Skip to main content

Home/ Media in Middle East & North Africa/ Group items matching "activists" in title, tags, annotations or url

Group items matching
in title, tags, annotations or url

Sort By: Relevance | Date Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Ed Webb

Egypt police detain Egyptian-German activist | World | Reuters - 0 views

uk.reuters.com/...idUKTRE51617J20090207

shared by Ed Webb on 07 Feb 09 - Cached
  • no formal charge
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 07 Feb 09
       
      This is, sadly, not as rare as one would hope in Egypt.
  • Rizk, who blogs at Tabula Gaza (http://tabulagaza.blogspot.com) is "passionate" about Gaza and had recently completed most of the work on a short documentary about non-violent resistance to Israeli occupation,
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 07 Feb 09
       
      When David Faris comes later this semester we can ask him about blogging and activism in Egypt. Note that Rizk has branched out into another medium - low-cost digital video means a documentary is a more accessible tool for activists than previously.
Ed Webb

Activists aim to punch holes in online shields of authoritarian regimes - SiliconValley.com - 0 views

www.siliconvalley.com/...ci_14407148

censorship evasion filters activists Iran China USA

shared by Ed Webb on 20 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Haystack, a program to help Iranians wiggle past government filters as tensions between authorities and the opposition movement surge.
  • virtual slingshots to take on government censorship
Ed Webb

Blogging in the Middle East: Not Necessarily Journalistic : CJR - 0 views

www.cjr.org/..._new_threat_to_middle_east.php

shared by Ed Webb on 19 Aug 09 - Cached
  • “This a country where barbers used to do the job of doctors,” says Abdelmonem Said, head of Egypt’s al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, who writes a newspaper column but does not consider himself a journalist. “We should not refer to [bloggers] as journalists unless they are qualified to perform the job of a journalist. Defending an activist in the name of journalism further complicates an already complicated situation.” Professionalism is the best defense for Arab and Iranian journalists; facts their ultimate ally. If everything written on the Web is equal, governments have an excuse to crack down on it all. And if journalist rights groups throw in their lot with political activists, it will be hard to make a case that jailed Iranian and Arab journalists shouldn’t be tried right alongside “cyberdissidents” advocating revolution and militants who throw bombs.
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 19 Aug 09
       
      Greater professionalism would be very good to see in the region, but it is not fostered by the current political and economic power structures and 'flexible' legal systems
Michael Fisher

Texting Toward Utopia - 0 views

bostonreview.net/...morozov.php

New Media Web 2.0

shared by Michael Fisher on 02 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Many such dissenters have, indeed, made great use of the Web. In Ukraine young activists relied on new–media technologies to mobilize supporters during the Orange Revolution. Colombian protesters used Facebook to organize massive rallies against FARC, the leftist guerrillas. The shocking and powerful pictures that surfaced from Burma during the 2007 anti–government protests—many of them shot by local bloggers with cell phones—quickly traveled around the globe. Democratic activists in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe used the Web to track vote rigging in last year’s elections and used mobile phones to take photos of election results that were temporarily displayed outside the voting booths (later, a useful proof of the irregularities). Plenty of other examples—from Iran, Egypt, Russia, Belarus, and, above all, China—attest to the growing importance of technology in facilitating dissent.
  • But drawing conclusions about the democratizing nature of the Internet may still be premature. The major challenge in understanding the relationship between democracy and the Internet— aside from developing good measures of democratic improvement—has been to distinguish cause and effect. That is always hard, but it is especially difficult in this case because the grandiose promise of technological determinism—the idealistic belief in the Internet’s transformative power—has often blinded even the most sober analysts.
  • investing in new media infrastructure might also embolden the conservatives, nationalists, and extremists, posing an even greater challenge to democratization. A brief look at the emerging cyber–nationalism in Russia and China provides a taste of things to come.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The problem with building public spheres from above, online or offline, is much like that of building Frankenstein’s monsters: we may not like the end product. This does not mean we should give up on the Internet as a force for democratization, only that we should ditch the blinding ideology of technological determinism and focus on practical tasks. Figuring out how the Internet could benefit existing democratic forces and organizations—very few of which have exhibited much creativity on the Web—would not be a bad place to start.
  • Michael Fisher on 02 Apr 09
     
    Does the Internet spread democracy? Evgeny Morozov seeks to answer this question. He shows both the pros and cons of new media and criticizes certain people and works for exaggerating the Internet's present capabilities. While he agrees that the Internet has an enormous potential for building public spheres and having positive effects (among other things), he cautions observers from expecting too much, too soon.
gweyman

