Session One: Rebecca MacKinnon

The inimitable Rebecca MacKinnon, co-founder of Global Voices and free expression expert in her own right, opened the day with a talk not all that dissimilar from her recent TED talk. The premise of Rebecca’s talk–as well as her upcoming book–is the fight for a citizen-centric Internet, rather than one controlled by governments. She, like I, has particular focus on the role of companies (Rebecca is also a founding member of the Global Network Initiative), and today discussed the role Tunisians–whom she says have just hit the “reset” button–could play in introducing new and innovative regulation that is citizen-focused.

Session Two: Tweeting the Revolution(s)

The second panel featured Ahmed Al-Omran (@ahmed), Hisham Al Miraat (@__hisham), Manal Hassan (@manal), @RedRazan, and was moderated by Nasser Weddady (@weddady). I unfortunately was unable to connect to the Internet during the panel, but @nmoawad, @techsoc and others did a great job of live-tweeting in English.

The main premise agreed upon by all panelists was the role that Twitter was less an organizing tool, and more a tool to allow users to draw a bridge between journalists/mainstream media and the people/citizen journalists. One major point worth noting, and agreed upon by Manal and @redrazan, is in respect to objectivity: citizen journalists, they emphasized, need not be wholly objective. They’re involved, it’s only natural that their views and reports will have a slant.

I can’t emphasize this point enough: I often hear MSM mainstays claim that to be the problem with the blogosphere; on the contrary, I believe that no one is truly objective, and that I would rather see an admittedly subjective player reporting his/her surroundings than a Tom Friedman sputtering bullshit without knowledge of the country he’s in. Of course, there are wonderful mainstream journalists–I’m not a hater, so to speak–but citizen journalists provide a complementary view. Both MSM and citizen journalism are needed in the ecosphere.

Session Three: Moez Chakchouk, President of the Tunisian Internet Agency

“Even if we wanted to censor, we’d have to consider the court decisions – there was a court decision in an appeals court without any prior references. We need to change ATI, make it an IXP, and provide more transparency.” — Moez Chakchouk, President and CEO, ATI

Moez Chakchouk is the president of the Tunisian Internet Agency (ATI). I recently interviewed him for a forthcoming piece, and his talk today was within the same framework: how to build up the ATI as an Internet Exchange Point (IXP) whilst ensuring that the ATI is neutral and free of censorship. He offered considerable detail on the goals and accomplishments of the ATI thus far (which I’ll spare you here, as it’s included in my upcoming piece – well, and because I couldn’t see the slides well enough from my position in the back row!)

Moez also, as Nasser Weddady put it, “[blew] a huge hole in tech companies’ claim that their equipment sale to repressive regimes [are] in good faith.” Tunisia long used SmartFilter (owned by McAfee/Intel) to censor the Internet and continues to do so (though at a very different level: see my post here). Slim Amamou (@slim404) commented afterward on the sale of surveillance and censorship equipment by American and European companies to foreign regimes, particularly Tunisia.

A little background: The ATI was long an enemy of Tunisians; charged with censorship and surveillance under Ben Ali, it was a feared agency, its practices referred to widely as “Ammar 404,” in honor of the 404 error users received when trying to access a blocked site. Post-revolution, the options were to shut down Ammar 404 and the ATI, or leave the ATI open as a semi-government agency, charged with being Tunisia’s IXP. Moez and others have faced several attempts to shut down the Internet, but continue their fight for an open and neutral Internet.

Session Four: Zeynep Tufekci on Networked Activism and Democratic Transitions

Zeynep, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and fellow at the Berkman Center, is presenting on the role of networked activism post-revolution.

“How did these regimes remain in power for decade after decade despite opposition?” Zeynep asks to start. She notes the struggles faced by long-term activists, as well as the perception that regimes cannot be brought down. “Once the floodgates open, as they did in Tunisia,” she says, “People realize they can bring a regime down. Revolutions can happen.”

Zeynep recognizes the years of preparation by both Egyptians and Tunisians, but explains that everyone here understands that and that, rather, she wants to bring experiences from other post-revolutionary states to Tunisia. She notes the utility of the new media ecology in expressing the unknown; like Sami Ben Gharbia has said, Tunisians were aware of corruption and human rights violations, but leaks and activism confirmed it.

“How does new media play a role in organizing a new society?” Zeynep asks. “More participation and more democracy are not identical, and new media can even increase polarization, create more conflict. Free speech doesn’t automatically translate into other values.”

If you start with free speech, Zeynep notes, it’s only the first step – there are complications and expression is not a magic wand. She takes us through the post-revolutionary processes in the French Revolution, as well as in Iran and Eastern Europe, noting that in all cases, transition was not straightforward and often took years, or even decades. “Sometimes you have to keep going back, back, back. Revolutions are not moments.”

“The biggest danger facing us is a failure of imagination,” she concluded.

