I received some troubling news today about a friend of mine – journalist and blogger Hossein Derakhshan. Hossein was arrested in Tehran, allegedly on charges of spying for the Israeli government. Last week he was detained in Tehran, and Jahan News, an Iranian Pres Agency, put out news that he had ‘confessed’ to spying for Israel. No one has heard from his since, and his blog has not been updated for weeks.
Hossein had a very highly publicized trip to Israel a few years back which he not only blogged about (with video) and which was also highly covered in the Israeli media. He’s been studying in Canada and then London for several years now and was returning home to live with his family. I spoke to him a few weeks ago and he was really thrilled to be returning home.
I wrote an article about Hossein a few years ago — that is how we met and have since become friends. Here is my article, which illustrates his last run in with the Iranian authorities:
I suspect he is in a lot of trouble. Charges like this are no joke in Iran, as the article below indicates.
Iran Executes Man in Spy Case, and Blogger’s Arrest Is Reported
By NAZILA FATHI
Published: November 22, 2008
TEHRAN — Iran has executed a man convicted of spying for Israel, the semiofficial Fars news agency reported Saturday.
The agency reported that Ali Ashtari was executed by hanging on Monday. It said he was arrested in 2006 and confessed during his trial in June to spying for Israel through security and telecommunication equipment.
Iranian news media reported in June that Mr. Ashtari, 45, had received a death sentence for spying. At the time, newspapers said he had been the manager of a company selling communication and security equipment to the Iranian government.
An Israeli official said in June that Israel had no knowledge of his case.
Tension between Iran and Israel has escalated in recent months over Iran’s nuclear program. Israel has not ruled out launching a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Iran does not recognize Israel as a state and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has spoken of Israel with hostility since his election in 2005.
A Web site affiliated with the Iranian Intelligence Ministry has reported that a high-profile blogger, Hossein Derakhshan, was also arrested this month and accused of spying for Israel. Judiciary officials have not confirmed his arrest but the Web site, Jahan News, reported that he had confessed to spying for Israel.
Mr. Derakhshan, an Iranian-Canadian, had lived in Canada since 2000 but moved back to Tehran a few weeks ago. He traveled to Israel in 2007 and wrote about it on his blog.
Abraham Rabinovich, an Israeli journalist who interviewed Mr. Derakhshan in Jerusalem two years ago, described him in an op-ed article for The International Herald Tribune on Friday as an “Iranian patriot” who through his blog “offered the first views of ordinary life in Israel that Iranians had been able to see.”
Mr. Rabinovich quoted Mr. Derakhshan as saying: “I want to humanize Israel for Iranians and tell them it’s not what the Islamic propaganda machine is saying, that Israelis are thirsty for Muslim blood. And I want to show Israel that the average Iranian isn’t even thinking about doing harm to Israel.”
My new pal Curt Hopkins, creator of the group Committee to Protect Bloggers and master of the domain blog.morphemetales.com, wrote to me this week with regard to something he’s looking at – Blogging in Cuba. According to Curt, blogging did not exist in Cuba as recently as one year ago. However, some have begun to spring up, some of them written by pro-Revolution types, in fact. These guys have been critical in assessing the future of their country, particularly these days when their president of 49 years, Fidel Castro, announced that he would not return to political life (some have even speculated that the 81-year old ruler died, and the newspaper announcement was merely a cover-up so to prevent hysteria in the country. Here’s the entry Curt posted this week.
Several times over the last couple of years we tried to find any evidence of blogging in Cuba, the last time was about a year ago. Then, there were none I could find (though they may have been out there somewhere). Now, there are a number of them, the best known of which is probably Yoani Sanchez of Generacion Y. Yoani created Consenso Desde Cuba, a blog site for Cubans and has beenfeaturedinmediaoutsideCuba.We are trying to create an exhaustive list of Cuban bloggers (specifically, Cubans blogging from within Cuba). Here is what we have so far. If you know of any other bloggers, Cuban citizens blogging inside Cuba, regardless of political affiliation, please let us know in the comments. If we list a blog not written by a Cuban inside Cuba, please let us know that as well. We anticipate this list will grow over time.
So here’s what I ask from you. If you have any information that might help Curt out – let either of us know! I think this will make for a fascinating study. I wish him luck!
CAIRO (CNN) — An award-winning Egyptian human rights activist who posts
videos about police abuse said he had his account suspended by YouTube because of complaints that the videos contain “inappropriate material.”
Wael Abbas, an anti-torture watchdog, told CNN on Wednesday that there have been 100 videos posted on his account containing images of torture, police brutality, demonstrations, strikes, sit-ins, and election irregularities. Material he has posted is no longer available on the popular video-sharing Web site.
He said YouTube sent him an e-mail saying they suspended it. “They didn’t ask me to remove it. They said ‘your account isn’t working,’ ” he said.
When asked about the account, a YouTube spokesperson said, “We take these matters very seriously, but we don’t comment on individual videos.”
YouTube regulations state that “graphic or gratuitous violence” is not allowed and violations of the terms of use could result in the ending of an account and deleting all of the videos in it.
“YouTube prohibits inappropriate content on the site, and our community effectively polices the site for inappropriate material,” the spokesperson said. “Users can flag content that they feel is inappropriate and once it is flagged it is reviewed by our staff and removed from the system within minutes if it violates our Community Guidelines or Terms of Use. We also disable the accounts of repeat offenders.”
Abbas admitted that some of the videos were in fact “graphic,” but said it is important to convey strong imagery to underscore the issue of abuse and make an “impact on public opinion.”
He likened the importance of such graphic imagery to the photos and videos that emerged in 2004 and illustrated the brutality in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq, stoking international outrage.
“We managed to direct the attention of the people to something that was taboo, something that was never discussed before — which is police brutality and torture inside police stations,” said Abbas, referring to his videos.
The 33-year-old Abbas also operates one of Egypt’s best known blogs, misrdigital.com, and the popularity exists in large part to the frequent postings about police abuse.
He has gotten international notice recently, with the International Center for Journalists recently awarding a Knight International Journalism Award to Abbas for his work. In one prominent incident, Abbas posted a video on his blog of a police officer binding and sodomizing an Egyptian bus driver who intervened in a dispute between police and another driver.
The video was one of the factors that led the conviction of two police officers, who were sentenced to three years each in connection with the incident. “It’s the first time Egyptian people saw something like that,” Abbas said, referring to beatings and torture. “It was a shock to the Egyptian people.”
The blogger, who said he’s in a “state of shock” because he lost videos he’s uploaded for years, said he might resort to campaigning against YouTube. “We thought that YouTube was our ally,” Abbas said. “It helped show the truth in countries like Burma … With what they did now, it doesn’t seem like that anymore,” Abbas said.