The Revolution Will Be YouTubed: Syria's Video Rebels - TIME - 0 views

www.time.com/...0,8599,2069721-1,00.html

revolution syria video youtube protest middle_east meedanpartners

shared by gweyman on 06 May 11 - No Cached
  • gweyman on 06 May 11
     
    Feature on video activists in Damascus that I helped to commission and edit for TIME.
Ed Webb

Every night, jail becomes home for leading Egyptian dissident - 0 views

www.france24.com/...ome-leading-egyptian-dissident

Egypt rights activist activism bloggers activists repression prison

shared by Ed Webb on 03 Jun 19 - Cached
  • His split reality, a free man by day and a prisoner in solitary confinement by night, has already taken its toll."There's a deep level of insult that I'm cooperating with the state in the destruction of my life everyday... which puts such immense psychological pressure on someone."
  • Abdel Fattah's disjointed life has also affected his family who worry for his safety in the police station with no communication once he is inside. He is not allowed any mobile phones or laptops overnight.Abdel Fattah's sister Mona Seif, also a human rights advocate, said she still cannot process how her brother is imprisoned daily.She said she is determined to keep advocating against the unfair probation conditions for him and others.
  • Dubbed "the icon of the revolution" that unseated longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011, Abdel Fattah still speaks out on his social media accounts about political repression in Egypt.He argues for others also forced to spend their nights in jail, such as award-winning photojournalist Mahmoud Abu-Zeid, known as Shawkan.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • In the last decade, he has garnered the dubious honour of being jailed under Mubarak, his Islamist successor Mohamed Morsi and current President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
Ed Webb

Kuwait: Lawyer files lawsuit to block Twitter - Middle East Monitor - 0 views

www.middleeastmonitor.com/files-lawsuit-to-block-twitter

Kuwait censorship twitter

shared by Ed Webb on 20 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • A lawyer filed a lawsuit at a Kuwaiti court demanding the closure of the social networking site Twitter.
  • Authorities in the Gulf state have repeatedly cracked down on social media users, arresting those deemed to have “insulted” the state or its officials or “harmed” relations with other countries. In May the Kuwaiti Criminal Court sentenced activist Mosaed Al-Moseilem to five years in prison and a fine of 10,000 dinars ($32,856) after finding him guilty of criticising the UAE on Twitter.
Ed Webb

The dwindling promise of popular uprisings in the Middle East - 0 views

www.972mag.com/popular-uprisings-middle-east

Egypt Tunisia Iran Israel Palestine israelpalestine Syria Yemen analysis opinion uprisings surveillance technology repression

shared by Ed Webb on 03 Dec 22 - Cached
  • The scenes emerging from Iran today elicit a mix of reactions across a region still reeling from the dark legacy of the “Arab Spring,” which itself came on the heels of the “Green Movement” protests in the wake of Iran’s 2009 presidential election. Many Arabs cannot help but recall the sense of hope that reverberated from Tunisia to Yemen, only to be shattered by unyielding repression, war, and the resurgence of authoritarianism. Subsequent protest waves, including those that began in 2019 in Lebanon, Iraq, and Sudan, were similarly met with brutality, co-optation, and dissolution.
  • Over a decade on from the Arab uprisings, the path toward democracy and freedom for youth across the Middle East has become more treacherous than ever, as liberation movements find themselves fighting against stronger, smarter, and more entrenched regimes that have adapted to modern challenges to their domination.
  • Technologies that many hoped would help to evade state censorship and facilitate mobilization have been co-opted as repressive surveillance tools.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • many of the region’s youth have become immobilized by revolutionary fatigue left by the tragic, violent trauma of the Arab Spring’s aftermath
  • Breakthroughs in surveillance methods are allowing intelligence outfits across the Middle East to infiltrate just about every crevice of civil society, making it almost impossible to communicate or organize without the government’s knowledge. Some of the most sinister of these weapons have been manufactured in Israel, which has emerged as a leading global exporter of surveillance technologies that are now being deployed against oppressed populations worldwide.
  • with the United States declining as a global hegemon, authoritarians are selling their allegiances to the highest bidder, with human rights, democracy, and accountability falling further by the wayside.
  • While arming themselves with the latest repressive tools, autocratic regimes across the Middle East continue to be encouraged by their external benefactors to prioritize security and foreign interests at the expense of democracy and human rights at home
  • The prospect of acquiring dystopian surveillance tech like Pegasus has become a driving motive for authoritarian Arab leaders in their rush to normalize relations with Israel, against the will of their people
  • Since 2011, Russia has doubled down on its support for some of the most brutal regimes in the region.
  • About 60 percent of the region’s population are under 25 years old, and the dire socio-political and economic conditions that much of the Middle East’s youth face have changed little since the thwarted revolutions of 2011. Youth unemployment has, in fact, worsened over the past decade, increasing from 23.8 percent in 2010 to 27.2 percent in 2020. The lack of opportunities continues to fuel brain drains and mass migration across the region.
  • dictators driven by paranoia have continued to hollow out civil society, ensuring that no viable political alternative to their rule exists. Press freedom across the region has declined drastically; Egypt, for example, has become one of the world’s top jailers of journalists since President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi came to power in a military coup in 2013. In Tunisia, President Kais Saied has undone many of the country’s democratic advances by dissolving the government and enhancing his powers through a new constitution.
  • This aggressive trend has intensified in Palestine, too. Following the 2021 Unity Intifada, Israeli forces arrested hundreds of political activists and are now stepping up efforts to target civil society and human rights groups that expose Israeli war crimes and rights violations. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority has entrenched its role as a subcontractor of the Israeli occupation, stepping up arrests of political activists and resistance fighters alike across the West Bank at Israel’s behest.
  • A recent study by The Guardian and YouGov found that although a majority of respondents in Sudan, Tunisia, Algeria, Iraq, and Egypt do not regret the uprisings, more than half of those polled in Syria, Yemen, and Libya say their lives are now worse
  • By shutting down spaces for Iranians to realize their imagined future, Iran’s leaders have ensured that any substantial transfer of power will be violent
Ed Webb

