Free Ali Abdulemam

I woke up this morning, like many of my friends and colleagues, to the news that our good friend, Ali Abdulemam, had been arrested, for allegedly “publishing false news” on BahrainOnline.org, the site he founded and edits (the site appears to have gone down sometime this morning). This is not the first time Ali has been [...]

05.09.2010

3 Comments

What is it about today’s 20-somethings?

A week ago, the New York Times (that paper I love to hate) ran a rather interesting 10-pager entitled “What Is It About 20-Somethings?“  The author, Robin Marantz Henig draws on a few examples from real life and pop culture–young people trying to make a living from blogging, haha, remaining “untethered to permanent homes”–to set [...]

27.08.2010

2 Comments

This isn’t fear, this is hate.

Not too long ago, at the late end of a conference day in some faraway country, I was having a beer with a journalist whose work (and choice of journalistic employers) I respect.  Palestine being much the topic of the day, our conversation started there and quickly evolved into media bias and American perceptions of [...]

23.08.2010

18 Comments

Government Filtering: Not the Answer

Awhile back, in response to a particularly naive column defending Australia’s proposed Internet filter on the basis that it will protect kids from child pornography, I wrote a piece on the HuffPost explaining why filtering isn’t the solution.  Yet, similar articles keep cropping up.  Most recently, CJ Lambert, writing for New Zealand’s 3 News, argues [...]

22.08.2010

2 Comments

Palin and the First Amendment

Dr. Laura Schlessinger is being posited as the latest in a victim of liberal attacks on free speech, most notably by Sarah Palin, who claimed on Twitter this week that Schlessinger was forced to step aside “bc her 1st Amend.rights ceased 2exist thx 2activists trying 2silence” her and that that was “not American and [...]

20.08.2010

3 Comments

A Deeper Look into Tunisian Internet Censorship

This report was written jointly by Sami Ben Gharbia and Astrubal; I translated it from its original French into English and am sharing it here.  Originally posted at Global Voices Advocacy. We learned that the censorship imposed illegally on hundreds of Tunisian blogs and websites, both Tunisians and foreigners, was “shut off” temporarily for [...]

18.08.2010

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Internet Killed Israeli PR; Israel Killed YouTube Video

In Turkey and in Thailand, and perhaps elsewhere, there are a few YouTube videos you can’t see; videos in violation of local laws–in Turkey, insulting Ataturk, and in Thailand, lèse majesté. Though both governments filter their fair share of websites (and now, Turkey blocks YouTube as well), in this case, the filtering is not [...]

13.08.2010

21 Comments

The New York Times’ Exoticization of the Middle East

AT first glance, they seem like typical American college students on their junior year abroad, swapping stories of language mishaps and cultural clashes, sharing sightseeing tips and travel deals. But these students are not studying at Oxford, the Sorbonne or an art institute in Florence. Instead, they are attending the American University in Cairo, studying Arabic, [...]

08.08.2010

21 Comments

Digital Activism, the U.S. Government, and the Arab World

A few weeks ago, the New York Times published an op-ed by respected journalist Rami Khoury, entitled “When Arabs Tweet.” In the piece, Khoury questioned the State Department’s role in promoting digital technologies in the region. Anyone who has ever spoken with me at length about this topic knows how I feel: that [...]

07.08.2010

7 Comments

Facebook Responds

I’ve been writing about Facebook woes for nearly four months, so imagine my surprise yesterday when I received an e-mail from a Facebook staffer in response to my blog posts. Since I don’t have said staffer’s express permission to use his name or post his e-mail in its entirety, I will instead post the [...]

27.07.2010

11 Comments

Facebook: “No Palestinian Pages”

As of July 26 at 8:17 DST, I can now create pages with the word “Palestinian” in them. Congrats–all of your contact messages to Facebook clearly worked. Note: I had no idea this post was going to get as much attention as it did.  Regardless, readers, I am not implying some vast Facebook conspiracy against [...]

25.07.2010

36 Comments

Is Vaseline’s Skin-Lightening App Racist?

When I read danah boyd’s post on Vaseline’s skin lightening Facebook app, I was a bit disappointed; her post touched on all of the important issues surrounding the concept of skin lightening, but then landed on the premise that the debate around them, and more specifically the Vaseline app, are taking place primarily in (presumably [...]