Abbas said he has also had a problem with Yahoo! because it shut down two
of his e-mail accounts, accusing him of being a spammer.
A special thanks to Washingtonpost.com’s young globe-trotting extraordinaire Amar Bakshi for hooking my students at Rutgers University up with this inside look into the world of a professional blogger/reporter/traveler/packpacker. For anyone interested in new media reporting, I highly recommend you check out this clip Amar shot just days before leaving on his latest journey around the world. Good luck, Amar!!
On the temporary homepage for his highly read blog, journalist and blogger Hossein Derakhshan has posted a plea.
“Last Friday, I was kicked out of my hosting company,” the entry dated August 13th begins.His site, one of the most highly read Persian weblogs, was booted from his home domain (hoder.com), forcing Derakhshan to move years of entries onto a temporary server.
The incident began when lawyers of Washington Institute for the Near East Policy fellow Mehdi Khalaji claimed Derakhshan had mistranslated an article written by Khalaji about the Iranian election campaign. According to Derakhshan, Khalaji’s lawyers sent a notice to Hoder’s hosting company plus his domain registrar “Go Daddy” asking them to remove all defamatory material about Khalaji, publish and apology and pay $10,000 in damages.
According to a legal document provided by Derakhshan from the Toronto-based law firm of Cassels Brock, he is accused of numerous charges, including: “falsely stating that [Khalaji] is a traitor to the government and people of Iran”; stating that Khalaji “is a dupe or a puppet of the U.S. government,” saying Khalaji “counseled the Vice President of the United States of America to bomb thousands of men, women and children,” and that Khalaji “counsels enemies of Iran and of humanity.”Derakhshan denies the charges and calls actions by his hosting company a blow to free speech.
On his temporary site, he writes: “It’s all quite ironic that the way I am treated in the United States (being kicked out of my servers) is worse than that in the Islamic Republic of Iran (filtering my blog and forcing me to sign an apology when I was last in Tehran). Ever more ironic is that a blog I was editing to cover internet censorship in Iran has also been shut down.”
Hossein is no stranger to such obstacles.While leaving Tehran in Spring 2006, authorities detained the now 32-year old activist to question him about numerous posts on his popular site.Authorities forced him to sign an apology for his blogging activities before permitting him to leave the country, according to his blog. He continues to blog defiantly at risk of never being allowed back into his homeland.
Hossein has provided the following documents in support of his claims:
A South Korean version of MySpace is emerging as a potent political force. How Cyworld is reshaping the country’s presidential campaign.
By Vivian Salama
Special to Newsweek
July 16, 2007 — Miri Leung does all the usual teenage things online: she chats, e-mails, decorates her cyber home and buys the latest fashions for her avatar. But lately she’s also venturing into an area that most political candidates still dream about. The 18-year-old is going online to learn about political issues with her country’s real-life presidential hopefuls. “It’s cool,” says Leung. “It kind of makes me feel like [the candidates] are just like all of my other friends.”
Leung lives in South Korea, where candidates are making new efforts to jump on the cyber bandwagon and woo the country’s youngest voters. Their vehicle: a network called Cyworld, South Korea’s equivalent to American online social sensations like MySpace, Facebook and Friendster. Launched in 1999, the site recently catapulted to the No. 1 spot among Asian networking sites, hosting an estimated 20 million users daily and drawing in an estimated $146 million in revenue. (MySpace, by contrast, brought in nearly $200 million in 2006; Facebook a little over $100 million.)
Cyworld, says its creators at SK Communications—South Korea’s top Internet provider—was designed to appeal to Koreans with its two-dimensional bubbly cartoon characters and bold graphics. Users exchange real money for the Cyworld currency of dotori, which translates as “acorns.” With it they can accessorize their own pages or buy gifts for others. The virtual currency has become so popular that it spills over into real life, too. Jung-Eun Lee, a 33-year-old Seoul-based reporter, for example, says her birthday gifts included dotori from her husband and Cyworld gifts from friends.
According to company officials, about a third of Cyworld users are between the ages of 30 and 50. But it’s among younger users that the site has hit the mother lode: corporate spokesmen say that a whopping 90 percent of South Koreans in their 20s are registered users of Cyworld. That’s especially important given that the government lowered the country’s voting age to 19 last year, making an additional 4.2 million South Koreans eligible to vote since the last presidential election in 2002.
Not surprisingly, the politicians’ Cyworld homepages—known as “minihompys”—blend right in with those of their young constituents. The candidates design their characters—complete with virtual wardrobe; fix up their Cyworld homes; they even have Cyworld buddies who generally consist of their supporters. The candidates reach out to their buddies via messages, articles or save-the-date memos for campaign-related events. Another key feature: in order to register, Cyworld users must have a Korean national ID number, so candidates can be sure they’re connecting with genuine voters.
More than 90 percent of South Korean households have high-speed broadband at home, making it one of the world’s most connected countries. During the 2002 election, South Korea’s current President Roh Moo Hyun’s core supporters consisted of the younger, Internet-savvy generation, as opposed to the conservatives who backed his opponent, Lee Hoi Chang. On the morning of the election, Roh supporters launched a massive campaign, sending e-mails and text messages to more than 800,000 people, urging them to vote. The use of both technologies is attributed by many as one of the main reasons Roh came out on top.
The power of the Web is certainly understood by South Korean politicians. Asked whether he is a registered Cyworld user, opposition lawmaker Park Jin says, “Of course! You have to be if you want to be heard and understood by the younger people.”
Cyworld’s reach can only be envied by politicians elsewhere. In Web-savvy Japan, a few candidates do have personal profiles on Mixi, the nation’s most popular networking site. But national election laws prohibit political candidates from using the Internet during campaigns, saying it allows unlawful “distribution of unauthorized documents and pictures.” The law also sets penalties for slandering candidates on the Web. Several politicians, particularly those with the Japanese Democratic Party, have pushed to lift the ban. Meanwhile, political restrictions in China—which has the second-highest number of Internet users after the United States—make it unlikely that Chinese politicians will be able to exploit the Web as a campaign tool anytime soon.
In the United States, the challenge for candidates is to make their voices heard. In addition to ubiquitous mass e-mails and conventional campaign sites, most of the main White House contenders also have set up profiles on Facebook and MySpace. (Hillary Clinton confides on her site that she’s a bad cook and that her closets need organizing; Mitt Romney discloses that he enjoys The Beatles and Mark Twain.) Some, like Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama have also used text messaging to reach out to supporters. Their efforts haven’t always met with universal approval. The personal “walls” of candidates on Facebook are filled with uncomplimentary virtual graffiti and the number of hate pages for nearly every candidate almost rivals the number of their support sites. But for White House aspirants who have yet to achieve the Cyworld penetration level, even negative attention may be better than being ignored online.
On a visit to Tehran in spring 2006, Iranian-Canadian blogger Hossein Derakhshan received a rather frosty sendoff from Iranian authorities. His blog, dedicated to discussions relating to Iranian politics, technology and pop culture, exposes a number of political and social issues that were once — or perhaps still are — unmentionables in Iran.
Citing a violation of Iran’s integrity, authorities interrogated Derakhshan, then forced him to sign an apology for his blogging activities before permitting him to leave, he describes in his blog.
Defiant of the warnings made by Iranian authorities, Derakhshan left his homeland and continued to blog. With some 20,000 subscribers, his site is one of the most widely read Persian-language blogs. After returning to Canada, his first order of business was to tell the world about his experience.
“The well-behaved official … warned me not to write anything about the incident in my blog or I’d be formally prosecuted next time I was in Iran. But I didn’t comply, since it was a silly and illogical demand,” he posted on his blog in September.
Over the past three years, blogging in the Middle East has functioned as a mechanism for free speech, but often at a high cost. In a land where oppression — political and social — is often the norm, citizens across Iran and the Arab world are frequently turning to blogs as a source for noncompliance — and many governments are not having it.
“[Internet] is a new threat just the way Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and BBC were a threat in the post World War II years,” says Nancy Beth Jackson, a journalist and professor at Columbia University’s School of International Affairs.
Blogging is believed to have begun in the Middle East in 2003 when an Iraqi using the cyber-ego “Salam Pax” (“Salam” is Arabic and “pax” is Latin for “peace.”) gained notoriety when he began publishing a blog about his life during the invasion.
“One day, like in Afghanistan, those journalists will get bored and go write about Syria or Iran,” read a post by Salam on his site, titled “Where is Raed?” on May 30, 2003. “Iraq will be off your media radar. Out of sight, out of mind. Lucky you, you have that option. I have to live it.”
Since then, Middle Easterners are emerging as citizen journalists, attending rallies and protests, then posting articles, photographs and video on their sites and the sites of others.
But it’s been a slow crawl because of government interventions and social setbacks. Countries with larger populations, such as Egypt and Iran, have extremely low Internet user numbers, with only 7 percent and 11 percent, respectively. Even Internet usage in wealthier nations like the United Arab Emirates and Qatar remain low at 35 percent and 27 percent, respectively (especially when compared to Israel’s 51 percent, for example). There are some 32 million Internet users in the Arab world (and Iran), out of a combined population of 347 million. That accounts for about 3 percent of the total Internet community worldwide, according to data from Internet World Stats, an online research group.
Those numbers are an increase, however. In 2002, the Arab world (and Iran) had only about 9 million users, according to a study by Madar, another online research group, and Reporters Without Borders. That accounted for 1.6 percent of the total Internet community worldwide.
Blogging has given many in the Arab world and beyond the chance to delve into subjects their societies may frown upon. Iran and Syria are classic examples, as their regimes impose domineering ideologies on society.
Jad Najjar, a Lebanese-American who made his mark blogging under the cyber ego “Con Man” about the summer 2006 Lebanese-Israeli war from New York, explains that blogging lends a voice to those under the watchful eye of Arab despotism. “In the Arab world, the implication can’t be more extraordinary: Many of those societies are so closed and oppressed. Blogging can help speed up democratization or can help make the society more free or liberal.”
“Blogging anonymously helped many to criticize their society, culture, politicians, system, government, taboos, etc., something they never got the chance to do before,” Haitham Sabbah, host of Bahrain-based Sabbah’s Blog told me in an e-mail interview.
In a study conducted in 2005 by Reporters Without Borders, a number of countries in the region were dubbed “Enemies of the Internet.” Top offenders often implement crackdowns and censorship on independent news publications, as well as chat rooms and blogs. This is usually done in an attempt to stifle the spread of political dissidence or to prevent people from challenging Islamic authority via the preaching of other religions or by use of sexual content. Harassment and intimidation are common, and imprisonment of bloggers is a growing trend.
“[The government] is pre-empting against the Internet because it is an expansion of the public sphere which breaks their monopoly or influence over public opinion,” Derakhshan, the Iranian-Canadian blogger, suggested to me in a live chat conversation.
In Saudi Arabia, aggressive tactics are increasingly being used to cap the spread of online pornography, drug use, conversion of Muslims by other religious groups and gambling via blogs or chat rooms, according to a study [PDF] conducted by the OpenNet Initiative, an online research group. The study adds that lesser actions are taken on blogs promoting homosexuality, women’s rights, alcohol use and religious extremism, and there was a noticeable decrease in the filtering of human rights Web sites in Saudi Arabia between 2002 and 2004.
Since Tunisia’s President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali has a solid monopoly on Internet access in his country, the government has a tight grip on virtually all online activity. All Internet cafés are state-run. According to the OpenNet Initiative and Human Rights Watch, Internet cafés are required by Tunisian law to have on-site monitors to prohibit the access of sites that are either sexually — or politically — explicit.
Blogs relating to Tunisia do exist, but any blog coming from within its borders generally discusses travel — blogs from outside Tunisia are filtered. As described in a study released by OpenNet Initiative in 2005, the state’s Internet service providers purchase access from Tunisia’s Internet agency, which combs through the sites and blocks those deemed deviant by government standards.
In Egypt, award-winning blogger and opposition activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah made international headlines in 2006 following his arrest at a pro-democracy demo after he managed to smuggle handwritten blogs out of prison with his wife. Traditionally, the arrest of political dissidents in Egypt often meant the temporary disappearance of the detainee.
Abdel-Fattah’s entries from behind bars offered people both in his political movement and around the world a window into this secret underworld — and almost in real time. The blog even featured illustrations detailing the prison layout, sketched by another imprisoned activist and passed along to Abdel-Fattah’s wife during visiting hours.
“Information is power,” notes Jackson, the journalist and professor at Columbia University. “That’s why Arab regimes — any government — have to be worried about the Internet. More information of all kinds and all degrees of ‘truth’ are now available.”
Gone are the days when the closest thing to free speech was the hushed banter of men (and only men) at qahwas (cafés). Now, anyone with access to a computer has access to a world of ideas — and their own thoughts are part of that ever-growing arena.
Blogs now serve as a platform for issues once considered taboo, or which encourage dialogue in the way of political opposition; they educate and they tear down stereotypes through discourse.
In fact, many governments realize this and are jumping on the bandwagon. In August, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad joined the budding international cyber community by starting his own blog.
Ahmadinejad’s first post consisted of his life story, Iran’s Islamic revolution and the Iran-Iraq War. The blog included a poll questioning whether Israel and the United States were trying to start a new world war, plus a forum for visitors of the site to post comments. The site was dubbed a political stunt by some of his critics since Iran exercises some of the strictest censorship practices.
