Diplomacy & Crisis News

U.S. Defense Department officials said on Wednesday that a total of 51 laboratories in 17 states, the District of Columbia, and three foreign countries have received potentially dangerous samples of anthrax from a U.S. Army lab in Dugway, Utah.

Riyadh is pushing to keep the oil taps open at Friday’s OPEC meeting. That’s a direct challenge to enemies in Tehran and Moscow, not U.S. wildcatters.

At a Headquarters forum on the role of media in combating terrorism, senior United Nations officials today expressed deep concerns over the impact of foreign terrorist fighters and their use of social media in spreading propaganda and radicalizing and recruit vulnerable young men and women to join their ranks.

(lire la suite sur Global Brief (Toronto) Une politique étrangère a souvent ses tournants, ou ses moments clefs qui déterminent un changement d’orientation, restructurent les croyances comme les organigrammes. La guerre contre l’Espagne en 1898, Pearl Harbour, le « Long telegram » de 1946, la guerre de Corée en 1950, le Vietnam, la révolution iranienne, la fin de la guerre froide et la guerre du Golfe qui l’a suivie, le 11 septembre 2001, sont autant d’épisodes qui ont ainsi profondément modifié la politique étrangère américaine (voir, à Montréal, les travaux de Charles-Philippe David sur la question). Qu’en est-il de la France ?
Le court XXe siècle (1914-89) aura d’abord été marqué par la terrible victoire de 1914, obtenue dans une saignée générale qui fut le suicide de l'Europe ; le traumatisme de 1940 ensuite, hantera les esprits, qui n’oublieront jamais, malgré la magie gaullienne in fine, que la France a failli disparaître ; de la crise de Suez en 1956, la France tira une analyse opposée à celle des britanniques : il faut avoir les moyens de résister aux pressions de l’allié américain, et ce sera le statut de puissance nucléaire ;  le gaullisme de gouvernement, enfin (1958-69), instaurera pour longtemps un socle de principes fait d’indépendance et d’une « grandeur » que Maurice Vaïsse a parfaitement analysée, et qui devait compenser la perte de l’Empire (La Grandeur, 2013).
Descendons dans le détail de l’après-guerre froide, après que l’effondrement de l’Union soviétique eut obligé de si nombreuses diplomaties à s’adapter à un monde post-bipolaire. La réunification allemande (1990), en faisant glisser le centre de gravité européen vers l’est, effaçait plus de trente ans d’un leadership français perçu, dans l’hexagone, comme naturel. La guerre du Golfe, en 1991, montra que la France devait adapter son outil militaire à une époque de projection, déclenchant une série de réformes qui aboutiront sous Jacques Chirac à la professionnalisation des armées. L’éclatement de la Yougoslavie, à partir de 1992, mit fin aux illusions d’une Europe puissance, et d’un brave nouveau monde onusien. Le Rwanda, après l’opération Turquoise de 1994, changea à tout jamais la politique africaine d’une France qui n’avait plus de « pré-carré », et se retrouvait sur le banc des accusés, dans un monde ultra-médiatisé. Les printemps arabes, en 2011, nous firent entrer dans l’ère « post-post coloniale » : ces sociétés du sud méditerranéen, jadis si familières au moins dans l’esprit des orientalistes, avaient désormais des populations composées aux trois quarts de citoyens de moins de 30 ans, qui se soulevaient sans crier gare, sans plus aucun référentiel post-colonial, et suscitant à Paris surprise et maladresses.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has announced his intention to establish an independent review panel to investigate the United Nations&#39 handling of sexual abuse allegations involving foreign troops in the Central African Republic (CAR), the Organization has confirmed.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is celebrating its longstanding partnership with luxury goods brand Gucci and marking a decade of successes in bringing access to quality education to more than seven million children across sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, the agency announced.

Palestinian refugee families living in substandard dwellings and owners of homes demolished in last year’s hostilities in Gaza, are among those gaining access to shelter under a United Nations-backed project to provide close to 450 newly-built housing units, which was stalled for three years due the lack of access to construction materials.

The only option Libya has, “the only real alternative for the future,” is an agreement, Special Representative and head of the United Nations Support Mission in the country (UNSMIL), Bernardino León said at a meeting in Algeria with Libyan political leaders and activists today.

Not that kind of troll. Photo credit:
Kai Schreiber via Flickr

If you’ve spent any substantial time on a social networking site, you’ve likely encountered an anonymous troll. They may mock something you’ve said, or a photo of yourself or others that you’ve shared. Then again, maybe they’ll say nothing of substance at all, churning out a slew of profanities or insults. Sometimes they hit below the belt; other times they’re easy to swat away and ignore. Either way, a troll’s purpose is inherently ethereal — its raison d’etre can be shattered by the click of a “block” button.

Much ado has been made about the psychology of trolling — and for good reason. We store a lot of our lives online — photos, private correspondence, biometric data, tax returns. We spend the rest of our time in spaces that we have collectively designated as a digital commons. These virtual public spaces are governed by rules, explicit or otherwise, of their own. Like any crowded physical space, these regions can be noisy, confusing, and easily subjected to disruption. It’s the ideal space for getting your message out so long as you don’t particularly care about being heard. Think of it as like screaming at a rock concert: It’s annoying for those people nearby, but completely ineffective if you want to convince the crowd to do anything .

Those endeavors may be largely fruitless, but they have gained a great deal of ground in one country: Russia. Here, the troll as an agent of information warfare on behalf of the state has garnered a great deal of attention since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. If recent revelations are any indication, the well-oiled, Kremlin-sponsored troll machine has no intentions of closing up shop anytime soon.

