PeaceTech News Roundup

 

PeaceTech Roundup Weekly News Highlights, April 10 - 16, 2014   Featured Story: How to Beat A Russian Occupation with Flash Mobs by Maria Stephan and Maciej Bartkowski Media and Social Media The Dangers of Being a Journalist in Pakistan (BBC, 4/16/14) Evaporated (Vanity Fair, May, 2014) Turkey Wants to Tax Facebook and Twitter (Mashable, 4/15/14) How Researchers Use Social Media To Map The Conflict In Syria (Forbes, 4/15/14) Afghan Voters Turn to Social Media to Fight Fraud (AFP, 4/14/15) Leftist Presidential Candidate in Egypt Sees Media Bias for Sisi (Los Angeles Times, 4/13/14) Myanmar Newspapers Go Black to Protest Over Jailed Journalist (BBC, 4/11/14) The Decline of Iran's Blogestan (Washington Post, 4/11/14) For Afghan Journalists, Election Brings a Sense of National Duty (New York Times, 4/11/14) Triumph of the Will: Putin's War Against Russia's Last Independent TV Channel (Guardian, 4/10/14) Technology and Science Darpa Turns Aging Surveillance Drones Into Wi-Fi Hotspots (Wired, 4/15/14) Drone Wars Are Heating up Between Google and Facebook (Guardian, 4/15/14) Eight Hopeful Legacies of the Arab Spring (New Yorker, 4/14/14) Warp Speed Ahead (Newsweek, 4/12/14) Internet Freedom in Myanmar: A Curse or An Opportunity? (Al Jazeera, 4/11/14) Somalia in High Speed Internet 'Culture Shock' (BBC, 4/10/14) Media and Social Media The Dangers of Being a Journalist in Pakistan For years, Pakistan has been considered one of the most dangerous countries for the press - But according to the report there has been modest improvement, with the recent convictions of six people for the killing of a television journalist. For many journalists, the risks still remain as Pakistan ranks tenth on the Impunity Index. See the full article (BBC, 4/16/14) Click to read about USIP's upcoming event "Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Pakistan and the South Asia Region" on April, 23, 2014 at 10:00am. [Return to top] Evaporated Syria is the most dangerous place in the world for journalists. More than 60 have been killed there since the war began, and many others have been kidnapped, becoming pawns in the conflict. The author picks up the trail of two colleagues, Austin Tice and Jim Foley, who vanished in 2012. See the full article (Vanity Fair, May, 2014) [Return to top] Turkey Wants to Tax Facebook and Twitter In a new stage in Turkey's strife against U.S. social media companies, the Turkish government now wants Twitter and Facebook to pay taxes to its treasury - despite the fact that neither have an office in Turkey. All social media companies that do business in Turkey should pay taxes to the Turkish Government and have an office in the country, said Turkey's Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek in a press conference on Tuesday, according to news reports. See the full article (Mashable, Lorenzo Francheschi-Bicchierai, 4/15/14) [Return to top] How Researchers Use Social Media To Map The Conflict In Syria The Syria Conflict Mapping Project is an initiative launched by the Center to examine the massive amounts of citizen-generated information related to the Syrian conflict that is available online. Posts on social media help to detail the growth of opposition armed groups in each governorate within Syria; show the current geographic delineation of pro and anti-government forces and provides up-to-date analysis on the current state of the conflict. See the full article (Forbes, Federico Guerrini, 4/15/14) [Return to top] Afghan Voters Turn to Social Media to Fight Fraud Fed-up with the massive rigging that took place in previous elections, Afghan voters have been using social media to highlight alleged fraud, and officials are starting to take notice. Smartphone videos of ballots being stuffed at breakneck speed, voter harassment outside polling booths, and papers scattered in the street would raise serious questions about a vote's viability in the West. See the full article (AFP, 4/14/15) [Return to top] Leftist Presidential Candidate in Egypt Sees Media Bias for Sisi Leftist presidential hopeful Hamdeen Sabahi on Sunday bemoaned what he called Egyptian media's "blatant" backing for his prime opponent, former army chief Abdel Fattah Sisi. "The media are promoting an image that all Egyptians will undoubtedly vote for Sisi, and this is against the reality of Egyptians who have deposed two [ruling] regimes," Sabahi said. See the full article (Los Angeles Times, Amro Hassan, 4/13/14) [Return to top] Myanmar Newspapers Go Black to Protest Over Jailed Journalist Several newspapers in Myanmnar have printed black front pages to protest against recent arrests and jail terms handed out to journalists. The