News Roundup Archive

Thursday, November 10, 2011

USIP's Media, Conflict & Peacebuilding Roundup

United States Institute of Peace

 

Center of Innovation: Media, Conflict and Peacebuilding

Weekly News Roundup, November 3 - 9, 2011

Media and Journalism

Internet and Social Media

What's New from PeaceMedia

**Click here to subscribe to USIP's Science, Technology and Peacebuilding News Roundup.**


Media and Journalism

First, They Came for the Journalists
The number of journalists attacked or killed [in Russia] dwarfs the number of closed cases, and the figures, worn and oft cited to the point of cliché, are only swelling. One year after Oleg Kashin was brutally attacked in Moscow, the noted journalist looks back on the clownishly futile investigations -- and the climate of fear that threatens his profession.
See the full article (Foreign Policy, Julia Ioffe, 11/9/11)
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Press Freedom Fears as Ecuador President Rages Against the Media He Doesn't Control
President Raphael Correa has become increasingly critical of the media. His weekly speeches on TV and radio are laced with criticism of journalists, newspapers and publishers. Critics have also been cowed by the use of criminal defamation actions with excessively punitive claims for damages.
See the full article (Guardian, Roy Greenslade, 11/9/11)
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Why Do the US Media Believe the Worst about Iran?
"One of the oldest tricks in the run-up to a war is to spread terrifying stories of things that the enemy may be about to do. Government officials plant these tales, journalists water them and the public, for the most part, swallow them." I wrote this paragraph in December 2002, some three months before the US launched its invasion of Iraq, but it seems just as applicable today in relation to Iran.
See the full article (Guardian, Brian Whitaker, 11/9/11)
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Journalists Held as Israeli Navy Boards Gaza Peace Flotilla
A Scottish TV reporter was among a group of journalists arrested earlier today when Israeli soldiers boarded two ships sailing toward Gaza. Hassan Ghani, who works for Iran's Press TV, was detained along with Lina Attallah, managing editor of the Egyptian independent daily Al-Masry al-Youm's English edition and Jihan Hafiz, correspondent for the US-based broadcasting outlet Democracy Now!
See the full article (Guardian, Roy Greenslade, 11/4/11)
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Internet and Social Media

Hacking Palestine: A Digital Occupation
In the aftermath of the near-total shutdown of the internet and telephone network in the West Bank and Gaza Strip last week, the Palestinian Authority (PA) is attempting to figure out how, why and by whom Palestine was hacked. The Palestinian Minister of Communications has been hinting that a state may be behind the concerted attack - by which he means Israel.
See the full article (Al Jazeera, Helga Tawil-Souri, 11/9/11)
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Six-year Project to Tweet the Second World War
An Oxford history graduate has begun a six-year project to tweet events from every day of the Second World War as they happened 62 years ago. The account, @RealTimeWWII, features up to 40 tweets each day. Created by 24-year-old Alwyn Collinson, the project is an attempt to "help people feel like they're there."
See the full article (Telegraph, Christopher Williams, 11/9/11)
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Is This the WikiEnd?
Advocates of information transparency point out that even if WikiLeaks founders, the idea it represents - a transnational mechanism to disseminate information beyond the reach of any government, corporation or organization - will live on. But the notion that state secrets across the globe had been cracked open like a piñata once and for all, and that secrets will be regularly plopping into public view, seems remote.
See the full article (New York Times, David Carr, 11/5/11) *NYT sign-up may be required to view the full article
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Darpa's Plan to Trap the Next WikiLeaker: Decoy Documents
Darpa-funded researchers are building a program for "generating and distributing believable misinformation." The ultimate goal is to plant auto-generated, bogus documents in classified networks and program them to track down intruders' movements, a military research abstract reveals.
See the full article (Wired, Dawn Lim, 11/4/11)
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CIA Analysts Comb Social Media For Trouble Spots
In an anonymous industrial park, CIA analysts who jokingly call themselves the "ninja librarians" are mining the mass of information people publish about themselves overseas, tracking everything from common public opinion to revolutions. The center already had "predicted that social media in places like Egypt could be a game-changer and a threat to the regime," [the center's director] said.
See the full article (AP, 11/4/11)
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What's New from PeaceMedia

