Slashdot Mirror
Social Networking Spurs Activism Against Repression
The New York Times Magazine is running a story about the rise in political activism in Egypt through sites like Facebook, which allow citizens to gather and share ideas in ways they otherwise aren't allowed. A state-of-emergency law has been active in Egypt since 1981, which, among other things, "allows the government to ban political organizations and makes it illegal for more than five people to gather without a license from the government." As affordable internet access has spread throughout the country, the government is having a much harder time keeping wraps on the ideas of dissidents. Blocking access to the sites isn't a good solution for the government, because many non-dissidents use it for mundane communications. As Harvard's Ethan Zuckerman puts it, "...doing so would alert a large group of people who they can't afford to radicalize."
To the extent that the ban of the Muslim Brotherhood (a theocratic group pushing for stricter religious rule) in Egypt is effective, I say "Bravo!". When people complain about political, religious, or other repression from a government, it's generally a good idea to find out what kind of group exactly is being repressed.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Translation:
The people living there, if given the freedom to decide their own fate might decide to do do something I don't approve of.
Hence only I deserve such rights.
The ideas they espouse are disgusting, and yet they manage to obtain web hosting services in the United States.
Of course, it would be even more disgusting if they were not allowed to get a website BECAUSE of their ideas.
In this case, the Egyptian government wants to bring peace to the Middle East, whereas the activists want more violence. The Egyptian government has long been instrumental in coordinating peace efforts between the Israelis and Palestinians. The majority of the activists coordinating through Facebook are doing so to express their hatred of Israel, and their desire for its destruction.
There was an interesting interview with a Hamas leader on Al Jazeera not long ago. Essentially, he said that the leaders know that violence won't lead anywhere. The reason the violence keeps going is because the common people on both sides keep calling for it, and leaders who don't acquiesce are thrown out. If the same thing starts happening in Egypt, then it will just lead to more war, and more death.
We, people from more peaceful parts of the world, generally assume that more democracy is always good. We fail to realize that at times, the majority is wrong. The majority wants to kill the other side, because they were harmed, and then the majority on the other side wants to kill the first. It's self-perpetuating, tit for tat. The only way to break out is with strong leaders on both sides who are willing to step up and refuse to fight. Giving the vengeful mob tools to undermine that is not a good thing.
There is no easy solution in the Middle East, but any solution would need to start with strong leaders in both Israel and Gaza who refuse to resort to violence, not with grassroots movements calling for each other's destruction. We need to recognize that, and stop applying our own values to their situation.
as a Vet of Iwo jima once told me. His words We fought for your right to make a choice even if I don't approve of it.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
You may not be able to see the connection, but attitudes like yours led directly to the rise of the Taliban.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Better Translation:
The people living there, if given the freedom to decide their own fate, will almost certainly call for more violence between Israelis and Muslims, leading to decades of war, in which tens of thousands of innocent people will die. Hence, they should be deprived of such rights, just as I would be, if I openly supported the murder of innocents.
You ought to learn a thing or two about that part of the world before saying that everyone should have the right to freedom of speech and expression. If the Egyptian government collapses, things between Israel and Gaza will get really bad, really fast. Sometimes it's more important to save the lives of thousands of people, rather than let thousands of other people yell hate speech.
Luckily we live the the most democratic place on the planet. Where free speech and freedom to public protect are enshrined in the constitution. Except outside Parliament Square and American military bases and drug testing labs and .. anywhere else for that matter. You also risk getting arrested if you try and talk to any of the protesters. Try it if you don't believe me. One other method of intimidation is the mass photographing of protectors by the Police Forward Intelligence Team and ironically the seizure of photographs by legitimate journalists.
--
"Freedom of speech without freedom of response is meaningless"
"Without privacy, there cannot be freedom. And without freedom, there cannot be personal or social growth"
davecb5620@gmail.com
Where did I say a group couldn't be opposed later?
I'm as willing to write code to help people sidestep censorship after they've elected the nutjobs and decided it was a bad idea as I am willing to write code to help those who don't like the other kinds of repression.
If genocide becomes likely then the UN should step in, they're too slow to be much use but that's another problem.
The worst internet censorship I saw (haven't been to all the countries in the area, mind) was actually in Tunisia where bogus MSIE error pages would be thrown back at me. In firefox. Not too long after the WSIS conference in fact, to ladle the irony on. Even sites like BoingBoing was blocked, but then I can kind of understand that :) Consider also, if facebook and social networking internet-style was so effective at fostering political opposition, there's be more successful grass-roots opposition in for example Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan, etc.
There's been some arrests of bloggers in Egypt, but if you watch the Egyptian blogging community it's pretty clear they can get away with far more than many other countries. Wasn't there legislation being written in Italy that bloggers were to be held up against the same laws as journos?
In any case, with internet penetration being what it is in Egypt, even a very successful digital opposition campaign will only have limited effect on a national aggregate. I wonder if the traditional coffee shop networks or SMS for that matter (if you really want something technological to tout) as a vehicle for collective social action isn't orders of magnitude more effective.
Not to rant too hard (the blogging community there sprang from the LUG I helped set up, so I got to observe in a sense), but as an experiment in citizen media the Egyptian blogging community has at the very least outdone traditional media in one respect: sensationalising. I'd be careful where I dish out my kudos, Mr. New York Times. :)
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
So freedom is great as long as it's only used to promote ideas that you think are morally OK?
If I know full well in advance, I will never grant someone the freedom to take mine away.
For better or for worse, actions always have consequences.
Life is not for the lazy.
plus they hate us for our freedom!!!
Perhaps if we required everyone to wear shock collars which stunned them whenever they had a violent impulse... it would reduce their freedom but people who would otherwise be murdered would survive!
Life before freedom!
I said "If I know full well in advance", not that they may or might. Words DO have meaning. You should re-read what I said.
Let me give you an example. Say you have a prisoner behind bars. They do not have the same freedom that you have. However, this same prisoner has stated he will kill you just for self gratification. Knowing this, would you still grant him freedom from prison?
Life is not for the lazy.
Not at all. Get your priorities in line, man. It is MORE important that people survive than that they're free.
"They may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom".
Or in the South Park version:
"Gobble, gobble gobble gobble, gobble gobble gobble gobble, gobble, gobble gobble, GOBBLE!!!"
And I seem to recall a gang of rebels, oh-when-was-that-around-1776-I-think, who'd rather die at the hand of their oppressors than pay taxes if they didn't have seats in the government.
And I'm sure you can find other historic examples of people willing to die for freedom.
Just something to consider...
Not at all. Get your priorities in line, man. It is MORE important that people survive than that they're free.
New Hampshire State Motto:
Live Free or Die.
Not everyone would agree with you.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
Huh? Why not? Why couldn't we put trade embargoes on them?
You might want to note that we didn't invade Germany during WWII because of what he was doing to his own people. We did it because he invaded other countries.
And don't we have trade restrictions with Iran?
The problem with your reasoning is that it quickly results in the USofA being the "policeman of the world" and our country cannot AFFORD that.
I think that you need to read up on some history.
But you never ask the question WHY the majority of voters in Egypt would WANT to elect them.
It doesn't matter if you outlaw one political party. If the majority of the people have the same beliefs as that political party, then they will, eventually, become the government.
First paragraph is true and most people see that.
The bit about MEMRI is also true, and unfortunately not a lot of people know how that organisation selectively and misleadingly translates documents.
http://www.infocusnews.net/content/view/15069/135/
http://mondediplo.com/2005/10/15propaganda (subscription required)
And there's more that I can't be arsed to link to.
JG
-- "...I'm a bad guy because I, well, I sing some rock-and-roll songs." M. Manson
If genocide becomes likely then the UN should step in
I think if I had modpoints today I would give that a "+1, Funny" right there.
