By Rachel Konrad
The Associated Press Thursday, March 27, 2003; 4:47 AM
As bombs blasted Baghdad last week, dozens of cell phones in China buzzed with messages about where to stage an anti-war protest.
In Cairo, activists tapped out text messages to summon 5,000 demonstrators to a central square. And in San Francisco, technophiles beamed live footage from protests to anti-war Web sites.
Throughout the world, technology is allowing activists to stage spontaneous rallies in reaction to the war.
Prohibitively expensive only a few years ago, gadgets ranging from the cell phone to the mini digital video camera simplify protests from Brussels to Manila.
Instead of relying on posters taped to telephone poles or slapped onto university walls, activists have crafted sophisticated Web sites with maps, weather and traffic updates and news on police crackdowns.
Before the invasion of Iraq began, the San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center solicited volunteers to stage sit-ins in particular intersections. When sit-ins sparked police confrontations, the group published live video on its Web site.
Such tactics enabled the activists to shut down much of downtown San Francisco - proof that new technologies have revolutionized civil disobedience, said Pam Fielding, co-author of "The Net Effect: How Cyberadvocacy is Changing the Political Landscape."
On the eve of a "No Business As Usual" anti-war protest planned for midtown Manhattan on Thursday morning by an ad-hoc coalition of activist groups, e-mails sped across the Internet seeking participants.
At the organizers' Web site, anyone could download flyers for printing that announced the intention to stop morning rush hour traffic through "decentralized autonomous direct action."
While New York activists might opt for e-mail and voice phone calls, regional nuances remain in leveraging technology against the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
In Asia and Europe, mobile phone text messages, also called short message service or SMS, are a powerful activist tool.
The morning after the first U.S. air strikes in Baghdad, Ashraf el-Bayoumi and other organizers urged anti-war activists by text message to converge on downtown Cairo.
It's a familiar way of communicating for them, he said. "We have been trying to use this technology for three years."
Two days later, officials in Frankfurt, Germany, home of the U.S. military's Rhein-Main Air Base, decided after initially wavering to allow a protest. Within hours, 2,000 protesters converged near the base.
In Denmark, demonstrators have used cell phones while riding bicycles to reconnoiter and update each other on police movements.
