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| 1 |
ID:
135119
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| Summary/Abstract |
In order to combat governments’ efforts to isolate their people from the outside world, individuals in countries across the globe have developed alternative social media for their fellow citizens. World Policy Journal has identified six alternative social media sites that are engaging locals on a daily basis.
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| 2 |
ID:
135116
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Big question: have social media and/or smartphones disrupted life in your part of the world?
/ Valenzuela, Sebastián; Valdimarsson, Valgeir ; Egbunike, Nwachukwu ; Fraser, Matthew, Sey, Araba, Pallaev, Tohir, Chachavalpongpun, Pavin, Saka, Erkan, Lyubashenko, Igor
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| Summary/Abstract |
Social media and smartphones, the latter carrying this newest of mankind’s means of communication and activism, have in many cases served as agents of change for both good and ill. We asked our panel of global experts how these new networks and those who use them may have disrupted daily life in their respective parts of the world.
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| 3 |
ID:
135125
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NEAR LAIZA, Burma—At a rebel encampment high in the Kachin Hills, 50 new recruits alternate between knuckle-pushups and jumping jacks, stirring up dust as they move in the searing heat. Some have the deeply tanned, serious faces of laborers; others wear the spiky hair and easy smiles of middle-class kids. When one of the boys lags behind, the drill sergeant shoots him a withering look, as if to say, “Really? That’s the best you can do?” The kid shrugs and cheerfully struggles on. The exercises feel more like gym class than a military drill. It’s the first week of basic training, and many of the recruits have skipped their school holidays to be here.
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| 4 |
ID:
135122
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| Summary/Abstract |
Edward Snowden’s June 2013 leak has shone unprecedented light on the dark underside of Internet connectivity. So far, however, Canada has remained a victim largely hidden in the shadows.
Much of the debate over the National Security Agency (NSA) revelations has focused on U.S. domestic surveillance of individuals never under suspicion. But whatever modest legal protections Americans may enjoy, all those outside the United States are classified as foreigners and have no such protection. And while we know most about the NSA’s domestic surveillance operations, the Snowden documents make very clear that with the aid of its allies—Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand—the NSA has developed a globe-spanning surveillance infrastructure of remarkable scale and scope. Not surprisingly, the NSA has targeted countries regarded as “unfriendly” to American interests, such as China, Russia, and Iran, but the Agency has also been intercepting and analyzing the internal communications of countries generally regarded as “friendly” allies, such as Brazil, Denmark, Germany, France, India, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and many more. The aptly named Boundless Informant program reported that in one month alone, the NSA’s Global Access Unit collected data on over 97 billion emails and 124 billion phone calls from nearly every country.
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| 5 |
ID:
135129
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| Summary/Abstract |
Eastern Antioquia, Colombia—In late 2001, Sandra Mira was kidnapped while riding a bus with her six-year-old daughter through rural Colombia. Paramilitaries in camouflage uniforms stopped the bus and forced both to disembark. They tied up Sandra, then returned her daughter to the bus. When the girl arrived in San Carlos, the town where the family lived, she asked someone to call her grandmother, Pastora Mira.
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| 6 |
ID:
135134
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| Summary/Abstract |
Harare, Zimbabwe—“It was a thrill when the U.S. dollar was introduced in Zimbabwe as legal tender. Before that, we were all too often balancing the cash in the office, which was a nightmare—especially with all the zeros, not to mention the coins and having to weigh them,” says Anna, a bank teller. The bank, it seems, had a standard weight for a certain amount of coins for each denomination. Instead of going into the bank and counting the coins, they would weigh them because there were so many. “Inflation got so bad,” she continued, “it was a relief to have a stable currency, as our money was losing value by the minute. Before the [U.S.] dollar came, we were in a spending frenzy as our own currency lost value so quickly, it was necessary to get rid of it quickly—to buy something, anything solid.”
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| 7 |
ID:
135135
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On Saturday, October 1, 1977, I arrived in Belgrade to take up my post as East European bureau chief of The New York Times. I’d timed my arrival to coincide with the opening of the conference of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), one of many efforts during the depths of the Cold War to facilitate dialogue between East and West—the two halves of a very much divided, and at times hostile, Europe.
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| 8 |
ID:
135127
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| Summary/Abstract |
Eastern Antioquia, Colombia—In late 2001, Sandra Mira was kidnapped while riding a bus with her six-year-old daughter through rural Colombia. Paramilitaries in camouflage uniforms stopped the bus and forced both to disembark. They tied up Sandra, then returned her daughter to the bus. When the girl arrived in San Carlos, the town where the family lived, she asked someone to call her grandmother, Pastora Mira.