This, of course, begs a couple of serious questions:

1. Does Sarah Palin actually not understand the Constitution?
2. Where was Sarah Palin to defend Shirley Sherrod, Octavia Nasr, or Helen Thomas?

Oh wait, I know exactly where Sarah Palin was when Helen Thomas was forced to resign, because she saved her own tweet about it in her “favorites”:

Palin was quite clearly on the side of getting rid of Helen Thomas for a single comment, despite years of incredible work as a journalist. But when it comes to Dr. Laura Schlessinger, whose years of work as a radio personality include calling gay people a “biological error” and telling abused women they “asked for it,” Palin is suddenly concerned about free speech.

Nevermind the fact, of course, that our Constitution’s first amendment does not guarantee anyone the right to a public audience, as Rashad Robinson so eloquently explains in this piece.

What it comes down to, in my view, is that Sarah Palin (and her Tea Party ilk) think it’s okay to invoke one’s free speech for the sake of racist comments, but that those who defend against racism (or more accurately, those who defend Muslims) should be shut down.

Yesterday, in a Washington Post op-ed entitled, “The case for spreading press freedom around the world,” he made the case for spreading press (and Internet) freedom globally, a sentiment I typically agree with, assuming it’s done right.

Utilizing a forthcoming “press-freedom manifesto” by Lee Bollinger, Ignatius argues that “‘America’s “Manifest Destiny’ in the 21st century is to extend to the world the standards of our own First Amendment.” Though there are subtleties to that argument that I might disagree with, generally speaking, I agree with Ignatius (and by extension, Bollinger), that it’s in the best interest of the United States to support press and Internet freedom globally.

But as the old adage goes, such sentiments must start at home.

As I’ve written before, the U.S. often acts as a de facto
censor toward other countries when it comes to certain technologies. Recently proposed HR 2278, for example, would block certain satellite TV stations not only from US consumption, but (were the satellite providers to follow U.S. diktats) from their intended audiences as well. And while the Department of Treasury recently loosened restrictions barring certain downloads from netizens in Cuba, Iran, and Sudan, Department of Commerce restrictions still make basic use of certain Internet sites and tools nearly impossible for citizens in Syria.

Ignatius notes that private companies are often affected by other countries’ censorship, but fails to mention how his own government affects private companies’ ability to remain open in other countries.

If you ask me, the U.S. needs to walk the walk before it starts talking the talk.

Lest this seem like a simple case of poor leadership or low readership, one must first understand why Le Journal is suffering financially. In 2006, Le Journal was ordered to pay MAD 3 million ($370,000) in damages following a defamation case brought forth by Claude Moniquet of European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center. Le Journal had criticized a report by the organization on the Western Sahara for closely toeing the Moroccan government’s official line.

Jamaï had come under fire before; earlier that year, following the publication of the Danish cartoons that negatively depicted the Prophet, Le Journal had issued a special report, re-publishing one of the cartoons, inked out as not to add fuel to the fire. Still, protesters gathered at the magazine’s Casablanca headquarters. Le Journal was also shut down by authorities twice between 2000 and 2005.

Following the 2006 defamation case, Jamaï left Morocco and headed to the United States, where he became a Nieman Fellow at Harvard for a time, completed a Masters in Public Administration at Harvard’s Kennedy School, served as a visiting scholar at the University of San Diego, and wrote for Newsweek’s venerable PostGlobal. In 2009, he returned to Morocco to rejoin Le Journal. Less than a year later, Le Journal faces closure for its lack of funding, brought about by numerous palace attempts to stifle its voices.

Le Journal, and another Moroccan weekly, TelQuel, are essentially why I learned to read French. Few English-language sources on Morocco are available, and those that do exist tend to follow the government’s official line. The two daring (and often competing) French weeklies do not, which is why they’ve suffered under Morocco’s repressive media environment. Le Journal often took the high road over gossipy TelQuel, however, taking the government to task on its many promises, questioning the government’s stance on the Sahara, and uncovering human rights abuses.

Like Issandr El Amrani points out, the closure of Le Journal does not alone indicate Morocco’s slide backwards. The arrests of bloggers Bashir Hazzem, Mohammed Erraji, and Boubaker Al-Yadib, of Facebooker Fouad Mourtada, of countless journalists, should speak for themselves. Yet, Morocco continues to maintain an appearance of moving forward, especially to the United States, which proudly touts Morocco’s Mudawana and subsequent other new rights to women as evidence.

This is an issue that cannot, must not be ignored. Morocco, in case I don’t say it enough, is a beautiful place. I spent more than two wonderful years there, and would still happily go back, despite its faults. But in order for Morocco, for any country, to continue down the road of progress, free expression is non-negotiable.

Shameless plug: For a collection of essays on press freedom in Morocco, look no further than Talk Morocco’s December issue.

