foreignaffairsmagazine:

Writing final papers? Every Foreign Affairs article has a “Cite!” button that automatically generates the reference in three different styles.

Re-posting because this is wonderful!

(…Except for the fact that “The Clash of Civilizations?” is the example citation. Will professors please, please stop assigning us Huntington?)

nprfreshair:

Here’s a link to today’s interview with New York Times journalist C.J. Chivers about the situation in Syria. Chivers has spent much of the past year with rebels in the country and you can read his reports for the Times here.

Damascus from above by rajarajaraja via Flickr

BuzzFeed/Foreign Policy Mashup? “11 BuzzFeed Lists that Explain the World”

“The real point, however, is that entertaining pieces of web culture — often the iconic images known as “memes” — spread virally. This is the way the web now works: It’s a different kind of front page for the world, one where Overly Attached Girlfriend and a dead-serious exposé of Malaysian government propaganda in the U.S. media can and do coexist. So don’t make the mistake of thinking that just because the social web is full of cat pictures, great journalism is dying. (In fact, many great journalists are fond of cats.) This new viral world not only promotes the heck out of powerful original reporting, but it also is a crucial new channel for understanding closed, authoritarian societies, and for activists and campaigners from Russia to Zimbabwe to communicate with the outside world.

Then there are the lists, an old journalistic form reborn online with a vengeance: 21 Cats Who Aren’t Striking the Right Work/Life Balance, 10 NCAA Coaches Who Look EXACTLY Like Their Mascot. Once you stop laughing and start thinking, the extreme virulence of the social web just might revolutionize the way you think about the world too. Lists, I suggest to you, are the news of the future. Here are 11 we’d like to see on BuzzFeed — or ForeignPolicy.com — soon” 

(via 11 BuzzFeed Lists That Explain the World - By Ben Smith | Foreign Policy) h/t Christina

I absolutely agree with Ben Smith that social media and web culture are mixing up the way we digest serious, hard hitting news. Heck, I run a Tumblr called “IR Major, Thucydides” and reblog pictures of Ryan Gosling paired with international development quips, so dismissing Foreign Policy’s piece on memes would be more than a tad ironic.

However, I’m wary of Smith’s delight in proclaiming that lists are the news of the future. Lists aren’t news. They’re easy to breeze through, but they’re superficial. They shouldn’t replace well researched, longer articles. Which is not to dismiss them—if a list like “9 Disturbingly Good Jihadi Raps” can interest you enough that you delve into longer articles covering terrorism and ideology, excellent. But that’s all lists like the ones found in BuzzFeed’s politics section are: appetizers, not full meals.

Megan Garber made an excellent point about the increasing co-habitation of “pop” culture and “serious” culture when she wrote about Oreo’s response to the Mars Landing:

Last night, we landed a robot on Mars. Today, a sandwich cookie celebrates that accomplishment. The fluidity here between history and banality — and between science and pop culture — is, actually, kind of wonderful. It represents an access point to a fairly complicated news story. It makes the epic seem accessible, and it makes the accessible seem just a little (teensy, tiny) bit epic.

I echo Smith in hoping that we heartily embrace the interaction between frivolous memes and serious news. But as someone studying IR first and foremost and running a Tumblr on the side, I hope Garber’s critique rings truer. Memes and lists are wonderful, but they should serve as access points to more thoughtful analysis—they shouldn’t replace the news.

foreignaffairsmagazine:

Gallery: Choking on China

China’s pollution problem in photos

Not Your Average Chechen Jihadis: Drawing the Wrong Conclusions About the Boston Bombings

Since the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing were identified as ethnic Chechens, the national conversation about the incident has focused on the connection between the violence and terrorism in Chechnya. Here’s why that is the wrong model.

