Politics: Police reportedly kill 10 in Iran protests

Robert F. Worth reported from Beirut, and Nazila Fathi from Toronto, for Reuters news agency on 28 December 2009.


Police officers in Iran opened fire into crowds of protesters on Sunday [27 December], killing at least 10 people, witnesses and opposition Web sites said, in a day of chaotic street battles that threatened to deepen the country’s civil unrest.

The protests, during the holiday commemorating the death of Imam Hussein, Shiite Islam’s holiest martyr, were the bloodiest and among the largest since the uprisings that followed the disputed presidential election last June, witnesses said. Hundreds of people were reported wounded in cities across the country, and the Tehran police said they had made 300 arrests.

News agencies, citing an opposition Web site, said that Ibrahim Yazdi, a former foreign minister and pro-democracy leader, and Emad Baghi, a prominent human rights activist, were arrested early Monday. Mr. Yazdi was an adviser to the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who led the Iranian revolution in 1979.

Mehdi Karroubi, an opposition leader who was among the losing candidates in the June election, was quoted Monday as saying on a Web site that the government’s actions in suppressing the protests on Sunday were even more brutal than the regime that was overthrown in the revolution, news agencies reported.

One of the dead on Sunday was Ali Moussavi, a 43-year-old nephew of the opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi.

The decision by the authorities to use deadly force on the Ashura holiday infuriated many Iranians, and some said the violence appeared to galvanize more traditional religious people who have not been part of the protests so far. Historically, Iranian rulers have honored Ashura’s prohibition of violence, even during wartime.

In Tehran, thick crowds marched down a central avenue in midmorning, defying official warnings of a harsh crackdown on protests as they chanted “death to Khamenei,” referring to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has expressed growing intolerance for political dissent in the country.

They refused to retreat even as the police fired tear gas, charged them with batons and fired warning shots. The police then opened fire directly into the crowd, opposition Web sites said, citing witnesses. At least five people were killed in Tehran, four in the northwestern city of Tabriz, and one in Shiraz in the south, the Web sites reported. Photographs of several victims were circulated widely.



Unlike the other protesters reported killed on Sunday, Ali Moussavi appears to have been assassinated in a political gesture aimed at his uncle, according to Mohsen Makhmalbaf, an opposition figure based in Paris with close ties to the Moussavi family.

Mr. Moussavi was first run over by a sport utility vehicle outside his home, Mr. Makhmalbaf wrote on his Web site. Five men then emerged from the car, and one of them shot Mr. Moussavi. Government officials took the body late Sunday and warned the family not to hold a funeral, Mr. Makhmalbaf wrote.

In some parts of Tehran, protesters pushed the police back, hurling rocks and capturing several police cars and motorcycles, which they set on fire. Videos posted to the Internet showed scenes of mayhem, with trash bins burning and groups of protesters attacking Basij militia volunteers amid a din of screams.

One video showed a group of protesters setting an entire police station aflame in Tehran. Another showed people carrying off the body of a dead protester, chanting, “I’ll kill, I’ll kill the one who killed my brother.”

By late afternoon, coils of black smoke rose over central Tehran from dozens of street fires, and smaller groups of protesters continued to skirmish with police and Basij militia members. In the evening, loudspeakers in Imam Hussein Square, where most of the clashes took place, announced that gatherings of more than three people were banned, witnesses said.

There were scattered reports of police officers surrendering, or refusing to fight. Several videos posted on the Internet show officers holding up their helmets and walking away from the melee, as protesters pat them on the back in appreciation. In one photograph, a police officer can be seen holding his arms up and wearing a bright green headband, the signature color of the opposition movement.

The Tehran police denied firing on protesters and in an official statement late Sunday said five people had been killed “in suspicious ways.”

Ahmadreza Radan, deputy commander of state security forces in Tehran, said dozens of police officers had been injured and “some were killed,” the semiofficial news agency ISNA reported.

Protests and clashes also broke out in the cities of Isfahan, Mashhad, Shiraz, Arak, Tabriz, Najafabad, Babol, Ardebil and Orumieh, opposition Web sites said.

Foreign journalists have been banned from covering the protests, and the reports could not be independently verified.



If the 10 deaths are confirmed, it would be the highest toll since the summer, when huge crowds took to the streets to protest what they said was rampant fraud in the presidential election won by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The White House condemned what it called the “unjust suppression” of civilians by the Iranian government on Sunday.

“Hope and history are on the side of those who peacefully seek their universal rights, and so is the United States,” said Mike Hammer, a spokesman for the National Security Council.

The turmoil revealed an opposition movement that is becoming bolder and more direct in its challenge to Iran’s governing authorities. Protesters deliberately blended their political message with the day’s religious one on Sunday, alternating antigovernment slogans with ancient cries of mourning for Imam Hussein.

“This is the month of blood, Yazid will fall,” the protesters shouted, equating Ayatollah Khamenei with Yazid, the ruler who ordered Imam Hussein’s killing.

The protests may have received a boost from the death last week of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, a patriarch of Iran’s Islamic Revolution who became a fierce critic of the country’s leaders, especially in recent months. His memorials have brought out not only the young activists and students who have dominated the protests in recent months, but also older and more conservative people, who revered him for reasons of faith as well as politics.

Sunday was the seventh day since his death, an important marker in Shiite mourning rituals. Late Sunday, the authorities declared martial law in the city of Najafabad, Ayatollah Montazeri’s hometown, the Jaras Web site reported.

The government crackdowns on mourning ceremonies in the past week provoked many people in the more traditional neighborhoods of south Tehran as earlier clashes did not, some residents said.

“People in my neighborhood have been going to the Ashura rituals every night with green fabric for the first time,” said Hamid, 33, a laborer who lives in the southern Tehran neighborhood of Shahreh-Ray and declined to give his last name. “They have been politicized recently, because of the suppression this month.”

Yet few protesters expected the scale of the bloodshed that broke out on Sunday. The memory of Imam Hussein is so potent among Shiites that killing for any reason is strictly forbidden on Ashura, and Iranian leaders have always tried to avoid violence or even state executions during a two-month period surrounding the holiday.

“Ashura is a very symbolic day in our culture, and it revives the notion that the innocents were killed by a villain,” said Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, a former member of the Iranian Parliament who is a visiting scholar at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. “Killing people on Ashura shows how far Khamenei is willing to go to suppress the protests.”

In another sign of the breadth of the crackdown, security forces on Sunday raided the offices of a clerical association in the holy city of Qum that has supported the opposition since the June election, the Jaras Web site reported. Guards surrounded the house, and members of the association and their families — who had gathered inside the association’s headquarters for an Ashura mourning ceremony — were not allowed to leave, the site reported.

Mr. Radan, the police deputy commander, said that only one of the protesters killed in Tehran had been shot. Two were run over by cars and one was thrown from a bridge, he said.

But a doctor working at Najmieh Hospital in Tehran said Sunday night that the hospital had performed 17 operations on people with gunshot wounds. They were treating 60 people with serious head injuries, including three who were in critical condition, said the doctor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions.

USEFUL WEBSITES
Global Voices Online on citizen photographs of the protests, here.


DISCLAIMER
Here at WbH we do not like to reprint articles from news agencies or newspapers, but the story in Iran has not yet been analysed by open sources. We felt it was a strong story that needed to be reproduced so that as many people as possible could be made aware.

Source: Reuters news agency, Beirut, 28 December 2009.

Full text of Barack Obama's Nobel Lecture December 2009

Nobel Lecture "A Just and Lasting Peace" by Barack H. Obama delivered on 10 December 2009 at the Oslo City Hall, Norway. He was introduced by Thorbjørn Jagland, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, distinguished members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, citizens of America, and citizens of the world:

I receive this honor with deep gratitude and great humility. It is an award that speaks to our highest aspirations – that for all the cruelty and hardship of our world, we are not mere prisoners of fate. Our actions matter, and can bend history in the direction of justice.

And yet I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated. (Laughter.) In part, this is because I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage. Compared to some of the giants of history who've received this prize – Schweitzer and King; Marshall and Mandela – my accomplishments are slight. And then there are the men and women around the world who have been jailed and beaten in the pursuit of justice; those who toil in humanitarian organizations to relieve suffering; the unrecognized millions whose quiet acts of courage and compassion inspire even the most hardened cynics. I cannot argue with those who find these men and women – some known, some obscure to all but those they help – to be far more deserving of this honor than I.

But perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of the military of a nation in the midst of two wars. One of these wars is winding down. The other is a conflict that America did not seek; one in which we are joined by 42 other countries – including Norway – in an effort to defend ourselves and all nations from further attacks.

Still, we are at war, and I'm responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land. Some will kill, and some will be killed. And so I come here with an acute sense of the costs of armed conflict – filled with difficult questions about the relationship between war and peace, and our effort to replace one with the other.

Now these questions are not new. War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man. At the dawn of history, its morality was not questioned; it was simply a fact, like drought or disease – the manner in which tribes and then civilizations sought power and settled their differences.

And over time, as codes of law sought to control violence within groups, so did philosophers and clerics and statesmen seek to regulate the destructive power of war. The concept of a "just war" emerged, suggesting that war is justified only when certain conditions were met: if it is waged as a last resort or in self-defense; if the force used is proportional; and if, whenever possible, civilians are spared from violence.

Of course, we know that for most of history, this concept of "just war" was rarely observed. The capacity of human beings to think up new ways to kill one another proved inexhaustible, as did our capacity to exempt from mercy those who look different or pray to a different God. Wars between armies gave way to wars between nations – total wars in which the distinction between combatant and civilian became blurred. In the span of 30 years, such carnage would twice engulf this continent. And while it's hard to conceive of a cause more just than the defeat of the Third Reich and the Axis powers, World War II was a conflict in which the total number of civilians who died exceeded the number of soldiers who perished.

In the wake of such destruction, and with the advent of the nuclear age, it became clear to victor and vanquished alike that the world needed institutions to prevent another world war. And so, a quarter century after the United States Senate rejected the League of Nations – an idea for which Woodrow Wilson received this prize – America led the world in constructing an architecture to keep the peace: a Marshall Plan and a United Nations, mechanisms to govern the waging of war, treaties to protect human rights, prevent genocide, restrict the most dangerous weapons.

In many ways, these efforts succeeded. Yes, terrible wars have been fought, and atrocities committed. But there has been no Third World War. The Cold War ended with jubilant crowds dismantling a wall. Commerce has stitched much of the world together. Billions have been lifted from poverty. The ideals of liberty and self-determination, equality and the rule of law have haltingly advanced. We are the heirs of the fortitude and foresight of generations past, and it is a legacy for which my own country is rightfully proud.

And yet, a decade into a new century, this old architecture is buckling under the weight of new threats. The world may no longer shudder at the prospect of war between two nuclear superpowers, but proliferation may increase the risk of catastrophe. Terrorism has long been a tactic, but modern technology allows a few small men with outsized rage to murder innocents on a horrific scale.

Moreover, wars between nations have increasingly given way to wars within nations. The resurgence of ethnic or sectarian conflicts; the growth of secessionist movements, insurgencies, and failed states – all these things have increasingly trapped civilians in unending chaos. In today's wars, many more civilians are killed than soldiers; the seeds of future conflict are sown, economies are wrecked, civil societies torn asunder, refugees amassed, children scarred.

I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war. What I do know is that meeting these challenges will require the same vision, hard work, and persistence of those men and women who acted so boldly decades ago. And it will require us to think in new ways about the notions of just war and the imperatives of a just peace.

We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations – acting individually or in concert – will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.

I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King Jr. said in this same ceremony years ago: "Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones." As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King's life work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there's nothing weak – nothing passive – nothing naïve – in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.

But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism – it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

I raise this point, I begin with this point because in many countries there is a deep ambivalence about military action today, no matter what the cause. And at times, this is joined by a reflexive suspicion of America, the world's sole military superpower.

But the world must remember that it was not simply international institutions – not just treaties and declarations – that brought stability to a post-World War II world. Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans. We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest – because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if others' children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity.

So yes, the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace. And yet this truth must coexist with another – that no matter how justified, war promises human tragedy. The soldier's courage and sacrifice is full of glory, expressing devotion to country, to cause, to comrades in arms. But war itself is never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such.

