Saudi-UAE attack on Qatar seems to have used every dirty trick in the book: hacking, fake news prepositioned opeds. https://twitter.com/KenRoth/status/873176836708204546 …
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========The #UAE govnt hacked my email & placed me on a #GCC-wide blacklist. I'm a grad student. My op-ed in the @nytimes https://t.co/ETJlqIxaa3— Kristina Bogos (@krisbogos) December 15, 2016
Awkward: Saudi interpreter ignores German FM's defence of Qatar, embarrassment ensues
https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2017/7/4/awkward-saudi-interpreter-ignores-german-fms-defence-of-qatar
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Note that the French minister was in Qatar and Held press conference there was no special translator! The Gulf crisis
French Foreign Minister's mistrust of translating of Saudi Arabia after mute the comment of German Foreign Minister
in last visit
so
French Minister accompanied by a special translator to stop saudi Censorship
=========
The price of criticising the UAE
Online vilification continues
26 Feb 2015: As regular readers will know, some odd things have been happening since I raised questions about the Global Network for Rights and Development (GNRD), an organisation registered in Norway which has links to the United Arab Emirates and takes an unusually favourable view of the UAE's human rights performance.
I have also raised questions about another Emirati-linked "human rights" group, the Swiss-based International Gulf Organization (IGO), which earlier this month attacked Human Rights Watch over its criticisms of the UAE.
It was a couple of days after my most recent blog post about GNRD that the weird things began. The details are here and here but, just to recap:
Someone created a fake Facebook profile using my name and photograph.
My own Facebook account was suspended after someone complained that I was using a false name.
Someone attempted to hack into my Twitter account.
A Twitter account called @Media_intel began making false claims about me. One of its tweets said I was being paid $50,000 a year by Qatar; another said I had been expelled from Yemen for a sexual offence.
The claims were then retweeted by hundreds of fake Twitter accounts.
Interestingly, these same fake accounts had been used earlier to mass-tweet links to a speech by Loai Deeb, the president of GNRD. This leads me to believe that whoever organised or paid for the promotion of Deeb's speech through fake accounts also organised or paid for the retweeting of @Media_intel's claims.
Now for a brief update.
Someone has set up a fake Twitter account in my name (@BrianWhitak). This hasn't been very active so far but it includes some tweets copied from my real Twitter account (@Brian_Whit).
During a periodic check of the statistics for my website I found there had been 52,300 page views last Friday and 27,638 on Saturday. As far as I'm aware, both these figures are far higher than I have ever had before on a single day. Daily traffic to the website is usually in the range of 3,000-4,000 page views and doesn't fluctuate much. I can't see any explanation for this surge in traffic except, perhaps, as an attempt to crash the website.
Several new Twitter accounts have begun posting about my imagined connection with Qatar
I have also received emails thanking me for subscribing to websites that I haven't subscribed to.
One was a dating website; the other was bayt.com, a job-search website. Someone has created a fake profile/CV at bayt.com which uses my photograph (below) and says I am looking for employment in Qatar. -
i was particularly intrigued by the photograph of myself. It has appeared only a handful of times on the internet and I don't recall when or where it was taken, but I do remember the last time I saw it.
The same picture was used in a Tweet by @emarati001 in 2012 when I was still working at the Guardian and the paper came under attack from the UAE:
The photograph also figured in a Twitter campaign (accompanied by a YouTube video) under the hashtag #uk_supports_traitors:
The main cause of the 2012 campaign against the Guardian was an article by Said Nasser al-Teniji, an Emirati Islamist, published on the paper's website. The online abuse was directed mainly against me and Ian Black, the Guardian's Middle East editor, even though neither of us had played any part in the publication of Teniji's article.
Ian Black referred to this later in a Guardian article about
the UAE's sensitivies:
"The Emirati authorities ... do not take negative publicity lying down. A recent comment piece in the Guardian by an Islah activist has attracted particular venom. The fightback in Abu Dhabi has been fast and abusive. Under a Twitter hashtag #UK_supports_traitors the Guardian and BBC have been accused of being in the pay of the Qataris; knowledge of Arabic is produced as evidence of involvement in 'espionage'. Harassed foreign office diplomats are being forced to explain that the British government does not control the British press.
"But the campaign is wider than that. The UAE has been lobbying hard in both Washington and London against their 'honeymoon' with the new regimes of the Arab spring, with special emphasis on Egypt. It is perhaps over-stating the case to call this effort a Gulf 'counter-revolution' but the Cold War notion of 'containment' certainly fits the bill."
If I were to ask Emirati officials about this online harassment I'm sure they would deny it has anything to do with their government. They would probably attribute it to over-zealous Emirati citizens who feel slighted by criticism of their country.
What puzzles me, though, is why Emiratis specifically would indulge in such crude behaviour. I have probably said critical things about every country in the Middle East at some time or other and the reactions have been varied, but I have seen nothing from other countries in the region quite like this.