23.07.2010

2 Comments

Facebook will reinstate your content, but only if you’re Sarah Palin

At an event a few weeks ago I had the chance to publicly ask Adam Conner of Facebook why, if their service is offered in 70+ languages, their terms of service are only available in 7 and, with that in mind, how they feel they can accurately apply their TOS to people who use the [...]

22.07.2010

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Israeli Court Calls Lying for Sex Rape

For those stumbling upon this story months later, there is new evidence that suggests that this was in fact a forcible rape, not a “rape of deception”.  At the same time, it is unlikely that the Kashur will be re-tried; thus, we may never know what transpired. I think it is important to consider [...]

22.07.2010

2 Comments

(Talk) Vivek Wadhwa: “Entrepreneurship: where are all the women and minorities?”

Today’s Berkman luncheon hosted Vivek Wadhwa, a “a senior research associate with the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, an executive in residence/adjunct professor at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University, and a visiting scholar at the School of Information at University of California at Berkeley.” Wadhwa’s talk [...]

20.07.2010

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Why I Don’t Understand America: The Illustrated Edition

Could someone please explain to me why American Muslims–a great number of whom live in New York–should be concerned with the feelings of an Alaskan when it comes to an Islamic community center (not a mosque, a community center) being built in Manhattan? I don’t understand why Cordoba House is a problem, I don’t understand why [...]

18.07.2010

9 Comments

5 Writers You Should Read

This is one of those half-brained ideas I came up with yesterday while doing some googling for good articles on the niqaab ban.  There are people I love to read–many of them are listed to the right, in my blogroll–but there are some people I think ought to be read by everyone (or, at least [...]

16.07.2010

3 Comments

Proud Niqaabis

It is practically a truism that women who wear the niqaab (face veil) are forced to do so. The first image that comes to mind for many people of my generation when hearing “burqa” is that of blue-clad Afghan women, forced to cover from head to toe by the oppressive Taliban. While it [...]

15.07.2010

8 Comments

On the ‘Burqa Ban’

Today, France banned the burqa.  Let’s be clear about what that means…France has banned not only the oppressive Afghan burqa, but also any form of facial covering, usually referred to as niqaab or the “face veil.”  While traditional in various places from Afghanistan to Saudi Arabia, the niqaab is considered by most–but not all–to be [...]

13.07.2010

22 Comments

Dear Journalists, (Yes, France24, I’m talking to you). If you would like to interview me for an article, you can do so easily.  My e-mail is listed on the contact page of this blog.  My phone number is listed in numerous places (or you can just–gasp!–ask me for it).  No need to quote my blog, without linking [...]

12.07.2010

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Shame on the American Media

And just like that, with one brief tweet, @OctaviaNasrCNN is no longer…That is, because of her tweet mourning the death of Lebanese religious leader Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, Nasr has now been pushed out (fired? It’s not yet clear) from CNN.  The tweet? Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah… One of [...]

07.07.2010

11 Comments

More Facebook Deactivations

Call this my quarterly (or thereabouts) post on the issue. Since I began tracking instances of Facebook deactivating user accounts and deleting content from existing profiles and groups, I’ve found that the practice has not waned at all; if anything, it has increased. I first wrote about this in April, when I reported on Moroccan atheist activist [...]

06.07.2010

8 Comments

On Patriotism and Nationalism

On the celebration of my country’s independence from Britain (I don’t say “birthday,” there were people here before us), I always find myself frustrated, and sometimes torn.  Torn between being sourpuss and sitting at home, refusing to celebrate a day that I find disingenuous, and going out with my friends, many of whom feel similarly [...]

05.07.2010

27 Comments

The BOBs!

I would be remiss not to post about the experience of winning the BOBs.  Talk Morocco, from its inception last summer, has been an incredible experience, and has grown beyond what Hisham and I originally envisioned; I am so proud of this little project, and of its amazing contributors. We were notified of winning in April, [...]

25.06.2010

3 Comments

Ich bin in Bonn

I stumble onto the escalator heading toward the train tracks.  I feel ill; perhaps it’s from not eating, and then eating too much, but in any case, I feel as though I’m about to faint.  I shouldn’t even be here right now,* I think to myself as I collapse onto a bench, grateful for the [...]

22.06.2010

2 Comments

#NetFreedom in Syria, Between Sanctions and Censorship

This post is directly re-published from Anas Qtiesh’s blog, but I agree with it 100%. A delegation of US tech companies and policymakers are visiting Syria today and holding a meeting with President Bashar Al Assad and high-ranking officials. The tech delegation (#techdel on Twitter, and “techdel” hereafter) came after [...]

15.06.2010

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Blogoma

This month, over at Talk Morocco, Hisham and I have proposed the topic of Moroccan citizen media.  The subject has turned out a fascinating set of essays, some highlighting the history of pre-blogging citizen media, others highlighting the various blogger “coups” of the past ten years.  I’ve written (and re-written, and revised, and I’m still [...]

14.06.2010

2 Comments

The “Draw Mohammad Day” Brouhaha

When I first saw the poster for “Draw Mohammad Day,” I admit, I was amused. In reaction to Comedy Central’s decision to censor South Park, Seattle-based cartoonist Molly Norris had drawn up a poster asking people to draw the Prophet; the poster, below, was humorous and whimsical, with the Prophet depicted as a toaster [...]

19.05.2010

6 Comments

Facebook Deactivations: No Appeals

I was CC’d on an e-mail this morning regarding a deleted account on Facebook. In fact, over the past 24 hours, I’ve been sent a lot of e-mails about deleted accounts. Whether it’s a glitch this time or not I can’t say, but here’s something alarming: Two of the people who contacted me [...]

19.05.2010

5 Comments

On Street Art

As a (very) amateur photographer with a too-cool-for-words camera, one of my favorite pastimes is tracking down, and photographing, graffiti and street art.  The habit started in Senegal, where even the interiors of some university buildings were subject to spray-painted political slogans, and continued during my years in Morocco, where straight-up graffiti was less common [...]

18.05.2010

5 Comments

Change Facebook or Change Ourselves?

As a result of Facebook’s ongoing privacy debacle, a number of conversations have emerged as to whether or not privacy matters in this so-called “new world.”  As the story goes, we (particularly those of us who are members of Gen. Y) have become used to putting our lives online: We tweet about what we ate [...]

16.05.2010

5 Comments

Policing Content in the Quasi-Public Sphere

As I’ve written before, Facebook has, in numerous cases in various countries, deleted accounts, groups, or content put on their site by activists. From Hong Kong, where activists have written an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg complaining of Facebook’s harassment and deactivation of activists, to Morocco, where some activists have been deleted from the site, asked for identification in order to reinstate their accounts, then received no assistance upon sending said identification, Facebook users are fed up.

15.05.2010

5 Comments

Reflections on Santiago

I’ve just returned from 12 days in Santiago, Chile, for the Global Voices Summit 2010, and while I know that it’s technically impossible to have jet lag whilst traveling within one’s home time zone, my body is ignoring that fact…I’m exhausted. I remember having the same feeling two years ago as I arrived home from Budapest [...]

13.05.2010

2 Comments

To 28

I left my country for the first time when I was 14.  Actually, 12, but I’m not sure that I knew that Canada was a separate country.  So at 14, I left, on a school trip to the UK, for which we raised our own money and traveled in packs. At 19, strolling through Binghamton’s gymnasium, [...]

03.05.2010

4 Comments

You Can’t Take It With You

I woke up this morning to a jarring phone call from my roommate; one of us had accidentally left the front door unlocked and my cat had escaped (to the fourth floor, where she was coddled until we popped up there and retrieved her).  So you can imagine the mood I was in when I [...]

28.04.2010

2 Comments

The Price of Beauty

Yesterday, I watched an episode of Jessica Simpson’s The Price of Beauty which took place in Marrakesh. I hadn’t seen the show before, so had no idea what to expect, but knowing J.Simp’s provocative attire, imagined that I was in for a treat. The first surprise was who Jessica’s host was – Khansa Batmaa! [...]

23.04.2010

1 Comment

Couscous, Djellaba, Tajine.

Originally posted at Talk Morocco Julia Roberts, McDonald’s, Mickey Mouse. This was how a young Moroccan student of mine described the United States to me. Images from his youth: Pretty Woman, glimpsed illicitly on satellite TV as a boy, or downloaded by BitTorrent. McDonald’s, which arrived in his hometown when he [...]

22.04.2010

No Comments

Morocco Bans Swimsuits

(Note: This is a beautifully done, elaborate joke) From Ahmed BlaFrancia’s blog, 3alash?: ردا على مشاريع القوانين الجديدة في بعض الدول الأوروبية التي تمس الحريات الدينية للمواطنين المغاربة في أوروبا بمنعها لإرتداء الحجاب والنقاب وما شابه ذلك، قررت الحكومة المغربية في اجتماع عاجل منع كل القاطنين والسياح الأوروبيين من ارتداء ملابس مخلة بالحياء ولا تتطابق مع القيم [...]

22.04.2010

2 Comments

How Banking Should Be

19.04.2010

4 Comments

Net Freedom Starts at Home

David Ignatius is one journalist whose work I greatly respect. I followed his PostGlobal project with Fareed Zakaria for its duration and know that, as a journalist, he tends toward openness and honesty, with a definite global (and sometimes even developing world) slant. Yesterday, in a Washington Post op-ed entitled, “The case for spreading press [...]

19.04.2010

1 Comment

Infiltrators

A recent military order by the IDF calls for the deportation of Palestinians residing in the West Bank who are not in possession of West Bank ID cards. Worth noting before I get into this post is that, while typically Palestinians born in Gaza have Gaza ID cards and those born in the West [...]

15.04.2010

1 Comment

Talk Morocco Wins the BOBs!

On a hot summer day in July of 2009, I was sitting at my kitchen table, imagining an idea for a PostGlobal-like forum for Moroccans. Fed up with the existing platforms and lack of cross-blogosphere discussion in my adopted second country, the idea sprung to life. Excited, I asked Hisham Khribchi, my long-time [...]

15.04.2010

4 Comments

Slippery Sloping

I’ve been horribly busy with travel planning (shameless plug: I’m speaking at the IJF next week in Perugia, Italy; yes that’s an awful photo of me) and non-blog writing that I haven’t updated you since that last post about Facebook (which I’m currently expanding into a more academic piece). So here’s some candy: Check out this [...]

14.04.2010

No Comments

On Facebook Deactivations

Update/note: Since writing this a few hours ago, I’ve been flooded by e-mails from Facebook users who have also experienced this. Those users include gay rights activists, Jewish activists, activists for a free Palestine, and activists against the Venezuelan regime (among others). Clearly this is happening to many users across the board. [...]

08.04.2010

15 Comments

The Haifa Wehbe Post

Before I get into the meat of this post, I’d like to thank the inept American mainstream media for giving me an excuse to write about Haifa Wehbe, Ruby, and Nancy Ajram on my blog. Frankly, I’ve never found a better one than this… Pop quiz—What does more to galvanize radical anti-American sentiment in the [...]

01.04.2010

21 Comments

Discovering New Places

Authenticity keeps coming up in conversations. First it was the white people and dreadlocks conversation, followed by one about manufactured authenticity via cappuccino. In that same post, David says, “I find that for most tourists nothing is more important than seeking out the “authentic” of where they are.” I’ve been thinking a lot lately [...]

30.03.2010

1 Comment

Why the UK Home Office’s “Pro-Islamic” Blog Study is Wrong

Update: Al Jazeera published a modified version of this post, complete with interviews with As’ad Abukhalil, Rime Allaf, and Edip Yuksel. CONTEST is the United Kingdom’s counter-terrorism strategy, with a stated aim to “reduce the risk to the UK and its interests from international terrorism.” The UK’s Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU) is set [...]

26.03.2010

4 Comments

Let Me Google That For You

In the past week, I’ve encountered far too much lazy journalism when it comes to Internet filtering; young journos calling to ask for the basics of filtering (and I’m far too polite to send them here), mostly, and now, crap like this. In the first few paragraphs, the author of the article states quite clearly that [...]

24.03.2010

No Comments

The BOBs!

I’ve been paying attention to the BOBs (Best of Blog Awards) since 2007, when I wrote this Global Voices post summing up the winners. Considered the most prestigious of the blogosphere’s many awards, the BOBs are sponsored by Deutsche Welle, and past winners include worthy projects Alive in Baghdad, Generacion Y, and of course, [...]

22.03.2010

1 Comment

March 18

I wrote this on March 21 of last year: Omidreza was you. He was me. He was each one of us who dares speak our minds. He simply was born in the wrong country, at the wrong time, and chose the wrong day to write about something he believed in. The world has lost one genuine soul, [...]

18.03.2010

No Comments