Here’s what the US does well; inept propaganda

Seriously: The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda. A Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with United States Central Command (Centcom), which oversees US armed operations in the…

Revolution in China? Not so fast

It may take a little bit longer to bring serious political reform to China, especially when the connected class is so comfortable. Barbara Pollock writes in Artnet: During a recent visit to Beijing, the conversation at a local restaurant on a Saturday night turned briefly, only briefly, to politics. The video artist Wang Gongxin spoke…

This is what the West has backed for 3 decades in Egypt; depravity

Remarkable documents have emerged from Egypt from inside Alexandria’s State Security compound: This past weekend, Egyptians lost their patience and simply started dismantling it themselves. After reports of documents being burned and moved out by the truckload, crowds converged on its offices in Alexandria, Cairo, and the southern city of Aswan. Once they broke in,…

Memo to Western MSM; Twitter revolutions exist only in your heads

Jordanian activist Sohail Dahdal: The rise of social media made a set of online tools for revolution readily available and accessible to the largest demographic in the Middle East — youth. Put a powerful tool of communication in the hands of a handful of highly motivated, highly educated activists with the potential to reach the…

Hillary Clinton: “Al Jazeera is winning” message war

Almost comical. Like the Israelis, the Americans think that they can simply communicate better and use Twitter and the Muslim world will start to appreciate their dictator-friendly and Zionist occupation loving policies. Here’s Hillary Clinton mumbling about not winning the information war. As if they ever will (or should): “Let’s talk straight realpolitik,” Clinton said.…

The voice of independent unions in Egypt

A key player in the recent revolution (so not just those on Facebook and Twitter) speaking in solidarity with workers in America: Kamal Abbas is General Coordinator of the CTUWS, an umbrella advocacy organization for independent unions in Egypt. The CTUWS, which was awarded the 1999 French Republic’s Human Rights Prize, suffered repeated harassment and…

The democratic impulse burns in China

Yes: Chinese authorities cracked down on activists as a call circulated for people to gather in more than a dozen cities Sunday for a “Jasmine Revolution.” The source of the call was not known, but authorities moved to halt its spread online. Searches for the word “jasmine” were blocked Saturday on China’s largest Twitter-like microblog,…

Not a Twitter revolution but social tools surely helped

Another fascinating Al-Jazeera feature on Empire about the role of the internet in the Arab uprisings: Carl Bernstein, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist; Amy Goodman, the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!; Professor Emily Bell, the director of digital journalism at Columbia University; Evgeny Morozov, the author of The Net Delusion: The Dark Side…

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