So part of our challenge is reconciling these two seemingly inreconcilable truths – that war is sometimes necessary, and war at some level is an expression of human folly. Concretely, we must direct our effort to the task that President Kennedy called for long ago. "Let us focus," he said, "on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions." A gradual evolution of human institutions.

What might this evolution look like? What might these practical steps be?

To begin with, I believe that all nations – strong and weak alike – must adhere to standards that govern the use of force. I – like any head of state – reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation. Nevertheless, I am convinced that adhering to standards, international standards, strengthens those who do, and isolates and weakens those who don't.

The world rallied around America after the 9/11 attacks, and continues to support our efforts in Afghanistan, because of the horror of those senseless attacks and the recognized principle of self-defense. Likewise, the world recognized the need to confront Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait – a consensus that sent a clear message to all about the cost of aggression.

Furthermore, America – in fact, no nation – can insist that others follow the rules of the road if we refuse to follow them ourselves. For when we don't, our actions appear arbitrary and undercut the legitimacy of future interventions, no matter how justified.

And this becomes particularly important when the purpose of military action extends beyond self-defense or the defense of one nation against an aggressor. More and more, we all confront difficult questions about how to prevent the slaughter of civilians by their own government, or to stop a civil war whose violence and suffering can engulf an entire region.

I believe that force can be justified on humanitarian grounds, as it was in the Balkans, or in other places that have been scarred by war. Inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later. That's why all responsible nations must embrace the role that militaries with a clear mandate can play to keep the peace.

America's commitment to global security will never waver. But in a world in which threats are more diffuse, and missions more complex, America cannot act alone. America alone cannot secure the peace. This is true in Afghanistan. This is true in failed states like Somalia, where terrorism and piracy is joined by famine and human suffering. And sadly, it will continue to be true in unstable regions for years to come.

The leaders and soldiers of NATO countries, and other friends and allies, demonstrate this truth through the capacity and courage they've shown in Afghanistan. But in many countries, there is a disconnect between the efforts of those who serve and the ambivalence of the broader public. I understand why war is not popular, but I also know this: The belief that peace is desirable is rarely enough to achieve it. Peace requires responsibility. Peace entails sacrifice. That's why NATO continues to be indispensable. That's why we must strengthen U.N. and regional peacekeeping, and not leave the task to a few countries. That's why we honor those who return home from peacekeeping and training abroad to Oslo and Rome; to Ottawa and Sydney; to Dhaka and Kigali – we honor them not as makers of war, but of wagers – but as wagers of peace.

Let me make one final point about the use of force. Even as we make difficult decisions about going to war, we must also think clearly about how we fight it. The Nobel Committee recognized this truth in awarding its first prize for peace to Henry Dunant – the founder of the Red Cross, and a driving force behind the Geneva Conventions.

Where force is necessary, we have a moral and strategic interest in binding ourselves to certain rules of conduct. And even as we confront a vicious adversary that abides by no rules, I believe the United States of America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war. That is what makes us different from those whom we fight. That is a source of our strength. That is why I prohibited torture. That is why I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed. And that is why I have reaffirmed America's commitment to abide by the Geneva Conventions. We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend. And we honor – we honor those ideals by upholding them not when it's easy, but when it is hard.

I have spoken at some length to the question that must weigh on our minds and our hearts as we choose to wage war. But let me now turn to our effort to avoid such tragic choices, and speak of three ways that we can build a just and lasting peace.

First, in dealing with those nations that break rules and laws, I believe that we must develop alternatives to violence that are tough enough to actually change behavior – for if we want a lasting peace, then the words of the international community must mean something. Those regimes that break the rules must be held accountable. Sanctions must exact a real price. Intransigence must be met with increased pressure – and such pressure exists only when the world stands together as one.

One urgent example is the effort to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, and to seek a world without them. In the middle of the last century, nations agreed to be bound by a treaty whose bargain is clear: All will have access to peaceful nuclear power; those without nuclear weapons will forsake them; and those with nuclear weapons will work towards disarmament. I am committed to upholding this treaty. It is a centerpiece of my foreign policy. And I'm working with President Medvedev to reduce America and Russia's nuclear stockpiles.

But it is also incumbent upon all of us to insist that nations like Iran and North Korea do not game the system. Those who claim to respect international law cannot avert their eyes when those laws are flouted. Those who care for their own security cannot ignore the danger of an arms race in the Middle East or East Asia. Those who seek peace cannot stand idly by as nations arm themselves for nuclear war.

The same principle applies to those who violate international laws by brutalizing their own people. When there is genocide in Darfur, systematic rape in Congo, repression in Burma – there must be consequences. Yes, there will be engagement; yes, there will be diplomacy – but there must be consequences when those things fail. And the closer we stand together, the less likely we will be faced with the choice between armed intervention and complicity in oppression.

This brings me to a second point – the nature of the peace that we seek. For peace is not merely the absence of visible conflict. Only a just peace based on the inherent rights and dignity of every individual can truly be lasting.

It was this insight that drove drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights after the Second World War. In the wake of devastation, they recognized that if human rights are not protected, peace is a hollow promise.

And yet too often, these words are ignored. For some countries, the failure to uphold human rights is excused by the false suggestion that these are somehow Western principles, foreign to local cultures or stages of a nation's development. And within America, there has long been a tension between those who describe themselves as realists or idealists – a tension that suggests a stark choice between the narrow pursuit of interests or an endless campaign to impose our values around the world.

I reject these choices. I believe that peace is unstable where citizens are denied the right to speak freely or worship as they please; choose their own leaders or assemble without fear. Pent-up grievances fester, and the suppression of tribal and religious identity can lead to violence. We also know that the opposite is true. Only when Europe became free did it finally find peace. America has never fought a war against a democracy, and our closest friends are governments that protect the rights of their citizens. No matter how callously defined, neither America's interests – nor the world's – are served by the denial of human aspirations.

So even as we respect the unique culture and traditions of different countries, America will always be a voice for those aspirations that are universal. We will bear witness to the quiet dignity of reformers like Aung Sang Suu Kyi; to the bravery of Zimbabweans who cast their ballots in the face of beatings; to the hundreds of thousands who have marched silently through the streets of Iran. It is telling that the leaders of these governments fear the aspirations of their own people more than the power of any other nation. And it is the responsibility of all free people and free nations to make clear that these movements – these movements of hope and history – they have us on their side.

