My post is not really about stealth conflicts but more about the role of the Internet in bringing up problems and opinions that politicians in Russia want so much to hide from the public.  ‘Stealth problems and the Internet’ I would say.  These days the vast part of the anti-government political debate in Russia happens online, on Livejournal, Facebook and the Russian social network, Vkontakte. It seems that the Internet today is the last chance for the Russian people to speak up loudly on their positions and problems.

In this post I’d like to talk about the role of the Internet if not as an agenda-setting “game changer” but at least as a public “ mood-changer”.  Analysts say that one of the special features of the recent pre-election campaign is the increasing role of the Internet and blogs. Nowadays the Internet has become the second most popular information source in Russia (and even the most popular for some social groups). Many people do not watch news on TV any more, and for them the Internet is like a window to a free world, where one can always find out something that others are trying to hide.

A few  weeks ago I read an interesting article about Russian opposition artists using the Internet and specifically YouTube to challenge and discredit the ruling party United Russia as well as Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev.

Here are the fragments of the article “Russia satirists use YouTube to challenge Kremlin” I found on BBC web-site the other day:

“Media control has been one of the key factors that have allowed Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to dominate Russia’s political landscape since he was first elected president in 2000.

As the country prepares for parliamentary and presidential elections, though, there are signs that the Kremlin is facing a fresh media challenge in the form of an increasingly politicised audience on YouTube.

Over the past few weeks, a number of Russian politics-themed clips on YouTube have achieved over one million views.

The videos are in a variety of genres – political polemic, satire and song – but they have one thing in common: a critical or irreverent attitude to the country’s leadership – Mr Putin, President Dmitry Medvedev and their party, United Russia…”

“YouTube is not only giving a powerful voice to the opposition, it is also helping to revive subversive art forms.”

“Changing perceptions

Anti-government or satirical clips on YouTube are unlikely to have a decisive effect on the outcome of the forthcoming elections.

But they may already be changing perceptions.

Recent research by academics from Moscow State University found that Mr Putin is regarded in a much more negative light today than before the previous presidential elections he fought in 2000 and 2004.

The researchers found that just 17.1% of respondents had a positive view of his professional capacities as against 69% in 2000 and 64 per cent in 2004. According to the website Gazeta.ru, among the negative sides of Mr Putin’s rule listed by respondents were “unfulfilled promises“, “failure to solve corruption problems”, “excessive populism” and “excessive authoritarianism”.

Watching political content on YouTube is likely to reinforce these perceptions.”

While writing this post I found another fascinating example of how Russian citizens are trying to stand their ground against the political machine through the Internet . A few weeks ago there was a  mixed martial arts fight event between Russia’s Fedor Emelianenko and America’s Jeff Monson. The event was carried out in Moscow and it turned out that the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was in the crowd. Emelianenko won the fight and Vladimir Putin climbed into the ring to congratulate him, when the crowd booed the untouchable prime minister as he started to speak, and continued to boo him except when he was praising Emilianenko.  The whole event was broadcast live on the state-owned television channel Rossiya 2 and eventually the booing was cut out in all subsequent replays of the fight. This video clip  broadcast appeared on YouTube and has been viewed 2.5m times. The Putin’s administration tried to restrict the damage and stated that fans were actually booing the American fighter Jeff Monson who lost the match, and this was repeated in many Russian newspapers thereafter. As a response Russian fans left more than one thousand messages on the Monson’s Facebook page with supportive messages in English. Many of the were attacking Mr Putin and his administration in these comments. For example, one of the fans wrote:

“greatest date for our country because Putin the first time was whistled and shamed!”, adding “Russia must be free”.

Or

“His corrupted government, muppet courts, punishers in police clothes, pocket electoral commissions and people of his clan at all the most important and profitable chairs – it all drives us crazy!”

The mood of this politicized Internet audience tells us that everyone on the Russian political arena besides United Russia can benefit from its mobilization. And here the primary goal of the opposition should be to find the way to motivate these people to leave their computers on election day.

Link to the original articles on BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15553373

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15869047

This post aims to cast light on the state of the mass media in Japan. As in many other wealthy countries, news consumption in Japan is increasingly moving to the internet. This does not necessarily mean, however, that the sources of news are changing, or becoming more global. The bulk of the news that people access online is coming from news aggregators, and their sources are the traditional newspaper and television companies. In any case, looking at the content of such news aggregators is a good way to see the type of news that people are being fed.

