Author: Carsten Agger

Web 2.0-fail: Flickr bortcensurerer dokumentation af egyptiske Stasifolk

Wanted Egyptian Stasi Pig

Den egyptiske blogger og aktivist Hossam El-Hamalawy har i efterhånden årevis samlet billeder af egyptiske Stasifolk – medlemmer af det berygtede sikkerhedspoliti, der som deres vigtigste opgave har haft at udpege og nedkæmpe regimets modstandere, og det med ganske ubehagelige metoder – på sin Flickr-konto.

Den slags synes Flickr imidlertid ikke, at deres “pro”-konti skal bruges til, for nu har El-Hamalawy fået dette brev fra dem:

Brev om censur af billeder

Det lyder jo meget tilforladeligt med begrundelsen om, at man kun må have billeder, man selv har taget – eller gør det? Masser af mennesker lægger billeder, de ikke selv har taget, på Flickr, og det sker der næsten aldrig noget ved. Man aner, at det må være politisk motiveret – at Flickr nok synes, det er hyggeligt, at folk bruger siden til at lægge feriebilleder og den slags op.

Som El-Hamalawy selv gør opmærksom på: Billederne blev taget ned “because of ‘copyright infringement'”. Men der har næppe været fremsat noget krav om en sådan krænkelse af ophavsretten, eftersom billederne var bidraget af folk, der gerne ville have dem frem. Der er snarere tale om en politisk motiveret “proaktiv” censur fra Flickrs side.

Moderselskabet Yahoo! synes også, det er fint nok at angive folk, der engagerer sig i kampen mod et diktatur som det i Egypten eller Kina – men hvis nogen bruger deres tjeneste til at dokumentere et dikatorisk regimes overgreb , kommer de pludselig i tanker om reglerne.  Det er ærligt talt skammeligt og udstiller svagheden i det “nye” Internet – de meget store og centrale sider som Amazon, Google, Facebook og Flickr bliver også til et “single point of censorship”, hvor Censur 2.0 let kan få alt til at forsvinde fra de få steder, folk læser.

Men var den egyptiske sikkerhedstjeneste overhovedet så slem, at den fortjener at blive udstillet, dokumenteret og sammenlignet med Gestapo, SS og Stasi?

Ja, skriver Issandr El Amrani i den egyptiske avis Al-Masry Al-Youm, under overskriften “This is more of a revolution than you think“:

There were worse dictatorships, yes, but the problem was not simply an aging, authoritarian president, his ambitious son and his corrupt entourage. It was that, for the sake of regime preservation, a sprawling security apparatus collected information on citizens, manipulated them, cajoled and threatened them, humiliated them. State Security did not just, as its role should have been, keep tabs on possible terrorists and criminal networks. It ran Egypt on a day-to-day level, super-imposing itself onto the regular bureaucracy, acting as an intermediary.While ministries shuffled paper and red tape, state security kept tabs on people. This goes beyond the issue of torture, which it certainly practiced abundantly, or the racketeering, blackmailing and other schemes its officers carried out with impunity. What those who gained access to its offices discovered is that, much like the Ministry of Transport might keep an inventory of its buses and trains, State Security maintained an elaborate database on citizens, the threats they represented, their weaknesses, relationships and other every little detail of their lives.

This process that had its own chilling logic, reminiscent of the “banality of evil” Hannah Arendt chronicled in Nazi Germany, Andrei Almarik in the Soviet Union, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck in East Germany, or Ariel Dorfman in Pinochet’s Chile. What it boils down to is that a vast bureaucracy existed simply to perpetuate itself and those in charge. Consider the neat categorizations of the population–“Muslim Brothers”, “Communists and human rights activists,” etc.–or the recent allegation that the Ministry of Trade paid a monthly retainer of LE174,000 to its own state security watchers to get them to write positive reports.

Whatever counter-terrorism and other legitimate roles State Security played, this must have been a relatively minor part of what it did: most of its resources were dedicated to the humdrum task of keeping tabs on those Egyptians who, for whatever reason–wealth, political opinion, media influence, foreign connections–posed a potential threat to the regime.

Flickr-gruppen Piggipedia er endnu ikke fjernet, men det er givetvis kun et spørgsmål om tid. El-Hamalawy opsummerer selv situationen således:

And once again, @flickr you should b ashamed. The only people u made happy tonight r police torturers. Way to go.

Roger Waters: Tear down this apartheid wall

Selveste Roger Waters, som er kendt fra Pink Floyd og ikke mindst albummet The Wall, forklarer i dagens Guardian, hvorfor han ikke vil spille i Israel, så længe de opretholder deres apartheidlignende undertrykkelse af palæstinenserne i de besatte områder, ikke mindst meget konkret i form af den mur, de har bygget mod Vestbredden.

Waters skriver bl.a.:

Under the protection of the United Nations I visited Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw that day. The wall is an appalling edifice to behold. It is policed by young Israeli soldiers who treated me, a casual observer from another world, with disdainful aggression.

If it could be like that for me, a foreigner, a visitor, imagine what it must be like for the Palestinians, for the underclass, for the passbook carriers. I knew then that my conscience would not allow me to walk away from that wall, from the fate of the Palestinians I met: people whose lives are crushed daily by Israel’s occupation. In solidarity, and somewhat impotently, I wrote on their wall that day: “We don’t need no thought control.”

Sadly, in the intervening years the Israeli government has made no attempt to implement legislation that would grant rights to Israeli Arabs equal to those enjoyed by Israeli Jews, and the wall has grown, inexorably, illegally annexing more and more of the West Bank.For the people of Gaza, locked in a virtual prison behind the wall of Israel’s illegal blockade, it means another set of injustices. It means that children go to sleep hungry, many chronically malnourished. It means that fathers and mothers, unable to work in a decimated economy, have no means to support their families. It means that university students with scholarships to study abroad must watch the opportunity of a lifetime slip away because they are not allowed to travel.

In my view, the abhorrent and draconian control that Israel wields over the besieged Palestinians in Gaza and the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank (including East Jerusalem), coupled with its denial of the rights of refugees to return to their homes in Israel, demands that fair-minded people around the world support the Palestinians in their civil, nonviolent resistance.

Link: Tear down this Israeli wall

Angry Arab om Søren Pind som taler til Mellemøsten-demo

Den ubegribelige opportunisme, der har fået arrangørerne af en stor demo for demokrati i Mellemøsten til at lade den nationalkonservative integrationsminister Søren Pind tale, har nu vakt opmærksomhed også uden for landets grænser.

Angry Arab News Service, der drives af den libanesisk-amerikanske forfatter og akademiker As’ad Abukhalil, skriver således:

On friday 11th, there will be a large demo in Copenhagen in favour of democracy in the Middle East. Unbelievably, Søren Pind, the current Danish minister of “integration” (foreigners) and “devolopment” (humanitarian aid, development programmes) will be among the speakers.  Mr. Pind is an unapologetic racist who has supported the Danish Hells Angels’ “Jackal Manifesto” which said Arabs “squeal when they are beaten”. I kid you not. He has also said there will be no more “integration” – foreigners must assimilate completely or leave. And he is in charge! I kid you not. I don’t know what the other speakers are thinking, but I know I’d only go for one reason: To protest again that man’s presence. I can only hope he will meet his one little slice of Tahrir on Friday. The Facebook page of the demo is here – it’s in Danish, but you can easily see his name.

Link: Soren Pind

Bedst som man troede, det ikke kunne blive værre – Søren Pind som integrationsminister

Birthe Rønn Hornbechs længe ventede afgang, efter at det blev lidt for åbenlyst, at hun ganske enkelt bevidst har syltet en række statsløse menneskers krav på statsborgerskab, markerer samtidig endnu et tryk på speederen i højredrejningen af Danmark: Hendes afløser Søren Pind erklærer prompte, at den lov, som Birthe Rønn Hornbech har overtrådt, er “åndssvag“.

Det er også Søren Pind, der har udtalt:

Jeg gider ikke høre mere snak om integration. Fri mig for det – det rigtige ord må være assimilation. Der er så rigelig kulturer, folk kan drage andensteds hen og dyrke, hvis det er det, de har lyst til

Det er også Søren Pind, der udtalte sin helt uforbeholdne støtte til Hells Angels’ “sjakalmanifest“, hvor det blandt andet hed, at arabere “piber og skriger, når de får tæv”.

En analyse viser ret hurtigt, at Søren Pind er en gennemført magtpolitiker – antiliberal, åbenlyst racistisk, i bund og grund udemokratisk og ude af stand til at anerkende andre synspunkters ret til at eksistere. Udnævnelsen af Pind rejser et grundlæggende spørgsmål: Hvorfor ikke Pia Kjærsgaard?

Svaret er desværre: Fordi det ikke ville gøre nogen forskel. “Mørke” indvandrere gør snart klogt i at have en pakket kuffert stående ved siden af sengen, som This Indonesian konkluderer:

To tell you the truth, I don’t even want to imagine what kind of new “rules” that the new minister would implement – I could already tell that it’d be worse than Birthe Rønn Hornbech’s era.

What it would feel like to be an immigrant in Denmark in the next few months or years? I have no idea. My only hope is that the election would hopefully come soon and the opposition would win the majority. Other than that, I could see myself packing my big suitcases ready.

Fredag d. 11. marts er der demonstration til støtte for revolutionerne i Mellemøsten på Rådhuspladsen i København – og arrangørerne har temmelig ubegribeligt bedt Søren Pind om at tale.

Jeg håber, at mange vil møde op; ikke for at deltage i demonstrationen, som allerede er ødelagt, men for at vise deres vrede mod det racistiske Danmark, som Søren Pind repræsenterer. Noget af det bedste, vi kan gøre for at støtte folk i Egypten, er at lære af dem og ikke finde os i de “demokratiske” regimer, som har ført krig i Irak og Afghanistan og sendt folk til Syrien og Egypten for at blive torteret.

Jeg håber, at Søren Pind vil møde et lille bitte hjørne af Tahrir-pladsen, når han taler på fredag. Ash-shab yurid isqat al-nizam – folket ønsker at vælte regimet. Jo før, jo bedre!

Michael Moore: “America is not broke”

Michael Moore taler til de strejkende arbejdere i Madison, Wisconsin.

“America is not broke. Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you’ll give up your pension, cut your wages and settle for the life your great-grandparents had, America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash, it’s just that it’s not in your hands. It has been transferred in the greatest heist in history from the workers and the consumers to the banks and the portfolios of the über-rich!”

Via Lenin’s Tomb.

Libyen: Mission Accomplished (not)

Hvis der er én ting, oprørerne i både Tunesien, Egypten og Yemen fra starten har gjort klart, er det, at de ikke ønsker indblanding udefra. Ikke modstand, ikke støtte, ingen ting. Wael Ghonim, som vi før har citeret, er ganske repræsentativ:

Dear Western Governments, You’ve been silent for 30 years supporting the regime that was oppressing us. Please don’t get involved now.

Og Ghonim er endda med sin middelklassebaggrund og sin chefstilling hos Google blandt de mest provestlige af den egyptiske revolutions ledere (hvilket han også bliver kritiseret for). “Pro-vestlig” behøver ikke længere at være “pro vestlig indblanding”.

Oprørerne i Libyen har også hele tiden gjort opmærksom på, at de ikke ønsker udenlandsk militær støtte til opgøret mod Gaddafi, men nok humanitær hjælp. Så hvad gør man, hvis man er en hjertensgod vestlig regering, der så gerne vil gøre lidt godt for de trængte libyere?

Ja, hvad man ikke gør er at sende en deling jægersoldater ind bevæbnet til tænderne og med pas fra fire forskellige lande ind med en helikopter midt om natten. Den officielle historie er, at meningen var, at de britiske jægersoldater skulle kontakte oprørslederne for at hjælpe dem, men det blev i givet fald ret hurtigt klart, at en sådan hjælp var ganske uønsket.

The Daily Fail har for en gangs skyld en glimrende gennemgang af den uheldige “diplomatiske hændelse”, eller hvad man nu skal kalde den britiske regerings forsøg på heltedåd:

A joint SAS-MI6 team was kicked out of Libya last night after their mission to link up with rebels fighting Colonel Gaddafi turned to farce.

The eight-man unit was sent to have secret talks with opposition leaders but humiliatingly the team was detained and held by a group of farmhands.

The crack troops, armed with guns, ammunition, explosives and false passports, were mistaken for enemy spies, detained and stripped of their mobile phones and satellite communications devices

Britain faced further diplomatic humiliation as telephone calls in which officials in London begged opposition figures in Libya for their release were intercepted by Colonel Gaddafi’s security forces and broadcast on Libyan state television.

But his team of Special Forces bodyguards was forced to put down their weapons just after they had landed when confronted by armed farmers near the town of Khandra.

Whitehall officials admitted they had ‘gone quietly’ when challenged. A senior defence source denied the men were captured but said: ‘They had issues of freedom.’

Some rebels are hostile to any foreign forces entering Libya, even if they may be providing support.

One spokesman said: ‘If this is an official delegation, why come with helicopters? Why not say “We are coming, permission to land at the airport?” There are rules for these things.

Der er også et interview med en af de landarbejdere, der overmandede de såkaldte elitesoldater:

‘They all got out and they were not talking, just moving,’ he says. ‘Three or four of them were dressed all in black, so it was hard to see. But they were unloading big bags, several of them, and it looked like a lot of equipment.’

This was when Rafah, a mere 5ft7in tall, and his workmates decided they needed to act. They picked up AK-47 rifles from inside the gateroom, and made their way along the inside of the perimeter fence.

Rafah says: ‘We fired into the air, and said “hands up, don’t move”. They did as we said. It was not very difficult, we just asked them to move away from their bags to the side, and they did.’

When the farmhands peered into the bags, they found a fearsome array of military kit, which seems to have included guns, explosives, bullet-proof vests with a desert-camouflage design, satellite phones, GPS tracking devices and multiple sets of passports.

The warning shots that were fired woke the wheat and corn farm’s manager, Ahmed Albira. He remains reluctant to speak, but confirms he telephoned the headquarters of Libya’s rebel government, in Benghazi, and the reaction was immediate alarm.

With Colonel Gaddafi flying in heavily-armed mercenaries with orders to murder innocent civilians, any foreign troops on Libya’s soil are being treated with the deepest of suspicion.

Mr Albira was warned to keep them under close armed guard until back-up could arrive. While they waited, Rafah and his friends took it in turns to guard the seven SAS men and the MI6 agent, and make them breakfast. Rafah says with a smile: ‘We gave them eggs, milk and bread. It was very nice.

Er den historie overhovedet til at stå for? Nogle gange betyder: “Nej tak, vi er ikke interesserede” rent faktisk lige præcis: “Nej tak, vi er ikke interesserede.”

The Guardian har også historien:

“We don’t want new enemies, but this is no way to make contact,” said a senior member of the committee, Essam Gheriani.

“Dropping in in the dead of night with espionage equipment, recording devices, multiple weapons and passports. In Dubai the Israelis used British passports to kill that man, [Hamas commander Mahmoud] al-Mabhouh. It’s a matter of verification. At a time of revolution, suspicion is greater than trust.”

” A major embarrassment to the British government”, som The Guardian opsummerer; og det er vist endda årets underdrivelse.

Charlie Brooker om oberst Gaddafi

Den britiske komiker Charlie Brooker kan en vits eller to om Gaddafi og hans gode, gode venner rundt omkring (se den til ende for at få hele pointen med).

Via Boing Boing, hvor Cory Doctorow benytter lejligheden til at give en stående anbefaling af Channel 4s Ten O’Clock Live:

I wish that all of Ten O’Clock Live’s clips were on YouTube, as it would be amazing blogfodder — the show is better than The Daily Show most weeks, IMO (I’ve asked, C4 say their lawyers won’t let them because there are got clips of the BBC, Sky, etc, which is some pretty weird fair dealing analysis).

“Better than Daily Show”, det var da alligevel noget. Så mangler vi bare, at en dansk komiker og TV-kanal med respekt for sig selv tager fat på at lave et dansk Daily Show.

Arabisk revolution – next stop Palestine?

Faktisk kunne en regulær palæstinensisk opstand som dem, vi har set i Libyen, Tunesien og Egypten måske være det, der skal til for at bryde den israelske besættelse og få såvel israelerne som Abbas’ Quislingestyre til at trække sig helt tilbage, spekulerer Larry Derfner i Jerusalem Post:

Something’s going to blow, I figured, and my guess was that Israel would start one war too many, maybe against Iran, or Lebanon, or Gaza, and masses of Israelis as well as foreigners would die, and when the smoke cleared it would be recalled that we started it, and the world would finally run out of patience with us and we would get out of the West Bank in a lather to avoid being ostracized, to save ourselves from becoming a Jewish North Korea.

Again, not my preferred way of ending the occupation. But no “good” way was presenting itself.

And then came Tunisia. And Egypt. And Iran, and Yemen, and Bahrain, and Libya, and no one knows where this is going to stop.

And it became pretty clear to me that this is how Israeli rule in the West Bank is going to end – through Palestinian people power. Masses of Palestinians, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, marching to IDF checkpoints and outposts, marching to Israeli-only roads, to settlements, to the security fence – to the nearest Israeli presence and screaming, “Out! Out!”

And refusing to leave.

WHAT THE hell is the IDF going to do then? Shoot them? Arrest them? With the whole world not only watching but, for the first time, already won over by other unarmed Arab masses facing down their oppressors? What will the IDF do under the eyes of a world that, for the first time, is seeing Arabs as people like themselves who want freedom, who deserve it and who are earning it, to say the least, with their courage?

How will the IDF and the Palestinian Authority police – those who don’t defect – get all these people to go back home and stay there?

I don’t see it. I think we’re going to have grand-scale anarchy on our hands – and we won’t be able to solve it by force, and the world will be on the side of the anarchists.

Impossible? If you say this is impossible, you’ve been on Mars for the last month. If you’ve been on Earth, the idea of the Arab revolt not reaching the West Bank is what seems impossible. To me, it’s inevitable. I’m only surprised it hasn’t started already.

After all, the Palestinians’ “war of the stones,” the first intifada in the late 1980s, was close to being a model for what’s happening in the Middle East now. The Egyptians and other Arab rebels have even adopted the term intifada, which means “shaking off.”

True, the first intifada (not to mention the second one) wasn’t nonviolent – the Palestinians threw stones and Molotov cocktails. But they certainly played David to the IDF’s Goliath. And in recent years, the “popular resistance” – the marches on the security fence in Bil’in and other West Bank villages – has been all but nonviolent, with only a few teenagers throwing stones at IDF troops, usually from far distances.

The Palestinians are the Arab world’s masters at political judo – at turning the enemy’s superior power against him. This is how civil disobedience works, and it’s working wonders in the Middle East, so why on earth shouldn’t it come to the West Bank, too?

It’s a matter of time. Maybe it’ll start Friday with the Palestinians’ “Day of Rage” against the US veto of the UN resolution against settlements. If not Friday, it’ll start soon. Something will set it off.

And yes, I’m hoping it happens. If the only other options are occupation forever or peace following catastrophe – and I think those are the only other options – I prefer people power.

Link: People get ready – there’s a train a-comin’ (via Angry Arab).

Dansk udlændingepolitik i en nøddeskal

De danske udlændingeregler er nu så stramme, at selv topdiplomater ikke kan få deres ægtefælle til Danmark, hvis de ender med at få arbejde her i landet. Det vil sige, at folk, der har tjent Danmark som ambassadører i både 20 og 30 år må opgive at bosætte sig her, når de går på pension. Det er på grund af pointsystemerne, som blev indført i 2010, og som Liberal Alliance for nylig reddede i endnu et formentlig karrierebetinget krumspring.

Der er også historien om den kinesiske PhD-studerende, som kom til at indbetale 1600 kroner i stedet for 3025 i gebyr for at søge om at komme til Danmark, fordi Udlændingeservice bragte de forkerte oplysninger på deres hjemmeside. Da fejlen blev opdaget, nægtede de bare at modtage de manglende 1425 kroner og arbejde videre derfra, man måtte have en ny indbetaling og en ny ansøgningsdato, for det andet “kan de administrative systemer ikke håndtere”. Til dato har studenten mistet flybilletten fra Kina og de første måneders husleje i København, men han håber stadig.Men de klogeste har vel efterhånden lært at sætte sig ind i, hvad Danmark er for et land, og holder sig væk.

Og så er der nogen, der ikke kan forstå, at det ikke lykkes at trække turister til landet.  Læg hertil den fortsatte historie om Birthe Rønn Hornbechs magtmisbrug og bevidste lovbrug i sagen om statsborgerskab til statsløse palæstinensere, er billedet efterhånden kun alt for klart. Måske man skulle se at få pakket den kuffert, mens man stadig har lov til at rejse her fra Danmarks Demokratiske Rige.

Billede: OneLiners4DK, en udmærket, Danmark-kritisk Facebook-side, som du også kan følge på Twitter.