Note that the French minister was in Qatar and Held press conference there was no special translator! The Gulf crisis
French Foreign Minister's mistrust of translating of Saudi Arabia after mute the comment of German Foreign Minister
in last visit
so
French Minister accompanied by a special translator to stop saudi Censorship
=========
The price of criticising the UAE
Online vilification continues
26 Feb 2015: As regular readers will know, some odd things have been happening since I raised questions about the Global Network for Rights and Development (GNRD), an organisation registered in Norway which has links to the United Arab Emirates and takes an unusually favourable view of the UAE's human rights performance.
I have also raised questions about another Emirati-linked "human rights" group, the Swiss-based International Gulf Organization (IGO), which earlier this month attacked Human Rights Watch over its criticisms of the UAE.
It was a couple of days after my most recent blog post about GNRD that the weird things began. The details are here and here but, just to recap:
Someone created a fake Facebook profile using my name and photograph.
My own Facebook account was suspended after someone complained that I was using a false name.
Someone attempted to hack into my Twitter account.
A Twitter account called @Media_intel began making false claims about me. One of its tweets said I was being paid $50,000 a year by Qatar; another said I had been expelled from Yemen for a sexual offence.
The claims were then retweeted by hundreds of fake Twitter accounts.
Interestingly, these same fake accounts had been used earlier to mass-tweet links to a speech by Loai Deeb, the president of GNRD. This leads me to believe that whoever organised or paid for the promotion of Deeb's speech through fake accounts also organised or paid for the retweeting of @Media_intel's claims.
Now for a brief update.
Someone has set up a fake Twitter account in my name (@BrianWhitak). This hasn't been very active so far but it includes some tweets copied from my real Twitter account (@Brian_Whit).
During a periodic check of the statistics for my website I found there had been 52,300 page views last Friday and 27,638 on Saturday. As far as I'm aware, both these figures are far higher than I have ever had before on a single day. Daily traffic to the website is usually in the range of 3,000-4,000 page views and doesn't fluctuate much. I can't see any explanation for this surge in traffic except, perhaps, as an attempt to crash the website.
Several new Twitter accounts have begun posting about my imagined connection with Qatar
I have also received emails thanking me for subscribing to websites that I haven't subscribed to.
One was a dating website; the other was bayt.com, a job-search website. Someone has created a fake profile/CV at bayt.com which uses my photograph (below) and says I am looking for employment in Qatar. -
i was particularly intrigued by the photograph of myself. It has appeared only a handful of times on the internet and I don't recall when or where it was taken, but I do remember the last time I saw it.
The same picture was used in a Tweet by @emarati001 in 2012 when I was still working at the Guardian and the paper came under attack from the UAE:
The photograph also figured in a Twitter campaign (accompanied by a YouTube video) under the hashtag #uk_supports_traitors:
The main cause of the 2012 campaign against the Guardian was an article by Said Nasser al-Teniji, an Emirati Islamist, published on the paper's website. The online abuse was directed mainly against me and Ian Black, the Guardian's Middle East editor, even though neither of us had played any part in the publication of Teniji's article.
Ian Black referred to this later in a Guardian article about
the UAE's sensitivies:
"The Emirati authorities ... do not take negative publicity lying down. A recent comment piece in the Guardian by an Islah activist has attracted particular venom. The fightback in Abu Dhabi has been fast and abusive. Under a Twitter hashtag #UK_supports_traitors the Guardian and BBC have been accused of being in the pay of the Qataris; knowledge of Arabic is produced as evidence of involvement in 'espionage'. Harassed foreign office diplomats are being forced to explain that the British government does not control the British press.
"But the campaign is wider than that. The UAE has been lobbying hard in both Washington and London against their 'honeymoon' with the new regimes of the Arab spring, with special emphasis on Egypt. It is perhaps over-stating the case to call this effort a Gulf 'counter-revolution' but the Cold War notion of 'containment' certainly fits the bill."
If I were to ask Emirati officials about this online harassment I'm sure they would deny it has anything to do with their government. They would probably attribute it to over-zealous Emirati citizens who feel slighted by criticism of their country.
What puzzles me, though, is why Emiratis specifically would indulge in such crude behaviour. I have probably said critical things about every country in the Middle East at some time or other and the reactions have been varied, but I have seen nothing from other countries in the region quite like this.
================
Critics of UAE face new harassment
Who hired the private investigator?
28 March 2015: Two Americans who publicly criticised the exploitation of migrant workers in the United Arab Emirates have found themselves under investigation by a private detective, the New York Times reports.
A private investigator called Loren Berger has been making inquiries about Andrew Ross, a professor at New York University (NYU), and Ariel Kaminer, a journalist who formerly worked for the New York Times – reportedly in the hope of finding people who would say negative things about them.
Earlier this month Ross was refused admission to the Emirates, where NYU has a campus. Ross, who has frequently criticised the university's arrangement with the UAE, had been planning to continue his research into labour conditions there.
Kaminer reported critically on UAE labour conditions in an article for the New York Times which was published last May.
Sea O'Driscoll, a freelance reporter who worked with Kaminer on the article, has since told the New York Times that he was offered "generous payments and immunity from prosecution if he would write favorably about the [UAE] government". He said he had refused and had not been permitted to re-enter the country after leaving for a short period, the paper added.
When contacted by the New York Times, Berger – the detective – said: "I can't tell you who I’m working for ... I don't know who the client is. It's not unusual." The NYT's report continues:
On January 29, Ms. Berger called Susan Fraiman, a professor of English at the University of Virginia. Professor Fraiman had written critically about some of Professor Ross’s academic work.
Ms Berger “said something like, ‘We’re looking for people to comment negatively,’ ” Professor Fraiman recalled in an interview. “I told her that I don’t know him personally. It seemed odd.”
She said that she had asked about the context of the investigation, and that Ms Berger had told her the president of NYU was under fire over the university’s involvement in the Emirates.
As Professor Fraiman recalled the conversation, “She said: ‘We’re investigating Andrew Ross for his comments about this and a particular journalist, Ariel Kaminer, who wrote about it. By the way, do you know her?’ ”
Both Professor Fraiman and Ms. Kaminer attended Princeton University, but at different times; both said they did not know each other.
New York University has issued a statement saying it has no knowledge of Berger's investigation and no involvement in it. “It’s reprehensible and offensive on its face, and we call on whoever is involved to desist immediately.”
Asked by the New York Times if the UAE also condemns the surveillance or can cast any light on it, a spokeswoman for the Emirates embassy in Washington did not respond. The paper notes that the UAE government "has a record of striking back at those critical of migrant labour conditions there".
Regular readers of this blog will know that I have been facing persistent online harassment as a result of articles I wrote about two strange "human rights" organisations which have links to the UAE.
One was the International Gulf Organization (IGO), based in Switzerland, which describes itself as a "non-governmental organisation dedicated to implementing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at regional and international levels". Last month IGO published a vitriolic attack on Human Rights Watch which it accused of "targeting" the UAE in its annual World Report.
The other organisation is the Global Network for Rights and Development (GNRD), based in Norway, which also has links to the UAE and promotes an unusually favourable view of human rights there.
The harassment, which began in mid-February and was still continuing yesterday, has included repeated attempts to hack my Twitter and Facebook accounts, the creation of fake online profiles using my name or photograph, and the use of hundreds of fake Twitter accounts to post false and defamatory allegations about me.
These include claims that I am paid $50,000 a year by the government of Qatar and that I am evading tax.
A video posted anonymously on YouTube claims that I was in Yemen during the uprising against the Saleh regime (which I was not) and induced a Yemeni man to have sex with me by offering him money and a job and Qatar.
The latest effort is a blog called "Brian Whitaker owns fake companies", where an article purportedly written by someone called Adam L Conner claims:
"In 2007, Brian was made redundant from The Guardian because of his bias articles that favoured Qatar’s position on issues in the Middle East."
In fact, I left the Guardian in 2012 – five years later – for reasons that were unconnected with anything I had ever written about Qatar. As evidence of my supposed support for Qatar, Conner cites one of my blog posts which criticised Sheikha Moza, wife of the former emir. Bizarrely, Conner claims the article "had a clear intention of glamourising the Qatari royal family".
There is also a new Wikipedia Arabic page titled "Brian Whitaker, Reporting for Qatar", though as yet it has no content.
I made a formal complaint that Conner's blog posts were defamatory and received an email from Google saying that if I wanted them removed I would have to get a court order. The email continued:
"Blogger hosts third-party content. It is not a creator or mediator of that content. We encourage you to resolve any disputes directly with the individual who posted the content.
"If you cannot reach an agreement and choose to pursue legal action against the individual who posted the content, and that action results in a judicial determination that the material is illegal or should be removed, please send us the court order seeking removal.
"In cases where the individual who posted the content is anonymous [as in this case], we may provide you with user information pursuant to a valid third party subpoena or other appropriate legal process against Google Inc."
The same fake Twitter accounts posting defamatory allegations about me are also being used to promote the work of GNRD and its founder-president, Loai Deeb, a lawyer of Palestinian origin who previously ran a fake university in Norway which closed down under threat of legal action by the Norwegian authorities.
Among other things, the fake accounts have been promoting a 27-minute speech about terrorism that Deeb gave last month. It has now been retweeted almost 25,000 times and a video of the speech itself, posted on YouTube, has supposedly been viewed an unbelievable 1,185,864 times.
Deeb appears to be an extraordinarily popular Twitter user, with almost 1.2 million followers. However, he has posted only 387 tweets – which means that on average each tweet must have attracted more than 3,000 new followers.
Some characteristics of the current online harassment reveal striking similarities to a campaign organised by supporters of the UAE in 2012 when I was still working at the Guardian. An opinion article by a member of the Muslim Brotherhood which appeared on the Guardian's website infuriated the UAE government, and this resulted in online abuse directed against me and the paper's Middle East editor, Ian Black. The UAE supporters wrongly assumed that we had been involved in publishing the article, though in fact neither of us knew anything about it before it appeared
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