Let me also say this: The promotion of human rights cannot be about exhortation alone. At times, it must be coupled with painstaking diplomacy. I know that engagement with repressive regimes lacks the satisfying purity of indignation. But I also know that sanctions without outreach – condemnation without discussion – can carry forward only a crippling status quo. No repressive regime can move down a new path unless it has the choice of an open door.

In light of the Cultural Revolution's horrors, Nixon's meeting with Mao appeared inexcusable – and yet it surely helped set China on a path where millions of its citizens have been lifted from poverty and connected to open societies. Pope John Paul's engagement with Poland created space not just for the Catholic Church, but for labor leaders like Lech Walesa. Ronald Reagan's efforts on arms control and embrace of perestroika not only improved relations with the Soviet Union, but empowered dissidents throughout Eastern Europe. There's no simple formula here. But we must try as best we can to balance isolation and engagement, pressure and incentives, so that human rights and dignity are advanced over time.

Third, a just peace includes not only civil and political rights – it must encompass economic security and opportunity. For true peace is not just freedom from fear, but freedom from want.

It is undoubtedly true that development rarely takes root without security; it is also true that security does not exist where human beings do not have access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine and shelter they need to survive. It does not exist where children can't aspire to a decent education or a job that supports a family. The absence of hope can rot a society from within.

And that's why helping farmers feed their own people – or nations educate their children and care for the sick – is not mere charity. It's also why the world must come together to confront climate change. There is little scientific dispute that if we do nothing, we will face more drought, more famine, more mass displacement – all of which will fuel more conflict for decades. For this reason, it is not merely scientists and environmental activists who call for swift and forceful action – it's military leaders in my own country and others who understand our common security hangs in the balance.

Agreements among nations. Strong institutions. Support for human rights. Investments in development. All these are vital ingredients in bringing about the evolution that President Kennedy spoke about. And yet, I do not believe that we will have the will, the determination, the staying power, to complete this work without something more – and that's the continued expansion of our moral imagination; an insistence that there's something irreducible that we all share.

As the world grows smaller, you might think it would be easier for human beings to recognize how similar we are; to understand that we're all basically seeking the same things; that we all hope for the chance to live out our lives with some measure of happiness and fulfillment for ourselves and our families.

And yet somehow, given the dizzying pace of globalization, the cultural leveling of modernity, it perhaps comes as no surprise that people fear the loss of what they cherish in their particular identities – their race, their tribe, and perhaps most powerfully their religion. In some places, this fear has led to conflict. At times, it even feels like we're moving backwards. We see it in the Middle East, as the conflict between Arabs and Jews seems to harden. We see it in nations that are torn asunder by tribal lines.

And most dangerously, we see it in the way that religion is used to justify the murder of innocents by those who have distorted and defiled the great religion of Islam, and who attacked my country from Afghanistan. These extremists are not the first to kill in the name of God; the cruelties of the Crusades are amply recorded. But they remind us that no Holy War can ever be a just war. For if you truly believe that you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint – no need to spare the pregnant mother, or the medic, or the Red Cross worker, or even a person of one's own faith. Such a warped view of religion is not just incompatible with the concept of peace, but I believe it's incompatible with the very purpose of faith – for the one rule that lies at the heart of every major religion is that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

Adhering to this law of love has always been the core struggle of human nature. For we are fallible. We make mistakes, and fall victim to the temptations of pride, and power, and sometimes evil. Even those of us with the best of intentions will at times fail to right the wrongs before us.

But we do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected. We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place. The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached – their fundamental faith in human progress – that must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey.

For if we lose that faith – if we dismiss it as silly or naïve; if we divorce it from the decisions that we make on issues of war and peace – then we lose what's best about humanity. We lose our sense of possibility. We lose our moral compass.

Like generations have before us, we must reject that future. As Dr. King said at this occasion so many years ago, "I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the 'isness' of man's present condition makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal 'oughtness' that forever confronts him."

Let us reach for the world that ought to be – that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls.

Somewhere today, in the here and now, in the world as it is, a soldier sees he's outgunned, but stands firm to keep the peace. Somewhere today, in this world, a young protestor awaits the brutality of her government, but has the courage to march on. Somewhere today, a mother facing punishing poverty still takes the time to teach her child, scrapes together what few coins she has to send that child to school – because she believes that a cruel world still has a place for that child's dreams.

Let us live by their example. We can acknowledge that oppression will always be with us, and still strive for justice. We can admit the intractability of depravation, and still strive for dignity. Clear-eyed, we can understand that there will be war, and still strive for peace. We can do that – for that is the story of human progress; that's the hope of all the world; and at this moment of challenge, that must be our work here on Earth.

Thank you very much.

(Source: Nobel Prize website, December 2009)

Technology/Politics: ONI study shows censorship rising

In December 2009, the Director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, Dr. Ron Deibert, gave to the Googleplex in Mountain View a presentation on the Open Internet Initiative's recent studies on the policies and technologies that repressive governments are using to censor Internet content.

The following is a summary of ONI's findings.

Every country wishes to share in the prospective benefits of the Internet. However, there are no countries that are completely comfortable with the newfound freedoms of expression and access to information the Internet brings. As a result, there are few countries left in the world today that have not debated, planned, or implemented Internet filtering. In the following eight regional overviews, we provide broad summaries that exhibit the ways in which the countries within each region are grappling with the implications of Internet freedom and the challenges of regulating online content.

ONI regional profiles synthesize the findings of background research and, when applicable, technical tests carried out in eight regions: Asia, Australia/New Zealand [NOT UPDATED SINCE 2007], the Commonwealth of Independent States, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the United States/Canada.

In general, the regional overviews are structured to cover the targets of and approaches to Internet content regulation, though the individual composition of the eight overviews varies in accordance with the quantity, focus, and strategies of regulation and filtering employed by the countries within a given region.

These overviews exhibit considerable variation in filtering practices between and within different regions. This variation is seen not only in the depth, breadth, and foci of filtering, but also in the legal, technical, and administrative tools used to enact filtering. For example, the overview of Asia presents a region with a range of filtering targets and strategies as wide and diverse as its political and cultural landscape. The CIS overview displays a more narrow range of activity, reflecting perhaps the common history of the region. The MENA report evinces a region with extensive social filtering regimes and a growing penchant for targeting political speech.