State-sponsored or state-sanctioned Internet trolls are nothing new on the Russian Internet — or RuNet, as it is often called. In 2012, a series of emails published by a Russian hacktivist group showed a youth group with ties to the Kremlin was paying bloggers and journalists to post pro-Putin content online. Activists were also paid to down-vote YouTube videos posted by the opposition and to even leave hundreds of comments on news articles with an anti-Putin spin. The leak was huge, but the practice was nothing new. Indeed, a Freedom House report in 2013 noted that “Russia [has] been at the forefront of this practice for several years.”

But the practice became even more critical to the Kremlin’s informational warfare strategy during the invasion of Ukraine in 2014. One firm, called the Internet Research Agency, garnered a great deal of mainstream media attention last year after a major document leak exposed the agency’s operations.

In June 2014, Buzzfeed reported that the Kremlin had poured millions into the agency so as to fund a veritable army of trolls to post pro-Putin commentary on English-language media sites. Commenters were also expected to balance several Twitter and Facebook accounts while posting over 50 comments on various news articles throughout the day. A more recent account described a heavier workload: Over the period of two 12-hour shifts, one employee was expected to draft fifteen posts and leave 150-200 comments.

“We don’t talk too much, because everyone is busy. You have to just sit there and type and type, endlessly,” one former Russian troll told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty a couple of months ago.

“We don’t talk, because we can see for ourselves what the others are writing, but in fact you don’t even have to really read it, because it’s all nonsense. The news gets written, someone else comments on it, but I think real people don’t bother reading any of it at all.”

If they were only trolling comment threads, that’s likely true. Many readers (and writers, sorry) skip the comments. Head over to your favorite mainstream media news site and read the comments on any given article. On occasion you’ll find some gems among the weeds of trolls and spam bots, but they can be few and far between. A paid Russian troll would be just one voice among many.

The new age of information warfare may have started out on comment threads, but its biggest battles won’t be fought there. If recent events are any indication that shift has already begun.

According to a recent account by reporter Adrian Chen in The New York Times, the Internet Research Agency may be behind several larger hoaxes throughout the United States. The first engineered a fake chemical spill in St. Mary Parish, La., through a coordinated social media campaign and text message alerts. This “airborne toxic event” of sorts had media coverage and eyewitness testimony. None of it, investigators soon realized, was real.

Months later, many of the same accounts used to spread the news of the fictional chemical spill reported an Ebola outbreak in Atlanta. Others told of a shooting of an unarmed black woman, again in Atlanta. At first glance, none of these three events appeared to be related, although two videos — the first one documented the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’s (ISIS) apparent involvement in the chemical spill and the other the shooting of the unarmed woman — appeared to have the same narrator.

Chen’s account should be read in full, not summarized. Nevertheless, it does raise a few important questions. For one, are these hoaxes the new face of the 21st century information war? It would appear so, if only in for the short term. Will technological developments in image manipulation make conning easier? What about an increase in the number of social media users? Probably. In the latter case, though, it could swing either way.

In the end, the most important question is one that we need to continuously ask ourselves: What am I, as a responsible Internet user and media consumer, doing to protect the integrity of the web? Ignoring the troll(s) screaming in the crowd is a start.

This post also appeared at The Eastern Project.

Appalled at the two-year prison sentence handed down to U Htin Lin Oo on charges of insulting religion, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) today urged the Myanmar authorities to release the columnist and guarantee freedom of expression and opinion in the country.

Since President Paul Biya came to power in 1982, Cameroon has been a sleepy regime with a soft and aging dictator, a nation all but forgotten in a remote corner of the African continent. This has dramatically changed with the spillover of Boko Haram from Nigeria into Cameroon in 2014 and its transformation into a regional threat. Now there is not a single day without reports of Boko Haram attacks in northern Cameroon. Even before it realized what it meant, the Cameroonian regime had become part of the fight against terrorism. After initially downplaying the problem, Cameroon’s leaders are now discovering the challenges and dangers of this new war. This rising, external threat sheds a new light on a forgotten country with a strategic position in Africa. The geography of Cameroon is both its blessing and its curse—a pivot between West and Central Africa, divided by language, culture, and history, its very existence depending on a regional stability so often beyond its grasp.

مهما كان ما قد يعتقده نظام الأسد وخصومه، لا يتجه أي طرف نحو انتصار عسكري في هذه الحرب. ووفقاً للمسار الراهن فإن الأمور تتجه نحو الأسوأ، مع مزيد من القتل والتدمير للنسيج الاجتماعي وتفاقم حدّة التطرف العابر للحدود.

The Security Council today voiced deep concern about the &#8220grave situation&#8221 in Yemen and urged the country&#39s stakeholders to engage as soon as possible in United Nations-brokered inclusive political consultations.

Sure, Sepp Blatter has stepped down -- but will that actually change anything for FIFA?

The answer might surprise you.

Noting that challenges remain to curb Greek debt crisis while addressing human rights, a United Nations expert today urged international institutions and Greece to redouble their efforts to “maximum available resources” for financial obligations and ensure the enjoyment of human rights.

While the outgoing senior United Nations rights official in Afghanistan said she expected the human rights advances made “will be sustained, will not be rolled back, and will not be sacrificed,” she lamented the high level of violence against women and the need for the Government to do “much more” for women’s rights.

The United Nations is continuing its efforts to facilitate a dialogue among Burundian stakeholders amid the country’s ongoing political deadlock and a burgeoning humanitarian crisis, a spokesperson for the Organization announced today.

A pair of senators is pushing the Pentagon to do more to prevent the Islamic State from using massive improvised explosive devices that have long been a hallmark of Sunni insurgents and, more recently, cleared the extremists’ pathway to seize the Iraqi city of Ramadi last month.