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

This story from afrol News warrents your closest consideration.  Whether you are a Sudan: The Passion of the Present reader, or a person interested in Second Superpower political action, or someone involved in the movement to memorialise and learn from past genocides and stop current and future genocides, this story is important.

Citizen action can gain force by identifying an element of law and using legal processes to influence the behavoir of the titans of the world economy.  The Presbyterian Church of Sudan is suing an oil company for its complicity in the genocide in southern Sudan–a genocide that predates the current genocide in western Sudan, and involves many of the same actors. Perhaps we might want to sue some oil companies?  Anyone interested? Let me know at jmoore@cyber.law.harvard.edu.  By the way, this seems much more effective than consumer boycotts.

Oil company faces genocide charges over Sudan engagement

afrol News, 30 August - The Canadian oil company Talisman Energy is set to face charges of “complicity in genocide and war crimes” in a US court due to its past engagements in southern Sudan. The Presbyterian Church of Sudan is challenging the company, claiming its operations had fuelled an “oil war” in the region that victimised “hundreds of thousands” of people.

Talisman Energy, a Canadian oil company, “must face charges of complicity in genocide and war crimes in a federal District Court in New York,” according to a statement released today by the US law firm of Berger & Montague, representing the alleged victims in southern Sudan. On 27 August, a New York had denied Talisman Energy’s motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction.

The complaint, filed by the Presbyterian Church of Sudan and other alleged “victims of the oil war in southern Sudan” claim that Talisman, in an “unholy alliance with the Islamic government of Sudan, committed genocide and war crimes in connection with the exploration and extraction of oil in southern Sudan.”

The plaintiffs seek disgorgement of Talisman’s revenues from its Sudan operations as “compensation for hundreds of thousands of victims forced to flee their homes and left in despair without food, water, shelter, or medical care as a result of the strategic plan by Talisman and the government of Sudan to use helicopter gunships and high altitude bombing to depopulate areas around the oil fields,” the US law firm says.

The Presbyterian Church of Sudan originally had filed its lawsuit against Talisman in 2001, but there has until now been disagreement over the New York court’s jurisdiction in the case. Friday’s ruling means that the Canadian oil company cannot avoid to have the charges proven in a US court. The United States have a much tougher stance on Sudan than Canadian authorities.

Since the case was filed in 2001, Talisman has ended its controversial operations in Sudan. One and a half year ago, Talisman sold its Sudan holdings to ONGC Videsh Ltd, an Indian state-run oil company. According to the company itself, Talisman thus achieved US$ 1.2 billion for its 25 percent stake in the Greater Nile Oil Project, making a large profit after four years of involvement.

Oil developments in southern Sudan have been controversial since they started as they were observed to fuel and prolong the war between North and South Sudan. Many credible human rights reports from the oil-rich region have suggested that oil companies were followed by the Sudanese army, which emptied the area of its population.

For Talisman, the four-year engagement in Sudan was profitable but a major blow to its international image. “Shareholders have told me they were tired of continually having to monitor and analyse events relating to Sudan,” Talisman President Jim Buckee confessed as the company pulled out of the war-torn country in late 2002. The company’s shares had suffered heavily from the engagement.

By staff writers

The modular media revolution

What we all know:  A revolution has come about through the combination of broadcast and narrow-cast networks, inexpensive storage, blog-like sharing tools ands services, and end-user devices such as iPods, digital phones, small video players, and software for personal computers.

What we also know:  The revolution has forever transformed media.  Media content is now inherently modular, even if it is initially streamed, channeled, and time-bound during delivery.  As soon as the media is received by the individual user, it is converted to modules that are stored and indexed on local devices. Modules can then be experienced at any time by the user, and can increasingly be shared across communities of users.

Services such as Comcast are encouraging this revolution by distributing end-user storage and playback devices, such as the new Motorola Digeo system, as well as providing network-based storage and playback of modules, by way of the Comcast on-demand service.

Threats to traditional media business models

The module-making and distributing ecosystems are becoming rapidly more extensive, easier to use, and better integrated into daily life and experience.  Our daily world is changing fast.  The six o’clock local news on channel 5 in Boston is now dowloaded time shifted  by up to 20,000 users per night, using the Comcast on demand service.  It is no doubt TIVOed by many thousands of others.  Barrons has an article this week suggesting that conventional radio stocks are overpriced, and that the conventional “Kiss FM” radio station business model is forever damaged by extensive use of iPods for personal radio throughout the day.

