Eideard

The Central Intelligence Agency is systematically monitoring Twitter, following up to 5 million foreign tweets a day, according to a new report.

The CIA’s Open Source Center reviews and analyzes information widely available to the general public, including Twitter and Facebook, and keeps eyes on everything from blogs to tweets to more traditional media, The Associated Press says in a feature article on the unit.

Analysts monitor information in an array of languages and cross-reference it to existing intelligence, and are often called on to provide information on the mood of a region after a foreign policy event…

When President Barack Obama gave a speech addressing Middle Eastern issues a few weeks [after Bin Laden's killing], the center monitored negative Arabic and Turkic tweets, denouncing the president as too pro-Israel, and Hebrew tweets criticizing the president for being too pro-Arab.

The center’s analysis ends up in Obama’s daily intelligence briefing in some form almost every day, reports the AP.

The CIA started reviewing social media after watching Twitter’s influence during the 2009 Green Revolution in Iran, when thousands protested the contested results of an election that kept Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in office.

If you believe this started in 2009 or the CIA is a solo operation – I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

Want to know how common the task has been, rent Redford’s movie, THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR sometime. The plot doesn’t have to derive from today’s Tweets; but, Redford’s job description in the movie – back in 1975 – certainly fits.

Danger over – American politicians fly to Egypt for a photo op in Tahrir Square
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Hosni Mubarak’s resignation resurrected a tsunami wave of articles and commentaries on whether Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood would now come to power. And yet, few have asked why the primary leaders of grassroots revolt in Egypt and across the Arab world curiously have not been Islamic organizations.

Authoritarian rulers in the Arab world, like Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, have long justified their repressive governments by warning the United States and Europe that the alternative to their governments was “chaos” and an Islamist takeover.

The new generation of Arab youth and their supporters, however diverse and different, is united in its desire to topple entrenched autocrats and corrupt governments.

Having witnessed the failures of Islamist authoritarian regimes in Sudan, Iran, the Taliban’s Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia, and the terror of the Bin Laden’s of the world, they are not interested in theocracy but democracy with its greater equality, pluralism, freedoms and opportunities.

But what about the Islamists, where are they?

The Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic groups neither initiated nor have led pro-democracy protest movements. The uprisings have revealed a broad-based pro-democracy movement that is not driven by a single ideology or by religious extremists.

What has occurred is not an attempt at an Islamist takeover but a broad-based call for reforms…

As their signs, placards, statements, demands and the waving of flags not Islamist placards indicated, protesters want to reclaim their dignity, control of their lives and the right to determine their government; they demand government accountability and transparency, rule of law, an end to widespread corruption, and respect for human rights…

In contrast to radical extremists who want to seize power and impose their brand of an Islamic state, mainstream Islamic groups have competed and done well in elections and remained non-violent despite government limitations, harassment, repression, and rigged elections.

They have created effective NGOs that respond to the social and educational needs of their societies. They have come to appreciate diversity and pluralism in society and the need for democracy as the best system to manage this diversity. They have also been advocating many of the values of democracy, such as citizenship, rule of law, constitutionalism, separation of power, good governance and accountability…

I’m not certain how much of this analysis is wishful thinking by John Esposito. Certainly the currents he describes as mainstream, even predominant, have always been a force in the resistance to old-line dictators. Especially to the autocrats so often favored by the US and UK.

I hope he’s right. RTFA for the details. He does have significantly more knowledge of the turf than your average politician or pundit.

Protesting a security demand that an al-Jazeera producer remove her bra, fellow colleagues bowed out of a meeting with Israel’s prime minister.

Israeli security personnel screening those attending the annual foreign correspondents event in Jerusalem Tuesday, asked al-Jazeera producer Simri Diab, 31, to remove her bra. She refused and was not permitted to enter the hall where Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was due to speak, Ynetnews.com said Wednesday.

Diab told Ynetnews three reporters from the station planned to attend the event. She said she was forced to wait for a long period in the queue and then singled out with other Arab reporters. One of the security guards allowed her to sit down because of she is pregnant. She later agreed to a body search in a holding room downstairs, she said.

“They later took me downstairs to the security check cell. They asked me to take off my coat and then my vest. I did. Then they asked me to take off my shirt. I took a deep breath and did it. I was left with just my undershirt and trousers, without my shoes and the rest of my equipment. The female officer felt me with her hands for 15 minutes in any place possible. I told her I was pregnant and asked her not to use the manual device, but compromised on that later too.” When later asked to remove her bra, she said she refused and was told she would not be permitted to attend…

Yes, this goes beyond the usual depths of paranoia and political dementia that infects the actions of self-important pimps of national security, TSA, Shin Bet or otherwise. But, then, there’s probably a race to the bottom between Israel and the United States over who can produce the greatest number of bigoted incidents per month.

Neither nation produces any justification greater than “people hate us” – without ever examining the larger question of “Why does everyone hate us?”

An Arab man convicted in Israel of rape because he pretended he was a Jew when he had consensual sex with a Jewish woman has called the verdict racist. Sabbar Kashur, 30, was found guilty of “rape by deception” by the Israeli court and sentenced to 18 months in jail.

According to the complaint filed by the woman, the two met in a Jerusalem street in 2008 and had sex that day. When she discovered he was not Jewish, but an Arab, she went to the police.

Kashur was arrested and charged with rape and indecent assault, but the charges were later replaced by a different charge of “rape by deception”…

“If I were Jewish, they wouldn’t have even questioned me,” the Haaretz newspaper quoted him as saying.

“That’s not called rape, I didn’t rape her in the forest and and throw her away naked. She agreed to everything that happened…”

“The court is obliged to protect the public interest from sophisticated, smooth-tongued criminals who can deceive innocent victims at an unbearable price – the sanctity of their bodies and souls,” the court judgement was quoted as reading.

Can you imagine what would happen, say, if a German court convicted a Jew of “rape” if he lied when having sex with a German woman.

Oh. That’s right. They did. Under Hitler.

American Congressmen visiting school destroyed by Israeli military
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

CAIRO – President Obama’s decision to deliver a speech here next month has given significant encouragement to a once powerful ally that has grown increasingly frustrated over its waning regional influence and its inability to explain to its citizens why it remains committed to a Middle East peace process that has failed to produce a better life for Palestinians.

After eight years in which Egypt felt unappreciated and bullied by the Bush administration, Egyptian officials were gleeful about Cairo’s selection last week for the president’s address to the Muslim world. They said that it proved Egypt remained the capital of the Arab world and that it eased concerns that Washington might undermine its Arab allies in exchange for a grand deal with their rivals in Iran.

“The aptest choice was Cairo,” the Egyptian foreign minister, Ahmed Abul Gheit, told the state-owned daily newspaper Rose Al-Yousef. “It is the capital of moderation in Islam and the capital of cultural sway in the Arab and Muslim worlds.”

Still, President Obama’s decision to address a deeply skeptical Arab audience from Cairo is fraught with potential land mines, according to political analysts, human rights advocates and government officials. He has selected an authoritarian state where political and economic reform has stalled under President Hosni Mubarak, 82, who has been in power for nearly 30 years.

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Absolutely hilarious. If the dude needs it, I will contribute a piece of my social security check to his bail fund.

Is he being honest or just trying to cover his butt?

Riots have broken out in the mixed city of Acre, reportedly triggered when an Israeli Arab man drove his car during the Yom Kippur religious holiday. Dozens of cars and shops were damaged as hundreds of people took to the streets

The Arab man was reportedly attacked by youths who said he was making noise intentionally, Haaretz said. The Arab man is reported to have said he was simply driving to a property he owned in the eastern part of the city.

The unrest erupted around midnight local time, with hundreds of people pouring onto the streets as news spread of the alleged assault.

A crowd gathered on Ben Ami Street, a key commercial street in the city, and caused “extensive damage” to vehicles and property in “large-scale” Jewish-Arab rioting, the report said.

Living in a theocracy really gives you a sense of history, doesn’t it. Especially the injustice part.

Bab al-Hara

Many Arabs were shocked and appalled this month when a prominent Saudi cleric declared that it was permissible to kill the owners of satellite TV stations that broadcast “immoral” material. But the comment, by Sheik Saleh al-Luhaidan, was only the most visible part of a continuing cultural controversy over Arab television.

This summer another Saudi cleric denounced the Arab world’s most popular TV show ever – the dubbed Turkish series “Noor” – calling it “replete with evil, wickedness, moral collapse and a war on the virtues.” He also urged Muslims not to watch the series, which portrays the lives of moderate Muslims who drink wine with dinner and have premarital sexual relations.

And last week, as if to provide comic relief, a third Saudi cleric said (in all seriousness) that children should not be allowed to watch Mickey Mouse, labeling that Disney cartoon character a “soldier of Satan” who should be killed.
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