UPDATE: Apple’s iTunes has walked back, and promised to list all the album’s songs. Congrats! source
This morning, Apple’s iTunes Middle East proved they are an unethical corporation that is helping quash freedom of expression in the Arab World.
Al Rahel Al Kabir (The Great Departed) is a Lebanese band known for their brutal (but beautiful) criticism of religious fundamentalism, political oppression, military rule and other problems people in the Middle East face on a day-to-day basis (and have suffered under for decades).
Apple’s iTunes ME said one of the songs violated its policies on cover songs, but the rest, they claimed is “inappropriate” for Arab audiences, as the band posted on their Facebook page:
Most surreal of all is the justification given for the censoring of these songs — that they are “inappropriate for the Arab world” because of their “political” and “religious” content, and their “sarcastic” nature. (source)
In response, the group decided to pull the rest of their album “La Bombe”, from Apple’s iTunes. I applaud them for this, because if there’s anything worse than government-sponsored censorship and oppression, it’s big corporations that make money off us censoring arts and culture.
It’s like with every passing day, Lebanon descends further into the abyss of backwardness and stupidity.
Last year, Wonder Woman and Justice League caused quite the stir, with outdated laws from the 1950s that no one cared to implement, suddenly becoming a top priority for the Lebanese authorities.
The problem with that though, is that Lebanon is the only one doing it, and not even close to consistently, calling to question the point of these pointless bans, and their negative effects on the state of arts and culture in the tiny country.
The Israel Thing
Apart from backwards religious reasons, the number one reason the General Security in Lebanon bans arts and culture, is when it has to do with Israel. The problem though, is that they sometimes can’t differentiate between Israeli, and Jewish, one of the 18 officially recognized sects in Lebanon.
Steven Spielberg is one of those examples where the GS confuses Israeli and Jewish. In the past, what they used to do is get a black marker and erase his name from posters and billboards on movies he directed or produced, but we still got to see the movie.
The rise in pro-censorship rhetoric, and the need to appease ultra-conservatives ahead of the parliamentary elections, means that Lebanese moviegoers aren’t allowed to see a lot of movies (legally at least).
Other Spielberg Movies Weren’t Banned
Perhaps the most frustrating thing about censorship in Lebanon, is how haphazard and inconsistent it is. If it’s a slow news day for Al Akhbar, they’ll cause a huge fuss about a movie because of a cast member, but that same cast member would have been in several other movies that didn’t register on their radar because they were busy smearing someone with libellous claims of treason, that more often than not are proven as pure works of fiction.
In the past two years, the latest Transformers movie, as well as Jurassic World and other movies, all had Steven Spielberg as an executive producer or director. All of them were shown in Lebanese cinemas though. This begs the question, why is The Post on the chopping block? Is it because it idolizes journalists who stand up to the powers that be when they do wrong, and choose truth and justice over government bullying?
Oscar Buzz Means Lebanon Bans
This isn’t the first Oscar-favorite to get banned in Lebanon recently. Spotlight, which won Best Picture in the 2015 Academy Awards, was also banned. The movie details how journalists broke the scandal of widespread child molestation in the Catholic Church in Boston, and how they attempted to cover it up. Given how many child molesting priests in Lebanon have been let off the hook, like Labaki and others, it’s no surprise this movie was banned, just like the website to support Labaki’s victims was also banned from Lebanon to try and hide the heinous crimes of evil people in positions of religious power.
A movie that stars Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks and directed by Spielberg, that chronicles the rise of Washington Post, the paper responsible for keeping the Trump administration and its corruption on its toes, seems to warrant a ban, but stuff like Jurassic Park and other Spielberg flicks, seem to skip the shoddy radar of censorship in Lebanon.
We Will Watch It No Matter What, So Why Ban?
Perhaps the saddest thing about censorship in Lebanon, is how useless it is. Any of us can walk down to Nabil Net and buy it on DVD, or stream it from endless pirated movie streaming websites, if not buy it when it comes out on services like Google Play Movies.
