The biggest story in the world right now is the ramifications of the Egyptian uprisings. Al-Jazeera English has been a beacon of reporting and insights over the last weeks (and indeed, leaves every other global news network for dead because it understands the world isn’t simply about what London or Washington thinks or wants). I…
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New Assange interview on Australian TV
Here’s the interview on SBS Dateline just aired in Australia. And here’s the gist of what Julian Assange said: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange says the whistleblowing website’s influence on events in Tunisia was the “example” for the political upheaval in Egypt. The material leaked by WikiLeaks which was then published through a Lebanese newspaper, Al…
What online culture has brought to Egypt (and didn’t start yesterday)
The internet has certainly played a role in bringing Egypt to this moment. It started years ago – something I documented in my book The Blogging Revolution – and hasn’t just appeared in the last two weeks. Instant Facebook Revolution, indeed. I like this: As one secularist blogger put it in commenting on the protocols…
Wikileaks: Not all leaks are created equal
My following essay appears today in Online Opinion: The Obama administration is pursuing Wikileaks and its Australian founder Julian Assange for alleged criminal activity in releasing classified documents. The US Department of Justice has ordered Twitter to hand over private messages sent by parties close to Wikileaks and the whistle-blower website says that even the…
Wael Ghonim talks to CNN and dispels some myths over Egypt
He explains the major role of the internet in the uprisings, the non-existent place of the Muslim Brotherhood in the beginning and how the time to negotiate with the regime is over (when innocents are being tortured and murdered in the streets):
Beijing should be scared
Censoring content will never work in the long run: …The New Yorker‘s Evan Osnos points out. China’s 457 million Internet users (and 180 million bloggers) can no longer use the Chinese word for “Egypt” in microblogs or search engines. The government’s goal is to pre-empt any contagion effect that popular uprisings against autocracy in the…
Portrait of an Egyptian hero
He’s just one fine man. I met and spent time with Hossam elHamalawy in Cairo during the research for my book The Blogging Revolution. Thinking about this over the last week, I’m proud to have documented the then small but growing movement of web dissent in the US and Israeli-backed dictatorship. It was those seeds…
Journalists, don’t be afraid to rely on Arabs to tell you Egyptian truth
Here’s an idea for a Western newspaper trying to report in Egypt. Rather than sending your own correspondent who doesn’t get anywhere near the action – or know any of the important writers, bloggers, Tweeters etc – you actually rely on other, perhaps indigenous sources, who are seeing the real action on the streets. Not…
Wikileaks shows that Egypt/US cuddling achieved little positive
Wikileaks cables released this week show the real relationship between Washington and Cairo, a toxic brew of money, slight pressure, fear of Islamism and reliability. Who needed whom more? US diplomats and their masters never imagined a different Egypt because they never wanted it to happen. It suited America just fine. The real rights of…