Erkan's academic interests
"4 Ways You Can Help Free Moroccan Blogger Mohammed Erraji
Action Alert: 4 Ways You Can Help Free Moroccan Blogger Mohammed Erraji
Written by Amine on September 12, 2008 – 6:13 am –
As you may have been following through the DigiActive Twitter Feed, Moroccan blogger Mohammed Erraji was arrested last Friday, September 5th following the publication on the online news site Hespress.com of an article entitled “The King Encourages His Subject’s Dependency” (English) He was sentenced 72 hours later, in an expedited trial without assitance from a lawyer, to two years in jail and a fine of 5000MAD for “failure to uphold the respect due to the king”.
In a movement of solidarity reminiscent of the one which surrounded the campaign to help free Facebook prisonner Fouad Mourtada earlier this year, the Moroccan blogosphere was quick to mobilize and condemn the arrest. Various international organizations such as Reporters without Borders, Amnesty International, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and IFEX also issued statements calling for his immediate release. On Thursday September 11th, citing procedural misteps, a court in the southern city of Agadir granted him bail and he has been “provisionally released” pending his appeal trial next Tuesday.
Blogger Beware
Faster than you can say “Larry Summers,” James Otteson was gone from Yeshiva University.
The former head of the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Honors Program at Yeshiva College, the intuition’s undergraduate college of liberal arts and sciences for men, resigned from his leadership position near the end of the spring semester after administrators at the university uncovered remarks viewed as sexist on his pseudonymous blog, Proportional Belief. One particularly controversial remark — which he revised — refered to “high-functioning women.” Now, following months of rumor concerning the nature of his resignation, Otteson has taken a year-long visiting professorship at Georgetown University, though he maintains a contract for a tenured full professorship with Yeshiva.
Doğan Media Mogul vs. Tayyip Erdoğan; no one backs off
PM Erdoğan promised to open up new files by this weekend. As the deadline gets closer, no side seems to be backing off. Today Hürriyet’s chief editor, Ertuğrul Özkök replied back/threatened angrily in NTV channel. Once again I have to underline: This is not a case of freedom of speech. Only this media mogul’s own papers (and plus the staunchly Kemalist, Cumhuriyet) support their bosses at the moment…
A quick primer on Doğan vs Erdoğan
What is Lighthouse e.V? Lighthouse e.V. was a Germany-based charity foundation that operated between March, 2001 and April, 2007. Its director Mehmet Gürhan, his successor Mehmet Taşkan and
Day 2 in the battle of AKP vs. DMG
I thought after yesterday’s speech Mr. Erdoğan would not talk back immediately, and i spent the day out without recognizing today’s speech until the evening. Well, Mr. Erdoğan gives "1 week" to correct the false news disseminated by Doğan group dailies. Mr. Doğan replied back in Kanal D to declare that his media will not be an obedient media in sum. I found Mr. Doğan a little bit scared. But only a little bit. He has a giant media empire, his journalists occupy many Press institutions, his daughter is the head of powerful businessman association, TUSIAD. Although he said last night "all state institutions belong to AKP, they can finish us easily, we know that things do not work like that. A leftist TV channel, Hayat TV was closed nearly all summer and no body could help that but DMG is not a small marginal media group and dynamics of politics is much more complicated. Never politically correct Mr. Erdoğan waited for more than 2 years to attack back, and only after the Constitutional Court case, he felt more secure to start the battle.
Mr. Erdoğan claimed that Mr. Doğan visited him and requested some privileges for the Hilton Hotel site located in near the super valuable Taksim square. (In tonight’s interview at Kanal D, Aydın Doğan said "of course, we always have requests from the government, we do lots of business and we have needs to discuss] When he was rejected, DMG dailies began to attack. DMG is known to request some sort of airwave rights for CNN Turk. That is also refused. After tens of TV channels, anti-trust laws do not allow him for more airwave but Mr. Doğan wants more basically. Anyway, we will see new files to be opened in the next few days. In the mean time, in today’s papers Abdullah Gül’s visit to Armeania and the "battle" news competed in headlines. DMG’s flagship Hürriyet replied back. Milliyet also. [circulation report of dailies are given in the end]
DMG’s newly acquired furiously anti-AKP Vatan columnists charged their weapons like the ones above:
more Chrome links and more from the cyberspace…
More ‘EU controlling blogging’ outrage – a more careful analysis
Back in June there was a lot of debate on numerous blogs about a draft European Parliament Resolution by Estonian Socialist Marianne Mikko. The original draft contained some rather strong paragraphs about placing legal restrictions on blogs but, after all, the initial draft – as I argued at the time – was probably the misguided view of one MEP, and that some MEPs had proposed sensible amendments.
