Monday, February 22, 2010
Niger(ia)
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Tear down that firewall
I strongly agree with Secretary of State Clinton’s decision to make unrestricted Internet access a key component of US foreign policy. It is a critical tool for encouraging democracy abroad, and sure works a lot better than neoconservative state building or sending troops abroad.
Moldova & Iran
Following the announcement by Moldova’s communist party of electoral victory, young Moldovans organized via the Internet and took to the streets. In the 48 hours after the communist party’s declaration, “#pman”, became one of the most popular Twitter hashtags worldwide. “pman” stands for “Piata Marii Adunari Nationale", which is the name of the largest square in Chisinau, Moldova's capital, and the rallying grounds for protests. ForeignPolicy.com blogger, Evgeny Morozov, termed the Moldovan protests the Twitter Revolution.
I think this is absolutely incredible. These tools can help expose government corruption and rally against it. They open up closed societies. And the Moldova example is even more fascinating when you consider that it’s a tiny, underdeveloped former-Soviet backwater. If these social tools can be used so powerfully in Moldova, the opportunities in other less-developed nations are equally strong—not to mention the possibilities for political activism in wealthier and more educated societies.
A similar phenomenon happened in Iran last summer as well. After Ahmadinejad by most accounts stole the election, Moussavi and his “green” supporters rallied via Twitter. Some of their tweets were even in English to make it easier for non-Iranians to follow their protest movement. What’s more, a YouTube video of a young woman bleeding to death after being shot at a rally, spread throughout Iran and the world, galvanizing pro-democratic rallying.
The State Department has taken notice of these two protests. They’ve organized trips to meet with foreign leaders to discuss how technology can be used help to rebuild in Iraq and fight drug violence in Mexico. I have no clue how the Internet could facilitate this, but I don’t doubt that it can. The Iranian and Moldovan examples are from the past year alone! As technology becomes more sophisticated in accommodating social communication, the possibilities for organizing and voicing dissent against repressive rule will grow.
China & Iran
Today marks the 31st anniversary of the Iranian Revolution, and fearing that the Twitter revolts of the summer will flare up again, the government has suspended Gmail indefinitely. The New York Times writes that unlike past holidays where the opposition movement was firmly in the spotlight, the anniversary today “belonged to the leadership and its security forces.” Cracking down on the Internet freedom has certainly helped them to achieve this.
In the Xinjiang province this summer, the Chinese government took even more extreme measures that the Iranian government. In the separatist province, the government shut off nearly all Internet access following protesting and rioting by Muslim Uighurs. Since then, the government has only allowed a trickle of Internet access into Xinjiang. Yesterday, Xinjiang residents could access 3 websites. Today, that number has blossomed to 30 government-run sites.
These two examples temper my optimism. Even with Google’s “Don’t be Evil” motto, and Twitter’s explicit aid in Iran, governments are still able to silence Internet dissent. Just as books can be burned, firewalls can be erected and cell-phone signals blocked. The Internet has the ability to educate, liberate, and organize people—and thus promote democratization—but it’s not immune to propaganda or, more likely, censorship.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Possible turmoil?
Saturday, January 9, 2010
The Africa Cup: Cause for Optimism, Cause for Despair
Monday, December 28, 2009
Book Review: The Good Soldiers, David Finkel
The Good Soldiers by David Finkel
The crack of thunder woke me early this morning. The lighting was so close that I saw its flash through my closed eyelids. It woke me up, and I felt just like how an animal feels during a thunderstorm; I was scared. My heart was racing, my breath was short and quick.
I took some deep breaths and I was able to fall back asleep. When I woke up later that morning, I was thinking about The Good Soldiers. I thought that the way I felt, waking up to thunder, might be how those soldiers feel leaving their compounds (their FOB—forward operating base). Of course, I know that my waking-up-to-bad-weather fright paled in comparison to their stays in Fedaliyah, Iraq. Nonetheless, I felt that I had gotten a taste of the ubiquitous fear and anxiety that invades their subconscious during and after their service. A life of IEDs, EFPs, mortars, and street patrols through dicey neighborhoods where American troops are not looked on favorably.
And, as Finkel captures, one of the things that makes service during the surge so scary is that it’s all chance; your fate is out of your hands. Every time, a soldier hops in a Humvee (just to travel from one point to the next—not necessarily to go on an aggressive mission after insurgents) they are relinquishing control of their life and their limbs. They are at the mercy of the road and the EFPs that may or may not be buried underneath it. These cheap, gruesome weapons account for most of the deaths in Iraq. Detonated by a frustratingly-invisible enemy, they blow through the bottom of Humvees and spray shrapnel throughout its interior.
The Good Soldiers, however, is about more than just the paranoia and fear of serving in Iraq during the surge. As its title suggests, it’s about the soldiers, young and middle-aged (but mostly way young--my age). Their lives and their brotherhood during service. It just so happens that serving in Iraq during the surge is a pretty damn scary, so much of Finkel’s writing captures this fear and frustrating helplessness.
Finkel captures their fear and frustration with poignancy. He writes with an astounding intimacy. There are a couple of quotes I’ve written down below that I feel capture this sad proximity to the soldiers; he articulates their struggles astoundingly well, capturing their complex war-stretched emotions with an intimacy and a truthfulness as though he is one of them. It’s pretty astounding.
And as his writing is soaked with a powerful closeness, it is also structured in a clever and striking way. The first few pages of the book, are enough to serve as an example: this was before, the soldiers hadn’t yet, he would say it…"Except now, on April 6, 2007, at 1:00 a.m., as someone banged on his door, waking him up, he said something different. ‘What the fuck’ he said, opening his eyes."
The comparison to The Things They Carried is apt (although FSG’s is the author of this flattering comparison). Finkel writes with the same intensity as O’Brien, and it loyally captures (at least I think), with a difficult intimacy and cleverness, these good soldiers lives.
This book was especially powerful for me because it’s the first book on war where my peers are the ones fighting. 19, 20, 21, 22 year olds just like me. Books and films about Vietnam or World War II seem so far removed from my life. I’m able to understand the morals and feel the emotions of these soldiers—Charlie Sheen in Platoon, Private Joker in Full Metal Jacket—but they still end up feeling a bit distant—removed form my life. But as I read about the good soldiers, and the difficult passages of young men like me dying in gruesome ways (19-year olds burning alive in cars, their bodies full of shrapnel) it felt more realistic, more disturbingly tangible and powerful.
My one caveat about the book would be that it’s told almost purely from the soldier’s perspective. As a result, there are a lot of generalizations, and the macro-level details of the conflict aren’t captured. Finkel makes it clear that his intention is to capture the soldiers perspectives—which is different from what think tank scholars and talking heads focus on. Nonetheless, there’s little info on Muqtada al-Sadr or the Jaish al-Mahdi. Nor is there any information on West Baghdad, al-Qaeda in Iraq, and the Sons of Iraq. So if you’re looking to understand who the they are that Finkel refers to, or what motivates insurgent attacks (or most interestingly, why the Muqtada’s cease-fire declaration resonates) then this book won’t be of much help. But Finkel’s goal is to capture the lives of these young, good soldiers, and this he does with a remarkable poise and weight that their service deserves.