Cornel West on Occupy Wall Street: It's the Makings of a U.S. Autumn Responding to the Arab Spring - Democracy NOW!
Dr. Cornel West spoke with Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman during a visit Tuesday night to the Occupy Wall Street encampment. Some critics have expressed frustration at the protest's lack of a clear and unified message. But the Princeton University professor emphasized that "you're talking about raising political consciousness so it spills over all parts of the country, so people can begin to see what's going on through a set of different lenses, and then you begin to highlight what the more detailed demands would be.
See the full video
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USIP's Science, Technology & Peacebuilding Roundup

United States Institute of Peace

 

Center of Innovation: Science, Technology and Peacebuilding

Weekly News Roundup, November 3 - 9, 2011

Table of Contents

**Click here to subscribe to USIP's Media, Conflict and Peacebuilding News Roundup,
which includes a special section on Internet and social media.**


Researchers Spot Blue Coat Web Control Gear in Another Repressive Regime: Burma
Since Web filtering and network monitoring gear from Blue Coat Systems turned up in Syria last month, the company has been scrambling to avoid a reputation as an Internet arms provider to the world's most repressive dictatorships. A new report from Canadian researchers won't help: it shows that Blue Coat gear has been used in Burma, too.
See the full article (Forbes, Andy Greenberg, 11/9/11)
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IAEA Says Foreign Expertise Has Brought Iran to Threshold of Nuclear Capability
Intelligence provided to U.N. nuclear officials shows that Iran's government has mastered the critical steps needed to build a nuclear weapon, receiving assistance from foreign scientists to overcome key technical hurdles. Documents and other records provide new details on the role played by a former Soviet weapons scientist who allegedly tutored Iranians over several years on building high-precision detonators of the kind used to trigger a nuclear chain reaction.
See the full article (Washington Post, Joby Warrick, 11/6/11)
Click to read about USIP's upcoming event "What's Parliament Got to do With it?: Elections in the Islamic Republic of Iran" on November 18 at 2:00pm. You can also watch the live webcast!
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When War Stops, the Impact on the Environment Lives On
The marginal, semi-arid lands where so many displaced persons' camps are located may have been able to effectively support their small dispersed resident populations in the past. However, sudden large concentrations of people living in the crowded camps that emerge during conflict or after natural disasters can rapidly deplete the land's carrying capacity and make it difficult for the environment to recover.
See the full article (Huffington Post, Erin Patrick, 11/4/11)
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Rwanda Returns More Than 90 Tons of Smuggled Minerals to Congo
Rwanda has returned more than 90 metric tons of minerals this year smuggled from Democratic Republic of Congo. Electronics-industry auditing rules resulting from a U.S. law to prevent the mineral trade from supporting armed groups in Congo are spurring companies and nations in the region into implementing tracing programs and technology to monitor their mineral exports.
See the full article (Bloomberg, Michael J. Kavanagh, 11/3/11)
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Jimmy Wales: 'Wikipedia Can Topple Tyrants'
[Wikipedia founder Jimmy] Wales is tirelessly optimistic. His optimism about man's capacity to play fair and find compromises is accompanied by the firm belief that technology - and specifically its ability to open up access to information - is a force for good. "Suddenly people's access to information explodes. And the possibilities for political change are enormous. It means they're connected, that they can organise revolutions, they can learn what's going on in other countries."
See the full article (Telegraph, Kate Day, 11/3/11)
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Cold War Redux Warning Over Cyberspy Threat
It's like the Cold War never ended: U.S. intelligence agencies see Russia and China as the most significant threats to the nation's interests. Cyberattacks by Chinese and Russian intelligence services, as well corporate hackers in those countries, have swallowed up large amounts of high-tech American research and development data, and that stolen information has helped build their economies, U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded.
See the full article (CBS, 11/3/11)
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Click here to subscribe to USIP's Media, Conflict and Peacebuilding News Roundup,
which includes a special section on Internet and social media.

Did we miss anything?

 

 


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