The state of art

of the Middle East blogosphere.

The US Congress: Tweeting competition

Hard days in the Congress: they have to vote and to keep on eye on their Twitter updates. In fact, I think Twitter is not easy at all to handle, even at the first sight it sounds quite easy and, by having a threshold of 140 keystrokes, you don't have to fantasize too much. But, for : you shall post several times the day, including when the event is in the making. After, to be ready to answer the feed-backs of your "followers". For a busy politicians, it is a system extremely demanding and, in terms of efficiency, it is quite limited. You could have 10.000 followers, let's say, but you will not be able to skin over all and from this sample, not all will vote you. But, at the very symbolical level, if we think about the benefits of the word-to-mouth effects, Twitter is a tool - but not the only one and not exclusively the most important - with which you could increase your brand awareness, you could test the reactions of a group to certain policies and test perceptions on-line.

In the case of elections, Twitter is a quick way to permanently inform your readers about the incoming results. The Consulate of Israel in New York, for example, sent during the last elections through Twitter almost minute by minute updates.

See also:

AP - How the Twitter works

The Telegraph - The Twitter craze in the States

Egypt's critics have a voice, but never the last word

Michael Slackman

International Herald Tribune
February 18

In Egypt, there is relative freedom to complain about and criticize the government, even the feared security services. Egypt is not Syria in that way, or Saudi Arabia, where public criticism aimed at the state is often dealt with harshly.

But that is where freedom stops.

"I call it the freedom to scream," said Fahmy Howeidy, a writer who has often criticized the government without penalty. "You can say what you want. But you cannot act."

The detention this month of Philip Rizk, an Egyptian-German who organized a peaceful march in support of Palestinians in Gaza, received international attention because of his dual nationality and because he was held incommunicado and without charge.

But what made Rizk's case extraordinary was how routine it actually was, according to political activists, political scientists, bloggers, Islamists, former prisoners and human rights groups here and abroad. It is all too common for the security services to grab citizens, detain them without charge, refuse to release any information concerning their whereabouts and deny them even the minimal protections, under an emergency law passed decades ago to help fight terrorism.

"In Egypt, it's sort of a soft dictatorship," said Gamal Eid, executive director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information in Cairo. "They want to have a pleasant image. But Egypt is ruled by the security apparatus."

The security services appear to have decided that it is generally acceptable to write for a newspaper. But bloggers are another matter. For some reason, as yet unexplained, blogging seems to cross the line from speaking to acting.

It may be that bloggers, by nature, are less willing to stop at the edge of what criticism is tolerated. Newspaper writers, for example, are cautious about how they deal with the president; bloggers have often attacked him head-on.

Many bloggers have been arrested and beaten and thrown in jail. Eid said his organization was handling more than 100 cases of bloggers being detained. He keeps on his wall a snapshot of Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suleiman, a young blogger sentenced to four years in prison for criticizing President Hosni Mubarak and the state's religious institutions.

Karim el-Beheiri is a blogger too. He is a nervous wreck. His legs don't stop jumping, his eyes dart around, and he smokes three packs a day. He suffers memory loss and fatigue. He's been that way since he was held without charge for 73 days by state security — even after a judge ordered his release.

Beheiri, 25, wrote about corruption and workers' rights. He worked in a state-owned textile factory where tens of thousands of workers went on strike last April in a dispute with the government over wages. He said he had been beaten, shocked, handcuffed and manacled through much of his ordeal.

"For a second, after the judge said I should be freed, I thought there really were laws in this country," Beheiri said, dragging on a cigarette.

Diaa Eddin Gad, 23, another blogger, was grabbed the same day as Rizk and has not been heard from since.

But there is a gray line through it all. The Muslim Brotherhood — a religious and social movement that wants to see Egypt ruled by Islamic law — is legally banned and its members are often arrested, even tried before military courts. But it has offices around the country and is allowed to operate religious and charitable activities.

There are some critics who say that the government allows the brotherhood to survive so that Egyptian officials can say to the West that they are fighting to keep the Islamists from power.

Still, 740 of its members were arrested because they protested in support of the Palestinians in Gaza.

"There is a red line: don't make a big deal of your ideas," said Nasser Hobshi, 42, an engineer, as he sat with friends at an outdoor café near the stock exchange.

There are laws on the books that provide for some degree of due process. Even the emergency law, which gives the government broad powers to ignore civil protections in the Constitution and to detain citizens without charge, requires the authorities to make public that a person was detained, legal experts here said. But, they say, the rules are often ignored, largely because the security forces operate with impunity.

There is also a belief among some political activists here that Egypt's leaders think the new administration in Washington is too busy with the transition and the economic crisis to think much about repression in Cairo.

"It's an old regime that doesn't have the imagination to find new answers," said Hassan Nafaa, a former political science professor at Cairo University. "This pattern of repression — it is not the result of a political vision; it is the product of a security apparatus."

The government disputes the criticism. General Hamdy Abdel Karim, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said: "None of these false allegations on the part of wrongdoers are going to stop me from exercising my authority to enforce stability and order. Anyone in trouble will try to justify his position."

He added: "Your impression is wrong, wrong, wrong, because you're listening to some bloggers. But to get the real general impression, you have to go back to the street and ask the people who deal with the police on a daily basis."

Where better to ask than in bustling Falaki Square, where Sayed Mohammed, 50, had a cigarette in his mouth as he tinkered with the engine of his white Peugeot.

"Of course there are laws," he said with a quick qualification: "Texts."

"They say the people who go to jail are against the government," he said. "But when you look at how the system works here, you see that it's the government who is against the people."

Tech Warfare in Gaza Spreads

Politics OnLine

The centuries-old conflict in the ancient Middle East is being influenced by a young generation of citizens, soldiers and militants who have grown up using new media.

Cellphones are being used as a form of psychological warfare to send threatening text messages. Here are a few examples of the use of new media in the Gaza war:

• Israeli government officials have also been using technology such as text messaging, social networking sites on Facebook and MySpace and the microblogging site Twitter to communicate Israel's point of view to the western world and to a younger demographic.
• Relief efforts and various organizations are finding a strong donor base in young people online who are using the internet to form grassroots movements and to co-ordinate fundraising events in support of Palestine.
• The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has its own YouTube Channel and according to an ISF spokesman, contains "exclusive footage showing the IDF's operation success".

Stay tuned as the high tech new world continues to collide with centuries-old conflicts.

(Times) Facebook Users Go to War Over Gaza
(FT) Websites And TV Spur Flood of Donations For Political Causes In Arab World
(USAToday) Cellphones Put to 'Unnerving' Use in Gaza
(BBC) Gaza Crisis Spills onto the Web
(Time) Fighting the Media War in Gaza

US Elections - The need for a new beginning. But not any kind of beginning

The US elections are over now, and Barack Hussein Obama will be the next 44 president of the United States of America. According to last estimations, his administration - to sworn in at the end of January 2009 - could count too on a secure majority of Democrats in both Senate and the House .

The lessons of the last two years of campaigning are still to be learned, with many interesting conclusions regarding the new style of politics in the era of global communications, in a world of permanent and unexpected changes (as was the case of the recent economic crisis, predictable, but impossible to estimate the very moment of bursting out). Obama created a huge mobilization of voters, putting at work the unknown power by now of social networks, as Facebook or Twitter or whatever any mean useful to reach the most isolated voter. The effects, advantages and disadvantages of the new trends of personalized politics are not fully evaluated, but, for sure, the overwhelming success of Obama it's a matter of preoccupation and analysis for many countries over the world confronted with coming elections .

In the discourses held shortly after the announcement of the first results, both Obama and McCain stressed the need to get over partisan lines and tackle together the long, long list of issues on the domestic and external agenda.

Former secretary of state in Clinton administration, Madeleine Albright, published today a letter to the new elected president stressing the emergency to the Obama administration to offer a comprehensive approach to the challenges facing nowadays America. The final paragraph of her opinion is extremely inspiring and doesn't concern exclusively the successful Democrats, but the whole spectrum of politicians in Washington D.C., with lessons to be drawn by the Republicans as well:

"To justify our confidence in you, you must show confidence in us. End the politics of fear. Treat us like adults. Help us to understand people from distant lands and cultures. Challenge us to work together. Remind us that America’s finest hours have come not from dominating others but from inspiring people everywhere to seek the best in themselves".

In today's NY Times, Thomas L. Friedman is writing a very good opinion stressing the historical moment in US contemporary history and the hard tasks ahead.

Indeed, it is a new beginning and the pressure of the huge expectations impose very much details and focus in projecting the future, not only for America, but for the fate of democracy as well.

