For Twitter, Free Speech Is a High-Wire Act

Twitter Inc.'s growing ambitions are making it harder to carry the Internet's free-speech banner.

Chief Executive Dick Costolo promotes Twitter as a protector of more than 200 million people who broadcast their lives, be it love for a new pop song or Tahrir Square protests. But increasingly, freewheeling tweets are clashing with divergent global laws and standards in markets where Twitter is spreading its wings.

"You have to abide by the rule of law in the countries in which you operate," the 49-year-old Mr. Costolo said in an interview at Twitter's San Francisco headquarters. Defending free expression "gets more challenging for us as a company as we become an ever-growing global company, and have a presence and offices and people on the ground around the world."

In recent weeks, Twitter has found itself labeled a censor, an enabler of hate speech and a tool of Big Brother. It drew flak in July for turning over to French prosecutors information about users who tweeted anti-Semitic messages.  Read more >>

Egypt uprising film depicts crippling social divide

When horse and camel riders attacked protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square during last year's uprising, Egyptian filmmaker Yousry Nasrallah was struck by one of the most vivid examples of how Egypt's huge class divide is exploited by powerful elites.

Nasrallah's "After the Battle" tells the story of how one of the horsemen struggles to come to terms with his role in the aftermath of one of the most violent incidents of the 18-day-uprising which toppled former President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011.

Actor Bassem Samra portrays impoverished tour guide Mahmoud from Cairo's Pyramids area, who is coerced into taking part in the brutal attack on crowds of anti-government demonstrators packed into Cairo's streets that has since become known as "The Battle of the Camel".

He is badly beaten by protesters and in the months afterwards he and his family are taunted and ridiculed for allowing himself to be duped into taking part in an attack that is widely thought to have been instigated by the agents of Mubarak's state apparatus. Read more >>

How the Corporate Media is Snookering You on Syria

For those versed in the black arts of propaganda, the hijacking of Arab Spring must be a beauteous thing to behold. First came evidently spontaneous uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. Then some up-and-comer in Washington or London or Paris had a brainstorm, a new twist on a very old idea: if you can’t beat em, join em. Or even better, co-opt them, and use them for your own purposes.

The old way of getting rid of “inconvenient” leaders was so 20th-century—in the case of Saddam Hussein, a monstrous lie followed by a massive bloodletting on both sides. Tahrir Square suggested how to bring down a regime in a manner far less costly and far more palatable to the public: lots of medium-sized and little lies, war through Twitter, war through expendable proxies. Provide financial incentives to key figures to publicly renounce the old leadership, create a steady stream of heart-rending moments and photos and allegations, generate endless “human rights violations” by baiting the government into a military response, then very publicly petition international bodies for redress of humanitarian concerns. Read more>>