By contrast, the general picture that emerges from Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand is one of more narrowly focused targeting of online content and a more diverse mix of strategies for restricting access to that content. Filtering plays an important part in these regions and countries, though it tends to be voluntary and focused on a much narrower set of issues — primarily child pornography and, in a few cases, hate speech. The primary content regulation strategies in these countries tend to rely more heavily on taking down domestically hosted Web sites and in removing Web sites from search results than on the technical filtering of foreign-hosted Web sites. This is not surprising given the large proportion of total Internet content hosted on local servers in these regions. The targets of content restrictions vary by country. Within this set, Australia is the most aggressive towards combating obscene content, while the United States goes to the greatest effort to remove Web sites that are suspected of breaching copyright law. Germany and France are the most vigorous in addressing online hate speech.

Latin America generally shares the same complement of targets and strategies as documented in Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia. However, the legal and administrative means for restricting access to content are not as advanced in Latin America as they are in these other countries and, therefore, the policy and practice of Internet blocking and content restrictions have not been applied as widely. As the legal structures and technical tools are further developed in the next several years, we may see a marked change in content regulation in Latin America.

Finally, sub-Saharan Africa has implemented the lowest level of regulatory restrictions on content of any region to date. One country, Ethiopia, has a systematic filtering regime, while Uganda has one reported incidence of filtering. In Africa the obstacles to viewing and posting content online are based on infrastructure and economics — few people have access to the Internet. This region is another in which we expect to see increased content regulation activity in the future, particularly as Internet access expands.

In these regional overviews, ONI presents information on the current ways that regions approach Internet filtering and content restrictions. These summaries in turn provide a context for ONI's specific country profiles.

ASIA

The dynamism and creativity driving the development of networked spheres in Asia showed no signs of abating through the early months of 2009. As more citizens began to utilize Internet tools for disseminating and producing information, online expression, activism, and networking have begun to permeate the national political and cultural fabric across the spectrum of Asian countries.
In 2008-2009, ONI conducted in-country testing in Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, South Korea, Malaysia, Burma, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, and Thailand. Testing results found filtering practices to be largely consistent with 2006 results.

China, Burma, and Vietnam continued to rely on pervasive filtering practices to shape public knowledge and expression by targeting primarily content specific to politically sensitive topics in their own countries, especially Web sites in local languages. China, Burma, and Vietnam also continued to block with the greatest breadth and depth, spanning human rights issues, reform and opposition activities, independent media and news, and discrimination against ethnic and religious minorities. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Singapore continued to block a nominal amount of adult content and pornographic Web sites.

South Korea increased its filtering across content categories to include a selective number of the Korean-language pornography Web sites, but otherwise remained consistent with its 2006 filtering practices, specifically targeting Web sites containing North Korean propaganda or promoting the reunification of North and South Korea, as well as a handful of gambling Web sites. In contrast to 2006, ONI in 2007-2008 found no evidence of filtering of pornography and religious conversion sites in Pakistan. Otherwise, Pakistan continued to engage in security and conflict filtering as well as social filtering of Web sites containing “blasphemous” content.

ONI found no evidence of national filtering in Indonesia, Laos, Nepal, or the Philippines. During ONI testing periods, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Malaysia were not filtering the Internet, but media reported that these countries also began blocking selectively for brief periods in 2007-2008.

COMMONWEALTH OF INDEPENDENT STATES

As a former superpower—with a tradition of authoritarianism, poorly developed independent media, and lack of private rights—the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) would seem to be an ideal setting for substantive and pervasive Internet controls. The reality, however, is variegated and complex. While the CIS region is home to some of the world’s most repressive measures and advanced techniques for subtly “shaping” Internet access, it also showcases examples of just how profoundly the Internet can affect social and political life.

States within this region have a conflicted relationship with the Internet. Most have adopted national development strategies that emphasize information technology (IT) as a means for economic growth, with some even declaring their intent to become regional “IT powerhouses.” IT development is favored because it is seen to leverage the comparative advantage of the ex-Soviet educational system with its emphasis on mathematics and engineering, and the strong tradition of innovation in the computing and technology sector. Until its demise in 1991, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was one of the few countries with a ”homegrown” capacity in supercomputing, cryptography/ crypto-analysis, and worldwide signals intelligence gathering. Currently many former Soviet citizens are among the leaders of the global IT industry.

At the same time, CIS governments are wary of the civil networking and resistance activities that these technologies make possible. In recent years, Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan have experienced “color revolutions,” where networked opposition movements (albeit movements that are more reliant on cell phones than on the Internet) have effectively challenged and overturned the results of unpopular (or allegedly fraudulent) elections. Neighboring governments fear that these challenges were made possible by opposition groups leveraging IT to organize domestic protest (often with the help of foreign-funded NGOs), and are therefore wary of leaving the sector unregulated and without control. Many now see the Internet and other communications channels in national strategic terms, and these countries have increasingly turned to security-based arguments—such as the need to secure “national informational space”—to justify regulation of the sector.

In 2006 ONI tested for the presence of filtering in eight of the eleven CIS countries: Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Background and baseline testing was also carried out in a further two countries: the Russian Federation and Turkmenistan, although in these two cases limitations on the testing methodology do not allow us to claim comprehensive results.

Of the eight countries in which ONI tested, our results did not yield significant patterns of substantive or pervasive filtering. Only Uzbekistan pursued pervasive filtering of the kind found in China, Iran, or some parts of the Middle East. In almost all countries some degree of filtering was present, but this filtering occurred mostly on corporate networks (such as educational and research networks) where accepted usage policies (AUPs) dictated that inappropriate content was not permitted, or in “edge locations”, such as Internet cafés where the reasons for filtering were more benign (conserving bandwidth) or left to the discretion of the Internet café owners themselves.

