Razan Ghazzawi arrested in Syria

Prominent blogger Razan Ghazzawi is the latest victim of an increasingly desperate Syrian regime, arrested on her way to a media conference in Jordan on Sunday. The US-born human rights activist was arrested at the border while on her way to attend a workshop for advocates of press freedoms in the Arab world. Ghazzawi was arrested by police and immigration officials at the border while on her way to Amman to attend the conference as a media representative. While the Assad administration have said nothing, a local committee of activists confirmed the arrest yesterday.

The Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM) said Ghazzawi worked for them as a media officer and was attending the workshop on their behalf. SCM said they condemned her arrest and the restrictions on civil society and freedom of expression in Syria. “SCM demands authorities stop abuse of systematic practice against bloggers, journalists, and Syrians citizens,” they said. “SCM demands to release the blogger Razan Ghazzawi immediately and unconditionally and to release all detainees in Syria and stresses on the need for Syrian authorities to respect their international commitments that have committed themselves to it through the ratification of the conventions and treaties international.” SCM said they held Syrian authorities responsible for any physical or psychological harm caused to her.

Ghazzawi has been a high profile documenter of violations and arrests in Syria since the start of the uprising in March. Bravely she was one of the few in Syria to blog under her real name. Her most recent post on 1 December announced another Syrian blogger and activist Hussein Ghrer had been freed after 37 days in Adra prison. “Hussein is going to be home tonight, where he will be holding his wife tight, and never let go of his two precious sons again,” Ghazzawi wrote. “It’s all going to be alright, and it will all be over very soon.” But now the nightmare has begun for Ghazzawi herself.

The arrest has sparked wide protests online. A Twitter campaign #freerazan has gone viral in the last 24 hours while own twitter feed @redrazan is being managed by friends. A Facebook page has also been set up since the arrest. A Moroccan blogging friend Hisham Almiraat said Razan was an indefatigable campaigner for human rights and freedom of expression in her country. “She has been advocating for the rights of political prisoners and minorities in Syria and has always fought for the rights of the Palestinians,” Almiraat said. “Razan is the most driven, thoughtful and freedom loving person I have ever met.”

A message on Ghazzawi’s blog shows what she told friends before she set off for Jordan. If anything happens to me, she said, “know that the regime does not fear those imprisoned but those who do not forget them”. This message suggests she knew she was taking a risk by travelling to the conference. The blog MidEast Youth is making much of her US citizenship in its calls for her freedom. While Ghazzawi admits she born in the US she never lived there. Her family lived for 10 years in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and are now back in Damascus. She graduated with a degree in English literature from Damascus University and did a further five years of study in Lebanon before returning home.

The administration she berated shows no sign of bending to intense international pressure either to release her or end atrocities against protesters. Instead the regime held bellicose war manoeuvres over the weekend. State-run television said the exercise was meant to test "the capabilities and the readiness of missile systems to respond to any possible aggression." The drill showed Syrian missiles and troops "ready to defend the nation and deter anyone who dares to endanger its security". Assad and his regime intend to tough this out with the support of Russia and China and won’t mind the collateral damage to the likes of Ghazzawi in the process.

Newsstand up and running for a media inquiry

I got an email tonight from grass roots campaigners Getup advertising the existence of a new organisation called NewsStand. It is little surprise Getup would promote NewsStand; the newbie is moulded in Getup’s image (and uses former Getup staff) but with a narrower focus in the media. The main purpose of NewsStand is to demand a parliamentary inquiry into Australian media and they want people to sign an e-petition. “We believe Australia needs a full parliamentary inquiry to publicly scrutinise the media landscape as a whole: what’s working, what’s not and what we can do to change things for the better,” NewsStand said.

The site’s about page said it was inspired by the Murdoch UK hacking scandal. NewsStand was born out of the revelations of unethical and illegal practices which showed the “extent of the power and influence that individuals and companies can have over the news industry”. It quoted a Lenore Taylor article in the Sydney Morning Herald which mentioned NewsStand’s first market research which showed 60 percent support for a media inquiry.

NewsStand’s board consists of five members. They are journalism professor and investigative journalist Wendy Bacon, Ben Brandzel who has done fundraising for Barack Obama and worked at Moveon.org, Australia Institute executive director, economist and Greens strategy adviser Richard Denniss, Centre for Policy Development executive director Miriam Lyons and communications consultant Nick Moriatis. They provide direction to a staff of two led by US political strategist Kate Walsh and supported by former Getup campaign director Ed Coper.