Indeed, the modular world threatens current business models–especially old-school advertising inserted into the time stream between what used to be “programs” and are now modules, and new-school subscription models such as iPod and  XM and Sirius radio as well as cable-TV subscription levels.  Digital rights management is no solution, becauses digital-to-analog-to digital conversion can get around any restrictions.  And good digital to analog is key to user experience, so it can’t be compromised by the senders.  And analog to digital is getting better and better.

Resulting struggles for control and strategic leadership of the emerging new business ecosystems

Thus, expect to see new and strange struggles as services such as XM seek to control content and keep it from becoming fully modular–or to preempt the doityourself options by selling their own modularization systems and services–as Comcast is doing.

This will force “open  versus closed ecosystem” choices on the companies.  Services such as Comcast and XM can promote a platform as an environment in which others can develop new software and services and end-user experiences–and become the base for an ecosystem of innovation.  Or they can seek to provide layer after layer of innovation themselves–and keep both control and revenues.  The danger in scenario one is that XM loses control of its business world–and also that the RIAA and others would attack XM.  The danger in scenario two is that XM stifles innovation and stunts the expansion of their platform, and perhaps advantages Sirius as well as local digital FM radio and internet audio.

In this light, the recent decision by XM to stop selling its personal-computer-oriented radio adapter is of interest.  The story is summarized in a mock-Harvard Business School case study, below.  What has happened is that XM first opened up, and is now–at least temporarily–closing down.

XM radio’s attempts to shape its business ecosystem–resulting in contradictory moves to both promote and to supress personal-computer-based modularization of satellite radio content: A Case Study

Part one, opening up.

I’ve been waiting for this.  It lets you turn your PC into a TIVO-like service that can record from XM satellite radio, make MP3s and catalogue them–and then make them available for you to play at any time…

more about

Part two, closing down

Ah, but in the spy-versus-spy world of doityourself media, XM has quietly taken  the required hardware device off the market.  Of course, XM declines to publicly say that they have done so.  They just won’t fill orders–and the market for the hardware device is booming on eBay.  See the excellent slashdot summary.

Part three, contradictory action

In  the “famous last words” category–see XM’s site today, advertising the hardware:

XM PCR Developer Communities:

The XM PCR revolution is in full effect. Across the XM Nation, we’re excited to see independent developers creating fantastic new versions of the XM PCR software for a wide range of platforms including Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows. Windows: XtreMe PCR Macintosh OS X: MacXM Unix: XMPCR perl scripts Linux: xmd-xmfe Did we miss a developer? Let us know if you’re developing any PCR software. Case discussion What will happen next?  Will XM try to offer advanced modularization services itself–perhaps as an extension of already announced pause-and-playback features coming in the next round of radios?  By offering some of the desired functionality to end users, XM may be able to slow and cripple the doityourself movement.  What do you recommend?  What do you think would be the consequences? How will the doityourself community respond?  Will the doityourself community find that it is easy to modify other XM products so that the analog output can be captured and fed into modularization software?  Will the doityourself community be able to reach the scale to threaten XM’s business model and change industry dynamics? How might the market play out? If you were XM, what might you do to get out ahead of this entire trend? If you were a promoter of doityourself–what might you do?  As an individual? As an entrepreneur? Does Sirius have a strategic opportunity? It could get out ahead of this train, either by offering modularization features faster than XM, or by opening up its platform to innovators through offering a personal-computer-oriented adapter and working with software and service developers. What would you recommend it do? Oh yes, and what about the RIAA?  Do you expect them to weigh in? What might they do? Who might they take action to influence? If you ran the RIAA, what would you do? How might the doityourself community address the RIAA both now and in anticipation of the future? How might XM or Sirius do so? What might the Electronic Frontier Foudation, or the Open Software Foundation, or other activists do? What might be best for “the commons?”–and for those of us who are “commoners?”  Individual hobbyists, users and consumers?

I’ve been waiting for this.  It lets you turn your PC into a TIVO-like service that can record from XM satellite radio, make MP3s and catalogue them–and then make them available for you to play at any time…

more about

Ah, but in the spy-versus-spy world of doityourself media, XM has quietly taken  the required hardware device off the market.  Of course, XM declines to publicly say that they have done so.  They just won’t fill orders–and the market for the hardware device is booming on eBay.  See the excellent slashdot summary.

