unlikely to go back to where they were before the uprising. A paradigm shift has occurred in the Iranian subjectivity, expressed most vividly in the recognition of women as transformative actors and the “woman question” as a strategic focus of struggle.
  • Those who expect quick results will likely be dispirited. But the country seems to be on a new course.
Ed Webb

Why it's Time to Retire the Term 'Arab Spring' | Al Bawaba - 1 views

www.albawaba.com/...etire-term-arab-spring-1268340

protest protests MENA Arabs ArabSpring

shared by Ed Webb on 20 Mar 19 - No Cached
  • cross-regional protests are again breaking out in 2019 in Algeria, Sudan, Syria, Jordan and Palestine among other, which has prompted many commentators to herald these movements to be yet another Arab Spring.As this label is used each time, and will likely be used ad nauseum to describe popular movements in the Middle East, it’s worth pausing and questioning its utility.
  • The grievances around which these protests are organized—austerity, corruption, rising cost of basic food and utilities, have been served as a rally cry for movements in the region for the past half-century. Calling each an “Arab Spring” belies the cyclical, repetitive nature of these problems and simplifies the demands of the protesters.
  • Smaller protests have broken out as well. In March 2019, hundreds marched through Deraa, Syria, the first city that protested against the Syrian regime in 2011, to protest the re-erection of a statue memorializing Hafez al-Assad, the former ruler of the country.A subtler protest too has caused controversy in Egypt: Moataz Matar a popular TV host, accused the state of kidnapping two of his brothers and their families. Dissidents then wrote, “You are not alone Moataz, I swear to god. More than 50 million Egyptians are with you. Don’t be scared,” on Egyptian banknotes.
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  • The temptation to draw the comparison has some substance. In 2011, demonstrators explicitly demanded the end of regimes ruling over their respective countries, and the same is happening today.Moreover, both in 2011 and 2018-19, the protesters seem to be emboldened by the ongoing movements in other countries. Stephen McInerney, the executive director for the Project of Middle East Democracy (POMED), explained that “certainly what happens in one Arab country is seen elsewhere, and there are common frustrations shared across the region.”
  • It’s natural that boiling tensions inside countries and ongoing protests are giving way to the overarching claim that a new Arab Spring is underway. But that simplistic framing misunderstands the nature of political grievances and upheavals in the region. After all, they are similar to the protests in 2011, just as the 2011 protests are similar to those that happened in the decades before, and will be similar to those that happen in the future.
  • A ‘Spring’ implies in its history and usage, the new flowering of a spontaneous, overwhelming grassroots revolution that permanently changes the sociopolitical landscape of the countries and even the region. It paints a picture of a people awakened to the oppression they face and marching through the streets to demand justice.
  • But Arabs have been ‘awake’ to the corruption, misuse and abuse regimes have enacted upon them for decades, and have organized against it accordingly.
  • the same protests and chants that can be heard in Jordan and Sudan were yelled in the beginning of 2018. At both times and in both countries, the government cut bread and fuel subsidies in order to comply with loan conditions set by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).Egypt in 2017 also saw thousands take to Twitter and the streets to protest against similarly price hikes in bread following a government removal of subsidies, though the IMF continually insists it did not recommend these governments cut subsidies servicing poor and working class families.
  • To look at these continual mobilizations and isolate the movements happening now as an “Arab Spring 2.0” ignores the continual, inter-generational struggle for economic and political rights that has pushed continuously at the doors of old regimes. In their place, an alternate history is given whereby Arabs were resting, and were woken up.
  • “In Algeria, Jordan, and Sudan the regimes managed to dodge the original 2011 wave. The confrontation was avoided but popular discontent was not crushed, and the reasons for it not addressed. So this will continue to come back, until either a showdown happens or things change.”
  • It is less an ‘Arab Spring 2.0’ than a continuation of 2011’s protests, which were in themselves continuations of protests that occurred in the years before.
  • Ending practices of corruption and cronyism requires movements that aren’t framed as spontaneous ‘Springs’ of youth but as constituent parts of a broad-based, durable intergenerational call for justice from below. 
  • Ed Webb on 20 Mar 19
     
    Indeed. Let's dump it.
Ed Webb

How social media spreads protest tactics from Ukraine to Egypt - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...-tactics-from-ukraine-to-egypt

Egypt Ukraine protest socialmedia video

shared by Ed Webb on 17 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • In the absence of protest workshops and ‘how-to’ manuals, video footage captured on mobile phones in Kiev (and elsewhere) and uploaded to social media sites now serves as a repository for protest tactics, to be studied and adapted by anti-coup protesters thousands of miles away in Cairo. These instances of unsentimental appropriation mark an interesting departure from previous patterns of resource sharing and border-crossing diffusion of protest tactics, patterns which saw Egyptian activists cultivate a series of formative linkages with pro-democracy movements such as Serbia’s Otpor movement in the years before the Jan. 25 revolution.
  • We have teams of people who go on YouTube and search for videos of other protests around the world and when they come across a new tactic, they post it on the Facebook page. If we find a good tutorial video, we translate it into Arabic
  • The co-ordination of protests themselves, however, is increasingly occurring offline: Egyptian state security has grown so adept at infiltrating online groups, that mosques and university campuses are now the two most important associational spaces in which to organize. In many neighborhoods, certain mosques have a reputation for playing host to rallies that are launched after prayer. Here, would-be protesters do not need access to formal protest networks to participate; they simply need to turn up. These are often the same mosques from where protests were launched during the Jan. 25 revolution. If the protests begin elsewhere, the relevant times and locations are distributed to a trusted list of regular protest-goers who then relay the information to friends and relatives
Ed Webb