British artist Alan Jaras turns light into awesome works of art. A majority of the works are analogue images of the refraction patterns from a beam of light passing through a transparent object (Jaras uses pieces of textured glass). VIA
Now open warfare between AKP and Doğan Media Group (DMG)!
After a corruption case whose details given below, DMG papers and CHP started a new wave of attack against AKP and its leadership. As usual Milliyet leads the accusations. As far as I remember PM Tayyip Erdoğan uttered the name of "Aydın Doğan" for the first time and he accused him of not having moral … Read more
Akşam, your Ergenekon friendly paper
I am hitting Doğan Media Group (DMG) papers recently but how I missed Akşam? Owned by a once-bigger media conglomeration, Akşam’s bitter tone should be noted when one talks about the Ergenekon case. Normally, I respect Akşam’s position. Compared to major Doğan papers, it occupies a more neutral standing and unlike Vatan daily who had boasted about being independent (but then sold to DMG), Akşam stayed relatively independent. Its chief editor Serdar Turgut has an intellectual level well beyond many of his counterparts. -But of course he rejected to talk to me for my dissertation despite the talk I made with his secretary, several times. So Erkan does not like him anymore (!) and be believes his frequent quotes from famous philosophers and social theoreticians are all farcical-
Reports from EASA
As I become a robot like person and concentrated on writing in the remaining days, I had decided not to attend anthropology conferences this year. EASA conference was relatively close to Istanbul but i could not make it. Similarly, I won’t be attending AAA. I just did not want to deal with a trip, last minute paper preparations etc. Hopefully Erkan will be next year but in the mean time, Lorenz reported from EASA:
First reports from Europe’s largest anthropology conference (EASA)
Today was the fifth and last day of the 10th Biennial Conference of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) in Ljubljana, Slovenia. There are no news stories yet, but anthropology students at the University of Ljubljana have already written an impressive number of reports on workshops, plenaries and poster sessions.
The students have done a real great job and I hope they will inspire other conference organizers. There are exciting things being told and discussed at conferences. But until now, these stories have stayed inside a small community of scholars. Things are changing: The Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) has started podcasting from their annual meetings.
Here comes the Google browser- Chrome
The launch of Google Chrome had to be rushed out last night after an employee accidentally emailed a comic book explainer to Blogoscoped. The really very excellent comic explains how Google rethought the web browser from the bottom up, starting by saying how the current browsers were designed in a different era of the web when we weren’t all frequently accessing heavy, interactive applications. VIA
Last night I installed Chrome but did not feel to play with it as I was forcing myself to write for the dissertation. My current Firefox is too nice to quit honestly. The first impressions of Chrome users all seem to be good and i may change mine too but for the moment Firefox 3.0 is really good enough to beat. We will see. Before some links on Chrome, here is Ethan’s post on-
Blogger “failures” in the Georgian war, and the rise of citizen propaganda
As Russia slowly pulls out of Georgia and the world of foreign policy wonks contemplates how the Olympics War will change the geopolitical map of the Caucuses, the world of citizen media is busily evaluating its (our?) own performance.
Two good friends have taken the blogosphere to task for its failures during the conflict. Rather than rise to the defense of Georgian, Russian, Ossetian and global bloggers, I wanted to take a look at their critiques and at the phenomenon of citizen media during the conflict and at the emergence of one of the interesting epiphenomena of citizen media: citizen propaganda…
"Two Bits"
I remember once linking to Cris Kelty’s Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software( by Christopher M. Kelty) but now i began reading it and i would like to recommend it again. Prof. Kelty is in my dissertation committee but more than that he is the one who encouraged me to start this blog! So readers of the blog should pay their tributes to him:) One of the experimental aspects of Two Bits is that Cris put all the book online. It has its own site and anticipates future collaborations: The book can be downloaded here:
Two Bits
I have just started to read. So I am still in the very first chapters. But I thank God that I don’t need to lie. This is really an exciting book to read for me!
In a related issue, there is a good discussion in the last issue of Cultural Anthropology. The title sums up the subject matter of discussion. However, this needs subscription.
ANTHROPOLOGY OF/IN CIRCULATION: The Future of Open Access and Scholarly Societies
Speaking of Cultural Anthropology, check out the journal website…
Two Bits in Interview Form
For those of you who’d like to know more about my book, but want it presented in a more convenient question and answer form, the media theorist and activist Geert Lovink just posted an email interview he did with me. It has some of the best questions I’ve been asked, and it means I’m in good company amongst the other interviewees. The original is on Geert’s site, Networked Cultures. I will also be making a few changes to my profile page, which the attentive reader might glean from this interview, also re-posted at twobits.net
Bronislaw Malinowski
In "Great Diagrams in Anthropology, Linguistics, & Social Theory"
"Nosemonkey interviewed: On EU blogs and Russia
Nosemonkey interviewed: On EU blogs and Russia
Believe it or not, from time to time people actually ask me for my opinion on things, rather than me just spouting out unsolicited words into the electronic ether and hoping that someone may spot them and correct my mistakes.
As such, this evening I’ll be doing the talking head thing on the BBC World Service’s World Have Your Say, trying to come up with a coherent theory about Russia’s current plans and how the rest of the world should respond. (Likely argument? Russia’s being childish and throwing a tantrum, and there’s usually two responses to tantrums: smack them or ignore them. Unfortunately, neither option’s really possible in this case.) Any suggestions much appreciated.
The Caucasus war viewed through Europe’s blogs
Blogospheres are vibrating in the aftermath of the war in the Caucasus. The need to understand and debate is huge, as spin doctors have been manipulating the news on both sides
NEXT NEWS IS WRONG. YOUTUBE STATED TODAY THAT THE BAN CONTINUES; Erkan now believes only a YouTube generation can save Turkey. So far, I haven’t heard a single person who defends the ban. Only after the system does not support any more those unique cases who goes to court for a ban and of course those backward-minded judges who support the unique cases…As you can see if these were particular, exceptional cases there would not be a ban. There is something more systemic.
YouTube returns after three-month ban
Access to YouTube, a popular video sharing Web site banned in early May by a controversial court decision for broadcasting videos deemed insulting to the nation’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, was reinstated on Saturday night."
"Yahoo! aims to be "number one" independent news source
Yahoo! aims to be "number one" independent news source
Yahoo! News may be considered as a news organization, according to Jessica Barron, director of editorial programming. Unlike online news outlets that aggregate news content from the Web, Yahoo! is not only investing in its own journalists but is also signing agreements with wire services and "traditional" sources.
Two dancers act during the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games in Beijing. Photo: EFE / Bernd Thissen.
found in World Watches in Awe as Beijing Olympics Close With Carnival-themed Extravaganza
"853 Websites Banned in Turkey
FT.com / World – Turkish bloggers censure the censors
By Alex Barker in Ankara and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson in New York
Turkish bloggers are closing their websites to protest against courts banning dozens of mainstream sites for carrying content deemed “immoral” or insulting to Turkey’s founding father."
853 Websites Banned in Turkey
There are currently 853 Web sites banned in Turkey, including video-sharing site YouTube and dailymotion.com, placing Turkey in the league of countries such as China and Saudi Arabia, famous for restricting freedom of speech.
Web sites are most often banned on grounds that they insult the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, contain vulgarity, enable gambling or promote suicide. Many sites have also been banned for crimes covered under the Internet Security Law. But a number of sites are banned for no apparent reason. The latest Web site to be banned was gundemonline.com, which was blocked by Ankara’s 11th High Criminal Court without any justification. VIA
"Annotated bibliography on HTS, Minerva, and PRISP
Annotated bibliography on HTS, Minerva, and PRISP
I’ve been working on an article on the relationship between anthropology and the military, and Nikki Kuper, an honours student in our department, has been thinking about doing her honours thesis project on the Human Terrain System. So together, Nikki and I decided to put together an annotated bibliography of sources on the Human Terrain System, Minerva, and PRISP and post them here to Culture Matters so that others can benefit from them.
If you know of any resources or links that aren’t listed below (or if you spot any mistakes), please send me an e-mail (lisa.wynn[at]mq.edu.au) and we’ll add them to our list and credit you with the contribution.
–L.L. Wynn and Nikki Kuper