Hard News: "Orderly transition" in #Egypt
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And if anyone's been reading the comments on the Stuff.co.nz Kiwis in Egypt article, you'd be forgiven for thinking we're devolving into Social Darwinist rat-racism. Especially if Henrygate and Fullergate were anything to go by.
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Simon Grigg, in reply to
The online media narrative "it's about Twitter" is simply a reflection of the traditional media narrative
And to assume it's not at all is perhaps a failure to understand how much these communication networks have penetrated much of the third world via the mobile phone. New Zealand seems completely unwired when put next to places like Indonesia, Thailand, and Cambodia (which are my immediate experience) - and from what I understand Egypt.
When the cost of going online via your phone is almost nothing (an alien concept in NZ) and you spend half of every day messaging and tweeting - crisscrossing between the three phones that you always carry linked to the couple of dozen competing networks - then these things provide some voice.
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Andre Alessi, in reply to
And if anyone’s been reading the comments on the Stuff.co.nz Kiwis in Egypt article, you’d be forgiven for thinking we’re devolving into Social Darwinist rat-racism. Especially if Henrygate and Fullergate were anything to go by.
And you really don't want to read the comments on the Harawira mediation meeting story. It's like any story on Stuff with the word "Maori" in the headline is a siren call to every blinkered, I'm-not-racist-that's-just-how-it-is idiot in the southern hemisphere.
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New Zealand seems completely unwired when put next to places like Indonesia
Yep, just had two relatives arrive from Indonesia, both of whom have no computer and solely interact with Facebook (and Yahoo Messenger) via their phones. The younger one was bereft when he found out that he couldn't get his Blackberry hooked up to instant messaging on a pre-pay account from Vodafone while he was here. Now he's tying up my Mac with his chatting...
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Incidentally, this is quite an interesting article on the mechanics of Egypt's disconnection from the 'net.
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Neil Morrison, in reply to
Campbell's implication that Key is, by virtue of his mother and the acclamation of the Jerusalem Post, acting out some sort of traitorous solidarity with Israel, rather than being his typical ill-informed self.
Key's refering specifically to the role Mubarak has played regarding Israel in the peace process and apart from omitting Jordan gets it pretty much right. It's a complicating factor for the Obama administration which gives $US1.3 billion a year to the Egyptian army as a result of the Egypt/Israel peace agreement brokered by Carter all those years ago. (The army is currently playing a moderating role, co-incidence perhaps).
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Russell Brown, in reply to
The online media narrative “it’s about Twitter” is simply a reflection of the traditional media narrative NZer relieved to get out of Egypt. Pick a subgroup that you relate to and write about how they’re affected.
Of course, and that’s a perfectly reasonable approach, so long as you cover the wider story too.
But it does seem worth reiterating that the subgroup of internet users in Egypt is four times the population of New Zealand. I’m willing to bet it makes up more than 16% of the active protesters too.
I’m glad Simon chipped in on this, because it was some of his past comments about political organising via Facebook in Indonesia that I had in mind. I do, personally, find it an interesting element of the big picture.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Campbell’s implication that Key is, by virtue of his mother and the acclamation of the Jerusalem Post, acting out some sort of traitorous solidarity with Israel, rather than being his typical ill-informed self.
That jumped out for me too. I thought, that can't possibly be what he meant to say ...
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
If I was a government and wanted to disconnect the Internet in a hurry, I’d just send troops/police to the Internet exchange and each ISP/telco hub with instructions to shutdown mains, UPS and generators. In NZ, that would be a handful of places (given that the smaller ISPs don’t have full infrastructure).
The only major hiccup would be with voice telcos where that might also drop the regime’s communications, but with very few of these it’s less work to send signals troops with an idea of what to shutdown. Many countries have emergency modes mandated for telephony that kill the public networks but enable continued service to priority customers. (e.g. ACCOLC, GTPS, WPS, GETS). Enabling these would probably kill data access on the affected networks.
Of course, if a nation has an internet filter enabled (NZ, Australia, etc) then that can easily be widened in an “emergency”. That gives sophisticated control, as a government could overnight move to a whitelist that only allows benign content and blocks anything seditious.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
If I was a government and wanted to disconnect the Internet in a hurry, I’d just send troops/police to the Internet exchange and each ISP/telco hub with instructions to shutdown mains, UPS and generators. In NZ, that would be a handful of places (given that the smaller ISPs don’t have full infrastructure).
That would certainly take out most of the NZ internet. There would still be satellite for some. But it didn't need to be quite that heavy in Egypt -- apparently they just voice-called each ISP ordering them to amend their routing tables.
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Simon Grigg, in reply to
The army is currently playing a moderating role, co-incidence perhaps
Perhaps, but it's also worth reflecting in the fact that this is a conscription based army. These are their brothers and sisters and a non-voluntary military is often less reliable in domestic circumstances.
The Egyptian military is not a part of the security regime - its target remains Israel even though they are at peace.
The police is a different beast.
The troubles in Thailand benefited from the same stabilizing factor (although the government here was clearly far less inclined to use deadly force than the Egyptian leadership who seem eager once the lights are out to do so).
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Mikaere Curtis, in reply to
Yes, when I heard I that the military were not going to act against the protesters that was a"game over" moment
Hope so, although Robert Fisk, who is actually in Cairo watching events unfold, isn't so sure.
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Simon Grigg, in reply to
The only major hiccup would be with voice telcos where that might also drop the regime’s communications
And the small problem of the country's complete economic life grinding to an immediate halt.
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Andrew Sullivan links to an interview with the Muslim Brotherhood.
A few things to disagree with of course but comparatively anodyne, even when it comes to Israel, and they're not expected to have a huge influence in a post-Mubarak government.
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I watched this Al Jazeera story on events in Tunisia last week:
I think it puts Facebook et al in the right context. It’s not a “Facebook revolution”, but the tools did make a difference.
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
I think it already has. The Vodafone call centre that provides broken-English speaking "service" for NZ customers is now out, because people aren't able to go to work. I'm guessing that's a typical white collar workplace.
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Simon Grigg, in reply to
I'd imagine so. However, more, once you kill the phones you kill the taxi services, the food distribution mechanisms, and so on, all of which now, albeit quite recently, reliant.
The cellphone revolution has empowered the poor, the working and pre-working (student) classes more than the white collar workers who often already had the means to communicate. That, I think, is key.
We come from a country where each voice, in its own way, matters just a little and always has. We are incredibly small in number and there is a fairly inclusive and equitable democracy as much as we like to moan.
In a country of 70m, as socially and politically inequitable as Egypt and many other such nations, the great unwashed have not just mattered little, they haven't really mattered at all. The phone has changed that in a way we can't begin to imagine.
As someone commented, Facebook and Twitter (and I think he threw Wikileaks into that which is another whole argument that I don't want to begin) have done more for democracy in the Middle East than a ten year trillion dollar war.
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Interesting piece at bagnews discussing photojournalism, and how images were 'managed' in Egypt until very recently.
“What I’ve never liked about photos of protests here in Egypt is that they give a false image. The government actually plays it up. It lets the protesters give a little show — they let a group of maybe fifty people protest freely in a particular spot and the police form a ring around them and won’t let anybody else come in — except the photographers get to move in and out easily. So it creates a false sense of the freedom to demonstrate.
“So, what is so significant about the photo from Wednesday is that it possibly represents the last vestige of the old paradigm, of the exploitative tactics with policemen in a circle letting a show of protest go on. As of now, that system is gone. You do have to walk around the tanks to get into Tahrir Square right now, but once you’re in, it’s a free game. You can say anything you want. You can lead chants. It’s completely different.”
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
True, I see the mobile phone as very important, and believe it will be seen historically as much more of a social changer then the Internet.
My technical point was that governments have a range of measures that they can use to restrict communications, including the Internet, with variable effects on the day to day workings of society.
It's likely that governments will seek to enhance those processes in an attempt to gain more control, and that a lot of these measures will be justified as resilience building. For instance, if you ensure that essential service providers (banks, utilities, food distribution) have access to "resilient" communication networks as described above, it makes it easier to switch off services to everyone else.
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I thought, that can't possibly be what he meant to say ...
Can't it? It is perfectly possible for respected, intelligent, educated people to say and mean things we wish they wouldn't. I find it hard to put any other construction on what Campbell said.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
I find it hard to put any other construction on what Campbell said.
Yes, unfortunately.
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Neil Morrison, in reply to
I find it hard to put any other construction on what Campbell said.
I didn't get the impression he intended to make that implication, rather that the intro was poorly written. The jumping and down about the govts and our diplomats supposed lack of response to situation of NZers in Egypt seemed a little off the mark as well.
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My friend (and fellow Canterbury Journalism grad) classmate Glen Johnson has got caught up it in all. All due respect to Frank Bunce, but I can't help but feel that Glen's ordeal was somewhat more arduous than his. Then again, Glen already has prior form: see here and here. Keep an eye out for this guy, he's seriously good.
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I'm interested as to why everyone believes they shut down the Internet to quell internal organisation, as opposed to shutting down a coalface news source to the external world?
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Simon Grigg, in reply to
I'm interested as to why everyone believes they shut down the Internet to quell internal organisation, as opposed to shutting down a coalface news source to the external world?
I think we covered that further up the thread. It serves both purposes of course but the removal of a primary organisational platform is obviously pretty crucial to the regime..
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I'm intrigued that this is right down the bottom of the Guardian's story
Analysts believe that a likely outcome of the crisis is that Mubarak will eventually be persuaded to stand down by his closest advisers, including the army top brass and Suleiman. The US has close links to the Egyptian military.
A back-channel between Washington and Egypt's military leadership would be front-page news if we heard it out of Cablegate. Like this, it seems almost reassuring.
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