Below are some of the results of a recently completed study of all (20,233) news stories provided by Yahoo! Japan (in Japanese) for the year 2010. As can be expected, the news was dominated by ‘national’ news stories. International news stories made up just 10 percent of the total (and many of those were about issues related to Japan or Japanese people in the world, rather than the world per se). Entertainment stories (celebrity news and gossip) made up 15 percent of the news and sports news made up 22 percent – 37 percent of the news was of the ‘soft’ variety.

As seen in the traditional media, the African continent was thoroughly marginalized on the Yahoo! Japan news website. Of the 10 percent of the total number of articles devoted to international news, just 2.4 percent (or 49 articles) were focused on Africa. Let’s see how this compared to some other important objects of media interest:

While this is hardly an exhaustive search, it is clear that the leading figures in many sports were each able to garner far more coverage than all of Africa’s countries combined (even the women’s curling team didn’t do badly in terms of coverage). The same can be said for other celebrities embroiled in a scandal of some sort. Part of the coverage of the Kabuki actor Ebizo Ichikawa was because of his wedding to a famous newscaster, but the bulk of it came after he was injured in a fight while out drinking. Coverage of Manabu Oshio centred on his trial for his failure to help a woman who died of an overdose of ecstasy in 2009 (they were taking the drug together). Coverage of Erika Sawajiri was largely related to the question of whether or not she was going to get a divorce, and on her possible return to acting/singing. The rapid rise of globalization notwithstanding, infotainment at the national level is going strong.

Of all the stories devoted to Africa, 28 percent were related to the 2010 FIFA World Cup (soccer) hosted by South Africa. These were stories in the international news section, not the sports section, and were articles not about the action on the field, but about the state of crime in South Africa (particularly foreign victims), the vuvuzela (plastic horn used by supporters at games) and other related stories. Only three articles about South Africa were not related to the World Cup.

If we exclude South Africa’s World Cup related stories, the most covered African country was Sudan, with six stories in total – about developments in Darfur and a man who was fined for wearing make-up. Post-election violence and the rarity of two candidates claiming the title of president put Cote d’Ivoire at second with five stories, while Nigeria and Libya were at third place with four stories each.

It is interesting to note that (with the exception of South Africa and its World Cup news) no African country could attract as much coverage on Yahoo! Japan as could US celebrity Paris Hilton (nine articles), or Paul the Octopus in Germany, the aquarium attraction that appeared to correctly predict the winner of several World Cup matches (eight articles).

As in most countries, media coverage of the world in Japan is in a sad and sorry state, and Africa is perhaps the greatest victim.

As a citizen of the United States of America there is much in my country that provides me with cause for anguish. The Union wages a war which she is unlikely to win, the elected officials who operate the cogs of government give no heed to its founding charter, and my fellow citizens stand idly by, content to play the part of sheep. Add the standard list of modern tribulations – a rapidly changing climate, increasing financial instability, a general disregard for liberty, etc. – and you have a torrent of affairs with which the concerned citizen must contend with.

This wide array of rather important public issues combines unfavorably with the limited number of hours in a day. The time-crunch prompted by this combination regularly forces me to justify my interest in oft-ignored problems such as stealth conflicts. The question is generally posed along these lines: “Why spend effort stressing about the media’s portrayal of third-world conflict when there are real and pressing problems facing the world?“

My answer to this query is simple: the existence of invisible conflicts is dangerous to the health of the American Republic.

·

Stealth conflicts are those wars the rest of the world never hears about. They are conflicts that carry a considerable human cost but never seem to find a place in the international consciences, progressing and digressing undetected by those not immediately affected by them. Virtually ignored by all forms of media, such wars are started, waged, and won without ever making a blip on the public radar. They are, for all intents and purposes, invisible.

Allow me to provide an example:

Yemen: New terror camps as city falls to jihadists.
James Novak, Long War Journal, 1 March 2009.

In January, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh asked his network of loyalist jihadists to prepare for offensive operations against domestic “enemies of the state.” In return, Saleh has ceded authority to fundamentalist fanatics who seek to impose a neo-Salafi theocracy in the religiously pluralistic country. It is unclear if this is the full extent of the quid pro quo.

