This and that | Ripple's Web

Editor’s note: Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a director at the New America Foundation and the author of “Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden — From 9/11 to Abbottabad,” the basis for the HBO documentary “Manhunt” that will be shown on CNN on May 24. Jennifer Rowland is a research associate at the New America Foundation.

(CNN) — On Thursday, President Barack Obama is scheduled to deliver a major speech in Washington about his administration’s counterterrorism policies, focusing on the rationale and legal framework for the controversial CIA drone program and his plans to wind down the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.

So we thought it might be useful to examine some common myths about the drone program and the prison population at Guantanamo.

1. Drone strikes largely target the leaders of terrorist groups that threaten the United States.

In fact, of the thousands who have been killed in CIA drone strikes in Pakistan, only 37 were leaders of al Qaeda or affiliated organizations, according to a tally by the New America Foundation. And even if we add to that list the leaders of the Taliban who have been killed in drone strikes, only 2% of the victims of the CIA strikes in Pakistan have been militant leaders.

The drone program, which began more than a decade ago as a tool to kill leaders of terrorist groups, has evolved today into a counterinsurgency air force whose principal victims in Pakistan are lower-level members of the Taliban.

Drones, by the numbers

2. Drone strikes target specific terrorists who pose some kind of imminent threat to the U.S.

Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser and now CIA Director John Brennan said in a speech last year that “in order to prevent terrorist attacks on the United States and to save American lives — the United States government conducts targeted strikes against specific al Qaeda terrorists.”

That’s only partly true, because the CIA has also has occasionally conducted “signature strikes” against groups of men who display a particular behavioral “signature” that indicates they may be militants. In these cases, the targeter does not know the identity of the persons in the drone cross hairs.

3. Drone strikes kill a lot of civilians.

That was certainly once the case. Under President George W. Bush, the proportion of those killed by drones in Pakistan who were identified in reliable news reports as civilians or “unknowns” — people who were not identified definitively as either civilians or militants — was around 40%, according to data assembled by the New America Foundation.

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is home to the U.S. naval base that has held terror suspects since January 2002. Early in the war on terror, the Bush administration argued these detainees were “enemy combatants” who didn’t have the protections accorded to prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. Click through for a look inside the controversial facility. Pictured: A detainee stands at an interior fence at Guantanamo Bay in October 2009.

A Navy sailor surveys the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in October 2009. Shortly after his first term began, President Barack Obama signed an executive order to close Guantanamo Bay within a year, but the move do so has stalled. Congress passed legislation preventing detainees from being transferred into the United States. However, the administration says Obama remains committed to closing the facility, also known as Gitmo.

U.S. military guards move a detainee inside the detention center in September 2010. At its peak, the detainee population reportedly exceeded 750 men at Guantanamo.

Muslim detainees kneel during early morning prayers in October 2009. Cells are marked with an arrow pointing in the direction of Mecca, regarded as Islam’s holy city.

A soldier stands near a placard on the fence line of the detention facility in January 2012.

A Quran sits among a display of items isssued to detainees in September 2010. The suspects are given a prayer mat and a copy of the Muslim holy book as well as a toothbrush, soap, shampoo and clothing.

A U.S. military guard walks out of the maximum security section of the detention center in September 2010.

A German shepherd police dog undergoes training exercises in October 2009 at Guantanamo Bay.

A camp librarian views artwork painted by detainees in September 2010.

A detainee rubs his face while attending a “life skills” class inside the Camp 6 high-security detention facility in April 2009.

A seat and shackle await a detainee in the DVD room of the maximum security Camp 5 detention center in March 2010.

U.S. Marines join in martial arts training at the U.S. naval base in September 2010.

Members of the military walk the hallway of Cell Block C in the Camp 5 detention facility in January 2012.

Guards move a detainee from his cell in Cell Block A of the Camp 6 detention facility in January 2012.

A detainee waits for lunch in September 2010. The cost of building Guantanamo’s high-security detention facilities was reportedly about $54 million.

