Why Using Armies to Kill Civilians No Longer Works: Modern Digital Communication
In case you are not following the events in Libya, here is a good link:
Now, let me pose a question..
Would the events in Libya have occurred, spread and be reported outside the country in a modern digital communication age? Would reporting those events have the kind of repercussions we are now seeing?
Would any of this have been possible even 20 years ago? 50-60 years ago, the world was far more isolated and words, sounds and images did not spread fast enough to influence events on the ground. Today, anybody with an internet/phone connection and computer/cellphone can get updates about events.
It is worthwhile to note that even 20 years ago, the communication infrastructure was too centralized to allow news and information to spread in a “bottom-up” manner. Today anybody with a cellphone camera and even sporadic access to the internet can be a journalist. Images and sounds can be stored and sent via non-internet means such as diminutive memory cards.
The amount of trade between various technology equivalent trade blocs such as North America, Europe, Russia and East-Asia no longer allow for only one bloc to dominate proceedings. Moreover, these trade ties are now essential for keeping the world from collapsing.
Most people in the world, especially the older generation in both the west and other countries have NO idea about how to handle or manage such an environment. Many beliefs and ideas they were raised on and practiced in their lives have either stopped working or have become counterproductive.
And Yes.. I conceived and wrote about such scenarios long before they became reality. It is nice to see that reality is starting to catch up.
The world that many older people believe in is dying right before your eyes. The middle class american dream is dead, education is debt slavery, the willingness of young japanese men to work themselves to death is gone, young arabs just don’t seem to be pacified by traditional methods, organisations and protocols that ran the old world are being exposed as incompetent and useless, most members of traditionally respectable professions have been exposed as worthless sociopaths, few believe in the inherent goodness of capitalism or communism.
Comments?
PS: Many white CONservatives frequently masturbate to the idea that killing people through armed forces on a large-scale can stop uprisings, especially if victims are non-whites. So.. how is it working out in reality?
Shortwave radio was an amazingly powerful tech for its time. Due to various historical idiocies, it has stagnated for decades.
But yes, without the Internet, an open-source culture of shortwave amateurs could have gotten the news out.
I saw this happening when there were protest in Chile 3-4 years ago. Protesters were using their cell phone videos to post what was going on. This limited the government actions as, they could not beat and kill protesters without it being shown on world news/youtube.
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100$ cellphones with digital cameras are the disruptive technology of our time.
AD,
Did you notice that the commander of Qaddhafi’s guards is a woman?
At first glance, I am inclined to agree with you. But, I think it needs to be modified. A couple of years ago, both China and Burma put down protests, in Burma’s case, with a shocking level of violence. China was able to get away with it because despite word getting out, it has been too big an economic player to fuck with. In Burma’s case, they have a reliable patron in China, and even India muted its criticism.
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1989 is NOT 2011. In 1989 almost everyone in China was experiencing a rapid rise in quality of life plus modern communication was nowhere close to what it is now. Netscape 1.0 came out in 1994.
In Burma people are too poor and cowardly to revolt, thought that will change. Plus external communication is still very limited.
Mubarak’s thugs killed a couple of dozen protesters in Tahrir Square. By comparison, in the summer of 2010, Indian forces killed over 100 people in Srinagar when protests broke out.
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You are forgetting that most Indians detest Kashmiri Muslims, and could care less if ten times that number were shot to death.
Again, India’s increasing heft in the international arena may make it less likely to pay much heed to international criticism. Although in that case, most Western nations did not say anything, maybe less concerned about how India will react and more likely not being all that interested.
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See above.
So, while having technology to get the word out is certainly a factor, you can have external factors that mitigate it. In the case of Egypt, Tunisia, and Bahrain – Western nations, particularly the U.S., could exercise some influence. In Libya, you do not have that.
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Gaddafi is over, and he knows it. He is going to die in a plane crash.. look at who is abandoning him.
So, you may not see a quiet exit from power like in Egypt, but my fear is that it will descend into a modern version of 1980′s Lebanon.
Lebanon has at least 5 main human races. Lybia has one race, Muslims, divided into 2 main races: Arabs and Berbers. Things in Lebanon could be disrupted easier and get more complicated than in Lybia.
Plus, Qaddhafi was channeling funding to destructive elements in Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s, and was himself a major cause of the war in Lebanon alongside Hafez Asad and Yaser Arafat. The man who was behind many wars will be gone now. Therefore, how bad could things go?