Iran's elite technical university emerges as hub of protests | AP News - 0 views

apnews.com/...908c0e515362862dd7648123aca84d

Iran protests students university

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Oct 22 - No Cached
  • Thousands of Sharif University alumni power Iran’s most sensitive industries, including nuclear energy and aerospace. One of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s closest advisors has taught there for decades. But as demonstrations erupt across Iran — first sparked by the death in September of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of the country’s morality police — the scientific powerhouse known as “Iran’s M.I.T.” has emerged as an unexpected hub for protest, fueling Iran’s biggest antigovernment movement in over a decade.
  • Across the country and despite a violent crackdown, Iranians have taken to the streets, venting their outrage over social repression, economic despair and global isolation — crises that have clipped the ambitions of Iran’s young and educated generation.
  • “They are demanding the end of the Islamic Republic.”
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  • “Whether it’s true or not, people have this feeling that it’s safer to protest on campus,” said Moeen, a Sharif University alum who has observed the protests and spoke on condition that only his first name be used. “It’s easier than orchestrating something at a random square in Tehran. There are student syndicates. There’s leadership.”
  • After the U.S.-backed 1953 coup, University of Tehran students revolted over then-Vice President Richard Nixon’s visit to the capital. The shah’s security forces stormed the campus and shot three students dead.
  • Sharif University, among other campuses, was wracked by protests two decades later, when Marxist and Islamist student groups lit the fuse of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which ushered in the clerical establishment that still rules Iran.
  • Pro-reformist students protested at the University of Tehran in 1999, prompting a fearsome raid by security forces who fatally shot a student and flung others out of windows.
  • Sharif University — a competitive, high-tech hub considered less liberal and activist than others in the capital
  • Deepening global isolation and frustration over lagging political reforms convinced many students that nothing would come of engaging with the system.
  • in the fall of 2019, a fuel price hike set off the deadliest nationwide unrest since the Islamic Revolution. The Sharif Islamic Association, a misnomer for the students’ largely secular representative body, jumped into action, organizing demonstrations on campus
  • In 2020, the student group boycotted classes and held a protest vigil after the Iranian military’s downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane killed 176 people, including over a dozen Sharif University graduates
  • the biggest reason is freedom. We just want basic things that you have all over the world
  • Sharif University authorities denied the student association a protest permit, members said. Crowds demonstrated anyway, pumping their fists and chanting “Death to the dictator!” — a slogan that protesters have used around the country.
  • As hundreds of students chanted against Khamenei, plainclothes security forces raided campus. Professors formed a human shield so students could flee. But security forces beat the professors, ripped through their interlocked hands and chased protesters into the parking garage.
  • “For the sake of its own future, the government should care about these students. They’re the nerds. But it was clear it only cared about oppressing them.”
  • On Sunday, the university announced it would temporarily ban over two dozen students who contributed to the “unstable environment.”
  • Most recently this week, female students streamed into the male-only section of the dining hall in protest over campus gender segregation as male students cheered them on. The university closed the cafeteria on Tuesday, hoping to end the demonstrations.
Ed Webb

Egypt protests: How cartoon of Sisi the cat burglar became face of a movement | Middle ... - 0 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...tests-sisi-cat-burglar-ganzeer

Egypt Sisi cartoon art protest

shared by Ed Webb on 07 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • “I just wanted to pitch-in but I wasn't sure how,” says the 37-year-old street artist, who made his name in Cairo during the 2011 revolution against Hosni Mubarak.
  • “If I would were in Cairo now, I would have taken to the streets with graffiti, like I did in 2011. I kept on wondering: how can I participate in a concrete and positive way, and make it useful?"
  • On the morning of 20 September, Ganzeer woke up anxious. During the next few hours he drew the image that has quickly come to define a new wave of protests against the sitting president. In the illustration, Sisi is dressed in a striped jacket and tie, but drawn as a cartoonish cat burglar.
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  • Activists and protesters have added their own slogans to the cartoon, as well as printing it out, cutting it up, and turning it into masks, banners and posters. It has popped up at protests in New York, Washington, Berlin, Paris and Oslo - and even in the back alleys of Cairo.
  • Egypt has seen an outbreak of protests against Sisi since 20 September, when protesters took to the streets of Cairo and other cities, calling for him to step down.
  • the most public show of opposition to the president since a crackdown on dissent after the 2013 military coup that brought Sisi to power. Hundreds of protesters were killed by security forces in Rabaa Square, with tens of thousands more arrested and imprisoned
  • A new wave of repression has followed this month's protests, with more than 2,200 people arrested, according to local activists. Last Friday Egyptian security forces locked down the centre of Cairo and other cities to deter crowds from taking to the streets.
  • Activists say Ganzeer's image not only plugged into the rising anger on the streets; drawing Sisi as a burglar fundamentally stripped the president down from a so-called statesman to an ordinary, petty thug who had literally stolen the presidency and now the coffers of the state.
  • Ganzeer’s Twitter account was among those briefly suspended earlier this week.
  • Middle East Eye asked Twitter why it had suspended the accounts of Egyptian activists and whether it was investigating the closures.
  • Ganzeer says his Twitter account was reactivated a couple of hours after he filed his appeal, but he told MEE he believed he had faced a coordinated online attack since publishing the image of Sisi. “Since I released the image, I have had to spend a lot of time just blocking [trolls]. It has been coordinated with a number of suspicious handles and accounts that clearly began in September.”
  • "Some back home are complaining that people are ignoring the deaths and detentions and crackdowns and his attempt to stay in power and now talking about corruption. "But if you ask me, I think this wave of protest is about exposing Sisi as a liar from the inside - and you could say it's a key to opening up all the other lies."
Ed Webb

