Egypt blogger Maikel Nabil jailed by military court
A military court in Egypt has sentenced an internet activist to three years in jail for criticising the armed forces.
Maikel Nabil was arrested last month for blogs that criticised the army's role during anti-government protests.
The 26-year-old is thought to be the first blogger jailed in Egypt since the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak.
Activists said the trial set a dangerous precedent at a time when Egypt was trying to move away from the alleged abuses of the Mubarak era.
The rest of the article can be found at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13038937
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Intellectual Property, Entertainment, and Campaign Politics
At Politico, Molly Ball reports:
Charlie Crist isn’t the first or the last politician to use a pop song in a campaign ad without the artist’s OK, but now he owns a certain distinction: he is the most humiliated.
As if the former Florida governor needed more humbling after his last election, he appeared Tuesday on YouTube for the world to see, his permanently tanned skin glowing as radiantly as ever, intoning the words with a politician’s practiced seriousness: “I sincerely apologize to David Byrne.”
Crist then pauses, casts his eyes downward and bites his lip slightly before finishing the sentence: “… for using his famous song and his unique voice in my campaign advertisement without his permission.”
The video was posted as a condition of an undisclosed settlement reached between Crist and Byrne, lead singer of the band Talking Heads. At issue was Crist’s use of the 1985 hit “Road to Nowhere” — without the band’s permission — as the soundtrack for an ad produced by his 2010 Senate campaign.
Budget Cuts to Hurt Poorer Districts
New York Times Reports: "WHITESBURG, Ky. — Rich Kirby, a part-time producer for WMMT, the community radio station here, was interviewing two local aid officials the other day about the effect of Washington’s proposed budget cuts on this region, in the heart of Appalachia.
“We’re in one of the poorest if not the poorest districts in the country,” Ricky Baker, of the private Community Action Council, which receives 95 percent of its financing from the federal government, said into the microphone. Without that money, he added, “we’ll have people either freeze to death, starve to death or die of a medical condition because they can’t get appropriate health care.”
Mr. Kirby refrained from chiming in that his own employer,WMMT, is also imperiled by the same budget ax. As lawmakers seek to cut billions of dollars in federal spending, the Republican-controlled House voted in February to end financing for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 2013. While President Obama wants to continue financing the corporation, the current budget turmoil has left its long-term fate uncertain."
Jon Stewart and Health Care
Fairly old (August 2009) Daily Show interview, but pretty relevant to the discussion in Chapter 6 of Entertaining Politics. In the video Jon Stewart holds Betsy McCaughey, Chairman, Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths, accountable for her interpretation of the Health Care Bill and he isn't afraid to challenge the merits of her argument at its base.
Politicians, Protests, and Arrests
Max's post points to a significant phenomenon of the past quarter-century: politicians using arrests as a way to show solidarity with a protest movement. Some examples:
A 2010 immigration rally:
U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez made good on his pledge to get arrested at today's immigration rally outside the White House.
The congressman was among 35 activists detained for failing to move from a sidewalk outside the White House.
"They were asked to move by park police and they did not and they were asked again a couple more times, then they started arresting folks," said Douglas Rivlin, a Gutierrez spokesman.
A 1999 rally against police brutality:Five members of Congress were arrested outside the Sudanese Embassy in Washington Monday as they demonstrated against the situation in Darfur.
Hundreds of thousands of people have died in Darfur in western Sudan in what the U.S. State Department has described as genocide.
The protesters spoke out against the general situation in Darfur and Sudan's expulsion of outside relief agencies.
A spokesman for Rep. Donna Edwards, D-Md., told The Hill that the five and organizers of the protest from the Save Darfur Coalition crossed a Secret Service perimeter around the embassy and ignored three warnings to leave the property. They were expected to be fined for a misdemeanor and released.
Members of Congress arrested were Edwards; Jim McGovern, D-Mass.; John Lewis, D-Ga., a veteran of the civil rights movement in the 1960s; Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the only Muslim member of Congress, and Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif.
Rep. Charles Rangel (D-New York) and former New York City Mayor David Dinkins were among at least 13 people arrested on Monday at a rally against police brutality.
About 50 people took part in the rally held at Police Headquarters in lower Manhattan. The arrests came when demonstrators sat in front of the door and would not move.
Those arrested, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, were charged with trespassing.
Representative David E. Bonior was arrested on Friday after refusing to leave the offices of The Detroit News unless it and The Detroit Free Press agreed to reinstate all the employees who went on strike two years ago.
Mr. Bonior, Democrat of Michigan, and five other protesters were charged with trespassing and released. Trespassing can bring up to 90 days in jail and a $500 fine.
Sen. Lowell Weicker stood under cold, gray skies in Washington, D.C. two weeks ago wearing a matching dark gray suit and handcuffs. Minutes earlier the Republican Senator from Connecticut had linked arms with five other demonstrators and marched up to the front door of the South African embassy. When they were refused admittance, they turned around and began to sing We Shall Overcome, the anthem of the U.S. civil rights movement of 20 years ago. They had come to protest South Africa's policy of apartheid, and they were arrested for demonstrating within 500 feet of a foreign embassy. "The American people feel apartheid is wrong," said Weicker, who that day became the first U.S. Senator ever arrested for civil disobedience.
McCain Makes a Comeback
Not to say that McCain completely disappeared from the media after the 2008 election (though the tone of this article kind of suggests that to be the case), but according to Newsweek he is finally beginning to get over his loss by making his opinion on US foreign affairs better heard. As it turns out, the Senator has previous encounters with Gaddafi to share; if anyone is curious about how things in Libya would have turned out had McCain won the election, here's a hint.
Great Photo Op-but for whom?
Saw this photo over at Boston.com this afternoon with D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray being arrested for protesting the budget deal. It will be interesting to see what the media reaction to his arrest and this photo will be.
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