At the same time, in all eight countries authorities had taken steps of one kind or another to restrict or regulate their national informational space. These measures include:

expanded use of defamation and slander laws to selectively prosecute and deter bloggers and independent media from posting material critical of the government or specific government officials (however benignly, including, as was the case in Belarus, through the use of humor);
strict criteria pertaining to what is “acceptable” within the national media space, leading to the deregistration of sites that did not comply (Kazakhstan);
moves to compel Internet sites to register as mass media, with noncompliance then being used as grounds for filtering “illegal” content;
national security concerns (Ukraine); and,
in some cases, government officials have “asked” Internet service providers (ISPs)—formally or informally—to temporarily suspend sites detrimental to “public order” (Tajikistan).

The net effect of these sanctions (legal and quasi-legal) is to create overall environments that encourage varying degrees of self-censorship among ISPs, who are fearful of jeopardizing their licenses, and among individuals for whom prosecution or imprisonment is too high a price to pay for voicing criticism, which at times amounts to little more than a form of digital graffiti.

EUROPE

In less than a decade, the Internet in Europe has evolved from a virtually unfettered environment to one in which filtering in most countries, particularly within the European Union (EU), is the norm rather than the exception. Compared with many of the countries in other regions that block Internet content, the rise of filtering in Europe is notable because of its departure from a strong tradition of democratic processes and a commitment to free expression. Filtering takes place in a variety of forms, including the state-ordered takedown of illegal content on domestically hosted Web sites; the blocking of illegal content hosted abroad; and the filtering of results by search engines pertaining to illegal content. As in most countries around the world that engage in filtering, the distinction between voluntary and state-mandated filtering is somewhat blurred in Europe. In many instances filtering by Internet service providers (ISPs), search engines, and content providers in Europe is termed “voluntary,” but is carried out with the implicit understanding that cooperation with state authorities will prevent further legislation on the matter.

The scope of illegal content that is filtered in Europe pertains largely to child pornography, racism, and material that promotes hatred and terrorism, although more recently there have been proposals and revisions of laws in some countries that deal with filtering in other areas such as copyright and gambling. Filtering also takes place on account of defamation laws, and this practice has been criticized, particularly in the UK, for curtailing lawful online behavior and promoting an overly aggressive notice and takedown policy, where ISPs comply by removing content immediately for fear of legal action. ISPs in Europe do not have any general obligation to monitor Internet use and are protected from liability for illegal content by regulations at the European Union (EU) level, but must filter such content once it is brought to their notice. Therefore the degree of filtering in member states depends on the efforts of governments, police, advocacy groups, and the general public in identifying and reporting illegal content.

Efforts over the past decade have been underway to create a set of common policies and practices at the EU-level on Internet regulation. This is viewed as necessary to promote regional competitiveness and commerce, to counter Internet crime and terrorism, and to serve as a platform to share best practices amongst nations. Notable advancements in regulation at the EU level—although not directly in the area of filtering—include the definition of ISP liability toward illegal content and obligations toward data retention.

LATIN AMERICA

With the exception of Cuba, systematic technical filtering of the Internet has yet to take hold in Latin America. The regulation of Internet content addresses largely the same concerns and strategies seen in North America and Europe, focusing on combating the spread of child pornography and restricting child access to age-inappropriate material. As Internet usage in Latin America increases, so have defamation, hate speech, copyright, and privacy issues.

The judiciary in Latin America has played an important role in shaping and tempering filtering activity, a development common to North America and Europe. At the same time, there has been a wide range of legal and practical responses to regulating Internet activity. Latin American countries have relied primarily upon existing law to craft remedies to these challenges, though a growing number of Internet-specific laws have been debated and implemented in recent years. These issues have been addressed primarily through the application of cease and desist orders in conjunction with requests to have materials removed from search engine results.

Though most Latin American countries have ratified the American Convention on Human Rights, a regional treaty that guarantees the freedom of expression, speech continues to be threatened by government authorities, drug cartels, and others. In particular, journalists have long been targets of a range of attempts to obstruct or limit speech, from government threats to withhold publication licenses to outright intimidation and physical violence. In 2006 and 2007 journalists in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela were threatened, physically attacked, or murdered while others disappeared. For journalists working in Latin America, death threats were commonplace. In 2006 Mexico surpassed Colombia as Latin America’s deadliest country for journalists (second only to Iraq), while Cuba has the world’s second-biggest prison for journalists.

The level of openness of the media environment in Latin America is reputed to be subject to considerable self-censorship, particularly in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela.4 Because of threats from local drug cartels or other gangs and individuals, many journalists practice self-censorship, including many in Colombia who avoid reporting on corruption, drug trafficking, or violence by armed groups because of such threats. Drug gangs waging a campaign of intimidation in Mexico not only tack notes to corpses and publish newspaper ads, but have also posted a video on YouTube where an alleged Zeta member (a group of cartel operatives) is tortured and decapitated. The few Cubans who gain access are limited by extensive monitoring and excessive penalties for political dissent expressed on the Internet, leading to a climate of self-censorship.

MIDDLE EAST & NORTH AFRICA

Countries in the Middle East and North Africa continue to invest in IT infrastructure and media projects as part of their strategies to develop the local economies and create employment. Among the major examples are Jordan’s plans to establish a free IT zone in Amman, which will give sales and income tax breaks to the software companies and business development firms based in the zone. The zone is part of a strategy designed to increase the number of Internet users from 26 percent to 50 percent. It aims to increase employment in the sector and to boost the sector’s revenues from $2.2 billion in 2009 to $3 billion by end of 2011.

In addition to existing regional hubs Dubai Media City and Dubai Internet City, the United Arab Emirates launched a new content creation zone to support media content creators in the Middle East and North Africa. The new Abu Dhabi-based zone aims to employ Arab media professionals in film, broadcast, digital and publishing. CNN, BBC, the Financial Times, Thomson Reuters Foundation, and Thomson Foundation are among the partners of the zone.

At the same time, some countries have initiated efforts to develop Arabic Web content. In this regard, Microsoft is working on translation technology that would make the Arabic language more accessible to Internet users as part of Qatar’s Supreme Council for Information and Communication Technology’s initiative to develop more Web sites with Arabic content.

The number of Internet users is likely to continue to rise, especially with the introduction of technologies that overcome poor ICT infrastructure that hinders Internet access in the region. WiMAX, for example, was commercially available by end of March 2009 in Algeria, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia, while operators in other parts of the region have started testing the service.

Additionally, broadband markets are growing fast in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia, and commercial 3G mobile services have been launched in Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Syria, and Tunisia.