Turkey escalates crackdown on dissent six years after Gezi protests | Reuters - 0 views

af.reuters.com/...idAFKCN1R00DL

Turkey authoritarianism occupygezi Erdogan protests law

shared by Ed Webb on 19 Mar 19 - No Cached
  • the people originally prosecuted over the 2013 protests - which began against the redevelopment of central Istanbul’s Gezi Park and grew into nationwide anti-government unrest - were acquitted.
  • But in November, Yigit Aksakoglu was detained and is now facing trial with 15 other civil society figures, writers and actors. For a while Aksakoglu’s family hoped he would soon be released, but then on March 4, a 657-page indictment was released saying they had masterminded an attempt to overthrow Erdogan’s government.
  • Supporters of the detainees say the indictment contains no evidence and many bizarre accusations, and marks a new low for a country where 77,000 people already been jailed in a crackdown following a failed military coup in 2016.
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  • assertions that rights groups have dismissed as fanciful conspiracies. It says the protests were organised by local extensions of “forces which control global capital”, singling out billionaire philanthropist George Soros. Erdogan has vilified Soros as “the famous Hungarian Jew ... who assigns people to divide nations”. The indictment says the “Gezi Uprising” was fuelled by Osman Kavala, a well-known civil society leader and businessman who has been in jail since October 2017. A picture from Kavala’s phone taken from an academic book showing how different types of bees are distributed across the Middle East was described in the indictment as showing Turkey’s borders violated and redrawn. It said the fact that defendants discussed bringing milk, juice and pastries to Gezi, as well as gasmasks to counter the effects of tear gas, showed they were financing the protests.
  • The demonstrations, the indictment says, were inspired by the worldwide “Occupy” protests and Arab uprisings starting in 2011 and a book by Boston-based academic Gene Sharp called ‘From Dictatorship to Democracy’. The indictment cites Gezi protest acts that matched Sharp’s non-violent protest methods, such as Roger Waters’ “The Wall” concert in Istanbul in August 2013 when photos of people killed in the protests were displayed on a huge stage backdrop.
  • the request for life sentences without parole represented a “massive escalation” in Turkey’s crackdown on civil society. “What we are facing is an existential crisis for independent civil society in Turkey,” he said. “It is a blatant attempt to scare and pursue critics on completely trumped-up, fanciful conspiracy theories.”
  • “You hold these people responsible for all the windows that were broken in June 2013... but provide no evidence. This is not something that can be done legally,”
  • Istanbul Bilgi University law professor Yaman Akdeniz said the indictment lacked legal detail and reasoning, with only 1-1/2 pages of legal issues in the 657-page document. “Basically, it is shambolic and if it was written by one of my law students, he or she would get a clear F mark,” he said.
  • investigation was originally launched by prosecutor Muammer Akkas, himself now a fugitive accused of membership of what Ankara terms a terrorist group led by U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, which Ankara blames for the failed 2016 coup.
Ed Webb

Why isn't the tent protest in Israel covered in the global news? | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...-israel-covered-in-global-news

Israel protests analysis opinion media

shared by Ed Webb on 05 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • In the post-war period in Britain, and especially in the 1960s, Commonwealth immigrants were often excluded from the social movement for housing rights discussions. This was not because these immigrants lacked housing problems. In fact many immigrants experienced housing difficulties and suffered from the housing shortage, not only because of financial hardship but also because they were denied council housing or because private landlords did not want to let them rent their property. And yet representations of ethnic minorities were never at the centre of this social outcry against the British welfare state. At the heart of the 1960s protest was the symbol of white, working class Cathy, not her West Indies equivalent. Although some groups such as Shelter tried to assist and solve the housing difficulties of recent immigrants, the fact remained that within a very lively discussions about Labour’s failure to find a solution for housing and the result of what they called “homeless families,” the hardship of recent immigrants was barely discussed by the public. Similarly, in Israel of 2011 the protest focuses on young, Jewish (mostly Ashkenazi) citizens and not on any of the other ethnic minorities. The tent movement – which I fully support and respect – can only exist through a clear demarcation of who is part of the imaginary whole and who is not; who deserves housing from the state and who doesn’t; who is part of the national home and who isn’t. And we don’t even have to go to the occupied territories for that. In other words, in both cases this is a protest about a right for citizens and not a universal right to a home. Even within the so-called “social agenda” there are many who are excluded.
  • This is the first time I have felt a glimmer of optimism about Israeli politics since attending the rally where Rabin was shot in 1995.
  • This Israeli protest is on the scale of ordinary (= not 1968) European protests and about European issues.  It just shows how not-Middle East and not-revolutionary Israel is.
Ed Webb

