Tell MOCHA to show “A Child’s View From Gaza”
Middle East Children’s Alliance

Succumbing to enormous pressure from the Jewish Federation and the Jewish Community Relations Council of the East bay, the Museum of Children’s Art (MOCHA) in Oakland cancelled an exhibit of Palestinian children’s art called “A Child’s View From Gaza.” MOCHA and the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) had been working together for several months to bring this exhibit to the Bay Area community.

On September 8, 2011, MOCHA’s Board President Hilmon Sorey informed MECA that the museum would not show the children’s artwork. The exhibit was due to open on September 24, 2011.

Over the last 23 years, pro-Israel groups determined to silence the Palestinian perspective have repeatedly targeted MECA. Enough is enough. Please stand up for the right of all children to express the reality of their lives and share their dreams for the future. …more

Leading article: A regime we should not do business with
Tuesday, 13 September 2011 – The Independent

The sale of arms to unpalatable regimes is turning into an ugly stain on the record of the Coalition Government – an unacceptable practice that, disturbingly, seems to cause neither the UK authorities nor our arms industry the slightest qualm.

In February, as Arab Spring uprisings were being brutally suppressed, David Cameron saw nothing wrong in attending an arms fair in Abu Dhabi, blithely dismissing the objection that his actions were wholly inconsistent with his avowed support for democracy in the region. Seven months on, another arms fair is taking place – it opens today in London’s Docklands – and among the Government’s invitees is a delegation from Bahrain, a dictatorship whose crackdown on pro-democracy protesters this year have left at least 30 people dead.
Related articles

An invitation for Bahrain – despite human rights violations
Come and buy our weapons, UK arms fair tells Bahrain
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Britain was forced to revoke a number of export licenses against Bahrain after it emerged that in 2010 the Department of Business approved the export of a host of crowd-control weapons. That we are still in the business of trying to sell arms to a regime with so much of its own citizens’ blood on its hands is nothing less than shameful.

What is happening can’t be defended on the grounds that our arms industry employs thousands and makes an estimated £9bn a year in exports. Britain and Bahrain’s long-standing close diplomatic ties are also irrelevant. Considerations of morality must come first. …source

No Unplugging This Revolution
By Portia Crowev- IPS

MONTREAL, Canada, Sep 12, 2011 (IPS) – Nabeel Rajab believes in the power of social media, and he wants his government to know it. Speaking at the CIVICUS World Assembly in Montreal, the Bahraini activist embraced such communication and specifically requested that all live- Tweeters “hashtag” his name, or include it in their posts.

“That way my government will see I am here speaking out,” he told audience members at Saturday’s plenary session.

Rajab is the president of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, and an outspoken critic of that country’s regime. He is also critical of mainstream media – both local and international – and its coverage of Bahraini citizen uprisings.

“Social media is leading the revolution in the Arab Spring – not any local media or regional or international media,” he told IPS. Most media sources, including the well-known Arabic news source Al- Jazeera, are “ignoring and silencing Bahrain”, he said.

According to Perihan Abou-Zeid of Egypt’s Qabila TV, the role of social media in developing countries has most commonly been to unite people around a particular cause.

“A cause is more of a historical thing, and you can rally people around [it] and get them attracted, through a story,” said Abou-Zeid, who spoke Monday with civil society representatives about the role of social media in elections.

She said such storytelling, via social media, tends to attract people in a more emotional way than traditional forms of political communication do.

“That’s basically how social media played a role in the revolution,” she told IPS, noting for example the images of Khaled Mohamed Saeed, allegedly beaten to death by Egyptian security forces, which circulated on Facebook and helped spark the country’s Jan. 25 revolution.

Once such emotional barriers were breached, said Abou-Zeid, the next step was to mobilise action. Social media proved useful here, too.

“They asked the right question: what do you want to do? Do you want to go down to the streets?” Abou-Zeid explained.

In Egypt, this was enough to initiate protests in Tahrir Square. The Internet was then blocked, but since its return after Mubarak’s ousting, social media has taken on an entirely new purpose in the country’s democratisation.

“Its role after the rallies was that it was the ‘right’ source of information,” Abou-Zeid told IPS.

“You had people basically reflecting the reality, telling the truth,” she said.

Egypt has experienced an explosion of citizen journalism. Aaccording to Abou-Zeid, in the 10 days after Internet access resumed, the country gained one million new Facebook users and 65 percent more Twitter users, and organisations like Abou-Zeid’s Qabila TV have emerged to create a new “platform of political awareness”.

Through its YouTube channel, Qabila aims to make politics more accessible by helping regular citizens understand political terms used by elites. Qabila staff also work on the ground, training citizen journalists to conduct surveys, analyse their communities’ priorities, and ask tough questions of electoral candidates.

“We’re basically working in a decentralised fashion in the local communities,” Abou-Zeid explained.

The road ahead

Despite the progress made in the last seven months, social media are only beginning to have a real impact on Egyptian political life. Of the country’s 85 million residents, only 23 million are Internet users, Abou-Zeid said, and of these, only five million use Facebook and fewer than 50,000 use Twitter.

“We’re not expecting social media to play a great role in promoting a candidate or political party,” she explained. But she described the educated community who use social media as “trendsetters when it comes to political activism”.

At Monday’s workshop, some civil society actors expressed concern at the prospect of social media being used in harmful ways. One member noted the possibilities for slander, misinformation, and the breaking of electoral campaign rules.

Abou-Zeid, however, noted that in many cases, citizens have already proved capable of recognising such unreliable sources. She gave the example of Youm7.com, an Egyptian newspaper known for tweeting false information, which is no longer considered a trusted source by the Egyptian people.

The full impacts of social media in post-Mubarak Egypt are not clear, but its role in sparking that country’s revolution has inspired those like Nabeel Rajab in Bahrain, where human rights abuses are ripe and citizens continue to oppose the regime.

“Bahrain is very much educated in social media, and now every level of age group and every level of society are very aware,” he told IPS. “Thank God it’s not yet been blocked.”

He estimated that his own Twitter and Facebook followers alone make up 18 percent of the country’s population.

“I want my government to hear that,” he said. …source

An invitation for Bahrain – despite human rights violations
By Jerome Taylor – Tuesday, 13 September 2011 – The Independent

A host of authoritarian regimes will be entertained in London today at one of the world’s largest arms fairs, despite concerns over how readily unpopular dictatorships turned to live ammunition to suppress popular revolutions during this year’s Arab Spring.

Invitations to the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEi) exhibition – an enormous arms fair which opens its doors today at the ExCeL Centre – have been extended to 65 countries.

At least 14 delegations hail from countries that are defined as “authoritarian regimes” by human rights groups who have expressed fears that the British arms industry is returning to a “business as usual” approach towards weapons sales in the Middle East despite the political turmoil sweeping the region.

Arms campaigners have expressed dismay that Bahrain, which has killed scores of mainly Shia citizens since protests broke out in February, has been invited. Earlier this year the British Government was forced to cancel a host of export licences that had allowed the Gulf kingdom to import crowd-control weapons.

Other countries that have been sent invitations include Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, the UAE and Kazakhstan.

Arms campaigners had tried for months to discover which national delegations were being invited to the arms fair through freedom of information requests but they were rebuffed. The government finally published the list yesterday once national newspapers, including The Independent, began to make enquiries last week.

The exhibition,held every two years, features more than 1,300 companies, around half of which are British. The government defends the arms industry as a vibrant and lucrative part of the UK economy. But campaigners say Britain’s determination to sell arms abroad is ethically unacceptable.

“The Government appears so embarrassed by the countries it has invited that it has only issued a complete list the day before the exhibition opens,” said Kaye Stearman, from the Campaign Against the Arms Trade. “Does the UK public really feel happy about selling arms to undemocratic and abusive countries like these?”

Last night the Foreign Office defended the invitation adding that export licences are under review following the Arab Spring.

“An invitation does not mean that licences will be automatically issued for the goods exhibited,” a spokesman said. “We will not issue licences where we judge there is a clear risk that the proposed export might provoke or prolong regional or internal conflicts, or which might be used to facilitate internal repression.”

But Oliver Sprague, Amnesty International’s arms programme director, countered: “The invitation makes a mockery of any claim that Bahrain’s access to arms is being moderated.” …source