Finishing Our Work

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

And so it came to pass that on Nov. 4, 2008, shortly after 11 p.m. Eastern time, the American Civil War ended, as a black man — Barack Hussein Obama — won enough electoral votes to become president of the United States.
A civil war that, in many ways, began at Bull Run, Virginia, on July 21, 1861, ended 147 years later via a ballot box in the very same state. For nothing more symbolically illustrated the final chapter of America’s Civil War than the fact that the Commonwealth of Virginia — the state that once exalted slavery and whose secession from the Union in 1861 gave the Confederacy both strategic weight and its commanding general — voted Democratic, thus assuring that Barack Obama would become the 44th president of the United States.
This moment was necessary, for despite a century of civil rights legislation, judicial interventions and social activism — despite Brown v. Board of Education, Martin Luther King’s I-have-a-dream crusade and the 1964 Civil Rights Act — the Civil War could never truly be said to have ended until America’s white majority actually elected an African-American as president.
That is what happened Tuesday night and that is why we awake this morning to a different country. The struggle for equal rights is far from over, but we start afresh now from a whole new baseline. Let every child and every citizen and every new immigrant know that from this day forward everything really is possible in America.
How did Obama pull it off? To be sure, it probably took a once-in-a-century economic crisis to get enough white people to vote for a black man. And to be sure, Obama’s better organization, calm manner, mellifluous speaking style and unthreatening message of “change” all served him well.
But there also may have been something of a “Buffett effect” that countered the supposed “Bradley effect” — white voters telling pollsters they’d vote for Obama but then voting for the white guy. The Buffett effect was just the opposite. It was white conservatives telling the guys in the men’s grill at the country club that they were voting for John McCain, but then quietly going into the booth and voting for Obama, even though they knew it would mean higher taxes.
Why? Some did it because they sensed how inspired and hopeful their kids were about an Obama presidency, and they not only didn’t want to dash those hopes, they secretly wanted to share them. Others intuitively embraced Warren Buffett’s view that if you are rich and successful today, it is first and foremost because you were lucky enough to be born in America at this time — and never forget that. So, we need to get back to fixing our country — we need a president who can unify us for nation-building at home.
And somewhere they also knew that after the abysmal performance of the Bush team, there had to be consequences for the Republican Party. Electing McCain now would have, in some way, meant rewarding incompetence. It would have made a mockery of accountability in government and unleashed a wave of cynicism in America that would have been deeply corrosive.
Obama will always be our first black president. But can he be one of our few great presidents? He is going to have his chance because our greatest presidents are those who assumed the office at some of our darkest hours and at the bottom of some of our deepest holes.
“Taking office at a time of crisis doesn’t guarantee greatness, but it can be an occasion for it,” argued the Harvard University political philosopher Michael Sandel. “That was certainly the case with Lincoln, F.D.R. and Truman.” Part of F.D.R.’s greatness, though, “was that he gradually wove a new governing political philosophy — the New Deal — out of the rubble and political disarray of the economic depression he inherited.” Obama will need to do the same, but these things take time.
“F.D.R. did not run on the New Deal in 1932,” said Sandel. “He ran on balancing the budget. Like Obama, he did not take office with a clearly articulated governing philosophy. He arrived with a confident, activist spirit and experimented. Not until 1936 did we have a presidential campaign about the New Deal. What Obama’s equivalent will be, even he doesn’t know. It will emerge as he grapples with the economy, energy and America’s role in the world. These challenges are so great that he will only succeed if he is able to articulate a new politics of the common good.”
Bush & Co. did not believe that government could be an instrument of the common good. They neutered their cabinet secretaries and appointed hacks to big jobs. For them, pursuit of the common good was all about pursuit of individual self-interest. Voters rebelled against that. But there was also a rebellion against a traditional Democratic version of the common good — that it is simply the sum of all interest groups clamoring for their share.
“In this election, the American public rejected these narrow notions of the common good,” argued Sandel. “Most people now accept that unfettered markets don’t serve the public good. Markets generate abundance, but they can also breed excessive insecurity and risk. Even before the financial meltdown, we’ve seen a massive shift of risk from corporations to the individual. Obama will have to reinvent government as an instrument of the common good — to regulate markets, to protect citizens against the risks of unemployment and ill health, to invest in energy independence.”
But a new politics of the common good can’t be only about government and markets. “It must also be about a new patriotism — about what it means to be a citizen,” said Sandel. “This is the deepest chord Obama’s campaign evoked. The biggest applause line in his stump speech was the one that said every American will have a chance to go to college provided he or she performs a period of national service — in the military, in the Peace Corps or in the community. Obama’s campaign tapped a dormant civic idealism, a hunger among Americans to serve a cause greater than themselves, a yearning to be citizens again.”
None of this will be easy. But my gut tells me that of all the changes that will be ushered in by an Obama presidency, breaking with our racial past may turn out to be the least of them. There is just so much work to be done. The Civil War is over. Let reconstruction begin.