The desperate situation in Zimbabwe is deteriorating yet further ahead of next week's presidential run-off election between Robert Mugabe and the opposition MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who was arrested and released over the weekend for the fifth time of the "campaign." Tsvangirai's deputy, Tendai Biti, is currently being held in an undisclosed location, with treason charges supposedly being prepared against him.

Meanwhile, the Mugabe re-election drive is in full swing: under the oversight of the army and police, killings, beatings and intimidation are being employed to cow the Flickring The Revolution?: Sokwanele documents horrors no conventional reporter can get nearpopulation into voting for ZANU-PF, with scarce food rations being used as political weapons to secure the support of a starving electorate. Voter registration in MDC areas is being severely curtailed, and officials have taken to simply handing out billions of dollars of Zimbabwe's all-but-worthless currency in return for votes. Mugabe bellows darkly of "going to war" if the country is "taken over by lackeys." Given the vast scale on which these elections are being perverted, he may not need to.

Reporting restrictions make it difficult to know exactly what is happening on the ground, with most Western media banned from the country or operating under intolerable circumstances. But information about the harassment and violence being suffered by opposition activists is filtering out by other methods, some of them remarkably innovative. Chief among these has been the advent of blogging, which we have seen in previous situations such as the Israeli conflict with Hezbollah two years ago and the short-lived Burmese uprising of last autumn.

Where mainstream media are sometimes unable to operate freely, whether due to restrictions imposed by repressive regimes or the exigencies of wartime conditions, lone bloggers have often come to the fore in passing on vital information denied to us through traditional means. In Lebanon in 2006, Beirut residents sat on their balconies describing Israeli aircraft coming overhead; students in Haifa liveblogged from bomb shelters until the all clear was sounded. Some of these firsthand accounts provided valuable context to the reports on the evening news bulletins; others challenged the conventional wisdom we were being fed by our media, whatever you thought that was.

A similar pattern emerged in Burma last year, with the junta's clampdown on reporting from inside the country making traditional reporting all but impossible. Small independent newspapers, resistance groups and bloggers filled the gap, with photos of demonstrations being posted to the web and picked up by news agencies hungry for fresh pictures --- any pictures --- to accompany their stories in the era of 24-hour rolling TV news. But the shortcomings of these outlets quickly became clear; with limited internet penetration into the impoverished country, it was easy enough for the government to block access to blogging platforms for residents of Rangoon and other cities, and the piecemeal supply of information eventually dried up.

The same sort of problem applies in Zimbabwe, whose citizens have long had more pressing problems than a dearth of affordable broadband connections. But information is coming through, thanks in part to the advent of trends such as microblogging, made possible through platforms like Twitter, which (for the benefit of readers as technologically backward as I am) allows users to post information from any internet connection or, crucially, a mobile phone, and makes it easy for others to access the resulting updates. Organisations such as Sokwanele, a civic action group operating out of Zimbabwe and neighbouring countries, are collating information from local activists and observers and disseminating it via RSS feeds and Twitter, and posting photos of demonstrations and police brutality to specially set up Flickr accounts, in ways which the authorities are simply powerless to stop. They even have an interactive Google map charting instances of voter fraud and intimidation by the authorities, and you can follow Morgan Tsvangirai's campaign via Google Earth.

This is not the first time that services like Twitter have been used to outwit security services. A Berkeley student covering an anti-government protest in Egypt used his cellphone to post the one-word update "Arrested" when the police picked him up, and was released within the day. But Zimbabwean activists can count on no such deus ex machina; no embassy or consulate is waiting to spring into action to release those incarcerated in Mugabe's jails. And this is where the limitations of technological advances are most evident. As in Burma, telling the outside world what is happening to you is one thing, and getting them to help you is quite another. Whether through impotence, overstretch or apathy, there is little appetite for Western intervention in the wake of Iraq (as discussed by Daniel last week), and Thabo Mbeki's South Africa, the one regional agent who might realistically exert some diplomatic leverage, has been utterly spineless in the face of Mugabe's brutal campaign against his own people.

And so we watch and wait for the results of next week's elections; and, thanks to the bravery and ingenuity of a few committed activists, we have a front row seat for Zimbabwe's continuing death agony. But we're unlikely to get up from the sofa, no matter what happens. So, yes, the revolution will be televised - but to what end?

Great news from the blogosphere. After a regrettable period of inactivity, I’m delighted to say that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has resumed blogging.  

Since my last post on the blog, a few months have passed. But this doesn't ‎mean that I have not been keeping my promise of spending fifteen minutes per week ‎on it. As a matter of fact, I have spent more than the allocated time on the blog. The ‎magnitude of the reception and acclamation from the viewers was beyond ‎expectations.

Frankly I was worried that the President’s blog might have been wiped off the map, but it appears that the sheer volume of correspondence had simply overwhelmed him. (I’m not providing a link, tempting though it would be to flood his referral logs with Jewcy readers and watch his head explode, due to unsubstantiated reports last year that visitors with Israeli IP addresses were being targeted with viruses. Feel free to Google it.)

 

With commendable politeness, he even responds to hypercritical commenters such as John Walker from Germany, whose praise is distinctly conditional (“nice blog, but you should be posting more often”): 

 

I am apologetic to those who have been waiting for my new posts, but ‎fortunately overall, the analysis of the messages has got to a point that I can start ‎writing here again.

 

While it must be admitted that the President’s style can at times be a trifle dry, one has to commend his comments policy, which frankly is a lot more liberal than that of many political bloggers closer to home. True, there is some embarrassingly laudatory sunshine being blown up his arse here and there, like this from Adara, in Canada:

I in fact think you are a great leader and I am actually contemplating moving to Iran because of the ignorance of people and the harsh things they say about all middle eastern countries

And some commenters, like Nadim from Lebanon, are perhaps just a little confused:

Mr. President; Congratulations on your recent victory. I dont know much about you, and what I do know about you comes from many conflicting sources, but I wish you good health.

…but to his eternal credit, Ahmadinejad does not censor his critics – though American reader John Jacobs’ critique might have benefited from a vigilant editor’s pencil:

I hate you. you are retarted. that simple mentally retarted

Overall, though, the President’s blog is a resounding success; ranked at 2,713 on Technorati, which is not bad given that he’s only posted twice in 6 months. (Jewcy, by way of comparison, comes in at 5,149.) Would that we could all live in a country which encourages healthy pluralism, respect for others and meaningful dialogue with their critics, rather than labouring under the fascist-imperialist jackboot of BushCheneyHalliburton & Co.

Trouble in the Brit blogosphere. A number of leading blogs have been taken down due to the threat of legal action by an Uzbek billionaire who claims he was being libelled.

Alisher Usmanov recently bought shares in Arsenal football club, one of the top four teams in the English Premiership, and is looking to extend his shareholding. It's been alleged in several quarters that if they choose to dine with this guy, ‘the Gunners’ should be supping with a very long spoon. The Guardian takes up the story:

Schillings, the lawyers acting for Usmanov, have been in touch with several independent Arsenal supporters' websites and blogs warning them to remove postings referring to allegations made against him by Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan.

Usmanov was jailed under the old Soviet regime but says that he was a political prisoner who was then freed and granted a full pardon once Mikhail Gorbachev came to power as president. Schillings have warned the websites that repetition of Murray's allegations were regarded as "false, indefensible and grossly defamatory".

It appears that m'learned friends' intervention has had the desired effect. Murray edited his posting, but insisted that his allegations were true and that he would take his chances in court. He hasn't been given the chance. Rather than suing him for libel, as is Usmanov's right, his lawyers went directly to the webhosts. And in the face of a flurry of threatening letters from Schillings, the webhosting company caved.

A number of ‘offending’ blogs have had the plug pulled, including Tim Ireland’s Bloggerheads and Craig Murray himself. Both of them had published comments about Usmanov which prompted him to reach for the phone to his lackeys at Schillings. Worse, and particularly stupidly, a whole network of unrelated political sites hosted on the same server have also been taken down, among them prominent Tory MP and London Mayoral frontrunner Boris Johnson, none of whom were involved in any way.

More from DavidT at Harry's Place:

Bloggers cannot operate if they are bullied by rich plaintiffs. Defamation law in the United Kingdom is both farcical and unfair, and is in desperate need of fundamental reform. Errors on blogs can easily be remedied: particularly where they permit open commenting (a libel risk in itself) which allows postings to be criticised, facts corrected, and arguments opposed. I know what it is like to be at the receiving end of a well funded threat of defamation proceedings, and it is no fun at all. It is outrageous that the law of defamation should be used to break bloggers: like butterflies upon wheels.

That's entirely right. This ugly development demonstrates that blogs are vulnerable to big bullies with bigger sticks. We can't defend ourselves the way a magazine or newspaper can. There's no legal budget for us to dip into. And let's be clear on this point; these blogs are down not because Usmanov has been libelled, but because he says he's been libelled, and has a room full of paid monkeys sitting at typewriters firing off theatening letters to that effect.

In the US you have a First Amendment right to free speech. This has the effect, among other things, of making it rather harder to bully the little guy into silence. In Britain we have no such protection. As most of us use US-based blog platforms such as Google-owned Blogger, it’s unlikely that a thug like Usmanov would succeed in shutting us down if he didn’t like what we were writing (he could still sue us for libel, of course, but that’s a slightly different matter). But if a foreign businessman can have a whole network of blogs taken down in their entirety with just the threat of legal action, we're all in trouble. Next time, who's to say it won't be a politician? And then where does that leave us?

But Usmanov's problems are far from over. US sports blogger David Warner sums up Schillings' problem nicely:

It appears Schillings has fallen victim to something our pals at Techdirt like to call "The Streisand Effect." Back in 2003, Barbra Streisand sued a photographer in an attempt to remove an aerial photo of her California home from the Internet, despite the fact that the photo was part of a publicly funded coastline erosion study and wasn't even labeled as her home. As a result, photos of her house were published all over the web within days.

[...] for all their claims that Murray is libeling their client, Schillings has not actually sued Murray for libel. They have told anyone who will listen that Murray's book, Murder at Samarkand, is defamatory against Usmanov, but it's been out for more than a year, and they have never taken any legal action against Murray. Instead, they seem more focused on getting any mention of Murray and his allegations against Usmanov removed from the web -- and as the Streisand Effect teaches us, that's pretty much impossible.

If Murray's goal was to make Usmanov look like a thug, then mission accomplished.

I knew nothing about Alisher Usmanov this time yesterday; a rich businessman trying to increase his stake in a football club. So what? They're ten a penny, if you'll pardon the phrase.

Today, I know that he's a [snip! - Jewcy lawyers], a fat [snip! - Jewcy lawyers] who was imprisoned for [snip! - Jewcy lawyers] and even, it is whispered among his fellow Uzbeks, the perpetrator of a particularly vicious [snip! - Jewcy lawyers]. And this is all directly because his decision to legal up, and his lawyers' decision to bring out the elephant guns, led me to find out what all the fuss was about in the first place.

Letters are being written to the football authorities, questions asked in Parliament, and the original allegations are spreading through the internet like wildfire. Google his name and see what I mean. Tomorrow it'll probably be in some of the national papers. The stench around this guy's name continues to grow. Hundreds of Arsenal fans who yesterday only knew about his deep pockets are now going to start wondering if this is a fit and proper person to involve himself in the running of their famous old club. This may yet backfire horribly for old Alisher.

The website of Schillings, Usmanov’s lawyers, has a page boasting a case study in how to neutralise "the internet attacker". Oops.

I don't know if I'll have time to blog again before Shabbat, so I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for inviting me to blog here.  I guess I'm not your usual blogger, certainly not your usual anything.

You know who I am, where I live  and what what I look like, but many of you who commented just signed in as "Anonymous."  It's always easier to attack while protected by a mask, so I'd say that we had an unfair playing field.  At least I stand by everything I wrote, except the dumb mistake when I said that the 39 melachot forbidden on Shabbat were from building the Temple.  They're from constructing the Mishkan, Tablernacle.  I never claimed to be perfect.

You can always visit my blogs, and you can comment/criticize there, too.

Have a Shabbat Shalom U'Mevorach, a Peaceful and Blessed Shabbat!

"Not What We Intended" (Yudit Ilany)Well, not precisely. But I did want to introduce you to one of the most interesting and provocative Israeli English-language bloggers: Yudit Ilany of OCCUPIED. The images accompanying this post are from her terrific slice-of-life photo blog, occupiedimage. But before I do, a word on Jewish blogging. There are a lot of us out there. And while some blogs are very popular very few get the respect they deserve.

The Jewish media pretty much ignore blogs entirely as a social phenomenon or news source. And they do this to their peril because many of us are both covering important stories and breaking news that no one else is. I regularly encourage news outlets like Haaretz, JTA and The Forward to do more to include Jewish blogs in their coverage of the Jewish world--with decidedly mixed results. And it's a shame. Because you won't find Yudit Litany's Israel on any UJA or Birthright Israel mission. You'll hardly find her in the pages of any of the Israeli dailies and especially not in the American Jewish publications I mentioned above.

If we want to truly see Israel as it IS, both its strengths and weaknesses, we must peer into the dark alleyways of places like Ajami and Yaffo. Otherwise, we'll only be seeing the economic miracle, the "only democracy in the Middle East." Not that there anything wrong with seeing Israel's virtues. That's part of the picture too. But not the whole thing. That's where OCCUPIED comes in. One of the things I appreciate most about it is that she focuses on Israel writ small--the everyday joys and injustices that make Israel such a fascinating and distressing place to live.

Yudit was once a social worker and focuses with laser-like intensity on issues of social injustice and inequality within Israeli society. Her blog is a treasure for anyone who cares about making Israel a better place for all its citizens. Sometimes Yudit's posts just break your heart. Life is so unfair and things can be so unjust in Israel especially for its children. Read The Jaffa Heiress and try not to weep:

Intissar is seventeen, bright, funny, streetwise, the youngest of 10 children and until yesterday, full of hopes and dreams.

A knock on the door of the small apartment where she lives ended those dreams. Her sister's little 3 year old boy opened the door and several police men entered with arrest warrants for Intissar, her elderly disabled mother and all of her nine sisters and brothers (2 of them disabled as well). That's 11 arrest warrants in one go. Why? Because of debts, not even theirs. Debts they inherited. The story goes back a long time.

Intissar's mum developed a mental disease, when Intissar was very young, a tiny toddler, and became unable to care for her children. Intissar's father was addicted to to drugs and alcohol. The welfare department removed all children from the home and placed them in boarding schools. Intissar was only 2 years old when they took her from her parents' care and placed her in a home, in order to give her a chance... Intissar's father died about 4 years ago. Junkies with alcohol problems don't live long. After his death, all minor children were returned home by the welfare department. Their mum is still suffering from the same severe psychiatric disorder she's had for many years, and not really able to care for her daughters.

But Intissar is strong and in spite of many difficulties, she copes, somehow. But how can a 17 year old girl cope with her "heritage of debts"? Because that's the problem here. In Israel, when a person dies, and he or she leaves behind money or other possessions, these are shared by the inheritors according the the person's last will or, if there is no will, according to the law on inheritance. BUT, if the person died owing money, his or her survivors inherit [the] debt. If the person owned a house, usually the house can be sold, the debts covered and the remainder shared among the family, the cat or dog or whoever else.

Yet, in Intissar's case there is no home to be sold, there are no possessions. Her large family lives in a tiny public housing apartment in one of the worst slums in Jaffa. ...Their father was interested in one thing: getting high before cold turkey sets in. Over the years he made incredible debts. How exactly is only partially clear. Each time the water, electricity or phone were cut, he renewed the connection not by paying the bills, but by putting the new bill in the name of the next child of his 10 children. Thus, all of the 10 kids, while they never lived at home and were minors, ran huge debts at the various utility companies without knowing anything about it. I do not exactly understand how the utility companies accept contracts made by minors who are not present at all. Minors who have been made "wards of the state" and are under the responsibility of the welfare department...There is an "inheritance" of over a million NIS shared by all of the family members, and arrest warrants against all, including minor Intissar (which is illegal, by the way) because of those debts.

"Faces"This story reminds me of Bleak House and the family living together in debtors prison until one of them can work off the debt. But of course, Dickens story takes place in 'backward' Victorian England. While this is the 21st century, right?

The Torah says that the sins of the fathers must not be visited upon the children. How in heaven's name can such injustice exist? Who protects the children? Anyone?

Here's some backgrouind on Yudit by way of self-description:

Photographer educated at Hebrew U and Hadassah College of Technology, both in Jerusalem, Israel. Worked as documentary photographer in Israel, the West Bank, Gaza and Europe, specializing in "the story behind the news" and portraits. Works as art photographer using of combinations of digital and ancient techniques such as cyanotype, van dyke browns etc, printing on various media, including stone, cloth and metal. Occasional graffiti maker (when I'm extremely pissed off at what's happening in society). Does graphic design and photography for various NGO's and non profit orgs. Also for many people in the 'hood. Usually for free. Teaches photography and cinema as a tool of empowerment, especially with young women. Participates in different community art projects. Participated in a number of group and solo exhibitions and about to open another one (if all goes well) this september

Likes: art in all forms, shapes and smells, reading, hiking and espresso

Hates: meeting jellyfish & cheese

Distrusts: house-owners & lawyers.

I hope you'll be able to spend some time getting to know, if you don't already, how the "other half" of Israel lives.

If Samuel Johnson were required to construct a lexicon for bloggers, he'd have short work ahead of him. 

blogger
blog
stupid
me
myself
my
oh
yeah
ok
post
stuff
lovely
update
nice
shit.

Those are the most popular words in circulation in the blogopshere. 

One of the Offending Images: BobsYerUncle's effigy of SierraPrompted by my post below about l'affaire Sierra, Izzy engaged me in a Skype conversation. As always, it was more fun than either of us have any right to be having on the clock:

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“I do not want to be part of a culture--the Blogosphere--where this is considered acceptable. Where the price for being a blogger is kevlar-coated skin and daughters who are tough enough to not have their ‘widdy biddy sensibilities offended’ when they see their own mother Photoshopped into nothing more than an objectified sexual orifice, possibly suffocated as part of some sexual fetish. (And of course all coming on the heels of more explicit threats).”
-- Kathy Sierra

There's no question that women have a harder run of things on the internet than men do. Blowhards and egomaniacs are pretty much guaranteed with a y-chromosome, but any female who's even the least bit outspoken is automatically turned into a harpy or whore for the simple fact that no respectable, submissive lady would ever dare to have opinions or engage in argument to defend them.

The blogosphere is not an inviting medium for sane, rational discourse. It goes to Joey's much-cited Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory that anonymity allows for the kind of violent nastiness one wouldn't find at a lecture or debate (except from the most unhinged elements). As a result, the locker room palaver moves upstairs and becomes even more violent and more nasty. You waste no time at all getting at the nature of a mob to allow unregulated comment threads.

That said, I agree with Michelle Malkin, herself the target of innumerable death threats and sexist and racist taunts. Report the serious stuff to the police, don't let the rest get to you. Otherwise, you don't belong on the internet.

There is something unseemly and absurd about the woe-is-me attitude engulfing this Sierra business. It's hard not to suppress a giggle to hear of self-imposed moratoriums on blogging -- a kind of Take Back the TypePad campaign -- in solidarity with her.

Am I in any position to speak on this subject? Well, yes, I think I am.

Due to our Kevin MacDonald dialogue, Jewcy's top external "referrers" are neo-Nazi and white supremacist sites. This means having to wade through a bog of anti-Semitism in our comments section. Frankly, no one here is terribly upset or made anxious by this, nor can it be said that we're flattered by all the attention from people who probably do own guns and certainly do believe in a Jewish world conspiracy. (We're not sweating it because the Michigan militia types have adopted Joey as their foolish but well-meaning messiah, the one Jew who'll bring down the whole sordid, Protocols-infested edifice.)

And our office address is posted for all to see.

Kathy Sierra's weblog: Creating Passionate UsersThe blogosphere can be a cruel and vicious place. But there has been much hand-wringing lately among bloggers after a series of online death threats against technology blogger Kathy Sierra.

For the past month Sierra has weathered threats of physical and sexual violence in the comments section of her blog and on other blog sites. Anonymous correspondents have threated to slit her throat and hang her. Come this weekend, Sierra was so in fear of her life that she withdrew from a speaking engagement at an ETech conference in San Diego, called the police and announced her retirement from the blogging community:

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Commedianne Jen Dziura has a blog, Jenisfamous, which is often a fount of hilarity.  Today's hilarity is actually Jewcy relevent, and ends with this Martin Luther King like comment...

Can we all please just hate each other as individuals? If she had called him a "fucking dick" and he had called her a "dumb cunt," this blog post never would have happened.

 Words to live by.

MubarakThe first guy in a group of Egyptian bloggers that were indicted by the government last year was given a four year jail sentence for insulting Islam and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Abdel Karim Suleiman, a 22-year-old former law student who has been in custody since November, was the first blogger to stand trial in Egypt for his Internet writings. He was convicted in connection with eight articles he wrote since 2004.

Rights groups and opposition bloggers have watched Suleiman's case closely, and said they feared a conviction could set a legal precedent limiting Internet freedom in Egypt, the Arab world's most populous country.

A fellow blogger who runs the "Rantings of a Sandmonkey" blog said: "It's a dangerous precedent because it will impact the only free space available now, which is the Internet. The charges were undefined and vague."

"Tell me. What does insulting the president mean? What is the difference between criticising religion and being in contempt of religion?" he added, asking to remain anonymous.

The Internet has emerged as a major forum for critics of the Egyptian government to express their views in a country where the states runs large newspapers and main television stations.

See no truth. Hear no truth.An Egyptian blogger is on trial for "on charges of insulting Islam and inciting sectarian strife for his Internet writing criticizing Muslim authorities and the Egyptian government."

Abdel Kareem Nabil, the blogger, has been detained in solitary confinement since November and could face up to seven years in prison. What's more, he's one of many bloggers in Egypt that have been arrested on the same charges.

Nabil, who uses the name Kareem Amer on his blog, frequently denounces the government of President Hosni Mubarak on his blog and is often deeply critical of Egypt's Islamic authorities, particularly Al-Azhar, one of the Sunni Muslim world's top religious institutions. Nabil, a resident of Alexandria, was former a law student at Al-Azhar University.

He was detained briefly in late 2005 after posting an article to his blog commenting on violent riots that erupted in October that year in which angry Muslim worshippers rioted and attacked a Coptic Christian church over a play put on by Christians deemed offensive to Islam.

Titled "The Naked Truth of Islam as I saw it," Nabil said of the riots, "Muslims revealed their true ugly face, and appeared to all the world that they are at full of brutality, barbarism and inhumanity."

We've witnessed the backside of this true ugly face and it ain't pretty...

Well, folks, it's the end of my week here, and I have to say that I pretty much enjoyed it, except for the minor technological glitches.

I fought the temptation to publish cat pictures, what with that being the super-cliche of blogging, but hey, there's always next time.

I'm not sure I should tell you this, but I went fairly light on most of my subjects this week. Over on my place, I have such categories as "Jew Cooties" and "Israel Derangement Syndrome," and I long ago declared my blog a "No Israel-Bashing Zone." (In a nutshell: There are enough places in the media and in the world where people bash the crap out of Israel in every possible way, and I am unwilling to provide a forum for Israel-haters on my dime.)

Now it's back to regular blogging for me, and spending my Tuesday afternoons and Sunday mornings teaching little Jews to be big Jews. So they can grow up and write for sites like Jewcy.

I have my own photoblog as well, www.katyportier.com (end shameless plug)

Boxed wine and blogging don't mix.

- Editor Michael to Editor Joey shortly after soft launch. (Yes, we really are that geeky. And that underpaid.)