Iran state TV hacked with image of supreme leader in crosshairs - Al-Monitor: Independent, trusted coverage of the Middle East - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...mage-supreme-leader-crosshairs

Iran protests media socialmedia TV television hacking hackers hacktivism

shared by Ed Webb on 11 Oct 22 - Cached
  • Hackers supporting Iran's wave of women-led protests interrupted a state TV news broadcast with an image of gun-sight crosshairs and flames over an image of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in footage widely shared online on Sunday.
  • activists have spray-painted "Death to Khamenei" and "The Police are the Murderers of the People" on billboards in Tehran
  • Another 90 people were killed in Iran's far southeast, in unrest on September 30 sparked by the alleged rape of a teenage girl by a police chief in Sistan-Baluchestan province, said IHR, citing the UK-based Baluch Activists Campaign.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • In the face of the violence and the online restrictions, protesters have adopted new tactics to spread their message of resistance in public spaces."We are not afraid anymore. We will fight," read one large banner placed on an overpass of Tehran's Modares highway, seen in images verified by AFP.
  • "Join us and rise up," read another message in the TV hack claimed by the group Edalat-e Ali (Ali's Justice).It also posted pictures of Amini and three other women killed in the crackdown that has claimed at least 95 lives according to Norway-based group Iran Human Rights.
  • Many on social media said it evoked images of Neda Agha Soltan, a young woman who became an enduring symbol of the Iranian opposition after she was shot dead at protests in 2009.
  • a man with a spray can is seen altering the wording of a government billboard on the same highway from "The police are the servants of the people" to "The police are the murderers of the people".
  • Iranian pop singer Shervin Hajipour -- who was arrested after his song "Baraye" went viral online and became a protest anthem -- appeared back in an Instagram video Sunday for the first time since his release.In a short message, the 25-year-old denied links to any "movement or organisation outside the country" and said his song was only meant to "express solidarity with the people".
Ed Webb

Opinion | Ghada Oueiss: I won't be silenced by online attacks and trolling - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...-be-silenced-by-online-attacks

shared by Ed Webb on 07 Nov 22 - No Cached
  • Although I was the target of this latest assault — no doubt because I regularly present critical reporting about Saudi Arabia and the UAE — the message to journalists across the Middle East is very clear: Don’t criticize the crown princes.
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 07 Nov 22
       
      Intimidation to induce self-censorship
  • There has been a disturbing rise in gender-related harassment and threats against female public figures. The movement for women’s rights in Saudi Arabia has terrified the government, which has insisted on doling out reforms on its own terms while detaining the female activists behind the movement. Loujain al-Hathloul, the most prominent of the Saudi women campaigners, and several others remain behind bars.
  • Last Friday, a Turkish court began hearings on Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder — a stark reminder that justice has still not been served two years on. Jamal himself once warned me to ignore and block these Twitter accounts. Even though the man widely believed to be responsible for Jamal’s murder may never be held to account, we must not let him and those who work for him imperil one of the fundamental pillars of a free society — a free press.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Twitter and other social media sites must take action to protect journalists such as myself and ensure that its platform is no longer misused by authoritarian regimes.
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

Elon Musk: Good for MENA Twitter? - by Marc Lynch - 0 views

abuaardvark.substack.com/...lon-musk-good-for-mena-twitter

authoritarianism media opinion analysis twitter MENA socialmedia censorship

shared by Ed Webb on 05 May 22 - No Cached
  • The MENA online ecosystem is not a good place for freedoms or civil debate right now, to say the least. The Digital Authoritarianism collection I edited last year makes for grim reading. Many MENA states have set in place legal frameworks criminalizing online dissent (and a lot more than just dissent). The pervasive use of Israeli-designed digital surveillance tools has turbocharged the ability of autocratic regimes to spy on their citizens (or on anyone else). Online discourse is plagued by armies of bots and trolls. And the suppression of Palestinian activist content shows how social media platforms have proven an uneven playing field when it comes to content moderation. Apocalyptic takes on what Musk might do really do need to grapple with how terrible things already are.
  • Musk explained his approach to free speech in a recent tweet: “By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law.” That may sound good to some people in an American context, I suppose. But in the MENA, it would play directly into the hands of authoritarian regimes which have spent years constructing elaborate legal and normative frameworks to criminalize online dissent. Those laws don’t just ban violent hate speech, but range from political dissent, criticism of royal family members or the military, human rights monitoring, even dancing on TikTok. Following these cybercrime laws as a guide to content moderation would entail censoring a wide range of legitimate political speech - the opposite, presumably, of what an avowed free speech advocate would want to see.
  • If new Twitter policies drawn from the right wing understanding of the American online arena were applied consistently in the MENA context, it could potentially ease the suppression of Palestinian voices. I mean, that wouldn’t be the intention and it probably wouldn’t, but it’s worth thinking about.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • if he really means requiring users to authenticate their identity with some form of legal ID, that would mean a world of trouble for users in highly repressive MENA states. Many activists and dissidents face extreme consequences should their identities be discovered. So do many LGBTQ, atheist, or other users from marginalized or even criminalized communities
  • The bot armies really are annoying, and if Musk could figure out a way to remove them then the MENA region would benefit greatly. Disinformation, harrassment and abuse (especially of women), polluting hashtags to make conversation impossible, obnoxious trolling, intimidation… all of these have contributed to making MENA Twitter at worst almost unusable, and at best a highly distorted reflection of reality. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Iran are among the worst offenders among states, but the problem is endemic
  • Sure, if Musk actually does end up taking over and running Twitter (big ifs, still), he probably wouldn’t actually have those positive effects, at least not intentionally. But it’s still tempting to read some real significance into his intriguing little public spat with Waleed bin Talal, where he asked “What are the Kingdom’s views on journalistic freedom of speech?”
Ed Webb

Despite Limits on Freedom, Foreign Campuses Retain Value, Speakers Say - Global - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 0 views

chronicle.com/...137703

GCC UAE dubai education universities freedom academia

shared by Ed Webb on 12 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Dubai, one of the seven principalities that make up the small, oil-rich United Arab Emirates, is a growing destination for students from the Middle East, India, and China, making it a logical host for the Going Global conference, said the British Council, the British government's cultural and educational arm and the event's organizer. But recently the Emirates have been better known as the site of an academic controversy.
  • countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, of which the U.A.E. is a member, are at the "cutting edge" of efforts to internationalize higher education, and that holding the conference in Dubai "contributes to the sterling efforts being made in countries like the U.A.E. and Qatar to open their societies to international debates."
  • Foreign universities are guests in the United Arab Emirates and need to be "aware of the environment they're entering," said Warren Fox, executive director for higher education at the Knowledge and Human Development Authority, a Dubai government agency that accredits and regulates foreign higher-education institutions. "If universities decided they could only go to countries with the same cultural and political values, they wouldn't go abroad at all," said Mr. Fox. "And I think they should, because of the benefits to students and to universities."
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The United Arab Emirates is home to 37 international branch campuses, which serve its large expatriate population. The government of Abu Dhabi, part of the U.A.E., is also financing lavish new campuses for New York University and the Sorbonne.
  • universities here must also obtain security clearances to hire academics, organize conferences, and invite speakers. In the wake of the Arab Spring, authorities have tightened restrictions on freedom of expression and arrested nearly a hundred human-rights activists and Islamists they accuse of plotting to overthrow the state
  • Dubai International Academic City, a "free zone" that is home to dozens of foreign universities
  • our subject is engineering. We don't teach politics
Ed Webb

Tunisian Bloggers Discuss Open Data Two Years After the Revolution - Tunisia Live : Tunisia Live - 0 views

www.tunisia-live.net/...nges-of-open-data-two-years-on

Tunisia media politics data activism citizenJournalism

shared by Ed Webb on 08 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Prior to and throughout the popular uprisings that shook Tunisia and ousted former president Zine el Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011, Tunisian bloggers, cyber-activists and social network users took it upon themselves to take on roles unfilled by state-owned media.
  • “A blogger today is expected to change the world,”
  • citizen-journalism
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • “Unfortunately, transparency seems to be new to our culture… I am disappointed open data has not become successful nationwide still, since the revolution,”
« First ‹ Previous 41 - 60 of 164 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page