Therefore, the only real loss here is for local distributors who pay to get the movie screening rights, advertise it for months and weeks, then get slapped with a last minute, incoherent ban. The rest of us are gonna still watch it, whether the General Security bans it or not.
Banning is an insult to taxpayers’ intelligence. Why should a bunch of security officials decide what you and me can and cannot watch, listen to or read? All that in the age of the Internet…
Get Your Act Together
If you want to be taken seriously in 2018, either retire the entire censorship bureau, or do your jobs properly. How can several Gal Gadot movies pass, but then Wonder Woman and Justice League don’t? How can all the Spielberg movies pass, but suddenly The Post might not? Inno, shwayyet consistency guys, if you want to be taken seriously…
The Real Loss
Spielberg, big Hollywood Studios and the Israeli government aren’t going to give a fuck if a few thousand Lebanese don’t pay tickets to watch a movie that the detractors think is funding the occupation of Palestine. The movie will still make money, and still break records, so this has zero effect whatsoever on the stated “purpose” of the ban (which is different from boycotting, because people aren’t given a choice, they’re just forced).
The real loss from censorship is against Lebanese filmmakers, who with every passing month, get more and more “red lines” they can’t cross. This is the real tragedy, since Lebanese filmmakers count on their movie showing in Lebanon, given that is their main and often only market. If they mention a sect, or a politician, or Lebanese history, they often get banned, and that’s a movie someone put in a lot of hard work and money to make, only to be banned for stupid reasons, robbing the filmmaker of their livelihood, but also robbing us of a chance to see a topic explored that might help us better understand, cope or heal from the trauma it is trying to cover.
Movies like Reine Mitri’s “In this Land, Lay Graves of Mine” which is a documentary about people displaced during the Lebanese Civil War, is a gem that unfortunately never made it to the theaters. I of course saw it in a private screening with the director herself, and I feel such a movie would have been an amazing addition to Lebanon’s lost collective memory about our devastating civil war. Unfortunately, the GS thought it might “disturb the civil peace”, whatever that means…
Censorship is wrong, no matter what. If you have a cause, then boycotting something you perceive as against it, is definitely game. Banning it by force, is more akin to Saudi’s or Iran’s policies when it comes to subduing their oppressed populations. If anything, the rise in censorship means that the censors know they’re losing the culture war, and that people are overwhelmingly against it, hence the frenzied, incoherent attempt to ban things they don’t understand, or don’t fall into their extremely narrow worldview.
Ministry of Interior Has the Final Say
Let’s hope the Interior Ministry in Lebanon strikes down the recommendation to ban The Post. They have a history of just signing off on those recommendations, but we can’t lose hope in that the ministry will see how futile, unprofessional and backwards these bans are, and instead, work on overhauling the broken censorship system in Lebanon, or ideally, removing it altogether…
I wish there was some good news to share with you these days, but unfortunately, ever since the election of a president and the formation of the cabinet, freedom of speech has come to an all-time low in Lebanon. Honestly, things seem as bad as they were under the Syrian regime occupation these days, and with no excuse of a foreign army occupying us…
Plunging Back into the Dark Ages
The recent trend in religious fundamentalism seen in Lebanon, is throwing innocent tax payers in jail over Facebook statuses and tweets. This despicable, Saudi-like practice is a result of too many inflated egos, and too much time and taxpayer money to waste.
I know, it’s almost 2018, and “blasphemy” is still a thing in our laws.
The process works like this: a tabloid-style “news” website, or MTV, or other mouthpieces on the Saudi regime’s payroll, look for posts that virtually no one will ever see, and make a huge fuss about it. This makes opportunists in the justice and security system pounce on this, to “defend morals” or whatever, and get a taste of the spotlight, and of course, more clicks fuelled by misplaced outrage over stupid things, while we drown in garbage, shit Internet and corruption that would make the most brutal of dictators say “that’s too much”.
