Posts Tagged ‘Facebook’

Al-Jazeera Listening Post – Egypt’s elections: A new era for the media?

Egypt: Revolution in Motion

Western Mubaraks

Britain threatens to shut down social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter, or banning suspected “rioters” from using them. In New York, the “NYPD has formed a new unit to track troublemakers who announce plans or brag about their crimes on Twitter, MySpace and Facebook.” While in California…

A rail transit provider in the United States disabled mobile phone services to prevent a planned protest on Thursday, attracting criticism and unflattering comparisons to crackdowns on dissent in the Middle East.
Demonstrators in northern California’s Bay Area had planned a protest to condemn the shooting death of Charles Hill, who was killed on July 3 after Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police officers responded to complaints about a drunk man at a station in the city of San Francisco.

Mubarak and Adly are indeed an inspiration to their counterparts in the West.

Tweeting about a revolution: Social media and social movements

#Jan25 SMS, FB جدارية في الزمالك

Street art in Zamalek, Cairo…

General Rushdi el-Qamari اللواء رشدي القمري

During the uprising, the regime took down the internet from the night of 27 January till 3 February, after blocking websites like Twitter and Facebook on the previous day. The government also took down the mobile phone networks and SMS, with the complicity of the three operators Mobinil, Vodafone Egypt and Etisalat, as well as internet service providers like TE DATA.

The government body that orchestrated the blackout was the National Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (NTRA), headed by the former Telecommunication Minister Tarek Kamel (whose brother Cairo University President Hossam Kamel is currently the target of an impeachment campaign by faculty staff and student protesters over his ties to the Mubarak regime), together with representatives from the police, Mukhabarrat and government officials.

From SS Officers

The Interior Ministry’s representative on the board of NTRA during the revolution was General Rushdi el-Qamari, whose profile pictures I found on the Nasr City SS DVDs.

Little I managed to find out about the career of General Rushdi Mohamed Sayyed Ahmad el-Qamari, before he became the head of the General Administration of Police Communications in July 2010. But usually heads of such sensitive departments in the interior ministry come from the ranks of State Security Police, especially as he assumed the membership of the NTRA board, sharing seats with the Mukhabarrat.

Essam Sharaf’s cabinet has come out few days ago saying the regime’s shutting down of telecommunications was “inappropriate.” But has anyone been held accountable? What happened to NTRA board members, including General Qamari? Have they been investigated? Do they still keep their posts? Or are we continuing with the musical chairs game?

London Mini Marxism Festival: Gigi

Gigi speaking in London…

#Jan25 MSM, Social Media and the Egyptian Revolution

Graffiti on one of the buildings in Tahrir Square: Twitter, Al-Jazeera, Facebook…

#Jan25 Egypt’s intifada and social media

Mark Levine interviews me for Al-Jazeera’s English website…

#Jan25 Twitter and Facebook are blocked again

May be we rejoiced too early. Twitter and Facebook are down again in Egypt. Those guys at the top are so confused to what should they do with the internet. Let’s see if they lift the ban. Meanwhile, we’ll continue using proxies.