By John Ballard
Among the items I posted yesterday was a snip from the UK describing an app for smart phones with political activists in mind, a "panic button" feature the user can activate in the unhappy event of getting apprehended by someone confiscating the phone.
A 'panic button' that wipes out cell phone address books and sends emergency alerts is being developed by the U.S. government for pro-democracy campaigners.
A special app can be activated if the smartphone is confiscated by security authorities.
The U.S. State Department is targeting countries ranging from the Middle East to China with the technology.
It wants to equip the activists with the tools to fight back against repressive governments
At the end of the post I asked the following question:
To what extent, if any, has this technological input on the part of the US State Department contributed to the social explosions now detonating across the Arab world? This is not just a single event. It's going off like a string of firecrackers, sequentially, in a relatively short time. And it ain't over yet...
Yesterday afternoon's email from Kat, our awesome researcher, brought me the answer in an item she came across last week.
US training quietly nurtured young Arab democrats
Hosni Mubarak's woes could be traced back to Egypt's 2005 election, when an army of tech-savvy poll watchers, with a little help from foreign friends, exposed the president's customary "landslide" vote as an autocrat's fraud. In nearby Jordan, too, an outside assist on election day 2007 helped put that kingdom's undemocratic political structure in a harsh spotlight _ and the king in a bind.
And when 2011's winter of discontent exploded into a pro-democracy storm in Tunisia and then Egypt, opposition activist Bilal Diab broke away from his six-month "young leaders school" and its imported instructors, and put his new skills to use among the protest tents of Cairo's Tahrir Square.
The article describes how training with two established NGOs has paid off in spades in Egypt and across the Arab world.
?The National Democratic Institute describes itself as
a nonprofit, nonpartisan, nongovernmental organization that has supported democratic institutions and practices in every region of the world for more than two decades. Since its founding in 1983, NDI and its local partners have worked to establish and strengthen political and civic organizations, safeguard elections, and promote citizen participation, openness and accountability in government.
?And the International Republican Institute (Senator John McCain, Chairman of the Board of Directors) is self-described thus:
A nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, IRI advances freedom and democracy worldwide by developing political parties, civic institutions, open elections, democratic governance and the rule of law.
I love that "rule of law" part. So full of meaning, you know. And both organizations are very clear that they are both non-partisan and non-governmental. It is sheer coincidence that the two names happen to reflect the names of America's two-party political system.
Funding, you ask?
Yes, me, too. Here it is for both.
NDI funding is from a wide variety of donors, including the National Endowment for Democracy, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. Department of State, other international development agencies, private foundations and donations to date.
IRI funding includes grants from the U.S. State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development and the National Endowment for Democracy. Less than one percent of IRI�s funding comes from private donations. IRI does not receive any money from the Republican Party.
The NDI list is quite long, including a string of other governments funding this NON-GOVERNMENTAL organization. To save having to search, yes, Mr. Soros' organization is on the list. The reader can take it from there...
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In other news, but related, this morning's tweets Includes one from sarrasworld with this excited message.
Just arrived at the #NokiaE7 launch! @Sandmonkey
If you want to know what animating Egyptian activists at the moment (it's about noon in Cairo) check out hashtag #NokiaE7.
When I stared putting this post together there were only a handful of tweets, several of which were posted Friday. That was before word got out. The link I marked a little while ago now says "492 new tweets." Word travels fast in the Twitterverse.
My aim this morning is to connect technology with democratic changes in the Arab world. Even as we speak and read, I have a strong feeling that the next generation, to the extent they get politicized and become active, will bring about a sea change in how politics will be done in the future.
This change is not limited to the Arab world. But it is limited to places with Internet connectivity and a large number of savvy young people conversant with how to make it work. Past civil unrest in Iran, Myanmar, China and Thailand have surfaced during the last few years, but have been met with harsh responses from their respective govrnments. It is worth noting that all started non-violently but were met with violent, deadly responses.
One noticeable difference between the Tunisia-Egypt-Bahrain core of the Arab uprisings and what is happening in Libya and Syria is that these last two are not churning out Tweets other than from journalists and a handful of observers. The "rebels" and "opposition" participants are not as interconnected as those in Tunisia, Egypt or Bahrain. Yemen has a handful of techno-savvy young activists but the movement seems comparatively shallow nationally.
I'm just an observer, watching with awe at events as they happen. i want to make some important point but none comes to mind.
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Before I quit, here is a link to a short interview with Syria expert Josh Landis that aired yesterday on PRI's The World.
I mentioned Landis in Saturday's links list by way of balancing another link to Tony Badran. The two are typically at odds. Landis, whose wife and inlaws are Syrian, is a frequent visitor to Syria and his reports and observations reveal an underlying sympathy with the country, although he is not in denial about the ugly part of the Assad tyranny. All I can say about that is that those of us living in glass houses should not throw stones.
Briefly Landis feels the unrest in Syria will not spread beyond a few places, and if it does the aims will not be the same as they are in other parts of the Arab world. His thoughts are worth a hearing.
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