Given the ministers in our government don’t know how to do anything to help the taxpayers that pay their salaries, they instead waste our time and public money by hunting down people for stupid things like “blasphemy”, distracting us from the real crimes they commit every day and have been for the past few decades.
How to Take Precautions
Censorship is bad, and religious extremist censorship is the worst kind. So, here are a few tips to protect yourselves from the prying eyes of the thought police, and their religious extremist patrons that are out to get what’s left of our freedom of expression in a country that was once a beacon of free speech, slowly spiralling into a much poorer, backwards version of Saudi Arabia.
This will cover how to run and manage Facebook pages, without them being able to find and torture you.
Never use your personal email, or one that might identify you. Instead, use an email that you made just to start the page.
Use TORwhen you are opening, posting, editing or monitoring your page. You can download it here. Once you download TOR, enable it, use the TOR browser to log on to Facebook on the link: facebookcorewwwi.onion
Hide the admins of the page, you can do that by going to your Page > Edit Page > Update Info > Featured > Edit Featured Page Owners and then remove the check next to the names of the admins.
Disable the public wall, as well as messages from users who like and follow your page, this will make it harder for the malicious people trying to shut you down to send phishing links that might entrap you or the innocent users who follow and like your page.
Why We Do This
We can’t expect the increasingly authoritarian system in Lebanon to suddenly care about human rights and freedom of expression. The best we can do is be careful, and make sure that their goal to suppress free speech and harass and intimidate those with different opinions is harder than it is now.
Protect yourselves, and never let the religious fundamentalists and corrupt government silence you or your thoughts.
Be safe, and always be free.
Special thanks to my dear friend and colleague Mo Najem for helping set these guidlines
I’d hate to sound like a broken record, but MTV’s recurring insult to our intelligence doesn’t seem to be letting up.
It’s been well-documented that MTV prides itself on claiming it’s the number 1 TV station, even though it consistently ranks 3rd behind LBCI and Al Jadeed. They’ve been causing a fuss every time their ratings dip, like the whole “sharmoota” incident when MTV was outright cursing LBCI and calling women participating in a dating show “prostitutes”, all this because that show was crushing the ratings of their “Dancing with the Stars” show.
The Latest Chapter: IPSOS is Rigging Numbers
MTV aired this “report” last night. It claims that it has “evidence” that IPSOS is rigging ratings to benefit MTV competitors. The “evidence” they presented, is this cropped graph they showed:
It was based on a few minutes of outage on the Nilesat satellite. MTV considers their sinking to 0.2% (from about 3.8%) for a few minutes, while LBC’s dips considerably from almost 6% to just over 2.2%/. The MTV people thought that this means that the data is being rigged…
Given that this is the same channel that believes costume parties “satanic rituals” and “digital drugs” are an epidemic “affecting 200,000 people in Turkey”, it’s no surprise a detail so basic slipped their minds.
LBCI and LDC are two separate LBC feeds. LBCI is terrestrial, and LDC is via satellite (Nilesat). MTV is just on Nilesat. So, when weather conditions knocked the Nilesat feed off for a few minutes, MTV is definitely gonna dip close to 0%, since it only broadcasts via satellite. LBCI is part terrestrial, so that kept going, while the significant dip was the LDC satellite feed via Nilesat which went down just like MTV’s did.
That’s all the evidence they presented for that “report”. It’s kinda sad if you think how little they prepare their bluffs, given the authority and assumption of “criminal intent” when the reality is they just don’t know how to read a graph…
Why are they Doing This Now? Elections Season!
When MTV went crazy about the “sharmoota” stuff, the real reason wasn’t their sudden conversion to piety and humility in dresscode. It was that a lighthearted dating show was getting more viewers than their super expensive franchised show.
This time though, the reason is far more sinister. Elections in Lebanon are just a few months away, and the sad truth is that politicians pay top dollar to appear on talk shows on these stations. You would be priced a lot less if you’re third. Wouldn’t it be brilliant if you could dupe people into thinking you’re number 1? That’d be a lot of extra money, just ahead of the elections when politicians would have their chequebooks and pens at the ready.
