Aung San Suu Kyi Is Allowed to Make a Campaign Speech

Today, as reported by the BBC, Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was allowed to deliver a campaign message and even to criticize her country's political system. A clear sign that things are changing positively in Burma, she was able to speak for 15 minutes on national television and radio as part of a new government provision that gives parties in the 1 April by-elections the right to outline their political themes and aspirations for the country. Forty-eight parliamentary seats are being contested in the upcoming election. Hopefully her National League for Democracy (NLD) party will win many.

Dramatic changes are occurring in Burma. That's good news!

Hope from Testimony

Kenyan company Ushahidi is a free, open source or shared platform designed to crowdsource (use a community or large group of people to accomplish particular goals), amass and map crisis information from numerous sources in real time, including via text message, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, media sources and e-mail. Ushahidi can thus track real-time information, but it also puts that information into context by aggregating, categorizing and mapping what has been reported. In Haiti, Ushahidi introduced the 4636 SMS short code so individuals there could send free text messages with their location and need, and to report emergency information. Ushahidi's technology has also helped citizen participation initiatives and monitoring in elections in India, Argentina, Mozambique and Venezuela. But in addition to reporting vote-tampering, it can also be used to report violence, or any event or incident. In Russia in August, for example, it was used to establish a "map of help" to solicit volunteers needed after the wildfires, and it has been used in the USA to track crime in Atlanta. In its own words, "Ushahidi builds tools for democratizing information, increasing transparency and lowering the barriers for individuals to share their stories."