IRGC media producers open new front against Rouhani - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...ducers-landscape-avant-tv.html

Iran politics media propaganda IRGC

shared by Ed Webb on 05 Jan 18 - Cached
  • The Avant TV video, released on social media five days after protests erupted in Iran, which have thus far spread to dozens of cities and almost every province, carefully stitches together an emotional array of interviews of people unhappy with the economic situation and President Hassan Rouhani’s policies. With scarce public information available about Avant TV, and with the great pains its producers have taken to present it as an independent station, the video is intended to appear to be transparent, a true representation of the will of the Iranian people. Glaringly absent from the video are any criticism of the political establishment as a whole, which has been one of the main themes of the current demonstrations. Avant TV is in fact not independent at all. Al-Monitor has not been able to contact it, but two pro-regime media producers confirmed that it is only the latest example of a new media outlet backed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) seeking to reinforce the narrative of the supreme leader above the politics of Iran.
  • Avant TV stems from the media wars at the heart of political factionalism both inside and outside Iran
  • In revealing new details of his budget bill, Rouhani named, for the first time, the variety of state institutions, including cultural centers, that have received enormous funds and unconditional support from the regime. He attributed the move to a desire for transparency and an attempt to curtail corrupt use of state funds. The reaction on Iranian social media and in the local press was quick and harsh. People began attacking conservative and hard-line centers and clerics for taking so much from government coffers. “We couldn’t allow him to cut off our lifeline,” a producer at the regime production studios said after Rouhani revealed his new budget. “He and his supporters want to silence us by taking away our funding. But we will not be silenced. We will show him that people don’t agree with him.”
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  • The tactic that producers developed was to move away from content solely made for state television — which potential audiences almost automatically consider regime propaganda — to creating small production studios that develop content not easily identifiable as pro-regime. These ad hoc production studios receive funding from the IRGC and the government's cultural budget, but they remain small and unidentifiable on purpose.
  • The protests that began on Dec. 28 in Mashhad were a response to Rouhani from hard-liners for his remarks on the budget as well as his other attempts to curtail hard-line forces. Much of the analysis on the reasons behind the sudden outpouring of protests points to its origin in hard-liners' attempts to organize anti-Rouhani rallies in the lead-up to the annual pro-regime 9 Dey rally, established by the supreme leader in 2009 to celebrate the suppression of the Green Movement. Indeed, Mashhad is notably home to two of Rouhani’s main rivals in the 2017 presidential elections, Ebrahim Raisi and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. The intent was for the protests to culminate in a large 9 Dey rally, but despite the hard-liners’ intentions, once people went into the streets, they eventually began to chant slogans against the supreme leader and the regime as a whole.
  • Regime production studios have thus begun to create videos that highlight economic anxieties and attack Rouhani’s handling of the government. These slick new productions are meant to look critical, but in the end, they reinforce a belief in the virtues and the leadership of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Avant TV is only the latest example of the ways in which factionalism within the Islamic Republic and opposition to the regime play out in the media landscape.
Ed Webb

Tehran strikes Kurdish opponents in Iraq as protests over Mahsa Amini's death convulse ... - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...er-mahsa-aminis-death-convulse

Iran Iraq military Kurds protests PKK separatism

shared by Ed Webb on 30 Sep 22 - No Cached
  • Iran unleashed a wave of missiles and drones on the headquarters of three separate Iranian Kurdish opposition groups based in Iraqi Kurdistan today, killing at least nine people and wounding 32 others, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq’s Ministry of Health said, adding that it expected the death toll to rise.
  • An estimated 10 million Kurds, mainly Sunnis, who make up around a tenth of Iran’s population have long been denied political and cultural rights. At least 1,500 Kurdish activists were arrested in the last days’ tumult. The Kurdish majority areas in the country’s northwest, alongside Balochistan in the southwest, are among the least developed. The demonstrations over Amini’s murder first erupted in Tehran but rapidly spread to Iranian Kurdistan.
  • Persian demonstrators are chanting “Kurdistan is the eyes and the light of Iran,” Mohtadi noted. “The Kurds, instead of being perceived as the usual suspects, are now hailed as being at the vanguard of popular protests. It’s unprecedented,”
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  • Iraq’s Foreign Ministry and the KRG condemned Iran over its actions, as did the United States, Germany, the UK and the United Nations. “Attacks on opposition group’s through the Islamic Republic of Iran’s missiles, under any pretext, is an incorrect stance that promotes a misleading interpretation of the course of events,” the KRG stated in an oblique reference to Iran’s efforts to scapegoat the Iranian Kurds for the mass protests inside its own borders.
  • Lawk Ghafuri, a KRG spokesman, told Al-Monitor that media reports suggesting that Iran had also targeted the PKK’s Iranian branch known as The Party for Free Life in Kurdistan, or PJAK, had come under any Iranian fire were inaccurate. The party is mostly shunned by other Iranian Kurdish groups because of its links to the PKK, which is designated as a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union but has broader global reach than any other Kurdish group in the world. At least 12 Kurdish prisoners were executed in Iran in June alone, according to the Paris-based Kurdish Human Rights Network — one of them over alleged connections to the PKK.
  • The regime is under mounting pressure. They fear for many reasons that Kurdistan could be a point of departure for the liberation for the rest of Iran,” said Asso Hassan Zadeh, an Iranian Kurdish analyst and former deputy leader of the KDPI. “We have more connections with the rest of the world than other parts of Iran, and the role played by the Kurds in the current protests helps explain the reaction,”
Ed Webb

Egypt braced for 'day of revolution' protests | World news | The Guardian - 1 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...egypt-day-revolution-protests

Egypt internet politics twitter socialmedia Tunisia sidibouzid

shared by Ed Webb on 25 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • Tomorrow's events, dubbed a "day of revolution against torture, corruption, poverty and unemployment" by protest leaders, were initiated by two dissident movements, both based online. One is dedicated to the memory of Khaled Said, an Alexandrian man beaten to death by police last year, while the other, "6 April", is a youth group named after the date of an uprising two years ago in the Nile delta town of El-Mahalla El-Kubra, in which three people were killed by police.
  • In a sign of how seriously the Mubarak regime is taking any challenge to its authority following the downfall of Tunisia's president Ben Ali, counter-protests are being organised under the banner of "Mubarak: Egypt's security". Organisers say they want to express their rejection of the "destruction of state institutions" by the opposition, raising fears of violent clashes on the ground."Regardless of how many people turn up, these protests will be highly significant," said Nabil Abdel Fattah, a political analyst at the semi-official Al-Ahram Research Centre. "Those confronting the regime on Tuesday will be the sons and daughters of virtual activism - a new generation that has finally found something around which they can unite and rally.They are the product of a government that has never offered them any ideological vision to believe in, and now they have themselves become a symbol of contemporary Egypt.
Ed Webb

Bad News for the Brotherhood - By Mirette F. Mabrouk | The Middle East Channel - 0 views

mideast.foreignpolicy.com/...ught_to_you_by_the_brotherhood

Egypt media MB ikhwan censorship newspapers

shared by Ed Webb on 14 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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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  • the recent appointment of the new minister of information, Salah Abd El-Maqsoud, a MB membe
  • Traditionally the ranks of the Brotherhood have held professionals including doctors, lawyers, engineers, and teachers. They count precious few artists, columnists, or authors in their fold and as a result tend to be significantly more underrepresented than other political parties. Apparently, they've taken it to heart. Salah Eissa, the assistant secretary general of the syndicate told the Egypt Independent in June that the FJP's paper had recently published several articles that spoke of "purging the press of liberals and leftists."
  • On August 9, Khaled Salah, the editor-in-chief of Al-Youm Al-Sabei, a paper that has been increasingly critical of the Brotherhood, was attacked by what he said were MB protesters on his way to his television program. The attackers, whom he claimed were holding pro-Morsi banners also smashed the windscreen, windows, and mirrors of his car, calling him "one of those who antagonized Morsi." Nor was he the only one; Youssef el-Hosseini, appearing on the same program, was also attacked. MB spokesman Mahmoud Ghozlan categorically denied the charges but the banners were identified by independent witnesses. An investigation is underway.
  • Journalists listened warily to Morsi's comments earlier this week on supporting "the idea of forming a national council to oversee state and private media." In Egypt, the words "National Council" are usually synonymous with "Government Stranglehold."
  • Louis Greiss, former editor of the state-owned weekly Sabah el-Kheir said the Brotherhood might not know what they're up against. "Egypt's press has had 200 years of government intimidation," he said. "There's always a way around it. They always get tired before we do."
Ed Webb

Ministry escalates fight against Maspero dissent - 1 views

www.thedailynewsegypt.com/...t-against-maspero-dissent.html

Egypt media censorship ERTU unions protests journalists

shared by Ed Webb on 20 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Six dissident journalists and crew members calling for media freedoms within state-run TV were referred to investigation Sunday upon orders by the minister of information, who also filed complaints to the prosecutor. In addition to the internal investigation, Information Minister Ahmed Anis accused the six of vandalism, endangering national security, and disrupting the work process in a complaint to the Prosecutor General’s office, according to TV director Abdellatif Abou Hemela.
  • they aired a rerun of an old episode instead of the live show, since we were protesting in front of the show's studio. They feared that our voices could be heard if the show was on air,
  • a director in the Nile News channel, Ihab El-Mergawy, who raised a banner that said: "Freedom for Nile News Channel," which was visible from the glass behind the anchor of "Al-Mash-had" (The View). El-Mergawy was suspended for two weeks and referred to Maspero's internal investigations office as Anis accused him of storming the studio, disrupting the work process and squandering public funds, according to a statement published by Association of Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE).
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  • "El-Mergawy did not have access to the disciplinary bylaws that regulate the investigations process in Maspero, which are always dealt with as top secret by Maspero's administration,"
  • last week’s protest was filmed by Maspero administration using the building's internal monitoring cameras. The footage was used to identify the protesting workers. At first, 45 were referred to investigations. "The number then was lowered to 33 and finally to six protesting employees, the ones who always take part in Tahrir Square protests and sit-ins,"
Ed Webb