For shame.
Why I Do This
You guys might think that it’s weird I go to such lengths to debunk and fact check the fake news MTV tries to peddle on unsuspecting viewers, and ultimately advertisers and politicians. The reason is because MTV is a mouthpiece of the intolerance and backwardness Lebanon needs to get over. They’re the people who start a smear campaign against some unknown taxpayer tweeting something silly, to put them in jail for a week. They’re the people who defame, shame and endanger communities they see as “undesirable” to their ultra-conservative base. They’re the reason you can’t have a psy-trance event in nature anymore without being arrested and smeared on TV. They’re the station that sides with a doctor being tried for malpractice, not the victim, a mother of two.
The misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia and stoking of sectarian fears as well as their unwillingness to correct false or factually inaccurate claims, are a threat to many of our ways of life. Why should a crooked TV station trying to jack prices for appearing on their shows decide what concerts and parties people can hold? Or what they can tweet or share with their friends, without being the targets of witch hunts that rob people of their freedom and dignity, so that MTV can try and get a bump in ratings?
As long as MTV is fighting against civil rights, equality and freedom of expression, I’ll always be here waiting to debunk their lies and counter their hate speech.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel gleeful at such ironic poetic justice… That the person heading the bureau that had summoned and arrested so many civilians, journalists, activists and bloggers for shares, retweets, likes and statuses, would be sacked from her job for “liking” a tweet about Saudi Arabian women being able to drive now.
However, past the initial “you deserve it” gut reaction, there are several worrying things about this case, which I will try to discuss below.
Saudi Arabia is a Topic You Can Be Fired for in Lebanon
It’s a bit sad that all the violations of the Cybercrime Bureau, didn’t cost anyone there their jobs, but a tweet seen as “insulting” to Saudi Arabia did the trick.
Where were her superiors when university students were lured to the offices under false pretenses, like “your phone is a stolen one” only to be arrested and thrown in jail for days and weeks over an article they shared or a status they wrote? What about the random phone calls afterhours, asking a person to show up for “coffee” the next morning, only to be interrogated, without the charge or reason being specified, and without officially summoning them in person, as the law states.
The message being sent to taxpayers by the ISF, is that if its bodies abuse citizens’ rights, no one will be held accountable for that, but if you “like” a tweet poking fun at Saudi Arabia, the main financier and godfather of several political parties in Lebanon, then you’ll be out of a job at lightning speed.
This is both demoralizing for taxpayers like us, but also honest cops, who know that they will not be punished for breaking human rights law, but might suffer the full wrath of their superiors if they dare utter, by mistake or not, something that a foreign ambassador might not like…
Hobeiche’s Response Was Even More Censorship Attempts
You’d think that being at the receiving end of censorship and bullying, that the former head of the Cybercrimes Bureau would realize the error of her ways and the negative, unfair and obtuse impact of trying to control what people can and cannot say, share or agree/disagree with. Instead though, she has filed a lawsuit against the person who caught her “like” of Charbel Khalil’s tweet. Whether by mistake or not, she did like that tweet, and punishing the person who revealed that, instead of taking it up with her superiors as a misunderstanding, shows that this ironic twist of fate didn’t really hammer in the idea we might have hoped it would: that trying to shut people up by force, and twisting their arms when they say something you don’t like, is never the answer.
Alas, this is not the case, and I wish that person luck in the upcoming investigations.
The Real Problem is Still There
The Cybercrimes Bureau is a symptom, not the disease. The real issue is with the judiciary, especially the general prosecutors, which are the folks who forward cases to that bureau. The problem is, any and all Internet-related cases are sent there, whether it’s child porn or a tweet that someone found offensive to the “symbols of the nation”. So, it’s no surprise the detectives there treat you like some criminal for a like or share, if what they’re supposed to be investigating is heinous crimes like credit card fraud, sexual abuse online, blackmail and malicious hacking.
That bureau is no place for a journalist or activist who in their passion said something that the current ruling elite were ticked off by.
The removal of Hobeiche, will not solve anything, and in the spirit of not prejudging her successor, he might do a better job, but he might also ramp up the bureau’s bullying activities as a tool against anyone who dissents from the general party line of the ruling political parties and politicians in Lebanon.
In Conclusion
The Cybercrimes Bureau needs to focus on real crimes, and stop wasting our tax money and arresting people for something they wrote, shared or liked. The judiciary needs to keep up with the times, and appoint qualified people who enforce laws that don’t date back to the 1950s before the Internet had even been concieved in fiction novels of the time.
What happened to Hobeiche is a valuable lesson for everyone in power, that the loopholes and ambiguities and lack of accountability you use to bully taxpayers like us, can come back to haunt you yourselves one day.
I hope the Cybercrimes Bureau will stop being a tool of oppression against taxpayers, and instead do the job it’s supposed to: fight online crime, not online free speech. For this to happen, public prosecutors need to stop wasting the bureau’s resources and accomplishments against actual crimes, in order to bully innocent citizens of Lebanon.
A Coca Cola ad in Tripoli was also removed, because it seems that the religious extremists couldn’t keep their dicks in their pants when they saw it and started going crazy like a teenager who couldn’t masturbate for a week.
This is in Lebanon, not Raqqa…
A lingerie ad in Beirut was also removed, because apparently, it was “too close to a mosque”. Now, reports say that it was the governor of Beirut who ordered it taken down, but I think it was more likely the billboard company that was bullied into it by the da3esh-wannabes and blamed it on the government. (It was approved by the censorship bureau, which means it got the OK, so it was removed under duress by the extremist elements)
Look at all the childhoods being ruined! (As if they’ve never been to a beach or don’t know about PornHub, that this lame ad would make society crumble. Disgusting.)
Anyway, after this series of alarming trends by the ultra-conservative intolerant islamist elements in this country, it seems they’re trying to extend their hateful claws into a beacon of freedom of expression: a top Lebanese university, LAU Jbeil.
They Launched a Petition
This is taken verbatim from their petition, which nauseated me reading it. It was posted by a da3oush by the name of Mohamed Tafesh.
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
الحمد لله و الصلاة و السلام على عباده الذين اصطفى اما بعد,
This petition is to stop any act, speech, movie or poster that is considered to be disrespectful for the religion of Islam.
In the last two weeks a poster for a student theater production titled “ An Act of God “ was filling the LAU Byblos campus. This is a comedy act where one of the actors plays the role of God which is totally unacceptable for all Muslims in all the different sects that fall under the religion of Islam.
I call every Muslim to sign it.
Freedom of speech does not let you disrespect, insult or portray Islam in an unacceptable way.
The saddest part is that 278 sad souls signed this piece of garbage. I guess they must have been spending too much time on ISIS chatrooms and thought we were magically transported to Raqqa or Saudi Arabia. Too bad this is Lebabon, and we don’t take this kind of bullshit. I won’t even link to the petition here.
The Play
The play is hilarious, and very powerful. It portrays god as someone who asks his stupid, hateful fans to not kill other humans in his name. It also tells them to stop persecuting gay people among other things religious extremists are usually guilty of and try to justify it with their twisted view of their religions. In other words, it paints a more accurate picture of what religious people claim god is: tolerance and love and all that jazz.
It seems that Tafesh and his mini da3oushites think this is “insulting” to Islam, and that everything their tiny, hateful brains find insulting to their intolerant and hateful ISIS-inspired brand of Islam should be banned in a secular university that respects the right to free speech and expression.
People who aren’t wannabe ISIS members have started a petition to counter the hate speech and intolerance of Tafesh and co. You can sign it here.
We Want More Shows!
