Some Syrian soldiers record trophy video

It looks like their is another source of information popping up from Syria; the soldiers doing the dirty work are filming their actions. These video’s are becoming a new kind of bounty. In Lybia they stole someones smartphone? as a trophy, here they show off their deeds online. I wonder if these folks understand what the potential spread of these video’s is. What do they want to share with us, the viewer?  Is it really a trophy, like the people  in Lybia taking dead fighters phones? Is it a ‘ look mom, i can shoot my gun and beat prisoners’ kind of video, is it something to share amongst friends, is it ment for the family archive? These intentions are important if we want to understand the story the soldiers are sharing. Maybe they dont know themselves and they just do it because they can.

I like big buts though: in Syria’s almost lighttight censorshiprule you have to be carefull in jumping to conclusions about leaking videos that where not ment to be online. Maybe they áre ment to be online and that mr.Assad is taking the online battle for the framing of the Syrian showdown to the next level, not only beating the protesters on facebook (bit of an old link, still actual), but also increasingly countering their shaky video’s on youtube.

Syria knows its social media, so be carefull when ananlysing these vid’s.

Lybia rebel takover unveils social media monitoring

The fall of the Ghadaffi regime (for now, he has not been caught yet) gives a unique insight into the world of online monitoring by autoritharian regimes. As i wrote in earlier posts and what mr. Evgeny Morozov has explained in great detail in his book ‘The Net Delusion’ (BUY IT!) the internet gives ample opportunities to regimes to spy on their own people. For regimes such as  Ghadaffi’s a very interesting tool to maintain in power.

Some findings include that the regime knew about a lot, and by a lot, i mean A LOT. Another finding is chilling, yet not suprising. There was help from abroad: French, South African, Chinese systems where used and manuals where found. So you have ‘democratic’ regimes building systems for such dictators to oppress its own people. It is one thing building a one off unique electric fiat 500, like the one shown below, but helping the Lybian Stasi to collect date which can lead to arrests (and a treatment that does not exactly involve polite interrogation)? Someone start an ethical discussion, please.

I shows again that the internet was percieved as safe, but turned out to be just as dangerous to gather as the local coffeebar crammed with listeningdevices and secretagents with cheap cigarettes observing your every move through holes in a newspaper..

In this there is a awkward paradox: The the last resort for the opposition was the internet, where they used westernbuild social media networking sites to organise themselves, while at the same time this last dark alleyway in the digital realm of Lybia was flooded with the cybersearchlights of monitoringsoftware made partly in the West as well.
How paradoxal, how cynical.

 

 source fiat pic: http://gigapica.geenstijl.nl/2011/08/bye_bye_ghadaffi.html

Fear and blogging in the Arab world.

A piece in the Jerusalem Post about arab bloggers being threatened. I am not suprised: Like i said before: overemphasizing social media as a dicatorkiller is not exactly helping the internet becoming a tool for change in countries ruled by such leaders. It will entrench sitting autorities and only attracts more attention to the medium in the same way that the bloggers in the JP article tell about. Like one anaylst said in another article on the Jerusalem Post: in Egypt the internet went down for a couple of days, but the protests kept going. I see the same in Lybia.

But the same Harvard scholar quoted in the other article also says that there is only one option for leaders to suppress protests: force. It looks like mr. Assad of Syria is a quick learner when it comes to effectively cracking down on protesters.

Everbody tweets and youtubes their asses of, but Assad? He aint goin nowhere.  Ahmedinedjad: same.  Their motto: No guns, no glory.

Bloggers and Twitizens are not as powerfull as they may seem at first glance. They can only act as a cataclyst to rally existing hopes and fears into demonstrations on the streets. And by constantly heralding them as freedomfighters in western media the governments will be even more motivated to silence them. 

 

Schrapnel

Last april photohrapher Tim Chivers recorded the accidental death of a rebel fighter (Advice: GRAPHIC), caused by schrapnel that hit him. The schrapnel was released after inexperienced fighters fired a recoilless rifle (i would say, BIGASSgun) at very short distance, while the weapon was ment to hit tanks far away. Schrapnel flying around hit the man, causing a fatal injury. He bled to death.