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| 9 |
ID:
135121
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| Summary/Abstract |
Chinese Internet company Baidu recently debuted Busca, a Portuguese version of its search engine localized for Brazilian users. Though, as China’s state news agency Xinhua pointed out, this was not Baidu’s first foray into overseas markets, it was the first time China’s top leader was personally on hand to support the launch. As Chinese President Xi Jinping and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff jointly pressed a button initiating the service, it appeared China had taken another step in leveraging its fast-growing technology companies to enhance its global soft power—something Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, had declared a key national objective.
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| 10 |
ID:
135124
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In 2006, when the Pirate Party was launched in Sweden, Amelia Andersdotter was 18 years old. The movement, launched on a platform of reform for European laws regulating copyrights and patents, quickly adopted a broader mandate as it swept across Europe—supporting the individual’s right to privacy, both on the Internet and in everyday transactions, as well as government transparency in its interactions with its citizens. Five years later, Andersdotter took her seat as the youngest member of the European Parliament, her party having catapulted past the Green Party to become the third largest in Sweden by membership. Giving up her studies of mathematics, physics, Spanish, and law, she left university to take her seat in Brussels, where she focused her attention on information policy. A bitter opponent of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, she was largely responsible for its parliamentary downfall. However, this past Spring, Andersdotter lost her parliamentary seat. She has since turned her attention to the role that social media and Internet freedom can play in individual lives, which she discussed with World Policy Journal editor David A. Andelman and managing editor Yaffa Fredrick.
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| 11 |
ID:
135118
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We want more openness, more transparency,” Ethiopian writer Endalkchew Chala observes. “People deserve choice; people deserve access to the world’s knowledge.” For expressing views like these online, his friends were scheduled to go on trial for terrorism in early August—though the trial has since been adjourned to October 15. Perhaps because the absurd charges against them were getting more international attention than expected.
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| 12 |
ID:
135126
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| Summary/Abstract |
TIMBUKTU, Mali—“We are the only ones who didn’t leave.” Sandy Ag Mostapha is standing beside his cattle, a black turban binding his head and a loose shirt draped over dusty trousers. We are in Tayshak, a Tuareg encampment in the desert about six miles north of Timbuktu, where a few tents, made from goat skins, are pitched between feathery acacias. Before the crisis of 2012, some 60 families lived here, but that number has been reduced to just 15.
“Everybody left to go to the refugee camps,” says Sandy, “and it is only now they are starting to return. But most have lost their animals. They were frightened by the noise of the planes, and if you lose an animal here in the desert, they will die because they depend on us for water.”
One of his sons is walking beside a donkey, beating its back with a stick, driving it 200 feet across the sand, exactly the same distance as the depth of the well from which it draws the water. In the orchestra of well music, the crack of the stick chimes with the creak of a pulley, then the sloshing of the precious liquid, drops of it catching the sun like gemstones as they leak out of a sweating goatskin. The skins are dragged over the lip and emptied into the troughs, or poured into plastic bidons (small containers) to supply the human needs of the camp.
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| 13 |
ID:
135117
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| Summary/Abstract |
As the Ebola virus spreads across Western Africa, World Policy Journal explores the role of social media in tracking epidemics. In order to measure social media’s impact, we compare the number of reported cases and deaths through social media with that of the World Health Organization (WHO), the international body responding to the virus in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, in May, June, and July 2014. The information is compiled through Crisis NET, a cutting-edge platform that collects and houses incident data. Crisis NET’s
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| 14 |
ID:
135132
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Bethlehem, West Bank—At the edge of Bethlehem, a few blocks from Gilo terminal, past one of the checkpoints where anyone who needs to reach Israel must pass, is a small apartment—its view obstructed by the Barrier. The home was recently built by its Palestinian Christian owner, Adnan, from money he had saved while working for a foreign company in Jerusalem. His permit had recently expired, though, and he was no longer able to work in Jerusalem. Still, Adnan, who asked that his name not be used in this explosive environment, had worked intensely for decades. He had managed to save enough to build a home not only for himself and his family, but also to add a two-bedroom guesthouse. He was now seeking a tenant.
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| 15 |
ID:
135123
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| Summary/Abstract |
Cairo, Egypt—As a child of the 1980s, I grew up watching science fiction television shows and movies—all set in the “not-so-distant future.” Holographic communication, teleportation, and flying cars were central tenets of that universe. And while I marveled at the prospect of these technologies, I was most fascinated by the “magical technological device”—that could be used to complete any task, from basic communication to dissemination of news to national security. Though I later learned that this device was nothing more than a plot twist used to advance these stories, I gained something quite special from this twist—a belief in the promise of the future.
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