Like Getup, it hopes to have a blog up and running but it has not yet been launched. The idea is to encourage conversations, assess the validity of sensationalist news, conduct interviews with experts and shed light on the inner workings of the media industry. This is all laudable but it should have been up and running with the launch of the website. A blog desperately needs content to survive, not just promises. Like Getup, NewsStand is shilling for donations and is also attempting to harness social media. The @Newsstandau twitter feed has quickly built up 400 followers but disappointingly is following none of them back.

There is little doubt the Australia media is in poor shape. The flabby Murdoch empire will say or do anything to keep its power. Just today, artist Robert Crumb wrote an open letter to the Sydney Morning Herald saying why he was not coming to a Sydney festival. The fault belongs to the other Sydney rag, the Murdoch Daily Telegraph which published a shocker of an article bylined by Jesse Phillips which described Crumb primarily as a “self confessed sex pervert whose explicit drawings cannot be shown in Australia”. The article cited rent-a-quote moral crusader Hetty Johnson who gave the predictably juicy line about the “depraved thought processes of this very warped human being".

No effort was made to talk to Crumb or anyone who might have had a different view. The article was pure trollumnism. Crumb pulled the pin on the trip after the article and made some pertinent observations in his SMH letter. “One can see in this example how skilled media professionals with low standards of integrity are able to mould and manipulate public opinion, popular beliefs and, ultimately, the direction of politics," Crumb wrote. “The majority of the population in most places is not alert to this kind of deceptive manipulation. They are more or less defenceless against such clever 'perception management’”.

A reminder why NewsStand wants a media inquiry is pertinent: “The inquiry must examine how to promote higher standards, protect people’s privacy while guaranteeing the freedom of the press, stimulate a more diverse media marketplace, and ensure that problems and complaints can be handled simply, fairly and effectively.” Watching the Telegraph at work, it’s no wonder the Murdoch publications don’t want a bar of it.

Beppe Grillo's V-day salute to Berlusconi

As predicted here two months ago, Silvio Berlusconi has comfortably won the weekend election in Italy to become Prime Minister for the third time. Berlusconi’s latest comeback was at the hands of the distinctly uncharismatic centre-left opponent Walter Veltroni. But with Italy’s deepening problems in the areas of faltering competitiveness, unsustainable fiscal deficits, broken governmental services, corruption and a bloated bureaucracy, Berlusconi’s most implacable opponent may turn out to be an almost sixty old comedian and actor who has the ear of many everyday Italians, and increasingly, a large worldwide audience.

That man is Beppo Grillo. Grillo is famous not for his comedy or his thespian abilities but for his blog. In it, his acerbic writings strikes at the heart of Italy’s biggest scourge: rampant political corruption. Grillo is no fan of fellow media tart Berlusconi. In his blog, he has called him the "psychotic dwarf" and "asphalt head”. The English language version of his blog can be viewed here. As of 16 April, Technorati ranks Grillo’s site as the 13th most popular in the blogosphere worldwide with over 9,000 incoming links in the last six months.

Guiseppe Piero Grillo was born 60 years ago in the small Ligurian town of Savignone. He was educated as an accountant and he became a comedian by chance improvising a monologue in an audition. He was discovered by television presenter Pippo Baudo and he began to appear on Italian TV shows. As his success rose, he launched his own show called Grillometro where his particular brand of satire began to offend Italian politicians. He condemned the then ruling Socialists for corruption. As he created more enemies, his appearances on television became rarer.

In Time magazine’s first annual blog index released last month, the Blog di Beppo Grillo was voted the most interesting political blog. Time noted Grillo’s popularity to the “international language of outrage”. Their nomination concluded that “America could use a political satirist fuelled by this sort of outrage, but for now, there's Beppe”.

The most successful of Grillo’s stunts was his September 2007 rally across 300 Italian cities and towns for his “Il Giorno del Vaffanculo” (“Fuck Off Day” in English). Fuck Off Day was designed to encourage citizens to forcibly remove from office members of the Italian Parliament who have criminal convictions. Hundreds of thousands turned up for the rallies. The campaign was so successful he has arranged to follow it up with V2-Day on 25 April to protest against the subservience of the press. Grillo promoted the idea during his election tour of the country which attracted great crowds but was studiously ignored by the Berlusconi-dominated media.