Saudi Troops Enter Bahrain to Put Down Unrest - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...15bahrain.html

Bahrain KSA US protests democratization

shared by Ed Webb on 15 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Saudi Arabia has been watching uneasily as Bahrain’s Shiite majority has staged weeks of protests against a Sunni monarchy, fearing that if the protesters prevailed, Iran, Saudi Arabia’s bitter regional rival, could expand its influence and inspire unrest elsewhere.
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 15 Mar 11
       
      NB that much western coverage has framed the Bahrain uprising (and indeed the Saudi protests) in terms that fit this Saudi interpretation of events: Sunni v Shi'ite, and by proxy Saudi v Iran. A more persuasive framing would be in class terms in both cases, exploited versus ruling class; or in more straightforwardly political terms, democrats versus tyrants. Consider whose interests the sectarian framing serves.
  • This is an occupation
  • This may prolong the conflict rather than put an end to it, and make it an international event rather than a local uprising
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  • The Gulf Cooperation Council was clearly alarmed at the prospect of a Shiite political victory in Bahrain, fearing that it would inspire restive Shiite populations in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to protest as well. The majority of the population in Saudi Arabia’s eastern provinces, where the oil is found, is Shiite, and there have already been small protests there.
  • Political analysts said that it was likely that the United States did not object to the deployment in part because it, too, saw a weakened monarchy as a net benefit to Iran at a time when the United States wants to move troops out of Iraq, where Iran has already established an influence.
  • Bahrain’s opposition groups issued a statement: “We consider the entry of any soldier or military machinery into the Kingdom of Bahrain’s air, sea or land territories a blatant occupation.”
Ed Webb

Iraq clamps down on media and broadcast networks covering protests - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...iraq-protests-media.html

Iraq media censorship repression broadcast networks protests

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Nov 19 - No Cached
  • the Iraqi National Communications and Media Commission shut down or gave warnings to 17 media institutions for covering the protests in Iraq. The offices of Al-Arabiya, Al-Hadath, Dijlah TV, Al-Rasheed TV, NRT, Al-Sharqiya TV, Al-Fallujah TV, Houna Baghdad and Al-Hurra were closed, while Al-Sumariya, Asia Network Television, Rudaw Media Network, Sky News Arabia and Ur Television were warned to change how they cover the demonstrations.
  • On Nov. 17, a mortar shell hit Iraq Art Co. in Karrada in the center of Baghdad.
  • Iraq Art Co. is a local production business that offers television services to several satellite channels such as the BBC, Al-Araby TV (owned by the Palestinian politician Azmi Bechara) and other channels. Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, which is affiliated with Al-Araby TV, said, “The missile was targeting the Al-Araby TV office in Baghdad.”
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  • On Nov. 8 and 15, two episodes of the news satire Al-Basheer Show were jammed, as soon as the broadcast began on the German DW channel. Jamming would start at 9 p.m. while the episodes were being shown, and would end an hour later at 10 p.m., when the show was over.
  • The government clampdown on the media and journalists has taken several forms, ranging from obscure threats to the shutdown of media institutions to jamming channels or not offering security protection. There were also insinuations that media channels have been inciting people to protest.
  • “I received a text message on my personal phone threatening to kill me and attack my family if I continue to use my phone to contact the channel where I work.”
  • The Iraqi Media House, a civil society organization in Iraq, reported that “as a result of the internet ban, 90% of Iraqi media coverage was cut off, and 70% of social media coverage was dead. Fears of targeting media channels and journalists also reduced coverage.”
  • The Press Freedom Advocacy Association in Iraq reported that there had been “89 violations against journalists," 33 death threats and the shutdown of or warnings to 17 offices and headquarters of media institutions.
Ed Webb

Opinion | The Iran-USA World Cup match is a huge opportunity for Iran's protests - The ... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...n-world-cup-match-significance

USA US politics opinion Iran football soccer protests

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Nov 22 - Cached
  • The people of Iran are months into nationwide protests demanding fundamental change to the way their country is ruled. At its heart, what’s happening in Iran is an equality movement. Protesters’ goals are in line with U.S. ideals and liberal values generally, and their success would be a major blow to the worldwide authoritarian wave of recent years. This moment deserves attention, and no global stage is bigger than the World Cup. Billions will be watching. The longer Iran stays in, the more recognition its people and their movement will receive.
  • Should this movement in Iran dissipate without real alterations to the ruling system, the cost for participants will be tragic. At least 450 people, including dozens of children, have already been killed, and thousands more have been arrested and imprisoned. Some protesters have already been sentenced to death for simply exercising their universal right to peacefully assemble.
  • Those calling on social media for a boycott of Iran’s team say the players haven’t been sufficiently supportive of the protests and that they are owned and operated by the regime. But the team’s words and actions in Qatar tell a different story. The best thing Iranians — and the free world — can do is wish this team success.
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  • so much has changed in both countries and the world, but the enmity between the two governments remains frozen in time, and Americans’ understanding of Iran and its people has progressed very little.
Ed Webb

Security forces detain TV crews and shut down broadcaster's office in Iraqi Kurdistan -... - 1 views

cpj.org/...v-crews-and-shut-down-broa.php

Iraq Kurds Turkey media censorship protests

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Jan 19 - No Cached
  • the closure by Kurdish security forces of the Iraqi independent broadcaster NRT's office in Dohuk, Iraqi Kurdistan
  • security forces known as Asayish, which are aligned with the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party, detained NRT television journalists, cameramen, and drivers and confiscated their broadcasting equipment, and on the following day barred entry to NRT's offices
  • "Shutting down a broadcaster and detaining TV crews for delivering the news clearly contradicts the authorities' claim that Iraqi Kurdistan is a regional hub for democracy and press freedom," said CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Sherif Mansour from Washington, D.C.
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  • The detentions and office raid came as a response to NRT's January 26 coverage of a protest at a Turkish military facility in Silazdeh and of the arrival of injured protesters at the Dohuk Emergency Hospital, according to the broadcaster.
  • At least two civilians were killed by a Turkish airstrike in Duhok governorate on January 24, according to news reports. The casualties sparked a protest at the facility in Silazdeh on January 26, which resulted in one protester being killed and several being injured, news reports said.
Ed Webb

Reporting on Iran's unrest and crackdown from afar - The Washington Post - 2 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...nalist-mahsa-amini-radio-farda

Iran media protests journalism journalists BBC socialmedia disinformation IRGC

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Nov 22 - Cached
  • With foreign press virtually absent inside Iran — where authorities are arresting local journalists, restricting internet access and allegedly spreading misinformation online — distant correspondents such as Esfandiari face a deluge of challenges in getting accurate news about Iran to the rest of the world.
  • “These people are really risking everything to send us videos of the protests,” Esfandiari said. “And they come speak to us because they trust us, and they know the state media are never going to give them a platform.”
  • Western news organizations have been almost entirely shut out of the country by state restrictions and security concerns. Meanwhile, the government has arrested more than 60 Iranian journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Niloofar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi, among the reporters who helped break the story of Amini’s death, were charged with acting as CIA spies, an offense punishable by the death penalty.
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  • “We never have seen it before like this,” said Jiyar Gol, a Kurdish Iranian journalist for the BBC reporting the story from London. “They really want the world to know about what is going on. People don’t fear anymore.”
  • the dangerous climate makes it difficult for journalists to capture the scope of the government crackdowns, and it makes them unable to independently verify figures such as death tolls, having to rely on human rights organizations for much information
  • Social media has played a crucial yet complex role. The primary method for people inside Iran to get information out, it has also enabled the spread of false information.
  • it was the Revolutionary Guard deliberately spreading those videos
  • at Radio Farda — part of the U.S.-funded but independently run Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty — Esfandiari and her colleagues contacted prisoners and their families and could find no one with knowledge of such an escape. She traced the detail back to an Iranian government-aligned news agency known for false reports, then saw a quote in a more reputable news service from a prison official denying the incident.“You have to read between the lines” of official statements
  • Some phony social media accounts pose as critics of the government to promote false news. People sympathetic to the protests “start to reshare that [content] in the heat of the moment,” he said. “The end result is a chaotic situation, with all the disinformation and misinformation mixed together, and it could be very dangerous, because some people inside Iran risk their lives based off of this.”
  • there are also “honest mistakes and rumors” that get circulated, said Radio Farda director Kambiz Fattahi. Newsweek erroneously reported earlier this month that 15,000 protesters had been sentenced to death. Fact-checkers later traced the number to an activist news agency’s estimate of the number of protest arrests, conflated with the news that Iranian lawmakers were pushing a “no leniency” policy toward those detained that could include the death penalty. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted the false information, then later deleted it, which in turn became fodder for Iranian state media to accuse Canada of spreading lies
  • Iranian journalists working outside the country have been subject to hacking and phishing attempts. In Britain, police have warned of “credible” threats of kidnapping or killing, and the BBC has filed a complaint with the United Nations, saying Iran has been harassing its journalists and their families
Ed Webb

Narrating the Arab spring from within | openDemocracy - 1 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...rating-arab-spring-from-within

history memory revolutions Egypt Tunisia media video stories

shared by Ed Webb on 10 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Many were too immersed in the daily struggles to tolerate criticism or contradictory points of view. Many others welcomed observations and comments coming from participants who were able to make connections with other historical moments, and to discern patterns or conjunctions that helped to shed light on current events. Enthusiasm, rigorous analysis, heightened emotions, tears, serious reflections, and “a feel of the revolutionary spirit,” in the words of one participant, permeated the proceedings.
  • Amongst the objections voiced was that it was Euro-centric because it framed the protests with reference to a European precedent, the Prague spring; it implied Arab stasis preceding the coming of spring; it predicted imminent decline as spring is bound to be followed by autumn. Debates over the phrase “Arab spring” encapsulate the overriding theme of the conference: the conflicting narratives of and about the Arab revolutions and the geopolitics of these narratives were put at the centre of debates and analysis.
  • “Peacefulness” is fetishised reinforcing the premise that the state is the sole legitimate entity entitled to the use of violence, a premise challenged by the revolutionary project.
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  • poor and the dispossessed presented as unruly
  • Pro-revolution writers and public figures  challenge on a daily basis the demonization of the revolution and the assault on the symbolism of Tahrir square. Young men and women cover the walls and buildings in downtown Tahrir with graffiti that ridicules official media campaigns against protesters
  • The issue of who tells the story, who has ownership of the narrative of revolution was at the centre of many debates
  • how can we recognize the inspirational effect of Tahrir Square on the Occupy Wall Street movement for example, and still acknowledge the differences in the demands and contexts, without suggesting that one protest movement is more genuine or more original than the other?
  • The Iraq story of a backlash against women’s rights dressed up in the robes of traditional culture was all too familiar to Egyptian and Tunisian feminist activists and researchers
  • In a panel introducing the mosireen ↑ group, members of the group, Lobna Darwish, Omar Robert Hamilton, Yasmine Metwally and Philip Rizq, showed video clips ↑ which documented violence perpetrated by the military against civilians.  The group met in Tahrir square and organized to expose the stories untold in the official media:  “We think of ourselves as a propaganda machine for the revolution… we are not neutral… we give space to people without a voice.”
  • to bear witness as a means of resistance against official media campaigns aiming to discredit protesters and protest movements. The media mantra about objective and distanced reporting is replaced by emphasis on the personal, the immediate, the fragment as an antidote to official dominant narratives, or counter-revolutionary narratives
Ed Webb

Music Stirs the Embers of Protest in Iran - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...06iranmusic.html

music Iran protest censorship internet socialnetworking

shared by Ed Webb on 30 Jun 10 - Cached
  • The government has tried all manner of methods to mute what has become known as “resistance music.” It has blocked Web sites used to download songs and shut down social networking sites, which the opposition also used to organize protests and distribute videos of government and paramilitary violence.
  • lamping down on music in the digital age is like squeezing a wet sponge. Protest songs are downloaded on the Internet, sold in the black market or shared via Bluetooth, a wireless technology that Iranians have adapted to share files on cellphones, bypassing the Internet altogether. Fans have also made dozens of homemade videos, setting montages of protest images to music and posting them online.
  • “Music has become a tool for resisting the regime,” said Abbas Milani, the director of Iranian studies at Stanford University. “Music has never been as extensive and diverse as it is today.”
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  • Distance has no meaning with Internet
Ed Webb

Tahrir media wars: State TV gives ground before Al Jazeera-led rivals | Al-Masry Al-You... - 0 views

www.almasryalyoum.com/...s-ground-al-jazeera-led-rivals

Egypt #jan25 protests propaganda media aljazeera jazeera television TV

shared by Ed Webb on 07 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Facebook and Twitter might be the media keywords in these "Days of Anger," but in Egypt, television dominates as a way of disseminating information; it is why protests went on even when the government shut down the Internet and cell phone service. Al Jazeera's coverage has been characterized by its scope and commitment, as well as its timeline: on Friday, 28 January, while state TV ignored the protests, Al Jazeera broadcast constant live footage from the 6th of October bridge.
  • Al-Jazeera's "Gulf War moment"
  • Over the past twelve days, state television has been providing skewed coverage or willfully ignorant non-coverage of the demonstrations that has amounted to unabashed propaganda. Broadcasts have attempted to evidence some of the most destructive rumors: that protesters morphed into looters as soon as police were withdrawn; that foreign journalists were part of a conspiracy to overthrow the government; that the majority of Egyptians, Mubarak supporters, are being bullied and intimidated by thuggish activists whose uprising has paralyzed Egypt's economy. One protester described state TV to Moheyldin this way: "It would make Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels proud."
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  • it hasn't just been the past twelve days that has exposed the biased and obsolete agenda of Egyptian state TV--that's been happening gradually for the last 15 years. The model for controlling a people, once a great tool, is "locked in the past, in a world where the government controls the message," according to Lawrence Pintak, a professor, former journalist, and the author of forthcoming book "The New Arab Journalist: Mission and Identity in a Time of Turmoil."
  • News media in Egypt are "weapons of war," said Pitnak. "Government media is a weapon of pro-Mubarak people; the majority of the rest of the media have become weapons of people."
  • "As journalists, we're human beings. Once they start shooting at you or beating you up, it's hard not to take it personally. It is no longer objective, unbiased coverage. It has become a struggle between media--Arab and Western--and Mubarak."
  • Perhaps most indicative of the changing face of Egyptian television is Shahira Amin, whose departure after twelve years at Nile TV drew attention to the network's habit of prioritizing regime solidity over truth. Her resignation became a news story in and of itself, and when she told it to the media, she did so live from Tahrir Square--in an interview with Al Jazeera.
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