protest comes after a court on Monday jailed a journalist for a year over charges that included "disturbing a public servant" and trespass. See the full article (BBC, 4/11/14) Click to read about USIP's upcoming event "China's Roles in the World" on April, 25, 2014 at 8:30am. [Return to top] The Decline of Iran's Blogestan Iran became a "nation of bloggers" between early 2000 and 2009, as a vibrant, diverse set of online blogs became the platform for expression for thousands of Iranians, ranging from political activists, poets and sports fans to the often-overlooked class of hardline religious conservatives. This Persian blogosphere, or "Blogestan," however, is not what it used to be. See the full article (Washington Post, Fred Petrossian, Arash Abadpour and Mahsa Alimardani, 4/11/14) [Return to top] For Afghan Journalists, Election Brings a Sense of National Duty As the raucous news outlets of Afghanistan have come into their own in recent years, they have taken to criticizing government officials and institutions with an enthusiasm that borders on glee. So it is a measure of the urgency that Afghans are feeling about their presidential election that even the country's gadfly class has eased up on the criticism and taken on more of a cheerleader role for the political process. See the full article (New York Times, Azam Ahmed and Habib Zahori, 4/11/14)*NYT subscription may be required to access full story [Return to top] Triumph of the Will: Putin's War Against Russia's Last Independent TV Channel Vladimir Putin won the war in Crimea without a bullet being fired. But to triumph in a very different war - that against independent Russian media - he didn't even have to bring in the army. In today's Russia, there are very different instruments for this kind of thing. See the full article (Guardian, Tikhon Dzyadko, 4/10/14) [Return to top] Featured Story from the USIP Foreign Policy Peace Channel How to Beat A Russian Occupation with Flash Mobs by Maria Stephan and Maciej Bartkowski The prospect of Russian incursion raises the question of how Ukrainians -- outnumbered, outgunned, and more than likely unsupported by Western militaries -- might be able to resist. Though there have been murmurs of Moscow's troops being met with a guerilla campaign, Ukrainians best hope for challenging Russian aggression might be to follow the same method used to oust Kiev's venally corrupt regime: civil resistance. See the full article [Return to top] Technology and Science Darpa Turns Aging Surveillance Drones Into Wi-Fi Hotspots A fleet of surveillance drones once deployed in the skies over Iraq is being repurposed to provide aerial Wi-Fi in far-flung corners of the world, according to Darpa. RQ-7 Shadow drones that the Army flew in Iraq for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions are now becoming wireless hubs for connectivity in remote conflict zones where challenging communication environments can mean the difference between being ambushed and getting reinforcements. See the full article (Wired, Allen McDuffee, 4/15/14) [Return to top] Drone Wars Are Heating up Between Google and Facebook Drone wars are heating up between Google and Facebook, as the two internet giants vie with each other to take the high ground - literally - in the battle for the eyeballs of the planet. In the battle that has been shaping up for several years now, the number one and number two websites on the planet are each seeking to gain the upper hand over the other. That battle now has moved from ground zero to the skies overhead, as Google and Facebook vie for control over what might be called aerial resources as the rivals go head to head in the war for market share in the air. See the full article (Guardian, Alan Milner, 4/15/14) [Return to top] Eight Hopeful Legacies of the Arab Spring Many of the demographic and technological forces that underpinned the Arab Spring are still in place. The Arab population is young and increasingly well educated, Momani reminded the audience. And, thanks to the Internet and other new technologies, young people have access to a lot more news and information than their parents did, which makes it more difficult for the élites to manipulate, or to ignore, them. See the full article (New Yorker, John Cassidy, 4/14/14) Click to read "Bosnia's Protests: What Will it Take to Spur Change?" an Olive Branch Post by Viola Gienger. [Return to top] Warp Speed Ahead Pakistan's information communications and technology sector is resilient. Despite the country's widely-reported economic challenges, this sector has been one of the largest contributors to the economy over the last decade. Islamabad is committed not simply to preserving these gains