Marines get an early-morning workout at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in October 2009.

A bus carries military guards from their night shift at the detention center in September 2010.

A military guard puts on gloves before moving a detainee within the detention center in September 2010.

Members of the U.S. Navy move down the hallway of Cell Block C in the Camp 5 detention facility in January 2012.

A U.S. military guard holds shackles before preparing to move a detainee in September 2010.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

Photos: Inside Guantanamo Bay

Gitmo prisoners being force-fed

CNN Explains: Drones

But the civilian and “unknown” casualty rate from drone strikes has fallen steadily over the life of the program. Under Obama that number has fallen to 16%. And in 2012 it was around 11%.

In 2012, 2% of the drones’ victims were characterized as civilians in news reports and 9% were described in a manner that made it ambiguous whether they were militants or civilians.

And in 2013, civilian casualties are at their lowest ever. That is partly the result of a sharply reduced number of drone strikes in Pakistan — 12 so far in 2013, compared with a record 122 in 2010 — and also more precise targeting. According to data collected by the New America Foundation, three to five “unknown” individuals have been killed so far in drone strikes in 2013. Two other organizations that track the CIA drone program in Pakistan, the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the Long War Journal, report zero to four civilian deaths and 11 civilian deaths respectively.

4. The United States has no reason to worry about the legal framework governing drone strikes because it is so dominant in drone technology.

Only three countries currently are confirmed to possess armed drones — Israel, the United Kingdom and the U.S. But some 80 countries have drones, according to a count by the New America Foundation, and a number of them may already be able to arm them.

In February, a Chinese state-run newspaper reported that the Chinese government had contemplated deploying an armed drone in a remote, mountainous area to kill a drug lord, but decided instead to capture him.

Iran unveiled what it claimed was its first armed drone in 2010.

During a speech last week at the New America Foundation, the U.N. special rapporteur for counterterrorism and human rights, Ben Emmerson, estimated that “within a matter of certainly a year or two, other states will be deploying the technology, and within five years or so we will see a number of states and possibly nonstate actors deploying similar types of combat technology.”

Emmerson also pointed out that the rapid proliferation of drone technology means whatever legal framework the United States puts together to justify its targeted killing campaign “has to be a framework that we can live with if it is being used by Iran when it is deploying drones against Iranian dissidents hiding inside the territory of Syria or Turkey or Iraq.” A sobering and instructive thought.

Holder: Drone strikes have killed four Americans since 2009

5. The Pakistani government gives a wink and a nod to the drone program, providing tacit approval for its continuation.

It is true that Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf quietly agreed to allow the CIA’s targeted killing campaign to begin in 2004. But the program has become deeply controversial and unpopular in Pakistan because of the perception that it kills many civilians and that it erodes Pakistan’s national sovereignty.

In April 2012, the Pakistani parliament voted unanimously to rescind any previous permission that had been granted by the government for the CIA to conduct the targeted killing program.

During Ben Emmerson’s visit to Pakistan in March to discuss the CIA drone program with top officials, the point made to him “consistently, right across government, at the highest level and throughout, was that there is no continuing consent to the use of drones on Pakistani territory.”

The next Pakistani prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, who was elected on May 11 with a clear mandate, has urged an end to the drone strikes, telling reporters, “Drones indeed are challenging our sovereignty. Of course we have taken this matter up very seriously. I think this is a very serious issue, and our concern must be understood properly.”

6. Obama is soft on terrorists.

The CIA has conducted 355 drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal regions since the targeted killing program began there in 2004. The vast majority of these — 307 to be precise — were carried out under Obama.

Even if you take the most conservative estimate of the numbers of people the Obama administration has killed in drone strikes in Pakistan, 1,600, that is around twice the total number of prisoners that Bush sent to Guantanamo.

7. Many of the Guantanamo detainees who have been released return to the battlefield.

The U.S. government claims that 27% of those released from Guantanamo are suspected or confirmed to have taken up arms. For security reasons the government hasn’t released the names of these men since 2009, but a review of the public record suggests that number is quite inflated.