Blogs that function as a form of “citizen journalism” usually lack the degree of credibility that the mainstream media has for the simple reason that it is often extremely difficult to verify the blog’s sources of information. This is augmented by the strong tendency of Internet users in the region to maintain their anonymity, whether for the sake of privacy, or in fear of government or societal retribution.
Illiteracy and language barriers will continue to hinder a full-on Internet boom. According to the United Nations, some 65 million people in the Arab World are illiterate. Many of the regionally based blogs cater to those who write in any number of languages, though with 250 million Arabic speakers worldwide, the Arabic Web sites have a strong following.
Government surveillance continues, meanwhile, particularly with regard to blogs that host independently produced video clips. Blogs are an alluring forum for religious extremist groups looking to spread their propaganda to a broader audience given the expansive outreach of the Internet. This is a legitimate concern for many Arab and Muslim countries that continue to face their own domestic wars against religious extremism.
Regardless of exhaustive efforts by governments in the Middle East and North Africa to crack down on illicit Internet usage, their efforts are no match for the infectiousness of the World Wide Web.
“Blogging is just one aspect of the vastly expanded access to information brought by the Internet and satellite television,” explains Cairo-based journalist and blogger Issandr El-Amrani in an e-mail interview. “The security services are fighting a losing battle, and I think for the most part they know it.”
Syria’s Ambassador to the US loves music, art, and his wife. He is keen on showing that to the rest of the world through his online blog. Ambassador Moustapha has redefined diplomacy by blogging.
Accessibility usually is not the first word that comes to mind when discussing Arab diplomats – that is, until recently. I first became interested in learning about Dr. Imad Moustapha. Syria’s Ambassador to the United States, while watching him on a number of American media networks during the Israel-Lebanon war of last summer. Often put on the hot seat by journalists trying to portray Syria in a certain light, Moustapha was extremely candid, often firm, but always polite.
Since much of my recent writing and research has focused on Arab blogs, I was even more intrigued to learn that the Ambassador, a computer scientist by trade, had launched a blog of his own. An Arab diplomat AND a blogger? Something didn’t add up. I eagerly searched for it online, all the while, anticipating pages full of sharp critiques and hardball politics. Instead, I discovered a window into Moustapha’s private life. I was taken aback: a clear Syrian patriot, the Ambassador’s personal blog comprised of page after page of personal information, from his love for art of all kinds, to the chronicles of his one-man book club. He even posts photos from vacations he’s taken – that is, mostly photos he’s taken of his wife. As for politics – it seems that’s just a day job for this multifaceted diplomat.
I had to meet him.
Usually when a reporter looks to meet any politician or diplomat, they must go through their press secretary. In the case of Arab diplomats, this is usually followed by weeks of run-around, missed calls, a little stalking and ultimately, a lot of frustration. Therefore, I was less than pessimistic when I clicked on the link that read “email me.” It amused me that he would tease his cyber visitors with such a thought.
Naturally, I was left dumbfounded when the Ambassador returned my email within a mere 12 hours with a simple “thanks” and “just say when.” In less than a week, I was sitting in the Syrian Embassy in Washington, DC, tea in hand, for a chat with this technocrat-turned-politician. Right up front, the Ambassador confessed to me that his colleagues in Syria’s diplomatic community are a bit perplexed by his desire to blog.
“I guess they think it’s unconventional,” he admits. “I have no image what a diplomat is because I am not a career diplomat. I’m not a technocrat either. I think a more accurate term to describe me is tech-savvy.”
In fact, it appears his cyber activities are so unconventional that the Ambassador has even met his share of Western skeptics. On 6 May, 2006, Moustapha wrote: “A couple of journalists who interviewed me last month in California asked me if I were really the author of my blog. When my face reflected utter astonishment, they felt a little embarrassed.” The 21st century is all about the citizen journalist, or blogger, as they have come to be known in cyberland. Online conversations are no longer casual; they are hardly private. Internet users from all four corners of the globe have taken on a new role.
It remains unclear who the first blogger was; a young American journalist named Justin Hall was cited by the New York Times in December 2004 as being “the founding father of personal blogging.” Hall would cover video game conferences, and then publish his reviews in the form of an online diary. Dozens of young men and women were quick to follow suit, establishing personal websites and updating them frequently, asking any visitor of the site to post their comments. Years later in Iraq, an individual by the screen name of Salam Pax (Salam is Arabic and Pax is Latin for the same word; “peace”) gained notoriety in May 2003 when he began publishing a blog about his life during the invasion. The blogs were honest and compelling – so much so, in fact, that skeptics began speculating whether he might be a US or Israeli agent, or a relative of Iraqi government officials set to spread misleading informationabout the war.
Once the Dean of the Faculty of Information Technology at the University of Damascus, Moustapha originally developed his own website in 1997. The site would grow in sophistication and eventually evolved. “The phenomenon of blogs started, and I liked that you can get personal. I have a very stressful life.” In 2005, the Ambassador launched his blog and would eventually work his way up to receiving some 7,000 hits per week. Only shortly after the New York Times published an article about the blog did his site receive some 123,000 hits within a couple of days, and another 1,100 would come within three days of an article written in Israel’s Yediot Aharonot. Most notably, he says, was the tendency by people he was meeting for the first time to make reference to his blog. “Often I would be meeting someone and they would instantly connect with me, for instance by discussing a book that I wrote about in my blog.”
Moustapha and a small handful of others like him have kicked off a new, often controversial, trend within the diplomatic community. Jan Pronk, the UN’s Envoy to Sudan was recently expelled from the country after remarks he made on his personal blog angered the Sudanese government. Sudanese officials accused Pronk of “psychological warfare” after writing that the government had broken Security Council resolutions. While Ambassador Moustapha’s blog steers clear of political issues, he suggests that diplomats can play both sides of the fence. “Professionally, the UN envoy shouldn’t flagrantly be taking positions,” he says. “If you are trying to find solution to both sides, you shouldn’t take sides. This is not professional. That said, as a human being of course he has the right.”
Moustapha makes no secret of Syria’s reported attempts to limit Internet access to its citizens. Reporters Sans Frontiers, a non-profit media rights group, cites Syria as an “Enemy of the Internet,” saying it is a top offender for imprisoning cyber-dissidents. According to the group, the Syrian government also bans access to Arabic- language opposition sites and sites catering to the nation’s minority groups. The Ambassador insists the situation has improved tremendously in recent years, though he concedes that some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) function differently than others. “If you try to access my blog from one ISP in Syria you can’t, but then you try using another ISP and you can,” admits Moustapha.
He continues: “The situation is not that bad in Syria but it needs to evolve. We have different interpretations about what is legal and illegal; healthy and unhealthy. I personally belong to a school of thought that promotes the relaxation of state interference.” Moustapha goes so far as to cite an example from his days as a lecturer in Damascus. As a professor of computer science, firewalls were part of the puzzle for mastering the Internet. “When I was a professor, my students always tried to bypass firewalls,” he recalls. “I think all young people should be naughty. My students used to bypass these firewalls and then they would come and tell me. I would pretend to be cross with them but really it would make me happy – also because it meant I was a good teacher!” Nowadays, the Ambassador refers to himself as an “outside observer” with regard to his blogging. Since he and his wife Rafif welcomed a new addition to their family just days after his interview with FORWARD – a baby girl named Sidra – Moustapha confesses that his blog may divert from topics of art and literature to talk of bibs and baby nappies. Overall, the Ambassador’s weblog is meant to give Internet surfers incite into the man behind the politics. “It’s liberating. I never thought it would be that fun.”
Just an ordinary Sunday afternoon in Massachusetts. Nothing remarkable about the apartment either; picture the room of a typical engineering student. Stuff everywhere, chaos reigns. But in the mind of this room’s inhabitant, a blogger known to his online readers by the pen-name ‘Jij,’ connections are being made in time and space. For Jij, the violence being meted out on his country Lebanon on this lazy Sunday afternoon is all too real. So real he is gripped by thoughts of family far away:
“My room is a mess. I am sitting in the middle of a war zone. Every inch of the floor is covered with books, papers, clothes, empty bottles of water, electric wires, CDs, trash and cardboard boxes. It feels like my room is slowly moving to Beirut while I sit in it…I found some old photos behind my desk. One of them is a black and white picture of my parents. On the back it says ‘Aleppo 1976.’ They were so young. They were my age.”
Jij, or Jihad Ibrahim as he is more commonly known, was not alone as an Arab in America writing about the Israel-Hizbulla War online (for blogging in Lebanon see also Sune Haugbolle). When Israel first began dropping bombs on Lebanon following the abduction of two soldiers by Hizbullah, Arabs in America turned not just to the coverage of Al Jazeera, LBC, and Al Arabiya, but also increasingly to the Internet (for mainstream media-blogging interaction, see Will Ward). Isolated from the events taking place overseas—not to mention from their loved ones caught up in the month-long war—Arab ex-pats wanted to feel as though they too had a voice to be reckoned with. So, people in America and elsewhere went online to vent their frustrations, anxieties and criticisms of events. The online response to the war shows once again how the Internet is being used to generate loose Diaspora communities that cross national boundaries.
Blogging the War
Responding to Western reporting of the conflict which many Arabs considered vague and biased, Arab-American bloggers felt a responsibility to encourage balanced dialogue during the Israel-Hizbullah War of July and August 2006. This meant not only seeking out previously rarely-heard voices from the Arab World, but also playing some role in shaping narratives of the war. For many bloggers, this marked a rare shift to political discussion.
“I only wrote politics during the war, because I really did not feel like writing about anything else,” admits Jihad Ibrahim, host of Salam Cinema.1 “There was nothing else on my mind. That was the case for everyone online, I think. I felt compelled to write a lot because I felt there was an asymmetry in the way things were presented online.”
Ibrahim exhibits the struggle for those living in the Diaspora to combine an affinity for Western pop culture with a deep concern for contemporary political issues in his homeland, Lebanon. On his homepage in late November, “Jij” posted a tribute to the late Hollywood director Robert Altman followed immediately by a long analysis of the assassination of Lebanese Christian leader, Pierre Gemayel. “The country’s divisions are very deep and are not going away. Let’s hope nobody else dies in the meantime,” he wrote on November 23, 2006. The post shows the subtle ways in which Arab-American bloggers negotiate their dualistic identities.
Bypassing Censorship in the Arab World
If blogs can function as a means for Arab-Americans to communicate directly with people in the Arab World, they may be particularly valuable to Arabs suffering from censorship and persecution due to their online activities. Often, those who discuss politics in North America do not feel the same pressures felt by bloggers in the Middle Eastern countries—that is, as long as they are outside the region. Iranian-Canadian blogger Hossein Derakhshan was wrapping up a visit to Tehran last year when authorities detained him at the airport. His blog, http://hoder.com/weblog/, which is dedicated to discussions relating to Iranian politics, technology and pop culture, addresses a number of subjects considered taboo in Iran. His website even offers tips for setting up personal blogs and getting around censorship tools.
Citing a violation of Iran’s integrity, authorities interrogated Derakhshan, then forced him to sign an apology for his blogging activities before permitting him to leave. He says his experience in Iran has only reinforced his desire to continue blogging. “[The Iranian government] wrongly sees me as a threat,” says Derakhshan. “They think I am trying to topple the regime, but I’m not.”
A number of regimes in the Middle East are infamous for cracking down on bloggers to cap the spread of online dissidence. However, given that there is greater room for free expression in America, Arab-Americans usually feel at liberty to criticize Arab governments without fearing the same retribution. Moroccan-American journalist and blogger, Issandr El-Amrani concedes to this: “I blog under my own name partly because the blog is linked to my journalistic writing and partly because I have more freedom to do so as a US citizen,” he says.
According to Nancy Beth Jackson, a journalist and professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs in New York, Arab regimes are still trying to come to grips with the way technology is changing the dynamics of opposition. “It is easier [for governments] to control the message in a newspaper than online,” she explains. “Governments controlling the press can also control the message. Try that with Google!”
With that in mind, to what extent is blogging by Arab-Americans linked to opposition movements within Arab countries? In fact, blogs more commonly touch on personal stories or pop culture than politics. Most act primarily as a means of communication between friends. As the majority of bloggers are young (a study conducted last year by Perseus, an online research group, found that 58 percent of bloggers worldwide are between the ages of 13 and 19; 36 percent are in their 20’s, blogs are fertile ground for social exploration and interaction. Many Arab-Americans who were previously isolated from young people in the Middle East find themselves more aware than ever before about the issues and interests of their peers overseas. So Arab-American blogs are more likely to be socially rather than politically threatening to Arab regimes.
Nevetheless, the best-read blogs are likely to adopt political causes. “The best blogs, in my opinion, are quite focused and issue-driven and can act as a platform for activism or to bring attention to a particular issue,” notes El-Amrani. “They also often help tear down false representations that people have of certain countries or cultures.”
In some sense then, even blogs which are not strictly political can have some political impact by changing readers’ opinions.
Blogging to the Homelands
For the most part, Arab-American bloggers believe their online writing is more than just a hobby; it is a way of life. Many say they seek to provide a service both to people in Diaspora communities seeking discussion about their ‘homelands’ or looking to engage in debate beyond the confines of the mainstream media.
“I think an Arab-American is expected to have certain views on certain issues, so it’s not so much that there are pros or cons about raising these issues, but it’s really all about how those issues are brought up and discussed,” says American-born Egyptian blogger Paul Kist, host of the site Singing in the Shower. He relishes the opportunity to interact with people of other cultural backgrounds online, and in the process break down barriers. Kist, 28, a resident of Long Island, New York, targets those with “preconceived notions, biases, or hatred” with the aim of broadening their horizons, and ultimately persuading them to think differently—to “remember, ‘he’s no different than me.’”
But if blogs help readers from different cultural stand points understand each other, they also allow for widely divergent views of the world. This is as true within the Arab expatriate community as it is between Arabs and non-Arabs. In their blog “Kompashun” dubbed a “Podium for the Powerless,” Arab-American bloggers Jad Najjar and Omar Farha face off with essays and posts that reflect their polar views on the Middle East conflict, particularly when discussing the role of Hizbullah in Lebanon.
“Thoughtfulness is an important aspect of our writing and our mission because the mainstream media has no choice but to leave out too much from its reporting, which ultimately facilitates the average American’s ignorance,” says Najjar.
Many Arab American bloggers express frustration with the mainstream media; others with politics itself. Such frustration can be sensed by the following entry written by Dr. As’ad AbuKhalil, a professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus and host of the blog “Angry Arab News Service:”
This is just one more example of the potential for bloggers to participate in framing their own narratives. This is particularly important for Arabs in America, a country where some mainstream media outlets have only ratcheted up their patriotism in the wake of the so-called “War on Terror,” a trend which often results in associating terrorism uncritically with the Middle East. Blogs can allow Arab-Americans to find their own voice which fuses a sense of belonging in the United States with a sense of attachment and pride in ethnic identity.
Bloggers of Middle Eastern origin writing from abroad for Arab and Iranian audiences can help forge a new sense of Diaspora community and identity. “Blogs reinforce communities for sure, since they give voice to their scattered members,” admits Derakhshan. “Technology has also made it very easy to get in touch with things at home. The information gap has never been narrower between exiled Iranians [for example] and those who live in Iran.”
This is particularly true for Lebanese living abroad trying to keep track of fast-changing events in their homeland. “I wanted to feel like I was taking part in the protests that culminated in the historic March 14 demonstration, which in turn epitomized the Cedar Revolution,” says Lebanese-American blogger Raja Abu Hassan, one of six contributors of the Lebanese Bloggers website. “I wanted to communicate with other Lebanese and find common ground based on liberal ideals and a love of our country.”
But this is not just true of politics; events of profound cultural significance can also galvanize the blogging Diaspora. For example, when Egypt’s legendary author and Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz died earlier this year, blogs around the world paid tribute to his writing. For those living in the Diaspora, it gave them the opportunity to commemorate his legacy by sharing memories of the stories they or their parents grew up reading.
But despite the potential for footloose interaction, blogging is not without its own barriers. For example, it likely that the perceptions of Arab-American bloggers, like those of the Arabs overseas, are shaped by their environment. Bloggers in the United States may hone in on scrutinizing (or hailing) the Bush Administration’s policies in the Middle East, whereas Arab bloggers in Egypt or Palestine, for example, tend to place heavier emphasis on the troubles within their own regimes.
More significantly, perhaps, is the role language plays constraining interaction. For the online community in the Arab world, illiteracy is a major impediment since some 65 million Arab adults cannot read, according to the United Nations. In the United States, English is the mother tongue for many of the young Arab-Americans taking to the World Wide web. While a few sites do cater to entries written in both English and Arabic, the majority of those hosted by Arab-Americans are exclusively in English. Certainly this creates a language barrier between the Arabic-only online community in the Middle East and the English-only community of Arab-American bloggers.
One might also question the accuracy of political and social assessments made about the Arab world by those living in the Diaspora. Some web-hosts based in the Arab world caution that their peers overseas represent, in the words of one blogger, a “romanticized” view of the events taking place in the Arab world, and that their blogs must be taken merely at face value.
“Arab-Americans are usually delusional about the country and culture they left behind,” suggests Cairo-based Egyptian blogger “Sam Adam” (his penname), host of the popular blog Rantings of a Sandmonkey. “They usually think in terms of ‘I am Egyptian American’ or ‘I am Muslim American,’ so they come loaded with the prejudices, beliefs and preconceived notions that their families, community, other Arab friends and the media tell them. This definitely reflects in their blogs.”
Nevertheless, committed Arab-American bloggers adamantly defend the medium’s social and political potential. “Bloggers naturally form communities that shape public opinion—I think they can have a role in shaping the perceptions of conflicts and on-going issues in the region,” notes El-Amrani.
is particularly significant for Arab-Americans who found themselves—their culture and religion—thrust into the spotlight following the attacks of September 11, 2001. As media images show incessant images of violence and destruction in the Middle East, Arab-American bloggers find themselves in a sensitive—but vital—position to challenge stereotypes of Arabs living in the Diaspora while equally strengthening solidarity among them. “The words we use can be powerful tools,” notes Kist. “They can build, or they can destroy—I try to remind myself of this, so I can keep contributing back, and hopefully affect someone in a positive way.”
Vivian Salama is a contributing editor for Arab Media & Society. She spent nearly three years as a journalist and commentator in the Middle East, recently returning to New York to pursue a Master’s degree in Middle East Studies at Columbia University. She is an award-winning journalist who has reported for Newsweek, USA Today, The International Herald Tribune, The Daily Star and the Jerusalem Post. Prior to working in the Middle East, Salama was a producer for NBC News in New York.
It is perhaps ironic that the man who controlled the broadcast of his image with an iron grip was executed in one of the most widely watched news events of recent times.
But then you could say his last 14 months alive were one long television performance. Although Saddam Hussein’s trial for killing 148 Iraqi Shi’as from the village of Dujail dragged on a grueling 14 months, it actually made for a stunning courtroom drama: a once-powerful dictator is pulled from a hole in the ground looking as dismal as can be imagined; he is interrogated, checked for fleas and bite-sized weapons of mass destruction; then spruced up for his post-captivity television debut only to be sentenced to death some months later.
Throughout the course of the trial, unique characters came and went—some of them judges and lawyers who disappeared because they were either fed up, afraid for their lives or killed; witnesses who more often than not hid behind a curtain in fear of facing the once-ruthless so-called “Butcher of Baghdad”; and alleged accomplices who shouted, boycotted and even went on hunger strikes.As for the lead character, he almost always gave a stellar performance.He would constantly threaten boycotts, hunger strikes, not to mention retribution.On more than one occasion he even shouted defiantly that he remained the rightfully elected leader of Iraq.Occasionally, his outbursts received a tracked package on Western networks, but for the most part the day-to-day of the trial received less than a minute of coverage.
But despite his courtroom antics, Saddam Hussein’s execution had the potential of being a far bigger blockbuster than his trial or sentencing.The build-up prior to the actual execution date was significant—both in America and in the Arab world.Networks on both sides of the Atlantic wrangled with questions of ethics leading up to his December 30, 2006 hanging as to what could and what could not be shown on television.The scrutiny was different for both camps.Western networks simply sought to show enough of the final moments of Saddam Hussein’s life to captivate viewers without offending them.Middle Eastern networks—particularly those catering to primarily Iraqi audiences—had to prepare for repercussions of a quite different order.So they treaded carefully, attempting to show just enough footage to convince people that he was dead without further inciting sectarian tensions.
The fact is no one really knew what kind of actual footage would be released following the execution.US and Iraqi officials were assuring the media that Saddam Hussein would be executed before the New Year.However, to many that seemed unlikely.But they were wrong. It was dawn in Baghdad on the first day of the Muslim feast of Eid Al Adha, December 30 2006, and just past 10pm on the American East Coast at the heart of the New Year’s weekend, when Saddam Hussein was executed.The timing was inopportune for most Western networks and so little was afforded in coverage upon first word of the hanging.Incidentally, American networks had poured their resources into a week’s worth of coverage following the death of former President Gerald Ford whose funeral had been earlier that same day.
However, in a globalized world timing matters little.Anyone with Internet access (or TiVo digital video recording) who wanted to watch the execution could take part in a global forum of opinion and could see coverage of the events.Hussein’s death, as compared to the death last year of another so-called butcher Slobodan Milosevic, sparked sensationalist responses around the globe.Because Milosevic died suddenly of apparent heart failure in a Hague prison while awaiting sentencing for crimes against humanity there is no telling what level of media attention his death may have prompted had he actually been sentenced to death like Saddam Hussein.
If mainstream media were to learn one thing from the execution aftermath, it was this: they are no longer in the reporting game alone.The role of citizen journalists had never been so prominent as in the coverage of Saddam Hussein’s demise. Despite efforts—or alleged efforts as the case may be—to secure the premises of the execution so as to prevent leaked footage, international audiences witnessed—many for the first time—a capital punishment online.
Certainly, the outbreak of videophone footage of Saddam Hussein’s execution poses a new set of questions for reporters and Internet users alike about the ethical codes of news dissemination and consumption.But what may be remembered longer is that from Minnesota to Manila, public opinion addressing the execution and its coverage exploded onto the World Wide Web giving anyone with Internet access the opportunity to take part in history.
“We aren’t going to get these images and just slap them on TV”
Arab networks certainly did not let this opportunity for competitive coverage pass them by. In fact almost all of them invested heavy airtime on the action in the rolling-coverage approach which has become characteristic of modern television news.The primary source about the events that took place on the morning of December 30th was to be Iraq’s state-run network, Al Iraqiya.Curiously, it was not Al Iraqiya who broke the news of the execution on the Arab end, but rather two networks—Alhurra and Al Arabiya—who were reportedly the first to officially confirm that Hussein was, in fact, dead.
This raises questions as to who was calling the shots that early morning in Baghdad since Alhurra is a US government-funded, Arabic-language network, and Al Arabiya is owned by America’s top Gulf ally—Saudi Arabia.“It is very ironic,” believes Ibrahim Saleh, a professor of Journalism at the American University in Cairo.“It is either something is wrong or it confirms the conspiracy theory.It confirms that everyone is taking sides.”
Al Arabiya’s Washington Bureau Chief Hisham Milhem disagrees with this theory, saying that the two networks were one-up on their competitors simply due to a strong presence in Iraq.“We have a very large bureau in Iraq and we are the Arab satellite that is watched most by Iraqis after the local Iraqi station,” he says.“We paid a heavy price for this coverage; some of our staff were deliberately killed in the violence.Alhurra also has a large bureau in Iraq [so] it’s not such a surprise that we were able to break the news first.”
Al Arabiya, in fact, confirmed the news via Hussein’s lawyer, one of the network’s many contacts in Baghdad, according to Melhem.Shortly after Alhurra and Al Arabiya reported the news, a news ticker scrolled across the bottom of the screen on Iraq’s Al Iraqiya that read in Arabic: “Saddam’s execution marks the end of a dark period of Iraq’s history.” A presenter then announced, “Criminal Saddam was hanged to death.”
It took some three to four hours before official photographs were released by the Iraqi government of Hussein’s corpse in a shroud.Thereafter, Arab networks began rolling video of Hussein’s final moments, showing official government-supervised video of the final moments of the former dictator’s life just before the trap door dropped from underneath his feet.
“It was unfortunately one of the times that the Arab media was not trying to put a slant on things,” says Saleh.“It was a very provocative time for Arabs—not just Muslims—and seen as a pride issue.”
“He was not trembling or in a state of panic as some Iraqi officials claimed him to be before the videos were released,” notes Melhem, adding that Hussein “became a sort of victim or martyr, appearing more dignified than his executioner.”
Meanwhile, America’s 24-hour networks—in particular CNN, FOX News Channel, and MSNBC—offered live “as it happens” coverage before and after confirming that the former Iraqi dictator had been hung.US correspondents who spend much of their time bound to the Green Zone found themselves forced to rely heavily on the Arab networks for information.Shortly after 10pm EST, CNN, FOX News Channel and MSNBC were all quoting Arabic media sources that the hanging had taken place.
None of the three major American networks—NBC, CBS or ABC—committed to the same level of coverage that they had all broadcasted on the day Baghdad fell to the Americans, for example.But then coalition forces entered Baghdad on a Wednesday afternoon in April 2003 and so newsrooms were fully staffed.Although this was just before the online video/camera-phone boom, American viewers were far more likely to watch the news that evening than they were on the late December night that Saddam Hussein was executed.
NBC was the first to break into regularly scheduled programming to announce that three “very credible” Arabic-language stations were saying Saddam Hussein’s execution had been carried out.CBS News broke in four minutes later but had independently confirmed the news.ABC was last to break into their scheduled programming, however the network had been airing a news program and so the entire focus on the show shifted to cover the execution.
All the networks had no video upon confirming the news.CNN, for example, stressed the network’s commitment to sensitive and responsible journalism.“We aren’t going to get these images and just slap them on TV,” said CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
In fact, none of the networks knew what kind of footage to expect.Shortly after 3am EST, networks received the official feeds from Arabic network Al Arabiya.As reported in the media by a number of news executives, the decision as to what to show was made tremendously easy as they were only fed footage of Hussein being led onto the gallows, and the noose being tied around his neck, but the actual hanging was not shown.Later on, video of Hussein’s broken neck following the hanging was released, but most networks opted to air a wide shot of this image so not to disturb viewers.
“When [Saddam Hussein] was arrested there was a sense of triumph—a sense of gloating by the American networks,” Melhem believes. “Arab networks discussed his conditions mainly, but they believed for the most part that it was an insult.This time there was a universal revulsion as to the conditions of his execution, the timing and by those who opposed the presence of the Americans.”
Death by Videophone and Blog
In these times of widening access to mobile phone technology, it should not be all that surprising that one or more individuals managed to whip their telephones out and record video images of Saddam Hussein’s execution, particularly given that his execution was overseen by the very faction he was accused of oppressing.It is perhaps more surprising that individuals managed to sneak into the morgue where Hussein’s body was being kept prior to burial to capture video images of his corpse. Such are the times in which we live.
Their actions made available a video which would draw the attention of millions around the world. “Anyone with access to the Internet saw the video, the gory version,” Melhem notes.
The mobile video version of Saddam Hussein’s execution offered viewers something that major television networks could not: a censorship-free look at the events that took place that late December morning in Baghdad.Therefore, as categorized by CNN reporter Arwa Damon, the moment the video hit the web, it triggered an unprecedented “Bluetooth Frenzy.”
“We have so many surveillance cameras around the world now,” notes Alan Reiter, president of Wireless Internet & Mobile Computing, an analytical firm.“People think big brother is watching them, and we often ask ‘who is watching the watchers?’Now the answer is ‘we are.’”
Two mobile phone videos surfaced within 48 hours of Saddam Hussein’s execution.The first is approximately two and a half minutes long.It appears to have been recorded from inside the chambers where Hussein was hung.The video quality is incredibly poor, often shaky and blurry, but it essentially picks up where the official video shown by networks worldwide left off.
The individual who shot the mobile video appears to have filmed from down below the gallows and so when Hussein falls through the trapdoor, the image becomes extremely jittery, but ends with a tight shot of his face.
Audio quality is poor on the video but there are some decipherable phrases—some of which sparked condemnation by Hussein’s supporters.Sounds of chaos blanket the first part of the clip as the executioners prepare Hussein for death.Saddam Hussein himself can be heard repeating prayer verses, of which the word “Allah” (God) is most audible.Witnesses are also heard telling Hussein to “go to hell”; the former leader responding to taunts saying his tormentors were being unmanly.
The second video to surface, a 27-second clip, was posted on an Iraq-based website believed to support the late-dictator’s Ba’ath Party.Apparently taken shortly after Hussein’s death, this video shows a hand pulling down the white shroud to expose a close up of the former-President’s face, his neck twisted at a 90 degree angle to the right, with a gaping, bloody neck wound.The clip, this time of better quality than that of the first released mobile video, also shows wounds to Hussein’s face and blood stains to his white shirt.
Audio remarks are also clearer on this video.A number of male voices can be heard whispering at the beginning, then one voice says, “Hurry up, hurry up.I’m going to count from one to four.One, two…Hurry up, you’re going to get us into a catastrophe (mossiba).”Another voice, apparently that of the man taking the video, says, “Just one second, just one second Abu Ali, I’m almost finished.”A third voice then says, “Abu Ali, you take care of this.”
Days after the videos were released onto the Internet, Iraqi officials told reporters that they had made arrests in connection with the leaked mobile images.“I can officially now confirm the arrest of three individuals in the case of the execution of Saddam Hussein,” Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq’s national security adviser told NBC News.“You have a billion people around the world more or less who have the ability to take a photo and almost instantaneously transmit that photo around the world since a significant portion of camera phones now can take videos,” explains Reiter.“This can be very scary for totalitarian regimes or less democratic regimes because you don’t want people running around with the ability to document bad things.”
As Saleh argues, the mobile images raise difficult questions about Internet ethics. “Even if Saddam is the worst person in the world, how can you do the media phone thing?It’s terrible,” he asks.These questions echo the debate which followed the death of Pope John Paul II.Millions of people filed past the late Pontiff’s body taking pictures as he lay in repose in the Vatican.“A lot of people said it was sacrilegious and disrespectful and other people said it is a cultural difference,” recalls Reiter.“You might ask whether a man’s final moments should be respected.Is it better to know or not to know?Well, camera phones go where cameras cannot—for good or bad.”
Alongside the rapid dissemination of these videos was another, equally remarkable trend: the vibrant response of the global blogosphere.Rarely has the role of the so-called “online citizen journalist” been more apparent than in the days following Saddam Hussein’s execution.From Indianapolis to Islamabad, bloggers posted comments and reports in dozens of languages, providing web surfers with a wealth of opinion and insight beyond the realm of mainstream media.And this was not just a response in writing. Some blogs provided video commentary alongside posted comments, often linking mobile video to their personal websites. Many blogs celebrated the execution, but there were also many others who condemned it.
In addition, a number of blogs provided their readers with links to the websites of various media outlets, bringing them into a new globalized, interlinked media world.In this new media world, Western field reporters had little advantage over bloggers from other regions of the world in their coverage of the historic event.In the execution of Saddam Hussein, both relied on outside news sources for their coverage.Here is one voice from the many hundreds of thousands entering this global blogosphere. It is from an Arabic-language blog called I Miss Iraq written by an anonymous Iraqi doctor now living in Britain.
As an exile, the blogger explores his own feelings upon learning of Hussein’s death:What do I feel after the announcement of this execution? Am I happy or sad? No, I do not feel anything. I feel impervious to any sensation, as if I had become a “thing.” And that scares me. I should be pleased that justice has been done, Pleased that the man who made my people suffer has gone. Pleased that this coward and madman is dead. But I feel nothing. Is it the fact that I am in exile that has made me indifferent?
CONCLUSION
Saddam Hussein’s execution surely ranks among the most high-profile global stories in which the Internet has taken the lead.Mainstream-media reporting soon came to focus on not the execution or the man, but the phone-recorded videos and their dissemination online.In this way Internet technology gives breathtaking power to those who routinely seek to circumvent the framing techniques of governments and big media. At Saddam Hussein’s death, not only did his controlling media tactics die with him, but a new era of media consumption was born.
Just an ordinary Sunday afternoon in Massachusetts. Nothing remarkable about the apartment either; picture the room of a typical engineering student. Stuff everywhere, chaos reigns. But in the mind of this room’s inhabitant, a blogger known to his online readers by the pen-name ‘Jij,’ connections are being made in time and space. For Jij, the violence being meted out on his country Lebanon on this lazy Sunday afternoon is all too real. So real he is gripped by thoughts of family far away:
