Presentation – E-gypt: The Convergence of Politics, Demographics and a Wired Society (Transcript)
Venue: The Journalism School, Columbia University, New York City.  
Time: 6.00pm
Date: 29 September 2011

From the outset, I wish to thank Salim, the Columbia School of Journalism, the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association, and Columbia University. It really is an honour to have been invited to speak at such a renowned university in the great city of New York. It’s also refreshing to see students in the audience of Middle Eastern heritage studying something else besides engineering and medicine; but you know you have ruined your marriage prospects as a result.

As you well know Australia is very far away. To show you how far away it is, I grew up in a city in Western Australia called Perth. We have a central park there, and when I asked my high school teacher why that is so, he repeated an urban myth that if you dig a hole through Central Park in Perth, straight through the Earth’s core, you will come out in Central Park, New York. But I found the process too difficult so I took a plane. I bet some of you will go back home and be tempted to stick a pin through your desk globe, now you know how earthquakes are started. Before anyone asks why my accent is not completely Aussie, it is a case of my vocal cords never assimilating properly with the rest of my body.

Me and Salim were working on an appropriate title for the event, we thought of ‘Walk like a Digital Egyptian’, but that came across as too passé. We might get sued by the Bangles. So we settled for e-gypt.
Continue reading “E-gypt: The Convergence of Politics, Demographics and a Wired Society”

Presentation Inspired, Transfixed and Transformed: Painting the Egyptian Revolution 
Host: Egyptian American Professionals Society
Date: 24 September 2011
Time: 7.30pm
Venue: Marriott Woodbridge Renaissance Hotel

It is a great honour to be here, and I would like to thank Professor Morad, and the Egyptian American Professionals Society for the invitation to be present in New Jersey. Growing up in Australia, I first heard of New Jersey because of Bon Jovi. He had it on the back of his jacket so I thought New Jersey was a brand name of a jacket. The world has not forgiven you for Jersey Shore. But you made up for it with Jon Stewart.

As you well know Australia is very far away. To show you how far away it is, I grew up in a city in Western Australia called Perth. We have a central park there, and when I asked my high school teacher why that is so, he said that if you dig a hole through central park in Perth, straight through the Earth’s core, you will come out in Central Park, New York. But I found the process too difficult so I took a plane.

Before anyone asks why my accent is not completely Aussie, it’s just an unfortunate case where vocal cords never assimilated with the rest of my body.

Continue reading “Inspired, Transfixed and Transformed: Painting the Egyptian Revolution”

Presentation: Defriending the Status-Quo:  Translating Social Media onto Egypt’s Streets (Transcript)
Venue: Department of Cultural Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo 
Date: 19 September 2011

I would like to thank Professor Albert for the invitation, and the Department of Cultural Studies and Oriental Languages, and the University of Oslo. From the outset, I would like to pay my condolences to the victims and loved ones of the horrific tragedy that struck Norway a few months ago. I was in Australia when it happened, and like many I was in shock horror at the carnage. However, my breath was taken away by the Norwegian spirit that came together in unity. You really did show the world the spirit of humanity, and why Norway always deserves its reputation as a promoter of peace. There was one scene on the news, seeing a Norwegian mother cry for the loss of her son, I was reminded by a weeping mother in Egypt, who was holding a framed portrait of her son who died during the revolution, walking aimlessly on the streets of Alexandria, asking anyone for justice for her son. The pain of our losses is immeasurable, yet the unity of our humanity is incomparable.

As you know social media has been a very hot topic this year, it has lended itself to explain the successes of the Arab Spring, to its dark side in the recent London riots.

The first Norwegian I ever met in my life was a visiting professor in Australia. He told me something very profound, he said if you want to know the mood of a country, listen to their jokes. Egypt has no shortage of jokes, yet the most common joke that circulated around Egypt this year was this one: Mubarak goes into the afterlife, and meets with former Egyptian presidents Nasser and Sadat. They asked him: “How did the Egyptians kill you?” By poison, like Nasser?, By gun, like Sadat?’. Mubarak said, ‘no, they killed me by Facebook.”

Continue reading “Defriending the Status-Quo: Translating Social Media onto Egypt’s Streets”

Presentation: Media and Intranational Cascading Effects:  The Egyptian Revolution’s Cairo-Alexandria Interdependency, by Amro Ali.
Conference: Covering the Arab Spring
Date: 1-2 September 2011
Venue: University of Copenhagen

Slide One: Introduction

There has been much discussion on digitally enabled cascading effects, or domino effects, across national boundaries in the Arab spring. But internal cascading is not often given the same amount of attention, despite it being a critical component to the relationship between the media and the masses.

