I have always admired not only the academic work of Christian Davenport (everything I know about repression comes from him and Will Moore), but his data determination. He went to great lengths to determine how Rwanda's genocide played out, at the risk of being called a holocaust denier for simply stating the truth that more Hutus died than Tutsis. He then developed the definitive repression website (a site for researchers of repression, not for repressers to pick up tips): www.staterepression.com (I reviewed that site a while back). Now, he is trying to get folks to report human rights abuses and direct data his way to crowd-source via this site: https://iii.nd.edu/.
People wonder how the internet has changed what social scientists do. Davenport keeps teaching us that we have only scratched the surface. In addition, he demonstrates how important it is to be patient. His Rwanda project took quite some time and resources to generate the findings. This new project, relying on crowdsourcing, is a very much a long-term project as the crowd will take a while to gather. It will take more than just a minor blog like mine to get enough folks to gather virtually and provide the data that Davenport needs to get the crowdsourcing to work. Spread the word.
Showing posts with label repression. Show all posts
Showing posts with label repression. Show all posts
Friday, February 18, 2011
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Israeli Narcissism
As a narcissist, perhaps it takes one to know one? Israel's take on the events in Egypt are all about Israel. I get that--Egypt has been an ally, more or less for more than thirty years. The one neighbor they could take for granted. And now they cannot. I find it alternatively amusing and appalling to see Israelis and fans of Israel defend Mubarak and his authoritarian rule. Israel used to stand for being a democracy, but whenever there is a choice between security and liberty, well, we know which way that goes. Yes, Israel is vulnerable, but selling one's soul is usually not a good idea. Plus supporting authoritarianism today usually means that sometime down the road things get ugly.
The future of Egypt is uncertain, but let's not over-romanticize its pas. It has been a breeding ground for extremism, including significant numbers of folks working in and with Al Qaeda. Repression has that effect. [Indeed, one way to quickly determine that Petraeus is very sharp is to see how much focus he puts on getting detention straight. He gets that prisons generally become breeding grounds for more and more extremism]
What these events should demonstrate to Israel is that the US has its own interests and values and identities, and it cannot count on the US to support whatever Israel thinks is best for Israel. Of course, the irony here is that if the US focuses on what is best for the US, it might end up doing things that are best for Israel in the long run. Certainly, Israel has been doing a crappy job of late defending its own interests. How well did that last invasion of Lebanon work out?
The future of Egypt is uncertain, but let's not over-romanticize its pas. It has been a breeding ground for extremism, including significant numbers of folks working in and with Al Qaeda. Repression has that effect. [Indeed, one way to quickly determine that Petraeus is very sharp is to see how much focus he puts on getting detention straight. He gets that prisons generally become breeding grounds for more and more extremism]
What these events should demonstrate to Israel is that the US has its own interests and values and identities, and it cannot count on the US to support whatever Israel thinks is best for Israel. Of course, the irony here is that if the US focuses on what is best for the US, it might end up doing things that are best for Israel in the long run. Certainly, Israel has been doing a crappy job of late defending its own interests. How well did that last invasion of Lebanon work out?
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