As i wrote in an earlier post, the rebels are a group of disorganised  and untrained fighters, only bound together by the common goal of removing Colonel Ghadaffi from office.  They have learned some hard lessons on the way, like not firing such weapons in small crammed areas.
And hard lessons are ahead: People already say that if Lybia wants democracy, it will need to learn some hard lessons on the way to becoming it. Democracy is an ongoing project, it spans many years.

But if the common goal of removing the enemy from office is achieved, which has more or less happened at this moment, then whats next? How will those lessons crystalize into democracy?

Historically the rebels face a big challenge. Lybia is a tribal country, lots of differences: East en West, Nationalist vs Islamist, tribal disputes within those groups….It is not certain that all those differences will dissappear once the smoke has cleared over Ghadaffi’s compound.

To keep the fatal mistake on that april 24th in Misrata as a metaphor: Lybians must understand that the power thats currently in their hands can cause some nasty collateral damage.I hope that those hard lessons that the transitional government has to learn will not result  people dying because the schrapnel of history hits them in the back..

Time will tell.

Internet back on track in Libya: Sign of liberation?

Funny CNN article today: i quote CNN-correspondent Doug Gross writing about the re-emerging of Internet / Twitter in Tripoli last week:

“Internet service was, indeed, returning Monday to Tripoli and other parts of Libya. In a digital age in which the free flow of online information is credited with everything from helping topple dictators to abetting riots, that could be taken as a signal of emerging freedom almost as strong as the rebel forces advancing on Gadhafi’s last stronghold.”

So, let me break it down: The fact that internet is back online is not simply due to some rebel official unchecking the ‘lock ‘ button on some probably western made internetblockingdevice. Furthermore: we can forget that the rebels have send Khadaffi’s forces running without a proper internetconnection as a communication tool for what, the last 6 months? NOOOO, Its a sign almost as strong as the guys with AK47’s rushing for Tripoli in geared out Toyota Pickups. DEMOCRACY IS ON THE WAY, WE CAN USE TWITTER!

Eh, yep.

Well, if thats the case, then i hope you dont mind me stating that the internet is comparable in another way as well: Without central coordination even the most enthusiastic group of internet-users will not succeed in using internet and social media properly. It will end up in a cacafony of twitterchatter. Just as? Excactly; the same problem the rebels have: all of them very enthusiastic, but they lack central coordination and planning. The rebels are basically a mess and would not have had the current succes without NATO help. 

The internet played no role of importance in Lybia up until know, so what signs almost as strong as the rebel forces are there here excactly?

Im curious, since a seriously have no idea.

Flipper

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Afgelopen week is mijn eerste bijdrage aan de site Go2war2 gepubliceerd.

Dit is een site die zich richt op het delen van informatie over WO2. Mijn bijdrage aan dit nobele doel is hier te vinden.

User Generated Media als trofee

Opvallend stukje tv gisteravond bij de grijsaards van oude media NOS.

In de burgeroorlog die inmiddels woedt in Libië hebben beide partijen een interessante nieuwe manier van trofeeën verzamelen. De scalp van deze tijd is de telefoon van de vijand, vaak een smartphone.

Op die telefoons staan foto’s en video’s die de strijders zelf hebben gemaakt en vaak zichzelf filmen bij hun dagelijkse activiteiten of gevechtshandelingen.

Niet alleen laat het item zien dat iedereen tegenwoordig de eigen versie van het verhaal over een oorlog kan maken in beeld en geluid.

Het sluit ook aan op de conclusie uit eigen onderzoek dat militairen bij het maken van verhalen via nieuwe technologieën zoals sociale media en -in dit geval- smartphones vooral over zichzelf vertellen. Het zijn ego-documenten.

En het laat zien dat nieuwe mediatechnologien zodanig zijn doorgedrongen op het slagveld dat het nu ook de scalp is van de overwonnen vijand. Als je dit koppelt aan het feit dat de meeste beelden ego-documenten zijn, dan is dit eigenlijk nog niet eens zo gek idee.  Je hebt als het ware het ego, de belevingswereld van de strijder krijgsgevangen gemaakt.

Het verslag zie je hier.