Jim Moore’s blog: Innovation, Strategy, Public Policy

Consider these to be notes in progress.

Access

Access, the human kind, is essential to three roles I find of interest:  investor, social activist, and amateur reporter.

Access is commonly thought of as a matter of being able to call people
up and talk to them.  This is a misleading view of access. 
Access to ideas, access to resources, access to goodwill, access to
friendship and the ability to have one’s gifts valued  and
received; each of these, and more, are vital. Perhaps the most
fundamental form of access is access to important problems. 
We  don’t  draw on our gifts  until we face 
problems  and address  them.  People  who are 
able  to get  access to really critical problems
develop  rare and valued expertise.  This deep expertise is
trivialized in talk about one’s “track record,” which is the outward
and visible trace of an inner grace forged be effort, risk, and
reflection.

The principal reason the convention was valuable to those of us who
participated was because it reduced the cost of access.  The big
show was an excuse–or perhaps
better said–created a requirement for thousands of people show up in
one place at one time. 

And these people had time on
their hands.  The prime-time convention
assured that many people were deliciously available in the mornings through late lunch.

My most productive time overall was morning and early afternoon. 
This time was best invested hanging out at a table on the patio
of the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, in conversation.

Bobby

One of the people I was able to spend some time on the patio with
is Bobby Muller. Bobby Muller won a Nobel Peace Prize for helping ban
landmines.
The prize itself–a handsome framed affair–sits on the floor
of his office in Washington, D.C. propped against a wall.  Bobby
is
not much on ceremony.

Bobby is doing a new site you should know about, called “this is rumor
control.”  Here is the address. For some reason it is difficult to
find the site in Google.  http://www.thisisrumorcontrol.org/

Bobby has brought together folks from the CIA, from MI5, and other
organizations with links into what Tom Barnett would call “gap”
regions.  Bobby and his folks are providing a level of access into
Islamic society and especially Iraq that is not matched by the straight
world.

Rebecca

Rebecca McKinnon has a site that is similar in spirit, but focused on
understanding North Korea.  Her site does web-based intelligence
gathering and dissemination under the title North Korea Zone.  Rebecca 
formerly lead CNN’s Asia News Bureau, and is now at the Berkman
Center.  Korea, a notoriously closed society, is in fact
penetrated routinely by travelers  of all sorts.  Rebecca
provides a safe and thoughtful service of interviewing people 
when  they come  out, and putting  together mosaic-style
a better  picture of Korea than is available anywhere else.

Me and my friends

Sudan: Passion of the Present

This Spring at BloggerCon Rebecca lead a session that focused on the
use of blogging to help understand parts of the world that are normally
hidden from us.   Rebecca pointed out three things. 
1.  Most media attention is focused on a few geographic areas, and
under-reports vast parts of the globe (see Ethan  Zuckerman’s excellent work
on media attention).  2. Many parts of the world want to shun
media attention. North Korea, Sudan, Burma and regions within states,
such as the mountains  along the Afghanistan Pakistan border, have
leaders who want  to maintain a closed stance to the rest of the
world.  3. It is in the interest of society at large to learn
about these closed areas  and societies. 4. The internet might be
useful as a way to pull together information from  a variety of
sources–especially from travelers entering forbidden zones for
awhile–and  to frame that information and make it useful and
current for others.

Rebecca challenged those of us in her session to adopt  a
part  of the world, and focus attention  on them. I chose
Sudan, and with friends began a site.  Sudan is involved in a genocide that is getting worse by the day, so my site has adopted activism as well as information gathering and integration.

The new framing of world problems

Which brings me to a broader point.  The normal framing of
world problems focuses on big states in developed parts of the world,
and ignores the fringes.  This may be changing in the new
world.  Thomas Barnett’s “The Pentagon’s
New Map” 
argues that the new threats that the US military must face will be
largely in places like North Korea and Sudan, or in societies like
those of interest to Bobby’s group.  We  need a new framing
of problems, he argues, to see that these fringe areas that he calls
collective “the gap” need  to be understood, and ultimately they
need to be helped to integrate into world society.

Open source intelligence

How can one understand these areas? By integrating a great deal of
information, generating organized knowledge, and finally establishing
perspective and wisdom and–hopefully–effective action plans.

This may be best  done  by distributed ad  hoc 
networks of informants, linked  to editor/intregrators by the
web.   Open source intelligence is one line of thinking that may help us design these projects.

The following is from Sudan: The Passion of the Present today.   The photo is from BBC coverage of a refugee camp in Chad, on the Darfur Sudan border.

July 31, 2004

>An international failure of will

Forces from across the world are poised to help the people of Darfur, but no nation has the will to move forward.

