Un Internet furtif américain pour le printemps arabe. Washington développe un Internet furtif, tenant dans une valise, permettant aux dissidents de déjouer la censure des régimes dictatoriaux. Pourquoi la liberté d’accès au Net est-elle une constante américaine? Décryptage par deux spécialistes suisses. Le New York Times vient de le révéler. Les Etats-Unis sont en train de développer des réseaux de téléphones portables indépendants, un Internet furtif, à même de contourner les entraves et la censure du réseau par les régimes autoritaires.
Le grand quotidien de la côte Est décrit ainsi les recherches menées par de jeunes entrepreneurs de Washington pour mettre au point les équipements de ce réseau annoncé comme indétectable et qui peuvent tenir dans une valise ordinaire. Des technologies à double tranchant Et ce spécialiste des technologies de l’information d’avertir: «Toutes les technologies de communication sont à double tranchant. Avance stratégique «L’engagement de l’administration Obama en faveur de la liberté sur Internet est sincère. Google Earth, an iPhone compass and experience playing 'Call of Duty' have been vital to Libya's rebel war plan. A screenshot from the game Call of Duty. Inset: the iPhone compass app, and a Google Earth image of Misrata, Libya.
Source: Supplied IT is probably not what the designers of Google Earth had in mind, but for the rebels in the besieged Libyan city of Misrata their software has become a crucial part of the revolutionary armoury: a free battlefield system that helps them to aim mortars and pinpoint Gaddafi tanks. Other uprisings in the Arab Spring have leant heavily on the organising powers of Facebook and Twitter, but in Libya it is Google Earth that has become an invaluable asset. "The idea was that of an engineer named Ahmed Eyzert," said Mohammad Bashir al-Ruiyati, 35, who is in charge of artillery on Misrata's southern front.
Mr Eyzert first looked at using the system to help the rebels when they began capturing mortars and artillery pieces from Colonel Gaddafi's troops in March, he said. "They search through binoculars. Videogames for the rebellious masses. I was gratified to read that Libyan rebels in Misrata have been using the video game Call of Duty as a primary resource for tactical knowledge. Computer games are actually an extremely useful way for civilians with no military training (such as myself) to pick up a little bit of familiarity with military practices and problems that can be extremely useful in trying to function in a combat zone. Even the most serious of videogames is no substitute for actual military training, so one shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that you know too much -- ie, concluding that if the tank down the street can't see you in the game, it can't see you in real life.
But like any theoretical model of a complex situation, they are invaluable in helping you place yourself in an unfamiliar analytical mode -- to be aware of variables, and consider problems, that you would not otherwise consider. The CoD series is basically a commercial project, aimed at appealing to as wide a fan base as possible.
Egypt. Bahraïn. Arab spring: an interactive timeline of Middle East protests | World news. The Arab Spring: A Status Report on Tunisia, Egypt and Bahrain. The Arab Spring - the Jasmine Revolution - the hashtag revolts - the uprisings in the Arab World: whatever you call them, they're ongoing and as long as they go on, their proponents and opponents use, and misuse, technology. Technology played a great role in communications between protesters in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and between those protesters and the global public; it was also the fulcrum for the efforts of the regimes to stay in power, such as shutting down their connections to the Internet. It retains both of those functions. I asked people I know in the countries of the Arab Spring to tell us how they think things currently stand and what role technology continues to play there.
This post is the first of three. Today we take a look at Tunisia, Egypt and Bahrain. The next will cover Syria, Morocco and Yemen and the final post will examine the effects of the Arab Spring on a radically interconnected world. Tunisia Egypt "The image is very vague, to be honest. Bahrain Now You. 7% Of Arab Bloggers Have Been Arrested: Harvard Survey. Seven percent of Middle Eastern bloggers were arrested and detained in the past year--and nearly 30% were personally threatened, according to a new Harvard University survey of 98 bloggers throughout the Middle East and North Africa. The survey, which was released this week, was conducted by Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society in collaboration with world news aggregator Global Voices Online (GVO). Some financial support for the survey was offered through the State Department, via a subgrant from the United Kingdom-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting.
The State Department has been vocal about their desire to conduct pro-democracy outreach through social media and emerging technologies. While the blogs and bloggers who participated in the survey were not named, they were drawn from the pool of Middle Eastern bloggers whose posts were reprinted by Global Voices. These bloggers were also politically active. According to the study: [Image: Mike Licht] Social media can help build Arab governments too | Don Tapscott. In the Arab world this winter, social media proved that it can facilitate rebellion and even topple regimes. Now it faces a much harder challenge.
Can social media help to build new governments? The wiki revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt happened so fast that the positive forces of change have no vanguard, or organisations enabling them to take power. The organisations with the muscle to form political parties and win an election often seek to drive society backwards. Transitioning to democracy won't be easy. It's one thing to bring down a government. Social media might seem an unlikely place to start. The internet offers a new platform for people to collaborate and think seriously about what kind of government they want. But how? Over several weeks, let them inform the public of the advantages and disadvantages of the different systems, debate the choices very publicly – on the radio, TV or internet video – inviting comments and questions.
What are the alternatives? Daily chart: Return of the shoe throwers. Are food prices approaching a violent tipping point? | Damian Carrington | Environment. Seeking simple explanations for the Arab spring uprisings that have swept through Tunisia, Egypt and now Libya, is clearly foolish amidst entangled issues of social injustice, poverty, unemployment and water stress. But asking "why precisely now? " is less daft, and a provocative new study proposes an answer: soaring food prices. Furthermore, it suggests there is a specific food price level above which riots and unrest become far more likely. That figure is 210 on the UN FAO's price index: the index is currently at 234, due to the most recent spike in prices which started in the middle of 2010. Lastly, the researchers argue that current underlying food price trends - excluding the spikes - mean the index will be permanently over the 210 threshold within a year or two. Now, those are some pretty big statements and I should state right now that this research, by a team at the New England Complex Systems Institute, has not yet been peer reviewed.
Surely indeed. The Revolutions Were Tweeted: Visualizing Prominent Information Flows during the Tunisia and Egypt Revolutions. Cinema and the Arab spring: the revolution starts here | Film. Do the roots of the Arab spring lie in cinema? The question seems absurd: surely kleptocratic dictatorship, youth unemployment and grain prices all played a more important part. Iranian film scholar Hamid Dabashi disagrees: "If you want to understand the emotive universe from which the Arab spring arose, cinema is a good place to start.
Look at a film like Elia Suleiman's Divine Intervention: there the director spits out an apricot pit at an Israeli tank and blows it up. The scene is both fantasy and prophecy. " Dabashi will be speaking this month at Winds of Change, a series of talks and screenings at the ICA in London showcasing films from across the Muslim world; it hopes to explore the rich, sometimes fraught relationship between religion and civic society. These films are striking for their national and thematic diversity. Is the idea of an Islamic cinema problematic, I ask Ali Nobil Ahmad, co-curator of the series. Le Maghreb se soulève contre les dictaeurs - Oumma.com. Après la Tunisie, l’Algérie renoue avec la révolte populaire Ce début de l’année 2011 sera marqué par le mouvement de révoltes populaires qui secouent présentement le Maghreb.
Des révoltes de la faim, disent certains, mais sûrement pour la justice et la fin des dictatures et autres régimes maffieux, qui gouvernent ces pays par la force et la répression. Alors qu’en Tunisie les émeutes se poursuivent depuis plusieurs semaines, en Algérie, depuis mercredi, les quartiers populaires de la capitale et des grandes villes d’Algérie s’embrasent dans l’explosion de la colère des jeunes, nourrie par un quotidien des plus absurdes dans un pays, qui croule sous les pétrodollars, détournés ouvertement par les despotes au pouvoir depuis des décennies.
La jeunesse algérienne est estimée à plus de 70 % de la population, mais rien dans les politiques officielles n’offre d’ouverture, ni de prise en charge sérieuse de ces millions de jeunes livrés à eux-mêmes sans le moindre espoir à l’horizon. The World's Unemployed Youth: Revolution in the Air? A common thread to the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and protests elsewhere in the Middle East and north Africa is the soul-crushing high rate of youth unemployment.
Twenty-four percent of young people in the region cannot find jobs. To be sure, protesters were also agitating for democracy, wanting the full rights of citizenship and not to be treated as subjects. But nonexistent employment opportunities were the powerful catalyst. Youth unemployment is similarly dire in other parts of the world. In the UK, young people aged 16 to 24 account for about 40% of all unemployed, which means almost 1 million young adults are jobless. In Spain more than 40% of young people are unemployed. In France the rate is more than 20%, and in the US it's 21%. Unemployed young people comprised a large portion of the crowd that marched in London on March 26 to protest against the economic policies of the government. Today's society is failing to deliver on its promise to young people. Slavoj Zizek - #1 Arabian Revolution - OmU.
U.S.-Financed Groups Had Supporting Role in Arab Uprisings. Mideast turmoil threatens sovereign-wealth funds. By Alistair Barr, MarketWatch SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa may disrupt diversification efforts by some of the world’s largest sovereign-wealth funds, according to research released Tuesday by Preqin, which tracks private equity, hedge funds and other alternative investments. Unrest in the region may have ramifications for the future investment policies of the Libyan Investment Authority, Preqin said. This $70 billion sovereign-wealth fund has been able to invest more freely in recent years to manage the country’s oil revenues, but its mandate could alter following any political change in the country, the research firm added.
Advisers and families Wealth-management editor Kevin Noblet discusses how some hedge funds are turning into unregistered family offices, how munis are finding their ways into some IRAs and how one adviser dealt with a family feud over an estate plan. Alistair Barr is a reporter for MarketWatch in San Francisco. La lourde facture du "printemps arabe"
Libya.