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Ed Webb

Ahead of COP27, Egypt is highly vulnerable to climate change - 1 views

qz.com/-for-climate-change-1849657612

Egypt water agriculture food land climate COP sustainability SDGs

shared by Ed Webb on 27 Oct 22 - No Cached
  • Adel Abdullah cultivates a subsistence living off of six acres of peppers, eggplants, cucumbers, tomatoes, wheat, corn, and pomegranates. He is one of millions of smallholder farmers working in the Delta. He walks barefoot in his farm as a show of reverence to the land. The soil is pale and thin, almost as sandy as the beach, and choked by mounting concentrations of salt, left behind by periodic coastal flooding and pushed into underground aquifers by the rising sea.“This is the first place to be affected by climate change,” Abdullah says. “The barriers help a bit with flooding, but the salty soil is still really killing us.”
  • he takes irrigation water from the nearby Kitchener Drain, one of the largest and most polluted canals in Egypt that aggregates wastewater from the farms, businesses, and households of an estimated 11 million people in the Delta. By the time water reaches Abdullah’s farm, it may have been reused half a dozen times since entering Egypt in the Nile, each time accumulating more salts and pollutants and losing beneficial nutrients.
  • Abdullah is forced to douse the farm in fertilizers, pesticides, and salt-suppressing chemicals, all of which further degrade the soil. Those inputs, on top of the rising costs of irrigation systems and machinery, eat up any potential income Abdullah might earn
  • ...27 more annotations...
  • The Nile Delta—where agriculture employs one-fifth of the country’s workforce and is responsible for 12% of its GDP and much of its food supply—is being hammered by rising sea levels, rising temperatures, and a growing shortage of water.
  • rapid urbanization and population growth
  • Climate adaptation solutions that could keep environmental problems from turning existential—fixing the battered and wasteful irrigation network, expanding affordable access to improved seeds and climate-smart farming technologies, and more effective and equitable regulation of urban development on agricultural land—are being rolled out by the government and research groups, but often slower than the pace of climate impacts. That’s left Egypt’s economy and food security exposed to growing risk.
  • “We’re really squeezed and marginalized here, and the government isn’t helping,” said one farmer down the road from Abdullah, who requested anonymity to speak frankly (with tens of thousands of political prisoners, Egypt’s restrictions on free speech are also gaining prominence ahead of COP27).
  • his children see no future in agriculture
  • Around 1805, an Ottoman general named Muhammad Ali took control of the country, and founded the dynasty of kings that would rule—eventually under British colonial supervision—for 150 years. One of Ali’s most enduring marks on the country was the establishment of the first modern network of dams and irrigation canals in the Delta, which allowed tens of thousands of new acres to come under cultivation.
  • Egypt has managed that scarcity by meticulously recycling agricultural water and, in recent years, curtailing the production of water-intensive crops like cotton and rice and importing 40% of its wheat and other food staples.
  • Egypt’s population has since more than quadrupled, to 104 million. Yet the flow of the Nile, which supplies more than 95% of the country’s water, has remained more or less constant. In the 1990s water availability fell below the international “water poverty” benchmark of 1,000 cubic meters per person per year.
  • water and land played a crucial role in Nasser’s legacy. 12% of the country’s arable land was owned by the aristocracy; Nasser nationalized this land and distributed it to about 340,000 impoverished rural families. He also further extended Ali’s irrigation network and oversaw construction of the Aswan High Dam, which brought an end to the Nile’s ancient seasonal flooding and fixed the river in its present position, with just two remaining branches forking through the Delta.
  • The population is still growing quickly, and could reach 160 million by 2050. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam that is nearing completion upstream could cut the flow of Nile water into Egypt by a quarter during the as-yet-unknown number of years it will take to fill its reservoir. By 2100, climate change-related heat waves upstream could reduce the Nile’s flow by 75%, Abousabaa said.
  • rising temperatures and falling rainfall mean crops—which consume 86% of Egypt’s water supply—will require more irrigation to survive.
  • current annual demand for water is about 35% higher than what the country receives from the Nile, groundwater, and a very small amount of rain—a deficit of about 20 billion cubic meters. To cover it, she said, Egypt will need to use every drop multiple times, aggressively minimize wastage, and boost the supply by investing $2.8 billion in dozens of new desalination plants with the aim to produce 5 billion cubic meters annually by 2050.
  • The network started by Muhammed Ali now includes about 33,000 miles of delivery and drainage canals across the country, enough to wrap around the globe, that range in size from small rivers to something a child could hop over. Delta residents say they used to bathe in these canals, drink from them, and raise fish in them. Now many of them, especially at the ends of the network, are polluted with farming chemicals and sewage, and choked with trash.
  • The unpredictability makes it difficult to identify solutions, Salah says: “Climate change is like a big black box.”
  • “For the last two years, with heat wave after heat wave, we lost more than half the crop. It’s really sad.”
  • The farm relies on groundwater brought up from wells on the property, and Nasrallah says the suburbs are draining the aquifer. In the last four years he has had to dig an extra thirty meters to find water—and deeper wells mean higher electricity bills for pumping. Some wells have dried up altogether. Recently, government officials told him he had to stop watering the grass on a soccer field he built for his workers.
  • Urbanization is also spreading in the inner Delta, as many farmers decide that constructing housing is more profitable than growing crops. Since the 1970s, about 14% of the Delta’s arable land has been converted to urban development
  • Individual farms are also becoming smaller with each generation as, in keeping with longstanding Egyptian custom, land is divided among a father’s heirs (with sons traditionally taking a larger share than daughters). Urban development degrades the Delta’s soil and drives more farming into the desert, leaving the entire food system more vulnerable to climate impacts. Land fragmentation leads to the inefficient use of water and other resources and raises the costs of distribution for farmers.
  • in some cases, the government’s own plans are responsible, most recently in August when thousands of people living on a Nile island near Cairo that was primarily used for farming were evicted to make way for a state-sanctioned development project.
  • On the western fringe of the Delta, farms and suburbs are gradually overtaking the desert as the central Delta grows more crowded. Here, water is even scarcer and the impacts of climate change are more pronounced. But in this and a few other desert areas around Egypt, the government is working to link more than 1.5 million acres to groundwater irrigation, and says it is about one-third of the way there. Land reclamation could take some pressure off the Delta, and sandy soils are well-suited for the production of citrus fruits that are one of Egypt’s most lucrative exports.
  • Between seepage, evaporation, and water wasted by farmers who flood their fields instead of using controlled irrigation hoses, nearly one-third of the country’s water is lost in the irrigation system between the Aswan High Dam and the sea
  • The soil is dark and appears rich, but is crusted with a visible layer of salt, a problem that affects up to 40% of Egypt’s arable soil.
  • Fixing the irrigation network is a priority for the government. Eman Sayed from the Irrigation Ministry said her agency has lined about 3,700 miles of canals with concrete in the last two years and is aiming to finish another 12,400 in the next few years. The ministry is also helping farmers cover the cost of installing drip irrigation systems, which researchers at AUC found can cut farmers’ water consumption 61% per year; today such systems cover only one-sixth of arable land in Egypt.
  • Authorities have also begun to restrict production of water-intensive crops like rice and bananas, although farmers say there is little enforcement of these rules, and both crops are still widely cultivated throughout the Delta.
  • Egypt has made clear that COP27 will focus primarily on wringing climate finance out of the rich countries that are most responsible for climate change.
  • On the horizon, an offshore natural gas platform is visible. Egypt, which seized the disruption of Russian energy supplies to Europe because of the Ukraine war as an opening to boost its own exports of natural gas, is now contributing more to the problem than ever before; an independent review of its new climate strategy ranked it “highly insufficient” for averting disastrous levels of carbon emissions.
  • By 2100, Noureldeen says, sea level rise could inundate nearly 700 square miles of the coastal Delta and displace four million people.
Ed Webb

