from Paul Smalera:
Twitter’s censorship is a gray box of shame, but not for Twitter
Twitter’s announcement this week that it was going to enable country-specific censorship of posts is arousing fury around the Internet. Commentators, activists, protesters and netizens have said it’s “very bad news” and claim to be “#outraged”. Bianca Jagger, for one, asked how to go about boycotting Twitter, on Twitter, according to the New York Times. (Step one might be... well, never mind.) The critics have settled on #TwitterBlackout: all day on Saturday the 28th, they promised to not tweet, as a show of protest and solidarity with those who might be censored.
Here’s the thing: Like Twitter itself, it’s time for the Internet, and its chirping classes, to grow up. Twitter’s policy and its transparency pledge with the censorship watchdog Chilling Effects is the most thoughtful, honest and realistic policy to come out of a technology company in a long time. Even an unsympathetic reading of the new censorship policy bears that out.
To understand why, let’s unpack the policy a bit: First, Twitter has strongly implied it will not remove content under this policy. If that doesn’t sound like a crucial distinction from outright censorship, it is. Taking the new policy with existing ones, the only time Twitter says it will ever remove a tweet altogether is in response to a DMCA request. The DMCA may have its own flaws, but it is a form of censorship that lives separately from the process Twitter has outlined in this recent announcement. Where the DMCA process demands a deletion of copyright-infringing content, Twitter’s censorship policy promises no such takedown: it promises instead only to withhold censored content from the country where the content has been censored. Nothing else.
To be sure, that’s censorship of a kind, but compared to the industry censorship even Americans have long lived with -- take the Motion Picture Association of America, which still censors films based on dubious standards of taste and morality -- it’s positively enlightened. And it never permanently destroys or pre-empts content, the way the MPAA does.
Further, for a country to censor content, it has to make a “valid and properly scoped request from an authorized entity” to Twitter, which will then decide what to do with the request. Twitter will also make an effort to notify users whose content is censored about what happened and why, and even give them a method to challenge the request. According to Twitter’s post, a record of the action will also be filed to the Chilling Effects website. The end result of a successful request is that the tweet or user in question is replaced by a gray box that notifies other readers inside the censoring country that the Tweet has been censored:
Yemen needs an insurgent democracy
After months of uncertainty around whether Ali Abdullah Saleh has been sincere about stepping down from his post as Yemen’s president, Sunday brought confirmation that he has left the country to seek medical treatment in the United States. Under a deal brokered by the Gulf Cooperation Council with United Nations, United States and United Kingdom assistance, Saleh is barred from partaking in the Feb. 21 elections for an interim president. In exchange, he received immunity in an unamendable law — both nationally and internationally highly controversial — passed by Yemen’s parliament the day before his departure.
And yet Saleh made it immediately clear that he intended to return to Yemen before the elections to lead his General People’s Congress party, which holds a majority of seats in parliament. This is, of course, somewhat reminiscent of the last time Saleh left Yemen for medical treatment in June 2011. Following a bomb attack on the presidential palace which left several senior government officials dead and Saleh and others seriously injured, he sought treatment in Saudi Arabia amid hopes he would step down from office. He returned to Sana’a as president at the end of September. While Saleh will not be able to hold this office again, his intention of continuing to play a major role in the future of Yemen taints the otherwise good news of his departure.
But now what? We’ve seen leaders who had desperately tried to hold on forced from power in Arab countries before. Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali was run out of Tunisia. Hosni Mubarak, under withering domestic and international pressure, stepped down from Egypt’s presidency. And Muammar Gaddafi wouldn’t leave and was finally killed.
Yemen, though, is different. Its crisis goes much deeper than socioeconomic and political dissatisfaction. It has insurgencies to worry about.
There are two: the al-Houthi uprising in the north since 2004 and the increasingly secessionist rebellion in the south that, while tracing its origins back to the brief 1994 north-south civil war, has gained violent momentum from 2007 onwards. Both insurgencies are reactions to political marginalization and economic neglect by Sana’a.
But these insurgencies have telling differences. The situation in the north has been destabilized by past military operations against a Shi’ite rebellion that allegedly received support from Iran (doubtful as it may be in its significance). For years on-and-off fighting had seen little gain for either side until the government launched operation “Scorched Earth” in 2009. That push involved Saudi forces, but the insurgency, although reduced in strength, continued. To date, a number of ceasefire agreements have been signed, and broken, most recently in 2010.
In the south, meanwhile, a battle with secessionist forces is complicated by the significant and growing presence of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). This fight has garnered significant international attention, not least because of two failed international terrorist plots that originated in Yemen — the attempt to bring down airplanes with explosives hidden in printer toner cartridges in October 2010 and the Christmas Day bombing plot in 2009. The alliance between AQAP and the southern secessionists, however, is one of convenience above all else. The southern movement is deeply divided among different factions and has limited military capabilities. It thus relies to an extent on AQAP to challenge the regime without sharing the terrorist network’s religious fundamentalism or anti-Western agenda. For the regime, southern secession is unacceptable given that most of Yemen’s dwindling oil resources are located there. Internationally, too, there is broad support for Yemen’s unity and a fear that instability in the south will further enable and embolden AQAP.
from Don Tapscott:
20 big ideas for 2012, continued
The views expressed are his own.
What will happen in 2012? In the spirit of the aphorism “The future is not something to be predicted, it’s something to be achieved,” let me suggest 20 transformations (which Reuters will publish in four groups of five; the first can be found here). We need to make progress on these issues now to prevent next year from being a complete disaster.
These ideas are based on the research I did with Anthony D. Williams to write our recent book which comes out in January 2012 as a new edition entitled Macrowikinomics: New Solutions for a Connected Planet.
All 20 are based on the idea that the industrial age has finally run out of gas and we need to rebuild most of our institutions for a new age of networked intelligence and a new set of principles – collaboration, openness, sharing, interdependence and integrity. These big ideas will be the focus of much of my writing next year.
6. The Arab seasons: Getting beyond wiki revolutions to democratic, secular governments
In Egypt and Tunisia we saw a revolution in how to foment revolutions. Now we need to reinvent how to build democracies. Enabled by social media, anti-government leadership in these two countries came from the people themselves rather than a traditional vanguard. Tools such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter radically lowered the cost and effort of collaboration and undermined state censorship. Now leaders are beginning to use the same tools to help build functional democracies. "Social networks, Twitter and texting were critical to the revolution," said Yassine Brahim, Tunisia's new minister of infrastructure and transport, last year at Davos. "We are going to leverage social media to build a horizontal democracy rather than a vertical democracy." We must ensure that the wiki revolutions result in just societies, and not be taken over by the old regime or other regressive forces.
7. As the Old Media collapse, improve how We inform ourselves as societies
One year later: three lessons from the Arab Spring
By Stefan Wolff The opinions expressed are his own.
When Mohamed Bouazizi, a jobless graduate in the provincial city of Sidi Bouzid in Tunisia, about 200km southwest of the capital Tunis, set himself on fire on December 18, 2010 after police had confiscated a cart from which he was selling fruit and vegetables, few would have predicted that this event would spark the phenomenon we now refer to as the Arab Spring. Protests quickly escalated in Tunisia and within four weeks Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali had to flee to Saudi Arabia having failed to stop the protests either by repression of promises of reform.
On 17 January, one day after Ben Ali’s departure, another young man set himself afire near the Egyptian parliament. Within a week, coordinated mass protests began in Tahrir Square, and forced the resignation of long-serving Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who handed power to the military on 11 February.
Since then, the transitions in Tunisia and Egypt have made at best incremental progress in some areas. In Tunisia, the first elections anywhere as a result of the Arab Spring went ahead in October and the newly elected parliament had its inaugural session on November 22nd. The election winners, the moderate Islamist party Ennahda (Renaissance) will have a coalition arrangement with a liberal and a centre-left party. While Tunisia avoided the appalling violence that characterised the uprisings in Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen, the new government and parliament still face an up-hill battle in the transition to a more democratic political system, including drafting a new constitution.