In  the “famous last words” category–see XM’s site today, advertising the hardware:

XM PCR Developer Communities:

The XM PCR revolution is in full effect. Across the XM Nation, we’re excited to see independent developers creating fantastic new versions of the XM PCR software for a wide range of platforms including Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows. Windows: XtreMe PCR Macintosh OS X: MacXM Unix: XMPCR perl scripts Linux: xmd-xmfe Did we miss a developer? Let us know if you’re developing any PCR software.

The adage is that generals are always mentally fighting the last war.  As a student of leaders, including myself, I find a lot of truth in this.

Times change faster than we realize.  And change itself is happening faster–in world affairs as in business. I also find this to be quite true.  I struggle to remember this each day.

Put these two things together and consider the following: Maybe the “war on terrorism” is over.

Maybe we are in a new war.  Maybe the war on terrorism–where a network of international terrorists attack the west–culminagted in 9/11.  Maybe it started much much earlier, with, for example, bombing of the embassy in Kenya, etc.  We just didn’t realize it.  Maybe by the time George Bush declared himself a “war president” the war was in its last phase.  And maybe we more or less won the war on terrorism when we froze assets, shared intelligence, joined with other nations to crack down on the networks, and went into Afghanistan.  Of course there will continue to be terrorist incidents, and residual terrorists, but maybe the world wide war on terrorism was largely won within a few months–or at most a couple of years–after our generals–and we ourselves–woke up and focused on it.

So what is the new war? What is the new reality?  Two interesting news stories, one NYT about China expanding its reach, reported in my previous post. A second in the Boston Globe today about threads of moderation in Saudi.

These, to me, are worth reflecting on, worth connedting the dots about, worth doing pattern recognition.  They may have something to do with our current reality–or current “war” if you will. 

I worry that we are fighting the wrong war.  We are fighting a war on terrorism, but neglecting the war on totalitarianism.

Traditionally, America has been seen as the fighter for freedom, as the fighter against the spread of totalitarianism.  We may not always have been consistent in our policies against state control and suppression of human rights, but we have mostly made it a center of our overall approach to the world.  And this approach to the world–of being on the side of freedom and free people–is for many of the other 6 billion people in the world our reason for being, and their reason for respecting and admiring us. 

Now we are using many of the tools of totalitarianism to fight our war on terrorism.  Indeed, the very term “war” implies an at least temporary suspension of individual freedoms in service of a larger cause.  But more alarmingly and more permanently we are fighting our war on terrorism by systematically and permanently clamping down on civil rights, increasing surveillance, reducing freedom of action, and inventing new forms of criminal proceedure that suspend to one extent or another the rights of defendants.

Inadvertantly we are contributing to the expansion of totalitarianism as we fight the war on terrorism.  I wonder, do we need a “war on totalitarianism?”  Perhaps ”war” is not the right term here–but I think we need to make the rolling back of totalitarianism a major emphasis of our foreign policy. 

We are also taking our eye off the expansion of totalitarianism worldwide. The story we are not following is the expansion of what I have called the “Genocide Bloc” because of its inclusion of the government of Sudan.  The Genocide Club is anchored by China.  Here are excerpts from a very important article in The New York Times yesterday, describing China’s expanding influence:

The turnabout is just one sign of the broad new influence Beijing has accumulated across the Asian Pacific with American friends and foes alike. From the mines of Newman - an outpost of 3,000 in a corner of the outback - to theforests of Myanmar, the former Burma, China’s rapid growth is sucking up resources and pulling the region’s varied economies in its wake. The effect is unlike anything since the rise of Japanese economic power after World War II.

For now, China’s presence mostly translates into money, and the doors it opens. But more and more, China is leveraging its economic clout to support its political preferences.

Beijing is pushing for regional political and economic groupings it can dominate, like a proposed East Asia Community that would cut out the United States and create a global bloc to rival the European Union. It is dispersing aid and, in ways not seen before, pressing countries to fall in line on its top foreign policy priority: its claim over Taiwan.

China’s higher profile is all the more striking, analysts, executives and diplomats say, as Washington’s preoccupation with Iraq and terrorism has left it seemingly disengaged from the region, which in turn has found the United States more off-putting and harder to penetrate after Sept. 11.