Syria: Cholera surge sparks fears of uncontrollable outbreak in Idlib camps | Middle Ea... - 2 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...era-surge-fears-outbreak-camps

Syria water climate health disease conflict

shared by Ed Webb on 27 Sep 22 - No Cached
  • the outbreak is linked to the presence of bacteria responsible for cholera in the waters of the Euphrates river, the river's water level has suffered a serious decline because of climate change and is, in many areas, transforming into swamp land.
  • “The lack of treated drinking water through water stations and the irrigation of vegetables from the Euphrates river were the main cause of cholera infecting my wife and child.”
  • "We do not have potable water because of the interruption of pipe water, which makes us buy water from tanks filled from surface wells, which are not subject to sanitary control at all,"
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  • cholera crisis is partly a result of the effects of climate change but also a consequence of the civil war
  • the war has damaged two-thirds of water treatment plants, half of pumping stations and one-third of water towers.
  • Turkey has justified stopping the pumping of the station, claiming it was due to the cutting off of electricity by the SDF, which controls the power station in al-Darbasiyah, which feeds the Ras al-Ain and Tal Abyad regions.
  • "We demanded several times that Alouk station come under international auspices and that a UN flag be raised on it in order [for it] not to be bombarded and interrupted," Sarhan said. "The conflict between Turkey, Russia, the SDF and Assad should not be at the expense of vulnerable people."
  • “Our concerns are not about the spread of cholera within cities, but its spread within the camps, which are an incubator environment for infectious diseases due to the weak humanitarian response in them,”
Ed Webb

Neom: Saudi Arabia jails tribesmen for 50 years for rejecting displacement | Middle Eas... - 2 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...risoned-rejecting-displacement