In Egypt, the military was instrumental in pushing Mubarak out of office, but the slow progress towards democratic reforms, several deadly sectarian clashes between Islamists and Christian copts, tensions and violence on the border with Israel, and a heavy-handed police crack-down on continuing protests in Tahrir Square do not bode well for the country’s immediate future—even if parliamentary elections go ahead on 28 November. While the army seems keen not to want to actually govern the country, they seem equally determined not to give up their privileged position that gives them political influence and control over significant economic assets.
Elsewhere in the Arab world, it seems as if the old regimes are determined to hold on to power at all cost, and despite diminishing chances of success. In Yemen, a crisis that had engulfed the regime of President Ali Abdullah Saleh long before the Arab Spring began is nowhere closer to a resolution even after Saleh at long last agreed to a transition plan sponsored by the Gulf Cooperation Council. This plan saw Saleh hand over power to his Vice President (not the opposition), allows him to retain the title of President for another three months, guaranteed him immunity, and left his assets untouched and members of his family in charge of most of the government’s hard power. Forcing Saleh out of office does also not address at least two of the country’s major crises—the Houthi rebellion in the North and the secessionist insurgency in the south, the latter of which has formed an alliance of convenience with al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula. Unsurprisingly, violence in Yemen has continued unabated since Saleh signed the GCC transition plan on 23 November.
In Syria, Bashir al-Assad has, so far successfully, clung onto power regardless of the mounting death toll among protesters. Like elsewhere in the Arab Spring, an initially peaceful protest movement has turned into an armed insurgency, but one that lacks a unified political opposition. The Arab League has increased pressure on the Assad regime, albeit not unanimously and so far only threatens sanctions, while France, in an eerie déjà vu of events in Libya, has called for humanitarian corridors and safe zones inside Syria to protect civilians from an ever more violent regime crack-down and has recognised the opposition. All the signs at the moment are pointing at further escalation in Syria and possibly another international military intervention.
from David Rohde:
Complete Egypt’s revolution
For decades, the Egyptian military has operated an economy within an economy in Egypt. With the tacit support of the United States, the armed forces own and operate a sprawling network of for-profit businesses. The military runs factories that manufacture televisions, bottled water and other consumer goods. Its companies obtain public land at discounted prices. And it pays no taxes and discloses little to civilian officials.
Within weeks of Hosni Mubarak’s fall in February, experts predicted that the Egyptian military would refuse to relinquish its vast economic holdings or privileged position in society.
“Protecting its businesses from scrutiny and accountability is a red line the military will draw,” Robert Springborg, an expert on Egypt’s military at the Naval Postgraduate School, told The New York Times. “And that means there can be no meaningful civilian oversight.”
Protesters who are crossing that red line this week should be applauded, not oppressed. Egypt’s tumultuous revolution should be completed.
In increasingly brazen fashion, Egypt’s military has tried to usurp the revolt that toppled Mubarak in eighteen days and is transforming the Middle East. The protests this week are a legitimate response to those moves.
In a welcome concession on Tuesday, Egypt’s 76-year-old army chief, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, offered in a televised speech to hand over power to a civilian president by next July. Protesters are right, though, to react with skepticism. The military has botched a transition it initially said would last six months.
In a blistering report issued on Monday, Amnesty International accused the country’s military of suppressing dissent as harshly as the Mubarak regime. The report assailed its violent response to this week’s protests, which have left 36 people dead and more than 1250 wounded.
Protestors who demand elections be delayed are very likely the same who demanded they be speeded up – months back.
Sorry, guys, but I can’t help but feel the core motivator is that they’ve surveyed the feelings of the masses of voters getting to choose and their own political parties don’t stand to win control.
That ain’t the way democracy works except maybe in Ohio and Florida. :-]
from David Rohde:
Trust Tunisia
As the first elections of the post-Arab spring unfold over the next several weeks, you will be hearing the term “moderate Islamist” over and over again. Early results from elections in Tunisia suggest that the moderate Islamist Ennahda party is going to win the largest number of seats in a new assembly that will rewrite the constitution, choose a new interim government and set dates for parliamentary and presidential elections. Members of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood who have also been described as moderate Islamists are expected to fare well in similar elections there in November. And Islamists play a growing role in Libya’s transitional council as well.
The Islamist parties insist that they have renounced violence, fully embrace democracy and will abide by the electoral process. Secular Tunisians, Egyptians and Libyans, as well as some western pundits, warn that the Islamist parties are a Trojan Horse. Once Islamists take power, they will refuse to relinquish it and forcibly implement conservative Islam in all three countries.
What is striking is the silence emanating from Washington and other western capitals.
“One of the shifts that hasn’t been talked about is how much more the West is willing to accept the reality of a political landscape in places like Tunisia and Egypt that will include the existence of Islamist groups,” said Dalia Mogahed, the director of the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center, which polls public opinion across the Middle East. “The West has realized that it isn’t up to us to decide whether they can run.”
The term Islamist usually sets off alarm bells in Washington. Islamists have long been jailed by pro-American dictators, brutally silenced and believed to inexorably promote militancy. In the wake of the Arab Spring, though, they are delving into electoral politics to an extent never seen before in the modern Middle East.
The stakes are enormous. If hardline Islamic states emerge, this fall’s elections will be lambasted as a staggering error by the Obama administration. If Islamists are moderated by actually governing, one of the largest national security threats the United States faces may gradually ebb.
High expectations about democracy, of course, have proven wrong in the past. Iran's 1979 popular revolution-turned-repressive theocratic state is one example. Hamas' general failure to moderate since having to govern is another. Given the United States' waning influence in the region, though, barring Islamists from the elections is both hugely hypocritical and unrealistic.
Libya’s revolution pushes democracy forward
By Michael Ignatieff The views expressed are his own.
We like to think we made it happen. First in Kosovo, now in Libya, we believe our air power made it happen. Western politicians are taking the credit, but the truth is, we didn’t make it happen, any more than we made the Arab Spring happen and the air operation itself would never have been approved at the UN without the green light from the Arab League. The people of Libya, the peoples of the Middle East made it happen. We all need to understand how little of this is about us. Otherwise we risk succumbing to the illusion that we can shape the future in the Middle East.
The power we exercised in the sky gives us little control over what happens next. This is not just because we don’t have boots on the ground. Even when we did in the Balkans, we never controlled the way events rolled out after the air campaign was over. The people of the Balkans wrote their own history after the intervention and the people of the Middle East will do the same.
We called Libya a civil war and intervened to help one side win, as we did in Kosovo. But Libya was not a civil war. The dictator didn’t have deep enough support to turn it into one. It was a revolution, a people against a regime, rising up without any instigation from us, with nothing but rage, humiliation and hope to guide them. We gave them air cover and they made a revolution.
Let us not be romantic about revolutions, but let us also remember the hope they carry . The revolutionary moment—the discovery that ‘we the people’ brought the dictator down–gives the Libyans a chance to come together and build something out of the ruins. The people have discovered themselves. They have discovered their sovereignty and they will not willingly surrender it to gunmen or extremist Islamists, here or in Tunisia or Egypt. In Syria, in Yemen, in Algeria too, the people will see what the sovereignty of the street looks like and long for it too.
All revolutionary situations are poised between exhilaration and terror, and Libya is no exception. There are too many guns in the street, too many militias, too little authority and order. Revenge will be taken. Scores will be settled. Theft and vandalism will be legitimized as justice. Revolution could topple into civil war unless an army and a monopoly over the means of force are re-established. But those crowds, men and women all waving the same flag, the kids with their hands on their hearts, singing the anthem perched on their parent’s shoulders, are actually stronger than the men with guns, if they only could find a politics to express their power.
The future of Libya and the entire Middle East depends, not on us, but on something momentous and unpredictable: whether people who have never had the chance to do politics before can learn to do it now.
Unfortunately the problem here, as in many tyrannic cases, is the fact that the dictator treats the citezens as more of property rather then people. We’ve seen it time and time again, from ancient rulers, to Adolf Hitler, to modern dictators like this one. The real question is why? What drives these men to treat people so badly. Although the world seems to be ever evolving, these men seem to never change.
Obama’s bold gamble on Iraq
By L Paul Bremer, III The opinions expressed are his own.
In announcing that all American troops will be out of Iraq by year’s end, President Obama has placed a big bet on the future of Iraq and on America’s position in a restive Middle East. While the initial public response to his decision, in America and in Iraq, may be positive, this will not shield him from the consequences if his bet goes sour.
The single most salient lesson in countries emerging from tyranny is the importance of providing security for the population. This is not just one of many tasks that must be addressed: security is the essential prerequisite to progress in the other two foreseeable challenges—in Iraq, Egypt and now Libya: beginning a process of political reform and starting economic reconstruction.
The American government learned this lesson the hard way in Iraq. For several years after Saddam was thrown out, we lacked the comprehensive counter insurgency strategy and sufficient forces needed to provide security to the Iraqi people. Predictably, security deteriorated as an unholy alliance of Sunni and Shia terrorists, the first backed by al Qaeda, the other by Iran, took advantage the situation. The deficiencies in strategy and troops while Iraq’s own national security forces were still in training produced a bloody and chaotic year in 2006.
There were two game-changers in Iraq.
1. President Bush’s courageous decision to change strategy and to surge forces. Contrary to widespread skepticism in the American political class, these decisions gradually brought the security under much better control.
2. The almost unimaginable stoicism of the Iraqi people. In many individual months in 2006 and early 2007, Iraqi casualties from terrorism were greater, as a percent of the country’s population, than the casualties America experienced on 9/11. Fortunately by the summer of 2011, violence had fallen against both Americans and Iraqis.
Sorry I repeat same words which are written by Michael Rubin(http://www.commentarymagazine.com/ 2011/10/23/clinton-iran-iraq-strategic-m alpractice/) “the president turns around and hands Iraq to Iran on a silver platter”.US Lost its reputation.USA gives for this loss life of thousands of soldiers & thousands of billions dollars & the most important things USA losses its national interests in Middle East .
I am Kurdish & after this decision , We haven’t more hope for living with other Components( Arab-Sheea & Sunna)in one Iraq.Obama with our Kurdish leaders do same betrayal which was done against Kurdish revolution on 1974.We haven’t more friends…We are 50 Millions alone.We should try to protect our self by new strategic & new alliance . Sorry for my English..
Libya’s democracy has a real chance
By Daniel Serwer The views expressed are his own.
Libyans will be getting up late tomorrow morning, having enjoyed a spectacular celebration tonight. “The Wizard of Oz” comes to mind: “The witch is dead, the wicked witch is dead!”
Now begins the hard work of building a more open and democratic society with some distinct advantages, and Libya has vast resources—not only the oil and gas in the ground, but also cash in foreign bank accounts. Qaddafi’s ironic legacy is that his ill-gotten gains will fund Libya’s reconstruction.
The population is small (about 6.5 million) and more or less homogenous. There are tribal and geographic distinctions, there are Berbers as well as Arabs, there are blacker people and whiter people and there are rich and poor. But none of these differences has yet emerged as a source of widespread violence.
All the Libyans I talked with during a visit to Benghazi and Tripoli last month showed confidence in the National Transitional Council (NTC), which has drawn a roadmap for preparation of a constitution and elections that is widely accepted as reasonable and legitimate. Much criticized by the Western press for bungling a few public announcements, the NTC has managed to continue paying social security benefits and subsidizing bread. In Benghazi and Tripoli, the water and electricity are flowing, markets are open and well stocked, police are on the street and at least some of the garbage is being collected. For most Libyans, that counts for a lot more than whether an announcement of Saif al Islam’s capture was true or not.
Most of Libya was rid of Qaddafi regime more than a month ago. The main sources of friction so far have been two: fighters, mainly from the Nafusa Mountains in the west, who have not wanted to leave Tripoli; and Islamists who seem ready to push for a less secular society than many Libyans would like. Islam is already pervasive in Libya—most women cover their hair, alcohol is prohibited (and not generally available), mosques are ubiquitous and, I am told, well attended. Libya’s Muslim Brotherhood is relatively moderate, as are its secularists.
But there will have to be political differentiation: left and right, Islamists and secularists will begin soon to form political parties. That process will not be an easy or smooth one for people with no democratic experience and a lot of guns, including surface to air missiles looted from Qaddafi’s armories. There is a real risk of revenge killing by militias and of insurgency by Qaddafi loyalists.
Day 1 of the Libyan experiment
By Kyle Scott The opinions expressed are his own.
The U.S. has avoided some of the mistakes it made in Iraq and Afghanistan in its dealings with Egypt and Libya. While the context of the Arab Spring is entirely different from that of the invasions of Iraq or Afghanistan, the thought that democracy could be forced upon a nation has been avoided by the Obama administration in a post-Mubarak Egypt and a post-Gaddafi Libya. With Gaddafi’s death today, the challenge now is to continue taking this view while helping Libya move toward democracy. Working towards a successful transition requires adherence to two rules:
- A bottom-up system will be much more successful than a top-down one.
- The system that works in the U.S. may not work in these countries.
Top-down systems require coercion and manipulation to get things done. Bottom-up systems govern through consent. One works on domination and the other on cooperation. The uprising in Egypt was certainly bottom-up, but the government that has supplanted Mubarak is decidedly top-down. The prospect for Egypt looks bleak if the goal is to establish a representative system of government in which the majority retains the right to rule but the rights of the minority are safeguarded. It is not only because dissident voices are being quieted and religious minorities are being persecuted that the future looks bleak, it’s because once power is gained, particularly in a top-down centralized regime, reform is difficult as power tends to entrench itself as the Egyptian people know all too well.
Libya is fertile ground for an individual or group to seize power, or for a foreign nation to come in and impose its style of government on the people of Libya. Moreover, the disparate ethnic and tribal factions that have a history of violence towards one another makes a political power grab seem likely. A bottom-up system, or federalism, can secure a peaceful transition. A federal arrangement is flexible enough to incorporate all groups into the government which gives them voice and access. Rather than a unitary system that is governed only by a nationwide majority which can ignore the interests and needs of a minority, a federal system grants a geographically concentrated ethnic or religious group the authority to govern itself under the coordination of a central regime in which it also has representation.
The local governing bodies can take the form of states, provinces, regions, or cantons. But, regardless of what they are called, when the lines are drawn it cannot be done by those on the outside. The process of drawing these boundaries must be done by those who are sensitive to the various ethnic claims and familiar with the historical disputes. Moreover, proposals must be given to those who will be governed by them before they are enacted. If it is to be a government by the people and for the people then they too need to have a voice in its development.
The legislative body through which representation will be granted at the national level needs to be crafted similarly. Each group needs to be represented, thereby gaining a legitimate avenue through which to voice their concerns. Whether it’s the recent bombings in India or rioting in England, we know that alienated groups will resort to means which are illegitimate in order to be recognized. This doesn’t justify or defend such acts, but it helps explain why they occur and suggest how they might be avoided. Granting representation to groups will allow those groups to be assimilated in such a way that their success is tied to the success of the government.
In the end with this policy the odds of getting a decent replacement government is less than even with the “traditional” way.
disagree with your reasoning if the end result of a successful censorship request is (quote) “that the tweet or user in question is replaced by a gray box that notifies other readers inside the censoring country that the Tweet has been censored…. it’s instead a bright signal to a country’s online citizens that their government is limiting their free speech.”
condoms for tweets and safe social intercourse
timid walter mitty comes to mind … ‘bright signals’ and all
@ iq160 – finding alternatives to restrictive laws are the jouissance of internetting