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Ed Webb

Carole Cadwalladr: What a perfect revenge on the arch snooper | Comment is free | The O... - 0 views

  • It's such a lovely turn of phrase, that. If you suspect it, report it. Don't wait for evidence. Or question your own prejudices. If someone's not a "normal everyday person" exactly like you, then they could well be a member of al-Qaida. What flawless logic that is. We're already described as "a surveillance state" by Privacy International, one in five of all CCTV cameras ever made are currently in Britain, and Smith is drawing up plans to intercept every phone call we make and every email we send. The Taplins weren't snitches - they were perfect citizens in her New Model Army.
  • a conformity of living, of beliefs, aspirations and behaviour that is rigorously policed by family, friends and neighbours
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    State control of information is not simply an issue for authoritarian regimes.
Zach Hartnett

U.S. Army captain learning new skills in war-torn Afghanistan | McClatchy Washington Bu... - 0 views

  • U.S. Army Capt. Matthew Crowe trained to obliterate distant foes with high-explosive shellfire. But in this mud-washed, mountain-framed provincial capital in eastern Afghanistan, he is learning to be a diplomat, urban planner, construction manager, humanitarian worker and politician.
  • There was virtually no Taliban presence in Maydan Shahr until last year. Insurgent leaders believed to be wintering in Pakistan's nearby tribal region have been recruiting among the area's dominant Pashtun ethnic group. Even some senior city officials are now said to support the guerrillas, who often target public workers.
  • "I want to focus on Maydan Shahr," he said, "because it becomes a very visible sign of how we are here to help."
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  • The United States hopes that by partnering with officials like Ebrahimi across the country, popular faith can be restored in local authorities, whose years of flagrant misrule and rampant corruption are driving people into the arms of the guerrillas.
    • Zach Hartnett
       
      Maybe the officials the Bush administration has been so quick to place in positions of power are part of the reason the Taliban has been able to maintain support in Afganistan. Obama's tough stance with Karzai should offer a refreshing change that will hopefully accelerate the peace process.
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    Public diplomacy - the visibility of deeds
Zach Hartnett

Freed Guantanamo detainee says U.S. behind his torture | Reuters - 0 views

  • I was abducted, hauled from one country to the next, and tortured in medieval ways -- all orchestrated by the United States government."
  • he was tortured and abused by Pakistani intelligence officers in the presence of a British intelligence agent.
    • Zach Hartnett
       
      At least we know we can count on Pakistan.
  • Morocco on a CIA flight
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  • Morocco has denied holding him and the U.S. government has denied that he was subjected to "extraordinary rendition."
  • I realized in Morocco that the people who were torturing me were receiving questions and materials from British intelligence," he said. "I had met with British intelligence in Pakistan. I had been open with them. Yet the very people who I had hoped would come to my rescue, I later realized, had allied themselves with my abusers."
Manon Latil

Hamas bans popular TV talk show | Jerusalem Post - 0 views

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    Since we talked about talk shows last week…
Ed Webb

allAfrica.com: Uganda: Red Pepper Editors Wanted (Page 1 of 1) - 0 views

  • Two senior editors of Red Pepper are wanted in court to answer charges of defaming Libyan leader Col. Muamar Gadaffi over the paper's report that he has a love affair with Toro Queen Mother Best Kemigisa.
  • accused of defaming a foreign dignitary with intent to disturb peace and friendship between Uganda and Libya.
  • The accused, the court added, committed similar offences on different dates. The stories were entitled "Toro Queen sex secrets revealed, Gadaffi asks Toro Queen for a baby boy, Gadaffi, Toro Queen first kiss, Gadaffi, Museveni clash over Toro Queen and Gadaffi buys Toro Queen a plane.
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    Found via Bruce Sterling
Ed Webb

Howard Rheingold's Vlog - 0 views

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    Howard rocks out
Ed Webb

DIP's Dispatches from the Imagination Age: UK Hiring Government 'Twittercrat' - 0 views

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    Any signs of MENA states taking a proactive and engaged approach, rather than a reactive and repressive one, to social media?
Jared Bernhardt

Sci-Tech Today | Internet Accelerates Results, as Facebook Saga Shows - 0 views

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    The author talks a bit about McLuhan and Facebook--quite an interesting read.
Jared Bernhardt

To take notes or not to - The Financial Express - 0 views

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    Coverage of why Diigo is important for online productivity.
Jared Bernhardt

Media Literacy: Making Sense Of New Technologies And Media by George Siemens - Feb 7 09... - 0 views

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    Media Literacy: Making Sense Of New Technologies And Media by George Siemens - Feb 7 09
Ed Webb

It Hurts. Please, Make It Stop. | FunnyMonkey - Click. Connect. Learn - 0 views

  • The web opens up an array of options for teaching, learning, and connecting, but we need to remember that learning should be organized around the needs of the student/learner. The cost of joining a website should not be complete loss of control over your content, and as technology advocates we need to become more aware of the ramifications of data control and data portability within networked learning environments. In short, learners deserve better than the terms offered at StudyBlue, Facebook, Ning, etc. Why should a prerequisite of social learning be the loss of control over how your work is used/reused? By promoting sites that are predicated on an intellectual land grab of learner-created content, we perpetuate the lie that this is acceptable behavior.
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    I agree. Thank goodness that are people online who are currently acting as in place advocates like Consumerist.
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    I agree. Thank goodness that there are people online who are currently acting as in place advocates like Consumerist.
Jared Bernhardt

Gaza war coverage raises Al Jazeera hope | The Australian - 0 views

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    JUST as the 1991 Gulf War gave cable news channel CNN a boost, the war in Gaza has given Al Jazeera English a chance to break into the American and Australian markets.
Ed Webb

Informed Comment: Palestinians: Israeli Attack on Jesus, Mary "Racist," Anti-Semitic - 0 views

  • The satirical comedy skits put on by Lior Klein concerning Jesus and Mary on Israel's Channel 10 last week have provoked rallies and protests by Palestinian-Israeli Christians, of whom there are about 120,000. They also drew condemnation from Muslim Palestinian-Israelis, of whom there are over a million. Klein said that since Christians were denying the Holocaust, he was denying Christianity. He and Channel 10 later apologized to a delegation of Israeli Christians, and pledged that the skits would not be rerun.
  • the pieces were viewed as racist and not just anti-religious but as ethnic bigotry. They were even called "anti-Semitic," since Arabs are Semites as are Jews
  • the show offended Israeli Muslims, as well. I saw them on Aljazeera speaking out against the skits and denouncing them as racist (`unsuri).
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  • The way in which the incident was interpreted in the terms of Israeli identity politics suggests that nerves are frayed among Palestinian-Israelis in the wake of the massive Israeli assault on Gaza this winter. Already humiliated by Israeli disregard for the value of innocent Arab life in that campaign, they are sensitive to any slights from the Jewish Israeli majority.
  • he attack on that symbol ('died young of being obese') by a representative of the Jewish majority was doubly painful, since it repeated on a symbolic level the Israeli denial of the 1948 Catastrophe and even of the existence of the Palestinians.
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    Worth investigating the multiple, overlapping identity politics here.
rafasln

Global Voices Online » Palestine: The Story of a Gazan "Martyr" - 0 views

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    A very haunting account of a mother's perspective of her son fighting, and dying in Gaza. It gives a lot of insight into some of the more radical sides of Islam.
Manon Latil

After Fleeing North Korea, an Artist Parodies Its Propaganda - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Now, many here say that imagery, with its subverted content, addresses issues central to Korean identity
  • Later, while serving in the North Korean Army, Sun Mu was assigned to create propaganda paintings
Ed Webb

Informed Comment: Iran Nuclear Program Hyped again - 0 views

  • Note to mainstream media: Iran cannot construct nuclear bombs with uranium enriched only to less than 4%. It needs to be enriched to something like 90% to make a bomb. So all the silly articles on Friday about how iran now has enough enriched uranium to make a bomb are just illiterate.
Ed Webb

Informed Comment: Iraq: Kurdish-Arab War in the Offing? - 0 views

  • Open Source Center of the USG
  • statements made by Nechirvan Barzani, Kurdistan Region prime minister, about a war breaking out between Arabs and Kurds after the American withdrawal from Iraq
  • Kamal Kirkuki, Kurdistan Region Parliament Deputy Speaker, has described Al-Maliki as a "dangerous man", and said that the Kurds are trying to stand up to him, adding: "Al-Maliki is a danger to Iraq and to democracy; he is a second Saddam."'
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  • If the Kurdish-Arab hostity rises futher,the US could be drawn right back in to Iraq. The Eastern Mediterranean and the meeting-point of Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq, is too important to allow it to fall into substantial and long-term violence.
  • There was a great deal of empathy towards the Kurdish people in the rest of Iraq before the invasion. But their bizarre arrogance and fascist behavior has turned the Iraqis against them.
  • the final solution, barring the toppling the Kurdish warlords by their own people, is either the full independence of Kurdistan, or a symbolic confideration between two economically and politiacally separate states.
  • Recently, the Kurds have demanded Baghdad's intervention/protection from the "incursions" by Turkey. For that to occur, Iraq must have a stronger central government than the Kurds desire.
  • hundreds of thousands of Assyrians
  • the KDP spent so much effort on controlling the Assyrians that for the first time, the independent Yezidi slate won a seat in the provincial government.
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