KSA Saudi cities MBS repression prison land rights speech expression

shared by Ed Webb on 14 Sep 22 - No Cached
  • Two members of the Howeitat, a tribe in Saudi Arabia forcibly displaced to make way for the $500bn Neom megacity, have received lengthy sentences over their protests against the project
  • Two women - Salma al-Shehab, a Leeds University student and mother of two, and Nourah bint Saeed al-Qahtani, a mother of five - were given 34 years and 45 years respectively over tweets critical of the Saudi government. Osama Khaled, a writer, translator and computer programmer, was sentenced to 32 years over "allegations relating to the right of free speech",
  • since US President Joe Biden's visit to Saudi Arabia in July, there had been a "more repressive approach by the Saudi state security and judicial authorities against individuals exercising their right to freedom of speech". 
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  • a dangerous pattern
  • little has been constructed, but large sums have been paid to consultants and increasingly outlandish plans revealed. Yet Saudi authorities have sought to clear areas along 170km of Tabuk province of its residents, many of whom belong to the Howeitat tribe.
  • Since December, Howeitat tribespeople have reported the Saudi authorities' campaign to drive them from their land has escalated. New measures include cutting water and electricity supplies, and deploying surveillance drones above residences
  • among 150 Howeitat who have been imprisoned over their resistance to the Neom project
  • Abdul Rahim al-Howeiti, a 43-year-old Tabuk resident who was shot dead by Saudi special forces in April 2020 after protesting the government's eviction orders
  • drones are being flown regularly over Tabuk province, and that they believe their mobile phone and social media accounts are closely monitored.
  • water and electricity has been cut off from an estimated 15,000 people in an attempt to force them from the region
  • The new Saudi megacity - which organisers claim will be 33 times the size of New York City - is planned to include a 170km straight line city, an eight-sided city that floats on water, and a ski resort with a folded vertical village, among other grandiose and architecturally challenging projects.
Ed Webb

Climate migration in Iraq's south brings cities to crisis - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...q-climate-crisis-drought-basra

Iraq water energy urbanization urban migration economy unemployment politics climate

shared by Ed Webb on 10 Sep 22 - No Cached
  • Iraq as the fifth-most-vulnerable country to climate change. Temperatures have increased by 1.8 degrees Celsius (3.2 degrees Fahrenheit) in three decades, according to Berkeley Earth, well above the global average, and in the summers, the mercury now regularly hits 50 Celsius (122 Fahrenheit)
  • burning crops and desiccating marshes
  • As upstream dams in Turkey and Iran weaken the flows of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, a salty tide is creeping north from the Persian Gulf, poisoning the land
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  • changing climate is forcing families to sell off their livestock and pack up for urban centers such as the region’s largest city, Basra, in search of jobs and better services
  • As hotter, more-crowded cities become the future of a warming world, a lack of preparedness will only exacerbate the discontent already fraying the social fabric
  • decades of U.S.-backed sanctions and war, combined with the weight of corruption and neglect, have left Basra’s infrastructure unable to adequately support the 2 million people the city already houses — let alone the rising tide of newcomers.
  • According to official figures, Basra province has a population of over 3 million — an increase of at least 20 percent in 10 years. And most of that growth has been in its urban areas
  • nearly 40 percent of farmers across the country reported an almost total loss of their wheat crop.
  • Social media has been awash with photos showing water buffaloes lying dead on the cracked mudflats of southern Iraq’s dried-out marshlands
  • 12 percent of residents were newcomers who had settled in Basra over the past decade, mostly because of water scarcity and a lack of economic opportunities. The number is even higher in other southern Iraqi cities, such as Shatrah and Amarah.
  • water degradation in the province cost Iraq $400 million in lost animals, palm trees and crops in 2018 alone
  • As he saw it, migration was only making the situation worse, and he felt that the slow tide of arrivals was changing his city. “Their mind-set is different; we don’t know how to deal with them,” he said. “They don’t respect the laws here.”
  • Decades of government neglect in rural areas, particularly in the education sector, have left many of the migrants illiterate.
  • often struggle to access the city’s formal labor market and instead rely on temporary employment as construction workers or truck drivers, or hawking goods from carts in the street. And their habits and attitudes clash with those of their urban cousins.
  • political leaders in southern Iraq have started blaming the city’s crime rate — as well as other problems — on its migrants.
  • A few years ago, huge demonstrations decrying corruption and unemployment were crushed with deadly force. Since then, every summer has brought scattered daily protests over authorities’ failure to provide basic services.
  • “This is how you drive these people into criminality, by discriminating,” she said. “They move to irregular neighborhoods where there’s no proper public services and no employment. And then social issues will emerge.”
  • When a heat wave forced the shutdown of Basra’s power grid in August, the homes of newcomers and longtime residents alike were plunged into darkness as millions spent sleepless nights drenched in sweat
  • “My dreams in this country are being lived by a dog in Europe,”
Ed Webb

As climate change worsens, Egypt is begging families to have fewer kids - The Washingto... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...op27-climate-change-population

COP Egypt politics economy climate development food agriculture birth population

shared by Ed Webb on 06 Nov 22 - No Cached
  • In public speeches, President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi has repeatedly scolded families for having more than two children, calling the population crisis a national security issue that has hindered progress on development goals.
  • More than one billion people already live in Africa. By 2050, the populations of at least 26 African countries are expected to double.
  • rising temperatures increasingly threaten the country’s food and water supplies
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  • As the host of COP27, Egypt has vowed to champion African concerns, which include how rapid population growth may heighten countries’ vulnerability to climate change. Africa is already severely impacted by climate change despite being responsible for only around 3 percent of global CO2 emissions.
  • The effects of Egypt’s soaring population are felt in its traffic jams and crowded malls, its overflowing classrooms and packed apartment buildings. But residents of urban areas remain somewhat sheltered from the environmental stresses on rural communities and agriculture, which is vital to the country’s economy.
  • The country “is nearing ‘absolute water scarcity,’” according to a recent report published by UNICEF and the American University in Cairo. The government has sought to restrict the amount of farmland that is used for growing water-intensive crops such as bananas.
  • In agricultural areas, the “policy of just having two children is totally out of touch,” Khamis said. When the government aggressively pushes for families to have fewer children, it can come off as “simply using the people as a scapegoat for the government’s shortcomings on economic growth.”
  • According to Egypt’s 2021 family health survey, around 65 percent of married women between the ages of 15 and 49 were using modern family planning — an increase of 8 percentage points from 2014. Around 63 percent of those using contraceptives said they obtained them from government-run facilities.
Ed Webb

Giulio, the islands and national security | Mada Masr - 0 views

www.madamasr.com/...-islands-and-national-security

Egypt policing repression security research academics academia freedoms freedomofexpression NGOs

shared by Ed Webb on 01 May 16 - No Cached
  • The security logic seems to suggest that one cannot be sure that a researcher working on Islamic endowments in the 15th century isn’t really a spy — he might be looking for maps of Siwa, Halayib and Shalatin, the Yaghbub Oasis, or Tiran and Sanafir. Since we have border disputes with all our neighbors, not only can you not copy maps related to any border issue, you can’t conduct research on any topic vaguely connected to borders.
  • The security logic doesn’t stop at maps and borders. It casts suspicion on every topic. An Egyptian colleague working on Mamluk history was denied a research permit. An American colleague was denied a permit for a project on the history of private presses in the 19th century. A student of mine studies the history of the Labor Corps during World War I; his permit was also rejected
  • The official’s response (I paraphrase) was:Here’s someone studying the history of irrigation, and we have a dispute with Ethiopia over the Nile waters. We have no doubt that this student is honest and isn’t a spy, but how can we be sure that his thesis won’t fall into malicious hands, that it won’t contain information that could harm us — for example, info about Ethiopia’s right to the Nile waters? Such details could damage our negotiating position. Of course, we know employees at the National Archives are sincere patriots, and the same is true of most professors and students doing research there, but we have considerations that no one understands but us.
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  • Field research is infinitely more difficult. If a researcher wants to conduct a field study or distribute a questionnaire or opinion survey, she needs the approval of the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS). Its very name shows the perceived intimacy of the association between knowledge and the war effort.
  • The situation at the National Archives is reflected in all public institutions. Their mandate is not to serve the public, but to subject them to constant surveillance.
  • the security mentality in countries that respect the public is countered by a mentality that pushes back in the opposite direction, that respects the right to privacy, academic research and free expression. This mentality circumscribes the security mentality with numerous legal and administrative regulations.
  • In Egypt the security mentality runs amok. Just mentioning national security is enough to shut down a conversation instead of initiating it. Voices defending academic freedom and the freedom of research are few and far between (though brave and strong) — most importantly the March 9 Movement (a working group on university independence), the Association of Freedom of Thought and Expression, and the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.
  • The responsible agency treats the National Archives like a state archive, not a national archive owned by and serving the public.
  • When I first saw Giulio Regeni’s photo on Facebook, when he was still missing, my heart skipped a beat. A foreign researcher who speaks Arabic fluently, living in Dokki and moving about the city at will, one who is working on the extremely sensitive topic of workers’ right to form independent unions, and one who is also a political activist who writes anti-regime articles for a communist paper under a pseudonym. If the security authorities knew of him, I thought, they would consider him a spy.But Giulio wasn’t a spy. He was a doctoral student. I never met or corresponded with him, but I know Giulio and know him well. He’s like the students I’ve taught for 20 years. Having now read and become familiar with his work, I can say that not only is he not a spy, he’s an exemplary student, one who loved Egypt and Egyptians and made efforts to help them.
  • we know that we’re living one of the worst moments of our modern history and that our rights, liberties and lives are under threat at all times by our own government.We know that our government, in the name of defending national security, has attacked universities and killed students demonstrating on campus. We know that our government, in the name of defending national security, has shut down the public sphere, appropriated political activity, and prevented people from expressing their opinion and peaceful demonstrating — unless the demonstration’s purpose is to give Abdel Fattah al-Sisi a mandate to do whatever he likes.
  • waging war on civil society organizations, accusing them of foreign collaboration, treason and getting rich off foreign funding. But it’s the government itself, specifically the army, that is the biggest beneficiary of foreign funding. No one dares make a peep about that.
  • arrested tens of thousands of members of Islamist groups and sentenced hundreds of them to death in trials lasting just a few minutes, trials that dealt a mortal blow to the integrity of the Egyptian judiciary and people’s faith in it
  • arrested hundreds of journalists, writers and political activists, and sentenced them to years in prison
  • we, the people, the true owners of this country, are insisting on knowing what happened to Guilio Regeni and are holding on to our right to be consulted about our own national security.
Ed Webb

Johann Hari: You Are Being Lied to About Pirates - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...eing-lied-to-abo_b_155147.html

Somalia pirates piracy imperialism crime

shared by Ed Webb on 12 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied against their tyrannical captains - and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls "one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century." They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed "quite clearly - and subversively - that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal navy." This is why they were popular, despite being unproductive thieves.
  • In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.
  • Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: "Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention."
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  • They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia - and it's not hard to see why. In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was "to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters... We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas."
  • During the revolutionary war in America, George Washington and America's founding fathers paid pirates to protect America's territorial waters, because they had no navy or coastguard of their own. Most Americans supported them. Is this so different?
  • The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarised by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know "what he meant by keeping possession of the sea." The pirate smiled, and responded: "What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor." Once again, our great imperial fleets sail in today - but who is the robber?
  • Ed Webb on 12 Apr 09
     
    Via @3arabawy and @cburrell
Ed Webb

Medieval robots: How al-Jazari's mechanical marvels have been resurrected in Istanbul |... - 0 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...ht-mechanical-marvels-istanbul

Turkey Islamic engineering robots history

shared by Ed Webb on 02 Mar 19 - No Cached
  • the history of automation goes back some 900 years, when Ismail al-Jazari, a Muslim scholar, invented the first robotics, water clocks and other mechanical devices.
  • his outstanding machines have now been recreated for The Magnificent Machines of al-Jazari, an exhibition at the UNIQ Expo in Istanbul
  • “The impact of al-Jazari's inventions is still felt in modern contemporary mechanical engineering,” wrote 20th-century English engineer and historian Donald Hill in his book Studies in Medieval Islamic Technology.
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  • In his book, al-Jazari explained the construction of his devices and automatons, from water-raising machines to fountains, complete with illustrations and instructions that gave engineers the opportunity to reuse them. 
  • his masterwork, The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices,
  • The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices,  was the most important work of engineering written before the Renaissance centuries later. 
  • “The idea of having robots to do humans work - or simply automation - was developed by al-Jazari 250 years before Leonardo Da Vinci, with some excellent examples."
  • in the 21st century Muslim countries see relatively less scientific activity. According to the World Bank, in 2016 the United States and the European Union respectively published 426,165 and 613,774 articles in scientific and technical journals. That compares to 40,974 in Iran and 33,902 in Turkey, although the number of articles is rising.
Ed Webb

Alaa Abdel Fattah undergoes medical intervention by Egyptian authorities amid hunger st... - 1 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...er-strike-medical-intervention

Egypt COP rights prisoner activist activists

shared by Ed Webb on 10 Nov 22 - Cached
  • The family of Alaa Abdel Fattah, the British Egyptian political prisoner on a hunger and water strike in prison, was informed by Egyptian officials Thursday that he has undergone “a medical intervention with the knowledge of a judicial authority,” they said.
  • The United States is a close ally of Egypt and provides more than $1 billion in military aid to the country each year, but has repeatedly criticized its human rights record. Abdel Fattah’s family has made repeated public appeals to the White House to intervene in the case.
  • Abdel Fattah, who is 40 and a once-prominent activist in the 2011 revolution, has been in and out of prison for the past decade on charges human rights groups decry as attempts to silence dissent. He was sentenced to five years in prison last year after he was found guilty of “spreading false news undermining national security.”
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  • His case has become a central topic at COP27 — especially after an Egyptian lawmaker confronted his younger sister, Sanaa Seif, at a news conference discussing his case.
  • a lawyer in Cairo has since filed a case against Seif, accusing her of “conspiring with foreign agencies hostile to the Egyptian state” and “spreading false news,” among other allegations. The filing alone does not ensure the case will be pursued, but the family said it amounts to an intimidation tactic after Seif’s outspoken support of her brother at the international conference, where Egypt hoped human rights issues would not take center stage.
  • the message #FreeAlaa has spread throughout the conference, garnering support from climate activists. On Thursday, some attendees dressed in white — the color of prison uniforms in Egypt — and gathered for a protest over climate justice and to express solidarity with political prisoners here.
  • The protests would be unthinkable anywhere in Egypt outside the U.N.-controlled zone at COP27 due to tight restrictions on public gatherings.
  • On Thursday, the siblings’ mother — who has waited outside each day this week for a letter from her son — was asked to leave the area of the Wadi el-Natrun prison complex outside Cairo where he is being held.The family’s lawyer, Khaled Ali, then announced on social media that he has been approved to visit Abdel Fattah and was on his way to the facility — his first visit since early 2020. When he arrived, he said, prison officials refused him entrance to the facility — saying the permission letter he received that morning was dated the day before.
  • The family, who last heard from him in a letter last week that he would stop drinking water on Sunday, has repeatedly warned that he could die before the conference ends next week. Seif said Wednesday that she does not know if he is still alive.
  • Several world leaders, including British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, raised his case directly with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi. Under the terms of his sentencing, the presidency is the only office with the authority to pardon him. But despite days of demands, his family has still not had proof of life or seen any indication he may be released.
  • U.N. Human Rights High Commissioner Volker Türk called on Egypt to immediately release Abdel Fattah. “No one should be detained for exercising their basic human rights or defending those of others,” he said. “I also encourage the authorities to revise all laws that restrict civic space and curtail the rights to freedom of expression, assembly and association.”
Ed Webb

Back to the future for Egypt's state media - News - Aswat Masriya - 1 views

en.aswatmasriya.com/...view.aspx

Egypt media censorship MB ikhwan military television newspapers

shared by Ed Webb on 07 Jul 13 - Cached
  • The presence of Republican Guards in the studios of state broadcasting headquarters on Wednesday, the day the army staged its takeover, was an early sign that state media would reprise their traditional role as loyal servants of a military-backed administration.
  • Within hours of commander-in-chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi broadcasting the announcement that Mursi had been removed and the constitution suspended, authorities shut down four private television stations controlled by Islamists.
  • Even before the takeover, Nile TV, one of two state channels, had begun airing video montages of triumphant soldiers performing their duties to the strains of patriotic music.
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  • The day after Mursi's removal, Nile TV and state radio suddenly hosted studio guests who railed against the Brotherhood as "enemies of the people" and cast Islamist supporters of the elected president as instigators of violence.
  • "Every editor-in-chief at national newspapers is treading water, waiting for the new regime and its policies to crystallise and taking into account that the armed forces have a stance to be reckoned with," Attiya Eissawi, managing editor at state-run Al-Ahram told Reuters.
  • "Many of them expect to be replaced if their new editorial policies are not to the satisfaction of the new regime."
  • 52 senior executives and editors at Al-Ahram, including the chairman of the company, which is also a publisher and houses a policy think-tank, have been axed since the fall of Mubarak and the election of Mursi
  • rights activists and journalists say the toppled leader tried to use government-owned channels and papers to his own advantage as his predecessors had done, only less successfully
  • State-employed journalists went on strike to demand the removal of Mursi's information minister, Salah Abdel-Maqsoud.In May, radio journalists stopped work in protest when the top editor of state radio was transferred to a small station covering youth affairs and sports, after the minister deemed a Radio Misr broadcast insulting to the president.
  • Al-Akhbar, one of the biggest, accused the Brotherhood of meddling and incompetence in a front-page editorial by the editor-in-chief the week before the mass anti-Mursi protests that gave popular support for the army's action.A journalist at al-Ahram told Reuters that phone calls from the military and the security services regarding news coverage had been the norm before Mubarak's fall."This time, they don't need to," the journalist said, citing huge popular support for the military's toppling of Mursi.
  • Since the Islamist channels were silenced, coverage of large protests by Mursi supporters against his removal have been scarce on state TV and at times completely absent on private satellite channels that fiercely opposed the Brotherhood.
  • "Unfortunately, the Egyptian media is only presenting one picture of what's happening now. It's the picture of those who want the military government," said Abdel Aziz Mujaahed, one of 29 Mubasher Misr staff members, including the station's general manager, who were arrested on Wednesday.
  • The Muslim Brotherhood's political arm said the state-owned printing press refused to print its newspaper - Freedom and Justice - for two days after Mursi's removal, but the paper was back on some newsstands on Saturday.A military source acknowledged restricting publication because the paper planned to splash an article, which he said was untrue, alleging that the army was split and a major unit remained loyal to Mursi.
Ed Webb

Tourism blooms in Israel's Arava desert - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East - 1 views

www.al-monitor.com/...ourism-agriculture-gusets.html

Israel tourism desert arava Negev Naqab agriculture economy

shared by Ed Webb on 09 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • “I think that the agricultural potential here has exhausted itself,” Weinstein tells Al-Monitor. “Agriculture here is incredible, but there are limits on water and demand, so anyone who wants to continue living here will have to learn to create some other quality industry. I think that tourism here will be fine. I won’t make millions, but if I can support myself at least partially from these bungalows, that would be excellent. I can still do that when I am older.” He says that anyone in the region who is not a farmer still bears a certain stigma, but people are starting to change their attitudes. “We all have some work to do on the way this is perceived. There are farmers who came down to the Arava to get away from people. Now, suddenly they have to play host.”
  • New facilities that have opened in the region over the past few years include a bee farm, an alligator farm, an antelope farm, and other attractions that combine agriculture with tourism and the untamed wilderness.
  • ''This is the only strip of land left in the country with fresh air and wide-open virgin spaces. And it’s in a part of the country that is not disputed politically and has no demographic issues,”
  • Ed Webb on 09 Apr 16
     
    The real story here is the changing economics of desert agriculture. Arguably, no-one should have been growing peppers in such an arid environment, although the technologies developed to do so have been impressive. It's still a great place to grow dates, though.
Ed Webb

No to Military Trials for Civilians: Half an Hour With Khaled - 0 views

en.nomiltrials.com/...half-hour-with-khaled.html

Egypt opinion bloggers revolution #jan25

shared by Ed Webb on 20 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • they do not kill us to restore their state; they kill us because killing and jailing are normal behaviours in their state
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Nothing is exceptional in the Midan except our togetherness. Outside the Midan we think that we rejoice at a wedding because we know the bride and groom, in the Midan we rejoiced and celebrated at the wedding of strangers. Outside the Midan we think that we grieve at a funeral because we know the deceased, in the Midan we grieved for strangers and prayed for them.
  • Nothing is new in the Midan except that we surround ourselves with the love of strangers. But the love of strangers is not a monopoly of the Midan: hundreds sent me messages of love for Khaled from outside the Midan, some describe themselves as belonging to the sofa party. Millions grieved for the shaheed in every home in Egypt.
  • We love the newborn because he’s human and because he’s Egyptian. Our hearts break for the shaheed because he’s human and because he’s Egyptian. We go to the Midan to discover that we love life outside it, and to discover that our love for life is resistance. We race towards the bullets because we love life, and we go into prison because we love freedom.
  • If the state falls it is not just the Midan that will remain; what will remain is the love of strangers and everything that impelled us towards the Midan and everything that we learned in the Midan.
  • As for their state it is for an hour. Just for an hour.
Ed Webb

Iranian Police Seizing Dissidents Get Aid Of Western Companies - Bloomberg - 0 views

www.bloomberg.com/...-aid-of-western-companies.html

Iran surveillance technology middleeast ICT

shared by Ed Webb on 06 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • About half the political prisoners he met in jail told him police had tracked their communications and movements through their cell phones
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • AdaptiveMobile, backed by the investment arm of Intel Corp. (INTC), proposed a system in partnership with Ericsson for Iran’s largest mobile provider in 2010 that would filter, block and store cell phone text messages, according to two people familiar with the discussions. An Ericsson spokesman confirmed the proposal. The Irish company still services commercial gear for a similar system it sold in 2008 to Irancell. Police have access to the system, say two former Irancell managers.
  • Texting has become the predominant means of digital communications because more than 70 percent of Iranian households have a mobile phone -- four-times greater than the percentage with internet access.
  • Hundreds of people have been convicted by Iranian courts for offenses related to election protests, according to New York-based nonprofit group Human Rights Watch.
  • “My mobile phone was my enemy, my laptop was my enemy, my landline was my enemy,” says Shojaee, who turned to using pay phones.
  • Iran is one of many authoritarian countries across the Mideast and North Africa employing Western surveillance tools for political repression. In Bahrain, for instance, communications monitoring centers sold by Siemens AG (SIE), and maintained by Espoo, Finland-based Nokia Siemens Networks and then its divested unit, Trovicor GmbH, have been used to track and arrest activists, according to a Bloomberg News investigation.
  • Much of NSN’s gear in Iran has since been swapped out in favor of China’s Huawei Technologies Co.
  • The 3.9 million-euro ($5.5 million) system AdaptiveMobile proposed could handle more than 10,000 messages per second and archive them for a period of 180 days, according to a company proposal. The archive would contain 54 terabytes of storage, according to the document. That’s big enough for all the data gathered by the Hubble Space Telescope over 20 years.
  • A rapidly growing global business, the “lawful interception” and information intelligence market now generates more than $3 billion in annual sales
  • “Ultimately, telecom is a force for good in society,”
  • Police arrested him on the outskirts of a rally that December, beating him with fists and a baton and jailing him for 52 days. Security agents interrogated him 14 times, presenting transcripts of text messages plus an elaborate diagram showing all the people he’d called -- and then everyone they’d called.
  • The system can record a person’s location every 15 seconds -- eight times more frequently than a similar system the company sold in Yemen, according to company documents. A tool called “geofences” triggers an alarm when two targets come in close proximity to each other. The system also stores the data and can generate reports of a person’s movements. A former Creativity Software manager said the Iran system was far more sophisticated than any other systems the company had sold in the Middle East.
  • “A lot of people were not happy they were working on a project in Iran,” he says. “They were worried about how the product was going to be used.” Gokaram says he worked only on commercial products and didn’t share those concerns. He declined to discuss specifics about any technology deployed in Iran. Creativity Software, which is privately-held and partly funded by London-based venture capital firm MMC Ventures, announced last November that it had made four sales in six months in the Middle East for law enforcement purposes without identifying the mobile operator clients. Saul Olivares, market development director at Creativity Software, declined to discuss sales of law enforcement technology, but in an e-mail he pointed to its practical benefits, such as locating individuals during disasters, for ambulance crews and in other emergencies.
  • The European Union took aim at Iran’s growing surveillance capabilities in October 2010, enacting new sanctions that include prohibitions for goods that can be used for “internal repression.” The regulations, however, focused mostly on low- tech items, such as vehicles equipped with water cannons and razor barbed wire. In September, the European Parliament broadened its surveillance concerns beyond Iran, voting for a block on exports of systems if the purchasing country uses the gear “in connection with a violation of human rights.”
  • After his arrest early last year, Pourheydar, the opposition journalist, says police accused him of speaking to foreign media such as BBC and Voice of America. Their evidence: unbroadcast mobile phone calls captured, recorded and transcribed, he says. They also had transcripts of his e-mails and text messages. He never learned which companies provided the technology that made it possible.
  • “All these companies, which sell telecommunications services and listening devices to Iran, directly have roles in keeping this regime in power,”
Ed Webb

Egypt's Nubians continue to demand right of return - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middl... - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...a-displace-culture-people.html

Egypt minorities minority Nubia water infrastructure history memory politics

shared by Ed Webb on 02 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • they called for the need to introduce Nubian history to the school curriculum, from primary school to university, in order to teach society about the importance, customs and traditions of Nubian civilization and put an end to racist attacks against them
Ed Webb

What it's like to be a foreign journalist in Turkey - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Midd... - 1 views

www.al-monitor.com/...sidency-becomes-difficult.html

Turkey media journalists propaganda censorship

shared by Ed Webb on 18 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • A male journalist from Europe who has lived in Ankara for the last five years told Al-Monitor, “In the beginning, the toughest challenge was to survive the amount of food I was forced to eat because of the Turkish hospitality. In 2012 and 2013, the situation changed drastically and more and more often I had to cover street demonstrations and violent protests. Until that time the biggest danger I faced was being trampled by wrestling camels. After that it became normal to deal with tear gas, water cannons, plastic bullets and stones hurled by protesters. Nowadays, the biggest challenge is to be able to report in an environment where self-censorship is a constant danger and whoever disagrees with what you write or objects to the photos you take thinks you are against them. It is also very hard to obtain interviews, especially from ordinary people who seem to be afraid of talking with a foreigner.”
  • “Writing about Turkish politics is becoming increasingly a dangerous occupation. Several government officials who agree to talk demand they would like to preview the piece prior to publication. One MHP [Nationalist Action Party] official asked me to kill a piece because it included a section on the HDP [Peoples' Democratic Party]. He said his name could not appear in the international press with the names of the terrorists. There are plenty of capricious examples that turn proper reporting into an impasse.”
  • There is an increasingly sophisticated government propaganda apparatus — directly or indirectly controlled by the AKP — and they often point their guns at anyone even nominally critical of the AKP or [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan. Sometimes they are nice — always looking for gullible foreigners to convert to the cause, but they can also be incredibly vicious
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • it seems like certain sources, namely academics, are a bit less likely to talk lately, which, if true, means the government has successfully accomplished its goal of silencing some of its most credible critics. More generally, the political situation has gotten much, much worse, and most of my Turkish and Kurdish friends have either been further radicalized or have simply given up and withdrawn from politics and following the news. There's a great feeling of helplessness. It's an exciting life for a journalist, but it's also just incredibly sad and often seemingly hopeless
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.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • 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.
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