My professor’s analysis at Foreign Affairs.

autostraddle:

Femen vs. Muslimah Pride: Fighting for the Voices (and Bodies) of Muslim Women

It starts on October 2011. Egyptian blogger Alia Magda Elmahdy posts a photo of herself nude, along with a barrage of nude artwork and a message:

“Put on trial the artists’ models who posed nude for art schools until the early 70s, hide the art books and destroy the nude statues of antiquity, then undress and stand before a mirror and burn your bodies that you despise to forever rid yourselves of your sexual hangups before you direct your humiliation and chauvinism and dare to try to deny me my freedom of expression.”

At the time, street harassment was at a fever pitch, the military was forcing “virginity tests” on female dissidents, and there was no organizing around it.

What she did was comparable to the actions of Mohamed Bouazizi, the man whose self-immolation in Tunisia a year earlier started Arab Spring. Both used their bodies to shock society out of complacency and towards change. After Elmahdy’s statement, Egyptians began holding rallies against sexual violence, and demanding greater accountability. Virginity tests are now over.

However, while Bouazizi has been lionized across the Muslim and Arab world, Elmahdy was vilified (even by liberal secularists), received death threats, and was forced to leave the country. Egypt still has a long way to go with women’s rights.

Let me be frank: I’m a first generation Egyptian-American. My entire extended family lives in Egypt, including aunts, cousins, nieces, and in-laws. The issue of how women in Egypt are treated is a very personal one. Because of this, I supported Aliaa Elmahdy, and hated the craven way Egyptian liberals disavowed her in a cheap bid for votes. I may never live to see her get her due in Egypt, and that’s shameful.

The following year, she joined Femen, a Ukraine-based feminist organization, which specializes in “sextremism” as a means of political action. And, earlier this year, Amina Tyler, a Femen activist in Tunisia, posted a nude photo of herself online, with the message “My body belongs to me, and is not a source of anyone’s honor,” on her chest.

There’s been growing anxiety about the rise of (often violent) jihadism in Tunisia, as well as the increasing censorship of the Islamist government. Like Elmahdy, Tyler also received death threats, while a leading cleric called for her to be flogged and stoned.

A solidarity protest was called for April 4. Femen declared it Topless Jihad Day. Activists posted topless pictures of themselves from around the world to Femen’s facebook, and held topless rallies across Europe.

In response to Femen, Muslim women created a Facebook page called Muslimah Pride Day, and Muslim women sent pictures of themselves holding up index cards with a simple message.

“Femen does not represent me. I don’t need liberating.”

The page was covered by al Jazeera. Pamela Geller denounced it. And it was supported by countless Muslims, including many queer and progressive Muslims.

Including me.

Unpacking this issue relies on understanding one thing: Muslims are not monolithic. Muslims in the West (Europe, Canada, America) face a different set of challenges than those in the Middle East.

Read the full post

theatlantic:

In Focus: Syria in Ruins

While much of the world’s attention focuses on a possible war with North Korea, the war currently being fought in Syria grinds on. March of 2013 was a month of grim milestones in Syria. It marked two years since the start of hostilities; the number of war refugees passed one million; and it was was the bloodiest month to date, with more than 6,000 people killed. Neither the pro-Assad forces, nor the group of rebels opposing them have gained much ground recently, and little or no progress has been made by international agencies to halt the bloodshed. The following photographs come from across Syria, taken over the past six weeks, showing just some of the devastation in Aleppo, Deir al-Zor, Homs, Deraa, Idlib, and Damascus.

See more. [Images: AP, Getty, Reuters]

globalvoices:

Twitter users in cities like Reynosa, Monterey, Veracruz or Saltillo are in charge of informing the public about arrests, shootings and confrontations caused by the Mexican drug trade.

Twitter Turns Mexicans Into ‘War Correspondents’

Reporting about drug-related crime in Mexico can be fatal. Journalists and citizens are threatened and even killed for reporting on the violence that has overtaken the country. In spite of the danger, many Mexicans are using civic media to inform the public about shootings, harassment, murders and arrests, filling the informative space that the country’s mainstream media has abandoned.

Sara Plaza Écija summarized the findings of a new study of the role of citizen journalists as “new war correspondents” in Mexico in the website Periodismo Ciudadano [es] (Citizen Journalism).