During the course of the past couple of months, I undertook weekly travels between Cairo and Alexandra to study the dynamics and mechanics of the social movements in both cities. On the Friday 27 of May this year, I was observing the mass demonstrations in Alexandria, what was dubbed the second revolution. One of the lead protesters took out his smart phone to check the progress of demonstrations in Cairo, and announced to the crowds that our brothers in Cairo have reached a million. The implication being that Alexandria can beat that. The Alexandria protests got bolder, the chants got louder, the marches got stronger.

Continue reading “Media and Intranational Cascading Effects: The Egyptian Revolution’s Cairo-Alexandria Interdependency”

Transcript of my speech presented at the University of Western Australia
click here for details of the event UWA Panel

Abstract: The presentation will seek to argue that while Osama Bin Laden and Egyptian society shared two similar key goals: end to oppressive dictatorship and US meddling in the region. It was Bin Laden who lost considerable legitimacy on Egypt’s streets prior to and, more significantly, as a result of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. Mubarak’s Egypt was central to Bin Laden’s narrative of repression and political revolution in the Arab world, ideologically underpinned by his deputy, Egyptian physician, Ayman Al Zawahiri. Three main dynamics came into play to sideline an already waning Al-Qaida narrative: the opening of an alternative route of political and social dissent; the growing Al-Qaida-Egyptian Islamist divide as well as the latter’s political maturation; and, critically, societal perception shifts vis-à-vis the burden of responsibility in the ruler-ruled paradigm.

Continue reading “The Tahrir Square that Eclipsed the Terror Scare: Reframing Osama Bin Laden in Revolutionary Egypt”

When Henry Kissinger once queried the Chinese Premier Zhou En Lai in 1971 for his views on the consequences of the French Revolution, Zhou famously respond, “It is too early to tell”. In other words, 180 years notwithstanding, Zhou’s point was that the consequences of social revolutions do not crystallise until much later.

Academics who specialise in revolutions and Middle East studies are often fond of quoting the Zhou lesson yet are quick to omit social media from the discourse explaining the recent revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. Since January, I have attended countless academic seminars discussing the uprisings where specialists are downplaying social media to such an extent as to make it inconsequential. You know you are in for the long haul when a speaker remarks smugly that Facebook did as much for Egypt as the fax machine did for the fall of the Berlin wall.

The line goes something like this: “The revolutions of the French, the Russians, the Iranians, are proof that you do not need social media”. This argument has been repeated to me ad nauseum. Moreover, the critics are engaged in the logical fallacy they often warn against: argumentum ad antiquitatem, “appeal to tradition”, that is to say, because it happened in this manner in the past, it has to be correct. Continue reading “The War of Academia on Social Media”

By Amro Ali:

It was Lenin who once said, “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen”. After decades of stagnation under Mubarak, there could not have been a more fitting description for the events in Egypt of early 2011.

In 18 days, the Middle East experienced a geo-political earthquake. President Hosni Mubarak was successfully overthrown after 30 years in power. Yet what made the events spell-binding was the relative non-violent nature of the protestors, the all-inclusiveness, Muslim-Christian unity, and the communal spirit – an inspiration to the world. After the Pyramids, Tahrir Square became one of the most famous Cairo landmarks and was elevated to the hall of famous squares alongside Tiananmen Square.

After the January overthrow of Tunisia’s leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Middle East experts were appearing and proclaiming that the Mubarak regime would not follow the Tunisian path. Yet what so-called experts and intelligence services could not measure or foresee was the indomitable spirit of a downtrodden people. Once unleashed, people power kept gathering momentum at a formidable pace.

So, where to from here? Can Egypt handle its own version of democracy and put to rest the fears that have done the rounds on the news circuit? While the road ahead will be difficult, it is an absolute essential that a transition to democracy takes place and is supported by the international community. Continue reading “Why a Democratic Egypt Should Trump all Fears”

By Amro Ali:

In early 2007, while still a student at the ANU, I received a call from my younger relative in Alexandria, Egypt. Her words: “Are you on Facebook?”

Little did I know, some four years later, social media tools like Facebook would help drive passionate anti-government protests in a country that had been struggling to suppress politicised social media and its outcome on the streets of Cairo’s Tahrir (Liberation) Square and other cities in Egypt.

On 6 June 2010, my neighbour in Egypt Khalid Saeed was brutally killed at the hands of police, a tragedy about which I had written last year entitled “Egypt’s Collusion course with History”. In the wake of his death, his symbolism as martyr for anti-government sentiment flourished with the creation of the “We are all Khalid Saeed” Facebook group page whose members grew into the hundreds of thousands. Saeed’s symbolism was powerful; like the Iranian shot dead, Saeed was Egypt’s Neda Agha Soltan. Continue reading “Defriending Mubarak – Egypt’s social media revolution”