The Journal of his Delights

It seems that world opinion is firmly against John McCain. According to a poll at The Economist, if the whole world were voting, there’d only be two red states. Click through to see the map:

Vote Obama or McCain: Global Electoral College

I’m not surprised by Georgia. I imagine they’d rather see a hawkish American president to side with them against Russia. As for Macedonia, the voting looks close.

And the funny thing is, The Economist’s readership isn’t exactly liberal. The world is just fed up with U.S. politics and foreign policy.

Even when I worked at Amnesty International, I had an interest in the way people were using online tools for advocacy. It comes from having grown up a geek, I suppose.

And over course of the 12-13 years I was with the organization, I saw the dramatic effect the Internet was having on the way people communicated, strategized, and implemented their advocacy. Eventually, there came new opportunities for action that only existed online.

You only have to look at something like MoveOn.org or Project Chanology to see that the times, they are a-changin’. For example, Chanology’s campaign was born out of an online community, strategized and implemented across geographic and temporal boundaries, and used the tools and spaces of the Internet to meet its goals. They’ve even used these tools to organize “traditional” demonstrations, although they’re heavily flavored with Internet memes.

It’s this mix of strategies that interests me, because the skills used in “traditional” advocacy—communication, organization, mobilization—still apply, but they get adapted for the new medium.

And new opportunities for online advocacy are proliferating. There’s even a beta of a mashup that will let you search 19 different social action platforms for actions.

Sally Kohn wrote an article for the Christian Science Monitor saying that real change happens offline, and that online advocacy is a distraction. Naturally, I’m going to disagree. Advocacy happens when people come together in an attempt to create change. Just because the bodies aren’t in the same room doesn’t mean that that can’t happen.

People are people wherever they are, and as Second Life and the other virtual worlds show (I’m looking at you World of Warcarft and the other MMORPGs), people live their lives in multiple manifestations, real and virtual. Sure the medium will affect the way the interactions happen and favor certain types of communication over others, but the essential act of communication will remain the same. And where and when people communicate, change can happen.

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P.S. If you’re curious, my colleague LiAnna wrote a response to the article for the Care2 Campaigner Blog.

I have a couple of news items for you. Neither article may sound all that interesting from their description, but each in their own way is compelling.

Lost Promise for Rape Victims
The first is an account of all that goes into putting together a rape kit. It’s written by a researcher at Human Rights Watch, and it’s downright damning given the effort involved.

Can Weeds Help Solve the Climate Crisis?
The second article is a New York Times piece about the effects of global warming on weeds. It’s long and often more about the researchers than the research, but it’s a potential glimpse into the future–one where we can’t take for granted the ability of agriculture as we know it to feed humanity. Although, it may be that the weeds save us in the end.

Check ‘em out.

The title says it all.

The first is from a nonprofit working on development issues. It’s an education/promotion piece about the Girl Effect. Check it out - it’s a wonderfully creative approach to educating about the benefits of helping women and girls in the developing world.

I saw the other piece on Emily’s blog, and it really is amazing. People are so creative! You have to be patient though — its coolness doesn’t manifest till about 1:08. Trust me though, it’s worth it.

Big Ideas (don’t get any) from James Houston on Vimeo.

Yes, the machines really are playing Nude by Radiohead.

I brought my camera to the demonstration/torch route, and I thought I’d share a few of the images.

I spent most of my afternoon waiting for an Olympic torch that would never show up. As you might guess, I was down at the river front along with a contingent of folks from AI and Care2 to protest the Chinese government’s human rights record in Tibet. It was a hodge-podge of groups and individuals, including a fairly sizable gathering of pro-Chinese government supporters. It was interesting was to watch the flag waving (on both sides).

From friends, I heard that the situation did get tense on a couple of occasions, but fortunately, no one did anything stupid. I was at some distance from any potential disturbance however, as I’d managed to get separated from my group and ended up chatting with a bunch of out-of-town visitors. A good part of my time was also spent tracking down information on the torch’s whereabouts. Given what happened, i.e. the torch getting walked down empty streets, why even bother? Why not just send it to Buenos Aires in the first place?

Personally, I was happy to be there. I didn’t particularly mind the waiting around. It was a good opportunity to highlight to the Chinese government the cost of its realpolitik games. If it wants to stand on the stage as a world power, then it ought to know that there’s heat in that kitchen. Obligations, responsibilities, and a moral reckoning for decades of abuses.

Of course, Chinese officials don’t see themselves as villains. I’m sure they justify their actions as necessary for the development of Chinese prosperity. (Sudanese oil anyone?) But this “progress” at any cost… well, it has a cost. And as I mentioned, consequences.

Karma - works for people, works for governments.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MieDFkhlByo&hl=en]

My job will occasionally have me researching into something I know nothing about. This is super-cool, because research into random stuff is something I enjoy. And it’s one of the best perks of being a writer as far as I’m concerned.