…

Facing threats in the north and south, and an increasingly poverty stricken and desperate nation, Saleh has embarked on a strategy of empowering Islamic militants who, in exchange, have been given a free hand over some local populations. At a meeting in late January, Tariq al Fahdli headed a large delegation of “reformed jihadists” who met with President Saleh in Sana’a

. Al Fahdli is a bin Laden loyalist and former al Qaeda operative. He is an in-law of Brigadier General Ali Mohsen al Ahmar, Saleh’s half brother…. The next week, security officials released over a hundred militants from jail including dozens of al Qaeda operatives. Al Fahdli asked for YR five million and settled for a three million riyal budget as sufficient to orchestrate the regime’s directives. Militants established several new terror training camps following the meeting.

…

In Jahr, Abyan Jihadists declared an Islamic Emirate. Nine homosexuals were gunned down and murdered in broad daylight. Shabwa Press reports “wine drinkers” were severely beaten. Fundamentalists also attached threatening leaflets to homes, condemning certain women. Tariq al Fahdli, “using elements of the mujahideen for help and security,” took over various buildings and plots of land for distribution to his inner circle, the paper said.

 

 

 

The hostile takeover of an entire city by Muslim terrorists with a connection to Al Qaeda is a news-worthy event. However, outside of the specialist publication Long War Journal not a single Western newspaper picked up the story. Indeed, a conflict that has displaced upward of 70,000 people has seen precious little coverage in the media at all, despite Yemen’s well known status as a terrorist safe-haven. A quick search for the word “Yemen” in the archives of the New York Times provides readers with a small blurb about a bombing that killed 4 South Koreans, but nothing else about the country or the conflict therein. A search of the Washington Post archives yields similar results; once again coverage of the country focuses exclusively on the March 12th suicide attack on South Korean citizens.

Yet at least these newspapers are recognizing that bombs do go off inside Yemen. The same cannot be said for the media’s treatment of another ongoing insurgency. Please consider the events detailed below:

4,000 more troops for the Far South
Post Reporters, Bankok Post, 12 March 2009.

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has approved the deployment of another 4,000 troops to the troubled southern border provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala. He announced the deployment after chairing a meeting of the Internal Security Operations Command (Isoc) on Thursday.

The prime minister said more troops were need to counter the activities of separatist militants in the deep South and discourage local teenagers from joining militant groups by opening up more education opportunities to them.

“I have authorised sending an additional 4,000 rangers. Their mission is non-combat. They will work towards a better understanding with local people,” Mr Abhisit said.

 

 

Did you know that Thailand is embroiled in an Islamic insurgency? Few do. The main-stream media is silent on the subject. Again taking the New York Times and Washington Post as examples, a quick search of the archives of both papers shows that neither felt it necessary to spend ink on the subject once over the last three months.

I could go on like this for quite some time. Certainly there are conflicts more destructive than these two that the general populace is unaware of.

The reason I chose to highlight the insurgencies in Thailand and Yemen is simple: one cannot deny that America has a stake in their outcome. While the United States government has dropped the phrase “Global War on Terror” from its parlance, the fact remains that the United States is still committed to fighting Islamic insurgents across the globe.

This leaves one disturbing question: how shall a government run by the people respond to problems the people do not know exist?

·

Writing a letter to Colonel Charles Yancy in 1816, American founding father Thomas Jefferson sounded a warning to the young American Republic:

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

Jefferson’s words remind us of an uncomfortable truth: one of the great burdens of self-governance is the responsibility of the citizenry to remain informed and educated in the affairs of the state.

By all measures the great majority of Americans fail to take this responsibility seriously. Not a week goes by that a new study claiming that the average American’s knowledge of geography, science, foreign affairs, economics, history, or the structure of federal and state governments is woefully inaccurate and inadequate for modern times.

This laxity on the part of the American people will have its consequences. If Americans refuse to seek out knowledge necessary for their survival and liberty such will be taken away from them in due course.

Yet this is what makes stealth conflicts so unsettling. You cannot blame your average American’s ignorance of insurgencies in Yemen or Thailand on laxity. Apathy has not caused the invisibility of invisible wars.

In essence, ignorance is being forced upon the people of the United States. Where shall the the concerned citizen turn to make informed judgments of the world around him? What media outlet presents the world with any semblance of proportionality? NPR? CNN? The New York Times?

This is why I concern myself with the cause and continuation of stealth conflicts. A people cannot live both ignorant and free. The people of America deserve the chance to choose one way or another.

 This post has been cross-posted on the author’s own blog, The Scholar’s Stage.