but building on them, sustainably and cleanly. See the full article (Newsweek, Anusha Rahman Khan, 4/12/14) [Return to top] Internet Freedom in Myanmar: A Curse or An Opportunity? Nearly three years ago, after decades of military rule, the country began a transition toward civilian rule. A year later, prior restraint of the media was abolished and the Internet - once among the most restricted in the world - opened up. Today, the Burmese can access whatever they want online. But such freedom has come with a price. See the full article (Al Jazeera, Jillian C. York, 4/11/14) [Return to top] Somalia in High Speed Internet 'Culture Shock' Some residents of Somalia's capital have been experiencing a form of "culture shock" since fibre optic services launched over the last week, an Internet provider has told the BBC. The al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab group issued a directive in January ordering all Internet services to be stopped, saying those who did not comply would be seen as "working with the enemy" and dealt with according to Islamic law. See the full article (BBC, 4/10/14) Click to read about USIP's upcoming event "Progress or Peril in Somalia?" on April, 22, 2014 at 10:00am. [Return to top] Did we miss anything?     Share this: | Forward this to a Friend

PeaceTech News Roundup

 

PeaceTech Roundup Weekly News Highlights, April 3 - 9, 2014   Featured Story: "Never Again" Isn't Enough by Jonas Claes Media and Social Media Why We Need Women Journalists on the Front Lines (CNN, 4/9/14) Two Side to Ethiopia - the Plea for Press Freedom (AllAfrica, 4/9/14) #BBCtrending: #SaveAleppo - Syria's Cry for Help (BBC, 4/9/14) Pakistani Media Group's Staff Suffer Third Attack in Three Weeks (Guardian, 4/9/14) 'Hate Speech Pours Poison Into the Heart' (Irrawaddy, 4/9/14) Afghan Turnout Boosted by Social Media (Deutsche Welle, 4/8/14) The Syrian Filmmakers Aiming to Change Your View of the War (CNN, 4/8/14) Pakistani Taliban Launch its Urdu Website (Times of India, 4/6/14) Cuba's State Media Denounce 'Secret Twitter' as proof of US cyber-war (Guardian, 4/4/14) Journalist Shot Dead, Another Injured in Afghanistan (NBC News, Fazul Rahim, 4/4/14) Media Shield Law Should Focus On Protecting, Not Defining, Journalists (Forbes, 4/4/2014) Technology and Science A Global Campaign to Monitor the "Digital Weapons" Trade (TechPresident, 4/8/14) U.S. Won't Share Invasion Intel With Ukraine (Daily Beast, 4/8/14) The Crowd Is Dead, Long Live the Crowd (Wired, 4/8/14) West Point to House Cyber Warfare Research Institute (USA Today, 4/8/14) How Technology Failed to Fix Kenya's Election (NextGov, 4/7/14) After Genocide, Rwanda Looks to Tech (Washington Post, 4/4/14) Making a Difference in Hell (Daily Beast, 4/4/14) Media and Social Media Why We Need Women Journalists on the Front Lines Do we need women in the front lines of journalism? Don't doubt it for a second. We all suffered a terrible loss when an Afghan policeman shot and killed the extraordinarily talented AP photographer Anja Niedringhaus last week. Women journalists remain concentrated in "women's" subjects such as family, style and health. That means we are looking and trying to understand the world mostly through men's eyes when it comes to foreign affairs, justice and politics. See the full article (CNN, Frida Ghitis, 4/9/14) [Return to top] Two Side to Ethiopia - the Plea for Press Freedom There are two Ethiopias. Or better said there two narratives about Ethiopia. On one side, there is the Ethiopia as celebrated by the international aid community and the European Union. On the other side there is the Ethiopia as criticized by press freedom and human rights groups. A country ruled by an authoritarian regime, the second largest jailer of journalists in Africa, a country which misuses laws on anti-terrorism and civil society regulation to chill speech and prevent journalists from doing their legitimate watchdog work. See the full article (AllAfrica, Jean-Paul Marthoz, 4/9/14) [Return to top] #BBCtrending: #SaveAleppo - Syria's Cry for Help There's a major social media campaign underway to raise awareness about the desperate situation for many people in Aleppo, Syria- using the hashtag #SaveAleppo. There have been almost 120,000 tweets using the hashtags #SaveAleppo and #Save_Aleppo since the campaign kicked off on Friday. And that's just on Twitter. See the full article (BBC, 4/9/14) [Return to top] Pakistani Media Group's Staff Suffer Third Attack in Three Weeks A Pakistani media group, Express Media, has just suffered its sixth attack in nine months, and the third within three weeks. A hand grenade was thrown at the home of Jamshed Baghwan, the Express News bureau chief in Peshawar, on Sunday (6 April). It exploded near the gate but no one was injured. See the full article (Guardian, Roy Greenslade, 4/9/14) Click to read about USIP's upcoming event "Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Pakistan and the South Asia Region" on April, 23, 2014 at 10:00am. [Return to top] 'Hate Speech Pours Poison Into the Heart' Well-known Burmese blogger and activist Nay Phone Latt launched the Panzagar (flower speech) campaign last week, which aims to oppose hate speech, a practice of attacking a person or group on the basis of race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. See the full article (Irrawaddy, San Yamin Aung, 4/9/14) [Return to top] Afghan Turnout Boosted by Social Media Activists and experts say that social media campaigns were among the factors behind an unprecedented high turnout in the Afghan elections. An estimated seven million Afghans went to the polls, despite Taliban threats. See the full article (Deutsche Welle, Masood Saifullah, 4/8/14) [Return to top] The Syrian Filmmakers Aiming to Change Your View of the War Charif Kiwan heads up Abounaddara, a collective of Syrian filmmakers who are hoping to affect change in how the Syrian conflict is portrayed, both by President Bashar al-Assad and the media at large. Abounaddara's members -- all volunteer, all anonymous -- create short films, generally two to five minutes long, in which they give a voice to ordinary citizens. They try to capture the day-to-day lives of Syrians, whether they live inside the country, in a nearby refugee camp, or further abroad in exile. See the full article (CNN, Daisy Carrington, 4/8/14) [Return to top] Pakistani Taliban Launch its Urdu Website The banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan has launched its Urdu website hosting videos, a magazine, and interviews and statements of its top leaders. Interestingly, the website has also given links to certain YouTube videos but those don't work as the popular video sharing website is banned by the government. See the full article (Times of India, 4/6/14) [Return to top] Cuba's State Media Denounce 'Secret Twitter' as Proof of US Cyber-War Revelations of a secret US government programme to set up a cellphone-based social network in Cuba are being trumpeted in the island's official media as proof of Havana's repeated allegations that Washington is waging a "cyber-war" to try to stir up unrest. "ZunZuneo joins an extensive list of secret anti-Cuban operations" including the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 and plots to assassinate Fidel Castro, state news agency Prensa Latina said. See the full article (Guardian, 4/4/14) [Return to top] Journalist Shot Dead, Another Injured in Afghanistan A police officer shot two foreign journalists in eastern Afghanistan on Friday, killing one and wounding the other. Award-winning Associated Press photographer Anja Niedringhaus was killed while getting into a vehicle with reporter Kathy Gannon at a district government compound in remote Khost province, provincial spokesman Baryalai Rawan told NBC News. See the full article (Forbes, Jason Stverak, 4/4/2014) [Return to top] Media Shield Law Should Focus On Protecting, Not Defining, Journalists The media has long been clamoring for a federal shield law to protect journalists from prosecution and government abuse, and now Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) claims that the Senate has the votes to pass the Free Flow of Information Act (FFIA). The bill would codify protections for journalists, but it's all bark and no bite: by using restrictive parameters to define who is and isn't a protected journalist, it would only erect artificial and unnecessary barriers within the reporting community. See the full article (Forbes, Greg Satell, 1/18/14) [Return to top] Featured Story from the USIP Foreign Policy Peace Channel "Never Again" Isn't Enough by Jonas Claes The 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide offers an opportune moment to reflect on the horrific events of 1994, and honor the countless victims and survivors who still carry the collective trauma of mass murder. Remembering these deliberate efforts to extinguish an entire ethnic community should not only give us pause, but also encourage our atrocity prevention community, including humanitarian and peace organizations around the world, to rethink how such failures of humanity can guide us forward, beyond "Never Again" slogans. See the full article [Return to top] Technology and Science A Global Campaign to Monitor the "Digital Weapons" Trade It might seem that there is little connection between Milan and the atrocities occurring in Syria under the regime of President Bashar al-Assad but we now know that a little known Italian tech company called Area SpA was providing Assad with technology that could virtually allow him to seize and search any e-mail that passed through the country. This problem, which some activists have called the "digital arms trade" is at the heart of a new global campaign launched on April 4 by an international group of leading NGOs. They banded together to create the Coalition Against Unlawful Surveillance Exports (CAUSE), calling for governments to take action on the international trade in communication surveillance technologies. See the full article (TechPresident, Carola Frediani, 4/8/14) Click to read about USIP's upcoming event "Consolidating Democratic Gains or Cementing Sectarian Divides: Prospects for Iraq's April 30 Elections" on April, 16, 2014 at 1:30pm. [Return to top] The Crowd Is Dead, Long Live the Crowd Much has been said about the crowd as a means of empowering people through technology. It harnesses the global reach of the Internet to make it possible for a large group of individuals to give a little each to create something great together. There have been numerous examples of collective wisdom, or in most cases collective funds, catapulting brilliant ideas to success. Crowd-funding and crowd-sourcing are definitely here to stay. See the full article (Wired, Bartholomeo Guarienti, 4/8/14) [Return to top] U.S. Won't Share Invasion Intel With Ukraine U.S. intelligence agencies now have detailed information that Russia has amassed the kind of forces needed for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But the Obama administration hasn't shared with Ukraine the imagery, intercepts, and analysis that pinpont the location of the Russian troops ready to seize more Ukrainian land, The Daily Beast has learned. it would be particularly useful to the fledgling government in Ukraine that lacks the satellites, sensors and intercept technology to learn the details of the military force that looks like it is about to invade its territory. See the full article (Daily Beast, Eli Lake, 4/8/14) [Return to top] West Point to House Cyber Warfare Research Institute The Army's academy has established a cyber warfare research institute to groom elite cyber troops and solve thorny problems for the Army and the nation in this new war-fighting domain. The U.S. Army Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., plans to build a cyber brain trust unprecedented within the service academies, filling 75 positions over the next three years - including scholars in technology, psychology, history and law, among other fields. See the full article (USA Today, Joe Gould, 4/8/14) [Return to top] How Technology Failed to Fix Kenya's Election This December 2013 report from the U.S. Agency for International Development describes more than a dozen interferences that foiled the international community's attempts to use technology to improve outcomes in Kenya's March 2013 elections. The technological interventions aimed at securing that peaceful outcome were largely a mess, however, as outlined by the report titled USAID Support for Kenya's 2013 Elections: Rapid Assessment Review. See the full article (NextGov, Joseph Marks, 4/7/14) [Return to top] After Genocide, Rwanda Looks to Tech The Rwandan genocide still shadows Immaculee Mukamusoni's life. Ethnic Hutu militias killed her mother, father and siblings, and for the next two decades, she had little support. Today, she and her husband work as day laborers on a farm to provide for their five children. But this past week, she boarded a bus that she hopes will transform her world. Outfitted with 20 laptops, it is a central part of a government initiative to bring technology to impoverished rural areas. See the full article (Washington Post, Sudarsan Raghavan, 4/4/14) Click to read "Peace Education in Sudan? Not as Unlikely as it Might Sound" an Olive Branch Post by Linda Bishai. [Return to top] Making a Difference in Hell Neema Namadamu founded the Maman Shujaa--the "Hero Women of the Congo." Started by ten women in an Internet cafe, Namadamu earned international recognition. "I care about technology," she explains. "I connect women around the world." She does that by partnering with World Pulse, and providing accounts of what its like to live in a place where gender equality practically does not exist. Namadamu posted a petition on Change.org that asked President Obama to help integrate Congo's government with the African Union. It has already garnered more than 100,000 signatures. See the full article (Daily Beast, Erin Cunningham, 4/4/14) [Return to top] Did we miss anything?     Share this: | Forward this to a Friend