In this case, it’s not completely random, since the research is often on some issue that’s important to a client NGO/NPO. Since I’m doing the work anyway, I thought it might be interesting to share some of what I find with visitors to this site. I figure I’m not the only one with an interest in… well… everything. To start things off, I’ll talk about the GI Bill.

When World War I ended, discharged veterans got little more than a $60 allowance and train ticket home. Frankly, I can’t imagine the horror of surviving the gas attacks and trench warfare, only to come home to such a miserly and ungrateful welcome. Even worse, the Great Depression was just around the corner, and many veterans found themselves out of work and desperate.

Congress tried to make amends by passing the World War Adjusted Act of 1924 (also called the Bonus Act), but the bonus was structured like a bond and veterans wouldn’t see a dime for 20 years!

In the spring of 1932, a group of 17,000 veterans got together and (with their families and supporters) marched on Washington. This “Bonus Army” wanted their money immediately when it was most needed. They camped out outside the city, but the “real” army was called in to clear them out. Things went horribly wrong - the camp burned, two veterans were killed, and two infants died from tear gas asphyxiation.

In the aftermath of World War II, Congress very much wanted to avoid this kind of tragedy. Not to mention the desire to avoid a similar kind of post-war social and economic downturn. Thus was born the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 (more commonly known as the GI Bill).

The GI Bill completely paid for the tuition, text book costs, and living stipend for eight million veterans while they went to college. Another important feature was a low interest, zero down payment home loan. The Veterans Administration backed nearly 2.4 million home loans for World War II veterans. In essence, the program was an amazing act of social engineering. As a result, the government bolstered the creation of the U.S. middle class, shifted the urban/rural geography by providing the means for “white flight” to the suburbs, and instigated a whole set of knock-on effects for the offspring of returning vets. A 1988 Congressional study showed that every dollar spent on educational benefits under the War War II GI Bill added seven dollars to the United States economy in terms of productivity and tax revenue.

Subsequent GI Bills have been shadows of the original with nothing like the original’s effects. The current GI Bill, for example, barely pays for 60% of a public university education, and text books and living stipend are not included. There’s even a kind of buy-in of $1200 that is non-refundable, even if you never use the program. It’s gotten to the point where many veterans forego the benefits even if they’ve paid into it.

While I don’t believe a strengthened GI Bill could have the same effects as the original - the country is in a different place culturally and economically - I do believe it could still have a significant impact. Plus it gives returning veterans an opportunity to re-adjust to civilian life.

If you’re interested, there’s a bill before Congress to update the GI Bill and improve the benefits such that veterans from the current war in Iraq and Afghanistan get the same deal as their World War II brethren. It’s something that the organization, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, is working on, and there’s a petition at the Petition Site.

I finished reading Farthing by Jo Walton two days ago. I didn’t gulp it down like I did with Dust. While Dust had a lot of interesting ideas and characters, and I very much enjoyed its riffs on religion and The Tempest, at its heart, the novel is an adventure yarn. Once the action and characters got going, I didn’t want them to stop.

Farthing is not that kind of story. Yes, it has its own kind of tension - a grip that slowly and ever so slightly squeezes as events unfold - but at its heart, the book is a meditation on politics, class, discrimination, and power. Ostensibly, it is a murder mystery that drives the story, but it is the motive for that murder that is the real center of the novel.

I’m getting ahead of myself though. Understand that the world in which Farthing takes place is an alternate earth in which Britain made peace with Germany during World War II. Britain would remain inviolate, but the continent would stay in Germany’s hands (although still contested by Stalin). A decade passes and then a murder takes place - it’s victim? The key broker of the peace. Political assassination is the obvious motive, but as the novel progresses, complications become evident, layers are unearthed.

Two viewpoints tell the tale. We get to both look over the shoulder of an inspector from Scotland Yard and read a first person account of a daughter of the house in which the murder takes place. Both viewpoints are problematic for the society in which the characters live. The daughter is married to a Jew who is the primary suspect, and the inspector… I’ll keep his secret. Midway through you discover his reasons for being cautious.

Both characters have reason to fear what is slowly happening to England; the ascent of fascism in the name of fighting fascism, terrorism, communism. They must fear the lengths and measure people in power will go to justify and implement… well… evil. I can’t think of a better name for it.

As I said, I finished reading Farthing two days ago, and I find myself still thinking about it. In the immediate aftermath, I thought to myself that it was a good read - not something I would typically pick up, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. At the same time, I wondered if it was worth all the award nominations. But the more I reflected, the more my appreciation of the story deepened for its craft, story, and message. And then just yesterday, it really came home. Continue Reading »

You can find a slideshow of the trip to Battambang at Flickr. Wordpress seems to be having a problem uploading images so only one sample for the time being.