Demographic factors are also expected to contribute to the growth of Internet population. The Arab Media Outlook 2008–2012 says that, “Digital media will thrive in the Arab market because the market has a large, technologically accomplished demographic group—its youth—who are comfortable with it and will customize it to their own requirements.” The report also revealed that, “over 50% of the population in Yemen, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco and Egypt are estimated to be currently less than 25 years old, while in the rest of the countries the under-25, ‘net generation’ makes up around 35% to 47% of total population.”

Liberalization of telecommunications markets has already taken place in several Arab countries. Most incumbent telecom companies in North Africa are already in private hands, with exception of Algerie Telecom, the privatization of which has been postponed due to the global economic crisis. However, experts say telecom liberalization in the Middle East and North Africa still lags behind the rest of the world in terms cost and efficiency, a matter which does not encourage direct foreign investment.

SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

Many sub-Saharan African governments view the Internet as a key tool for development and are developing ICT policies accordingly, though the region still lags behind the rest of the world in both number and percentage of Internet users. Sub-Saharan Africa has a history of media abuses and restrictions on freedom of the press, and the region would seem a likely setting for equally restrictive Internet policies. However, ONI testing found evidence of a technical filtering regime in only one country, Ethiopia. As the Internet continues to develop in sub-Saharan Africa, so too will laws regulating its use. To what extent these laws will encourage education, commerce and online governance or restrict free expression largely remains to be seen.

USA & CANADA

Though neither the United States nor Canada practices widespread technical Internet filtering at the state level, the Internet is far from “unregulated” in either state. Internet content restrictions take the form of extensive legal regulation, as well as technical regulation of content in specific contexts, such as libraries and schools in the United States. The pressure to regulate specific content online has been expressed in concerns related to four problems: child-protection and morality, national security, intellectual property, and computer security. In the name of “protecting the children,” the United States has moved to step up enforcement of child pornography legislation and to pass new legislation that would restrict children’s access to material deemed “harmful.” Legislators invoke national security in calls to make Internet connections more traceable and easier to tap. Copyright holders have had the most success in this regard by pressing their claims that Internet intermediaries should bear more responsibility—and more liability—than they have in the past. Those concerned about computer security issues, such as badware and spam, have also prompted certain regulations of the flow of Internet content. In addition, in Canada, although not in the United States, publishing of hate speech is restricted.

Debate on each of these restrictions is heated. Public dialogue, legislative debate, and judicial review have resulted in different filtering strategies in the United States and Canada than those described elsewhere in this volume. In the United States, many government-mandated attempts to regulate content have been barred on First Amendment grounds. In the wake of these restrictions, though, fertile ground has been left for private-sector initiatives. The government has been able to exert pressure indirectly where it cannot directly censor. In Canada, the focus has been on government-facilitated industry self-regulation. With the exception of child pornography, Canadian and U.S. content restrictions tend to rely more on the removal of content than blocking; most often these controls rely upon the involvement of private parties, backed by state encouragement or the threat of legal action. In contrast to those regimes where the state mandates Internet service provider (ISP) action through legal or technical control, most content-regulatory urges in both the United States and Canada are directed through private action.

With only 5.1 percent of the world’s population, the United States and Canada are home to 21.1 percent of the world’s Internet users. Together their Internet penetration rate is 69.4 percent. Canada and the United States, however, have not kept pace with many other countries in expanding broadband access, slipping in the global ranking of Internet broadband penetration rates to 11th and 16th, respectively, in 2006. These high rates of Internet usage bring with them the ability of citizens to express dissenting points of view, as well as to engage in a large number of other activities (such as accessing pornography) that test a society’s dedication to free expression and privacy. Like the states that actively filter the Internet through technical means, Canada and the United States are not immune from the ongoing challenges that these tests pose.

Sources: Google Public Policy Blog, 14 Dec 2009; OpenNet Initiative website, 16 Dec 2009.

Economics: Who would pay more to tackle climate change?

Around 100 world leaders are set to attend the UN climate-change summit in Copenhagen to discuss a global deal to replace the Kyoto protocol. This will be tough.

Scientists estimate that greenhouse-gas emissions from rich countries need to be cut by 25 per cent -40 per cent to keep global warming to a 2ºC rise above pre-industrial levels.

The offers at Copenhagen add up to around 15 per cent, with America offering only around 4 per cent.

The cost of averting an even bigger rise in temperature is put at a relatively small 1 per cent of global output—a price, it seems, that many people are happy to pay.

In a poll for the World Bank, over 40 per cent of people in 13 countries said they would be willing to pay this extra amount for energy and other goods to help tackle climate change.

China is the keenest on spending more while Russians were most unwilling to fork out any extra.


Source: The Economist, 7 December 2009; here.

Politics/Technology: How authoritarian states survive the internet

Politics/Technology article by Shuvra Mahmud.

By adapting established methods of control, authoritarian and semi-authoritarian states have been able to counter the political impact of the internet within their borders, experts say, with serious implications for digital democracy movements around the world.

Despite global enthusiasm for the idea of digital revolutions, some state authorities have manipulated the flexible architecture of internet technology and even guided some of its development in order to promote their own interests and retain the monopoly of power.

A false dawn for digital revolutions

Since the early 21st Century, world leaders have lauded the ubiquitous and liberal nature of the internet, and ambitiously proclaimed that the information revolution would inevitably lead to the rise of liberal democracies.

Although there have been no historically positive cases where the transition from authoritarian rule has been significantly affected by the internet, media reports have hailed several cases where dissidents have adapted new social media and mobile phones to organize protests and circumvent censorship.

Yahoo! fellow at Georgetown University and contributing editor to Foreign Policy magazine Evgeny Morozov, in a presentation at the Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) conference in July 2009, said that "much like fax machines in the 1980s, blogs and social networks have radically transformed the economies of protest."

Co-founder of Global Voices Online and Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong Rebecca MacKinnon, at a seminar at the Oxford Internet Institute on 24 November 2009, agreed with Morozov's sentiments.

But, she also highlighted a rise in cyber sleuths and vigilantes, who have used technology to expose corruption and transgressions by state officials, citing China as a prime example.

In Belarus, cyber dissidents organized flash-mob protests in March 2006 against what Condoleezza Rice called the "last outpost of tyranny in Europe" through email, social networks and mobile phones.