That is why, while flipping through an older issue of Vanity Fair last month, I found myself hooked on an article Hitchens had written about Salman Rushdie, specifically about the Rushdie affair, the Satanic Verses, and those who had come to Rushdie’s defense. And in the midst of the article was a brief mention of a book that, despite being a Rushdie fan (and an advocate of free speech, and for that matter, an atheist), I had never heard of: For Rushdie: Essays by Arab and Muslim Writers in Defense of Free Speech. Praise be to Amazon, within 48 hours, the book was on my doorstep.

Yet, it wasn’t till today that I picked it up, thumbed through its gently-used pages, read ten or twelve of the essays. Assia Djebar, Tahar Benjelloun, Amin Maalouf (strangely and incorrectly referred to as Libyan), Mahmoud Darwish. I showed Anas the half-page essay by Darwish and his eyes lit up; he said that even though his eyes were reading it in English translation, his head and heart were seeing the words in Arabic and hearing his voice. Such is the power of Darwish.

My favorite essay, at least of those I’ve read so far, was Benjelloun’s:

…In real life we accept without protest that things such as prostitution, misery, and violence all exist. But to treat prostitution, misery, or violence in a story is often considered intolerable. It is a notable fact that censorship exists even in certain countries concerning things that nevertheless do visibly occur in those very same countries; they occur and yet this arouses no apparent shock. What arouses shock is to describe those same things in words.

Benjelloun famously fictionalized the life story of a Tazmamart prisoner in his 2002 book This Blinding Absence of Light, only three years after the era of the Years of Lead had culminated in the ascension of King Mohammed VI to the Moroccan throne. His words at the time were scathing, but not nearly as scandalous as those of Malika Oufkir, daughter of General Oufkir, who lead a coup against King Hassan II and whose family was punished by 20 years in a desert jail. Malika’s book, Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail, was banned in Morocco for a time (but at last check was all over the country’s elite bookshops, along with the French translation of The Satanic Verses.

Still, as Benjelloun would say, what arouses shock is often to describe events in words. Though the Years of Lead are now spoken of semi-freely, the name “Aminatou Haidar” is off-limits, unless you disagree with her of course, not that anyone would bother touching it anyway: The Sahara is, to Moroccans, indelibly Moroccan. And in the past year, journalists have been tried for, among other things, ruminating on the King’s possible flu infection.

But back to the book…the book, which came out in 1994 or thereabouts; my copy was purchased then, anyway, by the Saratoga Springs Library on June 28 of that year, for $14.95, where it apparently sat until it was discarded. No one ever checked it out. Imagine, such a beautifully bound book, full of wonderful essays defending Salman Rushdie’s words, essays by Arabs and Muslims alike, defending words that, in many cases, they didn’t agree with…and no one ever read it. But not just my copy – evidence from Amazon rankings and elsewhere would imply that no one really read it all. It’s out of print now; copies are sold online, from libraries and the like, where they were probably discarded without their pages ever having been earmarked, their spines ever having been cracked. And we wonder why Americans are so clueless about the region.

But though the essays are all works of art in their own right, one set of two pages stands out the most. On pages 138 and 139 of my paperback copy is a two-page spread, not of words, but of sheet music; horribly complex and confusing, with no time or key signature, seemingly written for bass flute, with absurd crescendos and sharps and flats willy-nilly. At the bottom of the musical piece reads a brief note: “Pour Salman Ruchdi [sic]: afin qu’en artiste il puisse exprimer ce que je ne partage point.” For Salman Rushdie, in order that an artist might write that with which I disagree.

That said, I have had this article open in a tab on my work computer for over two weeks because I couldn’t figure out what to say about it, or where to say it.  Thus, in lieu of a longer post, or a HuffPost, I offer you this bit of wisdom…

USA Today’s article entitled “Online hate speech: Difficult to police…and define” profiles a mother whose daughter is cognitively impaired.  The woman, Hannah Jacobs, says she spends about 20 hours each week “combing the Web” for sites which use the word “retard” negatively.  The article states that,

When she finds them, she tries to contact the organizers to ask them to take the site down or change the name. Her group members write letters to government officials and to media companies that operate the sites.

It also states that Jacobs is doing this in order to “make the world a better place for [her daughter] Molly.”

While it’s certainly lovely in many ways to see a mother who cares so much about her daughter’s well-being, it’s also frustrating to think that she wastes so much time policing sites, time that she could be spending with her daughter.  And since use of the word “retard” alone is typically not considered hate speech (nor, in my humble opinion, should it be), Jacobs efforts are largely in vain, as it’s highly unlikely a site will permanently ban a group that simply uses the word.

I’m personally of the opinion that, if Jacobs is going to spend her time fighting this online, that time would be best spent fighting words with words.  Rather than lobbying sites to get rid of groups that use the word “retard,” Jacobs should focus her efforts on combating such speech with positive speech.