Until, that is, she ruined my upcoming birthday.

You see, on May 18 I will turn 30. I’ve been pretty excited about this, and will be spending the week in the Netherlands with my nearest and dearest, and have rented a boat for our little group on the actual day. I was telling Manal this, and watched her face droop into a look of a concern.

“Just a boat ride?” She asked, “You have to do something outrageous, something you’ve never done!” As I pondered, she began to tell me why.

It seems, you see, that on Manal’s thirtieth birthday, she was alone at a conference in a foreign city, feeling sad, when someone came along and turned the day into a new adventure. After that, she decided to top each birthday with the last.

Last year, Manal turned 32, and posed the question to her Facebook friends: “What could I do to top last year’s adventure? I know, I think I’ll record a video of myself driving!” (I will take a moment here to interject another hilarious anecdote: Manal got her first driver’s license in my home state of New Hampshire!) Though it took a few weeks, she eventually did, and in doing so, made history. And that is the story of how Manal Al-Sharif (almost) ruined my 30th birthday.

I say almost, of course, because it’s not too late! So, my friends, I am now scheming for something truly epic. I will never top Manal, of course, but I hope to start big and then challenge myself each year thereafter. You see, for a year now I’ve been inspired by Manal’s fortitude, but after getting to know her a little, I’m even more inspired by her attitude and sense of adventure.

I can’t find the tweet, but last night I noted someone–a journalist, no less–tweet something along the lines of “Hmm, interesting – most of my [American? foreign? can't remember] friends like [the article], most of my Arab friends don’t.” While the tone of the comment was ambiguous and I’ll assume a bit of irony, I’ve seen other similar comments that are a bit more…obtuse. The problem, of course, is that while the audience for Eltahawy’s piece was obviously highbrow-ish English speakers interested in foreign policy (I mean, c’mon, Foreign Policy ain’t USA Today), the idea behind some of these comments is essentially: “Hey – foreigners find this valuable, shut up dissenters!” I even spotted one foreigner–who presumably lives in Egypt–telling various Egyptian women on Twitter that they were simply wrong.

The thing is, Arab women, in Eltahawy’s piece, are not active participants in the conversation, but subjects. That, I think, is why so many women took issue to her use of “us” — it felt disingenuous. I realize, of course, that there’s backstory here and she has a considerable number of non-fans and trolls, but this article in particular provoked a stronger reaction than any I’ve ever seen, and there’s a reason for that.

So the problem that I have is that, while the majority of long-form responses have come from Egyptian or other Arab women, most have been dismissed outright. Take, for example, this tweet from Foreign Policy editor Blake Hounshell:

Girls ready for marriage at 10, says Saudi grand mufti, but yes, let’s talk about how @monaeltahawy is an Orientalist arabianbusiness.com/girls-ready-fo…

— Blake Hounshell (@blakehounshell) April 24, 2012

That one is particularly ironic given that Foreign Policy appears to have pre-commissioned five responses to Eltahawy’s piece, indicating they knew how controversial her piece would be. Another:

Why is @monaeltahawy denying the agency of 12-year-old child brides? #criticism

— Blake Hounshell (@blakehounshell) April 24, 2012

(Don’t get me wrong – I don’t think Hounshell is amongst those not listening to Arab women, but his comments were nonetheless tone deaf – below one response, from Pakistani-Canadian Sana Saeed)

@blakehounshell Nice red herring as well as hushing the voices of Arab/Muslim women who have shown dissent. We can shut up and agree.

— Sana Saeed (@SanaSaeed) April 24, 2012

More troubling is the fact that, as Gigi Ibrahim points out in her post, “Many who have criticized Mona’s article get accused that we are defending the actions of discrimination against women or simply denying it and that couldn’t be farthest from the truth in understanding the fundamental problem with Mona’s argument in the first place.” I can’t tell you how many tweets I’ve seen claiming that, in opposing Eltahawy’s framing of the issue, any dissenters must not be taking the real issues seriously. This, I will say outright, is bullshit. I read approximately eight of the bloggy responses (including some of those in Foreign Policy) and every one was written by someone who does speak out about vital issues to women. The dissent is not coming from apologists, it’s coming from women who take issue with Eltahawy’s particular framing of the issue…and there’s nothing unfair about that. I think everyone agrees with Eltahawy when she says FGM is awful and must be eradicated – where I think most disagree is with her take on the root cause.