Similarly, many other examples have been cited as positive examples where the internet has been able to spread liberal and democratic values, including: The popularity of mobile text messages (SMS) in the Philippines; Egyptian activists' use of tools and services to circumvent state monitoring by intelligence agencies; Cubans' use of online discussion forums; the "Twitter revolution" in Iran; efforts by activists in China to circumvent filtering and censorship of information; and more.

These examples may indicate that a shift in power has taken place from the state monopoly of control over the media towards technologically savvy individuals. But to what extent can we say whether governments have shifted from an authoritarian system to a democratic one?

Morozov and MacKinnon both argue that government policies, not regimes, have shifted towards a middle ground, where the media and other media elements are used to control and set the news agenda, and to ultimately channel public opinion. The ubiquity of the internet has been matched by a growth in different levels of restrictions on free speech.

"Authoritarian deliberation"

Academics have said that on discovering like-minded people and seeing that their protests are not being stifled through violence, people will be more likely to join causes in what Professor Susanne Lohmann of UCLA in 1994 termed "information cascades".

In his speech to the TED, Morozov highlighted that not only do information cascades fail to translate into crowds, but certain authoritarian states themselves have "mastered the internet for propaganda purposes".

Blog postings tend to linger on in the internet and can spread almost immediately, indicating that censorship may not be as effective as some human rights watchdogs think. In fact, some Chinese language blogging platforms apply such a sweeping filtering system that even positive postings that contain the president's name, for example, are censored.

Assistant-Professor at UNC-Charlotte Jiang Min, in a paper published in June 2008, argued that it was possible to apply the principles of "public deliberation" to policy within an authoritarian or semi-authoritarian state, terming is "authoritarian deliberation".

Part of that deliberative process is to engage with the masses in their preferred medium of communication, Jiang said.

Moulding public opinion

In China, the state has employed a top-down policy designed to "channel public opinion". The principles of rapid news agenda setting and information manipulation have emerging as a centralized strategy aimed at tackling domestic and international information challenges in an internet era, and are sustained by strong domestic media controls.

As a part of this strategy, the authorities pay the so-called "50 Cent Party/Army", which comprise of some 28,000 bloggers posting and commenting on topical issues with statements supporting the state and its activities. Chinese officials have also been encouraged to actively engage - even use - "netizens", those who are actively involved in online communities.

In Russia, according to the Moscow Times on 29 October 2009, the Russian Communications and Press Ministry said that it was "looking for a company to provide the technology needed to allow bureaucrats to promote state interests on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook."

Media spin has been seeded out in Russia to private companies such as New Media Stars, owned by one of the Russia's youngest Duma members Konstantin Rykov. New Media Stars has produced zaputina.ru ("For Putin"), russia.ru (a leading Russian internet service) and vz.ru (a popular internet newspaper) - which all relay a pro-Kremlin line to Russian netizens.

The Kremlin has also increased its online-only media budget by 75 per cent in 2009.

The Israeli government and state institutions have been one of the early adopters of social media as a tool to take its message directly to a global audience.

Some 150,000 dollars have been allocated from the Israeli foreign ministry's budget this year towards an "internet warfare team" aimed at "establishing a special undercover team of paid workers whose job it will be to surf the internet 24 hours a day spreading positive news about Israel"; according to Jonathan Cook writing in the UAE-based The National newspaper website on 21 July 2009.

Ha'aretz on 29 January 2009 reported that President Shim'on Peres urging a group of students from 60 countries to "fight anti-Semitism using social networks like Facebook".

On 29 December 2008, several news agencies reported that the Israeli Defence Force had become the first national armed force to launch its own channel on YouTube as part of its public relations campaign to draw international support for its military operation in the Gaza Strip.

In Iran, according to Hamid Tehrani, writing in the US-based Berkman Centre for Internet and Society's "Internet and Democracy Blog" in January 2009, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps have started Shi'i blogs and plan to recruit some 10,000 Basij bloggers for the same purposes.

Intelligence gathering

As well as "authoritarian deliberation", which attempts to control spin and neutralize online discussion before it translates into a real life civil movement, another reason for the state to maintain control of the internet has been the ability to gather intelligence.

In an article published on the human rights blog, OpenDemocracy.org, Professor of Iranian and Islamic studies at the University of California Babak Rahimi, wrote that during the Iranian presidential elections, and despite the levels of censorship of the media and jailed journalists and bloggers, the Iranian government also encouraged young people to go online.

"By unblocking Facebook and creating a false sense of open and fair elections, the intelligence services are able to monitor the activities of dissidents who may feel more comfortable to express their views on Facebook," he wrote.

In his article, Rahimi added that through such small concessions to liberty "the regime also hopes to gain approval for its 'progressive' nature", and provide for itself a cover of legitimacy and proclaim its liberal values.

Morozov agrees that "authoritarian deliberation" can aid a state to gather information, data, identify weak spots or issues that are contentious, and act to neutralize any threats.

China planned in July 2009 to introduce the controversial Green Dam internet filtering system, which the state said would protect young people and curb access to pornography. But the project came under fire from human rights watchdogs which claimed the software would collect user data and censor content beyond its remit.

Lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan opposed the software at the time. On 2 July, he told journalists: "If [the authorities] really want to protect young people from porn, they should deal with the source – pornographic websites."

Factors beyond technology

New communications mediums can provide a space outside of government propaganda in which more information is available and new technology can provide easier ways of circumventing censorship, and make crackdowns less violent - as the police can be surrounded by mobile phones capturing stills and videos.

However, as well as these possibilities, "rational ignorance" also exists in the form of political apathy, the love for celebrity, gossip and pornography, which can create a form of "cyber-hedonism" in the best case scenarios, and more sinister uses of the internet in the worst, such as: Cyber-terrorism, cyber-espionage, and cyber-warfare.

Indeed, online participation does not always equate to online political participation.

A paper by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published in 2003 said that "the barriers to greater online citizen engagement in policy-making are cultural, organizational and constitutional, not technological."

However, MacKinnon and others have hope in technology. She said that a "transparent internet can lead to greater democracy...The possibility is there."


USEFUL WEBSITES
- Rebecca MacKinnon
- Evgeny Morozov