News Roundup Archive

Thursday, August 16, 2012

USIP's Media, Conflict & Peacebuilding Roundup

 

United States Institute of Peace

 

Center of Innovation: Media, Conflict and Peacebuilding

Weekly News Roundup, August 9 - 15, 2012

Media and Journalism

Internet and Social Media

What's New from PeaceMedia


Media and Journalism

In Burma, a Delicate Balance for New Freedoms of Speech
The weekend before last, black-clad Burmese journalists took to the streets of Rangoon to rail against the suspension of two local newspapers by the country's censorship board. The Voice Weekly and The Envoy were suspended for not submitting stories for pre-publication scrutiny, a legacy of the bad old days of arbitrary rule. The protest and other related developments show how finely-balanced emerging press and speech freedoms are in Burma.
See the full article (PBS, Simon Roughneen, 8/15/12)
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Chad's Flourishing Community Radio Stations Feel the Pinch
Refugee camp radio stations set up by a development charity are loved by their audiences, but face major funding challenges. The stations use a mix of targeted social action programmes and innovations on a range of subjects, often those considered taboo in local communities. These have included interactive phone-ins and discussions to provide information, and a communications channel between [Darfuri] refugees and aid agencies.
See the full article (Guardian, Celeste Hicks, 8/14/12)
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Does Russia-Georgia-War Film Signal a Rift Between Putin and Medvedev?
A slickly produced film featuring some leading Russian military figures who accuse then-President Dmitry Medvedev of indecisiveness on the eve of Russia's brief August 2008 war with Georgia continues to produce shockwaves among the country's political elite. Timed to coincide with the fourth anniversary of the conflict, the film has been seen as an attack on Medvedev, who is now prime minister, and a bid to portray President Vladimir Putin as a far-seeing and reliable leader.
See the full article (RFE/RL, Robert Coalson, 8/13/12)
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Somalia: 2 Journalists Killed
Two more Somali journalists have been killed in Mogadishu, the capital, in the past two days, bringing the number of journalists slain in the country this year to nine. On Sunday, a man dressed in a high school uniform shot and killed Yusuf Ali Osman, a veteran reporter who has been serving as the director of Somalia's Information Ministry. None of the people involved in the nine media workers deaths this year have been prosecuted.
See the full article (AP, 8/13/12)
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Egypt Bans Two Media Executives from Travel Amid Investigation
Egypt's prosecutor-general has banned the head of a satellite channel and the editor-in-chief of an independent newspaper from travel amid allegations of incitement to kill the president and fueling sectarian strife. The decisions are the latest targeting Tawfiq Okasha, the head of the Al-Faraeen channel and Islam Afifi. Okasha was under investigation by state security prosecutors for allegedly seeking to incite violence against President Mohamed Mursi.
See the full article (Bloomberg, Tarek El-Tablawy, 8/12/12)
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Press Freedom Group Criticizes Oman for Convicting 20 Bloggers, Activists
An international press freedom organization has criticized Oman for convicting 20 activists, including prominent bloggers, on charges of illegal assembly and of insulting the nation's ruler. The cases are part of wider crackdowns against protesters and online activists in the Arabian Peninsula country, which has seen growing calls for more political openness after last year's unrest inspired by the Arab Spring.
See the full article (AP, 8/9/12)
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Pakistan's Eroding Space for Free Expression
Declared as the world's deadliest place for reporters for the past two consecutive years, Pakistan has made little progress in improving the working conditions for journalists. The Pakistani state has historically set a negative precedent by patronizing and glorifying coercive tactics toward the media. Ethnic nationalist groups and extremist religious organizations, have learned these techniques from the government and now expect to enjoy the same level of authority and impunity.
See the full article (Huffington Post, Malik Siraj Akbar, 8/9/12)
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Internet and Social Media

Facebook Shows Off Its Good Side in Aftermath of Iranian Quakes
Back in 2009, at the height of mass protests that followed Iran's disputed presidential election, Facebook emerged as an important tool for protesters to share news and information. It had such an impact that the authorities even branded Facebook a weapon in a "soft war" against the Islamic republic. As a result, users in Iran go through the hassle of going through proxy servers to circumvent the regime's efforts to block Facebook. And this week, their unsanctioned efforts were life-saving.
See the full article (RFE/RL, Hannah Kaviani, 8/15/12)
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UN Body Opens Debate on Internet Future to Public After Critics Slam Secrecy of Talks
The U.N. telecoms agency has invited the world's more than 2 billion Internet users to join a debate about the future of the Internet. Diplomats have for months been holding closed-doors discussions about proposals that include enhanced government surveillance and changing the way Internet traffic is billed. Activists say greater government control of the Internet could endanger free speech online.
See the full article (AP, 8/15/12)
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'Twitter Is My City': An Exclusive Interview with Ai Weiwei
Ai, who lived in New York for much of the 1980s, has become a patron of China's disaffected urbanites, and here, in his tranquil garden, he holds court, offering advice to the thousands of fans, bloggers, activists, and petitioners who visit from all across China and the world. Despite the government's relentless attempts to shut him up, Ai is still talking. The first change he would make to Chinese cities? Free the people.
See the full article (Foreign Policy, Jonathan Landreth, 8/13/12)
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Korea Policing the Net. Twist? It's South Korea.
A government critic who called the president a curse word on his Twitter account found it blocked. An activist whose Twitter posting likened officials to pirates for approving a controversial naval base was accused by the navy of criminal defamation. Such a crackdown on Internet freedom would be notable, but perhaps not surprising, in China, with its army of vigilant online censors. But the avid policing of social media in these cases took place in South Korea.
See the full article (New York Times, Choe Sang-Hun, 8/12/12) *NYT sign-up may be required to view the full article
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Syrians Wage Frenzied Propaganda War on Social Media
The battle for Syria is raging on the ground but also on social media, where people on both sides of the conflict are hacking, posting and spamming in a frenzied propaganda war. The Twitter feeds of news organisations have been hacked by pro-regime elements, videos purporting to show atrocities in Syria are regularly posted to YouTube and pro- or anti-government messages often flood Facebook pages.
See the full article (AFP, Marianne Barriaux, 8/12/12)
Click to read "Syria and "The Day After" Project," a USIP On the Issues by Steven Heydemann.
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Make Tweet, Not War
Lebanese political figures have become notorious for taking their rather unseemly catfights to Twitter and Facebook, leading some to wonder whether tweeting their spats is the only thing keeping these pillars of the Lebanese community from literally being at each other's throats. Perhaps Twitter, by providing Lebanese politicians with a platform to get snarky, is the only thing standing in the way of another civil war. Who needs to start shooting when you can run your mouth instead?
See the full article (Foreign Policy, Sulome Anderson, 8/10/12)
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The Anti-social Network: How al-Qaeda Survives
Given the advances in communication technology that were well underway before the 9/11 attacks, it is natural that many counter-network theorists have employed models explicitly rooted in the information age. Many theorists thought of al-Qaeda and other contemporary violent non-state actors as social networks much like those observed on the Internet. Unfortunately for us, al-Qaeda long ago understood how to lessen its organizational signature.
See the full article (Foreign Policy, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Adam Elkus, 8/9/12)
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What's New from PeaceMedia

"Scilla Elworthy: Fighting with Non-violence" - TEDxExeter
How do you deal with a bully without becoming a thug? In this wise and soulful talk, peace activist Scilla Elworthy maps out the skills we need - as nations and individuals - to fight extreme force without using force in return. To answer the question of why and how non-violence works, she evokes historical heroes - Aung San Suu Kyi, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela - and the personal philosophies that powered their peaceful protests.
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, August 9 - 15, 2012

Table of Contents


Using Satellite Imagery to Document Destruction in Syria
Add Syria to the list of places where human rights organizations are using commercially available satellite imagery to document destruction during conflict. Using satellite imagery of Syria, groups can attempt to reconstruct which units of the government and opposition are operating and where. [The town of Anadan] appears to have many impact craters from artillery -- the large number of which and clustering make it unlikely that they were aimed by chance.
See the full article (PBS, Larisa Epatko and P.J. Tobia, 8/15/12)
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When Are Drone Killings Illegal?
The Bush and Obama administrations' extraordinary program of targeted killing has resulted in the deaths of as many as 4,400 people to date. Both Presidents Bush and Obama have attempted to justify thousands of drone attacks as part of a "war" or "armed conflict." But is that correct? Targeted killing with drones in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan have generally violated the right to life because the United States is rarely part of any armed conflict in those places.
See the full article (CNN, Mary Ellen O'Connell, 8/15/12)
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Israel Tests Geo-targeted SMS Missile Warning System
Israel is testing an early-warning missile defence system that sends text messages to mobile phones located within a potential strike zone. The £6 million technology is a site-specific system. A week-long testing schedule was launched 12 August, 2012, with different major districts in the country being targeted each day. Mock messages are being sent out to civilians signed up to the three major mobile phone networks -- Cellcom, Pelephone and Orange -- in Hebrew, Arabic, English and Russian.
See the full article (Wired.co.uk, Liat Clark, 8/14/12)
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Is War Inevitable? A View from the Stars
Astrobiology is a relatively new field that attempts to put life, its origin and its evolution into a planetary perspective. It asks questions like how do planetary environments foster or inhibit the emergence of life. And once living systems gain a toehold, how do life and the planetary environment co-evolve? Looking from this vantage point, we might ask a different kind of question about war's "naturalness" and its future.
See the full article (NPR, Adam Frank, 8/14/12)
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Unable to Crack Computer Virus, Security Firm Seeks Help
Gauss, a computer virus targeting computers in Lebanon, [is] a sophisticated computer virus that may have been developed by the same nation state, or group of nation states, that developed Flame and possibly Stuxnet. Lebanon experts said previously that an American espionage campaign directed at Lebanese banks would make sense given United States concerns that Lebanon's banks have been used to back the Syrian government and Hezbollah.
See the full article (New York Times, Nicole Perlroth, 8/14/12) *NYT sign-up may be required to view the full article
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When It Comes to Human Rights, There Are No Online Security Shortcuts
As one of people who built Martus, an encrypted database used by thousands of human rights activists around the world, I routinely confront the needs of users who are not in wealthy countries. My thoughts here are focused on the democracy activists, citizen journalists, and human rights workers in the world's toughest political environments. These are people who need security more than just about anyone: it can be literally a question of life and death.
See the full article (Wired.co.uk, Patrick Ball, 8/10/12)
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Pentagon Proposes More Robust Role for its Cyber-specialists
The Pentagon has proposed that military cyber-specialists be given permission to take action outside its computer networks to defend critical U.S. computer systems - a move that officials say would set a significant precedent. The proposed rules would open the door for U.S. defense officials to act outside the confines of military-related computer networks to try to combat cyberattacks on private computers, including those in foreign countries.
See the full article (Washington Post, Ellen Nakashima, 8/9/12)
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