Erdoğan's Washington Misadventure

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's trip to Washington last week was supposed to go better than it did. The trip, coinciding with the Nuclear Security Summit, was supposed to help enhance his image in the West but, as my MEI colleague Gonul Tol notes, it did the reverse. Not only did Erdoğan and the Obama Administration snipe at each other over the Syrian PYD and the issue of press freedom in Turkey, but an embarrassing series of confrontations outside the Brookings Institution between Erdoğan's security detail and protesters, and their attempt to exclude certain Turkish journalists from the event, merely reinforced the impression of Erdoğan as an increasingly autocratic "Sultan."

The trip compounds Erdoğan's recent missteps, such as his summoning the German Ambassador to protest a satirical video about him on German TV, which backfired badly by driving online viewing to over four million views, in a classic example of the so-called "Streisand effect." in which an attempt to suppress information backfires and leads to its being more widely publicized.

Flickr Removes State Security Officers' Photos

The set of photos and information on Egyptian State Security officers that were posted to Flickr after the fall of the Nasr City State Security headquarters, Hossam al-Hamalawy, who blogs as 3arabawy,
and who had posted them to Flickr, has been forced to take it down by Flickr for "copyright infringement." Many Egyptian activists are already calling for a boycott of Flickr. (One note for some of those tweeting on this: Flickr is owned by Yahoo, not by Google as some of you seem to think; Google owns YouTube, so don't boycott Google.)

Remember the Streisand Effect, the Internet rule that says that the surest way to get information spread widely across the Internet is to try to censor it? I'm sure they're going to reappear and wish I'd downloaded copies; will post the links when they reappear. This may be a job for Wikileaks.

But I'm sure, they'll be back. [UPDATE: They may go up on Facebook, and he is reportedly getting help from the "Anonymous" people.]

Another Blogger Down: Nous sommes tous Fatma

I don't like posting Sundays, but there's another Blogger down.

The Streisand effect is kicking in again. Another Blogger has been arrested, this time in Tunisia. Her blog, known as Fatma Arabicca, was at this address, which now brings up a "blog not found" response from Blogger. There's now a Facebook group in support of her, and apparently a different one here, and a lot of attention in the Francophone and Arabophone blogosphere. One of the accusations against her is that she is also secretly behind the blog Debat Tunisie, which has some pretty biting cartoons about the recent elections; it is still online. And there's a logo for blogs and support groups (at top left; right click to download; I'm sure no one will object to your posting it).

You may recall that one of the problems with the Streisand effect is that it calls attention to what might otherwise be a minor story, as in my earlier post in which the suspension of a Moroccan newspaper for reporting on the King's health raised a lot more questions about the King's health than did the original story in a publication I'd never heard of.

I'd also never heard of Fatma Riahi before, or of her blog, or certainly not of the scurrilous cartoons at Debat Tunisie (let me repeat that link: Debat Tunisie). It really is scurrilous: it runs anti-government cartoons like the one on the right. (Which, if I continued never to hear of it, most of you never would have seen.)

I would (of course) never reproduce such an insulting cartoon except as an illustration of a news development. Such as the arrest of a blogger. But Debat Tunisie does. I'm sure you'd never heard of it till now, right? I hadn't. (Oh, I'm starting to repeat myself: sorry, that's Debat Tunisie.) I'm pretty sure authoritarian states just don't get the Internet. You know I rather like Tunisia as a country; I've blogged on that, and I take none of it back. But I still think you should have a right, and Tunisians should have a right, to read a site like Debat Tunisie.

Have I mentioned Debat Tunisie?

Now, I have no idea if Fatma is behind Debat Tunisie, but I know that as a blogger I don't like it when bloggers (or journalists) are arrested.

She was apparently arrested on November 2. If she was the only person behind Debat Tunisie, then who posted this cartoon on Debat Tunisie on November 6?

A cartoon which, since it's possible that Debat Tunisie might at some point bring up the "blog not found" that Arabicca now does, I guess I should reproduce for posterity:
The flamingo (I guess, or whatever it is) has a sign in English (I'm not Fatma) while the (not sure: the ground itself?) has one in French saying "We are all Fatma!" I have no idea why two languages (or a flamingo: could it be a stork, pretty common in North Africa?), but I do get one thing: Nous sommes tous Fatma!

See how effective it is to arrest bloggers? I'd never heard of her, or of Debat Tunisie.

Now, you have too. Don't forget the Facebook page. Or the other one.

See how it works now, governments? A whole lot of people outside North African diaspora communities would not have seen those cartoons, or heard of the websites, without the arrest. Now they have. The Internet is the enemy of censorship. Enjoy. You just gave those cartoons a whole new audience. Oh, did I mention Debat Tunisie?

Now let her go please.

Muslim Brotherhood Guide "Has Not Resigned"

UPDATE: A bit more background here.

Perhaps this is another Streisand Effect post like the previous one, but the General Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mehdi ‘Akef, has not resigned! (English version of the denial here.) Now, earlier postings have noted that ‘Akef reportedly plans to step down in the near term, but he hasn't resigned yet.

There have been some interesting developments lately in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, and these rumors may stem from them: the Brotherhood will, apparently, have an option to appeal some decisions of military tribunals to civilian courts, and there is talk of the next General Guide being a younger figure from the group's reform movement. Right now I'm not sure what these rumors stem from or what they mean, but they're worth watching. Something is going on.

King Mohammed VI and the "Streisand Effect"

There's an Internet phenomenon that even has its own Wikipedia entry: "The Streisand Effect." The Wikipedia article explains it as:

The Streisand effect is an Internet phenomenon where an attempt to censor or remove a piece of information backfires, causing the information to be publicized widely and to a greater extent than would have occurred if no censorship had been attempted. Examples of such attempts include censoring a photograph, a number, a file, or a website (for example via a cease-and-desist letter). Instead of being suppressed, the information receives extensive publicity, often being widely mirrored across the Internet, or distributed on file-sharing networks.

We seem to have a classic case in Morocco. The government has shut down a weekly publication and jailed its editor for publishing an article about the King's health. I had never heard of the publication in question, or any recent rumors about the King's health, but now everybody from Reporters without Borders to the Committee to Protect Journalists to probably everybody else is criticizing the crackdown on the publication, and I find myself (as you doubtless will) wondering what's wrong with the King's health.

Yes, I get the whole concept of lèse majesté, that you just aren't supposed to talk about Kings (there was an earlier case where a paper was prosecuted for actually running a complimentary article that was considered to intrude on the King's privacy). But closing a publication and jailing the editor makes those of us outside the Kingdom more curious about the King's health. And since as far as a reasonable amount of Googling tells me, it's just that he's got a rotavirus, I don't get the big deal. I've had that. Is royal diarrhea the big offense, or is there something else going on here? See, you made me wonder. And I would never have heard this rumor if you hadn't cracked down on an editor.

Now, of course, those of you who follow this stuff may be aware that the King, back when he was Crown Prince, got some unfortunate European tabloid coverage that created some scandal, but I have no intention of resurrecting that. I'm just noting that if you don't want people speculating, stop shooting the messenger. More people are talking about his health right now than if the article had simply been ignored.