Ultimately, and even though I disagree with it, I’m glad Eltahawy wrote the piece. When you acquire a certain amount of clout, as she has, you have also acquired a platform from which to shout about whatever you choose, and I would rather, on any day of the week, see Eltahawy using that platform to talk about women’s issues–of vital importance to all of us–than to call Israel the “opium of the people.” I also hope, earnestly, that amongst the criticism of her piece a few more voices arise that can step up, take such an amplified platform, and speak about threats to women in a way that doesn’t cause such a visceral reaction and allows us to learn, and eventually, conquer these threats.

The best part, to me, is not what is planned, but what comes as a total surprise. So often do I arrive somewhere to find someone I hadn’t planned to see, or someone who’d inspired me recently and who I’d been hoping to dig into a bit deeper. In coming weeks, I’ll find myself in Berlin–where inspiration is rampant, where I’ll take my good camera–and Oslo, then the Netherlands for my birthday, Austin-not-during-SXSW, and after that perhaps Rio, Madrid, DC, New York, and Nairobi…and all before my self-imposed, swear-I’m-going-to-stick-with-it break. And in those travels, despite the sleepless hours in airport lounges or perhaps because of them, I will find more inspiration.

To be honest, it’s exhausting. I remember when this all started, talking to my friend Ethan Zuckerman, and him telling me that yes, in fact, it does get old. I didn’t believe him at the time. I do now.

And yet, there remains to me nothing more exciting than taking in a new city. Tonight, I arrive in Stockholm, my first time in Sweden, in Scandinavia (I’m writing you from a Lufthansa lounge in Frankfurt airport). Next month, I’ll be in Berlin (an old fave) then will head for the first time to Oslo, and then to the Netherlands to celebrate my 30th birthday with family and friends. In June, it’s Madrid, then Nairobi – both new cities for me. And none of that is counting domestic travel.

And then here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to take off two months from travel. When I first started saying that, last month, my friends laughed at me, scoffed, and said they knew I’d fail. But seriously, in the year that I’ve lived in San Francisco, I’ve really only lived in San Francisco for a week here, a week there. I’ve been working on a top secret project with a friend for a few months now that I’m dying to dig into hardcore, get done. I want to start riding my bike more. I’m really excited about some stuff I’m working on at EFF and want to give it my all. Also, I think my cat sometimes forgets who I am.

So, friends, here’s the deal: From July 4-ish, when I return from Nairobi, until mid-September, when I have a tentative trip already lined up, I am not leaving San Francisco but once, to see my mom and, hopefully, celebrate my dad’s life (more on that later). At the same time, you, friends, are more than welcome to come visit me. With my newfound free weekends, I will clean up my backyard, and we will have barbecues. And it will be awesome.

So how did my journey with Global Voices begin?

When I moved to Morocco in 2005 (I’d spent a couple months there the year prior as well), I decided to start a blog, mostly to keep my friends and family abreast of what I was up to. I’d been blogging on Livejournal already for about four years, but when I tried to log on the first time from Morocco, I found that the site was blocked (this would be my first personal encounter with online censorship). After experimenting with proxies for the first time, I gave up and started blogging on a different platform, travelblog.com. I was also in the midst of writing a book on contract, and when it was released the next year, Travelblog actually put the book, with a link to my blog, on their homepage. I am forever grateful.

That, and my participation in a certain travel message board that shall remain nameless, resulted in one of my new online friends offering me some hosting space, and finally, I had my own spot on the Internet (aside from a 1998 misadventure with Geocities, that is) and my own, custom blog.

My encounter with Global Voices started, oddly enough, with GV quoting that blog. At the time, I was blogging at The Morocco Report (which is sadly offline, though I do have the archives on file), and GV’s Morocco author at the time, Farah Kinani, had quoted me in a post about the Nichane affair (good summary here) of December 2006. I noticed the link a few months later when I was just discovering web analytics (I’m a late bloomer) and subsequently noted that Kinani had stopped writing for GV. I wrote to editor Amira Al Hussaini asking if I might contribute. This was her response:

Dearest Jillian,

I think you are God-sent! I am actually looking for a blogger interested in covering the Moroccan blogosphere for GVO.

Ideally, I would love to see more coverage of the conversations taking place in the Moroccan blogosphere on GV and this is only possible if we had interested bloggers on the ground doing weekly round ups like the ones you see on the site.

Please let me know if you are game for that and we can take it from there.
Best regards, Amira

And the rest is history!