According to a review by the New America Foundation of news articles, Pentagon reports, and other relevant documents, of the 603 detainees who have been released from the prison, only 17 individuals (2.8%) are confirmed to have engaged in terrorist or insurgent activities against the United States or its citizens, while 21 individuals (3.5%) are suspected of engaging in such activities.

8. The detainees still held at Guantanamo are too dangerous to release.

Some undoubtedly are, such as the operational commander of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. But contrary to the fulminations of officials such as Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina — who said last year that Guantanamo detainees are “crazy bastards that want to kill us all” — half of the men still held at the prison camp were cleared for release three years ago by a task force of Department of Justice and Pentagon officials.

To be exact, 86 of the 166 men still imprisoned at Guantanamo were either found to be guilty of nothing, or were low-level fighters who could be repatriated subject to some continued monitoring by their home country’s government.

9. There are no benefits for the U.S. to release additional prisoners from Guantanamo.

Obama correctly said of Guantanamo in April, “It is expensive. It is inefficient. It hurts us in terms of our international standing. It lessens cooperation with our allies on counterterrorism efforts. It is a recruitment tool for extremists. It needs to be closed.”

The cost per year to keep one prisoner at Guantanamo is estimated to be $800,000, more than 30 times the cost of keeping a prisoner in a jail in the United States. And the Pentagon is asking Congress to approve a $200 million renovation plan for the prison.

The prisoners at Guantanamo have also featured frequently in jihadist propaganda, making it a recruitment tool for would-be al Qaeda members.

There is also a way forward through Guantanamo to obtaining some kind of peace deal with the Taliban. As a “confidence-building measure” for peace negotiations, theTaliban have agreed to release the only U.S. prisoner of war, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, in exchange for a handful of senior Taliban figures being held at Guantanamo, who would then be held under some form of house arrest in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar. This deal is a precondition for continuing serious peace talks with the Taliban.

The 27-year-old soldier has been in captivity since the Taliban seized him on June 30, 2009.

Follow @CNNOpinion on Twitter.

Join us at Facebook/CNNOpinion.

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/22/opinion/bergen-nine-myths-drones-gitmo/index.html?eref=edition

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NewsRipplesWeb/~3/VN8SVQSzsCw/opinion-nine-counterterrorism-myths

.cnn_html_media_utility::before{color:red;content:’’;font-size:9px;line-height:12px;padding-right:1px}
.cnnstrylccimg640{margin:0 27px 14px 0}
.captionText{filter:alpha(opacity=100);opacity:1}
.cnn_html_slideshow_media_caption a,.cnn_html_slideshow_media_caption a:visited,.cnn_html_slideshow_media_caption a:link,.captionText a,.captionText a:visited,.captiontext a:link{color:outline:medium none}
.cnnVerticalGalleryPhoto{margin:0 auto;padding-right:68px;width:270px}
]]

The victim killed in a cleaver attack Wednesday was identified as Drummer Lee Rigby of 2nd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. The brutal killing of Rigby shocked the United Kingdom, with Prime Minister David Cameron saying the act appears to have been a terrorist attack.

A police officer stands with flowers in a hail storm on Thursday, May 23, close to the crime scene in front of Woolwich Barracks in southeast London.

A man contemplates at a scene where flowers lay, outside Woolwich Barracks in London.

Flowers lie outside Woolwich Barracks on May 23.

Soldiers walk outside Woolwich Barracks on Thursday, May 23, near where the soldier was killed.

Notes and shirts sit outside Woolwich Barracks on May 23. The slain soldier was wearing a “Help for Heroes” shirt when he was killed.

British soldiers stand guard outside the barracks on May 23.

Members of the far-right English Defence League wear balaclavas as they gather outside a pub in Woolwich on Wednesday, May 22.

EDL supporters confront police in Woolwich on May 22.

EDL leader Tommy Robinson joins supporters at the crime scene on May 22.

A police officer guards a tent that’s been set up at the crime scene as investigations continue late May 22.

Mary Warder brings flowers to the scene of the crime on May 22 to pay respects to the victim.

Men place flowers near the scene on John Wilson Street.

A police officer guards a blocked-off area in Woolwich on May 22.

A general view of Woolwich Barracks, near the scene in Woolwich.

Police officers block off a road in Woolwich.

Forensic officers investigate the crime scene on May 22.

Police walk to the scene in Woolwich on May 22.

A still frame from video shows a man outside the Woolwich Barracks in London holding a cleaver and addressing the camera directly, moments after a serving soldier was hacked to death in the street on Wednesday, May 22. The man in the video swore “by almighty Allah” to keep fighting. British Prime David Cameron called the attack terrorism.

Britain’s prime Minister David Cameron addresses media representatives at 10 Downing Street in London on May 23, 2013, a day after a soldier who was hacked to death in a London street by two suspected Islamist extremists.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

Editor’s note: Are you in London? Tell us your reaction to this incident.

London (CNN) — The only thing more horrifying than the murder of a British soldier in a London street is the fear that there is little police can do in the age of “open-source jihad” to prevent these types of terror attacks.

“It’s always the one we feared, the lone wolf that can come from nowhere and not be on our radar,” said ex-London police chief John Yates.

On Wednesday two men hacked the soldier to death near his military barracks in Woolwich, southeast London before delivering a message to a witness’s camera: “We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone … this British soldier is an eye for an eye, a tooth for tooth.”

LATEST: London murder victim named

The message has all the hallmarks of classic al Qaeda rhetoric, and experts believe the blood-soaked men wielding cleavers for the cameras in London are just the latest proponents of the “open-source jihad” that seems to have grown just as the U.S.-led “War on Terror” scattered the organization’s terror cells around the world.

Fears of backlash in London

Man who taped London suspect speaks out

Brutal attack shocks London

London attack: Probing the suspects

Muslim community reacts to London attack

“Nearly a decade ago there was a debate within al Qaeda about the future of the organization,” according to Shiraz Maher, Head of Outreach at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation. “Afghanistan had been overrun by U.S. forces, the Taliban had been forced to retreat, and as a result al Qaeda lost its ability to train recruits there.”

The organization needed a new plan to stay relevant as the U.S. struck at the heart of its traditional operation in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen. Enter a man called Abu Musab al-Suri, the so-called architect of the new al Qaeda, who had a simple plan to change the way al Qaeda took the fight to the West.

“Every Muslim should be an army of one,” Maher told CNN. “That was his grand idea — every individual Muslim should be an autonomous hub that goes out and strikes the West and you can’t contain it.”

COLOR: Slaughter of soldier on London street

Al-Suri may have had the vision, but it was al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) that translated it into reality in 2010 through the online speeches of radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki — since killed by a U.S. drone strike — and the publishing of “Inspire,” the English-language magazine that acts as a how-to guide for followers to carry out small-scale terrorist attacks in the West.

“Since 2010 al Qaeda has been telling its followers in the West: ‘Don’t try and do another 9/11 or 7/7-style attack because invariably these things catch the attention of security services and you go to jail. Think small, think easy, think unsophisticated. Really scale it down to make it difficult to detect, because really it’s a detection battle,’” Maher said.

So this is the growing struggle facing police forces around the world today, say experts — not more traditional terror cells, which are more likely to show up through traditional surveillance methods, but self-starters who become radicalized through online sermons and publications.

READ MORE: The changing face of terrorism

In 2011 New York police arrested Jose Pimentel and accused him of plotting to detonate pipe bombs that he allegedly learned to make after reading “Inspire” magazine. Pimental pleaded not guilty to terrorism charges and is awaiting trial.

The pressure cooker bombs that killed three people near the finish line of April’s Boston Marathon bore strong similarities to a design laid out in the first issue of the magazine titled “How to Build a Bomb in Your Mom’s Kitchen,” according to CNN’s Paul Cruickshank.

In 2010 British MP Stephen Timms was nearly killed when a 21-year-old British student stabbed him during a meeting with his constituents in east London. The student, Roshonara Choudhry, told police she had become radicalized after watching the speeches of al-Awlaki online, and tried to kill Timms because he voted in favor of the Iraq War.

Yates, who was Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner until he retired in 2011, told CNN: “As someone who has tried to prevent these attacks in the past, they’re the most difficult ones.

“If we have some serious targets, then of course you can apply the correct level of resources and tactics … (but) Choudhry had never come to the attention of any authorities at any point.”

OPINION: Real enemy in London hacking death

So what, if anything, can be done to prevent lone wolf attacks? The grisly murder in Woolwich has prompted calls for Britain’s government to look again at a shelved bill that would greatly expand law enforcement’s powers to monitor suspects’ use of the internet, which is currently only possible on a more limited basis.

“There is some internet surveillance going on,” said Yates. “It’s been made very clear by police chiefs in recent weeks that if you download something like ‘Inspire’ you will be arrested, it is an offence and you will be charged.”

So where to draw the line between free speech and invasion of privacy? The proposal to expand police powers for collecting online data caused uproar among privacy advocates in late 2012, but the government says more robust surveillance tools are now needed to effectively combat terrorism.

While acknowledging there are “powerful” arguments on both sides, Yates said: “All I know is that you’ve got to do something, because the level of sophistication in technology is going to make it extraordinarily challenging to improve the way that the internet and other means of communication are monitored if nothing’s done.”

READ MORE: UK Muslims condemn London slaying

But radicalization expert Maher said monitoring the internet and tracking down anyone who downloads an al-Awlaki speech or a bomb-making guide won’t solve the lone wolf problem.

“You don’t have to have read ‘Inspire’ anymore — everyone knows what’s going on because, if nothing else, the media talks about it so much. The idea of committing an unsophisticated attack against a high-profile symbol is out there. It’s an impossible thing to work against,” he said.

Yates says in order to prevent future attacks, counter-terrorism police must bolster their community engagement strategy — making local people feel “free and able to provide relevant information at the right time.”

“It comes back to the line from the 1980s with the IRA: ‘Communities defeat terrorism.’ That was the strap-line then, and it’s no different today.”

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/23/world/europe/london-attack-lone-wolf-fears/index.html?eref=edition

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NewsRipplesWeb/~3/XnJs4wRkOCk/are-lone-wolf-attacks-future-threat

Editor’s note: Agnes Poirier is a French journalist and political analyst who contributes regularly to newspapers, magazines and TV in the UK, U.S., France, Italy. Follow @AgnesCPoirier on Twitter.

Paris (CNN) — The gesture couldn’t have been more dramatic, nor the setting more grand: 78-year-old French writer and historian Dominique Venner chose the altar of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris to shoot himself in front of about 1,500 horrified visitors. Just before pulling the trigger, he had meticulously laid a letter on the altar for the police.

Venner, a former paratrooper and member of the Secret Army Organization (OAS), a group opposed to Algeria’s independence and which waged a war of terror against Charles de Gaulle and his government in the early 1960s, was a theorist of the French Extreme Right.

Marine Le Pen, leader of the Extreme-Right National Front party, provoked controversy when immediately took to Twitter to salute Venner’s “political gesture,” concluding that he had tried “to wake France up.”

“Venner’s models were ancient Greece and ancient Rome, he was a pagan and an anti-Christian but chose a highly symbolic place of western civilization to kill himself, ” commented Christophe Forcari in the French daily newspaper Libération.

Issues beyond same-sex rights for French

France to vote on same-sex marriage law

Will France approve same-sex marriage?

Same-sex marriage battle in France

Read more: Man kills himself at Notre Dame Cathedral

Lately, Venner’s anger had focused on the same-sex marriage bill which became law last Saturday, and the abrogation of which, he thought, the French should seek in mass street protests. He dreamt, in fact, of a reactionary insurrection, a “French Spring.”

In a last post on his blog, he backed the anti-same-sex marriage march planned for this Sunday. He wrote that demonstrators were “right to shout their impatience and anger” and that laws could be overturned if the people shouted loudly enough. A xenophobe, he loathed multicultural France and called for radical and symbolic acts to “reawaken the memory of our origins.”

By committing suicide in such a fashion, Venner certainly hoped to show the way to like-minded radical militants; he recently wrote: “sometimes words are not enough, they need to be substantiated by acts.”

The four-month-long campaign on the same-sex marriage bill, during which supporters and protesters fought each other, sometimes violently, with hundreds of arrests, certainly antagonized the country in unexpected ways.

If a majority of the French people backed equality of treatment and therefore civil union for all, with its strings of fiscal advantages, they did however split on the second part of the bill, and the question of adoption rights and access to IVF for gays and lesbians.

Read more: Hollande signs same-sex marriage bill

In France, unlike in Britain for example, adoption and IVF for gay couples — alongside automatic joint parenting rights — was still illegal until last Saturday and remains controversial, simply because it touches on the highly sensitive question of family and what family is made of.

Surveys have showed that the divide is both political and generational: The Left is, for the most part, in favour of the same-sex marriage law while the hard Right, and leaders of the French Catholics, Muslims and Jews oppose it. The young, the educated and women are the main supporters of Hollande’s law.

The National Assembly was the theater where such French uneasiness played out: The bill required 172 hours of heated and angry discussion, and was the most debated in recent history. Even the laws introducing abortion in 1974, and the abolition of the death penalty in 1981, required fewer hours of debate in parliament and proved less contentious.

France is the ninth country in Europe (and the 14th in the world) to adopt same-sex marriage. The first civil union of this kind, between two gay men, will take place in Montpellier next week. It will likely take years for the whole of French society to adjust to this new reality.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Agnes Poirier.

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/23/opinion/opinion-poirier-same-sex-marriage-suicide/index.html?eref=edition

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NewsRipplesWeb/~3/hTh83F_ND_g/impact-of-same-sex-marriage-on-suicide

Editor’s note: Calestous Juma is Professor of the Practice of International Development and Faculty Chair of Innovation for Economic Development Program at Harvard Kennedy School. Twitter @calestous.

(CNN) — As Africa celebrates the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Organization of African Unity, the focus of the celebrations is renewing Africa’s vision for continental unification as envisaged by its founding fathers such Kwame Nkrumah.

It is not the lack of political will that hampers Africa regional integration, it is poor infrastructure. Africa’s challenges have less to do with fragmentation of state but more to do with the lack of infrastructure connectivity, especially energy, transportation, irrigation and telecommunications.

The World Bank estimates that Africa will need to invest nearly $93 billion annually over the next decade to meet its infrastructure needs. A third of this cost will go to maintenance. Part of this investment can be met through public and private sector investment, including novel facilities such as the infrastructure bonds proposed by the African Development Bank.

But the urgency to address Africa’s infrastructure requires additional non-conventional interventions such as the mobilization of the continent’s armed forces. Historically, there is a long legacy of military involvement in infrastructure projects going back to the Roman days.

Read this: Gunboats keep pirates from ‘blue gold’

African armed forces possess extensive human resources and equipment needed to build infrastructure projects. They regularly use such facilities during emergencies and are at the forefront of developing robust systems such as smart microgrid systems that can provide decentralized power supply for rural Africa. What is needed is an explicit policy to extend their role in the construction and maintenance of infrastructure projects in cooperation with civilian agencies.

Many African countries have been converting military facilities to support civilian infrastructure activities. Rwanda, for example, turned a military barracks into the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology, which played a vital role in the reconstruction of the country after the genocide. The role of the military in Rwanda’s civilian affairs involves a wide range of operations which include the awareness-raising annual Army Week.

One of the most explicit commitments to the role of the military in infrastructure projects comes from Uganda. The country’s armed forces recently established Africa’s first University of Military Science and Technology which is training engineers to build and maintain infrastructure projects. Uganda has been collaborating with the US Army on how to rehabilitate its railway networks.

Read this: South Africa’s private security forces bigger than army

These efforts are targeted interventions and differ remarkably with cases such as Egypt, where the military controls a large proportion of the economy. It is much harder for countries where the military is an economic class to be creative. The role of the military in civilian projects needs to be under democratic control for it to rise above popular suspicions and distrust.

Senegal, for example, has established clear policies and operational guidelines that have since independence steered its “Army-Nation” program. The program includes activities in infrastructure (especially water supply and road construction), healthcare and environmental management.

In 1999 Senegal set up the civil-military committee in support of development to bring together representatives from parliament, the military, government ministries, civil society and the private sector to collaborate on implementing public programs. Its broad membership helps to foster trust and coordination.

It can be argued that deploying the military in civilian infrastructure activities could divert attention from essential defense functions. To the contrary, the military would strengthen its national security activities by building infrastructure projects.

Read this: ‘Africa’s tallest building’ set for $10 billion tech city

Many of Africa’s armed conflicts occur in isolated regions with limited opportunity for economic growth. Poor infrastructure and lack of economic opportunity traps populations in spirals of poverty and conflict over limited resources.

Countries such as Indonesia and Papua New Guinea are responding to the challenges of poverty to deploy their armed forces to fill the gap in civilian capacity to build infrastructure projects. Similarly, building robust infrastructure networks makes it easier to police national borders.

Investments in Earth observation satellite infrastructure, as well as the ability to deploy troops along national boundaries, is an important element in maintaining peace. Infrastructure built to address economic needs has the additional purpose of helping to maintain internal law and order as well as maintenance of national security.

New countries such as South Sudan face the challenge of keeping large armies that were built up to fight for independence. They can choose to dismantle their armed forces or convert them to a force of development. They are better advised to do the latter; their potential role in infrastructure rehabilitation pays for peace building.

As Africa celebrates the 50th anniversary of its declaration of unification, it should also reflect on the fact that it has recorded about 80 successful military coups. Led by an increasing number of technocratic presidents, Africa’s armies can give future generations hope by helping to build infrastructure — the motherboard for all economic activities.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Calestous Juma.

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/23/opinion/africa-military-infrastructure-calestous-juma/index.html?eref=edition

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NewsRipplesWeb/~3/37GlnMZU20k/mobilize-armies-to-build-better-africa

.cnn_html_media_utility::before{color:red;content:’’;font-size:9px;line-height:12px;padding-right:1px}
.cnnstrylccimg640{margin:0 27px 14px 0}
.captionText{filter:alpha(opacity=100);opacity:1}
.cnn_html_slideshow_media_caption a,.cnn_html_slideshow_media_caption a:visited,.cnn_html_slideshow_media_caption a:link,.captionText a,.captionText a:visited,.captiontext a:link{color:outline:medium none}
.cnnVerticalGalleryPhoto{margin:0 auto;padding-right:68px;width:270px}
]]

The Bare Conductive paint pen contains a non-toxic electrically conductive paint. The pens work the same way as glitter glue pens, and are designed to help people explore elecronics, and learn about circuit making.

Bare Conductive’s House Kit contains two paper houses, wired with conductive paint, which light up in the dark.

Rather than hiring an electrician to install switches, conductive paint could be used to send power across the surface of your wall. Indeed, a whole wall could feasibly be coated with conductive paint to make fumbling for a light switch a thing of the past.

Designer Patrick Stevenson-Keating developed a conductive paint-powered lamp for the 2012 Milan Furniture Fair. The lamp consists of a layer of liquid paint suspended in oil. When standing vertically two electrodes make contact with the conductive paint sending power to the bulb. By rotating the lamp horizontally, the contact is broken and the light goes off.

Bare Conductive’s Matt Johnson travelled to Budapest Design Week and ran a workshop with University students at the Bloodmountain Foundation.

The company has created a collection of prototype posters that respond to touch. When activated, the posters play audio, which they hope might be used in poster campaigns promoting festivals, music, TV shows and film.

Last year, conductive paint was used in a collection of interactive postcards created by Liverpool-based design agency Uniform. When inserted into a bespoke dock, buttons on the postcard trigger music. The cards were shown at last year’s South By South West festival in Austin, Texas, and were finalists at this year’s Designs of the Year Awards at the Design Museum in London.

DJ and producer Calvin Harris mounted a project with Bare Conductive, with painted dancers whose movements triggered loops from Harris’s hit song Ready for the Weekend.

Dundee University printed invitations to their 2011 product design MSc launch party with conductive paint. When plugged in to a system at the show, the invitation turned into a musical instrument. Users could control pitch by hovering one hand over a large circle of conductive paint, and frequency by pressing buttons with the other.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

London (CNN) — Imagine if you could paint a working light switch directly onto your wall, without any need for sockets, cables or wiring.

A group of students from the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London has made that possible by creating electrically conductive paint.

The paint acts as a form of liquid wiring. Unlike conventional wires, it can be applied to almost any surface, including paper, plastic, metal and even fabric.

The product has the appearance and consistency of runny marmite, but dries quickly when exposed to the air. Its inventors, RCA graduates Isabel Lizardi, Matt Johnson, Bibi Nelson and Becky Pilditch, call their creation “Bare Paint.” While they don’t claim to be the first group to have invented a conductive ink, they are pioneering new ways it can be used.

Read: Off-road chair that changes lives

“We started this project in earnest in 2009,” says Matt Johnson. “We were originally interested in trying to apply electronics to the skin … so we arrived at this idea of applying them as a coating and eventually we got this idea of a conductive paint.”

The team began by investigating how electronics were being used in the body.

“In 2008 — and probably still today — there was a lot of work around electronic textiles,” says Johnson. “And though we really liked the idea of having a jumper (a piece of clothing) that has some intelligence in it, we didn’t like that it was so bulky and that once you took it off the functionality disappeared.”

Around the same time there was a lot of “extreme work” being done by people who were injecting electronics beneath the skin. For their final project, the RCA students began work on making something less intrusive, looking for a substance that could be painted onto the body. Eventually, says Johnson, “that idea transformed into the material we have now, which is very safe though it’s not specifically intended for the body anymore.”

Read: Designs that will define our future

After graduating from college, the team collaborated on a video for DJ and producer Calvin Harris. The resulting project was the “Humanthesizer,” a performance which literally brought the paint to life, with dancers whose movements triggered audio loops from Harris’s song “Ready for the Weekend.”

“Making a new material was a bit daunting for four designers,” says Johnson. The team’s solution was not to return to school to study chemistry for four years. Instead, they simply went on Wikipedia. According to Johnson, the online encyclopedia provided them with almost everything they needed to know about crafting conductive materials.

Once the paint’s formula was finalized, co-creator Isabel Lizardi says the team began to consider how it might be applied to real-world products. The first thing they launched was the paint in its raw form, which they made available to other garden-shed inventors.

Today, Bare Paint jars and pens are sold on the Internet and stocked by Radio Shack electronics stores across the United States. Projects being done by Bare Paint users include everything from interactive color wheels to homemade electric toys.

Johnson says that conductive paint opens up an enormous range of creative opportunities. As conductive paint becomes increasingly common, we can look forward to a future where billboards talk back, walls are interactive, and greeting cards come to life in our very hands.

“Devices no longer have to look high tech to be high tech,” Johnson says. “Our goal is to put interactivity onto objects you don’t expect.”

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/23/tech/innovation/bare-electrically-conductive-paint/index.html?eref=edition

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NewsRipplesWeb/~3/UylOwP1-0pc/electric-paint-could-light-up-your-life

Share this: