digitalcommons

Baghdad Maps from BBC

Some people know first-hand just how bad the situation is in Iraq. Most of the world knows from news reports: print, electronic text, video clips, radio commentary. The BBC has some spectacular coverage including this article that makes very good use of an interactive map of the capital to show the location of the attacks but more importantly the shift in Sunni-Shia populations from 2006 to the present. Note that prior to 2006 much of the people lived in mixed neighborhoods. Now that is confined to the area in and around the highly protected green zone. What the maps do not show is how many people have fled the capital for other regions and for Jordan and Syria.

Counterinsurgency Manual

In December 2006 the U.S. Department of the Army issued a new counterinsurgency manual, the first in 25 years.FM 3-24 is a very interesting document, even if you just skim some of the 280 pages. Where else might you find quotes from The New Yorker, T.E. Lawrence's 27 Articles from the Arab Bulletin of August 1917, a discussion of social network analysis, and solatia (payments to a victim's family as an expression of condolence).

It  of course draws lessons from Algeria, Vietnam, China, Colombia, Malaya, and present day Iraq. Given the falling level of support by most Americans, it may be too late to be applied very effectively if the conflict is primarily a civil war.  However, for those whose interests lie with NGOs and development in general, it may provide insights in the way civil assistance intertwines with counterinsurgency strategy. At least that is the goal of the U.S. State Department and its "transformative diplomacy."

Lost Boys of Sudan

Last night a San Jose branch library showed the documentary, Lost Boys of Sudan, about two young men who settle in Houston.  The State Dept. has contracted with groups like Catholic Charities (San Josed) or YMCA (Houston) to help with the 4000 men (and about 80 Sudanese women) who have immigrated from the Kenya refugee camp to different urban areas.

There are about 50 in Silicon Valley. The movie details their challenges and daily life and is definitely worth seeing. The support networks vary greatly with sporadic help from Christian churches, the government, and school districts. The documentary was shown on PBS and has been out for a while. Some viewers have offered to help, and in this area a scholarship has been set up to pay for tuition for any Sudanese in this group to attend college.

Santino, one of the stars of the movie was at the showing and he was very open about his own problems: demands by relatives to send more and more money, hard to make friends here (especially girls), black on black crime in the housing areas, lack of time for fun, and a generally unsure future: do you go back home, do you build a life here?

Silicon Valley is very stratified economically yet there is a fairly congenial diversity (65 languages spoken in my wife's school district), and the audience reflected this: an Ethiopian, a Kenyan, a couple of S. Asians and Vietnamese, and the a lot of people like me: white Americans. The questions were good, as were the answers.

The sister from Catholic Charities had worked in refugee relocation for 25 years and was quite critical of some parts of the whole program, but she added some interesting commentary in the discussion.  All in all, it was very different from most of my experience in Togo decades ago, but an interesting part of the whole dialogue (and argument) about immigration policy in the U.S.

Incommunicado reader

In June the Institute of Network Cultures hosted a conference. I wrote a report following the meeting. They have a reader (print/CD) which is available online.  You may also request a free hard copy though the ones I received yesterday had no CD-ROM included. There is a wide variety of topics covered: info development, open source software in Brazil, urban issues in Bangalore, piracy, international remittances. The download is 17.5 Mb as a single file.  Well worth the time, but the printed version is easier to read.

Here's  The Table of Contents

Geert Lovink and Soenke Zehle,  Incommunicado Glossary
• Jan Nederveen Pieterse,  Digital Capitalism and Development:  The Unbearable Lightness of ICT4D
•  Bernardo Sorj and  Luís Eduardo Guedes,  Digital Divide: Conceptual Problems,  Empirical Evidence and Policy Making Issues
•  Lisa McLaughlin,  Cisco Systems, the UN, and the  Corporatization of Development
•   Shuddha Sengupta,  Knowing in your Bones  that You’re Being Watched (Transcript)
•   Roy Pullens,  Migration Management: Export of the IOM Model
•  Alexandre Freire, Ariel G. Foina,  and Felipe Fonseca, Brazil and the FLOSS process
•   Kim van Haaster, The University of the Future:  Software Development in Revolutionary Cuba
•  GovCom.org,  Digital Cartogram
•  Scott S. Robinson,  Diaspora Incommunicados - IT,  Remittances and Latin American Elites
•  Glen Tarman,  The Biggest Interactive Event In History?
•  Ravi Sundaram,  Post-Development and Technological Dreams
•  Nnenna Nwakanma,  The mirage of South–South cooperation in  ICT4D: Reflections from African Civil Society
•  Loe Schout,  Why Civil Society is not Embracing FOSS
•  Heimo Claassen,  Formatting the Net: Trusted Computing  and Digital Rights Management to Accelerate  the Proprietary Seizure
•  Steve Cisler,  What’s the Matter with ICTs?
•  Solomon Benjamin,  E-Politics of Urban Land
•  Maja van der Velden,  Cognitive justice:  Cultivating the diversity of knowledge
•  Jo van der Spek and Cecile Landman,  Info-Solidarity with Iraq

WSIS News

This is a pretty good introductory article about the issues at WSIS this week. In addition, it has a number of links to other sites of interest. the UNESCO site is so bandwidth heavy I do not recommend it, and I'm using a relatively fast wireless connection.  Pity the interested person in a rural village in Guatemala.

"Obstacles ...and whose security?" by Jac sm Kee, one of the bloggers on the apc site, has an entry about the heavy police and security presence at the ICT4 All exhibit.  If that's the way the whole town feels, I'm glad I'm staying home.

Some of the satellite programs taking place are extensive. The Global Knowledge Partnership has a program with dozens of sessions with a lot of the usual suspects plus some new ones.

The former head of Amnesty International in Tunisia has an opinion piece in the International Herald Tribune