But really…I can’t say enough about what Global Voices, and the Global Voices community, has done for me. In 2008, I met Amira in person–first in Miami, then again in Budapest for the GV Summit, and then again when she kindly invited me to spend a week with her in Canada, where she was living at the time…to date, she’s still #1 in my book of favorite hostesses; you must try her cherry jam. At that first meeting in Miami, I also met Solana Larsen, Renata Avila, David Sasaki, Eddie Avila, Georgia Popplewell and I’m surely forgetting others! Of course, that summer I met more than one hundred members of the community, and a lifetime of friendships were born.

But, perhaps more fateful was the first time I met, in March 2008, Ethan Zuckerman. Ethan, as I’m sure you know, is one of GV’s two founders (the other being Rebecca MacKinnon) and, at the time, a fellow at the Berkman Center. As it happened, Georgia P. was in town (Boston, where I had just moved from Morocco a few months prior) and so we made plans to meet…at a bowling alley. Yes, the first time I met Ethan Zuckerman we drank beers out of plastic cups in a bowling alley…and didn’t even bowl.

It was just a few weeks later that I sat having a beer with Solana Larsen in Boston’s South Station, where she was awaiting her train to New York (I worked across the street from the station at a small non-profit). We picked up on a discussion we’d started in Miami about how I desperately wanted to find work that was fulfilling; the non-profit I was working for at the time was in many ways a great place to work, but it just wasn’t my passion. Solana promised to send me any leads she found.

One of those leads came about just a few weeks later, when I got an email from Ethan introducing me to Rob Faris, the research director at the Berkman Center, who was looking for someone to manage the OpenNet Initiative. I’m sure you know where this story is going…I got an interview, though I will note that it was almost two months and presumably many interviews later until I heard that I was being considered. In the end, I got the job and dove headfirst into the world of Internet censorship, the Berkman Center, and this crazy wonderful community that I’m now a part of.

Of course, none of this would have happened without Global Voices. As of today, I’ve written precisely 500 posts on the site (how apropos!) and while I don’t contribute as much these days for various reasons (I’m no longer in the region, I don’t have much free time, I’ve lost track of the blogosphere), I remain a part of the community – last year, I was elected to the Board of Directors as a representative of the GV volunteer community. In case you didn’t know, I’ve never been paid by Global Voices (unless you count a few plane tickets)…that, to me, is what’s so amazing about us: GV is primarily made up of passionate, dedicated, talented volunteers, all with different interests and expertise but all with a passion for free speech and a strong media landscape.

As we get closer to the Global Voices 2012 Summit in Nairobi, I’m sure I will have a lot more to say here. But for now, Global Voices, I would simply like to salute you. Not only am I incredibly proud to be part of such a rich and robust community, I am also grateful for all of the things this community has given me over the years: Friends, my partner, even my livelihood. I love you, Global Voices.

Trayvon Martin's smiling face.

I first heard about Trayvon a few mornings ago in an airport lounge, on CNN. Thinking it was an older story that I’d somehow missed, I watched, shocked, but moved on…until a few days later when I began to see the petitions, the calls for protest, the plans for the Million Hoodie march and began reading up on the case.

Since then, I’ve simply been speechless.

Every element of this case horrifies me. The idea that a young boy would be chased down by an allegedly responsible adult member of a neighborhood watch and shot is one horror, but the lack of justice from the police charged with protecting young citizens, the continued excuses from the local police, and the continued silence from the White House is another. And lest you think it’s not Obama’s responsibility to comment, let’s not forget about the Beer Summit. Apparently the fact that Trayvon Martin is just a black kid, and not a black Harvard professor, matters.

And yes, I realize I shouldn’t be shocked per se, that variations of this are everyday occurrences in the United States, that racism hasn’t died but simply migrated from overt to covert, and yet. And yet.

In any case, I have nothing new to say here. I am privileged. I have not experienced racism. I will instead direct you to this beautifully written post from my close friend Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, with the suggestion that you read it. You might also read up on what the ACLU is saying.

Mind you, I was only there a short time; I don’t mean to imply that my leaving is torturous like that of an exile. Rather, I simply note the tears that ran down my face as I walked across the tarmac to the plane, with a heavy feeling like I was leaving forever. I was not, of course, I can say even more certainly now (what, three years later and with enough miles to go the second it’s safe to do so), but I nonetheless had an ache in my chest that I’d never felt upon leaving anywhere else.