We are in a tragic and signal moment, a catalytic moment,
where the world sees the need, has the means, and yet continues to
experience a failure of will. Giving the Sudanese government
30 more days–and then asking Kofi Annan for a report to the UN
Security Council–assures 30 more days of death and destruction. Given
the nature of the genocidal process being carried out in
Sudan–engineered, intentional famine and epidemic disease–30 more
days translates into months of additonal famine, and hundreds of
thousands of additional lives lost.

Now it is the public’s turn. It is our turn. The time is now
for our action. We must ask our leaders to act now, not in 30 days.

All key elements are in place, except the will to launch the rescue of Darfur in ernest.

1. High level sources in Washington tell us that the US administration and congress have privately agreed that a military force is needed immediately
to halt the genocide in Sudan. Key leaders have agreed to approve
whatever is required to enable such a force. This commitment has been
communicated to Kofi Annan. We believe that similar commitments have
been made by other nations.

Military and logistical preparations have been made
by the US, UK, France, Australia, and the Netherlands. The US and
France have coordination teams on the ground in neighboring Sudan, and
are now in position to provide technical assistance to the rescue
mission.

2. Key African Union members are signalling that they have reached the same conclusion, led by the powerful president of Nigeria–Africa’s largest nation–who is also the current head of the African Union.

An African Union force, supported by military and
humanitarian resources from around the world, is what the African Union
leaders are trying to put together.

It seems obvious that we ought to help them in their initiative.

The African Union faces its defining moment. The
African Union was founded two years ago this month, in July 2002, out
of the wreckage of the defunct Organization of African States. The
leaders of the African Union have from the beginning worked to form a
continental government that can solve important problems. African leaders recognize that Sudan is a crucial test of the organization’s ability to lead.

3. The AU has momentum on its side.

The AU already has placed independent observers in the country
who have in recent days reported on new attrocities and the further
collapse of the conditions of life for Darfur black citizens.

The AU has permission from Sudan to send into the country a small military protective force, which will land in the next few days.

The AU summit, currently meeting in Ghana, yesterday agreed to add an unspecified number of additional troops to the protective force. Nigeria and Rwanda have committed troops to the current force, and are willing and able to provide more.

The AU protective force can be expanded immediately into a
peacekeeping force, and begin to seriously help victims across Darfur.

4. We have the power. A top US congressional aid told me three days ago:

“What you people [all those
who have brought attention and care to Darfur, not just this site] are
doing on the web has been very very valuable. Thank you all. Your work
enables us [in government] to say to our colleagues, ’see, the public
cares and wants us to act. The public is with us.’ Please keep it up.”

We can focus public opinion and help leaders gather the personal strength to act.
We can help heal the failure of will. But we need to assert our own
will. We need to take two or three acts today and every day for the
next week, and ask our friends to do the same:

If you know someone with “influence” in government, ask them to help. This is the time to tap people in our networks of friends and acquaintances.

Do what you can to extend the reach of our community of concern. Call 50 friends and invite them to check out this site and other resources, such as Human Rights Watch.

Ask other bloggers to share their thoughts and feelings about Sudan daily for the next week. Repetition helps.

Pass helpful op-eds around, such as today’s in The Washington Post.

Call your local television station and ask them to cover the story, and/or to cover the story of your activism.

Call your elected officials and thank them for what they are already doing. The US Congress, after all, has been out ahead on this issue.

Write to your friends and relatives and tell them about what you are doing.

Send us your ideas and notes and resources we should link to, by way of comments for all to see, below,
or by email. Even if your idea is only half-formed, share it with
others in a spirit of creative brainstorming. Time is of the
essence–let’s use the public power of the web to move rapidly together.

—————

UPDATE: FRENCH TROOPS have begun to act to enable the relief effort on the Chad border, though they are not entering Sudan itself.

From correspondents in Ndjamena, Chad
August 1, 2004

FRENCH soldiers stationed in Chad began airlifting aid to the border with Sudan’s Darfur region today..

French President Jacques Chirac ordered the mobilisation of his
forces yesterday to help the 1.2 million people driven from their homes
by Sudanese troops and Arab militia known as Janjaweed.

Since then, troops in Chad had begun flying relief supplies to the
border town of Abeche and were preparing to send 200 troops to secure
Chad’s eastern frontier with Darfur, said army colonel Philippe Charles.

However, the French action stopped short of entering Sudanese
territory. Sudan’s Government has warned it will send its army to repel
any foreign military intervention.

July 31, 2004 | Permalink
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Heartbreaking Wasington Post Editorial on Darfur this Saturday Morning, July 31

Here is a an editorial from The Washington Post this morning. The entire piece is worth reading, but here are excerpts:

Death and Deception in Darfur

By Daniel Wolf
Saturday, July 31, 2004

SOUTH DARFUR, Sudan — On the morning of July 12, hell descended on
the village of Donki Dereisa. Shortly before sunrise, Fatima Ibrahim,
28, awoke to the deafening sound of exploding ordnance falling from the
sky. As she emerged from her mud hut with her 10-year-old daughter, she
saw fires blazing all around and scores of heavily armed men on
horseback attacking from every direction. With bullets whistling past,
Ibrahim and her daughter ran for their lives, ducking into a nearby
ravine, where they hid without food or water for the next two days.

From the ditch, Ibrahim witnessed a horrific avalanche of violence that
will haunt her for life. With Sudanese foot soldiers at their side, the
mounted attackers shot the panicked and unarmed villagers in cold
blood. Approximately 150 people, including 10 women, were killed. But
the worst was to come.

Ibrahim told Refugees International about a week after the attack
that among those captured during the assault were four of her brothers
and six young children, including three of her cousins. As Ibrahim
watched in horror, several of the attackers began grabbing the
screaming children and throwing them one by one into a raging fire. One
of the male villagers ran from his hiding place to plead for their
lives. It was a fatal error. The raiders subdued the man and later
beheaded him and dismembered his body. All six of the children were
burned. Ibrahim’s four brothers have not been heard from since.

———————-

..On July 3, the United Nations and the Sudanese government
issued a joint communiqué in which Khartoum formalized commitments it
had made to Powell and Annan to immediately disarm the Janjaweed,
prosecute egregious abuses of human rights and honor a cease-fire
agreement reached two months earlier.

But recent events suggest that in making these commitments, Khartoum’s
objective was to stall for time in the hope it might deceive the
international community into believing the crisis had been brought
under control. This cynical approach is graphically illustrated by the
recent arrest and prosecution of a group of alleged Janjaweed
militiamen on charges of robbery and murder in southern Darfur’s
provincial capital of Nyala. According to reliable sources inside the
government, the were in fact common criminals plucked from
a Nyala jail, who were informed that they would be sentenced to death
unless they agreed to pose as Janjaweed and confess to the crimes. The
true killers remain at large.

Nor is there any indication that Khartoum intends to disarm
or otherwise rein in the Janjaweed. To the contrary, the government and
the Janjaweed have continued jointly and relentlessly to pursue their
terrorist campaign in the few remaining regions of Darfur under
government control where African villagers have not yet been driven
from their homes.

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Sudan Turns Around on U.N. Resolution

Today the Sudanese government announced that it will comply with the U.N. resolution. The resolution, while not using the word “sanctions,” allows for U.N. action if Sudan does not comply.

Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said that Sudan has already agreed to all the U.N. demands.

The Sudanese ambassodor to the AU, Osman Al-Said said, “We are not
happy with the resolution, but we are going to implement it we have no
other option.” [ABC News]

In a press conference today Powell said that the U.N.’s vote — and
not what the Sudanese government was saying — was what mattered:

“I hope the Sudanese government will use the time provided in
the resolution to do everything it can to bring the Janjaweed under
control,” he said. “I hope the African Union will move forward
aggressively as they have said they would in order to help these people
and help restore a sense of security. We can have polemics about the
resolution. But let’s not forget the fact that hundreds of thousands of
people are in need. They’re the ones we need to be trying to help.”

[Voice of America]

Keep the pressure on. Call your Congressmembers office and thank
them for supporting the genocide resolution, and ask them to keep the
pressure on.

July 31, 2004 | Permalink
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John Kerry gave the speech of his life, the speech needed to win the election and replace George Bush.

John Kerry made a clear, clean commitment to doing what is needed to get the country going again.

At a more technical rhetorical level, Kerry spoke in the language of
Americans, not the language of old line democrats and union
leaders.  For example, he spoke of the “middle class” not of
“working families.”  Indeed, the Democratic Party has made a major
shift this year in language–unnoticed by most pundits.  The most
powerful speeches–Clinton, Obama, Edwards and Kerry–used no
traditional Democratic code language.  Instead, their language was
that of most Americans, and their allusions were to the shared
zeitgeist of Americans–the shared experience of Americans who follow
the news and think about leadership and governance.

The nation’s experience includes a great deal of frustration with the
Bush administration.  Brilliantly and subtly, Kerry’s speech was
laced with allusions to these shared frustrations, and the more focused
frustrations with George Bush.  Others can provide more serious
examples, but I had particular fun with Kerry’s line about the nation
needing “a president who believes in science.”  And yes, we do
need a “fact -based” approach  to decision-making.

Nancy Pelosi has made much recently of her commitment to stopping the
genocide in Sudan.  I am surprised that she did not mention
anything about it tonight.  Perhaps she was asked to stay away
from foreign policy–given that that is where Kerry is going.  But
it is still a disappointment to the gang here at Passion of the Present.

I  would think it also a disappointment to the menbers  of
the Congressional Black Caucus.  Representative Conyers, in
particular, has been working very hard on getting a peacekeeping force
into Darfur.  It would  have been helpful to give this issue
some national TV time.  But then again, that is what tends to
happen in regard to genocides, especially in Africa.

We will see what happens with Kerry.

BTW  Zephyr Teachout is high up in the rafters in the bloggers’
eagles’ nest. I took the night off from  actually being  in
the hall–last night and night before were  great but completely
exhausting, especially when adding in the blogger party after 
hours.  Nice to see all the old Dean folks,  and other
friends!

Terrorism as topic #1

In preparation for John Kerry’s speech tonight, I’m focusing on the
terrorism issue.  This is crucial, and provides a huge opportunity
for Democrats, but not if they just say “bring it  on” 
along  with the president.

Democrats need to take on, and improve upon, the best of the Republican
and establishment thinking on terrorism and its prevention–and not
simply point out the flaws in Bush’s simple-minded thinking.  The
American people want more.

Threats come from the edge of world society

Along this line,  I like the thinking currently going on in the
Pentagon’s Office of Force Transformation.  The most  interesting idea out of this office is that most threats in the new world will come from people and
places on the edge of the world  economy. 
Our military planning and capability needs to be restructured to cope
with these new threats from new adversaries.  The areas from which
threats arise may
be ideologically on the edge, like North Korea, they may be failed
states that provide opportunities for terrorist bases and recruiting,
such as Somolia or the Congo.  Or they may be authoritarian
oil-supported states that abuse human rights and promote narrow
religious extremism, such as Saudi Arabia and Sudan.

Our major mission with respect to these states must be nation-building,
and we must learn to do it well. We don’t know how to do
effective  nation building at all, today.  And our current
military does not have the staff, training, systems, and skills to do
it.  We need, in the words of one of the leading thinkers, a kind
of “systems integration” force consisting of experts from a 
variety of fields.

Opening up closed societies

We must create states that are open to communication, that respect
freedom of speech and assembly, and that protect human rights. 
Only in this way will the people  of these states become
connected  into the rest of the world. And only in this way will
the world be  able  to monitor progress  in these 
state, and  assure itself that terrorism is not being promoted or
incubated behind  closed walls.

Oil-funded closed societies

Finally, the most difficult states to open up will be those led by
regimes funded  by oil money–Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Angola. 
These states become  major clients of nations that are arms
suppliers–such as France and Russia–and they become major suppliers
of oil to customer states, the most important in the new world being
the US and China. 
 

Some important closed  states are  protected from
accountability by their large trading partners.  The US 
protects Saudi Arabia.  China  and Russia protect Sudan.

The problem  is, thus protected, these states become sources of
terrorism.  Some, like Saudi, promote narrow religious ideas that
are easily turned to fanaticism, and then are surprised when such ideas
bloom into radical activism.  Others,  like Sudan in the case
of Osama bin Laden, make deals with terrorists and allow themselves to
be used for everything  from  recruiting stations, to
training  bases, to banking and commerce to fund terrorism. Still
others, like Pakistan, make money by servicing  rogue nations and
groups–providing  everything  from nuclear secrets  and
rocket technology  to international banking.

The Bush administration is up against one of these situations right
now.  In Sudan there is a terrible genocide going on.  And
China and Russia and Pakistan are blocking action in  the UN 
Security Council because of, respectively, oil, weapons, and banking
interests. Just today the US suffered a humiliating defeat in the Security Council.

Sudan

I hope tonight that  John Kerry mentions Sudan and the
genocide.  I think he probably will, because he has taken a stand
on the issue, and it is of increasing importance  to the
public–especially African-Americans, Jews, and Evangelical 
Christians.

I hope he goes farther. I hope he draws the link 
between authoritarian governments  and the harboring  of
terrorists.  I hope he points  out that some of the
most  stubornly authoritarian regimes hold out against democracy
because they sell oil to bigger  powers that protect them.

I hope John  Kerry articulates

(1) an energy policy that
reduces our  dependence  on  authoritarian states,

(2) a
foreign  policy that promotes open communication and human 
rights as a foundation for a world free  of terrorism, and

(3)
a  commitment to effective intervention and nation building where
necessary not, as in Iraq, because of phony threats, but in order 
to save  the victims of human  rights crimes, and at the same
time to drain the swamp of the vile stuff on which terrorist
organizations  thrive.

Let’s not simply try to sound more manly than George W. Bush.  Lets show,
as  former  president Clinton said on Monday, that “strength
and wisdom are not mutually exclusive.”

http://passionofthepresent.org

Edwards

Does anyone else think that John Edwards’ remarks on national security last night were particularly unfortunate? 

Edwards’ message to Al Qaeda,  “we will hunt you down,” was a low point of the evening. 
I envision the video clip playing across the Arab world today on Al
Jazeera, alongside a rerun of Bush’s “bring it on.”  Edwards fed into the Bush oversimplication: terrorism as a mano-a-mano
battle of wills.

Terrorism

We need three Ps to combat terrorism:  prevention, protection and prosecution–not one P.

John Edwards’ speech last night  at the Democratic Convention emphasized prosecution.

By contrast, Bill Clinton advocated a very different approach in his speech on Monday night.  Clinton emphasized prevention and protection, as well as prosecution:

How do we do this? We start by understanding people and areas that we
have previously ignored, where terrorist networks and other social
pathologies are incubated.

Terrorism incubators

Consider Sudan.  Sudan was the incubator of the modern Al
Qaeda.  Al Qaeda was formed by Osama bin Laden with the help of
the US CIA as a vehicle for fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. 
After the collapse of the Soviets, the US withdrew funding.  
Bin Laden then moved his base of operations to Sudan, an authoritarian
Islamic state “off the map” of the great powers.  From 1991 to
1994 Bin Laden lived in Sudan and used this location to accomplish two
things.  He built Al Qaeda into a systematic recruiting, training,
and action network to carry out terrorist attacks on behalf of radical
Islam, and he established a variety of businesses that provide
continued financing to the network.  Then in the late 1990s he
began seeding his network into other parts of the world, extending from
Sudan first into Afghanistan under the Taliban, and then into the
United States and other target nations.

It is almost certain that Osama bin Laden’s base system businesses and
other organizations is still operating in Sudan.  Sudan has become
a kind of low-tech Swiss-banking center for criminal organizations,
including Al Qaeda.  For example, in September of 2002 The Washington Post reported that large quantities of gold had been transfered from Pakistan to Sudan by Al Qaeda.

Sudan:  Human rights abuse, weapons, oil, and banking

For months I and a group of friends have been operating the web site Sudan: The Passion of the Present,
which focuses on stopping a genocide being promoted by this same
Sudanese goverrnment. In doing so, we have uncovered much more about
the story:  An unholy story of human rights abuse, weapons
dealing, oil money, and banking.

Sudan is a human rights abuser, and currently carrying out a genocide
that will likely kill a million people. This is not the first mass
killing it has done.  Over the past two decades Sudan has killed
more than two million others, through a combination of military action
against its own people, and engineered famines. These fact, by the way,
are not in question.  The reason you may not have heard of them is
that Sudan is a closed society, and is not covered  by the world
media–nor has it until recently been a serious focus for
diplomacy. 

Sudan’s human  rights abuses are essential to its role in
supporting terrorism.  The closed communication and authoritarian
policies of a Sudan, a North Korea, or a Saudi Arabia are not
coincidental to their support of terrorism.  It is these features
that keep terrorist organizations
hidden from the rest of the world, that render the internal workings of
these states largely invisible to the rest of us, and allow them to
develop their capacities to the point that they become serious threats.

Sudan is protected by other nations that benefit economically
from  it.  Sudan is fueled by oil riches, armed by Russia
(which for example just sold a new shipment of MIG jets to Sudan),
funded by China (who has established its Africa-wide oil services
operation in Sudan), and linked to the world banking underground by way
of Pakistan.  Here is a link to a summary of the whole system.

Currently the United States is attempting to press the UN Security
Council for a resolution on Sudan that would pave the way for helping
save more than a million likely victims of a genocide in Darfur,
Sudan.  Blocking the resolution are Russia, China, and Pakistan.

So far, by the way, the current administration has not made much of
the  human  rights abuse/weapons/oil/banking connnection.
Perhaps in part  this is because we maintain our own similar
relationship with Saudi Arabia–another authoritarian state that is a
breeding ground for terrorists including the 9/11  perpetrators.

Returning to Bill Clinton’s words, “we have to both fight terror and
build a world with more partners and fewer terrorists.”  This
requires a compehensive address to the problem of hidden, closed states
like Sudan. 

It is not enough to track down members of al Qaeda,  Al Qaeda and
other networks will continue to breed in placese like Sudan as long as
we accept a world of authoritarian governments that oppress their
people, and that are maintained by hidden, shadowy relationships among
the economic powers of the world.

If Kerry and Edwards hope to lead our nation to a new level of security
and hope, they need to develop a foreign  policy that opens up
closed societies like Sudan, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia. We need to
promote universal human rights.  And we need to expose and
transform economic relationships that support closed societies, and
that in turn enable conditions that breed terrorism.

For a quick, powerful overview on Sudan, focusing on the genocide but
also reviewing the broader story, I recommend
http://passionofthepresent.org

In addition, the following multimedia links are particularly effective, and harrowing:

• “Song for Sudan” (MP3)
• Video documentary of ethnic cleansing in Darfur, Human Rights Watch
• Satellite Images of destruction in Darfur, USAID

Multimedia intro to the genocide in Darfur Sudan

• “Song for Sudan” (MP3)
• Video documentary of ethnic cleansing in Darfur, Human Rights Watch
• Satellite Images of destruction in Darfur, USAID

My activist self and my blogger/reporter self are in conflict about my
role at the Democratic Convention.  I have credentials and access
to the Fleet Center.

My main hat at the convention is as an activist on the Sudan
genocide.  I’m at the convention largely in that capacity: to
raise awareness of the genocide, and to promote action.  My
friends and I contribute to the Sudan genocide news blog
http://passionofthepresent.org,

I am not a journalist.  However, I am a blogger on the site you
are reading. My site is aggregated into Convention Bloggers.  As
such, I have the reach of a reporter, at least temporarily.  And I
share in the general  blogger ethos of reporting my experiences
and ideas online.

People at the convention are sharing their secrets with me, one
committed activist to another.  My “sources” do not think of me as
a journalist, and indeed I am not.  They trust me because we share
common cause.  

On the other hand, I could put what they are telling me into a blog,
and perhaps scoop the journalism world on Sudan. And I’m not alone.
Twenty years ago personal publishing empowered the individual to print
magazines and books. Today personal broadcasting, by way of blogs and
RSS linkages, empowers the individual to be an outlet for news to the
entire world.

The Democratic convention this year gave press credentials to a small
number of bloggers.  By so doing the convention accelerated a much
broader movement.  The credentialing of bloggers helped provide
legitimacy and visibility to untold additional numbers of
non-credentialed bloggers.  On the convention floor, in the halls,
and in the seats are scores of people like me. We are having all manner
of intimate, confidential conversations, and then facing the question
of what to report on our blogs.

Like reporters, we feel some of the excitement of being able to
influence events as well as report on them.   Well-timed
disclosures can change the world.  

We slso  know that to do so is to be reckless.  We are not
able to predict the impact of a possible story.  We know we can do
damage to our cause, as well  as advance it.

This new condition is potentially revolutionary.  Conventions are
places where secrets are shared, alliances formed, and plans put into
motion.  A convention provides a coming together of thousands of
like-valued and like-mined souls. As a friend who has studied too much
economics puts it, at a convention the transaction cost of connecting
approaches zero.

What is revolutionary is that blogging has now reduced the transaction
cost of individual global publishing.  As bloggers we have the
means at our fingertips to share secrets with the world.  This
places a great responsibility on the shoulders of each activist
blogger.  He or she must decide when sharing a story will likely
help the cause—and when it will threaten it.

We don’t have institutional support to help us with this
calculus.   We don’t have editors. Most of us revel in the
freedom of being “unedited.” But it might be helpful to be able 
to discuss a potential disclosure with a Ben Bradlee, someone seasoned
in the fine art of both reporting on and occasionally helping to shape
history.

We also are not bound by the reporter’s ethics of
confidentiality.  We don’t talk with our fellow activists about
“deep background” versus “on the record.”  We don’t walk around
the convention hall with a  large “reporter” tag that warns others
away, or at least puts them on notice that they are potentially
speaking with the public at large.

For now I am treating my conversations as deep background, and asking
sources if I can print certain items.  I’m suppressing my inner
reporter in service of my inner activist.  But this does not
prevent me from experiencing the conflict.  And it helps me
appreciate that hundreds of other convention-goers are experiencing
this same tension for the first time due to blogging, and making their
own private choices about what they will each say in public.

The convention overall feels a lot like a big TV show, situated in a
basketball arena.  Not sure where the news is here, except for
what you hear from those you meet.  Oh, yea, that’s what all
conventions  are really about.

The bloggers have the coolest perch–high up on
floor seven, slot 318 and 319, on little plywood and erector-set
scafolds slightly set out from the seats. Looking far down to the
deligates on the floor, one could be forgiven for thinking of spit
wads…

Climbing up there was fun–kind of a boys club: Dave Winer, Matt  Stoller, 
Michael Feldman, Matt Gross, Joe  Rospars, Jerome Armstrong, 
Jascha Franklin-Hodge, Clay Johnson.  Hanging out, blogging, talking, enjoying the show.

Terrific talk with Matt Stoller about Sudan.  Good ideas and a real concern for the issue.

Conversation with Markos of the  DailyKos–he knows about Sudan
but is not inclined to intervene–”I see no answer”–I asked him to
consider an African peacekeeping force funded through the UN by large
countries including  the US.  He asked “Why don’t the
Africans do something?”
I pointed out that Nigeria and Rwanda are committing troops, but yes,
the AU is not taking effective action. I don’t know the detailed
politics of why..

Meanwhile, Fish found a place to hang out that brimed with
interesting people. She joned up with John Shore, who does science and
technology policy for Senator Leahy, in a hall outside Legends, which
had an open bar for
contibutors, where she saw everyone. She was totally fearless when it
came to walking up to strangers to talk about the genocide in Sudan,
and
http://passionofthepresent.org, and the Sudan song.

She got within two feet of Jimmy Carter, but secret service wouldn’t let her talk to him.

She saw Jerry Springer go by, but thought better of asking him.

High point was Rep. Conyers from  Michigan, who–it turned 
out–had just come from a meeting with Kofi Annan on  Sudan. 
Conyers was warm, thoughtful, and encouraging.  One of his aids
encouraged  the  blog world to keep the pressure on–he says
he is very very sure the blogs are  having a powerful effect on
politicians in regard to Sudan–because the politicians feel the
public’s interest, and because they realize their actions and 
being watched and will be judged.

The sunshine is gorgeous, people are out in the parks, almost no one is
working–I just drove out of downtown at 5 PM, with no traffic at
all.  What is obvious is the security.  Here west of Boston
our normally quiet skies are now regularly ripped by fighter jets
zooming around the city, protecting us by air. These jets come out of
the North American Defense Command, but are now under the direct
control of the Secret Service.  The are flying 24 hours a
day.  In town you have got to love the security.  On every
corner there are clusters of police, marines, MPs, and others.  By
clusters I mean 6 to 10 in a group.  And then the black Chevy
suburbans and police motorcades wind their way by every few
minutes.  And I’m talking a mile or so from the Fleet Center..

My agenda tonight is to watch and report, of course, but also to 
bring attention to the genocide in Sudan, and to the importance of
human rights issues for the country, the party, and the campaign. 
And of course I am urging folks to go to http://passionofthepresent.org

I’m sitting here across from Joe Trippi, author of The Revolution
will not be Televised and next to Dick Bell, chief blogger of the
Kerry campaign, also here is Andrew McLaughlin, head of public affairs
at Google, and a former Berkmanite.  Also here Tod Cohen of eBay,
others. The  topic today is the transformation of political
culture.  We are having the beginning of lunch.  I will be
back with updates when more happens.

Pre-lunch discussion of the blogger’s breakfast predictable
issue.  At the bloggers breakfast earlier  today there were
three speakers, including  Walter Mears who is the (new) blogger
for AP–which has hired for the first time a number of bloggers. 
Someone asked  “how do your politics affect your
newswriting.”  He gave a spirited defense of “putting your
politics aside” as a reporter.  This was of course countered by
essentially  the whole audience of bloggers.  Bloggers
embrace their own point of view.

We are doing intros–Zack Exley from Kerry campaign mentions that he
has been working for years to use the web  to transform
society–but for the next few months he is focused on using web tools
to win elections.  “After the election we will review both
topics.”

I expect we will discuss both. Here are a few of the intros

I’m Joe Trippi, came up as a grassroots organizers.  In the 80s
and 90s started building web communities.  Decided to marry the
two to help Howard Dean win an election.  I would say that
the problem in my view is that the net really is at 1952–1956 in
relation to television.  The Dean campaign was equiv to Nixon
Checkers speech, or maybe Nixon Kewnnedy.  It took 11 years for TV
to become totally dominant.  It will happen faster in the
web–indeed it could happen instantly. [but we are not there yet..] I’m
interested in seeing how this will develop.

Tod Cohen with eBay.  Been fascinated as to whether our
community of users have political power. We’ve been trying to
understand that.  We are a community-based company.  To what
extent are we run by our communit.  We have six to seven users in
Germany, on eBay Germany.  Something is happening in Germany that
is not what we expected. We are interested in understanding what is
happening, and sharing what we are learning, and learning from you.

Sharon McBride, I run the political and grassroots organization at
eBay. We have half a million people who make their livings on
eBay.  When we go talk to public policy people, we try to speak
not only ourselves but a large community of business people.

JM: this is new to me–eBay as a political force in the US and in regions of the globe. Follow up.

Andrew McLaughlin, everything I know I learned at the Berkman
Center.  I worked on international development around
the world–Africa, Mongolia.  Now I am sort of
the cleanup hitter at Google for public policy.

Dick Bell leans over and tells me  he was director of
communication for Oxfam, and also for Worldwatch, and follows the
development issues.

John Palfrey points out the interest of the center in both domestic
politics and international internet development in areas such as Africa
and Central Asia.

In my intro I mention my involvement in http://passionofthepresent.org bringing attention of the web on the genocide in Sudan–as well as my engagement with Joe in the Dean campaign.

It is interesting how many folks here have done international
development.  And of course community organizing.  And now
they are technologists and socio-technical activists.

Joe Trippi: “faith in strangers again.”

“What eBay, and we at Dean did was to help bring Americans back again to having a faith in strangers.

“Television does the opposite. It isolates people.

“When Harry Truman took the train he talked to 19 million
Americans.  And people  did something social, waited for
hours, met each other.

“When Ike talked to 19 million people on TV in the next election, it was not social.

“The net allows both.  It allows the social interaction of the Truman train, and the direct reach of Ike’s tv..

“The eBay community could rise up in a day and change this country–or change the world..”

Zack Exley: “What is changing is the structure of “the people.” The
train did that, the telephone, and now the net.  And so there are
two things  to study–the structure of the people, and the
tools  that [enable the people  to change their own
structure.]

Andrew McLaughlin: “For the fall conference, I think we should not
focus on international development, but rather study  technology
and society globally.  I don’t know how many of you follow the
amazing stuff happening in Mongolia [see Berkman site for case study].

Or Kenya VOIP

and cell phones in Africa 

We can learn from South Korea, which is the most advanced place perhaps on the planet for internet campaigning.

We can learn lots  from global politics. About ourselves,
too.  For our conference in the fall, lets bring in folks from
these other areas.

Zack: we talk about trust. on eBay the rating system built
trust.  In the Kerry campaign, we let folks advertise a house
party without revealing address immediately. the attenders search by
area, and then if they register, and their registration is accepted by
the host, they see where it is. that little bit of code three lines
really helped us. and at moveon we did not get that. but kerry did. so
we will have 5000 house parties this week.

the  developers don’t necssariy get these social issues..we need to have training for tech folks about [social stuff].

JM see the old literature on “socio-technical systems” Miller and Rice.

Tod Cohen: Last year in the anti-spam regulation the country allowed
the political class to use spam, but not business.  so we created
two classes of people.

many folks think that the anti-spam act was intended to make only politicians able to use spam.

Jim Moore: the Dean campaign was a center of innovation. More than a
hundred new things were tried, at scale, and we learned a lot. When
people study the campaign they ask the wrong question–they ask why
Dean didn’t win. The better question is what worked and what didn’t,
and what does it tell us about behavior in politics in the new
socio-techniaal environment.

Mark Bohanon: politics 101–we don’t yet know how to use the internet to reach the “influencables.”

Joe Trippi: Dean was going to Austin Texas.  We had 481
emails.  One guy on  that list says come to my house and get
ready.  a hundred  showed up. they decided to leaflet the
whole latino community. and things kept going. and when we got there we
had 3200 people, at least half of whom did not have computers.  So
you can reach out.

Candlight vigils of moveon had same effect.  [the web stimulated a core–and it took off]

Zack Exley: the question is how to make that happen more.  the
lesson of the dean campaign is that when you let a thousand flowers
grow, only 10 really thrive.  because folks don’t really 
know how to organize. but if you train folks better, you can get a much
better return on the stimilation.  what if we train up 100000
people who can really do an effective house party.  we can use the
internet as the communication and connection. 

Peter Emerson: for the conference in the fall, it would be good
to commission some data organizing so that we are working off the same
fact base.  and we might take a pass at a review, a  state of
the art, and a prospective picture, to stimulate our thinking.

Tod Cohen: I want to thank everyone. This has been just what I
hoped for.  And let me point out that in the fall it will be
a non-partisan conference, so we will have our friends from 
the other side with us.  And that will be really good. 
One of the things  that I am interested in is which political
culture does this media most advantage?  We
don’t  know that, and it may be that different
approaches  work  differently in different political
communities.

[Someone] and  it may be that this technology can help to create a more non-partisan political dialogue and climate..

Everyone  claps.

I am off to talk to Matt Wood of http://winbackrespect.org
which is a new group with terrific video ads on why a world of
friends and allies is more secure.. Give them a little bit of
money if you’d like to see these ads run in swing states..

And do listen to this song and help us use the web to stop the genocide in Sudan.

http://passionofthepresent.org

Thanks folks!