Honestly, I’d love to see “An Act of God” on stage on LAU, and really hope they decide to do more shows. I want to thank LAU and their Dean of Students for upholding the free speech and expression that seems to be withering away day after day outside its campus walls, with terrorist-loving groups like hay2at 3olamat el muslemeen and its sister hate groups having the power to censor what their tiny religious brains can’t handle.
We cannot let the tide of rising facism and violent extremist ideologies gain ground. If anything makes Lebanon special, it’s that hateful religious groups are kept at bay and cannot influence the rest of us normal people who do not hate others based on the fantasies we believe in or don’t.
Offense is taken, not given. I suggest to Tafesh and other potential ISIS members to immigrate to Raqqa or any of the other ever-shrinking ISIS-controlled areas. There, no one will insult their hateful brand of religion, and they can be happy not seeing lingerie ads, coca cola ads or plays that try to portray a god that doesn’t tell people to kill in his name.
Why am I suggesting they’re ISIS? Think I’m being a bit harsh on the religious hateful? Well, ISIS kill in the name of their god. This play’s god says don’t kill in my name. So, if this offended them, then they must be ISIS-lovers. There is no place for that kind of dark ages thought in Lebanon’s prestigious universities.
Sign the petition, let’s show them how few they are and how many we are. And I really hope they do another few shows of the play, so we can watch it just to spite the hateful religious and teach them that free speech still flourishes here, no matter how hard they try to quash it.
I had a feeling this would happen when Aoun finally became president after the longest temper tantrum in recorded history, that saw the entire illegitimate government grind to a halt till they got what they wanted.
My worst fears were realized, with the number of people being jailed for expressing their opinion skyrocketing in the “new term” which has so far been a disaster on every level:
Attempt to increases taxes on the people without raising wages, while giving tax breaks to big corporations and giving themselves wage hikes that remain even posthumously…
Imminent third illegitimate extension of this almost decade-old parliament
Corruption scandals in the open, and disobeying court orders that seek to rectify disgusting theft of public property, like in Ramlet El Bayda and Horsh Beirut
These are just a few of the disastrous results of the “3ahd Jdid” they’ve promised us with.
FPM chief was pro freedom of expression in 2013
Reading this, you’d think it was fake, so I dug in and embedded the actual tweets so you don’t think I’m pulling your leg with mad photoshop skills.
Arresting people for their tweets is outrageous. #كلنا_جان_عاصي
While writing this though, the fifth person this year has just spent his 7th day behind bars for a Facebook status considered “insulting” to the president…
The double standards are astounding: to see the FPM come to power, and be Sisi-like, is sad. The FPM chief used to think “freedom of expression is sacred”, but apparently, not more sacred than his father-in-law…
It’s amazing to realize that a president who once said atheists and seculars are akin to terrorists, is behaving just like the current president (who used to bash Michel Sleiman for exactly that). Assy was called to go down to the infamous Cybercrimes Bureau, where he refused to sign a pledge under duress that he’d never mention the president again. As a result, the attorney general filed a lawsuit against him, and the legal battle with the president cost him a lot of money, and more than two years. The charges were dropped only after Michel Sleiman’s term expired…
Now, it seems the full force of the government is being brought down on anyone saying something Aoun doesn’t like, just like it was during Michel Sleiman’s term. I really wish the current government would listen to the language Bassil used in 2013, and consider this alarming trend of jailing people for statuses: “outrageous”.
Is this the new 3ahd? Is this what Lebanon has come to? Is Aoun’s dream to become the new Sisi? Is this the Lebanon where folks from all over the Arab world would come to to publish and speak freely? Are they trying to tell us that speaking something they don’t like will land us in jail? Are they that scared? Do they have that little disregard for our constitution, and the international agreements we’ve ratified that guarantee freedom of expression and speech? Is Michel Sleiman a better president than Michel Aoun, because he didn’t prosecute taxpayers for a Facebook status? Is his skin thinner than Donald Trump’s?
This has to stop. Listen to your own tweets!
UPDATE: After having a conversation with @JeanAssy, I’ve updated the post accordingly and fixed the mistakes.
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