While Grillo has not yet put himself forward as an electoral candidate, he has allowed the few candidates he likes to use his “Lista Grillo” (Grillo’s List) symbol as an endorsement. Grillo has publicly stated that no-one with a criminal record should be allowed to stand for office – that immediately rules himself out as he was convicted of manslaughter after a 1980 road accident in which three passengers died in a car with Grillo at the wheel. But Grillo prefers to be a catalyst rather a protagonist. The New Yorker magazine described Grillo accurately as a “distinctly Italian combination of Michael Moore and Stephen Colbert: an activist and vulgarian with a deft ear for political satire.”

Getup, stand up

Activist organisation Getup brought a lively crowd of 400 people to Bega, NSW on Sunday to hear the candidates of the key marginal Eden-Monaro constituency outline their policies. The meeting occurred as Getup geared up for the closure of the electoral roll in advance of the election. The movement's electoral director, Taren Stinebrickner, said its volunteers had handed out 5000 enrol-to-vote cards since August and had signed up 300 people this week alone on university campuses across the country.

This is the first federal election since the two year old Getup was founded. The issues based activist group sees this election as its most important campaign to date. They have grand ambitions and plan to coordinate grassroots action and voter engagement in every seat in every state. Its national profile is at an all-time high after raising $200,000 in a week to broadcast an ad during the AFL grand final that spoofed Government advertising on climate change.

Getup was founded in 2005 by two Harvard educated Australians, Jeremy Heimans and David Madden. The pair met while studying at the Kennedy School of Government. They were inspired by Move On, an Internet based activist political organisation that has raised millions for the Democrats. Heimans and Madden decided to found Getup when the Government won control of the Senate in the 2004 election. They adapted the Move On model for Australia. When launching the site, Heimans told the ABC that GetUp was a way to get ordinary people back into politics. These were “people who are tired of institutional politics,” he said “People who aren't happy with the direction this country's going”.

Both Heimans and Madden had to defend themselves against the accusation that Getup was a front for the Labor Party with Evan Thornley and Bill Shorten as foundation board member. Former Liberal Leader John Hewson was also on the first board but quit less than a month after its launch citing lack of time to make a commitment. Liberal MPs Malcolm Turnbull and Andrew Robb denounced the group and its initial email campaign as “little more than spam”. They were complaining about Getup targeted strategy of getting their members to send pro forma emails to government members.

According to its own website, Getup “does not back any particular party, but aims to build an accountable and progressive Parliament”. Within its first week, Getup claimed 17,000 members. This number has now risen to over 200,000 after two years. While Heimans and Madden remain on the board, the day-to-day running of the organisation is in the hands of executive director Brett Solomon.

Brett Solomon got his ideas for grassroots activism during his time working for Oxfam Australia where he was the co-ordinator of the International Youth Parliament (IYP). According to Solomon, IYP was an international forum where “hundreds of young people from over 150 countries exchange ideas, strategies and the implementations of their Action Plans”. He wanted IYP to give young people the tools to work with their peers from around the world and effect change at the grassroots level. Now 37, Solomon has taken this zeal to Getup and is one of three full-time staff at their Sydney headquarters. Under Solomon’s leadership Getup has become an effective issues based organisation.

In an interview with Monica Attard for ABC’s Sunday Profile in July, Solomon said Getup fills a void for people to have a say. Solomon also denied Getup was a Labor front. “The aim of GetUp is to build a progressive Australia and what that means is a country which has social justice, economic fairness and the environment at its core,” he said. “So, we tend towards having a membership which is progressive in that sense”.

As of May 2007, they were Australia’s most popular political website with 16 percent of the total traffic and about 200,000 hits each week. Their biggest campaign was to bring David Hicks back to Australia. They invited residents of Bennelong (John Howard’s seat) to write to the PM saying “I want you to bring David Hicks home”. 10,143 residents obliged, about one in eight voters. Solomon believes Getup’s campaign was instrumental in Hicks’s eventual return.

Beyond the election, the next step for Getup is international organisation. They have co-founded a new global political online community called Avaaz (which means 'voice' or 'song' in several Asian languages). Avaaz aims to "match the power and reach of global leaders and borderless corporations" and has big ambitions to tackle trans-national issues such as climate change, escalating religious conflict and corruption. Avaaz claims one million members across 192 countries "speaking with one voice".