The UN is a joke, this has been proven time and again. Leaving it to them would be an end to the Christians in Egypt.
But hey, they're just Christians, so that's ok, right?
Preventing violence is as important as picking up after it.
Best state motto ever. Of course, some people did sue to keep that off their license plates, which is really stupid when you think about it. "I don't want to even give the impression that I'd defend my rights to the death, and I will defend my right not to do so via lawyers."
The UN is mainly a joke because it's never been given control of a UN army. The original idea was to give the UN it's own military so that when it decided to intervene it had the ability to allocate the troops and send appropriate orders.
Then there's the bit where America or the EU will take pot shots at the other using the UN as a means, but the sames the case with the WTO as well. I mean it's not as if those organizations have better things to be doing.
Civilized? Who wants to live in a civilized society? I mean hell, civilization is why I have to wear pants and go to work. And worse still wear pants while going to work.
Well, the UN is only a joke in that it is more like a local bar than a local police station: it's job is not military activism, it's job is to facilitate talk. Ideally, crazy people announce some deranged plan of theirs, and the rest of the patrons try to talk them down. It's low cost, and the victories are mostly the lack of anything happening.
The UN has it's own army. There's just one problem. The whole institution is based on preventing war. They're not very big on ending a war with superior violence.
After all, that's what Bush would do. It's also the only thing that works.
The UN puts armies on the ground and instructs them to never attack anyone. Either the soldiers are bad (UN mission to katanga, the rape cases of the UN armies in Western Sahara (yes that regiment was a muslim regiment, and it's not an accident at all), ...) or they don't do shit (UN mission to southern Lebanon, ...)
Violence ends in one of two ways :
-> either the agressor gets what he wants
-> or he gets killed by superior firepower (or at the very least some serious wounds and destruction of property is involved)
The basic premise of the UN is that "sitting down and talking" is another option. The problem is simple : in many cases, that's not true. Many problems are indeed "zero-sum" problems. Therefore only ignoring the needs of one side can increase supply. And it's the way the entire middle east thinks.
NO war has ever been "proportional violence". No war will ever be : after all, if that's the case you're just going to hurt yourself by going to war. And the whole point is to hurt the other guy.
No amount of talking is going to erase the jew-hatred from the quran, and hamas will therefore never stop. Neither will "al qaeda". Actual violence *might* erase that hatred from the "mein quran" "holy" book.
The only reason that gaza even exists is an attempt by muslims to wipe Israel of the map. So what is the UN to do ? March in and deport those muslims for attempting to conquer another state, then leave the area empty like turkey did with Cyprus ?
Lots of talk. But when the time comes to do the dying, you never see progressives turn up.
In fact you frequently hear something about moving to Canada in that type of case.
Imagine that, people having a big mouth and tiny balls ... who'd have thought ?
Muslims think mohamed was a good guy, THE example of a leader. Read his biography once and you'll see the problem with that. Hitler and Stalin were but cute poodles, sweet and innocent, compared to him.
Can you quote what 'biography' you are referring to ?
Come on. The idea that outsiders can't study and judge a group is completely ignorant. Often, the outside group is more impartial and makes a better judgment.
I'm sure you have more to your viewpoint than what you wrote but simply dismissing somebody's post as "orientalist rhetoric" doesn't bode well. Where's the nuanced and thoughtful post that I've come to expect at slashdot?
Let's take his first statement. "The problem is that they would use force against minorities, against everyone including themselves."
You claim that that is basic orientalist rhetoric, and I assume by that you mean "wrong". However, the Muslim Brotherhood was founded to promote traditional sharia law. Do you disagree with that, or think it's orientalist to call sharia law an oppressive system for non-Muslim minorities?
Too bad there are so many, many, many UN "defeats". Rwanda, Sudan, Yugoslavia, Israel to name a few contemporary ones.