Local communities in Uganda send UNICEF some 10,000 text messages (SMS) every week. These messages reflect the voices of Ugandan youths who use UNICEF’s U-report SMS platform to share their views on a range of social issues. Some messages are responses to polls created by UNICEF while others are unsolicited reports of problems that youths witness in their communities. About 40% of text messages received by UNICEF require an SMS reply providing advice or an answer to a question while 7% of messages require immediate action. Over 220,000 young people in Uganda have enrolled in U-report, with 200 to 1,000 new users joining on daily basis. UNICEF doesn’t have months or the staff to manually analyze this high volume and velocity of incoming text messages. This is where advanced computing comes in.
Infopolicy: This is a primer on some fundamental concepts of economics: property, sale, goods, services. In the discussions around sharing of culture and knowledge, many words are thrown around that make no sense in the context of the discussion. Therefore, this is a reference article to use and link to in such discussions.
Our economy is a market economy. That means each and every person, over and above governmental welfare programs, is responsible for finding their own paycheck. This happens in one way, and one way only: a person makes a sale.
Google Earth offers unprecedented public access to satellite material that was once the exclusive preserve of the state. One obvious if unintended consequence of this service, writes Nicholas Kaempffer, is that insurgents and extremists now use satellite imagery to plot and better coordinate their activities.
By Nicholas Kaempffer for Canadian Military Journal (CMJ)
EXTRACT
Take 3rd World Ideology, Add 2nd World Weaponry, Plus 1st World Technology, Equals…
Within the tragic tale of the long-established Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is clear that Israel has held the dominating position of military supremacy via technology and surveillance for several decades. This balance of power is slowly starting to shift, and one element in this ever-changing equation is the introduction and utilization of Google Earth by Palestinian militants to more accurately strike Israel with rockets.[15] Striking distant targets with indirect fire (munitions fired beyond line-of-sight) is extremely difficult, as numerous variables are required to predict the necessary point of aim. Imagery from Google Earth allows the collection of distance, altitude, and target identification, allowing militants the ability to both fixate (figure out where they are) and orient (what way they need to point) rocket positions, to strike Israeli positions using firing tables. In layman’s terms, Google Earth allows Palestinian militant groups, such as the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, to more accurately strike specific locations within Israel, by giving them a better picture of real-world intelligence on the ground.[16] This cartographic knowledge was once almost exclusively held by the Israelis, and Google Earth is, in essence, ‘levelling the playing field’ between the two combatants. Khaled Jaabari, a commander for the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, stated: “We [al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade] obtain the details from Google Earth and check them against our maps of the city centre and sensitive areas.”[17] Thus, Google Earth is narrowing the technical divide between two historically mismatched opponents. Ten years ago, militants such as Khaled Jaabari simply could not match the surveillance and cartographic capabilities of the Israelis, who spent millions, if not billions of dollars to maintain such superiority. Now, groups like the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade are receiving high quality geographic information, for free. While this cost is easy for them to bear, it is certainly the opposite for the Israelis, and efforts have been undertaken to have imagery purposely censored or lowered in resolution to make targeting more difficult. Following the next case study of Google Earth and the ‘War on Terror,’ further discussion will deal with state responses and security issues regarding Google Earth.
Lieutenant Nicholas Kaempffer, an artillery officer,has a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree in Geography from Queen’s University. He is a Troop Commander at the Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery School (RCAS).
Kyodo reports that 300 tons of radioactive water have leaked from a 1,000 ton tank at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. That led Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority to consider raising the incident from a Level 1 nuclear event to a Level 3 (a “serious incident” with radioactive exposure 10 times the limit for workers) on the International Nuclear Event Scale, the first time an incident has been serious enough to be reported on the INES scale. The most extreme nuclear events on the scale are considered Level 7, a level only reached by Fukushima in 2011 and Chernobyl.
The latest incident is the worst (at least, so far) of a long list of mishaps this month in the cooling system, from rats chewing through exposed wires causing a blackout of the cooling system to Tepco, the company in charge of the cleanup, failing to stop leaks of contaminated water from flowing into the Pacific Ocean. Earlier this month Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordered the government to assist Tepco with the cleanup, not that it seems to be helping yet.
Tokyo (CNN) — The operator of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has said they need help from outside Japan to stabilize and safely decommission damaged reactors at the facility.
This follows the news that regulators are poised to declare a fresh toxic water leak at Fukushima a level 3 “serious incident,” the gravest warning since the massive 2011 earthquake and tsunami that sent three reactors into meltdown.
Activism: In a series of articles here at Falkvinge on Infopolicy, I’ll be giving examples of talking back to the most disturbingly false bullshit repeated by pro-copyright-monopoly pundits. The reason for this is that I see tons of this kind of bullshit in discussion threads, and it stands unchallenged, which is dangerous. As I describe in Swarmwise, it is of immense importance for our long-term liberties that false assertions are countered immediately and in numbers whenever they appear.
Today, we’re going to discuss the assertion that “copying is stealing”, that amazingly still lives on. It should be dead and buried at least fifteen years ago, but isn’t. Here are three examples how to counter it. Adapt to your own language and use when discussions threads like this one on Reddit pop up.