American military supremacy remains unquestioned, regional officials say. But the United States appears to be on the losing side of trade patterns. China is now South Korea’s biggest trade partner, and two years ago Japan’s imports from China surpassed those from the United States. Current trends show China is likely to top American trade with Southeast Asia in just a few years.

More on this in my next few posts.  China is doing more than extending its trading influence.  It is also extending its policies of abuse of human rights.  In Africa particularly, it is teaming up with the “new dictators” in Sudan and other totalitarian countries–and working together with them to establish social and political “stability” to protect its trade relationships–and particularly, in Africa, to protect sources of oil.

International relations may be more like the game of Go than Chess—and yet we seem to have a political class, a defense establishment, and a spy apparatus geared for the later.  So we think of ourselves as moving against Iraq and Afghanistan, and–as long as we have lots of pawns to lose–we are doing pretty well, albeit at great expense.

What we are not focused on are international linkages and surrounds.  We are not focused on China’s rapidly expanding leadership of the world.  China is creating linkages among nations and industries, and surrounding the United States with its sphere of influence. While the US is distracted by the Middle East, China moves across the world.  Across South Asia, into Africa, China is solidifying its networks.  While we fight a “war on terrorism” China expands a worldwide community of authoritarians.  This, btw, is the significance of China’s presence in Sudan.

I just read with sadness the recent
USA Today article on Democrats running for the Senate in the west and
south who hold views indistinguishable from Republicans. 
These folks don’t think they can win with a message that is distinct,
so they are converging on the Republican message and hoping for the
best.

This reminds me of the alcoholic wag who said, “I have lost my wife and
family, my job, my health–and my memory is getting poor.  Of
course I drink!  What the hell would you do?”

Here is the same line from the DLC:  “The Democratic Party has
lost the Senate, the House, and the Presidency.  People see us as
unprincipled and without vision.  Of course we need to run like
Republicans!  What the hell would you do?”

There is a rather precise definition of addiction, in cybernetic terms: 

(1) A signal indicates that a problem has been encountered that requires the system to make
a change in its behavior.  For example, losing one’s health might
be a signal to an alcoholic to stop drinking and seek recovery with the
support of Alcoholics Anonymous.
(2) The operator of the system turns off the signal, or turns off
awareness of the signal.  This action is generally called a
“palliative”–i.e., it makes you feel better, but does not cure the
true problem.  In the case of the alcoholic, further drinking
turns off anxiety, guilt, shame, depression–at least temporarily.
(3)  Because the underlying problem  has not been addressed, the condition of the system continues to decline.
(4)  [Return to #1, and loop the program again.]

This is what is besetting the Democratic Party.  A powerful
institution with many important resources is not addressing its own
lack of creativity and boldness in tackling the real problems of the
world.  The Democratic Party is absent on the field.  The
only voices advocating thoughtful new positions are the 527s,
and–watch–Republicans are working hard to silence them.

As a result of the lack of vision, leadership vacuum and general
submissiveness of Democrats, people turn to Republicans.  Many of
us think that Republicans are wrong, wrong-headed, and motivated by
private interests–but Republicans cannot be faulted for lacking vision
and boldness.  Redrawing the political boundaries of the Middle
East may have been a poor idea, a poorly-time idea, and a poorly
excuted idea.  It was, however, bold.

Democrats don’t use their resources to generate new solutions, to bring
to the public new voices and new ideas,. They put their resources
behind messages that reinforce the Republican view of the world. 
Essentially, Democrats help fund the educational and cognitive framing
campaign of the Republicans.

What is lost to the nation is the potential contribution of one of the
two major platforms for education, for action, and for political
creativity.

Most Americans are tired of right and left–tired, frankly of
Republicans as well as Democrats.  Look, please, at the polls on
non-voting and the expansion in numbers of independent voters. Most
Americans would like a  newspectrum entirely, a new
perspective.  Americans would–I believe–reward a party that
creatively reframed our fundamental challenges.

Finally, there is the personality dimension to politics–and failure on
this level is linked to addiction to the center.  Consider this:
Americans tend to vote for people they like, and they tend to like
those who seem authentic.  When Democrats run as Republicans, they
look
inauthentic.  People suspect that such Democrats are be closet
liberals dressing up like conservatives.  Or  people wonder
why such a nice conservative fellow would be a member of that
despicable Democratic Party.  Either way, as the old adage goes,
people will generally vote first for the real Republican.  Among
other
things, the real Republican often seems more authentic and more
comfortable with him or herself.

I close: Why is John McCain a most interesting major political
player?  Because  people believe he is authentic.
Authenticity, people believe in their guts, is the only firm basis for
the political creativity that our nation so needs.  The Democratic
Party systematically killed off the authentic voices that surfaced in its own
primary–and is now left with the result. 

Democrats may well win this fall.  If they do, it will be mainly
because
the Republican administration collapsed, and to some extent because the
Democrats ran a tight, well-funded machine aimed at tactically
exploiting the Republican failure.  A Democratic
victory, however wide, will not be a victory of ideas, but of
tactics.  It will not have advanced political thought in our
country, it will have further demeaned it.

We will not be on the road to recovery, we will be one loop deeper into
addiction.  And as a nation, the process of this campaign is likely to leave us more misinformed, less
effectively led, and more turned off.

I hope that whoever wins this election wakes up and smells the
coffee–and is able to find a way to bring our nation back to our
senses, back to our selves.   The American presidency–even
tactically won–provides a tremendous platform for action.  One of
John Kerry’s chief finance persons said to me earlier this summer,
“Jim, campaigns are not where you make policy–they are where you
win.  After you win, then you focus on  what really needs to
get done”  Perhaps.  I hope so. Time will tell. 
Unfortunately Democrats may have a hell of a hangover from the
campaign–having spent millions of dollars promoting a Republican point
of view.

Many many many thanks to Katrin Verclas of Passion of the Present and Greg Moore of Blockstreetandbuilding.com for collaborating on this darkly beautiful and powerful poster, and accompanying fact sheet.

You can download both from the following location. We will be putting these materials on higher volume servers soon.

The poster and flyer are undated, so they are appropriate both for today’s Sudan: Day of Conscience events and for ongoing use, such as postering of public spaces and using in conjunction with the green ribbon campaign. Print the poster and put it up in buildings you frequent! Schools, offices, churches!!

Download Genocide Now poster (8.5″ by 11″, pdf)
Download Genocide Now fact sheet (pdf)

These materials are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License, meaning they can be used royalty-free for non-commercial purposes, with attribution. Copyright 2004 Passion of the Present. Feel free to place these on your server, your web site, and to print and distribute them in any quantity for non-commercial use.

Download Genocide Now poster from a high capacity server (US)

Download Genocide Now fact sheet from a high capacity server (US)

Dave Winer has convinced me that an effective information community must be open to the views of its opponents and others with differing views from its core members. This is why I have encouraged contributions from both American liberals and conservatives, for example, in order that we can all be as open and informed as possible. The test of this point of view comes when you come up against a really well-informed person who holds a fundamentally different point of view on the situation at hand. That condition has now emerged on the web in regard to Darfur and Sudan, with a new web site and an entry in Wikipedia.

It is the strong view of Passion of the Present that the current situation in Darfur is (1) a genocide, (2) overwhelmingly caused, maintained and directed by the Sudanese government leaders, and (3) can only be addressed by outside help that can effectively defend the victims and counter the continual (and sophisticated) misinformation generated by the Sudanese government. Thus the prescription is to pour in more and more “outside medicine” to dampen the conflict and rebuild society–aid groups, protective forces, observers, monitors, outside visits by leaders of other nations, and AU peacekeepers if possible.

There is of course another side, that says the situation is (1) a “war” between rebels and the government, with unfortunate human rights abuses by both sides, (2) caused, maintained and directed by both the Darfur rebels and the government–though with the government having the upper hand because of having more resources–and now exacerbated by “outside forces” such as the United States and the west, and (3) that the answer to the conflict must come from within Sudan, by blocking out the outside forces, damping down the rebel actions, and seeking within an integrated Sudanese government a long-term solution that preserves the government but shares power more equitably. The prescription from this point of view is to keep out the outsiders, except those that are carefully vetted and controlled by the government so as not to be “divisive”–and to focus on restoring government control in Darfur, and extending this government control to the local level, through “governing councils” and the like.

These two views are able to marshall facts on their sides, though I believe that the vast preponderance of objective outside information supports the first view, and bringing in the outside world.

It was inevitable that the entire spectrum of views on Sudan would eventually be represented in the blogosphere, and now there is a new actor on the scene who supports view number two. His name is Ali B. Ali-Dinar, and he is at the University of Pennsylvania African Studies Center.

He seems to have extensive knowledge of the history and politics of Sudan. He has constructed both an information website with about 50 external links called “Darfur Information Center” and–more powerfully–seems to be the source for an extensive Wikipedia entry on the “Darfur conflict.” Here is his “about” page:

About “Darfur Information Center”

With the current political violence in Darfur, and the involvement of various political parties and ethnicities, it’s important to a have a comprehensive source that serves as a gateway for the plethora of news on Darfur, and at the same time to have educational and advocacy purposes. The main objectives of Darfur Information Center is to achieve the following:

- Provide balanced views and news about the current events in Darfur.
- Provide general information about Darfur history, culture, geography, for Sudanese and non-Sudanese.
- Serve as an advocacy organization that promotes peaceful co-existences between various ethnic groups of Darfur.
- Expose the atrocities and human rights abuses committed by the Sudanese government, and various militia groups.
- Provide political solutions for the current political turmoil in Darfur within a unified Sudan.

With all the news of the current violence, I believe the ingredients for peaceful co-existence are greater than the divisive elements exacerbated by outside forces for their own external gains.

Founder: CV
Ali B. Ali-Dinar, Ph.D.
University of Pennsylvania
African Studies Center
3624 Market Street, Suite 1SD
Philadelphia, PA 19104
USA

E-mail: darfur@darfurinfo.org

Joi and Boris: “rave for Sudan.” Dave: “BloggerCon II 1/2 to stop genocide.” Thursday night group meeting: “Wednesday night August 25, meeting to come up with better ways to stop the genocide.”

Cyberspace touches meat space–and really cooks.

http://passionofpresent.org is experimenting at a new level this weekend. Here is the summary:

The Passion of the Present community continues to experiment with new web-enabled ways to help stop the genocide in Sudan. Our partnership with SaveDarfur.org is an example of this. What SaveDarfur brings is an extensive network of more than 80 national “land based” organizations with affiliates across America. Mostly these organizations are religious, but some are civic and even a few are specialized to stopping the genocide in Sudan.

Meat space matters. These locally-based organizations have something that the web alone can not easily achieve, and that is face-to-face relationships, forged over time, and local communities committed to working together.

Cyber space matters. The web brings the ability to instantly mobilize, to easily provide “soft coordination” through shared public information, and an alternative to the mainstream media in being able to publicize the entirety of what is done to stop the genocide.

The online tool that POtP designed with SaveDarfur (see links at upper left of the http://passionofthepresent site, as well as http://savedarfur.org/dayOfConscience/editVenue.php?idvenue=0 ) uses a “want ad” metaphor to encourage creativity and variety in both event descriptions and contact information. It was inspired in part by the “get local” feature of Dean for America.

The power of this tool is that it is event-and-organizer centered(in contrast to MeetUp,that is more individual-focused ), easy to use, available across the web to an entire nation and to all of the groups that make up the Save Darfur coalition, and that it was simple to implement. This particular version of the tool was developed by April of Springthistle Design ( http://springthistle.com/ )in about three days of elapsed time. April IS very good, and she had some similar code on the shelf–but what she did is possible for others.

What the tool enables is for a land-based community to easily come online and post its actions, gatherings and events. It also enables those of us who are mainly in the cyber-world to consider and implement our own meat space events.

This tool has almost no limit as to how many events can be posted in a short time. The events are approved by Jake Sommer at SaveDarfur, but–as long as the info is reasonably complete (please remember day and time!)–the turnaround to post is very rapid. As Joe Trippi, campaign manager at Dean for America used to say, on the web a campaign could raise millions of dollars overnight, if enough people were moved to contribute. In the case of the August 25 Day of Conscience, overnight we can list and display thousands of events–across the United States and around the world.

Please help us during the next four days to publicize this opportunity to bring together the offline and online worlds, and to extend the Sudan-genocide-stopping community in each. This event provides a fine way to make our voices heard, and a way to explore new methods and tools to combine face-to-face and online political action.

During the next 24 hours you will encounter more new ideas on http://passionofthepresent.org –including a national guerilla theater idea being developed by Bich Ngoc Cao, and powerful posters by Katrin Verclas. Send us your ideas for amplifying the effect of August 25.

The advantage of Wednesday August 25 being so close at hand is that you only need commit a few days of intense effort

Thanks!