There was just…is just…something about Syria. I fell in love with it like no other, and thirty some-odd countries later, it still has my heart. For years I’ve read the blog posts of Yazan, Anas, and Maysaloon, for years I’ve dug through photos, but for the past three years I’ve simply dreamt of going back.

I want what’s best for the Syrian people, for my friends. I believe that’s freedom, but it is not I who decides how to get there.

Three years ago today I left Syria. One year ago today, Syria rose up. In one year, I can only hope I’ll be back.

Today, there are two stories making the rounds that illustrate this “tug of war” perfectly. The first is a New York Times blog post that demonstrates the Syrian state news agency’s (SANA) falsification of evidence in its argument that rebels are funded by foreign agents. Another, on CNN and elsewhere, reports a tragedy: More than 40 Syrian soldiers allegedly executed by the regime. In this case, the story may very well be true…but the only source is unnamed “activists.”

In fact, the latter is entirely illustrative of the mainstream Western (and Gulf) media’s approach to Syria. A quick glance at the reporting done by the New York Times, CNN, Alarabiya, and others shows that “unnamed activists,” “Syrian opposition activists,” and “human rights activists” are their primary–and often, only–sources.

In a paper I wrote for the conference I’m currently attending, I analyzed the reporting of several mainstream news sources on Syrian casualty reports between November 2011 and February 2012. While that paper isn’t quite ready for prime time, here’s a table illustrating what I found:

As I intend to argue in my paper, these sources…and their numbers (which vary wildly) matter. As I’ve written elsewhere, I have personal history with Syria. I have known and talked about the horrors of the regime since long before March 2011. But while even 1,000 civilian deaths are far too many, these numbers matter when they’re being used to justify intervention. The media’s almost total reliance upon activists–not simply citizens, but self-described activists–is therefore problematic.

And yet, criticizing that fact has become even more problematic. As I said on Twitter earlier today, “question activist reports and you’re shabih. Report on regime atrocities and you’re a shill for the GCC.” Seriously…you can’t win. The international community largely appears to view Syria in terms of black and white when the situation is in fact quite grey…or at the very least, unclear, unverifiable.

This brings me back to the point about the media. At the moment, you have what is essentially a divide between journalists, commentators, and media bureaus that are very clearly pushing the opposition line and those that appear to be shilling for the regime. And there’s no middle ground – there’s almost no one condemning the regime, for example, whilst simultaneously questioning the dominant opposition narrative. Those who dare search for truth are immediately labeled as being on one side or the other.

Comments on a recent NYTimes article by Tyler Hicks, who was with Anthony Shadid in Syria when he died.

This post isn’t about which side is right or wrong. As I’ve said before, what I think about Syria is well-known but frankly, it truly doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. What concerns me, rather, is that the media–whose job it is to report facts, objectively*–is not only pushing a certain narrative, but also ignoring certain truths: the non-civilian casualty toll, for example (this one in particular bothers me when I think about all of my friends that did or almost did their compulsory Syrian military service).

What bothers me most, however, is the sheer certainty with which both sides attempt to make their points. The New Yorker in the screenshot above, for example, is so sure that “one side is for life, the other for death.” I’m not so sure. I’m certain that the regime is killing civilians (if you’re going to argue with me on that, just go away), but I’m not sure that there aren’t bad actors amongst the legitimate opposition. I can’t be sure…especially not when the media isn’t doing their job.

*not my favorite term, as you might know, but it’s nonetheless relevant.

• “Violating Sacred Values” in Morocco: Free Speech with an Exception
• Gen. McCaffrey privately briefs NBC execs on war with Iran
• What the Quran burnings tell us – though I prefer its other title, “Sorry America: We are the heavily armed thugs in Afghanistan”
• Ahead of Elections, Iran Cracks Down on Press Freedom
• Ain’t I a Woman?
• I’m Being Followed: How Google—and 104 Other Companies—Are Tracking Me on the Web
• Kickstarter Expects To Provide More Funding To The Arts Than NEA

Added bonus: Drones do James Bond

Seriously, you really have to visit it yourself, the screenshot doesn’t do the animated gifs justice. Bonus: Dude lists his mobile number on his public CV.

Semi-related honorable mention (because it isn’t deserving of its own post) goes to…

Syrian Ambassador to China (and blogger) Imad Moustapha for his daring use of MS Publisher Word Art: