Tom Atlee: About RedBlue

[This is cross posted from Tom's list.]

As Daniel Yankelovich noted in a post-2004-election Christian Science Monitor article, "Democracy requires space for compromise, and compromise is best won through acknowledging the legitimate concerns of the other." Yet today, there is little space for the other to be heard. We talk about issues with people who already agree with us, re-circulating the same ideas within our own communities of interest. We take our cues from our favorite media outlets, where opposing TV sound bites pass for honest dialogue, or from partisan information sources like talk radio, email lists and weblogs that aim to further polarize the electorate.

Recognizing that opinions differ, and then creating the means for people to engage in constructive rather than destructive conversations, can reduce invective debate and set the stage for the deeper dialogue so necessary to democracy, negotiation, and solving the problems our nation faces.

RedBlue will be an interactive Internet application that will provide an exciting yet safe way to engage directly with someone on "the other side" of the political spectrum. This new approach to civic engagement is designed to leave behind the confrontational and polarizing forms of discourse that dominate today's Red vs. Blue debates and reintroduce Americans to the old-fashioned notion that in matters of public policy, there can be room for reasonable people to disagree.

RedBlue will create a private, one-on-one online dialogue process by matching participants with contrasting views. "Counterparts" will learn about the ground rules of productive dialogue, then engage on a difficult issue by viewing or reading a fictional narrative scenario that frames a front-page issue in personal, rather than theoretical, terms. Their email-style discussion will be monitored by a "virtual facilitator" that will make suggestions, provide feedback, and offer to step in when the heat of the moment threatens to derail the civility of the dialogue.

The partners who have joined forces to create RedBlue are uniquely qualified for the task: Internews Interactive is a non-profit pioneer of digital media convergence which has been creating innovative public policy dialogue using digital technology since 1989; Gekko Productions specializes in adapting video tools to online and offline interactive media, and is a frequent InterAct partner in realizing the technical aspects of projects; Public Conversations Project is a nationally-recognized facilitation group working with contentious policy issues that has extensive experience in on-line dialogue, and Alejandro Levins serves as strategic and technical lead on innovative web-based initiatives for businesses and non-profits.

Questions about the project? Email us.

Want to participate?

The first phase of the project, to develop a proof-of-concept prototype, is now underway. We are recruiting testers who will be matched with cross-spectrum counterparts, and who will then use the system to conduct a dialogue. Their feedback will help us refine the system. If you're interested in participating, please enter your email address below (we will use your email address only for this notification, and will not share it with anyone). Thanks for your interest.

Tom Atlee * The Co-Intelligence Institute * PO Box 493 * Eugene, OR 97440
http://www.co-intelligence.org * http://www.democracyinnovations.org
Read THE TAO OF DEMOCRACY * http://www.taoofdemocracy.com
Tom Atlee's blog http://www.evolvingcollectiveintelligence.org
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Islam, Aikido, and Environmental Sustainability

By: Michael D. McDonald, Dr.P.H.

In reading Dr. Farooq Hassan's Presidential Address on "Islam: Environmental Protection," I am inspired to suggest an ambitious project to change the course of human history toward environmental sustainability.  We have before us a unique opportunity to embrace our larger humanity and its movement toward a more sustainable future.  It is very encouraging to have such an eminent scholar discussing the truths of the Qur'an as they apply to humanity living in harmony with our environment. 

Within the traditions of Islam, Aikido, and the way of the western pilgrim are the seeds for developing a common understanding of a positive, peaceful, and sustainable future.  Aikido teaches that maintaining one’s own balance in the world, whether in self-defense or in life, is the key to harmony. Western philosophy, going back to ancient Greece, teaches that balance and moderation are key to living in harmony with the world. Although oft honored in the breech, biblical teachings in both Judaism and Christianity speak of living in harmony with nature, and of humankind’s responsibilities as steward of the environment.

Aikido teaches that in order to maintain balance, one must first have a strong base by finding one’s own sustainable center before addressing threats and the complexities of the world at large. In Judaism, the Kabbalah teaches that one must have a solid foundation before venturing into the unknown. Similar concepts in Sufism, Christianity, shamanism, and other religious and cultural traditions prepare the individual to live in balance with nature.

After-all, not living in accord with nature before the industrial age, usually had fairly short-term dire consequences. This was especially true for the 5.5 million years of human evolution prior to the agricultural age, which didn’t build strong roots until only 10,000 years ago. There is no question that humans can live sustainably within their ecosystems. We would have already gone the way of the dinosaurs if this were not the case. The question of our time is, “Can 6 billion to 8 billion humans live on the planet sustainably, in an post-fossil fuel dominated global economy?

The integrity of our environment is the foundation upon which all of us depend. We also now know that our current hydrocarbon economy is creating devastating consequences for our global ecosystems. When we address our environment with insensitivity and imbalance, we do ourselves and others damage. In contrast, when we collectively live in balance with the world we inhabit, it provides for us. The problem is, of course, not just oil, its effects on climate change, and the avaricious regimes it inspires. The problem is how humans behave when we are encouraged to think that the consequences of our actions on the environment, other cultures, and each other are irrelevant. In short, a major problem is that we are exhorted to exploit the easy energy in sequestered carbon, without regard to consequences of over stressing the carrying capacities of our ecosystem.

Today, and in future generations, our ecosystem is ultimately the source of our daily bread, our health, happiness, and source of life. There is no question that Americans have been living far beyond our ecological footprint. However, we now have a unique opportunity as we stand at a fateful tipping point. If we can learn to move thoughtfully and expeditiously in balance with our own humanity, our global ecological footprint, and the sustainable needs of our most immediate environment, we can forge a common ground. From this common ground diverse cultures can reach across the chasms of distrust and self interest to collaborate with one another to protect our global, regional, and local environments. As we de-escalate our relatively unintelligent and abusive exploitation of sequestered carbon, we have to keep in mind that we can maintain and improve health and human prosperity under such conditions by increasing social capital and knowledge sharing exponentially.

Many have not yet recognized that our global economy is currently moving from a low knowledge sharing, highly concentrated, nonrenewable energy dominated economy to a more intelligent, high knowledge sharing, less concentrated, more equitable, renewable energy economy. These forces are easily visible in the massive, rapid, global expansion of the World Wide Web. However, the transition will not be immediate, and will not necessarily unfold without very painful discontinuities. Time, energy, and significant capital will be essential for conversion, if a smooth landing is desired.

Given population trends, coupled with peak oil issues, increasing rates of extinctions, climate change, and other forms of environmental degradation, we are rapidly running out of time. How rapidly can we reverse our current destructive disintegrative patterns? The good news is that within a greater democracy we can collectively choose paths starting from our origins within our own traditions and engage in movements toward a common, sustainable, stewardship of the environment by participating in collaborative action to secure resilient, sustainable communities. Resilience starts with community dialogue metaphorically similar to the way the Amish raise barns for members of their community.

It is now time for us all to embrace the challenge of our current transition. We must work to understand how to build the social capital we need to become a part of a sustainable community living within its ecological footprint. Whether we are Muslim, Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Taoist, Animist, Hindu, scientist, or a follower of some other religious or secular tradition, it is in our power to collectively seize this unique moment in history to change the disintegrative course we are on toward a more sustainable future. Dr. Hassan speaks about a future compatible with Islamic laws. The good news is that his vision and the ecological principles he espouses are not only compatible with Islam but with the sustainable traditions in the West, the Far East, and other diverse cultures from all corners of the earth. 

We no longer have the luxury of non-renewable resources to waste on an unsustainable path perpetuated by ignorance, fear, self interest, and avarice.  A sustainable future is ours to forge together.  Please take this time to actively share your own steps toward shaping a sustainable future of collective humanity in balance with our environment. Even if your words feel too humble or experimental in your own eyes, they may be the steps someone else behind you can grasp as a handhold or foothold to move forward in a world craving for sustainable alternatives. If you find no sustainable solutions today, articulate the problems you see, the need that you perceive, and present a question about how your knowledge of the problems and needs might be translated into a solution.

Millions are now engaging in evermore sustainable solutions. Many of your questions may be able to be answered through better knowledge sharing of existing solutions in other communities. In other cases, new solutions to still unsolved dilemmas can be expedited through the act of articulating the problem and need more effectively, so new collaborations can be more clearly focused on resolving mission critical gaps.

Our history demonstrates that a greater democracy rooted in sustainable and ecological principles is feasible. The security of our future requires that we engage more with others within our own communities and across cultures to protect our shared environment. This is our time to shape our markets, our political leadership, and our sustaining cultures based upon our values. It is now in our capacities to effectively develop and share our knowledge of sustainable solutions. It is time for us to start living the emerging solutions collaboratively.

Please add your words and actions to this endeavor.

Sincerely,

Mike
Michael D. McDonald, Dr.P.H.
President
Global Health Initiatives, Inc.

Coordinator
National Disaster Risk Communication Initiative

Principal Investigator
Disaster Knowledge Management System
Resilience Networks

See also:

1: Aikido and the War on Terrorism - by M. McDonald 2: The author's comments on Farooq Hassan's essay "Islam: Environmental Protection,"

Posted by Jock Gill at 11:34 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Joe Lieberman Sells Out the Internet

Monday, October 16, 2006

by David S. Isenberg

I just got a letter from my senator, Joe Lieberman, dated Oct. 6, that indicates that he's completely flaking on network neutrality and other key telecom reforms. The letter says that he supports the principle of net neutrality, but underneath the letter's tricky language he's saying that he will vote for the telecom industry's telecom bill (S. 2686), the bill approved by the Senate Commerce Committee last summer without any net neutrality provision. Moreover, it shows that Lieberman is not willing to wait a year to see if his (former?) party wins a majority in one House of Congress so maybe the country can get a more balanced law.

Commerce Committee chair Ted Stevens (R-AK) has been scrambling to find the 60 votes needed to stop the filibuster promised by Senator Wyden, Senator Kerry and others who believe that the Stevens bill is anti-democratic and an industry give-away. To date, Stevens has lined up about 57 votes, and now with Lieberman and perhaps other swing senators falling Stevens' way, passage of the Senate telecom bill looks more likely than ever before.

Continue reading here.

Note: For more about David, see his home page.

Islam: Environmental Protection

By: Professor Dr. Farooq Hassan
President Pakistan Ecology Council

(Presidential Address to the Pakistan Ecology Council at the Karachi Hall, Lahore High Court Bar Association, 6 October, 2006, Lahore)

I am grateful to be invited to give this year's main Annual address on the highly important subject of Islam and protection of the environment. As Chairman of the Bar's Environmental Committee as well, I am pleased to be here at this historical Karachi Hall, the venue for many events dealing with this country’s constitutional history. To days talk is even more significant since it deals with the survival of the human race. My interest in this subject is not new. Let me at the outset take a brief moment of your time to submit to you that as far back as 1975, that is thirty years ago, I was elected amongst a handful of Third World delegates to the First International Ecology Congress in Vienna, in which I presented my views on a subject which was in some ways similar to the one today but without reference to the available Islamic conceptions about it. [1]

The current debates on environment and its much needed protection seems to be at the center of many controversial aspects of US foreign and domestic policy. Conservationists feel that exploitation of earth’s resources for commercial goals is leading the entirety of human race into an uncertain future. On the other hand, many Western governments, led by Washington, maintain that this threat is over exaggerated and that putting an end to useful acquisition of such resources by latest scientific methodology would be tantamount to impeding human progress.

It is the purpose of this presentation to examine this debate from an Islamic perspective. My research indicates that although some aspects of this topic have been handled by a few scholars mostly in the Arabic language, this appears to be a pioneer effort to do so in an exhaustive manner. I request therefore, that you give the message of this address, the needed significance for an adequate dissemination to the people of this country. Not only third of world countries are comprised of Muslims, a number of them are pivotal in enunciating policies with respect to oil exploration.

In this context, we may keep in mind the peculiar environmental controversy intertwined with fossil oil which Muslim states have in abundance. Their rapid utilization at the urging of mostly Western states, and by the US in particular, causes serious pollution hazards and also emission of gases that are a cause of acute danger to the ozone protection of the world’s atmosphere. This has resulted in clearly the single most dangerous pollution hazard, namely, global warming to which I shall revert to later in this presentation.

The ensuing analysis examines the Islamic injunctions, if any, on this subject. This is with a view to see the philosophy of the Muslim faith towards this most crucial of current topics of human concern. Islam is considered a comprehensive way of life whose teachings, directly or indirectly, cover every possible human relationship including what today is described as “environment”.

These teachings are primarily available in the revealed knowledge which comprises the Quran and in the teaching of Prophet as handed down in the Sunnah. In articulating and expounding the thesis of these presentation two further sources, namely Ijma and Qiyas, have been kept in mind by me. But, as they are dependent on the first two primary sources, it is not necessary to go into them in detail.

In what follows, therefore, reference will be mainly made to those verses that define the epistemological parameters of the Quranic teachings in this respect. In support, I would refer to some sayings of the Prophet through which the quintessence of the Shariah may be perceived. In sum, I would rely on the highest form of sources from Islamic Shariah to present my conclusions and analysis.

To begin with at the beginning of Sura Al-Baqarah, the Quran is presented to mankind as a book of guidance: "This is the Book; in it is guidance sure, without doubt, to those who fear God" (Quran, 2:2). God furthermore says that the Quran encompasses the foundations for knowledge and ethics: “Nothing have We omitted from the Book…" Quran, 6:3. In addition, the Quran announces that Islam, as a Din (Faith), has been perfected by God. It is considered a comprehensive way of life which accommodates every aspect of it. The Islamic world-view is established upon the very notion of Islam as a perfect religion:

"This day have I perfected your religion for you, completed My favor upon you, and have chosen for you Islam as your religion" Quran, 5:3

In the light of these Divinely ordained articulations, it can be justifiably submitted that a jurisprudence of the environment can be discerned and should be locatable from the confines of the metaphysical and practical messages in the Quran.

It should be equally self evident that all aspects of the environment's protection cannot be summarized in this limited initiative of mine. But sufficient coverage in depth would be provided to see if the current controversies can be resolved by applying the message of God for Muslims. This much however, is clear. That norms relating to environment from within the Muslim theological foundations would have an Islamic world-view of this topic. Once a Quranic injunction is located, it has to prevail and applied.

Depletion of resources

Before a more direct mandate about environment is referred to, it would be helpful to expound the general guidelines that may be usefully kept in mind while understanding the Islamic philosophy on ecology. Moderation is one of the main attributes of Islam. Islam furthermore discourages self indulgence, lavish living and waste. Those peoples in the past that did so were destroyed by the Almighty. The Quran says in Sura Al- Isra 17:16:

“When we intend to destroy a township, we permit its luxury loving people to commit wickedness therein. Then the word is proved true against it and we can destroy it utterly.”

Therefore many sayings of the Prophet towards modesty in living have to be kept in mind. Excessive indulgences of any kind are likely to inflict incalculable damage to our surroundings. It is manifest that such a tendency has to be stopped and discouraged by the Faithful through all forms of available legal recourse, influence and intellectual dissemination. Once it is grasped that human beings essentially remain care takers of the earth, it follows that they must preserve the environment in which they dwell. Humanity should behave in such a way that would maintain the balance that exists within the kind of environment that we inherited. In fact it is incumbent as a moral duty to restore and even retrieve the balance that had existed before we caused, collectively, many ecological disasters( See Quran: 15: 19):

"And the earth We have spread out; set thereon mountains firm and immovable; and produced therein all kinds of things in due balance."

The earth and its countless bounties have been created for mankind. It is also manifest that God made such natural bounties for all human beings in perpetuity. This huge reservoir is available for human use, without abuse or misuse. The circle of naturally available blessings for the benefit of humanity has to be kept alive for all generations to come.

“Environment”, as a term of art as we use it, has to be in the forefront of all such human thinking, policies and actions. There are numerous verses in the Quran that could be cited in this respect, but it suffices to mention three of them:

"And He has subjected to you, as from Him, all that is in the heavens and on earth: behold, in that there are Signs indeed for those who reflect.” Quran,45:13

Again the Quran says that His bounties to Mankind are always there: 


"Do you not see that God has subjected to your (use) all things in the heavens and on earth. And has made His bounties flow to you in exceeding measure, (that are essentially both) seen and unseen?" Quran, 31:20



 In another part the Quran maintains that:

"He has made subject to you the Night and the Day; the Sun and the Moon; and the Stars are in subjection by His command: verily in this are Signs for people who are wise." Quran:16:12.

There are other verses in the Quran that emphasize the point that mankind has merely a temporal use of nature and over other similar environmental elements. So tremendous is the ability of Man that God made night and day, stars, moon and the sun subject to his potential control. Therefore the primary reason for highlighting the temporality of things is to remind people of the Hereafter and to focus upon the non-permanent character of human existence on this earth. It is hoped that once people are conscientious of the limitation of life on earth, they will behave in a positive and constructive way. As a result, it is anticipated that the environment itself will benefit from the proper behavior of people.

The cosmic order of things seen or unseen and natural phenomena ultimately come to an end, as is reflected in this verse:

"…He has subjected the sun and the moon (to his Law)! Each one runs (its course) for a term appointed. He does regulate all affairs, explaining the Signs in detail that you may believe with certainty in the meeting with your Lord." Quran, 13:2

The subjection of the elements that make up the environment is spoken of in many chapters of the Quran:

"It is He who has made the sea subject, that you may eat thereof flesh that is fresh and tender., and that you may extract there from ornaments to wear; and you see the ships therein that plough the waves, that you may seek (thus) of the bounty of God and that you may be grateful." Quran:16:14

Concept of Vice Regency

Mankind and the human being are perceived as the trustee of the earth. The notion of trusteeship implies specifically that he is not supposed to cause corruption in any form on earth (i.e. the environment). Life on earth entails great responsibilities. This test implies accountability. It is followed by either reward or punishment. These concepts are mentioned both in the Quran and in the Sunnah. The Quran says in the following verse:

"It is He who has made you (His) vice regents, inheritors of the earth: He has raised you in ranks, some above others: that He may try you in the gifts He has given you: for your Lord is quick in punishment: yet He is indeed Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful." Quran, 6:165

This verse proclaims with clarity that mankind in this vice regency role is subject to a natural system of reward and punishment. If the cosmic order is preserved in good order, human beings are better of; if they interfere adversely with such natural order of things, punishment shall surely follow. The Quran further says in famous verse which ordains the preservation of environment:

"Then We made you heirs in the land after them, to see how you would behave!" Quran, 10:14

I feel that this verse of the Quran may be said to be the simplest magna carta of the genesis of a law of environmental protection in Islam. The same message is implied in the Sunnah of the Prophet:

"Verily, this world is sweet and appealing, and Allah placed you as vice regents therein; He will see what you will do. So, be careful of [what you do in] this world and [what you do to/with] women, for the first test of the children of Israel was in women!" [2]

These emphatic commandments of the Quran make it clear that the Islamic perspectives of mankind’s vice regency on earth forms a test which includes how human beings relate to the environment. Is it going to be based upon divine instructions, or based upon personal desires, greed or commercial exploitation that might lead to the destruction of our environment? If the latter condition prevails, then vice regency will be entrusted to another and different people or generation. The possibility of this kind of a change over of the inheritance of this earth to another set of people is understood from the following two verses:

"Call in remembrance that He made you inheritors after the people of Noah…" Quran,7:69


 Again the Quran says at a different place about changing the “inheritors” of this earth: 


"And remember how He made you inheritors after the 'And people and gave you habitation in the land…" Quran, 7:74

These verses of the Quran contains the philosophy that God can and does switch the vice regency on earth to different peoples if the ones who are incumbent fail to honor their Divine commandments. This would be particularly relevant to those set who alter the human environment for the simple reason that with damage to such natural legacy by a certain set of people they would appear to lose that mantle of leadership of incumbency.

Maintenance of Natural balance

This leads me to the next issue which in terms of the epistemology of this matter deserves our consideration. How does one maintain the natural legacy of mankind as is implied in the verses of the Quran cited above? Clearly it seems to me by the continued adherence of a “balance” in the natural order of things that exist in this earth since the dawn of civilizations.

Therefore, mankind’s dominium over the earth is based upon knowledge that enables human beings to remain care takers of the environment in which they live and have inhabited it for thousands of years. Humanity must, a fortiori, behave in such a way that would maintain the balance that exists within the environment ultimately for the survival of the human race. Efforts must indeed be made to retrieve and redress the balance that has existed before any current generation may have caused collectively ecological disasters of great magnitude (see Quran: 1519):

"And the earth We have spread out; set thereon mountains firm and immovable; and produced therein all kinds of things in due balance."

The earth should remain therefore available for human use; its use without abuse or misuse has to avoided, indeed shunned as it is tantamount to a breach of trust imposed by God on the believers. The following verses may be cited from the Quran that support this perspective:

"And He has subjected to you, as from Him, all that is in the heavens and on earth: behold, in that there are Signs indeed for those who reflect." Quran, 45:13

In another verse already cited earlier we may re-emphasize when God tells mankind that all things in heavens and earth are in abundance and care must betake to part-take of such bounties with prudence and care: Quran 31:20. God further ordains in yet another well known verse:

"He has made subject to you the Night and the Day; the Sun and the Moon; and the Stars are in subjection by His command: verily in this are Signs for people who are wise." Quran: 16:12.

We can see the same message in other verses that point to the temporal nature of the natural elements. The reason behind highlighting the temporality of things is to remind people of the Hereafter. It is hoped that once people are conscientious of the limitation of life on earth, they may respond in a positive and constructive manner. As a result, it is anticipated that the environment itself will benefit from the proper behavior of people. Even the cosmos and the natural phenomena remain subject to this balance and ultimately come to an end when they go against the Divinely ordained course:

"…He has subjected the sun and the moon (to his Law)! Each one runs (its course) for a term appointed. He does regulate all affairs, explaining the Signs in detail that you may believe with certainty in the meeting with your Lord." Quran, 13:2

The Quran contains an elaborate identification of the natural order of this universe by pointing that nature’s elements too are governed by norms of the cosmos. As such the elements that make up the environment are spoken of in many important verses:

"It is He who has made the sea subject, that you may eat thereof flesh that is fresh and tender., and that you may extract there from ornaments to wear; and you see the ships therein that plough the waves, that you may seek (thus) of the bounty of God and that you may be grateful." Quran: 16:14.

The Quran again reminds us:

"It is God who has created the heavens and the earth and sends down rain from the skies, and with it brings out fruits wherewith to feed you; it is He who has made the ships subject to you, that they may sail through the sea by His command; and the rivers (also) has He made subject to you." Quran:4:32

Then yet at another place the Quran tells us that Man has been even given the ability to: 


"Then We subjected the Wind to his power, to flow gently to his order, whithersoever he willed …" Quran: 38:36

These verses highlight the simple point that natural facilities that are available to human beings must be utilized in manner that genuinely furthers the nature’s design of human progress and not in way that bedevils that scheme. Whether it may be the utilization of the strength of animals or be it natural elements, all these measures of human assistance have to be used with prudence and care so that natural balance remains in tact:

"That has created pairs in all things, and has made for you ships and cattle on which you ride, In order that you may sit firm and square on their backs, and when so seated, you may celebrate the (kind) favor of your Lord, and say, "Glory to Him Who has subjected these to our (use), for we could never have accomplished this (by ourselves), And to our Lord, surely, must we turn back!" Quran, 43:12-14

Clearly humanity was not restricted to the use of ships and animals to move from one place to another. There are many other modes of transportation that are subjected to our use. The utilization and use of natural phenomenon and elements that mankind uses has to be undertaken in a humane and visionary manner.

Focus of Islamic on natural eco-system

The above discussion may be summarized as under:

(1) That Islam gave to mankind a message which is complete for guidance for all times to come. This message contains injunctions against human misconduct or excesses including, it is submitted, about utilization of nature and the elements.

(2) That in the support of this thesis we find numerous quotations from the Quran about harnessing the natural elements such as wind, water and the produce that comes from the land. The design of Almighty being to provide reasonable comfort and well being of the human race for all times to come.

(3) It is also clear that in such exploitation of nature and its resources and the elements there is depletion of such natural heritage of mankind.

(4) That as such God ordains Muslims to maintain a balance in these exploits so that the natural equilibrium is kept aloft as we inherited it.

(5) It is well to remember, as the Quran emphasizes, that those peoples who did not obey these natural laws were changed.

(6) On this earth God has appointed mankind as trustee and vice regent to oversee the affairs of its earthly existence. It is a trust that needs to be faithfully executed.

The above summary succinctly provides us with the fundamental philosophy of Islamic provisions of the earth’s eco-system and its conceptions relating to the environment. While there are many aspects of this environmental attitude of Islam, this exploratory analysis is only intended to concentrate on one particular aspect of this otherwise large subject. Do the injunctions of Islam address the current critical problem of global warming which is arising as a consequence of excessive fossil fuel burning and emission of carbon at the expense of the earth’s ozone environmental protective layers? I particularly refer to this problem as by itself it is quite sufficient to wreck havoc on the current living patterns of all kinds of living species on our planet.

Irreversible environmental damage

There has been an increasing worldwide clamor against this non-abating and irreparable damage to the earth’s environment through this peculiar form of “pollution”. At the international scene European countries have been generally in the forefront of this visibly active movement at both the governmental and at the NGO level.

This international furor finds support in a recently made powerful statement from a notable American personality. It would be instructive to refer to a memorable passage from the address of former Vice President of the US, Al Gore, who in a speech to the New York University on 18th September 2006 in which he said:

“A few days ago, scientists announced alarming new evidence of the rapid melting of the perennial ice of the north polar cap, continuing a trend of the past several years that now confronts us with the prospect that human activities, if unchecked in the next decade, could destroy one of the earth’s principal mechanisms for cooling itself. Another group of scientists presented evidence that human activities are responsible for the dramatic warming of sea surface temperatures in the areas of the ocean where hurricanes form.

A few weeks earlier, new information from yet another team showed dramatic increases in the burning of forests throughout the American West, a trend that has increased decade by decade, as warmer temperatures have dried out soils and vegetation. All these findings come at the end of a summer with record breaking temperatures and the hottest twelve month period ever measured in the U.S., with persistent drought in vast areas of our country. Scientific American introduces the lead article in its special issue this month with the following sentence: The debate on global warming is over.”

Manifestly, this quotation gives a capsule summary of the major assaults on the existing environment by and under the guise of exploitation for “scientific progress” through this process referred to as “global warming”. These “assaults” to which I refer have been noted most contemporaneously by the international community when analyzing the Kyoto Protocols. However, Islam examined the philosophical genesis of this danger fifteen hundred years ago. The fundamental genesis of this fear is that this ceaseless drive to deplete the fossil fuels’ reservoirs of the earth for purely commercial goals is at the expense of the eco-system and environmental balance that was identified above.

Message of Kyoto Protocols

Let us initially focus our attention on one basic facet of this contemporary debate. It seems to be beyond any doubt that mankind is faced with a huge danger because the Kyoto Protocol was not put really into effect by the all the relevant actors of this pollution drive on account of the commercial aims of a few but important international actors. This inability of the world community to act in unison has resulted in a potential disaster of incalculable proportions. The acute and impending damage to the earth, inteneded to be averted through the Kyoto Protocol, continues to loom large on all of humanity. We would initially briefly examine the contours of this controversy. Once the fundamental issues are realized we would with advantage visit the corresponding position of this topic from the confines of Islamic theological formulations.

Kyoto Protocol was signed in Japan in 1997 initially by 165 countries but that number now stands at over 180. The ideas behind Kyoto were aimed to achieve that state of affairs that existed as far back as in 1972, when human development and environment initially came under serious international discussions. This was at the Stockholm U.N. Conference on Human Development. Twenty years later, in 1992, came the famous Anniversary meeting of the UN at what is known as the “Earth Summit” when the UN Conference on Environment took place in Brazil.

Its landmark contribution was the signing of Agenda 21 and the Rio Declaration. In these international instruments the UN brought together conflicting interests of development and environment firmly into public view for an evaluation. As a consequence, two binding international texts were produced. These international texts of far reaching influence were the agreement on Biological Diversity and the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCC).

The quintessential elements of the Kyoto Protocol were that it committed the 38 most industrialized countries of the world to cut their emissions of greenhouse gasses between 2008 and 2112 to levels that are 5.2 percent below those that existed in 1990.

The simple question that arises, therefore, is why is the danger still there if nearly all countries of the world are in favor of abiding by it? The answer, regrettably, is that the US, possessing the world’s largest economy, and Australia, are holding out and refusing to ratify this crucial treaty engineered and crafted for the future survival of the human race on this planet. This danger is directly connected with the emanation of the greenhouse gasses by the industrialized states and pollution caused by transport vehicles by fuel emissions.

How are greenhouse gasses produced? What is the disastrous impact they produce on the environment?

Greenhouse gasses are a term that means those gasses like carbon dioxide which are mainly generated as a result of burning fossil fuels like coal, petrol and diesel. While burning these resources have been greatly beneficial to gigantic oil corporations producing them trans-nationally, they have simultaneously resulted in raising the level of carbon in the atmosphere. This has been the chief cause of world-wide pollution. Scientists predict significant global warming as a consequence of this process by warming the earth by about 5 degrees Celsius. This could potentially be disastrous to ecology by changing environment, expanding deserts, melting ice, causing sea levels to rise and engulf low lying coastal areas of the world. Were this to occur, many well known cities and seaports of the world would be submerged for ever under the oceans.

Islamic theological perspectives

(a) Basic terms

Before proceeding further to analyze the relevant Islamic perspectives, let me make a lexicographical submission of far reaching impact. We must, a priori, make a basic philosophical distinction between the concepts of “environment” and “ecology” or eco-systems”. Both these terms are interchangeably used in contemporary literature on this subject. However, there does exist, prima facie, a clear difference between the two terms. Intellectual exactitude requires that we keep it in mind for appropriate application the relevant term when necessary.

Both terms are employed in Muslim texts of authentic value. Indeed, it can be said that there exists a branch of jurisprudence (fiqh) about 'environment' (bi'ah). It may be described as the Fiqh al-biah al Islam. This would be the equivalent of Islamic jurisprudence of the environment.

On the other hand, the word “ecology” does appear to be utilized in lexicographical and epistemological semantics through out Islamic texts of the highest validity. Ecology in its lexicon sense means a branch of human knowledge that deals with living organisms, habits and modes of life.

Historically, therefore, it is necessary to comprehend that whereas the term ecology or co-systems have a direct base in the Quran, “environment" is newer addition to the classical texts on this subject. This is invariable. Not long ago, such a term was not even used in Western legal parlance.

It should be thus emphasized from the above analysis that Islam does advocate the protection of the environment as a matter of “law”. At the same time the preservation of earth’s ecology is equally mandated as the Quran normatively contains literally dozens of verses about keeping the natural balance that prevails on this earth. The quotations from the Quran cited earlier were clearly of this category and import.

The various verses of the Quran cited at the outset were towards establishing the thesis that Islam does have an in ecological sense. We tried to establish that Islam does have:

(1) A broad set of guidelines towards nature that calls for preservation of this earth.

(2) In these guidelines there is the warning that there must be avoided damage to this human legacy.

(3) There is the allegorical reference to the past history of mankind that those that did not obey such guidelines were removed and replaced by another people.

It may further be noted that the term “environment” per se, along with its diverse connotations, gradually evolved in recent times through interpretation provided by essentially jurists. This important development is predicated on the premise that all concepts that owe their genesis to the Quran are of an injunctive kind. Hence, I used the phrase of “towards jurisprudence of the environment.” Islam clearly has a high regard for the environment as support for such a proposition, as submitted above, is found in the Quran and the Sunnah.

(b) Basic norms

However, this should also be noted that by emphasizing that nature must be preserved does not mean that there has to be no human progress! In fact, it may be necessary to undertake the contrary route involving scientific advancement for the preservation, protection and for alleviating the difficulties of the human race itself. According to one Hadith, the Prophet is reported to have said that a person who uprooted a tree (which formed an obstacle) in the path of people, ended up in heavens. In other words, the object of interfering in nature has to be higher and nobler than mere exploitation for economic gain of the relevant actor.


The fundamental postulate in this context is thus the “balance” we adverted to earlier and to maintaining a course that keeps nature as purified as we inherited it, but subjecting it to mankind’s use intelligently with prudence. That this is the role and responsibility of a Vice Regent on earth is reiterated again and again in the Quran. It is incumbent on all peoples at all times to so perform their assignments in this world that nothing impinges or adversely affects on the natural state of scheme of such matters.


Islam modulates a middle path between human behavior that has disregard for the environment and those who practically want the environment or certain parts of it to remain untouched. While the Islamic world view supports the protection of environment from the greedy behavior of human beings, it also allows room for sustainable development.

At this juncture let me pause and introduce you to a term “I’mar”. Generally this term is given the conception of “to inhabit”. It is useful to comprehend the wider conception of this word. Such meaning includes spreading and settling all over the earth, inhabiting every livable quarters, building and undertaking civic projects that benefit the community at large. In short, it includes every positive activity that would make life on earth prosperous. If an activity diverts humanity from the right path which means against the Shariah, then it cannot be considered as I'mar.

It is clear from a study of the Quran that the earth is our habitat and that we are required to dwell on it, work it out and establish a balanced way of life without excesses or deficiencies. The Quran says:

"To the Thamud People (We sent) Salih, one of their own brethren. He said: "O my People! Worship God: you have no other God but Him. It is He Who has produced you from the earth and settled you therein: then ask forgiveness of Him, and turn to Him (in repentance): for my Lord is (always) near, ready to answer" Quran, 11:61


A well known commentator on Muslim theology says on this verse:

"And Salih reminded them (the people of Thamud) about their origination from earth, the creation of every individual from the nutrition of the earth or from its components that make up their bodies. Despite being (created) from this earth and its elements, Allah appointed them vice regents so that they may inhabit it! He wanted them to be vice regents as a species, and as individuals to replace those who came before they did!" [3]

In advocating the cause of preservation of inherited human environment and the prevalent eco-systems, the Quran reminds us with this warning that those who did not heed such messages before were wiped out of existence themselves.

"Do they not travel through the earth; and see what the end of those before them was? In strength they tilled the soil and populated it in greater numbers than these have done: there came to them their apostles with Clear (Signs), (which they rejected, to their own destruction): it was not God who wronged them, but they wronged their own souls." Quran, 30:9

The I’ mar of the earth should be in areas and projects that could benefit humanity and not harm it. This means that projects and activities that destroy the environment are excluded from permissible human enterprise. The brute form of the capitalist system encourages such “destructive” industries as drilling oil as long as the earth’s reservoir lasts. They find imaginative ways to counter the facts of pollution of the air, destruction of human health, lost energies and funds in combating and treating the resulting diseases, misuse of the land which could be used otherwise for other humanely beneficial purposes for mankind.

Protecting environment

Every act, as long as it is good in protecting the environment and done for the sake of generating and assisting life and also preserve the earth is allowed by Islamic teachings. A middle road between two extremes is the proffered solution; neither there should be a total disregard for the environment’s integrity nor an abandonment of the justifiable progress that mankind may achieve through sustainable development and evolution.


The total disregard for the environment is detrimental for the human being is not to be encouraged. Similarly it is equally true that the adoption of a position on the other end of the spectrum of protecting the environment in an absolute sense must not adhered to. 



The Islamic position forms a middle path between human behavior that has disregard to the environment and those who practically worship the environment or certain parts of it. While the Islamic world view supports the protection of environment from the greedy behavior of human beings, it allows room for sustainable development.

The oft quoted Hadith mandate on this point is in the following verse:

"He who cuts a lote-tree (without justification), God will send him to Hellfire." [4]

The lote-tree grows in the desert and it is very much needed in an area which has scarce vegetation. A well known Muslim theologian, Dr. Al-Qaradawi, is of the view that this Hadith provides us with the most vivid illustration in terms of protecting the natural resources and preserving the balance that exists between the diverse elements of nature in the environment. [5]

In this background, where the continuity of even one tree is appreciated, one can visualize what would be the Islamic position towards destroying millions of trees, or depleting the earth’s resources, or the destruction of the ozone layer of this planet? Non preservation of the natural environment of mankind or the habitat of the human race as a result of humans directly acting upon nature (e.g. deforestation) or indirectly (e.g. acid rain) cannot possibly be contended by Islamic dictates.

In this context there is much, for instance, on plants and the activity of agriculture in classical Muslim teachings. The Prophet indeed encouraged people to work hard under all circumstances in maintenance of the earth’s natural heritage. He explained that people should plant and undertake all kinds of plantations. This trend is particularly focused upon for those plants that bear fruit particularly a palm-tree seedling. So much is this emphasis that it is enjoined upon all Muslims, even if it is the Day of Judgment and that the world is coming to an end, they should still do it!

It is for this reason that it is prohibited by Islam to let the land set idle for a long time without working it out. Reviving a "dead" or “barren” land could lead, under customary Islamic law, to creating a legal right to use it indefinitely, as long as it was continued to be planted. This was a direct incentive from the state and the community to encourage cultivation of barren land. Hence it is obvious that Muslim jurists from the very inception had been brought up to frame normative norms of positive law which were helpful to environment.

Protecting Land

Protection of land finds many verses in support thereof by emphasizing that it must be kept clean and free from rubbish. It is reported by a famous Hadith that God likes cleanliness. [6] Further, the Prophet is said to have warned Muslims not to throw refuse in public or near the fruit trees. The message that this Hadith sends is that cleanliness is something desirable, good and reflects an act of necessity towards the environment. As such it is submitted that if cleanliness is something good, then it should be reflected everywhere.

Islam has thus created a bond between faith and cleanliness, rendering the latter as a part of faith. The Prophet’s sayings on this point illustrate that solid waste of any kind must not pollute the grounds that produce food or which forms parts of the dwellings. It is obvious that cleaning such places means, in this context, the removal of material obstacles or solid waste which constitutes a kind of pollution in contemporary perspectives of this matter.

The prohibition in such Hadiths is thus intended to prevent pollution. The direct human polluting activity presently is manifestly to extend to indirect sources of pollution as well, such as through sewers. The natural pollutants of any given time conceptually extended to include the chemical pollutants or other activity which is connected, for instance, with industrial production. The language of another Hadith which prohibits the pollution of water may further be cited to support the thesis just articulated by me that, in a contemporary context, pollution of any kind is impermissible in Islam. It is mandated that a Muslim should keep the channels of drinking water clean. We know already those chemicals such as pesticides, insecticides, or herbicides which are detrimental to the health of humans, and we know that much of these chemicals reach the reservoirs of drinking water. Analogical reasoning will justify, therefore, from the perspective of the Shraiah, that such activity be also prohibited and not allowed to be undertaken. 



The Shariah aims at protecting the environment, and while the individual is asked to help in this respect, the ultimate responsibility is in the hands of the state. When Abu Musa was sent to Al-Basrah as the new governor, he addressed the people saying:

"I was sent to you by 'Umar Ibn Al-Khattab in order to teach you the Book of your Lord [i.e. the Quran], the Sunnah of your prophet, and to clean your streets." [7]

The function of the governor who represents the authority of the state, in the narration about Abu Musa, tends to establish that keeping the environment clean is amongst the responsibilities of the Administration. This position should be highlighted, because it obligates the governments, as much as the Muslims themselves, to keep their civic environments and amenities clean and free of pollution.

Preserving Water

The above analysis would have already stressed the significance of water for various human needs. It is God's will that all living beings on earth are dependent for their existence on water:

"…We made from water every living thing…" Quran, 21:30

Furthermore, there are many verses in the Quran that reflect the direct involvement of the Divine Will whenever it rains. Following are typical of these verses from the Quran:

"And God sends down rain from the skies, and gives therewith life to the earth.” Quran:16:65

And again Quran mandates to Muslims: 


"…and He sends down rain from the sky and with it gives life to earth…" Quran: 30:24

Yet another instance of this philosophy this contained in this verse:


"And We send down from the sky rain charged with blessing, and We produce therewith gardens and grain for harvests." Quran: 50:9


In addition to the protection of water from pollution, the Sunnah emphasized the proper use of water without wasting it. One more Hadith regarding the protection of water is related to the use of clean still water. The Prophet said: "No one should bathe in still water, when he is junub (impure)" [8] In a Hadith that reflects the future scene regarding the said issue, the Prophet said according to Abu Dawud:

"There will be a people amongst this Ummah who will transgress in their supplication and ablution."

It is obvious that the transgressing in wasting eater even in ablution means the use of excessive amounts of water or it misuse even for an ostensibly laudable purpose and objective is disallowed by Islam. This is contrary to the Islamic ethos of maintaining the healthy balance between need and waste.

Preventing air pollution

Protecting the air from pollutants can be deduced from many sayings of the Prophet. There are many Hadiths that tell us that the Prophet , discouraged or prohibited activities that result in offensive smells and odors, from taking place in certain public places. 
Another Hadith aims at protecting the Muslim community from offensive smells that result from eating garlic or onion. The Prophet said:

"He who eats from this tree - meaning garlic - should not get close to our mosque." [9]

According to another Hadith:

"He who eats garlic or onion should stay away from us, or he said: "should stay away from our mosque and stay at his home." [10]

The period which one should stay away from the mosque is limited to the duration of the smell. This is understood from the Hadith narrated by Abu Dawaud :

"He who eats from this wicked plant, should not get close to our mosque, until its smell goes."

Al-Qaradawi refers to a religious ruling (fatwa) upon the fact that smoking is detrimental to the health of primary and secondary smokers. It is the harm that results from releasing anything into the air which forms the fundamental basis of al-Qaradawi's reference. By analogy, anything that pollutes the air and is detrimental to the health should be prohibited. This includes indirect harm such as in the case of CFC which depletes the ozone. Harmful fumes that cannot be prohibited all together, should be reduced and alternatives should be made popular. The emission of Carbon Monoxide would certainly be a target of this prohibition. A case is also made out to find out alternative sources of energy to ward off, if possible, the damage by way of global warming phenomenon by a continued use of fossil fuels.

Injunction against noise pollution

Islam took care of the human being and made sure that he should not be subjected to loud and annoying noises to prevent harm to him both physically and psychologically. There are multiple Hadith that point out that loud noise is tantamount to foolish conduct and is basically harmful. In the Quran, Luqman advised his son saying:

"…and lower thy voice; for the harshest of sounds without doubt is the braying of the ass." Quran, 31:19

The Islamic Shariah, it is interesting to note, does not contemplate loud voices or sounds being made even in the mosques. The right of others to pray peacefully, or to recite the Quran quietly on their own, during times other than the obligatory prayer, which is performed by all present at the same time together, should be respected. The argument in favor of preventing pollution by noise is that reciting of the Quran by voices is not encouraged because it may distract others from reflection; if this be the case then any other sources of noise pollution deserve the same evaluating criteria; they are all seemingly prohibited. It is established by modern medical sciences that if one is subjected to loud noise over a long period of time, it reduces the ability of a healthy person to react normally; such noise can adversely affect the hearing ability of some and possibly also result in psych-somatic problems.

Islamic objectives in environment protection

There are said to be five major aims (maqasid) of Islam in life. As mentioned many times by most scholars through out of its history of mankind the Shariah aims to:

(1) The protection of life,

(2) The protection of religion,

(3) The protection of the mind,

(4) The preservation of one’s offspring and progeny, and

(5) The protection of property.

A well known recent authority of the Islamic theology, Sheikh Muhammad Al-Tahir Ibn 'Ashur went beyond the original five and added another two objectives as aims of a good Muslims life:

(6) The maintenance of equality and (7) the right to remain and keep freedom in life. [11]

Quite clearly, the protection of Environment may be said to exist as a part of the quintessential nucleus of many such objectives. Indeed the right to life itself becomes a meaningful reality only if mankind’s environment is capable of living as we know of it presently and as known to us historically. I think I can refer with advantage to a well know case from the Supreme Court of India on pollution. In Sachidananda Pandey VS. State of West Bengal12 AIR 1987 SC 1109, in which Justice Reddy remarked on a public interest Petition against the construction of five star hotel next to the historical Calcutta Zoo by saying:

“How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land, or the life that goes along with it since long time? It is not a question of only buying or selling land; we have to see the totality of the ecology involved when the matter involves invasion of the nature by man’s desire to go on building”

The thesis presented in my address today is that protecting the environment and eco-systems of the earth are a major concern of the Islamic Faith. It is therefore a major aim of the Shariah. Hence it has rightful place as a norm of rule of jurisprudence for Muslims. If the situation of the environment keeps deteriorating at the present rate, there will ultimately be no life, no property and no religion left.

The environment encompasses, it is submitted, the totality of the other aims of the Shariah. The destruction of the environment prevents the human being from fulfilling the concept of vice regency on earth. Indeed, when the very existence of humanity is at stake here, as in the case of the destruction of the ozone layer, this phenomenon assumes special significance.

It is an established scientific fact that excessive pollution of the air might lead to serious deformities, abortion and chronic diseases. It is in evidence from advanced Western countries that highly polluted industrial cities might not have clear sunlight for days, resulting in deep depressions which affects a person's ability to rationalize properly. Certain radiation might also produce results that can affect adversely the quality of human and animal brain power. The attempt to protect any kind of property rights will also be in vain if, in the context of a highly polluted environment, the cities and dwelling places become uninhabitable. There are already many rivers and lakes that are considered dead with no marine life. This is a direct result of acid rain which also destroys forests. These forests and water sources form the natural habitat of many species; their death means the possible extinction of some of the signs of natural life that we presently know of.


To consider the protection of the environment as one of the major aims of the Shariah will, hopefully, enable the neo-model of Islamic civilization a chance to be advanced as an alternative to the already existing western model, which is the primary source of pollution. Adopting this position makes it imperative for the Muslim governments to establish laws for the protection of the environment and implement them. Internationally also, serious efforts are required by them to achieve these objectives.

End Notes

∗ D.Phil.; B A Juris, MA. M.Litt, (Oxon), DCL (Columbia), DIA (Harvard), Of Lincoln’s Inn, Barrister at Law, UK, Attorney at Law, US, Senior Advocate Supreme Court (QC) of Pakistan; David M. Kennedy Visiting Scholar & Professor of International Studies, Kennedy Center & Visiting Professor, Fellow, Center for International Affairs, Harvard University. The author has been Advisor to four Pakistani Prime Ministers on Foreign Affairs & Law, Member & Delegate to the UN Human Rights Commission, and the UN Sub Commission on Human Rights, Geneva. He has also represented Pakistan delegations to the UN GA and was the leader of Pakistan Delegation to the International Criminal Court (ICC); He is currently the UN Special Ambassador for Family, the President of the American Institute of South Asian Strategic Studies, Boston; President Pakistan Ecology Council and Chairman Pakistan Bar ‘s Committees on International Affairs and Environment, 2004-2005; he was awarded the highly prestigious King Faisal Memorial Award for 2002 by Saudi Arabia and in 2003 he received the International Professor of the Year of Human Rights Award in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia In 2004 he became the first Pakistani scholar to be appointed a distinguished Visiting Professor by JNU in Delhi, & to give Memorial Lectures at the Benaras Hindu University, University of Mumbai and at Ambadkar University in Auranagbad. In 2006 he was given the London World International Islamic Award for Family.

1 See: Proceedings, International Human Ecology Congress, Vienna, Austria, September 15-19, Present day Shortcomings of Environmental Law, Suggestions for Improvement, Dr. Farooq Hassan, pages 829-833, Georgi Publishing Company

2 See Muslim, Sahih

3 See See Fi Zilal al-Quran, Sayyid Qutub, 12th Edition (Dar al-Shuruq) Vol. 12, p. 1907

4 See: Al-Tirmidhi, # 5239

5 See: Al-Qaradawi, al-Sunnah Masdaran Lil-Ma'rifah wal-Hadarah, 143-144

6 Al-Tirmidhi # 2799

7 See: Al-Darimi, # 560

8 Narrated by Muslim

9 See Al-Lu'lu' wal-Marjan, # 331, 332

10 See Al-Lu'lu' wal-Marjan, # 333

11 See Isma'il Al-Hasani, Nazariyyat Al-Maqasid 'ind Al-Imam Muhammad Al-tahir Ibn 'Ashur, p. 16

12 AIR 1987 SC 1109

Detroit, New Orleans & Baltimore

Detroit has never recovered from the riots of 1967. What does it say about a nation that, after 39 years, it can not, or will not, heal such a wound? What does it say about the future of New Orleans?

As for Baltimore, I highly recommend a few hours watching HBO's The Wire. Although it is "fiction", it tells more truth than any "reality" TV show and is more relevant than the vast oceans of escapism that so define American television fare.

The question is this: If our house is not in order, as the evidence from too many of our cities suggests, why should we expect any other peoples to welcome the forced imposition of our imperfect model on them?

Secondly, if our model is imperfect, if not broken, why should we support politicians who can do no better than offer us more of the same old same old? Today, it seems that the leadership of the two largest political parties in America brag too loudly about how effectively they suck on the sugar teat of the corporate lobbyists. Do we really want politicians who are little more than the bitches of the lobbyists?

If we want an America that can do better by her people, an America that will lead the world in preserving a biosphere that we will be proud to pass on to our grandchildren, then we need to demand better of ourselves and our politicians.

Will we? Will we stand up to the Carbon Barons before their sequestered carbon has driven the biosphere into a seriously damaged state that bears little resemblance to the living conditions we have enjoyed in the past? Will we do it in the next 10 years?

Perhaps Al Gore's speech today at NYU Law School will help us get on a better path. It is an excellent speech I highly recommend to one and all.

Opposite Sides of the Same Bad Coin

Remember the counter culture extremes of the '60's? Life without limits, restraints, controls or consequences. Free sex, free love, free drugs, and rock and roll with general disregard for the future. It may well have been a predictable reaction to both the 1950s with its McCarthyism as well as the technological and cultural determinism that lead to the travesty of the VietNam war. In the end, however, it was not very effective. It was a bad idea that promoted immature self-indulgence, greed and the I.Me over the We. It did not and could not work as envisioned. Perhaps because it was basically an unbalanced view of "reality".

Now, some 40 years latter, we have the business cultural extremes of the first decade of the 21st century -- last seen from 1890 - 1929. Free market capitalism without limits, restraints or controls and with the same general disregard for inconvenient consequences. It too is a bad idea that promotes immature self-indulgence, greed and the I.Me over the We. It is not working. It is showing us every day what a bad idea it is. Enron being but one example. It too is basically an unbalanced view of "reality".

Worse, the Bush team has now, with the internal logical consistency of their prior business excesses ala Cheney & Haliburton, brought this same no limits, no controls, no boundaries, no consequences dogma to our politics. This is producing yet more disasters. Iraq being chief amongst them. They will be remembered for the gift they are giving to the future.

Remember the Club of Rome Study: Limits to Growth? It was an arrow to the very heart of the business culture of no limits, restraints, controls or consequences. The very word "limits" was anathema. The Business community reacted to it, via the National Association of Manufactures et al, just the way they reacted to FDR's first Inaugural Address in 1933. FDR was reasserting the need for limits and controls after the country was put into a many year Depression by the excesses and zealotry of rampant free market capitalism without limits. This had to be countered by the NAM at any cost. So they hired Edward Bernays and hijacked the New York World's Fair of 1939 to trumpet the superiority of the Corporation. Bernays manipulated the Fair to give one message: The future would be brought to you by the almighty and benevolent corporation. And what a future they have created for us. See, for example, "An Inconvenient Truth".

For more on Bernays, The New York Worlds Fair, and much more, see the BBC series "The Century of the Self".

Abu Ghraib, torture, rendition, illegal spying, denial of science and global warming, etc are not anomalies. They are all of a piece. They are the logical approach of those who demand life, government and business without limits, restraints or controls with complete disregard for consequences. The triumph of the I and ME over all else at any cost.

The irony is the 60's extreme counter culture leaders and today's extreme business culture leaders hate each other while they embrace so many of the same values integral to a Life without limits, restraints, controls or consequences.

Is it any wonder that neither group has found a way to fix the war zone in Detroit? Much less address the impending global consequences of de-stabilizing the biosphere?

The Communications Commons

I have a few thoughts on the June 26th article in NY Times reported by Ken Belson: What if They Built an Urban Wireless Network and Hardly Anyone Used It?

The missing conversation on the policy side of the municipal wireless issue is whether or not it is important to preserve the hub and spoke organizational model for our communications paradigm in order to preserve "billing" by "providers". Of course this also reinforces the regrettable notion that we the people are merely unequal consumers locked into an asymmetrical relationship.

Or should we look at another policy option, namely that wireless communications should be seamless, always on Big Broadband publicly operated as an element of the commons in order improve public life, promote innovation and the efficient use of end user capital? In this case, billing is a mute point, just as billing for street lights, snow plowing, police services, fire services etc are not billable events. In this case, we are allowed to view we the people as all of citizens, producers, distributors, and consumers.

It is wise to remember that the very successful PC revolution was largely funded by end-user capital when we upgrade our PCs every few years for $3,000 an upgrade.

As I wrote earlier this month:

The issue is do we want a connectivity environment that takes full advantage of all of the things we have learned since the founding of the FCC in 1934?

Or do we insist on remaining locked into the 20th century Hub & Spoke architecture [Master/Slave] in order to preserve the "customer" model supported by "billing"? IE, do we want to invent the future looking in the rear view mirror?

If, on the other hand, we want a network of equals for the 21st century, a model congruent with our professed political values, then we need to not only allow sharing of connectivity, but to actively encourage it. This suggests that we need a completely new billing model. More accurately, a no billing model!

If we want a modern communications paradigm, it would appear that public entities are the best, perhaps ONLY, entities to run it. Why? Because they do not have requirements to bill every user every month for every bit. We are not individually billed for police and fire protection, nor for street lights, nor public education and so forth. Thus government, which generally DOES work, has an proven and existing model for public services, such as public access to the internet, that can only work if sharing is leveraged for cooperative gain, not billed for private gain.

From another pont of view, if I were a stock holder in one of today's incumbent connectivity providers, would I want my company to invest its scarce human and financial capital in very low margin bit hauling? Or would my investment be better served if my company invested in high margin, innovative, products and services delivered over commodity bits? Do I want the cost of bits to be a barrier to my high margin products and services?

The conversation has been distorted by the recent notion that everything should be a market function and the false premise that anything a government does automatically and unfairly competes with the "sacred" private sector. Rubbish.

The private sector loves externalities that allow them to shift costs to others. Bit hauling should be seen as an opportunity for a magnificent externality that allows them to re-allocate resources to more profitable operations. In this light, it is, in fact, in the self interest of the incumbents to work with the municipalities to create the very best possible bit hauling externality. Consider: Did the proponents of the market object to our tax dollars building the Eisenhower Interstate Highway system that has allowed them to externalize so many transportation costs? Or that out tax dollars subsidize airports that benefit the business traveller the most? Or that our tax dollar created the internet in the first place?

So the win win here is a robust publicly operated network of equals operated by municipalities. Such a network will allow the private sector to externalize low margin operations in order to improve their bottom lines while enabling an innovations commons to support our emerging 21st century world.

For perspective on the appropriate role of government, consider what Frank Rich wrote in the June 25th NY Times:

"Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration, the very model of big government that the current administration vilifies, never would have trusted private contractors to run the show. Somehow that unwieldy, bloated government took less time to win World War II than George W. Bush's privatized government is taking to blow this one."

I suggest government has a significant and appropriate role in building wireless networks that are "free" from direct billing.

The only question is this: How long will it take creative citizens to invent applications that saturate the network? In Mongolia it took about 1 week. As long as the architecture of the network is scalable, this is not a problem. Consider that a modern fiber cable has 144 strands, each strand can carry 70 lamdas, each lambda is 10 gigabits. The backhaul capacity is available to support very big broadband -- if we enable it.

As James Burkes said:

"The other general thing to be said about how change comes about through innovation, and especially about the rate at which that changes occurs, is that the easier you communicate, the faster change happens."

James Burke. Connections series 1, program 10 at 19:00 into the show.

Finally, it is worth re-reading a few paragraphs from the March 4, 1933 First Inaugural Address of Franklin D. Roosevelt

... Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.

Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.

Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.

Bring on the publicly created municipal wireless projects. We need every bit of innovation we can get.

Right Turn on Green

Something is happening in English politics we should know about. Ode Magazine has published a very interesting essay by Jay Walljasper in their issue 34:

Right Turn on Green

Excerpt:

The rise of a political paradox brings hope for the world

Modern politics is notorious for the way it creates strange new meanings for familiar words. “National security,” for instance, now means attacking distant countries. “Choice,” in American electoral debates, is a secret code for abortion, and “family” signifies fierce opposition to gay rights. “Us,” in the minds of some European political candidates, refers exclusively to white people.

But the word that has undergone the most dramatic transformation at the hands of politicians is “conservative.” It once clearly described a political philosophy devoted to preserving tradition. But powerful leaders around the world now use the term to justify a complete reordering of society according to the wishes of global corporations and radical free-market economists. The merit of these policies is open to discussion, but it seems obvious that this kind of political agenda is anything but conservative.

“It’s no accident that ‘conservative’ and ‘conservation’ are almost the same word,” notes American environmentalist philosopher Bill McKibben. “But what we call conservative today has been captured by something else—the idea that we need economic growth at all costs. That can be ruinous to our environment and our communities.” That’s the great irony of politics today: The very idea of conservation—conserving the environment, natural resources, energy, a sense of community or anything else—is considered unnecessary, or even a dangerous obstacle to economic progress, by most so-called Conservatives. U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney summed up the prevailing right-wing view when he said, “Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis... for a sound, comprehensive energy policy.”

This is what makes the recent turn of events in British politics so fascinating. The Conservative Party, which earned the undying wrath of environmentalists when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister, is now trumpeting green issues in an effort to unseat the ruling Labour Party. The new Conservative leader, David Cameron, who assumed power last fall, quotes Gandhi in urging people “to become the change we want to see in the world.” He can be seen riding his bike all over London and plans to add solar panels and a wind turbine to his home in the fashionable Notting Hill neighbourhood. He’s gone so far as to question the dominance of corporate power in the UK, declaring in a recent newspaper ad, “We should not just stand up for big business but to big business.”

While this might sound like some sort of political gimmick, there are signs that Cameron is sincere about pioneering a new brand of “green” conservativism—which could become as globally influential as Thatcher’s free-market policies were in the 1980s. If the environment ceases to become a divisive issue among parties of the left, right and centre around the world, we will see a new flowering of green initiatives.

Read the whole article at: Right Turn on Green

Thanks to Greater Democracy member Erika Keller Rogoff for bringing this to my attention.

500 PPM CO2 & An Inconvenient Truth

My wife and I saw "An Inconvenient Truth" recently. Good audience, even if not quite sold out. Great film. As I told my friend Dewayne, if Al doesn't run for president, I'll be extremely disappointed.

Clearly, the implosion of the environment is THE defining challenge facing us. It trumps terrorism and all of the issues that Bush and Rove have used to define their agenda. It actually makes a mockery of them. The collapse of the environment as we have come to utterly depend on it is THE national security issue of the 21st century. It will be the organizing principal of the next effective political party with an agenda that ignites passions in its members.

Who lost the Environment? Who lost 8 precious years that could have made a real difference?

The Bush party of me, myself, and my money ignored Global Warming -- worse, they denied it.

Where is the party of we and I? The party of environmental stewardship? The party of cooperative gain?

Clearly, if the market must work for humanity and if humanity depends on the CO2 levels being held below 500 PPM, then the market must work to help humanity reach its environmental stewardship goals. To understand the importance of the 500 PPM of CO2 threshold, see Joe Romm's presentation at MIT's Energy 2.0 confernece on May 13, 2006.

My friend Dewayne also made a really good point in a conversation we had about the Gore movie. Back in the day, he worked for Buckminster Fuller as a programmer on his "World Game." And se this and especially this this.

Dewayne's point was why not use the World Game approach as a matrix for the information and challenges in Al's movie? The Inconvenient Truth version of the World Game could then give hands on experience manipulating the data to 10s of thousand school students. Manipulating the data with your own hands is the best way to internalize the learning it offers. It is their future, after all.

This World Game could also include the National Budget Simulation that Robert Steele writes about.

As my new company, Biomass Commodities, says: "It takes a village to raise a child, it takes the children to change the village." Education was the key to making "recycle" a powerful force. It will be a key to making "Environmental Stewardship" powerful enough to mitigate global warming.

Taking a closer look at one proposal for reducing CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, a question that needs to be asked is this: Where and how will the electricity for plugin hybrids be made? Releasing sequestered carbon to make this electricity is a non starter. This rules out all current power plants, with the exception of Nukes, which get ruled out as we have not yet solved their 20,000 year radioactive waste storage problem.

My answer is micro-CHP in 10s of millions of American homes. Micro-CHP fueled by biomass with 14:1 net energy gain - not ethanol with a mere 7:1 energy gain. Why would we throw away half the energy just to reduce the biomass to ethanol?

Think of the powerful economic forces that we would unleash in the process of inventing, building, installing, fueling, and servicing 10s of millions of micro-CHP units.

Micro-CHP will help us make the transition from making releasing sequestered carbon a prohibitively expensive option to a banned option. As we come to grips with the nature of the transformative threat of global warming, banning the release of sequestered carbon will not only be seen as obvious common sense but also a matter of preserving our national security.

Gore and Rommm have persuaded me that it is past time to move beyond carbon to the possibility of a future with even more rewards. Please watch their presentations and then take action not just to simply save any future but to create a better future for our grandchildren.

Doha Family Institute: foundations for optimism

Dr. Farooq Hassan*

(Synopsis of paper presented at the Eighth Annual Meeting of the Pakistan Family Forum at Lahore on the International Family Day, 16th May, 2006)

I recently had the opportunity to briefly tour Doha, Qatar, to meet with the Managing Director of the newly established Doha International Institute for Family Studies & Development. He is Professor Richard Wilkins, my good friend from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah where he had been the initiator of a similar program some years ago. The newly established Institute owes its doctrinal and visionary foundations to the ideas of Her Highness Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al-Missnad, Consort of His Highness the Emir of Qatar.

This institution is an independent center for higher learning and facilitating the disseminations of current laws and discussions on the study of the Family. Its genesis is the decision of Her Highness to follow up concretely on her announcement at the Conclusion of the last Session of the Doha International Family Conference of 30 November 2004. In that important meeting Her Highness had declared her intention to set up and create such an institution.

That such pious and timely aspirations have actually borne fruits so expeditiously, is a living tribute to her clear determination to create an intellectual atmosphere of understanding and propagating the fundamental human values in following the historical acceptance of family as basic tenet of civilizations in major human rights texts that emanated with the creation of the UN Charter, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The leading text of this nature is to be found in Article 16 (3) thereof which assets in categorical terms:

“The Family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by the society and the State.”

Despite this philosophical message, derived essentially from the teachings of great faiths and the monotheistic religions, Family as an institution has stood threatened in this century from the strong efforts of antifamily advocates in the 20th century. Dr. Carlson observes with acute perception when he says: “Foes have mounted attacks on all aspects of the natural Family, from the bond of marriage to the birth of the children to true democracy of free homes” (See Dr. Allan Carlson, The Natural Family Manifesto, 2005, page 5). This campaign was advocated on a very wide basis internationally with the result it had global adherents by 1990s. The UN declared 1994 as the year of the family but, cynically, the opponents too embarked upon their own advocacy of divergent views. Internationally the problem has serious ramifications in the Western world which has led to vigorous efforts to thwart this danger from pro-family protagonists.

Then the UN was persuaded to observe 2004 as the Decade of the Family. This anniversary observance was stipulated by the UN General Assembly decision number 164/75 given on 18th December, 2002. This year produced a tremendous amount of scholarship and erudite work by pro family intellectuals, non governmental bodies and religiously based institutions. Prominent international events of 2004 that can be cited for this pro family momentum are the Mexico World Congress of Families III, the Kuala Lumpur Family International Conference and the Doha International Conference, to which some detailed reference may be helpful.

The credit for having hosted the leading intellectual event of this decade year, in the form of the Doha International Conference on Family, goes to the State of Qatar. Let me therefore applaud the State of Qatar, the worthy Emir of Qatar, His Highness Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thanni, for showing such firm commitment to this fundamental postulate of all humanity. The specific gratitude that should be noted is all due to dynamic leadership of Her Highness, Sheikha Mouza bint Nasser Al-Misnad, who is also the President of the Supreme Council of Family Affairs in this country. She graciously decided to lend her auspicious supervision to hold this landmark international conference to celebrate the decade of the adoption of the year of the Family in Doha. Her guidance was really instrumental in organizing that conference; since then, she has been the main architect of the implementation of the ideas of the Doha Declaration of 2004. The creation of this Institute is, therefore, the real beginning of realizing the goals set out in the above mentioned Doha mandate.

As I believe I am amongst the first international visitors to this new institution of tremendous significance, a word about what I saw in Doha regarding its working and operations would be in order. The Doha Family Institute is an independent body sponsored by The Qatar Foundation, which works directly under the supervision of Her Highness and a distinguished Board of Governors. By its creation, the goals of the Doha process have to be achieved. It will work in co-ordination with Qatar’s Supreme Council for Family Affairs, The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and, where appropriate, with the other academic institutions within the Education City of Qatar.

I may add that during my recent visit the Doha Family Institute kindly took me to tour this Education City. It is simply awesome in its operational capacity and facilities. Both as a student and a professor I have had the opportunity and privilege of being at the best academic institutions in the world such as Oxford, Cambridge, Columbia, and Harvard. I can say, therefore, on the basis of empiricism, how well, comparatively speaking, the Education City, a basic foundation of intellectual endeavors in Qatar, should be perceived. The Qatar Education City has all possible amenities and it is for the students and faculties to produce world class scholarship with such modern infrastructure.

Amongst the Objectives of the Institute are:

1. To cooperate with the Qatari institutions mentioned above, e.g., The Supreme Council of Family Affairs to achieve the ideals of the Doha Declaration.

2. Networking with systems for accomplishing the goals set out above with efficiency and produce erudite academic work.

3. To work for organizing international conferences relating to Family.

4. To bring together prominent government leaders and scholars to discuss Family Research.

5. To encourage international network of family specialists to implement the spirit and ethos of the Doha Declaration.

6. To publish and bring out timely publications dealing with latest work and research material on Family.

In terms of its broad institutional working format, the Doha Family institute will work in two separate and operative branches, viz:

         Research and Development, and

         Implementation and Social Action.

With limited initial staffing, this ambitious planning will require additional recruitment. It is planned to do so in the near future, and, as such, it will be a process which I call a “living experiment”.

There exist at the international level a number of institutions which have as their focus the launching of activities which basically defend family values. A few of them are called “international” or are “world ” oriented in their approach since they aim to have a setup which is truly transnational or, alternatively, aim to achieve results that are of such a character. So far as I am aware, this is the first institute of this class that has been created in a non Western milieu and, in particular, in a Muslim environment. I hope, therefore, that this particular aspect of its genesis will be kept in mind while expanding the current activities of its academic and intellectual work.

Understanding the Islamic Message on Family

Islam places the highest significance in life to the family as an institution, towards its different members and the duty of “care” and responsibility in those that have the worldly ability to provide assistance and help to others in the family that need such aid. The message of Islam is contained in the word of God, the Holy Quran itself. These citations cited in my many works on this subject, which are published and also available on the net, will hopefully stress the high significance that our faith places on this matter.

Throughout its history, Islamic faith has been both deeply cherished as well as misunderstood for its emphasis on enveloping the entirety of a person’s life with its normative structure of rules of conduct and precepts. Amongst the major norms of such expected behavior are those that are devised to apply to the institution of the family. Simultaneously, the jurisprudence and moral philosophy of the Muslim faith also acutely focuses on the larger matter pertaining to the subject of human rights.

The contemporary Western World similarly accords tremendous significance to these topics. However, as I see it, the evolution of some newer norms and concepts in the international legal field has been such that, in respect of crucial details, there is a visible tendency to have the rights of the family give up some of its historical and inherent hierarchal position and status to specific and newly developed “rules” in the broader field of human rights. For instance, as Rapporteur of two major international UN sponsored conferences on the “rights” of the Family and the Child in Islamabad in May of 2005, I frankly reported that “rules” of “law”, and not merely soft international law, were being made by Islamic nations and major Asian countries. The areas that were focused upon pertained to “rights” that were of “reproductive” kind and those loosely referred to as “spanking” practices.

In its newer researches, therefore, I feel that such perspectives will be examined by the experts that work in, or for, or who will be guiding this Institute’s operational activities. Given the stark reality that all major Western nations are now set to create perhaps “norms”, some legal in their content, that may work against the traditional concepts of Family, the avocations of Muslim nations in this regard are of paramount significance. It is fact that, but for the work of Islamic countries such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in particular at the Human Rights Commission, already great damage to doctrinal purity of family may have resulted.

The “expertise” required to give quality to such intellectual research work would be of premier importance to this new institution. As such, I have no doubt that the Institute’s Administration will provide the needed direction in harnessing the required talent for this purpose. Since most of current thinking revolves around sociological and legal metamorphosis, collaboration with high level academicians would be helpful, from both the domains of social sciences and law, to achieve the results and intellectual products that I have in mind.

Be that as it may, the ground work of a new edifice has been created in the domain of Family studies and I am very hopeful that the coming months will be productive from the perspectives of its genesis. Already, I am informed by Professor Wilkins that two regional symposia have been held, one in Eastern Europe and another one in East Africa in the last four months since this Institute since formally created in Doha. It will necessary to project the work that is undertaken by this new institution. However, I am clear in my mind that, in the long run, it will be the quality of the work, and the publications the Institute is able to produce, more than just media projections, that will count towards the establishment of an enviable reputation. If it undertakes teaching as well, then those who come to learn will become the best ambassadors of this new body, but only after they leave. I wish the Institute well!

About the author:

∗ D.Phil.; B A Juris, MA. M.Litt, (Oxon), DCL (Columbia), DIA (Harvard), Of Lincoln’s Inn, Barrister at Law, UK, Attorney at Law, US, Senior Advocate Supreme Court (QC) of Pakistan; Special UN Ambassador for Family for the World Family Alliance, Advisor to four Prime Ministers of Pakistan on Law & Foreign Affairs; Delegate to the UN, NY, & to the Human Rights Commission on Human Rights & to the Sub-Commission on Human Rights, Geneva, Leader of Pakistan’s Delegation to the International Criminal Court Prep Coms., NY & Delegate to UN GA Sessions. Also, inter alia, on the Faculties of Foreign Affairs & Law, Harvard University, the Secretary General, American Asian Institute of Strategic Studies, Boston. International Legal Counsel before transnational Tribunals & US Congress. David M Kennedy Scholar of International Studies, Kennedy Center, BYU 2003-4. President, Pakistan Family Forum, Member International Advisory Board, United Families International.

A House Divided will not Prevail

Jock Gill, Aldon Hynes, and Robert Steele

If the Republican party can be said to have fragmented into 1] an evangelical extremist wing aligned for convenience with unregulated corporatism and neo-liberal capitalism, and 2] the rest of the more moderate Republican party that has lost all semblance of influence within its own party, the Democrats can be said to be even further fragmented, to the point of ineffective incoherence.

In control is the “last gasp” of the 20th Century wing of the Democratic party, where big money displaced labor and the grassroots, the caring church, and the intellectuals to craft the Democratic leadership as “Republican Lite,” equally corrupt, but more inept than their counter-parts. They stand for nothing other than incumbency and the power of money over ideas.

As insurgents emergent, we have the Netroots that were first noticed for their support of Howard Dean. In 2003 and 2004, the Netroots wing experimented with “bonding” social capital and micro-cash campaign contributions, but were not able to organize themselves in time to stage a break-out and capture the flag. Although Dean is today the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, his loyalties appear to be split between the new Netroots and the traditional Democratic Grassroots. A house divided cannot stand. In addition, there is every expectation that he will be trumped by the bigger databases and larger bank accounts of the 20th Century wing of the party.

These two groups have left three core constituencies of the Democratic Party, Labor and the traditional Grassroots, the intellectual, and the caring church, grasping at straws and feeling powerless. Labor, the intellectuals, and the caring church have no one in the top ranks of the Democratic Party organization who will listen to them or help them contribute to a restoration of the power of the people.

In our view, the Democratic Party is headed directly for another disaster, as the New York 20th Century gang self-destructs on the twin rocks of financial and ideological warfare, where the Republican Party, under the control of its well-heeled extremists, excels.

The Democrats, however, could work to unite at least these 4 core elements: 1] The traditional grassroots; 2] the new netroots; 3] the intellectual/progressive wing, and, importantly, 4] the caring church. How? By recognizing that the party must nurture the formation of both forms of social capital: Bonding and Bridging. The Wikipedia has this to say:

Bonding and bridging

In his pioneering study, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (Simon & Schuster 2000), Harvard political scientist Robert D. Putnam wrote: "Henry Ward Beecher's advice a century ago to "multiply picnics" is not entirely ridiculous today. ...

Putnam speaks of two main components of the concept: bonding social capital and bridging social capital. The former refers to the value assigned to social networks between homogeneous groups of people and the latter to that of social networks between socially heterogeneous groups. Typical examples are that criminal gangs create bonding social capital, while choirs and bowling clubs (hence the title, as Putnam lamented their decline) create bridging social capital. Bridging social capital is argued to have a host of other benefits for societies, governments, individuals, and communities; Putnam likes to note that joining an organization cuts in half an individual's chance of dying within the next year.

The distinction is useful in highlighting how social capital may not always be beneficial for society as a whole (though it is always an asset for those individuals and groups involved). Horizontal networks of individual citizens and groups that enhance community productivity and cohesion are said to be positive social capital assets whereas self-serving exclusive gangs and hierarchical patronage systems that operate at cross purposes to societal interests can be thought of as negative social capital burdens on society.

The concept of social capital in a Chinese social context has been closely linked with the concept of guanxi.

There is one issue, one place, one foundation, where the neglected elements of the Democratic Party can make common cause with moderate Republicans, Libertarians, Greens, Reforms, and all others, and that place is Electoral Reform. Working together as a Citizens Party respecting dual political memberships, they can generate significant bridging capital. Together, they can re-vitalize the notion that we all have challenges we can overcome by working together, but not if we work alone.

Al Gore won the majority of the popular vote in 2000. John Kerry, for all his problems, won a significant portion of the vote in 2004. In our view, the combination of Al Gore and a governor with a nationally recognized track record, working with a Citizens Party, as a non-rival builder of bridging social capital, committed to Electoral Reform as the litmus test issue for every incumbent and challenger in 2006, is a winning proposition.

Who else is better positioned to run against Senator McCain, the Republican’s anti-Bush?

Citizen Participation Activities in Porto Alegre, Brazil

We the People decide our city budget - and other democratic innovations

A letter from Tom Atlee

Dear friends,

When I last wrote about citizen participation activities in Porto Alegre, Brazil, their democratic budgeting practices had "only" spread to 70 cities in Brazil. Now 200 cities in Brazil are using annual participatory budgeting and it is spreading to dozens of other cities in Europe, Latin America, and Africa, as well. Do you think this profoundly democratic practice might someday reach the U.S.?

Brazil's remarkable weaving of top-down and bottom-up participatory democracy into the field of budgeting serves to inspire all who work to invigorate democracy, whether we are public officials, political parties, civil society organizations, activist networks, or individual social change agents. One thing is certain: When we see The People competently controlling the government's purse strings, we are seeing a different kind of democracy...

Participatory budgeting is one of an expanding family of innovative practices and creative ideas to make democracy more sensible, creative, participatory, and collectively intelligent. To pursue these innovations, however, requires that we shift some of our focus -- and resources -- from candidates and issues to THE SYSTEMS WE USE TO DECIDE about candidates and issues. Until those systems are healthy, we will continue to have grotesque distortions of democracy and a painful inability to make any real sustained progress on the issues most people are most concerned about and most affected by.

Viewing democracy as a form of collective intelligence can help us think more clearly about its possibilities. Other perspectives can also help, including more established approaches like "deliberative democracy" (see and also -- and mind-opening democratic concepts like "transpartisanship" , which helps partisans step outside their partisan roles long enough to work together on issues where they DO agree, to which their partisanship may have blinded them. Many other approaches to democratic innovation are listed at Democracy Innovations (a site which could use some updating: Any volunteers?)

One of the most intriguing new ideas to come across my desk is a proposal by Robert Steele and Jock Gill for "a 'dual membership' party, the Citizens Party. This new party would not ask its members to leave their original party, but would, instead, serve as a second home, a unifying party, committed to one issue and one issue only: achieving electoral reform". Steele and Gill want to attract citizens who may be proud of the ideals and traditions of their primary party (be it Republican, Democrat, Green, or whatever) but who are unsatisfied with how that party is behaving in the current political system. A "dual membership" party could provide such partisans with common ground on which to work together to change the system so their traditional party and the whole partisan approach could better function to serve the whole country.

In my co-intelligent dreaming I like to envision a broader transpartisan version of such a "dual membership party": It would provide common ground for creative collaborative work on ALL issues. Such a party could sponsor citizen deliberative councils to discover what the informed, deliberative public -- a truly inclusive "We the People" -- wanted on various issues. (Such a deliberative process provides a much deeper understanding of what the public truly wants than can be discovered through polling. See "A Call to Move Beyond Public Opinion to Public Judgment".)

Once members of this party knew the "public judgment" on an issue, they would support solutions and policies that implemented that judgment. They would also propose -- and lobby for -- ways to embed empowered citizen deliberation in all aspects of government, including budgets, as we see being done in Porto Alegre (below). A voter or candidate could be both a Republican (or Democrat, or Libertarian, or Green) AND ALSO be a member of this dual membership party. When an issue was resolved into what we might call "a People's Policy" -- an inclusive "We the People" solution -- they would play a TRANSPARTISAN role, promoting that solution. For every other issue, they would play their normal PARTISAN role, acting as they ordinarily do in our system as it is. As more issues were deliberated, and as more deliberations were empowered as part of our system of governance, partisanship would shrink and collective intelligence would expand.

Individually and collectively, we may not be evolved enough yet to step so far beyond partisanship. But times are changing. If enough of us see that there is more to be gained, in the long run, by supporting systemic changes towards more inclusive collaboration and collective intelligence, we can influence how our societies respond to the coming crises that will be demonstrating -- with painful clarity -- that the systems we have now can't handle the complex, challenging, and rapidly changing conditions of the 21st century.

Well informed, well connected, and moving ahead with alert awareness, we can become agents of the conscious evolution of civilization towards greater sustainability, thrivability, inclusivity and wisdom.

And every moment, as we enjoy each other and this work, we might also enjoy the added thrill of waking up as part of the 14-billion-year unfolding of the Big Bang and stardust, showing up today as our rapidly evolving world, galaxy, universe... Because deep inside what we are trying to do, evolution is seeing if human consciousness can call forth a self-evolving wise democracy on Earth, as one more remarkable experiment of Life...

And now let's take a look at a special, inspiring step on that strangely courageous journey....

Coheartedly,
Tom

=======================

The Citizens of Porto Alegre
by Gianpaolo Baiocchi ; Boston Review

Marco is a self-employed handyman in his mid-30s who moved to the city of Porto Alegre from the Brazilian countryside eight years ago. A primary-school-educated son of a farmer, he'd had few opportunities in his small town and had heard about the city's generous social services. He borrowed money for bus fare and landed in Porto Alegre, where he found construction work. But when his wages wouldn't cover rent he headed for one of the squatter settlements on the outskirts of the city. He soon moved in with a companheira who sewed clothes and ironed from home. In time his life became more settled, with incremental improvements to the house, small but growing savings, and brisk business owing to his good reputation in the community. Marco's story of migration, squatting, and survival was unremarkable--until he attended a local meeting on how the city government should invest its money in the region.

Read the whole essay.

About Tom Atlee

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Citizens Party, part II

Informed, Engaged, Democracy
Collective Public Intelligence

By: Robert D. Steele

Introduction

If we want an extraordinary future for all of our children, America and Americans must embrace reality. While, as a society, we may have recently found it comfortable to ignore reality, reality is most assuredly going forward, with or without us. What we have allowed to happen from 2000 to date can only be described as a national break-down. We the People failed to do our duty, to pay attention, to stay informed, to remain actively engaged and to keep our government honest.

Today, both the Republican and the Democratic Parties are “running on empty”. They cannot be trusted to represent the Republic within the current “winner take all” system. In addition, their exhausted 20th century solutions that got us to where we are today cannot be expected to get us to where we need to be tomorrow.

After a great deal of reflection, I have come to the conclusion that we need a Citizens Party, not to compete with the Democratic or Republican, or the other 60 plus parties, but to bring all of us together on the one big issue that really matters: Electoral Reform. If we are successful, a Democratic or Republican Presidential candidate willing to field a Vice President from the counterpart party, and a Coalition Cabinet, could win in 2008.

Citizens Party

I have three “big ideas” that I want to present for a “collective public intelligence” process.

Idea #1:

A Citizens Party (www.citizens-party.org) must be created. This new approach would be a party that is a “second home”, or alternative party, that respects every individual’s primary political affiliation, but offers them an opportunity to come together with citizens from other parties to keep government honest. It would NOT be a party set up to compete with all the other parties!

Moderate Republicans like me, for example, can join forces with those from other parties to beat back the extremist ideological and fundamentalist tendencies of the original Republican Party. We can all, as Paul Ray explores in his discussion of “The New Political Compass,” create coalitions across all issue areas. We can use the power of actively engaged citizens, networked, collective, public intelligence, to hold the Democratic and Republican parties in particular accountable for representing their individual members rather than special interests.

Idea #2:

There are actually two really big issues on which we can all come together as citizens in 2006 and again in 2008. They are: 1] Electoral Reform and 2] Energy/Environmental policy -- as discussed by Thomas Friedman. The reality is that our votes no longer count in the contrived monopoly that the Republicans and Democrats have established. Even if our candidate is elected, within weeks they have fallen prey to the corrupting combination of “the party line” which demands that they vote as they are told to vote by the party leadership; and special interests who bribe them to betray the people and favor specific corporations not acting in our interest.

Idea #3:

A Citizens Party can welcome immigrants enroute to citizenship as associate members who can use the Citizens Party as a neutral ground within which to both learn and practice their civic responsibilities, and be exposed to the many different parties that co-exist in America. A Citizens Party can offer generic civic instruction and opportunities for community service, and then once an individual becomes a citizen, they can be asked to declare a primary political affiliation, while retaining their “second home” in the Citizens Party. Membership cards for non-citizen immigrants should show where they are in their path toward citizenship, and be a source of pride and evidence of their commitment.

Discussion

The U.S. political process has been lost to monied special interests, including the most corrupt of those special interests the Republican and Democratic parties, who use party line control as a means of achieving outcomes that are NOT in the best interests of the public at large.

At the same time, the U.S. Government and the national infrastructures that it regulates, from education and health to water, energy, industry, finance, and telecommunications, have all become dysfunctional. Consider this summary drawn from Alvin and Heidi Toffler in Revolutionary Wealth:

Their first key focus is on TIME and its relation to space, knowledge, and effectiveness as translated into wealth. Innovative businesses are going 100 mph; civil collective groups at 90 mph; the US family at 60 mph, labor unions at 30 mph, government bureaucracies at 25 mph, education at 10 mph, non-governmental organizations including the United Nations at 5 mph, US politics and the participation process at 3 mph, and law enforcement and the law it enforces at 1 mph. This is really quite a helpful informed judgment as to the relative unfitness of all but two of the groups.

Now, keeping in mind—and Henry Kissinger has expressed similar concerns about the archaic slow processes of government and politics and law enforcement—the abysmally slow rating given by the Tofflers in relation to real life moving at 100 miles an hour, consider what this means when attempting to protect America and nurture American prosperity in the fact of global threats and in relation to global opportunities. Below is a threat table based on the report of the High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change (A more secure world: Our shared responsibility, United Nations, 2004) where LtGen Dr. Brent Scowcroft was the US representative. Note that poverty, infectious disease, and environmental degradation head the list, and that terrorism is next to last on the list. The percentages for the contribution of Open Source Intelligence [OSINT] to understanding and addressing the problem are my own informed judgment, but they are consistent with the “80-20” rule. I believe we can rely on the general point being made by this table, i.e. that we need to redirect at least half the secret intelligence budget toward open sources and all ten of these threats, instead of obsessing on secrecy and terrorism alone.

Threat to the Security & Prosperity of the USA           % Open Source

Threat #1:   Poverty  ............................................................... 95%
Threat #2:   Infectious Disease  ................................................. 99%
Threat #3:   Environmental Degradation  ..................................... 90%
Threat #4:   Inter-State Conflict  ................................................ 75%
Threat #5:   CivilWar  .............................................................. 80%
Threat #6:   Genocide  ............................................................. 95%
Threat #7:   Other Large-Scale Atrocities  .................................... 95%
Threat #8:   Nuclear, radiological, chemical, biological weapons  ..... 75%
Threat #9:   Terrorism  ............................................................. 80%
Threat #10:  Transnational organized crime  ................................. 80%

Average Importance of Open Source Intelligence       86.4%

We are spending close to $60 billion a year on secret sources, and less than $600 million on open sources of relevant national security information—on this alone the Bush Administration can be proven as derelict. At the same time, we are spending over $500 billion a year on a heavy-metal military, and next to nothing on waging peace or implementing what General Al Gray, then Commandant of the Marine Corps called for in 1988, “peaceful preventive measures.” We can still benefit immensely from the insights presented in May of 1966 by then Sec. of Defense Robert McNamara in his speech “Security in the Contemporary World”: In a modernizing society, security means development.

At the same time, because our secret intelligence community is so out of touch with reality, and our political system makes it easy to ignore secret intelligence, we have a federal budget that is catastrophically mis-managed, combined double deficits (debt and trade) with excessive entitlements and subsidies, and mis-directed expenditures that over-spend on a heavy metal military -- including missile defense and other unrealistic, or unnecessary capabilities, while severely neglecting “soft power” including cultural, diplomatic, economic, educational, and informational sources of national power. As McNamara said in 1966: The decisive factor for a powerful nation already adequately armed is the character of its relationships with the world.

Finally, because our political system is corrupt and our national counterintelligence and crime intelligence capabilities are virtually non-existent, we have failed to increase federal tax revenues by failing to demand that corporations pay a fair share of the federal revenue (they pay 6% down from a high of 32%, this needs to be brought back up to 25%), by failing to eliminate subsidies and other tax breaks illicitly obtained by special interests, and by failing to detect tax fraud. Taken together, these could produce an extra $500 billion a year.

A Citizens Party could utilize the National Budget Simulation, available online, to develop a balanced budget that clearly identifies the differing choices that each “wing” of the party makes, and puts before the larger public the specifics of the budget that demand resolution. Our budget is too important to be left to one party to manage without public oversight.

Here are a few more thoughts:

1. 2008 will not be 2000.

The Cheney-Bush Administration has radicalized America, everyone is now ready for decisive and reasoned leadership, and we can field a unity-reform team rather than a weak Democratic choice. America is ready to be brought back together. A winning and collaborative coalition of 20% of the Republican vote, 20% of the non-Democratic vote and a further 20% of the immigrant vote, as influenced by their relatives still in Latin America, China, India, Korea, and Viet-Nam, can make an important contribution to a Democratic victory in 2008, especially if we begin setting the stage in 2006 while campaigning for others. However, Democrats can only win if they adopt the Citizens Party platform.

2. One Dog-Catcher Issue.

The “dog-catcher” issue is now and will remain this: “does your vote count?” The answer to this question for most, including those that vote and then lose their Congressional representative to the party line and special interests, is no; consequently their concerns in other major issues are unheard and not represented. I believe that America will come together on our promise to reform the electoral process—everything else, including governance, policy, and budgetary reform, will follow from that. Making voting the first issue will set the stage for the second: Energy & the Environment. It is important to make voting the hinge issue, not the environment, or anything else, as the latter are “intangible” threats neither understood nor valued by a third of the electorate.

3. Citizens Party Breaks the Partisan Log-Jam.

Paul Ray knows what he is talking about when he discusses cross-over alliances on new progressive issues. I am a life-long moderate Republican who is also religious but in a practical rather than a fundamentalist sense. I have been giving speeches across the country and my sense is that we could begin the process of winning in 2008 by encouraging allies to start the Citizen Party in 2006. This new entity would be used to invite all Americans to consider a new concept: “dual political membership” in this new party that welcomes moderate Republicans, conservative Democrats, Independents, Libertarians, Greens, Reforms, and the members of the Dean set into a safe haven with one common cause: restoring the integrity of the electoral and representational processes. Further, it would also allow for the creation of an innovative Coalition Cabinet (next point). This party will, at a minimum, be committed to electoral reform that levels the playing field and isolates the extremists. This coalition party could well enable us to re-establish the core American values of integrity, vision and compassion for the greater public in America as well as our stewardship of the global environment. In the event the Democratic Party nomination goes to a polarizing candidate who cannot win the general election, this new party could be critical for the candidacy of a more generally acceptable Democratic candidate willing to choose a moderate Republican as their Vice President, and commit to a Coalition Cabinet to be announced in advance of the general election.

4. We Must Form a Coalition Cabinet now.

Such a cabinet, formed now as a shadow government, has several potential advantages for bringing citizens from disparate political groups together, especially since the Democratic traditionalists will not be willing to abandon the Master/Slave hierarchical and star-centered system. Coalition Cabinet members can serve as our outreach Ambassadors in building the big umbrella for decisively wresting power from the extreme right by recruiting “wings” from each party into the Citizens Party. Further, it could be used for developing, from 2006 to 2008, policies that make sense and pass the smell test. This will also allow us, in 2008, to articulate sound policies in detail—demonstrating the fruits of your innovative approaches—and to challenge the other candidates for President, in both the primaries and the final election, to identify their Cabinet choices. If they do not, we can mock them for not being able to pick a government, much less run one, and if they do, we challenge them to add selected Cabinet candidates (State, Defense, Justice) to the Presidential debates process. We win by showing that we have a balanced team, not a personality cult.

5. Peer-to-Peer Co-Intelligence.

There are creative resources, including Joe Trippi and the two authors of the new book on Crashing the Gate, as well as others, who have a lot to offer in the way of innovation in the peer-to-peer engaged democracy space. My friend Tom Atlee, for example, is at the forefront of the national Co-Intelligence or Collective Intelligence movement, and I believe that we are now at a point where Public Intelligence can both elect a coalition reform ticket, and drive sound Public Policy. We need votes, and contributions, but we also need a consensus of shared ideas.

6. Immigration & Catholic Social Justice.

I am in touch with the U.S. Council of (Catholic) Bishops on the matter of reducing poverty and increasing social justice among Latinos, who are inherently Catholic and more likely to be won over by a pro-immigration, pro-Catholic candidate (see point 9). This will be a big issue. Paul Ray’s help in dissecting this issue by voting base will be important. However, it will also be connected to foreign perceptions of America, and foreign influence on immigrants that vote—we need to promulgate our vision globally, in at least 15 languages. I believe that Michael Cudahy (a former Republican activists who worked on campaigns for G. H. W. Bush), Clyde Prestowitz, and a few other moderate Republicans can deliver 20% of that vote to Citizen Party candidates. I can find Citizen Party candidates another 20% bump in the voting immigrant pool. I am, incidentally, a white Latino, born in New York of a naturalized Colombian mother with Spanish ancestry and an American father of English and Scottish descent. This idea of a Citizens Party can, by the way, be migrated to all countries, and is not exclusive to our Nation.

7. Reality-Based Budgeting

This is a concept I have been working on for some time. I have been working with very senior former staffers from the Office of Management and Budget on developing this project. We are convinced that we could take the online National Budget Simulation and turn it into a tool for both establishing public consensus on revenue, spending; and for establishing a balanced budget at all levels of governance. We can make the budget process transparent and participatory, and we can really bring the power of the Open Source approach to help the voters understand where things now stand and are going at all levels of government and in the private sector.

8. Presidency.

I believe we should explore new concepts of governance in which the President focuses on the broad strategic issues, the really big picture and the really big alliances (both domestic and foreign), while the Vice President—ideally a former Governor with significant operational experience—serves as Chief Operations Officer with three Chiefs of Staff—one for policy, one for strategy, and one for treasury—ways and means.

9. Faith-Based Governance.

Finally, I believe that Rabbi Michael Lerner’s Left Hand of God and my friend David Johnston’s Faith-Based Diplomacy both have something to offer. If combined with due respect for the passion of the black church as identified by Bonhoeffer and represented in part by Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson, I believe we could find innovative ways of revitalizing the faith-based compassion of the Democratic Party, while opening doors to those of other faiths who have not found a haven where they feel they belong. Many Republicans of faith are beginning to see the hypocrisy of the extreme right fundamentalists. We cannot win the Latino vote, or the Korean vote, without showing that strong faith, loving faith and family values, are part of the proposition. America right now needs hope, and rational answers alone will fall flat. We need to offer pragmatic community-oriented faith versus nutty militant faith.

Conclusion

In 1994, Al Gore used the phrase “harnessing the distributed intelligence of the Whole Earth.” Now we have a clear and present emergence of networked “collective intelligence” or co-intelligence. It is clear today that the people in the aggregate can generate more campaign contributions, more votes, and more wisdom, than any collection of corporations or special interests. The Citizens Party is a non-rival means of taking back the power at the individual level, while respecting the unique concerns and insights of each of the traditional parties. That’s what I think. What do you all think?

A note on Mr. Steele

In the course of a twenty-five year national security career, Mr. Steele has served as a Marine Corps infantry officer and service-level plans officer; fulfilled clandestine, covert action, and technical collection duties; been responsible for programming funds for overhead reconnaissance capabilities, contributed to strategic signals intelligence operations, managed an offensive counterintelligence program, initiated an advanced information technology project; and been the senior civilian responsible for founding a new national intelligence production facility.

He was one of the first clandestine officers assigned the terrorist target on a full-time basis in the 1980's, and the first person, also in the 1980's, to devise advanced information technology applications relevant to clandestine operations.

As a government employee, he was a founding member of the Advanced Information Processing and Analysis Steering Group, a member of the Information Handling Committee, and a member of the Foreign Intelligence Capabilities and Priorities Committee, among others.

Mr. Steele, a political scientist liberally educated at Muhlenberg College, holds graduate degrees in international relations (Lehigh University) as well as public administration (University of Oklahoma), and certificates in intelligence policy (Harvard University) and defense studies (Naval War College).

He is an elected member of Pi Alpha Alpha, the honor society for public administration, and has received the Meritorious Honor Award (Group) from the U.S. Department of State; Certificates of Exceptional and Special Achievement from the Central Intelligence Agency (Operational), and a Certificate of Achievement from the Department of Defense.

A post for Daily Kos

[I'll post this to my new diary on Daily Kos after my one week waiting period is up.]

To shape our politics we have to shape our communications.

Here is a little personal history about the Dean campaign and how communications shaped it.

In 2003 I was asked by Steve Grossman to go to Burlington to work with Joe Trippi’s team on creating the Dean campaign’s internet strategies. At one point we were discussing a new tool that would allow Dean supporters to find one another. The original idea was to find supporters with 1, 2, 5 or so miles from your location. After some energetic exchanges, I was able to persuade Zephyr that the most important Dean supporter I needed to find was the one who lived in my building or on my block. We could then begin the face-to-face relationship building that would allow us to support each other in over-coming our inhibitions and to swing into local, retail political action supporting Dean: leafleting, hosting events in our homes, visibilities, and so forth.

The key was that the Dean campaign, like the Clinton Gore campaign in 1992, trusted us to communicate amongst ourselves in a true, symmetrical, peer-to-peer model. As a result, both Clinton and Dean enjoyed powerful benefits created by their supporters. In contrast, the Kerry campaign did not.

I was subsequently asked in April 2004, by the then CTO of the Kerry campaign, to work with a very small team of online community organizers [DemTech/DemComm members] to develop a vibrant peer-to-peer social networking strategy for the Kerry team. A small sub-group, including Howard Rheingold, AOL's Director of Community Management, Nanci Meng and Jon Lebkowsky, were tasked to create and submitted a draft proposal to Kerry HQ. We never heard back. We could only watch as Kerry imposed a traditional, asymmetrical, industrial era Master/Slave broadcast communications organizing principal on his campaign. Kerry did not trust the voters to generally do the right thing most of the time. Thus he was basically unable to leverage cooperative gain created by the collective actions of his supporters at the edges of his campaign. Kerry only understood power as it is created by asymmetrical relationships. This lead him to treat his supporters as sheeple, not as citizen activists.

Dean, of course, also made some critical mistakes in his communications. Perhaps Dean's greatest error was his scream speech in Iowa. We know that Lincoln understood that his audience in the Lincoln - Douglas debates was NOT the people in the immediate audience, but rather the multitudes reading the telegraphed transcript in papers in distant parts. For this reason, Lincoln adopted a radically new telegraphic debating style. Or, more recently, my friend Dan Hurley was asked to address a Democratic convention some time ago. As he was getting ready, an old Kennedy hand came up to him and told him two things: 1] go to the beach the day before to relax, and 2; address the audience beyond the cameras, not the people in the room.

Unfortunately not only did Gov. Dean not know this when he went out on the stage that fateful night in Iowa, but he had also not been rehearsed in BOTH an acceptance speech and a concession speech. Thus he was totally unprepared to leverage the opportunity of addressing the millions beyond the many cameras focused on him on that Iowa stage. A perfect example of how his communications strategy, on that night it was pure and simple 'wing it', shaped his political fortunes.

All of this is a round about way of getting around to the point that we must understand how the dominant organizing principle our national communications infrastructure shapes and determines our politics. If we want a truly democratic politics, based on the notions of equality with justice and fairness for all, based upon truly symmetrical relationships, we will have to have a communications paradigm that supports that goal.

Currently we do not. The dominant organizing principal in American communications is one that is fundamentally asymmetrical “Master/Slave” in nature with limited ability for the average citizen to participate and dependent upon rigid control of the distribution process. Why else would the current beneficiaries of this organizing principal demand draconian Digital Rights Management, with Infinite Copyright, and go to such great extremes to vilify and demonize peer-to-peer approaches? Indeed, the current communications paradigm, as enforced by the FCC and thus the US government is, at its heart, anti-democratic in both principle and fact. In truth, our current communications concentrates power in the hands of a few, supports a politics of oligarchy, and rule by the wealthy 1%. One clear result is today’s dominant politics of money, with humanity working for Mammon. It requires that we be sheeple.

I invite you to read the blog posts below to see some of my views of how else we might organize our communications in a true, symmetrical, peer-to-peer model. This is the only model that incorporates and energizes the core values of a politics of democracy.

Daily Kos, with its support for lateral, symmetrical and peer-to-peer participation is a case in point. For another example, see “OhMyNews” a South Korean online news site written by its readers who now even pay each other as well. But now, if we want our democracy back, we must extend the symmetrical, peer-to-peer model to all modes of communications. We now have both the understanding and the means to do so. All we lack is the political will and the political power to make it so.

So what will we chose for our future: Master/Slave or Peer-to-Peer?

Here are links to four posts of mine that relate to this topic.

1] Master/ Slave or Peer-to-Peer

2] To Encourage or Stifle Wireless Economic Innovation?

3] Wireless Civic and Economic Development

4] Mammon, masquerading as "The Market", is a false prophet

Master/Slave or Peer-to-Peer?

Sheeple Consumers or Citizen Activists?

Language matters. When Municipal wireless projects talk in terms of the "last mile in" to the "customer", it pretty clearly indicates that they have opted to maintain the old industrial era "Master/Slave" metaphor for their municipal wireless solution -- And probably for their politics and businesses as well.

The other option, of course, is to adopt a modern, peer-to-peer, mesh network architecture in which ALL nodes on the network are active participants in the mesh. This is the only way a municipality can create a truly Extra-Ordinary outcome for its citizens. This also creates a "first mile out" solution. In turn, a peer-to-peer mesh solution has the added benefit of giving all participants an incentive to improve their local infrastructure to improve their personal conditions. In the past, this has been called "leveraging end-user capital." It is what financed so much of the PC revolution that so benefited the US innovation economy. It is what creates a virtuous cycle of improvements.

The question is simply: Why do municipalities chose today to abandon this proven engine for economic innovation and growth?

Of course, the current EULAs from the "incumbents", such as Comcast, Verizon, AT&T etc., all specifically forbid sharing of connectivity by, at or for the end points. Intended or otherwise, this has the result of making a true peer-to-peer mesh a forbidden fruit. But is it really a municipality's function to pick business plan winners? Or is it to provide the very best solutions for its citizens?

From the above, it is clear that, until Peer-to-Peer business models are adopted by the incumbents, only municipalities are able to create and sustain modern, peer-to-peer, mesh network architecture in which ALL nodes on the network are active participants. Today, only municipalities can create networks that enable a virtuous cycle of improvements financed largely by end-user investments.

If a municipality fails to develop a municipal wireless solution that allows it to benefit from leveraging end-user capital, and the resulting cooperative gain created by this edge capital, I predict that such a system will have a substantially higher risk of failure. If we treat our fellow citizens like sheeple, as in the Master/Slave model imbedded in WiMax technology, they have no incentive to spend their own money to make local improvements. Thus they can never realize the innovation economy benefits of a system with inherent cooperative gain.

So what, my fellow citizens, do we expect from our government leaders? Master/Slave or Peer-to-Peer? The past or the future?

Massive Transfer of Resources

Here is another example of how we have allowed "The Market" to subvert Humanity into working for it, rather than "The Market" working for Humanity.

"Thanks to market distortions, public subsidies and tax avoidance, corporate oligopoly power in the food system actually results in a massive transfer of resources from farmers, workers, and consumers into the coffers of an ever-smaller number of transnational companies.” -- Vern Grubinger

Sounds about like the energy system too!

Bright Future for Farming: Vermont Can Lead the Way

By: Vern Grubinger

The commerce of food, and therefore farming, is dominated by oligopolies. At every level—from sales of agricultural inputs, to purchasing of raw commodities, to processing of food into branded products, to retailing of food to consumers—a handful of enormous corporations control a majority of the transactions.

For example, major suppliers of chemicals and seeds for farmers are Bayer, Dow, DuPont, Monsanto, and Syngenta. Purchases of raw products produced from farmers are dominated by Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, ConAgra, Smithfield, and Tyson/IBP. Food manufacturing giants that create most of the branded products on store shelves are Coca-Cola, Mars, Nestlé, Pepsico, Philip Morris, and Unilever. And finally, a huge share of these products are sold to consumers at stores owned by Ahold (Stop and Shop, Giant, Tops), Albertsons (Hannafords, Shaws, Star Market), Carrefour, Kroger, Wal-Mart, and a few others.

The clout of the top food retailers in the world staggers the imagination. Wal-Mart has 5,760 stores in 13 countries with $285 billion in sales. Carrefour has 11,080 stores in 37 countries with $90 billion in sales. Ahold has 7,078 stores in 15 countries with $65 billion in sales. Kroger operates 4,169 stores in the U.S. with $56 billion in retail sales. By comparison, the 120 food co-ops in the national cooperative grocers association have annual retail sales of $625 million.

The situation is not unique to farming and food; a similar scenario exists in banking, books, hardware, movies, music…you name it, even beer. A handful of multinational corporations dominate in many specific market categories where new companies rarely succeed; those that do are purchased or run out of business.

Some people say that it is precisely this economic system that brings us abundant and cheap food. But the problem, according to the Agribusiness Accountability Initiative, is that “far too few consumers realize that they actually pay for their ‘cheap food’ three times: at the check-out counter, again through their tax bill, and finally by assuming the long-term social and environmental costs of unsustainable production methods. Thanks to market distortions, public subsidies and tax avoidance, corporate oligopoly power in the food system actually results in a massive transfer of resources from farmers, workers, and consumers into the coffers of an ever-smaller number of transnational companies.”

Read the entire essay here.

To Encourage or Stifle Wireless Economic Innovation?

That is the question.

I recently stumbled on an essay by Thomas Keane in the The Boston Globe Magazine of March 19th: Strings Attached .

Keane does a marvelous job of articulating a particular and very conventional point of view on municipal wireless projects: They are a bad idea as they represent government competing with the private sector. He even makes the tired, old joke about "Hi! I'm from the government, and I am here to help you.

This is, of course, only one possible point of view. There are more innovative points of view that I would have expected a venture capitalist, as a taker of risks in the name of innovation, to articulate and embrace.

My essay on Wireless Civic and Economic Development is an example of such another point of view. It supports the new joke going around: Hi! I'm from the private sector, and I am here to help you.

I have been engaged in an extended email conversation with a consultant who has also been articulating Keane's point of view. He and I have found a number of common areas of agreement. A key one is the need to strongly separate the transport of bits from the provisioning of services and content. Once we accept this premise, we move on to the fact that the supply of bits is infinite and the hauling of them is a very small margin business. Clearly, with a robust municipal wireless infrastructure, a for-profit service and content provider is no longer required to be engaged in bit hauling as a necessary component of its business plan.

Thus Comcast, Verizon et al should be thankful that they can use lower cost municipal bit hauling and off load, "Outsource" if you prefer, a very low margin operation they no longer need to burden themselves with. They do not build roads for their trucks -- they out source that to the public sector. They do not pay tolls to use roads either.

By shedding a very low margin sector of their operations, Comcast & Verizon can improve their profits. So Municpal Wireless Networks are, in fact, fair, reasonable and democratic. They also support a healthy market place, which, I am sure you will agree, is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for a robust, democratic, civil society in which the market serves humanity.

In this scenario, it would be logical for the for-profit vendors of services and content to work with the public sector to insure the most extra-ordinary municipal wireless outcomes possible.

Consider, also, that most models for municipal wireless plan to offer several tiers of service. The entry level tier may be for free, but the others will charge progressively higher fees. It is assumed that the government, which can support long time horizons that the market can not, will only provide bit transport and e-government. All other services and content will be provided by others as they see fit -- many on a for-profit business basis. VoIP, for example, is not free. I actually pay two VoIP service providers.

While Keane writes that he is quite happy with his badly over priced connection, on a cost per Mbps per month when compared to international prices, I am not. The current providers stifle innovation with their grossly inflated fee structures while at the same time driving the city of Boston deeper into the depths of the Charles River in terms of the International Digital Divide. Why would any modern company move to Boston with its approximately $9 per Mbps fees when they can move to locations which are charging $1, or less, for the same commodity bit transport?

While there are many other arguments on the topic of Municipal Wireless that could be discussed, I will only mention two more.

1] The technology for always on, ubiquitous, wireless connectivity is now able to move into the home in such ways that we must now talk about the First Mile Out from the homes of citizens. These modern 21st century citizens are fully, and all of, producers and distributors of their own content as well as consumers. The old business model of the last mile in to the home, occupied by a one dimensional, Pavlovian consumer, blinds people to the new opportunities and realities. Take a look at Apple's iLife suit. It is moving the printing press, the radio station, the TV station, the movie studio, the photo studio and more out of the old center and into the home on the edge of the network.

2] As you know, the PC revolution was fueled by individual decisions, freely made, to upgrade their personal equipment every three years or so for about another $3,000. This demonstrated the great economic power of leveraging end-user capital. To stimulate economic activity today, we need to find new ways to motivate individuals to voluntarily invest their capital in improving their personal communications infrastructure to better their personal situations. This requires that we give the citizens at the edges of the network the full power of choice to be effective producers, distributors and consumers. I suggest that a first mile out model, based on strong mesh networking at the edges, is the best way to do this.

I note, however, that the incumbents currently insist that consumers sign agreements preventing this powerful engine for economic growth from even starting: No sharing of end point connectivity. Comcast & Verizon make mesh networking at the edges illegal. As such, they stifle communications innovation and new economic activities that would strengthen our economy and spawn new clients for Keane's VC firm.

Now we can understand that only a municipal wireless network can fully support powerful mesh networking at the edges. Why? Simply because they are providing the best possible bit transport as a civic benefit and are not required by "The Street" to deliver Ponzi-like rates of return every 90 days. The upside is that the cost of the tolls on the bit paths to the private sector's for-profit offerings are no longer barriers to getting there. Consequently, the private sector, leveraging free, or very low cost bit paths, will be able to offer innovative new products and services no longer constrained by the Tiny Band offering of the current incumbents.

Tiny Band? Reality is said to be 40 Gbps of symmetrical connectivity. 10% would be 4 Gbps. 1% would be 400 Mbps. Broadband starts at 1% of reality: 400 symmetrical Mbps. Thus Comcast's best offering of up to 8 Mbps of asymmetrical bandwidth is really no more than Tiny Band.

Sandoval County, NM, on the other hand, is starting at a county-wide symmetrical 100 Mbps capable infrastructure. Soon to move to 1 Gbps. I can happily report that their economic development office is thrilled by the private sector's response to their initial 100 Mpbs municipal wireless offering.

Can Boston afford to do less?

Can the government, contrary to Keane's assertions, actually create value for civil society and its attendant market place? History is rich with examples that prove that it can and often does.

I was once from the government. In 1994 I was one of the team leaders of the project that put the White House on the Internet. The Internet was an innovation that only the government was able to sustain the development of over several decades. The private sector, with its time horizons constrained by the demands of the market's 90 day number, could not, would not and did not create the Internet. I suspect Keane's VC firm has made a great deal of money, thanks to the government's investment in, and development of, the Internet as a public good in a civil society.

In the end, Keane's commentary does not stand up to either close inspection or the historical record.

Mammon, masquerading as "The Market", is a false prophet

Why have we not heard of the 300,000 to 500,000 people who demonstrated in Chicago on Friday?

"300,000 to 500,000 people marched in Chicago to protest The Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005."

Or this major development:

"Now comes the conservative American Bar Association--400,000 lawyers--whose House of Delegates has overwhelmingly approved a task force report accusing President Bush, in polite legal language, of violating both the Constitution and federal law. ABA President Michael S. Greco sent it to Mr. Bush with a cover letter dated February 13, 2006." -- Ralph Nader.

Why is the Mainstream Media [MSM] failing to report these stories? Google these stories and you will see that the MSM are missing in action. A conspiracy of silence.

Is it because they fear the restoration of the primacy of the people over Mammon's market?

It is clear once again that the proposition that the "market" is the best, if not only, solution for all problems is false. Just as in the “Roaring 20s,” Mammon'sMarket has, in fact, created one train wreck after another: healthcare, the environment, education, international relations, the middle class, justice as fairness, social equality, the rule of law, our Constitutional civil liberties, -- you name it. Our Civic and Economic viability and health are in deep trouble as a consequence.

The question is simply this: Is the market meant to serve humanity or is humanity meant to serve the market?

Mammon will always answer that we are the servants of the market. We have now tried Mammon's corporatist approach since 1980. After more than a quarter century, it is manifestly emerging as a massive failure, as it always has and always will.

A significant consequence of accepting Mammon's argument is that it replaces the functions of government with the operations, short time horizons, and metrics of the market. Dick Cheney's quip in the 2000 VP debate that "the government had nothing to do with his success" is a pure example of Mammon's value proposition. Government is incompetent and bad. The Market is supremely competent and good.

The British gave into Mammon even earlier: The policies of Margaret Thatcher, and earlier, in the 1960s, The Mayfair Set, including David Stirling, Jim Slater, James Goldsmith, and Tiny Rowland, rapacious take over con men who corrupted British political ethics and sold off England's Industrial assets for Mammon's short term profit imperative.

Until we once again assert the primacy of citizens over the market, and thus the validity of government's role in human affairs, we will remain in the thrall of Mammon's false prophecy. This can only lead to our demise, just as it did last century with the great market crash of Black Friday in 1929.

Can we afford another unregulated market inspired economic crash?

The false prophet Mammon sets up an equally false dichotomy: The Market or The Commons. From this, Mammon creates the tautological arguments that have powered the radical right and their corporatist paymasters for the past 25 years. At root, this is their attack on FDR's politics that clearly gave citizens primacy over the market. This attack on FDR was exactly the mission that the National Association of Manufacturers gave to Eddie Bernays in the 1930s. Bernays was Mammon's genius hand maiden. His successor and disciple, Karl Rove, is the same.

This is NOT to say that we do not need a market. We do. But one clearly and firmly dedicated to the service of all humanity: A market that respects and encourages the public good as its essential partner in sustaining both civic and economic well being.

When will the Democratic party wake up and reject Mammon? When will the Democrats declare the obvious: The market is not sufficient for civic and economic health and well being. It is necessary, but not sufficient.

The truth can only be found in the synthesis of and/both: The Commons and the Market: The citizens with primacy over the market but respectful of it, as they recognize and value its essential and necessary role.

I look forward to a political leader who will articulate this as the basis for claiming a brighter future for all of us: An extraordinary future full of promise, opportunity, and innovation.

The New Energy Frontier: Biofuels

New Hampshire Public Radio's The Exchange program, hosted by Laura Knoy, devoted a program to the topic: Figuring Out Bio-Fuel.

The 4 minute section on Grass Energy starts 42:28 into the show, which you can download or listen to from their site.

Here is some additional material on Grass Energy that adds to the material in the 4 minute interview.

Grass Energy is a tested and proven technology. In Canada, grass pellets have already been used experimentally for home heating. Burning grass for energy has been a well-accepted technology in Europe for decades.

As I was able to say on the air, we have years of experience with growing grass and pelletizing it - especially as an animal feed. The missing link in the Grass Energy chain has been a ready supply of commercially produced stoves, designed to burn high ash fuels such as grass, for the retail market. The missing link is about to fall into place.

The very good news is that we expect at least three major stove manufactures to announce new high ash capable stoves at the Hearth, Patio & Barbecue Expo in Salt Lake City, March 9 - 11.

Latter this year, we are also expecting the availability of stoker grate options for out door furnaces. Now these units will also be able to use clean burning Grass Energy - no more problems with smoke blowing into neighbors' living rooms.

These new stoves and grates are multi-fuel solutions that will give the user the ability to select the fuel of their choice based on factors such as: availability, price, and convenience. Given recent experiences with pellet fuel pricing and availability, these multi-fuel stoves will give consumers much needed confidence that reasonably priced fuel will always be available for their heating needs.

The introduction this year of these new and highly efficient stoves means that the 2006 - 2007 heating season will be the first heating season in which Grass Energy makes a significant contribution in the United States.

Research by Prof Jerry Cherney of Cornell university has shown that grass, a superb collector of solar energy, can be made into Grass Energy Pellets that have 90+% of the energy content of a premium, low ash, wood pellet. Unlike wood pellets, which are dependent upon a static to shrinking supply of sawdust as their feed-stock, Grass Energy has a tremendous untapped reserve of annually renewable feed-stock resources. For example, there are over 39 million acres are in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). We are paying farmers not to farm these acres. Why not turn them into Grass Energy producing acres that earn the farmers an income and at the same time reduce the burden on the tax payers by elimination the CRP subsidy as fully as possible?

Given the abundant and under utilized supply of raw materials, the challenge this year will be to fill the Grass Energy supply chain, not to keep it filled.

As we move further into the new energy frontier, here is a list of 6 key developments we can expect:

1] We will shift from a few, inefficient, centralized power plants to millions of small, 90% efficient, decentralized mirco-CHP internet appliances;

2] The electrical grid changes from power supply to back battery;

3] Our economy will change from fossil fuels to renewable biofuels such as Grass Energy;

4] Citizens will change from passive consumers of power to active producers, sellers and buyers of power produced in their basements;

5] We will stop exporting energy dollars and will keep our energy dollars in America to build and strengthen our local communities and economies;

6] A few jobs created in a few states building centralized plants will become many jobs, in all states, building, installing, servicing, fueling 50 million micro-CHP units [50% of US residential housing stock]

For more information on Grass Energy, the 41 page Grass Energy working paper is available here.

In February 2006, Roger Samson gave an excellent one hour over-view of Grass Energy, Switchgrass Energy Revolution, at the Frontier Centre in Manitoba, Canada.

The Grass Energy Collaborative
Grass is Greener

Wireless Civic and Economic Development

Wireless Civic and Economic Development
for our New Internet Economy

As more and more cities, towns and counties initiate projects to provide a dynamic, wireless, communications platform for forward looking civic and economic development, it is also important to reflect on the question below:

Who is the intended beneficiary of an un-metered wireless communications commons? The people or the corporations? The answer is that robust development benefits both, just as public education, public highways and public safety do.

Thus the people should expect the best possible un-metered communications commons for economic development, education, health, public safety and government services that their government can provide them. This is, after all, the proper and reasonable role of a democratic government for, of, and by we, the people.

Please note that I say un-metered communications commons, in the same vein as the un-metered transportation commons we take for granted. Or un-metered public education, street lights, trash removal, fire and police public safety services etc.

I do not suggest that the government provide services or content, other than its own, to the citizens it serves.

Thus my key question is this: Will expanding municipal wireless projects all around the country strive to provide their citizens with the very best communications commons we know how to build today? Will we create the strongest possible platforms for our future civic and economic development?

Will municipal wireless projects be state-of-the-art with core features such as:

1]100 Mbps of symmetrical access to the Internet at a retail price of less than $1 per month per Mbps;

2] Local loops with local Internet exchange points (IX) based on the National Lambda Rail (NLR).

3] Fully routable IPv6 static internet addresses for the full, end-to-end, Internet experience possible today and required for advanced collaborative applications.

4] A distributed architecture that minimizes central dependencies.

The cost of connecting all of the aggregated demand from many end users to the main internet, back haul, has to be kept as low as possible. Local loops in communities to keep traffic local, combined with Exchange Points, combined with the economies of scale that reduce the cost per Mbps achieved by connecting to the NLR, combined with municipal buying co-ops, can significantly reduce these “back haul” costs.

In the past, connection to the high speed backbones was only available to educational institutions. Today, the NLR is accepting commercial and other connections as well. If the costs per Mbps per month can be driven low enough, the metering of bit traffic might become more expensive than the costs. Bits to cheap to meter has to be a goal.

The Olla Grande project, in Sandoval County, New Mexico, currently ahead of schedule and under budget, is working even now to implement these core features.

If we now fail to deliver the very best to our peers, then shame on us. If we succeed, then perhaps we will spur the incumbents, telecos and cable companies, to deliver an even higher standard of connectivity, services, and content -- to deliver, at long last, on the $200 Billion dollar promise to deliver fiber to our homes they made 10 years ago. This would be the best outcome: the creation of a national development platform greater than the sum of its Public Commons and Corporate parts.

Horrendous Publication

By: Dr. Farooq Hassan
Published in The Nation

Barely seven months ago a number of leading American TV evangelists had some highly derogatory comments about the Prophet of Islam (pbuh). A leading Republican Party supporter of this category, referred to the Prophet as a 'terrorist'. The Muslims, the world over, were deeply offended. The Islamic populations protested as did their governments but as expected in a most respectful manner. In the wake of 9/11 it was considered to let this perfidy pass. Even the Government of Pakistan, conceivably the most important Islamic country, did not seriously protest to any one. Emboldened by the muted reaction of the Islamic world to such heinous moral invasions of the Muslim Faith this new found technique of hurting the Muslims has now emanated from Europe. This time a Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten has done so again. It came out with posters depicting the Prophet of Islam in a light that is unspeakable in a shocking affront to any civilised decent person in the international civil society so called.

It is reported that both the OIC and the Arab League are holding some kind of Executive Session to chalk out some strategy to lodge protest with the Danish authorities. What that means I cannot foretell. But if all that is designed to accomplish is to merely apprise the Danish Authorities that such publications are deeply offensive to the Muslims feelings, I am afraid it misses the point. Such routine diplomatic rumblings are taken in stride and really accomplish nothing. Already worldwide demonstrations by the people at large in the Islamic world have made this point abundantly clear.

Read the full essay here.

Religion & Islamic Extremism: Impact in South Asia

Dr. Farooq Hassan [1]

Brief thematic synopsis of Address given to
The Center for Society & Secularism, the Vikas Adhyayan Kendra and
The Pius College Seminary
Mumbai 29 October 2005

Religion has been a dominant factor in determining the history of the people’s of South Asia. It still continues to be the case. Today this region has several countries representing a diversity of faiths. Out of these countries, Pakistan was created, at least in an historical context, on the solitary basis of religion. Yet, despite this fact pertaining to the doctrinaire basis of the country in 1971, it was torn asunder by the political aspirations of the people of East Pakistan. At the same time, India, the world’s largest successful democracy, has had to face up to this phenomenon numerous times - sometimes with tragic consequences. More recently, even in Bangladesh, created on solid secular foundations, there are signs of emergent nuances of Islamic extremism.

At times it is very hard to distinguish between seemingly ethnic conflicts and more deeply held religious controversies. Generally, the minorities have had to face the brunt of unpleasant implications. But this is not invariable. Both in India and Pakistan, Hindus and Muslims have respectively suffered the effects of sectarian turmoil at the hands of their own followers of the same faith. A question thus naturally arises: does religion assume a secondary role of importance if political necessities of a given time, as perceived, are considered more urgent for redressal even at its expense? This realization is based on empiricism. Effects of far reaching significance affecting the geo-strategic realities of this region have been witnessed to occur presumably on such a foundation. Or, conversely, is the real question that religion is primarily used initially as a cloak or cover for wider political aspirations of the “relevant” people? If it is indeed so, then the enormity of the dynamics of the religion factor is evident. In sum, whether or not religion per se is the initiator of change, it continues be to a major matter propelling alterations of the status quo.

Most of the major religions of the world are present in South Asia, including hundreds of millions of Hindus and Muslims; this region also has a very large numbers Christians, Buddhists and even Jewish people. In addition, there exist several scores of other faiths in the peripheral areas of the main land mass of this vast and diversified sub continent, each possessing hundreds of thousands of adherents. While Pakistan was created on the basis of providing home land for Muslims, there still remain more Muslims in India.

Amongst the followers of these regions, some have ardently advocated frequently certain perspectives held in high esteem by them with emphasis. For some the effects of such partisanship are confined to their own locales. For others, such effects are of much wider application. [2] The emphatic focus envisaging changes of the status quo by such religious activists is often at variance with the thoughts of those constituting a majority. But hard liners often have an ascendant position in such controversies.

Over centuries, despite these sociological cum political differences, there was generally an overt appearance of acceptance of each others perspectives. Absence of homogeneity in the basic dogmas of diverse faiths was not by itself a major insurmountable hurdle for creating a healthy society of a pluralistic nature. Indeed, there existed pari passu with such discordant avocations a great deal of harmony in the Indian society.

It is my view that, in the wake of different political currents of ideology emanating from essentially non Sub Continental European and Western powers during the last century, the seeds of communal discord gradually appeared in South Asia. The fact of a difference in religion amongst very extensive populations was played up by skillful, vested, interests. This resulted in the creation of still more acrimony as the last century moved gradually towards the present day international infrastructure of modern times. Not surprisingly, therefore, the two most populous countries of South Asia, India and Pakistan, have seen regrettable acrimony of religious intolerance even after they separated to become sovereign countries at great human costs.

In Pakistan, there has been indeed serious sectarian violence between different sects of Muslims themselves. In India, too, there has been witnessed intra-faith discord involving Hindus, Muslims and even Christians. This analysis attempts to point out the extent of the conceptual impact of such religious pursuits have with the corresponding affects on the body politic and the public philosophy of the day.

I have already advanced my major conclusions on the broader theme of this subject in my accompanying talk today to the Indian Center for Society and Secularism entitled: “Islam & Extremism” (Now available on the net on the Greater Democracy site). What remains to be examined with a sharper focus is the impact of this phenomenon in South Asia; given my own familiarity, I will focus basically on Islamic issues in this presentation.

This audience, I am particularly happy to note, is a gathering of truly an inter faith variety. I see that this function is being held in a Christian seminary of great antiquity in the historic city of Mumbai. Also present amongst the sponsors of this event are the members of the Vikas Adhyayan Kendra, which is dedicated to promote religious harmony based on egalitarian principles of democracy and tolerance. I thank its Executive Director, Mr. Ajit Muricken, who has written enormously on the subject of religious harmony in India for being here this afternoon. Finally, we have amongst us the supporters of the Indian Center of Society of and Secularism which aims to achieve in the multi-religious Indian environment the attainment of the goal of a dignified civil society through the process of secularism. Its esteemed Chairman, Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer, is presen. His scholarship in Islamic learning stands on a pedestal of its own in this country and abroad. [3]

I may add that “secularism” has been variously interpreted in constitutional terms vis-à-vis its political connotations. One of the main authors in this field in the Sub Continent, Dr. Engineer, who is present today at this function, has described [4] this as an “attitude of respect for other religions" and has been summarized in the often quoted Hindu maxims “sarva dharma samabhava.” For my present analysis, this description, rather than a definition of secularism would do - as it is not necessary presently to delve into a number of controversial aspects of what this concept really envisages in constitutional law and in sociology.

There is no gainsaying the fact that the most notable manifestation of the religious phenomenon in the Sub Continent is the political divide of this region when Pakistan was carved out of British India as an autonomous country. For the first time in modern history, a country was created on the basis of a religion alone. It was almost a year later, in 1948, that the State of Israel emerged as a Jewish homeland in the Middle East becoming the second country to be so created by conferences and international diplomacy.

Thus, long before the contemporary controversy regarding the place of religion in a modern state, or that of the concepts and contours of religious extremism arose in its present form, the British Government, by lending a helping hand in the creation of both Pakistan and Israel, had demonstrated what it felt on such crucial issues. The British thinking, initially contained in the Balfour Declaration of 1916, was further solidified in its basic thematic content by the Cabinet Mission to India and the Mountbatten Plan of 3 March, 1947 regarding the independence and eventual division of India. These political ideas were carried into effect by the British through the then international community, consisting of just 55 Member Nations of the UN, to endorse and adopt the creation of new countries on religious basis alone.

The breakup of Pakistan in 1971, leading to the creation of Bangladesh, establishes that religion was not sufficient by itself to maintain the homogeneity of the country. Indeed, within Pakistan, it is still unclear whether the establishment of a separate homeland for Muslims also signified the creation of an Islamic state. Furthermore, what exactly is an “Islamic State” is far from a settled question. [5]

Given the political realities of the present millennium, such precedents may not be repeated for decades to come in the history of the world. Such an attitudinal metamorphosis is now manifestly evident. Contemporary de facto bashing of such ideas by the foreign policies of the Western states that matter is now beyond question. It has clear implications that over-indulgence of religion in an international context is not something to be lightly countenanced in future by the policies of significant Western powers. [6]

The policy to which I refer has been heavily underscored by the recent events in Afghanistan and Iran. In the former case, the Taliban regime, based on purely Islamic postulates, was overthrown by the U.S. led war, while the political cum strategic tensions against the Islamic Republic of Iran underscore this perspective as an illustration of the latter scenario articulated above. It is possible that, fearing this kind of a resultant turmoil in Pakistan, General Musharraf keeps on harping upon “moderate Islam” being the policies of the Islamabad military regime. This rhetorical repetition is as much an act of self preservation for an unelected ruler as it is to placate his newly found Western friends. Be that as it may, it is clear that a State based entirely, or mainly, on religious avocations is not likely to have many supporters in any significant Western Capital.

In South Asia, not merely religion, but ethnic antagonism based on historical acrimony, have compounded the tensions that have sadly been the cause of much friction. In Sri Lanka as well as in former East Pakistan, for instance, it was ethnic diversity and apparent exploitation (both economic and political) of a large segment of the society, which produced consequences of far reaching significance. Similarly events which led to the storming of the Golden Temple in the early seventies were predicated on similar aspirations of those that felt “afflicted” by those in authority. Thus hegemonic treatment within a state by those who posses the de facto elements of power vis-à-vis the disprivileged ones is also a malaise capable of producing deadly consequences.

I am very familiar with this phenomenon. In 1980, I was amongst six international jurists selected by UNESCO to frame the Third Generation of human rights. The right I outlined, “the right to be different”, was officially recognized in Mexico City in 1980 by the UN. It deals specifically with this problem. [7]

The minimum conceptual consequence that clearly emerges from this reality is that willingly, or by device, the continued presence of a state of “injustice” to a community, often by the majority, is the catalyst for eventual violence for change. [8] Stretched further, the hegemonic policies of foreign powers, whether real or perceived, gives rise to acts of extremism and terrorism. [9] In a broader sense, this is as true, in my view, of domestic South Asian events that have been noted above, as much as it is for international matters of grave significance affecting this region. For instance, the East Pakistan embroiled situation in 1971, or the current insurgency in Afghanistan, or Iraq, are directly the result of such perceptions and feelings. “Nationalists” naturally contest the external controls placed on their “independence” by domestic elements, or by governments emanating from abroad, and dominating them by presenting such fiats of and from outsiders. There is little doubt in my mind that “democracies” produced by armies, whether domestic or foreign, cannot easily succeed.

In this charged atmosphere, nationalism has assumed tremendous force. It is axiomatic that the emergence of this basic characteristic throughout the world is an addendum to the Age of Industrialism and Western expansion that led to colonialism in the 19th century. All serious analysts must surely realize this simple fact of history. Just as the industrialized West needed colonial possessions for it successful existence, nationalism dictates that foreign imposed rulers, howsoever beneficial they may actually be, be prevented from now arising. It is equally a truism that to not expect opposition to such a status quo by the affected people is utterly unrealistic.

In South Asia in addition, we have at the Government level a remarkable spectrum of different practices. India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka possess, despite cultural and systemic difficulties, representative institutions. Pakistan and Nepal, on the other hand, demonstrate the existence of military or authoritarian regimes which have a token or face saving pretense of being democratic. When this perversity is examined in a particularly a religious environment, autocratic regimes have a great deal to lose. Fascism, as such, is truly and historically allergic to any Faith. It is thus not surprising that Communism was always averse to any religion. Notwithstanding the different systems of government in various counties of South Asia, the presence of religion as a factor of great strength, with a potential for decisive change in the society, remains in tact.

While the topic of religious extremism is evidently vast and important in countries of South Asia, I am mainly concerned today in this analysis with the effects pertaining to Islam and Muslims. This topic has been in the center of all reverberating news, and developments manifestly impacting the foreign policies of states of great significance since 9/11. But, as I have said enough on this theme in my other accompanying article, nothing further need be noted here except its impact in the South Asian context.

The relationship of reason and faith requires a close examination. In terms of human values, one really cannot be understood by itself, without reference to the other.  We should also understand that religion and faith are inseparable, as the former derives from it validity via a norm of acceptance and consequential obedience to its core fundamentals. But once the initial dogma part of faith is traveled, the rest must surely be supported by reason. As such, it is only prudent to suggest that, while faiths of all types need to be respected, reason too should be utilized more extensively whenever it is so felt. This would lead to an over all more tolerant society. The underlying troubles of a sociological nature arise from an inability of contemporary political leadership to grasp such conceptual and historical niceties.

While the institutional part of the Faith may be dogmatic, there is a large reservoir of human addendum to it which must be:-

(1) In harmony with the divine mandate of the relevant religion, and
(2) It must, a fortiori, admit of change according to evolution and development.

Every Faith has a system of values and each prospers according to this accepted characteristic as such. In this context, changing hegemonic relationships and information technology are defining elements. Large populations in the Third World, particularly those of the Muslims, find it increasingly difficult that this process of “modernization” is gradually eroding their identity. The comprehensive Western hegemony in the cultural domain is producing this identity crisis among religious and cultural communities in South Asia, and much more so among Muslim communities. Thus, lack of cultural affinity with contemporary movements is another reason for much of South Asian anxiety against the perceived hegemony of the West. The recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have, in the short term, heightened these fears and apprehensions rather than toning them down.

In South Asia, as elsewhere, the religious rituals observed by Muslims are usually influenced by both history and local customs. It is also important to note that, though values and rituals are common to all religions, the former are really the cultural expression of the communities in which Muslims have lived for generations. As rituals are essentially the product of local custom, it is not surprising that Muslims in South Asia are largely influenced by local norms of behaviour of the Hindus. For such similarities to be accepted gracefully requires an attitude which is difficult to locate nowadays in quarters it should be vested in order to create a religious and communally harmonious atmosphere.

On most social issues, Muslims in Pakistan, for instance, have more in common with the Indian populations, regardless of religion, than with the Arabs or with the North Africa Muslim communities. Indeed, some Hindu social observances are observed with greater passion in Pakistan than even in India! [10] Such actual practice of local cultural practices of the dominant, or historical majority, has become, of late, not unnaturally, the cause of some friction. Even observances of minority cultural or religious practices has not failed to arouse local disharmony. [11]

Conclusions

This brief thematic expose has focused on specific issues of religious extremism in South Asia. In Pakistan, there is visible strife between Islamic sects, leading often to bloodbaths in mosques, of all places. This strife is recently also seen to arise in Bangladesh as well. In India too, despite its many successes in being a successful representative society, since many decades of regrettably tragic events of a communal variety have surfaced. Communal disturbances associated with the demolition of the Babri Mosque, and the more recent riots in Ahmedabad, are typical illustrations of such religious and societal discord.

It establishes that misplaced and demonstrative religious zeal, at times resulting in violence, is not totally under control of any government in this region; rational elements, however, are working hard to avoid the eruption of tragedies of horrifying magnitude. All prudent elements, individuals and institutions, must work to avoid these consequences. Some sceptics even maintain that the governments at the relevant times in different countries are conceivably involved in such terrible occurrences. [12] I am of the view that, while some evidence is available to justify such fears, on the whole, saner institutions and wiser elements in the overall structure of administration are at work to avoid such tragedies from erupting.

In line with these articulations, it is equally evident that similar developments on the basis of religion are taking shape in the rest of the world as well. It is clear therefore, that, not only in the South Asian context, but the world over, there is clearly, per se, a renaissance of religion. The more fervent this renaissance, arguably the more pronounced are its consequences and implications, including a corresponding reaction by those who feel threatened.

This phenomenon, according to some particularly foreign experts of American policies, is also noticeable in the U.S. itself. The strong showing in the last presidential elections, and the polling patterns, have established the manifest Bible belt support that President Bush obtained, compared to voting in the major urban civic centres. As cities like Los Angles, Boston or New York are representative of liberal attitudes, it is not surprising that they are apparently against him on the point of his adoption of a strong pro-war foreign policy. [13]

The U.S. emerged as the solitary World Power after the disintegration of the USSR in the late eighties. It is axiomatic that any major decision that Washington takes has genuine transnational effects and implications. What worldwide implications are likely to arise as result of a pursuit of Bush administration policies is, not as yet, clear as the purest might wish for. What political and strategic goals and aims have been achieved by the U.S. thus far, however, are still to be objectively evaluated. I am not going to go into this question as I am only concerned in this address with the effects of religious extremism in the Sub-Continent. But this much is clear to me: If, despite the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Washington does not take steps to ensure the creation of “true democracy” in countries other than India in South Asia, much that President Bush went to war for will be lost .

Communal and religiously based political activity operates at different levels. Its objective is to destroy the basic foundations of a pluralistic society. Why? Since it itself derives its dynamics on the basis of a monolithic elite. In military regimes, this corps of elites exists in the combined vested interests of the army and the feudal. In religiously led societies, this elitist element is epitomized by Mullahs and other kind of priestly classes. Since this aim is not easy to realize expeditiously, the process to obtain these goals is by a slow percolation and propagation of the social norms which suit the relevant society. In some ways, this phenomenon is found in all South Asian cultures. The only positive way to challenge this process is by producing a genuine participatory democracy.

Let me end these submissions by referring briefly to the ultimate goal of all religions. A genuinely religious human being, irrespective of his precise faith, should be devoted to freedom of person, freedom of conscience and compassion for all needing his care and assistance. Such a religious person invariably strives for truth and justice. In this respect, my detailed reference to the Islamic concepts of iman and adl (Faith and Justice) in my longer presentation needs to be properly comprehended. 

All religions basically advocate morality, tolerance and decency. Without such traits, they could not have survived for centuries. Where events take a course other than that of peace and harmony is when supervening factors and events outlined in detail in my longer text occur. As Mahatma Ghandi said, there is no religion higher than truth. Let us pursue this objective as it assures ultimate righteousness of human conduct.

The religious leadership of diverse institutions and parties in all South Asian countries must be vigilant against such possibilities that can create and have, with increasing velocity, caused tremendous damage to the multi-ethnic and multi-religious culture of the Sub Continent. It is also a phenomenon of current political evolution that religious based political parties are becoming tangible national or regional forces in their respective environments and societies. The great rise to political power of MMA in Pakistan and of BJP in India are the best examples of this trend. The real and perceived political and social victimization of some religious elements has created “extremism”. This situation must be attended to at the earliest, with respect to its causation, to prevent the deterioration of the law and order situation in these societies.

In any pluralistic society, the attainment of democracy, based of consensus and accommodation, is, in my view, the real, and ultimate only, end which can produce the desired results. India’s success in realizing this goal is, without question, a formidable achievement. True, it has still many socio-religious troubles, as evident from attacks such as those on the Bhandarkar Institute in Pune. But the wider reservoir of goodwill contained in its major state instruments of resolution of disputes, such as its judiciary, are still the best surety to proceed further in this regards.

Let me end this talk by bringing to your notice a unique consequence in the Sub Continent with respect to pursuit of religious bigotry in political or social affairs. Whereas terrorism is the normal result in such scenarios elsewhere, in the Sub-Continent the threat is of straight forward vandalism. In all major occurrences of this nature there is evidence of large scale destruction by mobs or gangs of a particular persuasion to achieve their avowed aims. The time has come for policymakers to devise appropriate modalities to combat this menace.

Clearly, a manifest attempt to achieve inter communal harmony is presently required. In all societies possessing multi-faith populations such a healthy evolution of attitudes would be invaluable. In a visionary spirit of looking at such matters, if inter-faith deliberations can occur, so much the better. It is imperative that in such a cultural attitudinal metamorphosis, past inter se grievances have to be over looked and focus should be on future betterment of the religious diversity. In more ways than one, the South Asian experiences on this subject have a tremendous role model potential. We have been victims of extraordinary religious bigotry and intolerance over a long time. We know too well how this has led to the most baneful consequences. I can only hope that, with a growing awareness of the immense benefits of peace and harmony, the time has arrived for turning a new leaf of history.

In this context, I am particularly keen to express my highest appreciation for my hosts, each of whom have done their share in contributing to this message of mine. The Center for Society & Secularism and the Vikas Adhyayan Kendra are leaders in this field. They have, to their credit, both vast publications and many activities devoted towards this goal. The Pius College Seminary is, likewise, an institution with a tradition of creating the kind of harmony which distinguishes a culture of toleration.

Thank you all!

Endnotes:

[1] D.Phil.; B A Juris, MA. M.Litt, (Oxon), DCL (Columbia), DIA (Harvard), Of Lincoln’s Inn, Barrister at Law, UK, Attorney at Law, US, Senior Advocate Supreme Court (QC) of Pakistan; Affiliate & Visiting Professor of International Affairs, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, Special UN Ambassador for Family for the World Family Alliance, Advisor to four Prime Ministers of Pakistan on Law & Foreign Affairs; Delegate to the UN, NY, & to the Human Rights Commission on Human Rights & to the Sub-Commission on Human Rights, Geneva, Leader of Pakistan’s Delegation to the International Criminal Court Prep Coms., NY & Delegate to UN GA Sessions. Also, inter alia, on the Faculty of Law, Human Rights Program, Harvard University, Faculty of Political Science, Tufts University, the Secretary General, American Asian Institute of Strategic Studies, Boston. International Legal Counsel before transnational Tribunals & US Congress. David M Kennedy Scholar of International Studies, Kennedy Center, BYU 2003-4, distinguished Visiting Professor JNU, Memorial Lecturer at Benaras Hindu University, Mumbai University &Ambadkar Center, Auranagbad, 2004-5 ;President, Pakistan Family Forum, Chairman, Foreign Affairs Committee, Pakistan Bar Association at Lahore, 2003/4. Given King Faisal Memorial Award, 2002 and awarded in 2003 the International Professor of Human Rights Recognition from a galaxy of international professor by Saudi Arabia.

[2] The Islamic concept of Ummah connotes a world wide application of Muslim norms to all of Islamic peoples.

[3] Conferred the Right to Livelihood Awarded by Parliament of Sweden, 2004.

[4] See: Religion, State & Civil Society, p 2, 2005, Asghar Ali Engineer

[5] See the two works of the author: Farooq Hassan , The Islamic Republic, 1984 and The Concept of State in & Law in Islam , 1981 University Press of America, Washington DC.

[6] The policies of the Republican Present Reagan in supporting and eulogizing the Jihadist elements in Afghanistan against the USSR have been utterly reversed by another Republican President George W. Bush since 9/11.

[7] See UNSCO Doc.SS-80/CONF, 806/COL.7 (1980). Also Final Report SS-80/CONF. 806/COL.7 at 22 The Right to be Different., Dr. Farooq Hassan.

[8] Ironically, it was the East Pakistan majority province that felt afflicted by the minority Provinces of West Pakistan on account of the clear Establishment bias against it.

[9] According to one view that is what is in evidence in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

[10] For instance the kite flying festival of Basant announcing the arrival of Spring is observed with tremendous fanfare in Pakistan despite strong opposition to it from religious elements.

[11] In Pakistan where the majority is of the Sunni faith, the taking of Tazia, a practice of the minority Shiites to commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Hussian, is not free from local disharmony or law and order situations.

[12] See e.g. Lessons from Gujarat, a Compilation of Essays, Mumbai, 2003,

[13] Engineer, op cit says: “Bush mainly relied on issues like danger of terrorism on the one hand, and Christian values and family values on the other” to push for “the propaganda that American right wing Christian politics (are needed) to enhance its security,” P 244-245.

 

Combined Heat & Power

The Convergence of Microprocessors, Sensors, Communications & CHP
Distributed Solutions for Distributed Problems

Vision:

To create a comprehensive systems view of grass in applications ranging from Heat, Power, Nutrient Management, Open Fields & Landscape Preservation, as well as a sustainable, integrated, grass and wood bio-energy strategy that promotes energy independence and security.

Problem Statement:

Fossil fuel prices are being driven upwards by a growing divergence between demand and supply, possibly complicated by “Peak Oil”;

The U.S. can no longer afford the luxury of fossil fuels that have a negative net energy return on total energy inputs required for their production;

Reliance on insecure and vulnerable foreign fossil fuel supplies constrains U.S. foreign policy options and exposes the U.S. economy to risky disruptions and distortions;

Burning fossil fuels releases sequestered carbon into an already overburdened atmosphere;

Centralized generating plants create single points of failure - a Homeland Security issue;

The U.S. economy can no longer afford power plants operating below 67% efficiency - 49% of US electricity is made by burning coal at less than 35% efficiency;

If you would like a PDF file of the current draft of the 40 page the working paper "A Scenario for Grass in New England", please send me a note asking for it. This paper has lead to the formation of the New England Grass Pellet Collaborative, Inc., a new non profit corporation registered in the state of Vermont. The Collaborative will be sponsoring the Green Valley Grass Pellet Project of 2006. Shelburne Farms will be an active participant and has graciously agreed to host the project.

Net Energy Realized:

A key metric for biofuels is the net energy gain they represent after allowing for all of the energy inputs required to produce them. Grass appears to offer the best return on energy invested to produce it: 12:1 according to R.E.A.P. Canada. Biodiesel has been rated as high 3.2:1 but is now generally rated closer to 2:1 . On the other hand, ethanol made from corn in North America, according to the Wikipedia (Minnesota Department of Agriculture), offers 1.34:1 return on the energy investment. This raises a question as to why research on ethanol from corn is currently receiving the lion’s share of U.S. Government research dollars for dedicated energy crops. One possibility is that a premium is associated with a liquid bio-fuel.

It is suggested that Net Energy must be balanced with the Application Value of the biofuel produced. It should be further noted that agricultural subsidies have distorted the choice of input stocks for making biofuels. Research may well identify a bioethanol feed stock with a much better net energy value than corn. Soybeans may not, in fact, be the optimal input stock for biodiesel. Industrial hemp, for example, might be a much better biofuel feed stock. There is evidence that Switch grass is superior to corn as a feed stock for bioethanol.

According to R.E.A.P., “Switchgrass has a net gain of about 11 barrels of oil energy equivalent per acre. This compares favourably to other commercial biofuel alternatives. Corn ethanol, for example, only produces enough net energy on one acre to replace 1.5 barrels of oil. Corn also requires moderate to high quality farmland for its production; switch grass can be grown on lower quality lands.”

By way of comparison, gasoline made from fossil oil is reported to have a net energy value of only .85:1. This shows that the return on the investment of the total energy inputs required to deliver gasoline to the retail pump is negative.

How Bush is empowering the Muni Wifi IPcom Revolution

It is a great and delicious irony that the tax cuts Bush rammed through in his first term, for the benefit his wealthy benefactors and corporate sponsors, are one of the key driving forces behind the municipal wireless IPcom movement that is about to gore the protected oxen of the telecom incumbents. The unintended consequences will be revolutionary in ways none of us can yet imagine. How so, you ask?

Consider that the tax cuts for the top 5% of the population and the mega corporations, combined with other budget recklessness, have slashed the flow of federal dollars to the states and then from the states to their respective cities and towns. As a result, the budgets of a great many cities and towns, with their increasing expenses and falling revenues, are in dire straights. And they are finding it almost impossible to raise real estate taxes to bridge the gap. So what do do to escape from this trap between a rock and a hard place?

Now consider the Chambers of Commerce that are very unhappy at they way the telecom giants have been exploiting them while taking them for granted.

Both groups are eager for a real choice that will improve services they can benefit from and at the same time cut the costs of their communications budgets. Both groups are discovering the many advantages offered by modern IPcom when compared to last century's Telecom. Both groups are also discovering that their peers in other countries have wider and more attractive choices than we have here at home. And both groups are discovering that they can, in fact, implement an IPcom strategy quite easily on their own. They are also discovering that cost savings from moving from Telecom to IPcom can pay for a muni wireless project in a few short years.

Today, the choice between old Telecom and new IPcom is clear and real. And we the people, when given the democratic power to choose what is best for us as we see it, are overwhelmingly chosing IPcom -- as the Muni Wireless explosion clearly demonstrates. The peoples' choice, no longer controlled by the Telecom incumbents, terrifies them. Why? Because if we the people chose IPcom, all of the business models locked to the old Telecom model fail. Can the old Telecom buggy whip makers transform themselves into modern IPcom services and content providers?

What is also happening is that we are seeing, across many domains, the adoption of the first mile out from the home model replacing the old last mile in from the center. IPcom sees the home as being the point of origin and the locus of choice, and thus power radiating out from the home. The old Telecom model, with the control of choice resident in the center to maximize profits on products delivered to the target home at the end of the last mile, is failing.

To see this, consider a home owner who buys a big, flat screen, hi-def TV home theater system for several thousand dollars. The choice is now in the home as to when, where, and how to view "product", that may even be free, produced by anyone, anywhere, on any topic with out restrictions imposed by governments or corporations on content or language. The choice is now in the home as to how best to optimize the return on the investment in home media systems, both for production and for viewing. The choice can no longer be dictated and controlled by the old industrial era producer in the center. That business model is as good as dead.

So we see Sony try to secretly control choice with rootkits clandestinely installed on privately owned personal computers by music CDs. We see the MPAA and RIAA fight tooth and nail to use anti-democratic and anti-innovation contortions of copyright principles to protect the power and profit they once had from the control of choice. We see the movie theater business fading away as they no longer control viewing choices. We see broadcast TV scrambling to survive in the face of the power of choice slipping from their hands. We see the Main Stream Media, with readership declining, very substantially challenged for "authority and reputation" by the new choices offered by text, audio and video "blogs" created at the edges. We see the wheels coming off the Bush political machine and agenda as it becomes ever more apparent that they have lost control of choice and the ability to impose their "story" on the American people, who are now clearly choosing alternative stories.

We are learning that, in the Bush political world of the stern, dogmatic and all knowing father who always knows best, and must not be questioned, the "children" grow up to realize that their worlds are not the same as "father's" and that he actually does not know best about their worlds. The next step is the recognition that Father probably did not even know best about his own world -- in fact, we soon learn that, with our imperfect knowledge, nobody can know best. The humbling realization is that all we can do is do the best we can to know "good enough" to muddle through life's many vagaries, ambiguities, and surprising unknowns. This is why it makes more sense to start at the edge and work our way out in cooperation with our neighbors, our community, each of us dealing as best we can with our local realities. If you can not "know best", then, in the end, any attempt at controlling choice from the center is bound to fail.

As a result of all of this, we are now living through the political, economic, and cultural tumult of the necessary relocation, if we want to preserve our democracy, of the control of the power of choice from its old point of origin in the center of the Telecom world view to its new point of origin: The edge of the network nobody owns and the new IPcom distributed world view.

Some Wireless History - Remember the NII?

In 1995, Dewayne Hendricks wrote a paper, Spread Spectrum and the Amateur Radio Service (1995), that was very forward looking. In it he reviews a good deal of early history, for example:

Since the Broscius article in 1989, there has been a lot of activity in the commercial sector regarding SS. As a result of the request and feedback of many manufacturer's of Part 15 devices, the FCC changed the rules in 1990 in order to make it possible to product devices under Part 15 which could operate at higher data rates and to close up some of the holes in the previous version of the regulation that had been issued in 1985.

In January, 1991, Apple Computer filed the now famous Data-PCS petition with the FCC which asked for the allocation of 40 MHz in the 1850-1990 MHz band for a new radio service to be used for high-speed, local area network services. Some important points of the petition include:

* be accessible to users of personal computers without imposition of licensing obligations, network connection fees, or air-time charges;

* be open to any computer manufacturer's products and any network access and usage scheme that complies with the regulatory requirements.

* be regulated in a manner that assures non-discriminatory access to assigned frequencies by compatible devices for like purposed; and

* Have flexibility built into the initial regulatory scheme to encourage innovation in and the evolution of Data-PCS technologies and services.

In 1993, the FCC allocated 20 MHz for this new service, in the 1910-1930 MHz band. In addition, ten additional MHz were allocated this year by the FCC for this service in the 2390-2400 MHz band. Lest you forget, this ten MHz of spectrum is part of the current ARS allocation which runs from 2390-2450 MHz. The ARS was made primary in this band by the FCC and the Data-PCS service now shares this band with the ARS on a secondary non-interference basis.

Finally, Apple Computer this May '95 petitioned the FCC for yet another new service called the NII Band (National Information Infrastructure). In this case, they are asking the FCC to:

* allocate for use as part of the NII Band the 5150-5300 MHz band, a shared private-government band that currently is not heavily used within the United States and has been allocated throughout most of Europe for unlicensed wireless local area networks;

* allocate for use as part of the NII Band the 5725-5875 MHz band, a shared private-government band that currently is used by unlicensed Part 15 technologies, industrial, scientific and medical ("ISM") devices, and Amateur radio operators;

Reading the whole paper today, 10 years latter, shows that the vision is there, but yet to be fully realized. Do you remember when we had an NII? It would be good to bring it back.

Katrina Journal, Part III

Becky, Ted, and I were to report at the Best Western in Harvey. On the way we saw a more tropical topography, and a lot of damage to trees and homes. When we arrived we were shown “the loft”–-a room at the top of a spiral staircase off the lobby–-where women were sleeping on cots. We also found out that there was a staff meeting every night at 8pm. So we settled in, ate dinner quickly, and went to the meeting. There was a general meeting and then we met with our function coordinator, Jake, to get our assignments for the next day. This was a very different experience from Baton Rouge. We were on the front lines, and we went where we were most needed–-which could be different each day. Jake talked a lot about St. Bernard, and that’s when I learned that the authorities were allowing people back into the area to see their homes. Of course, there was not much left of their homes and so the need for counselors to be there was pressing. But since I knew it was a toxic area, I did not want to go there. There was also going to be a cruise ship docked near the area which would house security people and first responders. Four mental health workers would be on the ship with them, but that didn’t seem to be any safer an option.

That first night I was the last to be assigned, and told I would be needed in the hotel for HQ support-–to help with exit interviews and assisting Janene, who would be taking over on Monday when Jake was going to go home to Brooklyn. He also talked about Hahnville and was unhappy that Margaret was sending some mental health people there instead of to Harvey. I said “Those are my teammates!” and asked if he wanted their names. He said he did so I wrote them down for him.

So the next day I spent in the hotel. I took one brief walk out to a Walgreen’s down the street, but found it was closed. The stench outside made me feel a little sick. Later I found out that there had been a restaurant next to the hotel and the smell was from the food that had turned rancid when the power went out. There were parts of the hotel that smelled really awful from that, too. But the hotel itself was a big improvement over the Hebron Baptist Church. The food was a step down, however. It was harder to get food there, and it was pretty bad and not nearly as plentiful. Sometimes food was brought in from one of the few restaurants in the area that was open, but if you weren’t there when it came in, chances are that you wouldn’t get any.

The Red Cross people there were great. If anyone was having trouble with something or looking for something, people would immediately jump in to help out. We all supported each other like that, and it was comforting to know that in such a stressful and harsh environment there was no such thing as being “on your own.” We acted as a unit.

That first morning, who should walk into the hotel but my friend from Denham Springs, Tonio! We hugged and planned a “counseling session” for later, which never materialized.

Then, during a phone call with a staff member that I was making for Janene, 3 people came in and sat down quietly around the table that served as my desk. I screamed and laughed when I saw Joan, Kathy, and Anne sitting there smiling mischievously! We were all so happy to be together again and decided it was a law of nature that we couldn’t be separated.

That evening we were told that they needed the loft space for another purpose and we would all get real hotel rooms! Becky, Leah, and I would share a room with a queen-sized bed. My room was on the second floor and had a balcony overlooking the pool and jacuzzi. In the room we had our own shower, of course, plus a refrigerator, TV, desk, and a chest of drawers and closet so we could actually unpack. It felt like the height of luxury!

I should mention the water. We were in a contaminated area, so to be safe we were told not to drink the tap water or use it to brush our teeth. We used bottled water instead. I also didn’t use the pool or jacuzzi because I didn’t want to risk illness by spending lots of time immersing myself in the water. Too bad!

Becky came back from St. Bernard with a splitting headache and feeling more than a little overwhelmed. Others had headaches, too, and reported burning in their eyes and nose. It had rained that day, and the rain turned everything to mud and intensified putrid smells. Although she felt she did some good work there, Becky decided she wasn’t going back. But the next day it didn’t rain, and those who came back from there said it wasn’t too bad... just very hard to see how shocked and saddened people were after they saw what used to be their home and neighborhood.

Monday I took the day off. At the meeting that night I was assigned to the Welcome Center in St. Charles.

Welcome Centers are supposed to be places where people are made to feel... um... welcome. Most of them had food, snacks, water, FEMA reps with computers where people could apply for help online, and reps from other helping agencies. There the Red Cross set up satellite phones so folks could connect to the 800 number they had to call for assistance more easily. The 800 number had become a joke and a disgrace, but phone lines were overwhelmed by the magnitude of this catastrophe and people simply could not get through. I heard many stories of people staying up all day and night dialing and redialing the 800 number, people waking themselves up at 2 or 4am hoping that at those hours the phone lines would be less jammed but still not being able to get through. Staff was as frustrated as clients, and it was amazing that tempers didn’t flare higher than they did. And that’s basically why we were there: to calm people, to listen to their stories, to validate their frustrations and the depth of their grief.

The WC in St. Charles was awful. It had been started by a local official who refused to give up control of its operation. The official had connections with the community, which was a good thing. But he wanted to run it his way, which was a bad thing. Instead of having people waiting on line to use the phones, he had them waiting on line to write down their contact information on a list so they could be called back at a later time-–sometimes as much as 2 weeks later–-to come back and use the phones. It made no sense and was a source of yet more frustration and confusion for clients because the process was not clearly explained and there were no written handouts saying what it was. Some, after waiting for hours in line under a canvas canopy in the hot LA sun, assumed they should go inside and wait to use the phones. I talked to people who had been sitting inside for hours, only to find out they had wasted their entire day for nothing. Most of these St. Charles people were black. Did that have anything to do with the shoddy way they were treated by local officials? I don’t know, but after experiencing another WC the following day in Plaquemines, I wondered. But talking to them was a rewarding experience. Most were exhausted, some were pissed, some depressed, but over and over I heard gratitude for all the help they had received so far, support for one another, reliance on faith, and determination to go forward even though they didn’t know where “forward” was. No one was enraged or violent or seemed to be in absolute despair-–although those who were would probably not have been there waiting.

I was tired and hot when I got back to the hotel that day, and Joan called me on my cell phone to say she wanted to change her return flight from Friday to Wednesday because Rita was coming. We were all feeling anxious about Rita, since even a few inches of rainfall could cause flooding and major damage to the fragile area we were trying so hard to fortify. We watched CNN and the Weather Channel constantly, hoping against hope that this region would be spared another storm. But at the same time, we had to take care of ourselves, and I thought that if Rita did strike here, trying to get home would be a nightmare. Luckily, I was able to change my flight, and Joan and I would be on the same flight from NOLA to Dallas to Chicago.

The next day I was assigned to the Plaquemines Welcome Center. While St. Charles had only the Red Cross and FEMA, Plaquemines had Red Cross, FEMA, SBA, unemployment, tarps, clothing, food, and toiletries that had been donated, and a home-schooling program that was being run jointly by local teachers whose schools were closed and one of the churches. Plaquemines was also largely a white parish (the LA word for county). They hadn’t suffered quite as much damage as some other areas, but I again heard stories of total losses and flooding that was 4 feet high or more. One woman showed me photos of what was her house and cried.

There was a line outside, but it was under an overhang against the school building and there were benches to sit on and fans. But it was still hot. I didn’t want to know the temperature but I wouldn’t be surprised if it had been over 100. I spent most of the day outside and only went inside to cool off and then later when the line was cut off and everyone was inside. In those 2 days at Welcome Centers I must have spoken with hundreds of people. They couldn’t believe so many of us came from all over the country to help them, and we were impressed by their spirit and strength.

That night I had to out-process and do it quickly between getting back to the hotel and the 8pm meeting. The next morning at 6am I stumbled down to the kitchen in my pjs to get coffee, as I usually did, and of course Tonio was there with a camera, ready to take my picture. I’m sure he’ll want to post that on the Red Cross Katrina photo album site! Kathy was driving me, Joan, and Anne to the airport. She was going to come back to the hotel afterwards, though, because her flight wasn’t until 6pm and she didn’t want to hang around the airport all day. So we packed our stuff into our team car for the last time and headed off for New Orleans Airport, which was only about 20 minutes from the hotel. Just as we approached the exit ramp for the airport, we heard a loud bang and then we smelled something burning and pulled off on the shoulder. We got out, looked under the car and didn’t see any damage there. Then we looked at the front passenger-side wheel. The outside half of the tire was completely gone and the wheel was bent and twisted. Joan flagged down a car that turned out to have 2 people from Channel 2 in it. Finally, we thought, we would get our long-awaited interview and be on TV! But no. However, they did take us to the airport. Kathy called someone to come help her and the rest of us left for the terminal that turned out to be at most 2 minutes from where we’d broken down. We worried about Kathy, so when we got on the check-in line I called Katrina (yep, Katrina was in charge of hotel services for the Red Cross Katrina volunteers!) and told her what happened. She said, in that inimitable authoritarian voice of hers, "I'll make sure someone gets out there ASAP!" I emailed her the next day and she had gotten home safely.

All in all, it was an amazing and intense experience. And I learned something important about myself. I learned that I got the greatest satisfaction of my career as a counselor simply by being with and talking to these people. It was just as–-if not more--fulfilling to me than writing my book, giving the Sophia Fahs Lecture, or counseling individuals and helping them change. And that surprised me. I realized that I probably could not have listened or talked to them as effectively and meaningfully if I hadn’t had those prior experiences or as profound an understanding of the grief process, but I felt this was what all that had been for-–so that people in a situation of catastrophic loss could find some hope and comfort in the attentive listening and words of someone who had been there and survived, thrived, learned, and remembered. I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Katrina Journal, Part 1

I had more than a little anxiety when I began this adventure. I received an urgent email from NBCC (National Board for Certified Counselors) saying the American Red Cross was waiving the usual disaster training for mental health volunteers because the need was so urgent. After watching the TV coverage of Katrina and seeing people who had lost everything, I knew I had to be there. But since I had never done any disaster work before, I didn’t know how it operated or what it would require. All I knew was that I had a skill that could help. So I faxed in the forms from the NBCC website and waited for a response. It came quickly in the form of a voicemail message saying I was to call a travel agency number, give them my Disaster Relief code for Baton Rouge, and they would book my flight. I booked a round trip, nonstop flight from Chicago to Baton Rouge, leaving 9/10 and returning 9/24.

The flight was quick and easy, and I felt more relaxed when I got to Baton Rouge. I called ARC HQ and spoke to a sweet woman named Tagreet who told me to take a taxi directly to my shelter since the HQ would be closed by the time I got there. I was told the shelter was only 12 miles from the airport. Later, this became a running joke with members of my team, since every time we asked how far something was the answer was “it’s not far--about 12 miles.” The taxi driver and I had time for a long chat, since the shelter was a great deal more than 12 miles away! In fact, it was 12 miles from the airport to the city, and my shelter was in Denham Springs, which was a suburb NE of Baton Rouge. The driver told me that he had 2 other families staying at his house and his daughter had taken in 3 families. This was my first glimpse into how the people of Louisiana were pulling together to support each other. It was only the first of hundreds of stories I was to hear in the coming days.

Shelter for ARC staff was in the Hebron Baptist Church. Later I found out there were other staff shelters in local churches, with varying facilities. Our shelter had a capacity of 200. We had a big floor with cots to sleep in, scratchy wool blankets, clean towels, a women’s bathroom with 3 sinks, 3 toilets, and 2 showers (I assume it was the same on the men’s side), home cooked meals nearly every night made by the local Stepford Wives, a whole wall of boxes of MREs, our laundry taken and brought back the same day by the aforementioned Stepford Wives, sandwiches in the refrigerator to take with us for lunch, piles and rows of assorted snack foods always out on the tables in the dining area and in the kitchen, tons of bottles of water, strong and plentiful coffee in the morning, and caring shelter directors. I slept fitfully that first night–-overtired, and kept awake by constant snoring, coughing, suitcase zippers, and creaking cots. Lights out at 10pm and lights on at 6am. Not hours for a night person!

The next morning at Baton Rouge HQ was an experience. They had just commandeered an old Wal-Mart the previous week and turned it into HQ in 2 days. It was big, vast, crowded, and confusing. Lots of frustration, waiting on lines and having some difficulty figuring out how to “in-process.” Mental health orientation took 1 hour and 20 minutes. Could have been much briefer, but Ron enjoyed talking about his own experiences and perspectives. He enjoyed that a lot. He said one thing in particular that stuck with me and my teammates: “You come first, then staff, then clients.” The reason for this is that if we do not put ourselves first, we cannot help anyone. My team took that very much to heart and were always mindful of self-care... especially after we discovered the 2-for-1 Bloody Marys at Don’s Seafood Restaurant! Best Bloody Marys any of us had ever had.

So, back to orientation. Margaret, our supervisor, was dubbed “Patton” by my teammate Joan because she was stocky, had a raspy voice, and didn’t hear it when you answered “no.” She also had a good sense of humor, and is as Irish as they come-–probably in her 60s, with a bleached blonde bob, square face, and eyes that said “If you’re going to complain, I’m not interested.” I had one major complaint for her, but that came later.

Ron and Margaret split our mental health group of 7 into 2 teams. One team of 3 went to the Cajun Dome, which was quite a distance away in Lafayette and had about 5,000 residents and a none-to-favorable rep at that point, so our team was much relieved to hear we weren’t going there. The 4 of us were assigned to an evacuee shelter in Erwinville, home to about 250 men, women, and children. We were told Erwinville was “about 12 miles” west of the city. It turned out to be 35 miles from our shelter, but who’s counting. My team couldn’t have been better. There was Joan, who is a social worker in private practice who focuses on the mind-body connection, spiritual counseling, and children; Kathy, who is a college counselor and the youngest, and Anne, who is a college professor with a lot of experience working with trauma. The 4 of us were complementary and we found as time went on we just intuitively understood where we fit in terms of the team and serving the shelter residents.

We also found that we shared a profound lack of a sense of direction. Some of that could be blamed on the fact that we were given no decent maps, that the MapQuest maps and directions we were given are often confusing and/or plain wrong, and that we couldn’t find a good map at a gas station. As a result, whenever we got into our car together, we got lost. This gave us lots of time to get to know each other. It always took us 2 hours to get anywhere, and the traffic was horrendous because Baton Rouge’s population doubled with the influx of evacuees from Katrina. But through it all, we laughed till we cried when Joan’s wry sense of humor kicked into high gear (which was just about always), we learned to respect one another’s unique abilities, we developed an affection for one another’s foibles and the mistakes or forgetfulness that often presented when we were tired or stressed–-which was all the time. But we kept each other sane, focused, and relatively calm. Many volunteers were not so fortunate and not so calm. Some volunteers also came for the wrong reasons (to save the evacuees or avoid dealing with their own recent traumas).

We all disliked the Red Cross vests-–or “aprons” as we called them. They were cut too wide for slim women and were huge on all of us... not to mention hot. I thought they looked like fast-food restaurant uniforms and had the urge now and then to say “You want fries with that?”

Our team did good work at Erwinville and by the time we left a week later, most residents were stable and the atmosphere was much improved. When we got there we found some depression, a lot of confusion and disorientation, many still in shock and disbelief about their situation, a few who needed meds, and children who were being neglected by their parents and were angry and acting out. But even with all those problems, there were very few who were deeply despairing and very few adults who were acting out in ways that were harmful to the community. For the most part, they had pulled together to support each other and although none of them had much of anything left in terms of material possessions, they had reordered their priorities and put caring for each other at the top of the list. This was mirrored by the entire state of Louisiana. Donations of clothing, food, toiletries, baby needs, and equipment of every kind were flowing in like a deep unending river. Our shelter had more than we could use and it just kept coming. People were taking other people into their homes and into their hearts. Members of the community came to our shelter to bring things, take the kids for a “day out,” or to give comfort in whatever way they could. People gave when they had next to nothing themselves. One Catholic woman came in on behalf of her church to bring rosary beads just in case there were any Catholic residents who wanted them. There was no proselytizing involved, just the impulse to share. Of course, there are always those who would take advantage of the chaos and neediness of such a situation, and they were around, too. But those were isolated incidents, annoying and sometimes harmful, but not typical or pervasive.

And we heard so many stories. There was Harriet, who lost her home and had to leave her disabled sister behind. She had not been able to find out where she was and didn’t know whether she was dead or alive. There was Alice, a former schoolteacher who wore her hair in curlers all day under a hair net, had lost several members of her family in the flood, but was determined to start a new life at age 68. There was Duane, a wiry Cajun in his 50s who had escaped Katrina by putting a motor on his bicycle and heading out down the highway--reaching Baton Rouge (normally an hour’s drive from NOLA) in 8 hours on one gallon of gas. He would speed past motorists stuck in traffic on the highway and then stop under shelter when it rained and wave to those same motorists as they passed him.

... To be continued

The Era of Paramedia

Mitch Radcliffe has posted an essay on Paramedia on his blog.

The new installment of Evolution Media, my podcast, is posted to the podcast feed.

“Paramedia” describes what happens when peers come together in networks with a purpose, something that media consumers, media makers and marketers need to understand and that, for the most part, is such a novel phenomenon that it is simply misunderstood as being very like the media of our childhoods, when messages came in big packages and audiences numbered in the millions.

Let’s begin to explore this idea by looking to the origins of the word. As I said, it’s been used by author Todd Gitlin and the Cult of the Dead Cow, but “paramedia” is also the name of a consultancy and has been used enough that it generates 81,800 hits on Google (as of this writing). I’d like to formalize the term here and now, so that we can use it with a common understanding of its meaning and scope.

So, here is my definition of paramedia for your consideration: Paramedia are networks of people with access to media publishing tools and training that align through self-organizing or by explicit planning to promote and support the discussion of an idea, agenda or problem.

To read the entire script, continue reading. I don't follow it strictly, and urge you to listen, too.

The free Audible file is available here. It will play in iTunes, Windows Media Player and most portable audio devices, and you can pass it around.

Why do we need Big Broadband?

There are now emerging a number of reasons we will soon demand Big Broadband. Participatory Culture and their open source project DTV and most especially their Broadcast Machine is but one.

Broadcast Machine is software you install on your website to easily publish video files and create internet TV channels. Broadcast Machine gives you the option of using torrent technology to reduce or eliminate bandwidth costs, even when you are posting high quality video to thousands of people. It is free, open source software, and is designed for easy installation. Broadcast Machine features an intuitive interface, integrated torrent creation, and flexible channel management. It also creates a browsable archive of videos on your website. Broadcast Machine is the prefect publishing tool for making channels that work with DTV: Internet TV.

A second, but not yet released, driver of demand for Big Bandband will be Six Apart's Project Comet. The goal of the project is to bring multi-media "webblogging into the mainstream."

A third, but more conventional, driver of demand for Big Broadband will be Super HD [4K TV]. This is the best TV today's technology can deliver. It requires 1.2 gigabits per second. But hey, we all want the best.

At the same time that these developments are emerging, the cost of connectivity is dropping significantly. One gigabit of connectivity that sold at wholesale for $20,000 per month in July of 2004 now sells for just $13,000 per month. This is an amazing reduction of 35% in just one year. Consider also that well over half the fiber optic strands already in place in America is still unused, or "dark fiber". It is simply waiting to be lit.

Taken together, these developments have very serious implications for a remarkable growth in demand for upstream bandwidth. Imagine if only 10% of the U.S. population, using the Broadcast Machine or Project Comet, took to uploading creative video works on a regular basis. Sudenly we would have 30 million new TV "channels". Suppose our educational system started to require students to create projects using full multi-media? How many student TV stations would that create as they sought to share their projects with teachers, friends and family members scattered far and wide? What happens when students want to use Super HD for their productions?

Could this happen? My guess is that 10% is a low estimate. Why?

As James Burke says in episodes 5 and 6 of his 1979 TV series "Connections", the era of "modern" and "scientific" mechanized mass production has us all living in the same city, with the same twice a day traffic jams, wearing the same clothes, driving the same cars, with the same sorts of stuff in our houses and pockets and worse, as the environment degrades.

Perhaps the current right wing counter revolution, a turn back to the dark ages of dogma enforced by inquisitions, with a rejection of the notion that if you can not prove it you can not believe it, the "fact-based" reality approach, is simply a classic reaction to the conditions Burke describes so well.

Could it be the case, however, that offerings such as The Broadcast machine, are, in fact, modern solutions to the modern condition of technologically imposed sameness? The ability of every person to have the ready ability and where with all to make unique content that nobody else has, that is not mass produced and not in everyone's pocket nor in everyone's house, is an important new development. After 100 years of monologue imposed by our exclusion from mass media, for reasons both technological and capital, we suddenly now have the ability to express ourselves in our unique and authentic voices when, where, and how we please. This is revolutionary.

As Marshall McLuhan observed, new technologies at first imitate what has come before. Films imitated stage production for a number of years before D. W. Griffith made Birth of a Nation in 1915 and showed the world what movies could be. Or take photography in its first decades, it too often imitated painting. TV began by imitating film and radio.

The internet has not been an exception to McLuhan's analysis. The internet and the world wide web have, in effect, spent the last twenty years exploring new ways to do text, numbers, graphics, radio and TV. So far we have basically only seen old solutions incrementally improved and in new easier to access guises.

The new Peer to Peer tools that allow individuals at the edges of the networks to easily cooperate with each other, while by-passing all of the obstacles created by governments, corporations and the significant hub and spoke inefficiencies found in the center, are some of the first truly new things to emerge from the internet/www synergy.

All of the required pieces, ala Connections, are now seemingly present and suddenly, and unpredicted, we have open source DTV and the Broadcast Machine, Project Comet, as well as the coming Super HD. This is a radical departure from the notion behind all of the traditional broadcast models of the past. No more technological or capital barriers to entry. No more having to ask governments for permission. No more government agencies acting as agents of Speech Control. No more government enforced unequal voices. No more barriers created by regulatoriums artificially creating spectrum scarcity.

90 years later, could this be our Birth of a Nation moment? Now that we can all have our "authentic" voices back again, how will we use them? Can we over come the McLuhan's warning in Gutenburg Galaxey as quoted in the Wikipedia?

Instead of tending towards a vast Alexandrian library the world has become a computer, an electronic brain, exactly as an infantile piece of science fiction. And as our senses have gone outside us, Big Brother goes inside. So, unless aware of this dynamic, we shall at once move into a phase of panic terrors, exactly befitting a small world of tribal drums, total interdependence, and superimposed co-existence. [...] Terror is the normal state of any oral society, for in it everything affects everything all the time. [...] In our long striving to recover for the Western world a unity of sensibility and of thought and feeling we have no more been prepared to accept the tribal consequences of such unity than we were ready for the fragmentation of the human psyche by print culture. (Galaxy p. 32)

I am a Reform Democrat

By: Jean Camp

I am a Reform Democrat. I want to reform the party all the way back to the last century. Decades ago, Democrats defined what we stood for:

freedom of speech
even to disagree with the government

freedom from want
a nation of charity without homelessness and hunger

freedom of worship
no state interference in internal religious debates

freedom from fear
functioning police, military and emergency services

I am blogging this now because it is safe to disagree. For a while disagreement was unpatriotic. Disagreeing was harming young men and women already in harm’s way in Central Asia. I was a bad American. Now I can write this. I know that some people will flame this. I know that common courtesy is now decried as politically correct. But I can speak, and you can declare you desire to silence me. And both are better than any alternative.

We can be free to speak but not free from speech.

When I was a child, I had never seen a homeless person. I saw people who depended on the government. We held church suppers in places where the only landlord was the government. I stood in line with kids with free lunch tickets. There were not homeless families. There were no “bag ladies”, also known as homeless women. Why did that change? Reagan’s American decided to embrace homelessness by stopping the construction of large housing projects. Reagan’s American and various ideological fools decided to institute homelessness for the mentally ill by closing down the hospitals and homes for the chronically mentally ill. It was later, shortly after I learned to drive, that I saw entire families standing up by the highway desperate for a better place and with nothing left to leave.

We can be free from homelessness as a nation.

When I was a child, I learned the words “integration” and “segregation” and “desegregation” in first grade. I didn’t use “desegregation” until the third grade. I could understand that the other two were opposite but that third word was a bit too complicated. I understood that the schools were the public charge, but that there were some churches that sought integration and some that did not. In many churches the congregation was deeply divided. Today, issues that belong in church, like the death of poor wasted Terri Schiavo, are in Congress. There is an effort to decide who my pastor can marry, by defining marriage in the Constitution. I can change churches if I have deep spiritual disagreements, or even change religions. But what about when the religion is put into the Constitution?

We can live with those who worship differently, who believe different, in a different God or looking at a different face of the same God. We can be free in worship.

When I became a mother, I learned the advice “tell your child to talk to a policemen if lost” no longer works. With the privatization of policing there is not enough oversight. We learned Sept 11 that the private security firms work for the first class passengers, whoever they are. You cannot trust some random minimum wage worker with your child because the mall has given him a uniform. Now parents say, “Find a lady with a stroller. She will help you.” The common interests of motherhood with hope that the person is kind has replaced the faith that a uniform and charge to protect the public interest has meaning. Privatization of security means the security firms don’t work for all of us.

We can be free from fear of those in uniform, return to a system where the police served us all.

All these freedoms are what generations of Americans have fought for, and waves of first-generation of Americans have sought.

I am Reform Democrat. I believe in freedom, like the Democrats before me. Reform, return, and remember why we are Democrats.

A Minister Fights Back on Moral Values

Dr. Robin Meyers' Speech during the 11/04 Peace Rally at OK University

As some of you know, I am minister of Mayflower Congregational Church in Oklahoma City, an Open and Affirming, Peace and Justice church in northwest Oklahoma City, and professor of Rhetoric at Oklahoma City University. But you would most likely have encountered me on the pages of the Oklahoma Gazette, where I have been a columnist for six years, and hold the record for the most number of angry letters to the editor.

Tonight, I join ranks of those who are angry, because I have watched as the faith I love has been taken over by fundamentalists who claim to speak for Jesus, but whose actions are anything but Christian. We've heard a lot lately about so-called "moral values" as having swung the election to President Bush. Well, I'm a great believer in moral values, but we need to have a discussion, all over this country, about exactly what constitutes a moral Value—I mean what are we talking about? Because we don't get to make them up as we go along, especially not if we are people of faith. We have an inherited tradition of what is right and wrong, and moral is as moral does.

Let me give you just a few of the reasons why I take issue with those in power who claim moral values are on their side:

Read the whole speech here

An Epic Failure of Presidential Staffing

As a former staffer in the White Office of Media Affairs, my sympathy goes out to the current White House staffers for their recent epic failure to recognize that hurricane Katrina presented their principal, POTUS, an opportunity to demonstrate strong Presidential leadership - an opportunity which, unfortunately, may become more frequent.

Consider how differently things might have turned out if they had had the imagination and innovative drive to have President Bush address the nation on Sunday, the day before Katrina began her devastation of New Orleans. A national address could have reassured the nation that the Federal government was working closely with the governors and mayors in the storm path to minimize casualties and insure prompt and efficient relief for victims. The President might even have cited the excellent storm disaster recovery results that had been achieved by his administration within the recent past in Florida.

Such a proactive approach would have set the stage for one magnificent Presidential photo-op after another, day after day. The media would have been the President’s cheer leaders. His leadership in the Katrina recovery efforts would have offset the criticisms of his leadership in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But such good fortune was not to be. And the mistake was compounded when the staff allowed the President to make the blatantly false statement that nobody anticipated a disaster of such a magnitude. And compounded yet again when the President praised the head of FEMA for the job he was doing, when it was clear from on the ground reporting that Brown’s lackadaisical leadership was increasing Katrina’s death toll due to FEMA’s late and under-resourced response.

The questions are: why did this epic failure of presidential staffing occur? How was such a terrific opportunity for burnishing the tarnished image of their principal allowed to pass unrecognized?

The answer may well be in both their hardened and dogmatic mindset that government is THE problem, an unnecessary adjunct to unbridled market mechanisms, and their rejection of the model that government is an essential facilitator of the public good. This rejection of modern mixed market economics, the fundamental innovation that brought the world out of the Great Depression of the 1930s, may have made it impossible for them to see a positive role for government in the Katrina disaster. If government could have no positive role, then how could there be an opportunity for President Bush to turn a natural disaster to his political advantage?

For example, as Harold Myerson wrote recently in the Washington post:

Consider the congressional testimony of Joe Allbaugh, George W. Bush's 2000 campaign manager, who assumed the top position at FEMA in 2001. He characterized the organization as "an oversized entitlement program," and counseled states and cities to rely instead on "faith-based organizations . . . like the Salvation Army and the Mennonite Disaster Service."

This does not sound like something anyone who viewed government as a facilitator of the public good would ever say. It is, however, exactly what someone who viewed government as the problem would, and in fact did, say.

It goes without saying that faith-based organizations have roles to play in disasters, but they do not have the required manpower, equipment and supplies to match the scale of most disasters. Nor do they, much less the private sector with its 90 day profit requirements, have the staying power for a recovery process that will be measured in years, if not decades. A government that understands its role as a facilitator and guardian of the public good, however, does.

The question remains as to what other failures the Bush view of government has or will engender.

The challenge facing those who are critics of the Bush administration is to act and sound like responsible adults, not carping and hyperventilating partisan harpies. All of us who are critics of the Bush administration, and their rejection of the role of government as a facilitator the common good, would be well advised to review the Watergate hearings to study the calm and professional manner of Sam Irving, the committee chairman, as well as Barry Goldwater, Sam Dash, Archibald Cox, Barbara Jordan, Howard Baker, judge Sirica - amongst others.

Reconnecting citizens with compassionate civic life

I remember working with my wife on her first campaign speech. There was a bit of biography, talking about “neighborhood Easter egg hunts and the pickup games of whiffle ball that filled our summers”, “being proud to be from Bethany”, and “believing that a community sticks together and helps each other out”.

She went on to say, “September 11th happened, and then it seemed possible, for a brief moment, that we would come together as a nation and rally once more.” Today, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we face the same possibility.

I have been reading the blogs, full of partisan recriminations. I have watched the news and seen the suffering of those displaced, compounded by the great poverty in the region. It makes me sad. Whether you are talking about looters, price gougers, or opportunistic politicians, it is sickening.

To me, the old speech by Joseph Welch still resounds in my ears, “Have you no sense of decency left?” Too many people have replace compassion with greed. Some people have suggested that the flood was God’s doing, a punishment for the immorality and depravity of New Orleans. I would like to suggest that like so much in life it is a combination of God’s doing and our own doing. God has allowed us to be overcome with our own greed and lack of compassion, and it is our greed and lack of compassion that has made this the disaster that it is.

Yet there is hope. Nancy White writes over on her blog, “But right now I'm much MORE happy to work with them in Katrina Community (re)Building. I don't give a &*^%$ if I disagree with their politics. I have my feelings about blame (they are strong and painful at the moment).

I'm angry. But that isn't where I want to put my energy right now.”

Since I’m working on John DeStefano’s campaign blog right now, I’m paying close attention to how different campaigns are approaching Katrina. We are spending our time trying to get people to contribute to relief efforts both nationally and locally.

Over at Deval Patrick’s campaign blog they write, “In the months since we embarked on this journey, part of our goal has been to reconnect citizens to civic life. We must learn to share not only in our own dreams, but also in our neighbor’s. A tragedy like Katrina requires us to live up to this spirit and requires us to act.”

Barbara Radnofsky who is running for U.S. Senate in Texas has a long list of entries on her campaign blog about relief efforts there.

So let us all find ways to work together, independent of political affiliation, to reconnect citizens with civic life and get people to show compassion through working locally and nationally to help those in need.

Can the Democratic party evolve?

Daniel C. Dennett's "Show me the Science" op-ed, published in the August 28th edition of the NY Times, perfectly defines evolution as a powerful, goal seeking [heuristic], approach to life: life, not death. Contrast this with the item about getting advice on living from the web site of Ayatollah Sistani: a very rigid rule-based [algorithmic] approach to living. But, to give the West its due, there are many examples of rules dominated approaches to life that enshrine hierarchy and privilege in a the West's top-down, hub and spoke organizational model.

The clash of these two basic world views, rules vs goals, is tectonic in nature. The goal seeking I talk about only has principles that describe a general means towards an abstract objective, such as justice as fairness, but does not specify one right answer.

The real problem is rule-based solutions, because the rules encode the possibility of a one right answer approach. See for, example, how the FCC's algorithmic approach to spectrum management compares to the goal seeking approach in Open Spectrum and cognitive SDRs [Software Defined Radios].

Or look at the US Constitution. It is largely a set of principles for working towards the goal of democratic self government. It is not a cook book of rigid rules.

Or the "scientific method" is a set of principles for seeking the goal of reducing the imperfections in our knowledge of how the world works. These are all examples of heuristic goal seeking -- but NOT of suggesting there is one right answer, which, btw, imperfect knowledge makes impossible to know in the first case.

So the principles that guide heuristic goal seeking acknowledge the impossibility of one right answer for all time but not the possibility of reducing the imperfection of our knowledge.

Now if only the Democratic party could articulate a true goal seeking politics of Justice as Fairness for we the people, they might find a way to escape from what Frank Rich so aptly describes in his essay of August 28th in the NY Times: the utter irrelevance and intellectual bankruptcy of today's Democratic party. See "The Vietnamization of Bush's Vacation" - Section 4, page 10,.

The Democrats have a huge opportunity to evolve into a vibrant party of exciting ideas and values. Why don't they? Internet architecture and peer-to-peer applications are clear examples of new ways to look at the world, how it works, and how human activities might be better organized.

Is it possible we could once again have a true two party system? Could there be a future where the GOP is the retrograde, hub and spoke, rules based party of the money, on the one hand, and the new Democratic party is the peer-to-peer party of the people on the other. Could the future offer us a real choice between a party of the old guard plutocracy promoting personal gain to the exclusion of the commons v.s. the party of the people supporting both the commons and private wealth?

The dots are there, all we Democrats have to do is start to connect them.

Broadband Perspectives

It's the applications enabled by the connection’s quality

Not everything can be photographed in natural light. In photography, you can set up a camera in a very dark room and leave the lens wide open for ever and get zero exposure on the negative if the number of photons falling on the film per unit of time is below some threshold. This has a fancy name: Reciprocity Failure - which describes certain non-linear aspects of film's response to light levels.

Well wireless bits are just electromagnetic photons. So, by analogy, if not enough bits are available per unit of time, some things are simply impossible. The "exposure" is never realized and is meaningless.

Consider, if you will, the situation in the Pacific island Kingdom of Tonga. On Tonga it costs a local ISP about $13K per month for a link that provides 2 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up - with the increased latency of a geosynchronous satellite connection as opposed to a terrestrial connection. An islander will pay about $2,500 per month US for 512 Kbps down/128 Kbps up. With this very limited capacity, how realistic is it to expect that people living on Tonga will find it “normal” to work with applications that use large files, such as the Democracy Now files mentioned below? The flow of bits as electromagnetic photons, combined with their substantial latency, is such that it prevents the islanders from benefiting from modern applications running on high capacity, high quality connections.

Note: Latency is another dimension of a network that must be taken into consideration when evaluating the sorts of applications a connection can support. Some readers will remember the “latency” that made overseas calls so interesting in the past. Others may have experienced problems introduced by latency in VoIP conversations. The latency dimension is usually overlooked in discussions of the quality of a connection. In general, the lower the latency in a packet switched network, the higher the quality. Too often all that is discussed is the cost of a connection and the bandwidth of a connection. To keep this brief note simpler, latency is not further considered here. It needs to be more fully addressed in another paper.

To explore the implications of very large files, we can look into Democracy Now's new recommendation that the members of their network use bittorrent/Azureus to down load the daily TV show they produce. These are about 700 megabyte files in high definition AVI format -- not simple video postage stamps ala Rocketboom.

Now, ideally it would take less than 1 hour to download a one hour TV show. In an ideal world, a connection with Comcast’s best 6 Mbps capacity would theoretically take about 16 minutes to FTP a 700 megabyte Democracy Now show file. In the non ideal real world the times would be longer. This strongly suggest that one of Verizon's new $15.00/mo 768 Kbps connections [.768 Mbps] could take at least 7.8X longer, or just over 2 hours FTP this same file.

By way of comparison, and as a competition check, it is worth pointing out that today a citizen of Hong Kong, with a readily available connection with 1 Gbps capacity, could, theoretically, FTP this same 700 MB file in less than 6 seconds - 167X faster than a Comcast customer in the US.

The fact of the matter is that these ideal performance are rare indeed. But for the purposes of this paper they serve to create a reasonable apples to apples comparison. Note: P-2-P distribution solutions eliminate the bottlenecks created by very limited numbers of FTP file servers, but the many variables that make P-2-P effective also make comparisons very hard. Thus I used FTP as a source of base line comparisons.

All in all, this means that a connections with a capacity of 768 Kbps is 7.8X more difficult than a connection with a capacity of 6 Mbps. And that this same 6 Mbps capacity is 167X less responsive than the capacity of a 1 Gbps connection in Hong Kong. This makes working with large files a difficult choice for the citizen of Tonga, a possibility for a citizen of America, and a no brainer in Hong Kong. Thus the capacity of our connections to send and receive bits can be a barrier to applications, such as the Democracy Now program, that assume large file capacities --or it can be an enabler. Is this justice as fairness for all? Do we wish to institutionalize the notion that some of us are more equal than the others of us? What else? What other applications does too little capacity, or too much latency, render too difficult and thus meaningless?

What do we want for our citizens? The best platform possible or should we be willing to ask them to settle for 1/167th of what our competitors have to work with?

Given the above, how should we properly define the term broadband? What is the capacity/latency threshold below which a connection is not considered to be broadband? I suggest that the lowest threshold is 10 Mbps. To be competitive on the global stage, we should consider a threshold of at least 100 Mbps, if not 1 Gbps.

This leads to the following thought experiment. Ask yourself how many megabytes per day a modern and well connected participant in a network of the near future might want to download per day on average. 700 megabytes of Democracy Now + X megabytes of Podcasts + Y megabytes of vidcasts + Z megabytes of what ever else was of interest PLUS all of the megabytes of our creations we wish to share with others. And all of this needs to be downloaded/uploaded in some reasonable amount of our time. The question is, what is reasonable? What will give us a robust platform for a sustainable economy in a networked world economy?

This thought experiment suggest that our average, actively engaged, networked citizen might well require at least 100 Mbps of capacity just for openers. Consider the case in Tonga where 512 Kbps of capacity downstream costs about $2500 per month. Consider, then, the case in Japan, and else where, where 100 Mbps of capacity is becoming the norm. Does Boston want to be like Tonga or does Boston want to be more competitive than the offerings in Japan, Hong Kong etc? It makes a real difference as to the applications that can be supported in a meaningful way.

Here, for example, are some current prices in Hong Kong. They offer an interesting perspective of what is possible today in a competitive environment:

1 Gbps [symmetrical] @ $215 US/mo = $0.22 per Mbps

100 Mbps [symmetrical] @ $34 US/mo = $0.34 / Mbps

10 Mbps [symmetrical] @ $16 / mo. = $1.60 / Mbps

Or more generally:

The Kingdom of Tonga: Consumer rate is $4883 per 1 Mbps [asymmetrical] for .512 Mbps of capacity = 533X more costly than U.S;

U.S.: (Comcast) consumer rate is $9.17 per 1 Mbps for 6 Mbps of capacity = 42X more costly than Hong Kong

Hong Kong: Consumer rate is $0.22 per 1 Mbps [symmetrical] for 1 Gbps of capacity. This is a stunning 167X performance advantage over Comcast’s best current offering - for under 4X the cost [$55 vs $215].

If we pay more for less in Boston, can we truly claim to be world leader in connectivity? Today a person living in Boston with a 6 Mbps connection is enjoying a capacity that is about 12X greater than that enjoyed by an islander on Tonga, but is only 1/167 of the capacity available in Hong Kong. The fact is that a premium consumer grade connection capacity in Boston is a lot closer to the conditions in the Kingdom of Tonga than those in Hong Kong.

Note: It does not matter what approach a society takes to offer their citizens truly Big Broadband capacities. The fact is that these real world capacities are the realities we have to compete with today and going forward. How they are provisioned does not alter the fact that they set the bar for competition in the network of interconnected modern societies, their markets and their commons.

There are further interesting implications.

1] How much back haul would be required to support 1 million users each with 100 Mbps of symmetrical capacity? With 1Gbps of symmetrical capacity? And what would the latency of these connections be?

2] In a P-2-P one-for-all-and-all-for-one environment each person increases his or her assets per download but also uploads 120% to 150% of what they download [share ratio of 1.2 - 1.5] as their contribution back to the commons [Cooperative gain]. What, then, are the implications for the demands on the infrastructure for the distribution of bits in this quantity within a 24 hour time frame? Currently, the cable companies have no idea what the upper limit on upstream demand is. We suspect they are afraid to discover what the answer is.

3] The above illustrates that it is already possible today to integrate our drives for creating community with our drives for increasing our private wealth. We can do this now in such a way that the integration is greater than the sum of the parts. This cooperative gain creates the value that will drive our future economy. This is also the cooperative gain that B. Franklin saw as the means to creating and sustaining a middle class.

All of this demonstrates why it is important that American cities, towns and counties use Buckminster Fuller's concept of Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science as they consider the best set of principals that will guide them towards the goals implied by the vision above.

Just what sort of heuristic, First Mile Out, P-2-P, low latency , mesh network, supported by what kind of Cognitive Software Defined Radios, should we be anticipating? Will we be ready for 1 Gbps WiFi capacity? It is on the horizon. Or rather, what sort of principals will allow us to grow into the above anticipated vision?

Now how do we get our elected officials -- and their advisors -- to understand all of this?

Francis Perkins: Cooperation and Mutuality in 1935

The 70th anniversary of Social Security is fast upon us. I recommend that you go to the link below to NPR's On Point radio show for a very interesting segment on the origins of Social Security. Click on "Closing Segment" Then scroll down to the Closing Segment to listen to Francis Perkins, the first woman Cabinet member, in a 1935 talk on the need for cooperation and mutuality to protect all of us from the unknown vagaries of the market.

The history, the context, of her achievement is fascinating.

Today's political leaders appear to be leading the forces that reject cooperation and mutuality as an organic part of American culture [Social Security, Social safety nets, etc].

On the other hand, those of use who look at the world from the perspective of citizens who are peers acting in their roles as members and participants of networks based on Internet principals see things quite differently.

Can it be that the fundamental conflict on Social Security is really about the validity and appropriateness of a world view that makes cooperation and mutuality a core principal?

Consider that more than a few economists and regulators insist that the term "consumer" is the correct term when talking about members of online networks. They flat out reject the term "citizen". Perhaps this is because they have never used a bittorrent client like Azureus which reminds you, as a function of the software, when you quit an upload if your share ratio is less than 1! Not having experienced this modern instance of "cooperation and mutuality" they are unable to understand the benefit of running your share ratio up to 1.2 or higher, but not necessarily above 1.5. Could it be that they have no idea what a "share ratio" is? Could it be that they have no idea how to monetize this cooperative gain from collective action? Could it be that they have forgotten that if is as important to build the common good as it is to build private wealth?

Perhaps they would find it instructive to use Azureus to legally download, and then VLC to watch, edge created content such as the film Star Wars Revelations and the series The.Scene.

Francis Perkins understood the value of cooperation and mutuality in 1935. Benjamin Franklin understood this in 1727. What do and an organic aspect of our culturewe have to do to once again restore this as a fundamental principal of our democracy?

Democracy can only be created, not consumed

Citizens are NOT consumers of Democracy. The FCC's last two chairmen have referred to we the people as being mere one dimensional consumers. For a recent example, see David Isenberg's comments on FCC Chairman Martin's new The Four Internet Freedoms.

The essential and fundamental objection to the Martin's suggestion that we are not citizens, but only mere consumers, is that it is totally anti-democratic and contrary to the spirit of America's founding principles.

Democracy is a process of continuous creation by citizens practicing self government. It is not a product from a 3rd party to be consumed. Thus, to relegate citizens to the status of simple consumers, is to attack the very foundation of our experiment in democracy. Democracy can only be kept alive if we citizens are engaged daily in its production.

I suspect, also, that the citizens who work daily to create and share democracy function as what we might today call a distributed peer to peer network that is subject to both Reed's and Metcalf's laws: The more who participate, the greater the value of the network.

I am first and fore most a citizen who is actively engaged in the creation and distribution of democracy. I am a consumer of commodities and celebrity last and least. To this end, I recommend that we all reconsider Benj. Franklin's Junto Club of 1727 as a model within which the commons and the market work together so that each may thrive. Note that Franklin, in order to support the commons, did NOT patent his lightening rod, his invention of bifocals, nor his metal stove.

Humbug to the small minds at the FCC who pursue a goal to impose upon us citizens, in all of our many dimensions, the corporate view of the world as created and delimited by unregulated free market capitalism, driven principally by consumerism and celebrity.

Consider, if you will, that the principles of democracy, as spelled out by the Founders, create a goal seeking, or heuristic, operating system which supports the various applications of our society. Sample applications running on top to the Founding OS might be: market capitalism, the commons, education, social safety net, environmental stewardship, religion and so forth.

Martin's mistake, and the mistake made by the far right ideologues, is to suggest that unregulated free market capitalism is the Operation System, rather than but one of many applications. Capitalism, like Java, needs to operate in a carefully bounded sand box. In Adam Smith's view, this sandbox was defined and controlled by the norms and values of middle class Victorian society. Smith never intended his vision to exist in the wild outside of the sandbox, unregulated and unfettered. Such a condition would be pathological, as we are seeing for ourselves today.

The question today, then, is what is a modern re-statement of the Founding OS and the role of we the people in re-creating democracy every day? What is the 21st century vision that yields this re-statement of the principals of democracy? Such a statement would starkly reveal the poverty of the misguided notion that market capitalism is more than an application. It is not, and never can be, the primary and superior operating principle for an experiment in democratic self governance.

Democrats, where are you?

Dewayne Hendricks: Looking to Spectrum for a Networking Utopia

[Note: This item was originally posted on Esme Vos' excellent Muniwireless site.]

What We Want

In network utopia, everyone will be connected across the digital divides of economics and geography. In network utopia, everyone will be connected with enough “bandwidth”—enough bits—that there will no longer be any impediment to innovation. Reaching network utopia may be possible by looking at where the most bits are: radio spectrum. Although spectrum has been treated like a scarce resource for almost one hundred years, today’s emerging technologies are altering this perception. There is actually an abundance of spectrum—more than enough for everyone.

Where We Are

Today’s communications technology is moving toward a world of all-digital transmitters and receivers. These advances in technology, combined with the swift evolution of mesh-based transmission and switching protocols, are opening up a new set of possibilities for unique new services utilizing intelligent wireless networks. These networks will contain smart transmitters, receivers, and switches. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has recently coined a term to describe these types of wireless devices: cognitive radios (CRs). Today’s Internet is perhaps the best example of a self-regulating structure that embodies these new technological approaches to communications in the networking domain. However, to date, many of these innovations have not moved into the wireless networking arena.

Continues on MuniWireless

Big Broadband Bill of Rights

Susan Estrada
President, FirstMile.US
http://www.firstmile.us

Big Broadband Bill of Rights

Preamble

During the last 20 years, the main tenets of Internet development included building and sustaining an open, interoperable, scalable network of networks that robustly supports a variety of applications and devices. As we look forward to a ubiquitous big broadband environment, these basic philosophies still hold true.

To understand how big broadband should evolve, it is essential to understand the three distinct portions of a big broadband connection.

The first is the pipe -- essentially the path, street or highway connecting you to the rest of the broadband network. These can be wireless or wired or a combination of the two.

The second portion is the applications - this is what you can do over the broadband pipe. These are sometimes software-based, but may be built-in to certain devices.

And, finally, there are devices and computers that you need to attach to your pipe that provide specific functions to help you more readily access applications.

These articles will best ensure the benefits of big broadband for all members of the American public.

Article 1. The Pipe

1.1 You have the right to a big broadband pipe -- no matter where you live, work or play. The pipe must be fast enough to support what you want to accomplish and must provide symmetric service.

1.2 You have the right to expect that any group with a reasonable business case will be able to provide a pipe to you including municipalities, telephone companies, cable companies, electric companies, community groups and others that may want to invest in you and your community.

1.3 You have the right to an affordable level of service.

1.4 You have the right to attach consumer devices and computers to the pipe as you see fit.

1.5 You have the right to use any application which you need or want to use, without restriction from the pipe provider, within the scope of the law.

1.6 You have the right to trust that public libraries and/or other publicly supported venues in your local community are available to serve your needs, if you do not have access to a pipe. You have the right to expect them to be funded for this activity, open during reasonable hours including nights and weekends and have up-to-date devices and applications for accessing the broadband connection.

Article 2. The Applications

2.1 You have the right to use any and all applications without restriction that meet your needs and wants, within the scope of the law.

2.2 You have the right to encourage educators, medical professionals, businesses, the government and entertainment companies to provide reasonable access to their services through your big broadband connection.

2.3 You have the right to trust that others will respect your copyright ownership. In turn, you shall respect the copyright protections afforded to us and compensate copyright owners per their request.

2.4 You have the right to widespread availability of entertainment, business, healthcare and education applications, especially if you live, work or play in an area where traditional options are limited.

2.5 You have the right to increased bandwidth that applications will require as they become more advanced, interactive and powerful.

Article 3. The Devices

3.1 You have the right to connect consumer devices, computers and appliances to your big broadband connection without restriction.

3.2 You have the right to widespread availability of entertainment, business, healthcare and education devices especially if you live in areas where traditional options are limited.

3.3. You have the right to expect that industry and government will provide an ever-broadening array of devices that will utilize your big broadband connection to support your needs in healthcare, business, education and entertainment.

Article 4. Public Officials

4.1 You have the right to expect your elected officials at the local, state and federal levels to be aware of the importance of big broadband and create laws that catalyze the development of big broadband pipes, applications and devices for your use. They shall not restrict any aspect of big broadband development or availability unless public safety is in question. They shall look at all aspects of your health and welfare to ensure that laws are created and modified to ensure that big broadband can drive economic development and better jobs, better healthcare and a stronger educational system for your community.

4.2 You have the right to expect your regulatory officials at the local, state and federal levels to be aware of the importance of big broadband and provide the absolute minimum regulatory rulemaking to ensure competition, to ensure ubiquity, to ensure the speed of connection that each individual requires and to ensure that solutions are developed for hard-to-reach and disadvantaged members of the public.

We invite you to show your support and sign the Big Broadband Bill of Rights. Both individuals and organizations are welcome. Visit the FirstMile.US website at http://www.firstmile.us and click on the link to the Big Broadband Bill of Rights.

How did our political system get to this point?

As Paul Krugman put it in a recent NY Times op-ed: How did our political system get to this point?

Could it be that the central challenge in a mass market consumer society is to fulfill the very human need to experience belonging to something greater than oneself? Interestingly, the act of belonging implies participating which requires something more than simple consumption. The "something more" includes elements of creation, distribution and control of our personal environment. "The Darknet" is the leading wave of the tsunami of change that is about to sweep over us. For example, J. K. Rawlings latest book is now on the darknet in both electronic book form and as several forms of audio.

From a post of Dave Farber's IP list:

J.K. Rowling could make more money and help the cause of literacy if she authorized electronic versions of her works. Already e-pirates are spreading around the just-released "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" without a nickel reaching Rowling.

What's more, "Harry Potter Radio" this weekend began streaming a highly skillful but totally unauthorized reading of the new Potter to accompany the almost instantly pirated text--scanned from the p-book. So much for the potential of Draconian DRM as a protector of best-sellers.

Along with publishers and policymakers, J.K. might want to check out J.D. Lasica's Darknet to understand the folly of Luddite copyright law as an anti-piracy measure for e-books.

Copyright is okay, but we need balance. If J.K., 40 this month, lives past 70, it will be a century or so before her work enters the public domain. Oh, well. The Darknets are ready if certain stubborn publishers think they can overprice e-books or refuse to release any at all.

David Rothman

Fundamentally, consumerism is like junk food. It feels good but its empty calories have no value as sustenance for our vital human needs. In fact, too many of them may be harmful to your health.

The impulse towards a membership in a greater community, be it membership in a club, association, singing group, bowling league, or a church affiliation, is matched by a seemingly equal drive for the individualism of the solitary hero achiever. These two basic impulses appear to be in conflict. But are they?

Perhaps the answer is simply that we lost the genius of Benj Franklin's Junto.

Franklin described the Junto this way in his Autobiography

"I should have mentioned before, that, in the autumn of the preceding year, [1727] I had formed most of my ingenious acquaintance into a club of mutual improvement, which we called the JUNTO; we met on Friday evenings. The rules that I drew up required that every member, in his turn, should produce one or more queries on any point of Morals, Politics, or Natural Philosophy [physics], to be discuss'd by the company; and once in three months produce and read an essay of his own writing, on any subject he pleased. Our debates were to be under the direction of a president, and to be conducted in the sincere spirit of inquiry after truth, without fondness for dispute or desire of victory; and to prevent warmth, all expressions of positive opinions, or direct contradiction, were after some time made contraband, and prohibited under small pecuniary penalties."

The results of the original Junto are still evident today as an integral part of American society. The Junto gave us our first library, volunteer fire departments, the first public hospital, police departments, paved streets and the University of Pennsylvania. They recommended books, shopkeepers, and friends to each other. They fostered self-improvement through discussions on topics related to philosophy, morals, economics, and politics.

Franklin's beliefs deeply informed his life. He never sought, for example, to patent his many inventions -- such as bifocal glasses, metal stoves, and the lightening rod. He understood the value of increasing the common good as a goal as important as creating private wealth. His contributions of his Intellectual Property to the common good make him, arguably, the father of the American Open Source movement.

I suspect the Junto was a key element in the genius of America's success, the key to America’s creation of a thriving middle class, the powerful synergy released by integrating the native impulse to rugged and competitive individualism with the impulse towards cooperative efforts and communitarianism. It created a context and an implied system of constraints for capitalism, exactly as Adam Smith saw as a required condition. [It is, by the way, very interesting to speculate on the relationship between Smith and Franklin. Could it be that the intended audience for Smith's writings was the new American environment, not the established business elite in England?]

The Far right has, for the past several decades, recast this as an either or choice between the two impulses we all harbor. They have reduced America's genius to a zero sum game with no synergy: either you are for unfettered free market capitalism, God fearing fundamentalist Christian at that, or you are some form of politically incorrect sub-human.

What an impoverished solution to the emptiness of consumerism as the main ingredient of the culture of our times.

Historically, this conflict between the closed fist and the open palm has been addresses in literature. Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain (1924) is a but one example. The integration of the snowflake and the snow drift is his symbolic integration of the seemingly impossible contradictions. The challenge is whether the Dionysian and the Apollonian are mutually exclusive or subject to the possibility of integration. As we all seems to have some measure of both these impulses in our make up, the question of integration is very personal to each of us. Can we, as individuals and as a society, benefit from the powerful energy released by the synergy of integration rather than dissipation of opposition?

The Democrats can articulate a vision that recaptures the energy of the synergy that Franklin's integration released. This will create a true contrast with the Far Right's shallowness. It will also address our hunger for success with both impulses. Today, we all feel the pain of the trashing of our communitarian desires by the run away excesses of the consumer society. It is time to restore the balance and to develop a politics that honors not just both impulses but has the goal of integrating them as well.

In the end, neither a meaningful life nor a meaningful politics can not be arrived at by consumption alone. Meaning, in life and in politics, can only be realized through active participation in a creative process.

A Strategy for a Greater Democracy of the People

By William Wood, Ph.D. & Jock Gill

The May 26 edition of the Boston Globe printed an AP story with some fascinating data on the 2004 election in the United States:

Turnout of blacks, whites said higher in '04 presidential vote
Rates seen unchanged for Hispanics, Asians

By Associated Press
May 26, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Whites and blacks voted in the 2004 presidential elections at higher rates than they did four years earlier, the Census Bureau reported yesterday.

That was not the case with Hispanics, one of the most heavily courted groups of voters by the political parties. The voting rates did not change for Hispanics or Asian-Americans.

For too long the Democratic party has fallen into the zero sum trap of gender and identity politics. For too long one group has feared that anything given to another group must come at their expense. The GOP has been very effective splitting us along our identity lines in using this against us. It is time for us to take steps to adopt an all inclusive, win-win, strategy based upon justice and civil liberties for all. This is a strategy of high values for escaping from the identity conflicts that have plagued us for years.

The data in the AP story above, as illustrated by the Boston Globe, reveals the close tracking, going back to the election of 1964, of white voter turn out with black voter turn out. This calls into question the validity of the old Democratic political strategy of banking on the Black vote to gain the winning majority. The 40 years of data show that this may be a strategy with no benefit in terms of total vote count advantage. Increasing the participation of all demographics is, without a doubt, essential and the morally correct thing to do. But, by focusing especially on a narrow range of demographics, have we been missing a significant source of votes we are not getting precisely from a lack of attention and general neglect? Do we need a new strategy?

Even more interesting than the tracking of voter behaviors is the data on why folks do NOT vote:

#1 reason for not voting: 19.9% report they are too busy = too many Walmart jobs in our Globalized economy? Is this agricultural slavery simply shifted to wage slavery?

#2 reason: 15.4% report illness or disability

Thus 35% of the not currently voting population is too busy, too sick or disabled to fully participate in our democracy. What, as Democrats, have we done for these people? How have we made their lives better? These are the votes of the people, not the money. These are the votes we must go after as the party of full civil rights and justice for all. These 35% of non voters are an important group of disenfranchised Americans we can recognize, support and help to organize to help us all in our cooperative drive to regain our logical majority status.

Two obvious strategies to attract the 35% who are too busy, sick or disabled to vote:

1] Make election days full national holidays -- make business, the money party, give back to society and the greater common good by giving back one day of paid wages to democracy and self government.

2] Make it our policy to insist on full civil rights and justice for all Americans of all demographics. We must demand, for example, full ADA access to every single voting place. We should refuse to enter non ADA complaint structures just as we refuse to cross picket lines. We have to walk the talk if we want to our professed values to be believed and trusted.

Here is a hint: read Victor Hugo an Herman Melville from the point of view of the disabled. Now, is the White Whale the majority society that drives the handicapped, amongst others, to madness? What is the message in making a hunchback the hero? Question: where are the disablility literature courses in our schools and universities? If none, why?

On a more delicate issue, for 1000s of years we have called "the other", and especially the handicapped, "dirty" and banned them from our various houses of worship. Is your church, for example, fully ADA compliant? We have 1,000s of years of antipathy towards "the other" and the disabled that we, as the party that stands for full civil rights and justice for all, need to overcome. If we do not, how can we regain our leadership position in our great national debate about values?

Why I’m Not Worried

By Dana Blankenhorn:

A lot of liberals are very upset right now over actions of the Bush Administration.

People are dying. Women are being denied their rights. Gays are being denied their rights. The judiciary is being perverted. The media is being perverted.

My reaction? Ho, hum.

It’s not that I’m completely sanguine about this Administration. Most of what we’re seeing is the predictable result of Bush’s 2004 victory, and the natural tendency of a second term incumbent to over-reach.

But everything I see indicates the public isn’t fooled by any of this. And there are two other bombs about to go off under this Administration, bombs the Administration set itself, economic nukes that will obliterate it, and all its works, forever.

The bombs are China and the Real Estate Boom.

China’s rise from regional power to co-equal superpower happened entirely on the watch of this President. China now controls the U.S. economy, because it owns a large portion of our debt – debt we’re still piling up. Bush has been blind to the problem of China, even aided and abetted its rise, ever since he came to power.

When the Yuan rises, when the prices at Wal-Mart skyrocket, when Taiwan is gobbled up and we find ourselves powerless to do anything about it, so all our chips come from our main economic rival, Bush policies will get 100% of the blame. No amount of spinning will wash that guilt away. It’s there. And few will care about how the mess came to be – they’ll see the results in their own lives and demand human sacrifice.

The Real Estate Boom may go off before or after China. I’m guessing before.

Over the last decade two quasi-federal agencies, dubbed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, have been able to create $1.5 trillion of real estate debt with no controls. This started under Clinton, but blaming him at this point is like the drug addict blaming the pusher who gave them their first taste.

Credit checks on real estate buyers have disappeared. You can now buy 102% of a home’s purchase price, on an all-interest adjustable rate note, so long as you can make the first payment on the thing. That’s how crazy speculation has gotten. Agencies created to make housing affordable have, in fact, made it completely unaffordable.

In this kind of super-heated environment you don’t need falling prices to get a collapse. All you need is for gains to slow. At that point some of the idiots who got these loans will have to sell, starting a vicious cycle.

The only reason Bush won last year was because the economy remained strong. It remained strong because real estate speculation replaced stock speculation. Look around your neighborhood. Look at all the SUVs driving around with agents and speculators still sporting their W ’04 bumper snickers.

How you think these folks are going to feel when it all turns to dust, and given the illiquid nature of real estate everyone’s going to fall down, including most of those who try heading for the exits right now. The last real estate crash, in the mid-1970s, took nearly a decade to clear out. This one is going to be bigger. And the quasi-federal guarantees on those FNMA bonds mean either we the taxpayers go on the hook for that money or the creditworthiness of the U.S.A. disappears.

It’s the perfect economic storm. And the only way to start digging out is through policies Democrats have been advocating since 1993. Move toward balanced budgets. Make the tax system fairer. Invest in education and in people.

No change in our message is necessary. When people really get mad (and they will) Howard Dean’s 2003 speech to California Democrats will sound brilliant. He’s the right man, in the right position, to stick the knife in Bush-ism’s back. He’s got it in his hand. He’s got the Internet tools needed to drive the message home.

When the moment arrives, the crowd will roar, the knife will come down, and history will write of this era the way it ought to do, as the Great Mistake America will never repeat.

It’s going to happen. It’s going to be painful for everyone. But one thing is certain. Today’s Republican Party will not survive it.

Dana Blankenhorn danablankenhorn@mindspring.com
Mooreslore Blog /
ZDNet OpenSource
A-Clue.Com

Joel Salatin: Lunatic Farmer

You will love this article, from, of all places, today's The NY Times Style Magazine:

High Priest of the Pasture
By TODD S. PURDUM

Published: May 1, 2005

The little dirt road is called Pure Meadows Lane, and to follow it across the slatted wooden cattle guard over the Middle River and into the 550 acres of Polyface farm in Swoope, Va., is to enter a peaceable kingdom, out of time and up-to-date. The oldest wing of the snug white clapboard farmhouse up ahead was built in 1750, and Polyface is just a newfangled name for an idea so old-fashioned as to be revolutionary. In fact, the man who owns and runs this farm may well be Virginia's most multifaceted agrarian since Thomas Jefferson. The big sign above his thrumming computer and cluttered desk reads, ''Joel Salatin: Lunatic Farmer,'' but he is crazy like a fox.

For 44 years on the western edge of the Shenandoah Valley, three generations of Salatins (of which he's the middle) have raised grass-fed livestock on rough and hilly land without recourse to an ounce of chemical fertilizer or a fistful of seed, in close touch with the soil, the seasons and themselves, using methods meant to mimic nature. The result is lush fields of unusual greenness -- even in the sodden melting snow of a late winter morning -- and pork, eggs and poultry of uncommon cleanliness and indescribably good taste.

snip ----------

Three of the resources mentioned in the article:

Eat Wild

Acres USA Magazine

Heritage Foods USA

Six Emerging Global Pandemics

[This post is from a friend with contacts in the national health care arena.]

Bird Flu is only one of the six emerging global pandemics. They are: Super-TB, H5N1 (Bird Flu), Super-Staph, SARS, Super-Malaria and the major threat is still HIV.

H5N1 is going to be very bad, but (at worst) it will cull out 10% of the healthy human population. That would be over 600 million deaths from H5N1. If it focusses on the weak, just what disease is supposed to do, it may be a very perverse partial solution to the tensions caused by exploding global population and the carrying capacity of the earths natural systems.

The most terrifying pandemic tidal wave is the one no-one is wants to address - (Except maybe China).

HIV, using 20+ million Human Petri-Dishes kept alive with long term "maintain" drugs, is evolving at a rate of 3 generations an hour/host into an indestructible, casual-contact, species-buster.

HIV has gone from 2 to 400 strains in 20 years. All of them with separate traits, target proteins, infection rates and preferred transmission membranes.

It's only a matter of time until one this exponentially growing number of variations cracks the protein to penetrate saliva and sinus membranes.

Three strains have already cracked 3 of the 4 classes of drugs that used to slow it down.

Some within Health and Human Services [HHS] also are increasingly alarmed about folding protein forms of virus, that are 99% benign, but seem to be increasingly interested in taking up residence in odd places in the human body.

Once there, they may decide to make friends with HIV and teach some strains how to fold to disguise itself.

In this we see the tragic unintended consequences of our best intentions opportunistically turned against us by the power of evolution.

Gaia will choose who survives these 6, unstoppable, pandemic tsunamis.

Who will lead us to safer ground? Safety will not be found if we keep our heads in the sands of entertainment, consumption and celebrity.

Don't be a Vector. Be a leader.

Are Black Babies Morally Equivalent to White Women?

Oliver Willis has a great blog posting that exposes the hypocrisy of the Tom Delays of the Religious Right Party: Where Were the Republicans? This sad event took place in TEXAS last September 25th.

"I talked to him, I told him that I loved him. Inside of me, my son is still alive," Wanda Hudson told reporters afterward. "This hospital [Texas Children's Hospital] was considered a miracle hospital. When it came to my son, they gave up in six months. ... They made a terrible mistake."

Sun's death marks the first time a U.S. judge has allowed a hospital to discontinue an infant's life-sustaining care against a parent's wishes, according to bioethical experts.

snip...

H5N1 Bird Flu: 70% mortality w/ 175 million deaths?

The Observer, the magazine of the English paper The Guardian, has today published On a wing and a prayer .

'We think it is only a matter of time before H5N1 or a related strain of the virus becomes infectious between humans,' Professor John Oxford, a virologist at the Queen Mary and Westfield School of medicine in east London, had warned me before I embarked for Vietnam. 'When that happens it will be too late to do anything about it, which is why we have to prepare now. Forget al-Qaeda, the biggest terrorist threat we face today is Mother Nature.'

Oxford isn't the only scientist who fears a viral meltdown. At a conference of international bird-flu experts in Ho Chi Minh City a few days later, I heard Dr Shigeru Omi, the WHO's Western Pacific regional director, warn that the world was 'now in the gravest possible danger of a pandemic'.

...

"In the last great pandemic in 1918, the absence of air travel and restrictions on movements during wartime meant it took two years for Spanish influenza to spread from crowded army camps in northern France - where Professor Oxford and other experts now postulate it first gained a foothold, in troops weakened by mustard gas - to the rest of the world. Then, 50m people died. Today, given the growth in the world's population, the equivalent death toll would be 175m."

Please read the entire article for a sense of the current and present danger we must face now. There is no escape in an alternative reality bubble nor is there a faith-based solution.

The Party of an Educated Public?

Facing a chasm in higher ed
By Derrick Z. Jackson

Mr. Jackson has an excellent Op-Ed in today’s Boston Globe that clearly illustrates a stark choice facing the Democratic party. Is the party to once again become the party of the people with a membership that is as well and fully educated as the members of the Money Party led by the GOP? Will the 80% of the population that goes to public colleges get an education based on the justice as fairness of equal opportunity for all?

Or will the leadership of the Democratic party opt to remain the soft wing of The Money Party dominating our politics since at least 1980? Will we allow the continuation of a system that gives an undemocratic preferential treatment to an elite 20%? An advantage conferred only on the basis of their wealth and privileged situation?

A party for, of, and by the people will not allow the condition documented by Mr. Jackson to stand:

“... the richest nation in the world is plunging even more deeply into an impermeable two-tiered society of higher ed. Eighty percent of the nation's 14 million undergraduate college students go to public colleges. We already have a system where desperate parents flood the most desirable private and public colleges with applications.

We are starving the public colleges at a time when only 3 percent of the enrollment in the nation's most selective colleges comes from the bottom 25 percent in family income. We are sending the clear message that public colleges are grimy places for rejects.”

Are we going to be the party that champions the 80% majority and refuses to allow the minority party to relegate the rest of us to the status of “grimy rejects”? How we answer this question will shape our destiny and and our values for generations to come.

In short, will we use education to unite us or to divide us?

This Week's Clue: The Climax State

By: Dana Blankenhorn

  Karl Marx was one of the great moral philosophers of the 19th century. But his vision was perverted, in the 20th century, and made the center of a system that imprisoned billions of people, one that required decades of war to eradicate. THE WORLD ISN’T FAIR

  Ayn Rand, who was born 100 years ago, was one of the great moral philosophers of the 20th century. Her novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged , have become as important as Marx' Das Kapital was to Communists, in defining the ideology of modern Conservativism.

  It's just as imprisoning.

  This would shock Rand no end. Everything she wrote about, everything she worked for, her entire life was dedicated to preserving and enhancing freedom. Her point was that great men and great ideas should not be limited by the small minds of small men, nor the small turnings of small-d democratic systems. If Gary Cooper wanted to build something that looked suspiciously like the World Trade Center (check the background of The Fountainhead's last scene ) we need to get out of his way, not sit around waiting for a consensus to agree on his monumental design.

But what Rand meant for Cooper's Howard Roark wasn't necessarily meant for Roark's children or grandchildren. Marx didn't want a dictatorship of little men, and Rand didn't want one of flighty heiresses, either. But Communism, as a system, happened. And the sad fact is that, today, Paris Hilton has a better chance of becoming President than your son or daughter has, and that's wrong.

Don't get me wrong, and don't write me off as a crank. If I wrapped my political writings into a philosophy and called it "Blankenhornism" I'm sure it would become just as perverted, in time, as Rand's words have become in our time. The dilemma reminds me of a scene in "Monty Python's Life of Brian" where the protagonist is trying to convince people he's not the Messiah, but they insist on parroting what he says back at him as though he were.

The philosopher who comes closest to my thinking is Isaiah Berlin. But what I take from Berlin is simply the belief that perfection doesn't exist. It's the same point I take from Jefferson. Few founders expected the U.S. Constitution to last over 200 years.

Why has it survived? It has survived because it has been remade in blood and rewritten many times over our history - one amendment was even explicitly erased by another. I'm convinced that revision is the only reason it's still with us. There have been many dictators throughout our history - small, large, and in-between -- but because they all pledged loyalty to the system, the possibility always existed for the people to outwait them, to outwit them, and to overthrow them. My faith is it will happen again, but blind faith won't make that happen.

The fact is that whenever I see someone quoting Rand at me, it's usually followed by a special pleading. Some person, some institution, some group, some truth wants dispensation to run roughshod over everyone else and their rights. Because they're strong they must deserve it, you see.

And this is the problem with any system based on Rand. It becomes an exercise in toadyism. Cozy up to the strong, because their strength is proof they are right.

What we face today is a concerted attempt to make the present social structure of the American economy permanent. If your grandfather did something great you should continue to profit from it, and your grandchildren should be guaranteed leadership in their society by right of wealth and fame that you created.

This divine right of wealth is as brain-dead as the divine right of kings, the divine right of faith, or the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is as they were, an attempt to tell history to stop, a call for a "climax state" that will render short-term success permanent.

Ecology tells us what must come from a climax state. When the Okefenokee swamp, in far south Georgia, reaches a climax state the swamp disappears, and only the catastrophe of a great fire can bring the groundwater back to the surface. In the West the great redwoods take advantage of this, relying on their girth to survive the catastrophe, and raising the next generation of seeds in the ashes. But this, too, is something of a climax state.

A climax state appears to be stable, but it is in fact just waiting for catastrophe. Stability should not be the end of our striving. Growth should be.

Growth is a continuous, painful process. All parents know this. The shame of my generation is that we have worked so hard to prevent it in our young. We have closeted them behind rules, behind walls, behind faith and behind lies. We thought we were protecting them. We were, in fact, infantalizing them.

Thus it should be no surprise that today's young Americans can't compete with the young of China, or the young of India, or the young of South Africa for that matter. Struggle and failure and the fallibility of your elders are all valuable lessons. Without them, an ecology or a society quickly reaches a climax state, where even a philosophy of the individual becomes merely another set of chains.

Dana Blankenhorn
danablankenhorn@mindspring.com
Mooreslore Blog
ZDNet OpenSource
A-Clue.Com

    

Big Bandwidth Now!

Gigagband Connectivity

Apple’s new Pages program has some very interesting implications. With Pages, just about anyone can easily create, for example, a family news letter that contains movies [Quicktime], photos [iPhoto], music [iTunes], URLs as hot links, graphics and, of course text. The result is a fully multi-media message that measures in megabytes. My sample news letter was just under 9 megs.

Now that I have experienced what is so easily possible, I want to create a message that talks about a very high quality “movie trailer” which has, of course, the 80 meg trailer as an embedded element of the message. In fact, why not embed two 80 meg samples of end-user created content, NOT corporate productions, to illustrate the argument that many of us [see Kevin Werbach and Andrew Odlyzko] are making: we need BIG Bandwidth Now!

Or I might want to write a review of the FREE new episode of Star-Trek that is available today via bittorrent. Why not be able to include the full episode in the review? After all it is only a few more bits. You would only have to view as much as you liked. The value add, not to mention the competitive advantage, of getting it all at once and eliminating intermediaries is huge.

You can well imagine the implications of 100 million American homes regularly uploading tens of megabytes of richly dynamic multi-media newsletters, vacation topping stories, graduation pride, wedding delights, not to mention SoHo marketing and promotional materials! Who would not want to create and share such marvelous sensory experiences? Who could compete against them?

And just what did Steve Jobs mean when he said 2005 was the year of HD? Can you imagine the size of messages with imbedded HD TV files of personally significant events? Remember, these file have very low production and distribution costs and thus are “successful” if the only reach the intended nano-market of my personal audience. They have no need to earn even one cent. This is suggests some intriguing new business models: profits on top of free, as IBM is doing with Linux.

What we need now, to support the sorts of creativity and innovation enabled by the multi-media messages that programs such as Pages makes it so trivial to create, is a grand national challenge to provide Big Bandwidth to every American Everywhere by 2010. I suggest we aim for 10 gigabits as a first goal on the road to 40. Reality is said to require 40 gigabits of bandwidth. Why aim for anything less than reality?

Quite simply, the severe limits imposed upon our native creativity and economic entrepreneurial zeal by today’s weak, asymmetrical, single digit, tinyband connectivity offerings is creating a barrier to our future vitality in the global market place.

The US Government built the interstate highway system we all use for free today as a national investment in our collective future -- an investment that no private company could make and meet its short term profit goals. What sort of economic situation would we be in today if we had no broadly distributed interstate highway system but only a smattering of private toll roads?

If we limit ourselves to only the asymmetrical tinyband connectivity that the private sector is willing and able to provide us today, where will we be tomorrow? A small band future is an unacceptable risk to our national well being. In the past, a kingdom was lost for want of a horse. Shall we lose our future for want of bits?

[Note: this was created using the Pages editor and then copied into MarsEdit.]

Evil, Salvation and Politics

Jock Gill & Rev. Randolph Becker

We need to dig deeper into the root causes of so much of the conflict afoot in the land today. We need to understand how our concepts of "evil" influence how we think about political power.

There are deep links to the nature of the source and legitamacy of authority and how we understand sin. Is the serpent the symbol of wisdom or of evil? What is Family Values really about? What are the sources of authority of secular and theological power structures?

Is this the same debate that animated the conflict between the Orthodox Roman church and the Gnostic beliefs in the early centuries of the Christian era? Elaine Pagels, in her book "The Gnostic Gospels", suggests links and relationships between: Martin Luther, The Quakers, and Paul Tillich. Most recently, many of us have direct and powerful experience of the 60's counter culture movements with their rejection of both top down authority and many of the classical sins.

A clue, in the bubble chamber sense, is that the Family Values proponents are strongly represented by very to ultra conservative Christians who have very rigid answers to the foundations of authority and the meaning of sin. Most of us on the progressive Left, or in David Brooks' words the "Educated Class of the university-town elite" have no understanding of the Religious Right Party's concerns with authority and sin and no well thought out and progressive 21st century positions on either.

We Progressives of the "Educated Class of the university-town elite" are, perhaps, the equivalents of modern day Gnostics: we don't want intermediaries with their top down power structures. We want direct access to the source of our faith and democratic politics. Unlike the Gnostics of the early Christian era, however, we have no 21st century "gospels" that eloquently state our case.

The election cycles since 2000 have clearly shown that until we can match the intellectual, cultural and religious vigor of the right, we are not going to be successful.

We must provide a progressive answer to the question of who gets to benefit from the power derived from defining the source of authority and the meaning of sin.

In order to unpack these notions of sin and power, we need to explore another concept in Christianity, that of the millennium. This is not millennium in the precise sense of a thousand years, but in the sense of the return of The Christ and the beginning of the heavenly age.

Fundamental to Christianity is the belief that at some time Jesus as The Christ will return to judge the living and the dead, and those found worthy will then enter into heaven. This will be end of all human trial and tribulation, and the final fulfillment of the divine experiment in humanity.

But, to complicate the picture, among those who are millennialists, we have two distinct camps:

-- the pre-millennialists believe we are living in a time prior to the second coming of The Christ, and the collective sins of humanity are keeping that awaited event from occurring.

-- the post-millennialists believe that we are living in a time after the coming of The Christ, and are already living in that heavenly state, but all of our sins are keeping us from the realization of that reality.

What we refer to as right-wing or fundamentalist Christians would be pre-millennialists, and more moderate Christians might fall into the post-millennialist camp.

However, sense the centrality of the issue of sin AND the centrality of the power of both sin and the sinner in both models.

The attainment of the promised blessed outcome is not achieved by a presence of divine, holy, sanctified living, but by the absence of sin.

These are both models in which getting humanity to being simply neutral would be sufficient to achieve the ends sought. Focusing on eliminating the bad is enough. The difficulty is that those who sin in the eyes of those who think they have the answer are the ones who hold the power. Yes, we post-millennialist sinners hold the power to keep the pre-millennialists from getting what they want. To the pre-millennialists, this means they must do more than simply defend their own sanctification to achieve their ends. They must, from their perspective, aggressively attack the power base of our sinfulness.

Their drive for political power is not based on enhancing something, but on eliminating something which they see as determinedly delaying the future they passionately seek.

Now I would not ever pretend to speak for anyone else in the left-wing community, so let me , Rev. Becker, speak only for myself.

If it can be said that the right-wing believes: "that humanity is pretty bad and needs to be kept from getting any worse," then I say "that humanity is basically good, and needs to be helped to be even better."

In this post-millennialist view, we are not working to eliminate those conditions which impede the arrival of the blessed community, but rather we are striving to enhance those conditions which create the blessed community. The former sees the locus of our salvation as external to humanity (when we finally behave, an outside force will reward us), while the latter sees the locus of our fulfillment as internal to humanity (when we finally live together in peace and equity, we will all have the rewards of our potential.).

In the former, power to block salvation ultimately is in the hands of the sinful until they can be eliminated, when, at last, the desired power from beyond can infuse life. In the latter, power ultimately is in the hands of the visionary, who can look beyond present limitations to what we might be able to achieve together.

In the former, authority ultimately is external, while in the latter authority is internal to the humanity community.

Either way, the battle for power and control will be aggressive from the right because they sense that in either scenario they are, in fact, powerless to achieve their ends . The millennialist fundamentally believe that their own acts will not be sufficient to get what they want. Thus they have to control others. In other words, they are desperate and desperate people are dangerous people.

What can we do in the face of this essential conflict of the views of sin and the application of power?

If we could focus on just three things, we could change the landscape of the debate:

1) emphasize the vision of fulfillment that we have (remember, a "chicken in every pot" was a more powerful slogan than any focused on negative reality). Tell the people about the world we think can be built by our cooperative energies, which transcends any particular religious tradition

2) stop engaging in any of the debates which pre-suppose human sinfulness (they can't vie for the power we inherently hold if we don't engage) This includes not using the religious right as butt of jokes, or symbols of ignorance, etc.

3) learn to use a language of reverence which is universal but also spiritual. We need to be ready, even in our agnosticism or atheism or divergent theism, to speak of the divine, the transcendent, God, Allah, Yahweh, all-that-is, inclusive Nature, always present mystery. We need to speak of the fulfillment which is offered by such a view. We often seem intimidated by a President who uses the word "God" so often in speeches. Let's offer a larger view of such words: values made alive in fulfillment, which can be understood, appreciated, and experienced by all people who seek more fulfilled and fulfilling lives.

The Internet Generation

By: Dana Blankenhorn

I was wrong about something important last year.

The year 2004 did not represent a "generational election" because people live longer than they used to. Thus, the Nixon Coalition was able to get the knees to jerk by turning 2004 into 1968. Democrats went along by nominating a man of the 60s.

Had this been a true generational election Vietnam would have been irrelevant, just as the New Deal was irrelevant to those marching in 1968, and the Spanish-American War was history to the hungry of 1932.

Will 2008 be the generational election? Maybe, but maybe not. In that year a person born in 1955, at the height of the "baby boom," will be only 53. That’s still old enough to matter.

But a new generation is coming along, and that’s where Democrats should concentrate their attention.

The last generation had a name, Baby Boom. The new generation has a name, too.

The new generation is the Internet Generation.

To this generation the Internet is just as natural as TV was to us. Young people understand its metaphors and take them for granted. If you’re saying "www" you’re too old. Think texting, think e-dress (for address), and remember that India is a Skype call away. Also remember that all these tools will change, and change often, over time.

I should not be your analyst here. You need someone just out of college to tell you what is going on. And the issues of this generation have yet to fully emerge, although I can guess what some might be:

Free access to information and to other people

A global view (vs. a national view)

Balance (of trade, of the budget, of payments, of power)

Sustainability (2050 isn’t beyond the horizon)

These issues have yet to reach a crisis point, but we’re moving in that direction. The Baby Boomers support Digital Rights Management (DRM) and travel restrictions. The Baby Boomers see the world only through the prism of U.S. vs. Them. The Baby Boomers run deficits out the wazoo. The Baby Boomers are destroying the Earth, and the effects of this Baby Boomer ignorance are becoming clear.

You say, "not me," but you don’t speak for the Baby Boomers. George W. Bush does. Karl Rove does. Baby Boomers are Republicans, always have been. Bill Clinton never won a majority, and Jimmy Carter barely scraped by against the man who pardoned Nixon and thought Poland was free. Those victories were aberrations. Don’t kid yourself. The Baby Boom is red. It’s narrowly red, but red nonetheless.

Every new generation rejects, not just the previous generation, but its issues and attitudes. Our parents emphasized thrift, and service, and gave us enormous freedom along with wealth. We have given our children wealth, entitlement, and the language of freedom without the reality.

All this has yet to crystallize around anything. But it will. And Democrats need to be ready when that happens, with institutions, and systems, and stands on issues that will resonate with the coming generation.

We already have many of the issues. Democrats believe in multilateralism. Democrats believe in environmentalism. Thanks to Howard Dean, Democrats again believe in balanced budgets.

But many Democrats associate the stand of technology industries, and copyright, with being "right" on technology. That’s wrong. Both the tech industries and the content they serve belong to the Boomers.

We need to stand for Open Source. I’m not talking about Linux or Windows here. I’m talking about an open source attitude, an open source politics, and an open source way of doing business.

It starts with our institutions. We need to build-in technological mechanisms for true two-way, massively parallel communication. Movable Type doesn’t provide that. Moveon.org doesn’t provide that, either. What happened in 2003 and 2004 was only a prelude, and it could be the end, if we think that voters only provide money, and manpower, to causes and strategies devised at the top.

Chairman Dean needs to assure that the DNC is always in session, 24-7. Technology is part of that. You need discussion systems that scale, that empower users to create their own threads, and that enable moderators to keep the signal-noise ratio high.

But you also need people. You need trained moderators at every level who will enable discussion, who will make sure every personal e-mail gets a personal response, and who will work closely with local officials to make sure concerns are dealt with. If I have a problem with a local Democratic official, I should be able to send one e-mail and have someone within the party looking into it. Not every dispute will be smoothed out, but the party will know who each politician’s enemies are by becoming part of the process.

That last paragraph defines an open source party. It must be open to incoming ideas, and open to dealing with them. This is in stark contrast to GOP politics of business interests and pressure groups, and in stark contrast to past Democratic politics based on interests and identity. We have to start dealing with people as unique individuals, scaling not just our technology but our human infrastructure as well.

As we do this, the issues that touch the Internet Generation will make themselves apparent, and so will the stands the party must take on them. Get the technology right, get the human infrastructure right, and everything else becomes a matter of simply working the plan.

I think Howard Dean has a Clue about this, but I don’t think he gets the whole picture. Neither Dean nor America nor Democracy for America properly scaled. The people at the top of his organizations have never really been in touch with those at the bottom, because they didn’t have the human middleware necessary to make that happen, and they were prevented by the campaign laws from creating it.

This is the party-building exercise that I am certain will bring the Internet Generation to our side, because it’s in line with how the Internet Generation expects things to work. Young people want open systems, they want fast response, and they expect personal service.

It’s not too much to ask, even though it’s a lot to do.

Sooner started, sooner done.

Dana Blankenhorn   danablankenhorn@mindspring.com
MooresBlog/
ZDNet OpenSource
A-Clue.Com 

Scaling the Intimacy

by Dana Blankenhorn

The software you have on your PC determines what you can do with it. The software a campaign or political movement uses reflects what it can do.

The biggest mistake Howard Dean made in his 2004 campaign wasn’t his attacks on Gephardt, and it wasn’t the scream. It was his software’s failure to "scale the intimacy," to give the 1 millionth, or 10 millionth, campaign participant the same features, and the same sense of belonging, given the 10th and 100th.

Throughout the campaign, and even to this day, Dean and his Democracy for America have relied on Movable Type as their interface with supporters. MT is a good product, but its interactivity is limited. You enter an item on the blog, and comments flow from it in a straight line.

In a true community software package, like Scoop or Slash, users have a lot more power. They can start their own comment threads. They can launch their own discussions. They can create their own polls. Interaction happens, not just between the campaign and supporters, but among the supporters.

And the same software, on the same server, can allow for the creation of local groups, specialized groups, even private groups, each of which has the same powers as the main group. You get self-organization. You get cross-fertilization, on issues, on tactics. You create leaders. You find out what works.

The difference between a two-way interaction, offered by Movable Type, and a many-to-many interaction, offered by community software, is nothing less than the difference between Microsoft Windows and open source software. To have true open source politics, you need tools that enable it.

Managing such a scaled system is a challenge, but it’s no more difficult than managing an actual campaign. The key is to to make certain the same person with power over the mini-campaign, or the group within the campaign, has power over the blog. At minimum, the campaign manager and blog manager must be very intimate, so that the concerns of the group are always transmitted to the decision maker, even if the consensus emerges that the decision maker should be replaced.

The worst decision made by the 2003 Dean campaign, and it was reflected in later (controversial) comments by Zephyr Teachout, was that the blog was an organ of the campaign. http://www.corante.com/mooreslore/archives/032386.html This was said and felt without malice, but it was a central point of failure. In fact, the blog (as it scales with the community it serves) is the campaign.

This happens only when the software itself can scale while maintaining an intimate relationship among all its users, and when the campaign is organized along the same lines as the software.

If Governor Dean understands this technical Clue and follows it, Democrats will have a choice next month between making him their chairman or having him as their President.

The 2008 campaign has already begun. It will be fought in 10,000 places, online and offline. Democrats need to create an infrastructure of money, of message, and of people that can compete with what Republicans do "under the Web." They have to get back into communities across America, fighting and winning small battles now in order to know what they’re fighting for when the time comes.

That campaign starts with software. And the decisions on what software to use should be taken now.

Dana Blankenhorn   danablankenhorn@mindspring.com
Mooreslore Blog    http://www.corante.com/mooreslore/
The Chinese Century at Mooreslore  archives/028588.html
A-Clue.Com Newsletter  http://www.a-clue.com
  

View of Sin in the Early church

Ancestral Versus Original Sin:

An Overview with Implications for Psychotherapy

V. Rev. Antony Hughes, M.Div.

St. Mary Antiochian Orthodox Church, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Abstract

The differences between the doctrine of Ancestral Sin—as understood in the church of the first two centuries and the present-day Orthodox Church—and the doctrine of Original Sin—developed by Augustine and his heirs in the Western Christian traditions—is explored. The impact of these two formulations on pastoral practice is investigated. It is suggested that the doctrine of ancestral sin naturally leads to a focus on human death and Divine compassion as the inheritance from Adam, while the doctrine of original sin shifts the center of attention to human guilt and Divine wrath. It is further posited that the approach of the ancient church points to a more therapeutic than juridical approach to pastoral care and counseling.

A young man called me recently to discuss his family’s movement toward the Orthodox Church. He told me a priceless story about how his seven-year old daughter helped him and his wife understand an Orthodox practice that is often a hindrance to inquirers. Although the family had icons in their home they could not grasp the reason for the practice of venerating (kissing) them. One evening after prayers with his daughter she looked at the icon in her room and asked, “Who is on those pictures, Daddy?”
He replied, “The Virgin Mary and Jesus.”

She picked up the icon, kissed it and hugged it to her chest exclaiming, “Oh, daddy, they love you so much!”

“Then,” he told me, “We understood. It’s all about affection.”

Love, in fact, is the heart and soul of the theology of the early Church Fathers and of the Orthodox Church. The Fathers of the Church—East and West—in the early centuries shared the same perspective: humanity longs for liberation from the tyranny of death, sin, corruption and the devil which is only possible through the Life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Only the compassionate advent of God in the flesh could accomplish our salvation, because only He could conquer these enemies of humanity. It is impossible for Orthodoxy to imagine life outside the all-encompassing love and grace of the God who came Himself to rescue His fallen creation. Theology is, for the Fathers of the Orthodox Church, all about love.

The Approach of the Orthodox Fathers

As pervasive as the term original sin has become, it may come as a surprise to some that it was unknown in both the Eastern and Western Church until Augustine (c. 354-430). The concept may have arisen in the writings of Tertullian, but the expression seems to have appeared first in Augustine’s works. Prior to this the theologians of the early church used different terminology indicating a contrasting way of thinking about the fall, its effects and God’s response to it. The phrase the Greek Fathers used to describe the tragedy in the Garden was ancestral sin.

Ancestral sin has a specific meaning. The Greek word for sin in this case, amartema, refers to an individual act indicating that the Eastern Fathers assigned full responsibility for the sin in the Garden to Adam and Eve alone. The word amartia, the more familiar term for sin which literally means “missing the mark”, is used to refer to the condition common to all humanity (Romanides, 2002). The Eastern Church, unlike its Western counterpart, never speaks of guilt being passed from Adam and Eve to their progeny, as did Augustine. Instead, it is posited that each person bears the guilt of his or her own sin. The question becomes, “What then is the inheritance of humanity from Adam and Eve if it is not guilt?” The Orthodox Fathers answer as one: death. (I Corinthians 15:21) “Man is born with the parasitic power of death within him,” writes Fr. Romanides (2002, p. 161). Our nature, teaches Cyril of Alexandria, became “diseased…through the sin of one” (Migne, 1857-1866a). It is not guilt that is passed on, for the Orthodox fathers; it is a condition, a disease.

In Orthodox thought Adam and Eve were created with a vocation: to become one with God gradually increasing in their capacity to share in His divine life—deification (Romanides, 2002, p. 76-77). “They needed to mature, to grow to awareness by willing detachment and faith, a loving trust in a personal God” (Clement, 1993, p. 84). Theophilus of Antioch (2nd Century) posits that Adam and Eve were created neither immortal nor mortal. They were created with the potential to become either through obedience or disobedience (Romanides, 2002).

The freedom to obey or disobey belonged to our first parents, “For God made man free and sovereign” (Romanides, 2002, p. 32). To embrace their God-given vocation would bring life, to reject it would bring death, but not at God’s hands. Theophilus continues, “…should he keep the commandment of God he would be rewarded with immortality…if, however, he should turn to things of death by disobeying God, he would be the cause of death to himself” (Romanides, 2002, p. 32)

Adam and Eve failed to obey the commandment not to eat from the forbidden tree thus rejecting God and their vocation to manifest the fullness of human existence (Yannaras, 1984). Death and corruption began to reign over the creation. “Sin reigned through death.” (Romans 5:21) In this view death and corruption do not originate with God; he neither created nor intended them. God cannot be the Author of evil. Death is the natural result of turning aside from God.

Adam and Eve were overcome with the same temptation that afflicts all humanity: to be autonomous, to go their own way, to realize the fullness of human existence without God. According to the Orthodox fathers sin is not a violation of an impersonal law or code of behavior, but a rejection of the life offered by God (Yannaras, 1984). This is the mark, to which the word amartia refers. Fallen human life is above all else the failure to realize the God-given potential of human existence, which is, as St. Peter writes, to “become partakers of the divine nature” (II Peter 1:4). St. Basil writes: “Humanity is an animal who has received the vocation to become God” (Clement, 1993, p. 76).

In Orthodox thought God did not threaten Adam and Eve with punishment nor was He angered or offended by their sin; He was moved to compassion.1 The expulsion from the Garden and from the Tree of Life was an act of love and not vengeance so that humanity would not “become immortal in sin” (Romanides, 2002, p. 32). Thus began the preparation for the Incarnation of the Son of God and the solution that alone could rectify the situation: the destruction of the enemies of humanity and God, death (I Corinthians 15:26, 56), sin, corruption and the devil (Romanides, 2002).

It is important to note that salvation as deification is not pantheism because the Orthodox Fathers insist on the doctrine of creation ex nihilo (Athanasius, 1981). Human beings, along with all created things, have come into being from nothing. Created beings will always remain created and God will always remain Uncreated. The Son of God in the Incarnation crossed the unbridgeable chasm between them. Orthodox hymnography frequently speaks of the paradox of the Uncreated and created uniting without mixture or confusion in the wondrous hypostatic union. The Nativity of Christ, for example, is interpreted as “a secret re-creation, by which human nature was assumed and restored to its original state” (Clement, 1993, p. 41). God and human nature, separated by the Fall, are reunited in the Person of the Incarnate Christ and redeemed through His victory on the Cross and in the Resurrection by which death is destroyed (I Corinthians 15:54-55). In this way the Second Adam fulfills the original vocation and reverses the tragedy of the fallen First Adam opening the way of salvation for all.

The Fall could not destroy the image of God; the great gift given to humanity remained intact, but damaged (Romanides, 2002). Origen speaks of the image buried as in a well choked with debris (Clement, 1993). While the work of salvation was accomplished by God through Jesus Christ the removal of the debris that hides the image in us calls for free and voluntary cooperation. St. Paul uses the word synergy, or “co-workers”, (I Corinthians 3:9) to describe the cooperation between Divine Grace and human freedom. For the Orthodox Fathers this means asceticism (prayer, fasting, charity and keeping vigil) relating to St. Paul’s image of the spiritual athlete (I Corinthians 9:24-27). This is the working out of salvation “with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12). Salvation is a process involving faith, freedom and personal effort to fulfill the commandment of Christ to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-39).

The great Orthodox hymn of Holy Pascha (Easter) captures in a few words the essence of the Orthodox understanding of the Atonement: “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, And upon those in the tombs bestowing life” (The Liturgikon, Paschal services, 1989). Because of the victory of Christ on the Cross and in the Tomb humanity has been set free, the curse of the law has been broken, death is slain, life has dawned for all. Maximus the Confessor (c. 580 – 662) writes that “Christ’s death on the Cross is the judgment of judgment” (Clement, 1993, p. 49) and because of this we can rejoice in the conclusion stated so beautifully by Olivier Clement: “In the crucified Christ forgiveness is offered and life is given. For humanity it is no longer a matter of fearing judgment or of meriting salvation, but of welcoming love in trust and humility” (Clement, 1993, p. 49).

Augustine’s Legacy

The piety and devotion of Augustine is largely unquestioned by Orthodox theologians, but his conclusions on the Atonement are (Romanides, 2002). Augustine, by his own admission, did not properly learn to read Greek and this was a liability for him. He seems to have relied mostly on Latin translations of Greek texts (Augustine, 1956a, p. 9). His misinterpretation of a key scriptural reference, Romans 5:12, is a case in point (Meyendorff, 1979). In Latin the Greek idiom eph ho which means because of was translated as in whom. Saying that all have sinned in Adam is quite different than saying that all sinned because of him. Augustine believed and taught that all humanity has sinned in Adam (Meyendorff, 1979, p. 144). The result is that guilt replaces death as the ancestral inheritance (Augustine, 1956b) Therefore the term original sin conveys the belief that Adam and Eve’s sin is the first and universal transgression in which all humanity participates.

Augustine famously debated Pelagius (c. 354-418) over the place the human will could play in salvation. Augustine took the position against him that only grace is able to save, sola gratis (Augustine, On the Predestination of the Saints, 7). From this a doctrine of predestination developed (God gives grace to whom He will) which hardened in the 16th and 17th centuries into the doctrine of two-fold predestination (God in His sovereignty saves some and condemns others). The position of the Church of the first two centuries concerning the image and human freedom was abandoned.

The Roman idea of justice found prominence in Augustinian and later Western theology. The idea that Adam and Eve offended God’s infinite justice and honor made of death God’s method of retribution (Romanides, 2002). But this idea of justice deviates from Biblical thought. Kalomiris (1980) explains the meaning of justice in the original Greek of the New Testament:

The Greek word diakosuni ‘justice’, is a translation of the Hebrew word tsedaka. The word means ‘the divine energy which accomplishes man’s salvation.’ It is parallel and almost synonymous with the word hesed which means ‘mercy’, ‘compassion’, ‘love’, and to the word emeth which means ‘fidelity’, ‘truth’. This is entirely different from the juridical understanding of ‘justice’. (p. 31)

The juridical view of justice generates two problems for Augustine. One: how can one say that the attitude of the immutable God’s toward His creation changes from love to wrath? Two: how can God, who is good, be the author of such an evil as death (Romanides, 1992)? The only way to answer this is to say, as Augustine did to the young Bishop, Julian of Eclanum (d. 454), that God’s justice is inscrutable (Cahill, 1995, p. 65). Logically, then, justice provides proof of inherited guilt for Augustine, because since all humanity suffers the punishment of death and since God who is just cannot punish the innocent, then all must be guilty in Adam. Also, by similar reasoning, justice appears as a standard to which even God must adhere (Kalomiris, 1980). Can God change or be subject to any kind of standard or necessity? By contrast the Orthodox father, Basil the Great, attributes the change in attitude to humanity rather than to God (Migne, 1857-1866b). Because of the theological foundation laid by Augustine and taken up by his heirs, the conclusion seems unavoidable that a significant change occurs in the West making the wrath of God and not death the problem facing humanity (Romanides, 1992, p. 155-156).

How then could God’s anger be assuaged? The position of the ancient Church had no answer because its proponents did not see wrath as the problem. The Satisfaction Theory proposed by Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033-1109) in his work Why the God-Man? provides the most predominant answer in the West. The sin of Adam offended and angered God making the punishment of death upon all guilty humanity justified. The antidote to this situation is the crucifixion of the Incarnate Son of God because only the suffering and death of an equally eternal being could ever satisfy the infinite offense of the infinitely dishonored God and assuage His wrath (Williams, 2002; Yannaras, 1984, p. 152). God sacrifices His Son to restore His honor and pronounces the sacrifice sufficient. The idea of imputed righteousness rises from this. The Orthodox understanding that “the resurrection...through Christ, opens for humanity the way of love that is stronger than death” (Clement, 1993, p. 87) is replaced by a juridical theory of courtrooms and verdicts.

The image of an angry, vengeful God haunts the West where a basic insecurity and guilt seem to exist. Many appear to hold that sickness, suffering and death are God’s will. Why? I suspect one reason is that down deep the belief persists that God is still angry and must be appeased. Yes, sickness, suffering and death come and when they do God’s grace is able to transform them into life-bearing trials, but are they God’s will? Does God punish us when the mood strikes, when our behavior displeases Him or for no reason at all? Are the ills that afflict creation on account of God? For example, could the loving Father really be said to enjoy the sufferings of His Son or of the damned in hell (Yannaras, 1984)? Freud rebelled against these ideas calling the God inherent in them the sadistic Father (Yannaras, 1984, p. 153). Could it be as Yannaras, Clement and Kalomiris propose that modern atheism is a healthy rebellion against a terrorist deity (Clement, 2000)? Kalomiris (1980) writes that there are no atheists, just people who hate the God in whom they have been taught to believe.

Orthodoxy agrees that grace is a gift, but one that is given to all not to a chosen few. For Grace is an uncreated energy of God sustaining all creation apart from which nothing can exist (Psalm 104:29). What is more, though grace sustains humanity, salvation cannot be forced upon us (or withheld) by divine decree. Clement points out that the “Greek fathers (and some of the Latin Fathers), according to whom the creation of humanity entailed a real risk on God’s part, laid the emphasis on salvation through love: ‘God can do anything except force a man to love him’. The gift of grace saves, but only in an encounter of love” (Clement, 1993, p. 81). Orthodox theology holds that divine grace must be joined with human volition.

Pastoral Practice East and West

In simple terms, we can say that the Eastern Church tends towards a therapeutic model which sees sin as illness, while the Western Church tends towards a juridical model seeing sin as moral failure. For the former the Church is the hospital of souls, the arena of salvation where, through the grace of God, the faithful ascend from “glory to glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18) into union with God in a joining together of grace and human volition. The choice offered to Adam and Eve remains our choice: to ascend to life or descend into corruption. For the latter, whether the Church is viewed as essential, important or arbitrary, the model of sin as moral failing rests on divine election and adherence to moral, ethical codes as both the cure for sin and guarantor of fidelity. Whether ecclesial authority or individual conscience imposes the code the result is the same.

Admittedly, the idea of salvation as process is not absent in the West. (One can call to mind the Western mystics and the Wesleyan movement as examples.) However, the underlying theological foundations of Eastern Church and Western Church in regard to ancestral or original sin are dramatically opposed. The difference is apparent when looking at the understanding of ethics itself. For the Western Church ethics often seems to imply exclusively adherence to an external code; for the Eastern Church ethics implies “the restoration of life to the fullness of freedom and love” (Yannaras, 1984, p. 143).

Modern psychology has encouraged most Christian caregivers to view sin as illness so that, in practice, the juridical approach is often mitigated. The willingness to refer to mental health providers when necessary implies an expansion of the definition of sin from moral infraction to human condition. This is a happy development. Recognizing sin as disease helps us to understand that the problem of the human condition operates on many levels and may even have a genetic component.

It is interesting that Christians from a broad spectrum have rediscovered the psychology of spiritual writers of the ancient Church. I discovered this in an Oral Roberts University Seminary classroom twenty-five years ago through a reading of “The Life of St. Pelagia the Harlot.” My journey into Orthodoxy and the priesthood began at that point. These pastors and teachers of the ancient Church were inspired by the Orthodox perspective enunciated in this paper: death as the problem, sin as disease, salvation as process and Christ as Victor.

Sin as missing the mark or, put another way, as the failure to realize the full potential of the gift of human life, calls for a gradual approach to pastoral care. The goal is nothing less than an existential transformation from within through growth in communion with God. Daily sins are more than moral infractions; they are revelations of the brokenness of human life and evidence of personal struggle. “Repentance means rejecting death and uniting ourselves to life” (Yannaras, 1984, 147-148).

In Orthodoxy we tend to dwell on the process and the goal more than the sin. A wise Serbian Orthodox priest once commented that God is more concerned about the direction of our lives than He is about the specifics. Indeed, the Scriptures point to the wondrous truth that, “If thou, O God, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand, but with Thee there is forgiveness” (Psalm 130:3-4). The way is open for all who desire to take it. A young monk was once asked, “What do you do all day in the monastery?” He replied, “We fall and rise, fall and rise.”

The sacramental approach in the Eastern Church is an integral part of pastoral care. The therapeutic view frees the sacrament of Confession in the Orthodox Church from the tendency to take on a juridical character resulting in proscribed, impersonal penances. In Orthodoxy sacraments are seen as a means of revealing the truth about humanity and also about God (Yannaras, 1984, p. 143). After Holy Baptism we often fail in our work of fulfilling the vocation to unbury the image within. Seventy times seven we return to the sacrament not as an easy way out (confess today, sin tomorrow), but because humility is a hard lesson to learn, real transformation is not instantaneous and we are in need of God’s help. Healing takes time. Sacraments are far from magical or automatic rituals (Yannaras, 1984, p. 144). They are personal, grace-filled events in which our free response to God’s grace is acknowledged and sanctified. Even in evangelical circles where Confession as sacrament is rejected the altar call often plays a similar role. It is telling that the Orthodox Sacrament of Confession always takes place face to face and never in the kind of confessional that appeared in the West. Sin is personal and healing must be equally personal. Therefore nothing in authentic pastoral care can be impersonal, automatic or pre-planned. In Orthodoxy the prescription is tailored for the patient as he or she is, not as he or she ought to be.

The juridical approach that has predominated in the West can make pastoral practice seem cold and automatic. Neither a focus on good works nor faith alone are sufficient to transform the human heart. Do positive, external criteria signify inner transformation in all cases? Some branches of Christian counseling too often rely on the application of seemingly relevant verses of Scripture to effect changes in behavior as if convincing one of the truth of Holy Scripture is enough. Belief in Scripture may be a beginning, but real transformation is not just a matter of thinking. First and foremost it is a matter of an existential transformation. It is a matter of a shift in the very mode of life itself: from autonomy to communion. Allow me to explain.

Death has caused a change in the way we relate to God, to one another and to the world. Our lives are dominated by the struggle to survive. Yannaras writes that we see ourselves not as persons sharing a common nature and purpose, but as autonomous individuals who live to survive in competition with one another. Thus, set adrift by death, we are alienated from God, from others and also from our true selves (Yannaras, 1984). The Lord Jesus speaks to this saying, “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it” (Matthew16:26). Salvation is a transformation from the tragic state of alienation and autonomy that ends in death into a state of communion with God and one another that ends in eternal life. So, in the Orthodox view, a transformation in this mode of existence must occur. If the chosen are saved by decree and not by choice such an emphasis is irrelevant. The courtroom seems insufficient as an arena for healing or transformation.

Great flexibility needs to exist in pastoral care if it is to promote authentic transformation. We need to take people as they are and not as they ought to be. Moral and ethical codes are references, certainly, but not ends in themselves. As a pastor entrusted with personal knowledge of people’s lives, I know that moving people from point A to Z is impossible. If, by the grace of God, step B can be discovered, then real progress can often be made. Every step is a real step. If we can be faithful in small things the Lord will grant us bigger ones later (Matthew 25:21). There need be no rush in this intimate process of real transformation that has no end. As a priest and confessor I tell those who come to me, “I do not know exactly what is ahead on this spiritual adventure. That is between you and God, but if you will allow me, we will take the road together.”

A Romanian priest found himself overhearing the confession of a hardened criminal to an old priest-monk in a crowded Communist prison cell. As he listened he noticed the priest-monk begin to cry. He did not say a word through his tears until the man had finished at which time he replied, “My son, try to do better next time.” Yannaras writes that the message of the Church for humanity wounded and degraded by the ‘terrorist God of juridical ethics’ is precisely this: “what God really asks of man is neither individual feats nor works of merit, but a cry of trust and love from the depths” (Yannaras, 1984, p. 47). The cry comes from the depth of our need to the unfathomable depth of God’s love; the Prodigal Son crying out, “I want to go home” to the Father who, seeing his advance from a distance, runs to meet him. (Luke 15:11-32)

What this divine/human relationship will produce God knows, but we place ourselves in His loving hands and not without some trepidation because “God is a loving fire… for all: good or bad.” (Kalomiris, 1980, p. 19) The knowledge that salvation is a process makes our failures understandable. The illness that afflicts us demands access to the grace of God often and repeatedly. We offer to Him the only things that we have, our weakened condition and will. Joined with God’s love and grace it is the fuel that breathed upon by the Spirit of God, breaks the soul into flame.

Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said: Abba, as much as I am able I practice a small rule, a little fasting, some prayer and meditation, and remain quiet, and as much as possible keep my thoughts clean. What else should I do? Then the old man stood up and stretched out his hands toward heaven, and his fingers became like ten torches of flame. And he said: If you wish you can become all flame. (Nomura, 2001, p. 92)

As we have seen, for the early Church Fathers and the Orthodox Church the Atonement is much more than a divine exercise in jurisprudence; it is the event of the life, death and resurrection of the Son of God that sets us free from the Ancestral Sin and its effects. Our slavery to death, sin, corruption and the devil are destroyed through the Cross and Resurrection and our hopeless adventure in autonomy is revealed to be what it is: a dead end. Salvation is much more than a verdict from above; it is an endless process of transformation from autonomy to communion, a gradual ascent from glory to glory as we take up once again our original vocation now fulfilled in Christ. The way to the Tree of Life at long last revealed to be the Cross is reopened and its fruit, the Body and Blood of God, offered to all. The goal is far greater than a change in behavior; we are meant to become divine.

References

Athanasius (1981). On the incarnation: The treatise de incarnatione verbi dei. (P. Lawson, Trans.). Crestwood: NY: St. Validimir’s Seminary Press.

Augustine (1956a). Nicene and post nicene fathers: Four anti-pelagian writings, vol. 1, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans.

Augustine (1956b). Nicene and post nicene fathers: Four anti-pelagian writings, vol. 5, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans.

Cahill, T. (1995). How the irish saved civilization. New York: Doubleday.

Clement, O. (1993). The roots of Christian mysticism. Hyde Park, NY: New Cit Press.

Clement, O. (2000). On human being. New York: New City Press.

Kalomiris, A. (1980). The River of Fire. Retrieved April, 20, 2004,

Migne, J. P. (Ed.). (1857-1866a). The patrologiae curus completes, seris graeca. (Vols. 1-161), 74, 788-789. Paris: Parisorium.

Migne, J. P. (Ed.). (1857-1866b). The patrologiae curus completes, seris graeca. (Vols. 1-161), 31, 345. Paris: Parisorium.

Meyendorff, J. (1979). Byzantine theology. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.

Nomura, Yushi, trans. (2001). Desert wisdom: Sayings from the desert fathers, Marynoll, New York: Orbis Books.

Oden, T. C. (2003). The rebirth of orthodoxy: Signs of new life in Christianity. New
York: Harper Collins.

Packer, J. I. & Oden, T. C. (2004). One faith: The evangelical consensus. Downers
Grove: Intervarsity Press.

Romanides, J. (1992). The ancestral sin. Ridgewood, NJ: Zephyr Publishing.

The liturgikon: The book of divine services for the priest and deacon (1989). New York: Athens Printing Co.

Williams, T. “Saint Anselm”, Retrieved April 21, 2004. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2002 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.),

Yannaras, C. (1984). The freedom of morality. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’ Seminary Press.

Security is Development

"Collaborative Behavior at the Edges" -- D. P. Reed

The legacy industrial paradigm for commerce, society and government has tried for over 100 years to discover a successful model for international development. The fact that over 2 billion of us still have no electricity, suffer from inadequate supplies of clean water to drink, healthcare, education and sustainable employment at reasonable wages is proof enough that our well intentioned efforts are, to be candid, failures. Clearly, something about the centralized, top down, large scale, command and control approach to development, capitalist and socialist, does not work enough of the time.

Is there any reason to suppose that we can now envision new approaches and systems that incorporate modern communications, partnership thinking, direct personal engagement, and emphasizes the critical role of women? What can we do if we engage all of us at the edges and leverage the energy and power of bottom up approaches?

This essay was originally written as two email comments on the Washington, D.C. based World Resources Institute's program for their recent meeting on Eradicating Poverty through Profit

The new model described below may be more effective than the traditional industrial approaches we have used to date. It proposes a system to integrate the efforts of governments, NGOs, corporations and individuals in new ways to create something greater than the sum of the parts. In short, what we need, in the face of the development challenges around the world, including the problems caused by the AIDs epidemic in Africa and the earthquake damage in Asia, is NOT another Industrial era Marshall Plan. We must seek something new that takes full advantage of everything we have learned since the end of the 2nd World War and Robert MacNamara's 1966 speech.

How can we greatly increase the number of Americans and other citizens of "developed" nations interested in, and participating in, economic development efforts on a global scale? Would such individual constructive engagement be far more effective in improving our image and security than unilateral campaigns to break things and kill people?

I suggest we can only develop honest, strategic Bottom of the Pyramid [BoP] solutions if the people at the far edges can become full participants in the modern, connected, economy. Like us, they must be appreciated and respected as fully multi-dimensional beings: producers, distributors and consumers. Just thinking of them as traditional one dimensional consumers with a difference, cash flow but not capital, is not going to work. Simply put, we need a new master narrative for all of us every where, not just the BoP.

For more on this, see my Mr. Jones post.

A case in point: I do not think cell phones will do the trick. While a cell phone is better than no dial tone at all, their bandwidth is too low to compete fairly with the new "first world" standard of 10 gigabits to everyone every where. What we will need is very high capacity and affordable connectivity at all scale levels -- from household, to neighborhood, to village and on up. This will inevitably lead to ubiquitous communications over IP as a service, making communications something "we do, not something we buy." By the way, these new hand-held communications devices will soon be able to produce, distribute and receive hi-def television. Why should we all not be able to have our own hi-def television capabilities? Must we accept the current state of affairs that renders some voices more equal than others?

Local governments, and corporations doing business in the host countries, will have vital roles to play in establishing the regulatory environments and infrastructure systems to enable this high capacity connectivity essential to this proposed model.

Lastly, I see far too little discussion of the inter-relationship of social capital, trust, and economic activity. See my post on Greater Democracy The Destruction of Social Capital in America has a Price. As Reed points out, Group Forming Networks can become key tools for social capital formation, the foundation for economic development.

Draft outline for an Open Source model for a system of 360 Full Circle Clubs as a possible BoP strategy:

If our producers/distributors/consumers have cash flow, but not capital, let's provide them with seed capital.

Can we imagine starting 360 Full Cirlce clubs? 12 members per circle, each donating $1 per day [$30/mo] -- less than the cost of a cup of coffee per day.

The money would be transfered directly to a women's self help group in the partner village. The funds will be used in micro credit programs -- A micro-finance bank in every village. Thus $360 dollars of seed capital goes into the Village Micro-Finance Bank every month for as long as the bank is operating prudently and there are the agreed upon tangible results on the ground: Checks and balances with measureable, results based, outcomes. Obviously these parameters would vary depending upon the local context.

The Village Micro-Finance Banks in the partner villages, mentored by experienced NGOs, will most likely be run by women who are also members of the local self improvement society. This suggests that the 360 members be limited to women -- at least at first. With no men present, the women are more likely to reveal the real issues and challenges that need to be addressed for strategic advantage. As we have learned, if you really want to discover what is going on in a rural village, get women to interview women -- with no men around.

Sponsoring organizations, including government, corporate and non-profit, would provide advisors and native language speakers who have, perhaps, Peace Corps experience, as well as micro finance etc. training to help mentor the new village-based Micro Finance Bankers. Various corporations with experience with their own programs in economic development and Corporate Social Responsibility might put together a range of "appropriate green technology" solutions kits for typical problems faced by rural villagers:

renewable energy
lighting
water purification
waste management
literacy in the broadest sense of the word
viral communications
education, training
health care and health records
micro industry
micro enterprise [village photographers etc.]
blog, podcasting, and video chat solutions [essential for the 360 concept based on partnership and feedback]
village center infrastructure
drip irrigation
weather information and warning systems
electronic marketing
etc

The goal is to provide seed capital for loans that will leverage the human capital on the ground in the village. Where ever possible, money lenders, distant bankers or other non-resident 3rd parties should be disinter-mediated. This is not gift money per se. It may only be invested in projects agreed to by the partnership with approved and appropriate technologies -- hopefully with the highest possible local inputs [raw materials, labor, etc]. See, for example, the SolarAid hearing aid project in Africa.

Using viral communications, including voice, email, blog, and podcasting solutions, the partners in the villages and the partners in the Full Circle Clubs will be in very regular conversation. This will create a distributed dynamic system with a full circle feedback loop. I would also urge the use of at least monthly video chats between the partners. Maximizing the face-to-face communications will help to engage, leverage and sustain the native innovation capacities of all the partners. A result should be an increase in both social capital and economic activity.

Obviously, the seed capital might also help to fund the acquisition of the enabling and infrastructure goods and services created by some sponsors. The business opportunity is on top of the Open Source solutions approach. The goal is an implementation that allows the 360 Full Circle Club concept to scale up very rapidly and benefit from the input of the maximum number of creative minds.

If we assume 12 employees/donors/partners per small rural village, how many villages could American citizens help to jump start into new economic activity?

1,000,000 villages could be supported by just 12 million Americans. The total economic leverage created by 1 million 360 clubs would be over 4.3 billion dollars per year. Imagine the interconnected, global, social network this could form. The cooperative gain from collective behavior at the edges would be enormous.

Related posting: A Liberal Long March?

The Truth About Terrorism

I strongly recommend Jonathan Raban's new essay in the New York Review of Books.

The Truth About Terrorism

1.

In his November 3 victory speech, President Bush, sounding the keynote of his second administration, pledged to "fight this war on terror with every resource of our national power." By saying "this" rather than "the" Bush stressed the palpable, near-at-hand quality of the war whose symbols have grown to surround us in the last three years—the tilted barrels of security cameras, BioWatch pathogen-sniffers, and all the rest of the technology of security and surveillance that Matthew Brzezinski somewhat overexcitedly details in Fortress America. Voters, at least, have been impressed. Responding to the exit pollers' question "Which ONE issue mattered most in deciding how you voted for president?" 32 percent of Bush supporters named "Terrorism" (as against 5 percent of Kerry supporters), 85 percent of Bush supporters said that the country was "safer from terrorism" in 2004 than it was in 2000, and 79 percent said that the war in Iraq "has improved the long-term security of the United States." Bush's successful conflation of security at home and military aggression abroad, his insistence that Iraq "is the central front of the war on terror," was the bravura rhetorical gambit that drove much of his electoral strategy.

If you live, as I do, in an American city designated as a likely target by the Department of Homeland Security, the sheer proliferation of security apparatus in the streets assures you that there is a war on. Yet the nature and conduct of that war, and the character—and very existence—of our enemy, remain infuriatingly obscure: not because there's any shortage of information, or apparent information, but because so much of it has turned out to be creative guesswork or empty propaganda.

--------- snip

Changing and Adapting

Jared Diamond's excellent NY-Times op-ed on The Ends of the World as We Know Them reminds us that the world is not a static place. He gives examples of cultures that failed to adapt to change and thus failed, as well as examples of cultures that adapted and persevered in the face of change. Clearly, a culture that wishes to endure must be constantly changing and adapting to new realities beyond its control.

The question Diamond puts squarely to us is simple: will we learn from the past? Which path will we chose, the status quo or adaptation?

If we chose to adapt, we face taking a hard look at a number of values and belief systems that have been at the core of what it has meant to be an American in the 20th century and before.

Here are a few of the hard looks:

1] Are we a nation of exceptional individuals with a manifest destiny? This sense of ourselves, over 400 years in the making, was severely challenged on 9/11. Have our responses been optimal responses to the new environment we find ourselves in? Is security better achieved by breaking things and killing people or by development, as Robert McNamara suggested in 1966? Would we be safer if we were investing a billion dollars per month in remediating the conditions that create permanent lives of desperation for young, unemployed males around the world?

2] In a few short centuries, we became a wealthy and powerful nation. Our economy is derived from the 19th century Industrial Consumerism form of Capitalism. We are now about 5% of the world's total population but we consume over 20% of the world's inventory of resources. Is this an optimal strategy for creating a world based upon justice and fairness for all? Is the goal of justice and fairness a key value we share?

3] To what extent are we willing to embrace the demographic change represented by the fact that more people in America under 10 are other than Caucasian? Are the demographics in the so called Red & Blue states different? What are the implications for us when people of color are in fact the majority of American citizens and voters in 2020 or before?

4] Do we wish to adopt policies which will tend to create a permanent, protected and privileged demographic based upon race, wealth, power and prestige? Or should we reject any attempts to create such a special class of citizens? Is this an appropriate response to demographic changes?

5] NAFTA and other international trade agreements appear to be enabling the rule of Ricardo's second law: The Iron Law of Wages. Is this a result we should welcome or fight against?

6] Can our economy create enough jobs that support "living wages" for all who want them? Or are we stuck with a majority of jobs that create so little value that they can only command subsistence wages? What do we have to do to increase the number of high value creating jobs? Is it good that, despite the cost of shipping to and from Asia, it is cheaper to add value to a log in China than in Maine, where it grew and was cut?

7] In many ways the sleeper disruptive innovations are peer to peer technologies that change the way we communicate and distribute content, such as blogs, podcasts, vidcasts, online gaming, and more. Skype, for example, now has over 3.5% of all international calls. P-2-P will in fact touch and change all human activities that involve communications and distribution, including political organization and process. Peer to Peer, with its model of one for all and all for one, will wreak havoc with the business models of the legacy industrial media, communications and distribution companies. Is this acceptable? Peer to peer shifts power in various forms away from today's elites to the people at the edges of the network. Does this strengthen democracy?

8] Should we citizens aspire to being more than consumers? Should we also reclaim the humanity that is based upon also being producers and creators as well?

9] What is the meaning of life as created and nurtured by industrial consumerism? Are there perhaps more substanive and satisfying alternatives?

A very interesting question is simply what sort of new politics and social contract emerges from the answers to questions like these? How are they different from the politics and social contracts favored by the current administration? Or the politics and social contracts of prior eras? Which will we chose?

2005 is going to be a very interesting year. The apparent radicalization of the New York Times, they even editorialized on the link between energy consumption in America and funding of those who would harm us, is but one startling indicator of things to come. Is this interesting year a Chinese curse or a blessing?

Imagination

One of my favorite artists is Brian Andreas, the creator of StoryPeople, an imaginative combination of art and poetry. We're fortunate enough to have 10 of his sculptures dancing on our living room wall. And one of my favorite Story People is called Imagining World:

In my dream, the angel shrugged & said, If we fail this time, it will be a failure of imagination & then she placed the world gently in the palm of my hand.

So, imagine the world in the palm of your hand and come with me on a journey of imagination...

Imagine the possibilities that opened for us on September 11, 2001, when the whole world declared itself American and reached out to embrace us with the empathy that only shared experience can elicit.

Imagine how we might have reached back. Think about millions of Americans finally leaving the comfortable cocoon of their country and traveling all over the world to learn about other cultures and customs. Imagine school children being taught foreign languages in kindergarten, and every college student required to spend a semester abroad.

Imagine a United Nations empowered by an overwhelming influx of American funds and talent in a concerted effort to make it more effective in its mission of peace and world community.

Imagine Iraq being invaded, not by our military, but by our musicians. Imagine thousands of Iraqis waking up one morning to the strains of Mozart's "Jupiter" Symphony playing in their square.

Imagine Palestinians, Arabs, and Israelis all participating in a Middle East Fair where they talk, laugh, and learn about each other.

Imagine a huge picnic on the outskirts of Baghdad--catered by the US, with entertainment and skits provided by our troops.

Imagine the US offering a free trip to Disney World (including complimentary mouse ears) to anyone in the Muslim world who can't afford to pay.

Imagine what we could do with our resources and power!

Imagine what could happen if we focused on life instead of death, on our friends instead of our enemies, on our potential instead of our fears.

Imagine the world in the palm of your hand. What can you imagine?

The Sandwich, NH, Wireless Project

Don Jones of FirstBridge Internet has written up his real world experience in successfully installing a wireless internet service in rural NH -- trees, hills, and other obstacles not with standing. In fact trees were even used as access point "towers" - some were solar powered.

Here we have a working proof of concept for other towns in hilly and well forested landscapes to evaluate.

It works. Note the practical example of a three hour radio remote from the Sandwich, NH, fair grounds.

The Sandwich Wireless Project

First Bridge Internet is a full service ISP in Conway, NH. We provide wireless, DSL, and Dial up in the northern NH region.

In the fall of 2003 Gunnar Berg contacted me at First Bridge Internet and asked us what it would take to get Internet in Sandwich. My response was I did not think it was economically possible. Not to be stopped by a little thing like money he enlisted our help in selecting several suitable Access Point(AP) sites in Sandwich. Gunner then got the town, the landowners of the sites and a woman named Rosemarie de Mars involved. Rose found a source of funding and together they convinced me that we could make the project work.

The original plan was to build a 2.4 Gh. AP on Brown hill in Sandwich, using Breezecom frequency hopping radios. Back-haul to our POP in Conway was to be a wireless link. This involved placing a relay point on the local radio station tower. Construction was started on the Brown hill AP. At the top of Brown Hill there was a rather tall pine tree growing in the best location for a tower. Gunnar and His friend Peter Hoge, who owns a tree service in Sandwich, convinced me that instead of cutting down the tree and erecting a tower we could use the tree and save a lot of money. Although, as a professional microwave technician, I was appalled at the idea of putting a commercial access point in a tree I agreed to give it a try as long as we used good grounding practices. It’s now one year later and through sleet, hail, wind, lighting, and snow we have never had a problem with the equipment in the tree!

This was also First Bridge’s first remotely located solar powder access point. Fortunately for us Gunner lives in an off grid solar powered house. (Check out the tec. pages). Unfortunately after several frustrating months it became clear that the logistics of getting the radio tower portion of the link completed were overwhelming and in the end it was going to be more cost effective to bring a T1 into Sandwich. Rose to the rescue, she got the library to host the T1 and found more funding to cover the first 8 months of T1 operation.

Gunner and Peter Hoge found a great location just outside of town to locate a second AP - again in a pine tree, they were wearing me down. So now we had a way to back-hall Brown hill and coverage in the southern part of town. In Jan of 2004 we lit up the network. Now we have 7 APs in the Sandwich area (check out the map). They are all fed by the one T1 located in the Library. This T1 also provides service to the Library patrons and staff.

The network presently has approximately 30 scribers and revenues cover the fixed costs. Without the hard work and monetary support of Gunner Berg, the town of sandwich, and the rest of the sandwich volunteers, none of this would have been possible.

What did we learn?

First off Sandwich is, most likely, one of the easiest places in the world to make something like this work. The town has no cable TV and no DSL so we were the only game in town. Sandwich has a very involved population. Volunteers gave generously of their time and money. All that having been said, public/private ventures are tough to make happen. The goals of the various parties are often significantly different. We were lucky to have a good mix of people who supported each other during the tough times. Was it a good short-term business decision for First Bridge? No. Our first year losses are significant and we will not meet the goals of our business plan. On the other hand, we now know how to build and support remote solar powered access points. We know how to successfully create a functioning broadband cloud over a rural, mountainous, sparsely populated area and how to make it pay for it’s self. In the end it may be the best choice we have ever made.

Conclusions:

Public/private Broadband projects are a practical solution for bringing Broadband to rural areas.

Knowing what we now know, we could write a business plan for this process that creates a fiscally self-sustaining system in two years.

We are developing a set of radios that implement a fully meshable network with bandwidth shaping, queue control, and hidden node effect elimination. In this system we plan to get the client equipment costs down below $100. In our experience, high client installation costs are one of the largest deterrents to deployment of a wireless broadband network. Driving the cost of installation down near $100 will allow much more efficient use of funding.

If the technology selected gets the job done, then it was the right choice. Once you have the AP locations and the client base, then introducing new, faster technology is a no brainer. The present system provides about 1.5 Meg. through put up and down. Because back-haul is limited, this speed is not always available. As more user are added, additional back-haul will be added. As the cost per bit drops, the network speed will go up. Ultimately, in a few years, we may see multi Gigabit speeds.

Some form of broad-based funding for universal access to some level of access speed is a nice goal, but in our experience as a long time resident of rural New England, not a likely result of any town meeting struggling over how to fund the school. At First Bridge we think some short term funding to get things off the ground and create the infrastructure, that becomes self-sustaining, is more likely to occur, particularly if this project also brings broadband to the school, library and town office.

A practical application example:

Yesterday we did a three hour radio remote with WMWV FM at the Sandwich fair. We had two lines of First Bridge VoIP and a local WiFi hotspot running. All this was back-hauled to our WiPOP at the Sandwich Library via a 14 db VAGI mounted on a tripod behind the grand stand and a Breezecom SA10D radio. The remote went of with out a hitch. Voice quality was judged by the radio station people to be as good or better than a standard POTS line. Connection to the radio station equipment was via a Grandstreem Analog to VoIP adapter dialing in to the POTS line at the radio station.

I thought 3 hours of remote radio broadcasting from a small village country fair in a mountain village with no Cable TV or DSL was a very good example of what wireless can do to provide information technology to a rural community. At every break the announcer mentioned the Sandwich Wireless Network and First Bridge as the sponsors.

Americans, Part 1

Who we are is what will save us.

Long road trips seem to inspire deep thoughts... and make people walk funny when they get out of their cars at rest stops. During the 13-hour drive back from our vacation home last week, my husband and I were listening to one of my mix tapes. When the song No Night So Long by Dionne Warwick came on (yes, I like it and don’t laugh) these lines struck me profoundly:

No night so long that you can't find the day;
no day so wrong that you can't find your way;
call on me like you used to do,
I still can show you who you are.

And I said to my husband: “It’s who we are as the American people, not what we are or what happens to us, that will see us through the most traumatic experience.” He agreed. Then, right there in the car, he gave a virtual speech as though he were running for a national office:

"My offer is simple: to reintroduce Americans to America. To reintroduce us to ourselves.

"To remind us that we are, and have always been, a nation, we have always been people who have focused: on courage not on fear, on hope not on despair, on vision not on close-mindedness, on connections not on differences.

"America, there are some who would tell you that you are a stranger even to yourself. They would tell you your future will be defined by others more than by yourself. They would tell you that terrorists will shape your mind, your heart, your lives, your future more than you will. They would ask you to identify yourself on somebody else's terms.

"But I tell you that you know, in your heart of hearts, your true identity, and it is the identity of the real American patriot: those daring women and men who dreamed of a community: which would embrace diversity without fear, which would face ambiguity without doubt, which would honor history without regression, which would respond to challenges without hate-mongering, and which would ultimately endure violence guided by a greater vision of peace and cooperation.

"Along the course to our future many forces and factors will assail us. The physical things we have built, the styles of life we have bought, even the lives we have nurtured, may fall before acts of nature and of belligerence--but our spirit, our true spirit, our American spirit cannot be felled by anything other than our own failure to remember who we are.

"If we forget our own identity, there is no strategy of government nor slogan of vengeance that can serve us or save us, but if we remember our own identity there is no circumstance in the world that we cannot face with courage, with hope, with vision.

"America, look in a mirror--see yourself as who truly are. America, greet yourself anew--a whole world is waiting for us to remember who we are."

the Rev. Dr. Randolph W.B.Becker

Let's Talk America: Petition

Let's talk America is petitioning the U.S. Public to sign a petition in support of "efforts to bring Americans into conversations that are inclusive, non-partisan, respectful and open -- guided by hosts and ground rules that allow all the voices of 'We the People' to be heard." [Link]

Party Politics -- a Convention Preview

"Many Americans are said to choosing their President based on whether they would enjoy a beer with them. If that question was ever relevant in American politics, it is not now." So said Hillary Clinton at one of the welcome parties this Sunday evening, "A Community Celebration" co-sponsored by a number of the Jewish organizations. Senator Clinton continued by articulating the fundamental questions a voter must confront this election: whether the President would address the issues of the education system, inadequate health care, giving proper focus to the war on terror, etc.

Of course, the question is not completely irrelevant, given the correlation between the people who have a drink with their elected officials at parties like these. My patron for the party had been in the VIP room, handling the night's speakers-- Boston Mayor Tom Menino, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senator Joe Lieberman, along with scores of elected officials. I was in the main room with my friends, playing the up-networking game with a lot of people. It goes like this: yes, you want to speak to a particular person, but isn't there someone more important to meet? And the same people play the game with you. Though the networking eventually tapered as the quality of speakers grew. The crowd got focused as Joe hit his stride (with Hadassah by his side), and then was absolutely transfixed when Hillary took the podium.

There were three people I encountered who were not drinking. One was myself. I wasn't drinking because I was a bit sick to my stomach having gorged myself on the smorgasbord of milchik delicacies-- cheeses, hommus, tabouleh, mushroom strudel, sushi, carved tuna. And the reason I gorged myself was that I hadn't eaten since breakfast; today I had been busy from a DemocraticGAIN conference to the Kerry convention HQ at Park Plaza, where I pinch-hit for a small delivery job, which ended up taking two hours. By the time I returned the rental car, I had to bike back home to Brookline to change, and then drive my car back in to the World Trade Center in Boston's seaport district (unlike its namesake which stood in NY for three decades, the WTC Boston is not a towering complex of office buildings but just a large hall usually used for parties.) I took a breakfast granola bar in with me in the car, but it was still in its wrapper when I passed it along with my pocket vitals around the metal detectors to get in.

One of the bartenders couldn't drink because she was on duty. After the festivities wound down, my friend asked for a drink and an impression as well: "Do you think Hillary had good things to say?" She served her answer with ice: "If that's what you like." It was not her place to elaborate further, and we didn't press. My first thought was how unfortunate it was that she couldn't care less about hearing Hillary Clinton. On the other hand, I thought back to the perhaps-infamous Whoopsy-Whoopi fundraiser in NY (which a rambling caller to C-SPAN this morning pointed out as an example of liberal "extremism"). It's people like the catering staff whose presence keeps the speakers honest.

Reality came to us again outside. A tanned, dark-haired man in his forties with a pencil-thin moustache walked by and saw me in my suit. He asked me whether he could get into the party was inside. I told him it was winding down. What type of party? For Kerry, a number of the Jewish organizations. He was from Lynn, he told me. Where I was from, he asked? Brookline, I answered. Both towns are overwhelmingly Democratic, over eighty percent. But while Brookline commuters will hop the Green Line into town as normal this week, Lynn will serve bear the commuter rail passengers from the North Shore now transferring to a bus instead of continuing into North Station. There's a party at Government Center, I suggested, the Boston Pops will giving a free concert. Aagh, he sneered, and walked away. Everyone appears to partying in town, and he wanted in.

Is there something similar all these voters want? I can offer a guess, based on reading the Globe's neat photo spread of delegates this morning. Tell them they're important. The most fun I had today was revving my rental Kerry car around town, lugging the precious cargo that two other volunteers had picked up, making questionable traffic maneuvers under ever-present eyes of three levels of law enforcement. I felt important, empowered. I expect to have more fun driving the shuttle tomorrow as a volunteer than actually showing up inside the convention.

But I think that many of the populists, well represented in the blogger community, would disappointed if they are expecting to feel empowered at all moments. For anyone who's a big player in their local campaigns, this is now the big leagues. It's time to see how the people higher up on the access ladder than you are doing their own up-networking. I hope this doesn't turn off people to party politics; since parties, particularly those of the catered sort, aren't going away anytime soon. I think it should give institutional climbers-- of which I count myself one-- a window into how the big leagues really work. But that shouldn't distract us from outreach efforts to bring in new people.

Incidentally, this event was the first time this weekend I was asked to produce photo ID. I write this not to expose the lax security elsewhere, just as a sense of relief that we still trust people in this country. Someone could have shown up as "Jon Garfunkel" at the Park Plaza and started taking some volunteer assignments. Another person could have gotten in by dropping my name into the DemocraticGAIN workshops, and then into the Jumpoff party at Avalon this evening-- where I sent some surrogates, who have yet to report back. I was partied out, and I couldn't say I honestly completed the GAIN training. And if you believe me, I thought of the fellow from Lynn who was in the dark about all the parties. So I visited a friend and watched the Sox-Yankees baseball game. And there he was, the junior Senator from Massachusetts, looking comfortable on television for about the first time this political season. He chatted amicably with ESPN's Jon Miller about the hopes for the Red Sox, and the state of baseball in general. I think the average fan could imagine himself having a beer with him.

Note: This is my first essay which is cross-posted to GreaterDemocracy as a blog post. I usually write on my Civilities website, in which I favor an essay form and resist the frequently-updated, stream-of-consciousness style that is common in blogs. I'm not sure where this fits, but it's a diary which covers most of today, with a little theme running through it. As with blog publishing, I have spare resources for fact-checking and editing, so I will check with a reporter from the Phoenix on the exact words of the Hillary Clinton quote above.

PACE

I just returned from Venice, where peace is proclaimed everywhere. Rainbow-striped flags with the word pace (peace in Italian) in white block letters hang from buildings along every canal. The crew of one boat in a regatta was bedecked with capes made from the flags. During a discussion about politics at my husband’s local barbershop, the owner scurried into his back room and came out proudly bearing his pace flag. After years of being subjected to the unrelenting grind of our media, churning out stories that focus on war and death, the sight of those flags felt like a life-affirming hug. They don’t hate Americans there. They pity us.

Peace is not an end, only the fulfillment of other values. You don't create peace. Peace is the reward for things like acceptance and connection. If we want peace, we need to energize those things which promote understanding and cooperation and fellowship. If we want to feel less divided in this country, we need to act more connected.

I was surprised by some of the intense reactions to Robert’s blog entry Why I Would Vote for Bush If the Vote Were Today. Are people so threatened by differing points of view? Personally, I thought it was encouraging when he said “I, and the other 15-20% of the moderate Republicans fed up with the impeachable offenses of the Bush-Cheney regime” and “understand that the center of gravity in this election is not left versus right”. Robert points in the right (no pun intended) direction: towards connection. It’s not about Republican vs. Democrat or conservative vs. liberal. It's about those who believe in democracy and understand how to make it work vs. those who believe in democracy and think they can do whatever feels comfortable for them and it will work anyway. And we need to connect.

Knee-jerk responses of revulsion whenever a Republican opens his or her mouth are not helpful. They only cultivate what we say we don’t want to grow: a house divided against itself and paralyzed to the point that all we see is what isn’t working. That’s a recipe for despair.

Here are some things Republicans have said recently from an article at salon.com:

GOP Sen. Chuck Hagel: "I think you've got a president who is not schooled, educated, experienced in foreign policy in any way, versus his father."

GOP Sen. Pat Roberts: "In fighting the global war against terrorism,' we need to restrain what are growing U.S. messianic instincts -- a sort of global social engineering where the United States feels it is both entitled and obligated to promote democracy -- by force, if necessary."

Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol: "Well, that's right, [Bush] did drive us into a ditch."

Former House GOP Leader Dick Armey: "We're letting the political hacks overrule the policy wonks in this town."

Conservative columnist George F. Will: "This administration cannot be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think and, having thought, to have second thoughts."

We need to start listening to everyone. Some voices may speak in a foreign tone or unfamiliar pitch. But if we exclude some for the sake of familiarity or comfort, we will lose the diversity of voices that makes democracy flourish... and we will lose the way toward peace.

Abundance

Today, when so much focus in the news is on pain and fear and scarcity, let’s talk about abundance. Why? What does abundance have to do with politics? Because if we are to have a greater democracy, we need an attitude of abundance. We need to incorporate into our political system the idea that there is enough for everyone. Otherwise, we risk confronting inequality in some form. If a fundamental American value is equality, then a primary focus of democracy must be abundance.

An attitude of abundance is an attitude of expectancy without fear. When we truly embrace abundance as a living experience then we also can expect the most fulfilling. But many of us measure our experience not by how fulfilling it is but by how much money we make or the status of our position. We measure what we have by asking whether the glass is half empty or half full. Wait for a full glass and die of thirst. The question should not be “Is the glass full” but rather “What's in the glass.”

Volume has no intrinsic value. More pain is not better. And a grain of hope can change the world.

If one has a sense of abundance, then sufficiency seems like enough. If one has no, or a limited, sense of abundance then sufficiency will always feel like scarcity.

My husband and I lived in Venice for several months. We were struck by (and ached for) the way people treated each other and felt about their lives. They seemed so accepting and happy! But no, it’s not because they drink a lot of vino or don’t know any better or are not ambitious. The rest of Italy thinks the Venetians are lazy because they are not striving. But when you have enough, you don't need to strive. Strangers in a city run for buses and boats as if it is the last one. But those who know understand there'll be another in a short time. Same in life.

Venetians’ families--their extended families--are always there for them. Often they share housing and other expenses. Everyone travels the canals together on public water buses (vaporetti). Who they are is respected, and no one career choice is better than another. If the simplest position has the same life support as the wealthiest, then the difference is only personal, not social. So more ordinary wine gets drunk than fancy vintages, but everyone gets a good glass. And everyone gets health care and retirement benefits. And no one has a private life, but all lives are respected. Not acceptable is disrespect, which includes thievery and violence.

And Venice is one of the safest places in the world–-which historically is how it became wealthy and prominent among European cities. The surrounding water and open landscape makes both stealthy entrances and quick getaways impossible. In fact, the early Venetians discovered that they didn’t need fortresses or impenetrable walls to protect them, and that their lack of such protection sent a more impressive message to their enemies than any arsenal of stone and weapons (I’m about to scream because I’ve been searching for hours for a link to a story I remember about this, but I’ll add it later if I find it).

The lack of fear and an attitude of abundance do not discourage achievement or progress. They set the necessary conditions for them. And they allow people to make connections based on mutual respect, sharing, and enhancement.

I will be in Venice again next week... ahhh, La Serenissima :)

Groupthink

There’s an interesting article on the website of the Psychologists for Social Responsibility about groupthink. Groupthink is a kind of peer pressure that occurs when a group separates itself from others by its uniculturalism (I think I made that word up), has problems dealing with ambiguity, and focuses on a very limited number of options and opinions. I would add mistrust and fear into that mix.

Groupthink makes it easy for people to reach conclusions and to abdicate personal responsibility-–often attractive and even seductive payoffs. But it usually leads to poor--and sometimes disastrous--decision-making. Anyone who has, had, or was a teenager knows what I mean.

According to the article, there are 8 symptoms of groupthink:

"Illusion of invulnerability –Creates excessive optimism that encourages taking extreme risks.
Collective rationalization – Members discount warnings and do not reconsider their assumptions.
Belief in inherent morality – Members believe in the rightness of their cause and therefore ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their decisions.
Stereotyped views of out-groups – Negative views of “enemy” make effective responses to conflict seem unnecessary.
Direct pressure on dissenters – Members are under pressure not to express arguments against any of the group’s views.
Self-censorship – Doubts and deviations from the perceived group consensus are not expressed.
Illusion of unanimity – The majority view and judgments are assumed to be unanimous.
Self-appointed ‘mindguards’ – Members protect the group and the leader from information that is problematic or contradictory to the group’s cohesiveness, view, and/or decisions."

I’m assuming that you’re thinking what I’m thinking: “Hey, that sounds like the current administration!” Yep.

Groupthink can survive only when new ideas are excluded, when there is demonization of “the other,” when ambiguity is discouraged, when easiness and lack of accountability are offered in exchange for the hard work of hashing through information and possibilities, when the identity of a group is its dogma, when the survival of the group depends on its resistance to change, when there is a willingness to punish dissent, and when membership in the group becomes more valued than the diverse perspectives of the members themselves.

Now, all this ties into Aldon’s post on Structural Changes because the decentralized, open, responsive, interactive structures he talks about would make groupthink impossible. And that could only be good news for democracy.

Let’s see what 8 symptoms of non-groupthink (Democracythink? Connectthink? Diversitythink? Webthink?) might be:

Acknowledgment of vulnerability –Creates realistic risk assessment.
Collective awareness – Members heed warnings, assimilate new information, and reconsider their assumptions.
Belief in universal values – Members believe in the values they share. They gauge decision-making by how well their decisions express those values and by whether the consequences of their actions are congruent with those values.
Acceptance of diversity – All perspectives are valued, listened to, and taken into account. People are seen as basically good and worthy of support.
Openness to dissent – Members are encouraged to question and to express arguments against any of the group’s views.
Facilitation of growth and learning – Members engage in a reciprocal process of learning and sharing and give each other constant feedback on their progress.
Direction – A general positive direction is agreed on that provides a vision of the future. The details of the vision are less important than the direction. The aim is better, not perfect.
Leadership – Members take leadership roles in their areas of expertise, help to set direction, and respectfully remind the group when they are not adhering to their own values and/or vision.

And like that. Please add your own thoughts.

Pyramid Marketing vs Peer-to-Peer

I strongly recommend that you read Matt Bai's excellent article in today's NY Times Sunday Magazine, page 43.

The Multilevel Marketing of the President: Can old-fashioned door-to-door politics -- combined with an Amway-style organizational pyramid -- get George W. Bush re-elected?

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/25/magazine/25GROUNDWAR.html

In the article, you will note not a single word about conversations, much less lateral conversations. Not a word about self organization or emergent behaviors. Not a word about Social Networks nor Blogs. You will read about the use of conference calls to enforce conformity. You will not read about supporters finding themselves and organizing themselves for mutual self help activities ala Franklin's visions of a Democracy based on the middle class.

Continues ...

Rather strangers are recruited -- converted? -- into a hierarchy. A very detailed and deep value chain.

At this late date we are not going to out advertise the Bush Campaign nor can we out Amway it. Their head start is a bit formidable.

Nor should we want to! It would make us even more indistinguishable from the Extreme Right Rapture and Dominion believers who have hijacked the GOP. There is one true plan and its is their one true plan. Do deviations welcomed. We are excluded.

We must accentuate our positive differences! We must the party of innovation to their party of stagnation. We must be the party that believes in a vibrant future, not the imminent end of the world in a horrific Armageddon event. We must be the party of rational discourse supported by the possibility of disproof. Not the party of a reality defined by a tautological ideology with out disproof.

We need to adopt a Peer-to-Peer model [Social Netgworks, if you prefer] to prove we trust the people. To show that we understand that this is about what we give each other -- community and respect -- and our country, security through open democracy. It is NOT about what the party gives us - food baskets, buckets of coal, and patronage jobs in the city hall. We can compete by being more agile, by having a flatter value chain, by dis-intermediating non productive organizational layers. We must out innovate both the GOP and our competitors in the global market place. We must invest in the people and infrastructure in the edges, not the legacy corporations in the middle.

The question is do we want a command and control politics where no deviations from the one true plan are tolerated [radical theology comes to mind] or do we want vibrant democracy based on the rich diversity of we the people? Is politics just about about profits and a Jones Town fantasy world view, or about we the people living in a complex and dynamic reality?

The problem I see is that the old political pros in the Kerry campaign only know the Roman Army model, adopted by the Catholic Church: A standard plan enforced from the top down. The old story imbedded in the technical and architectural limitations of the broadcast model.

To be fair, how could they "know" any other model? It is what they grew up with. Kerry is the product in part of the Catholic church's approach to organization and military world view. Could Kerry even explain what P-2-P or a Socail Netwrok is relative to the client server model or the "stupid network"? The point here is only that we can not practise what we do not know about or understand personally.

The fact is, the only over whelming success of the P-2-P model in politics we can point to so far is in fund raising. Everybody loves raising $50K per hour.

So far, however there is no concrete record of political victories delivered by a P-2-P / Social Network / Blog using political campaign. Dean went something like 0 for 17 in a campaign that was never really truly P-2-P. We need to show that newmedia /internet based tools can deliver the VOTES as well.

This goes to the point I tried to make recently that technologies, and their consequent architectures, contain embedded organizational/political structures. If you are a big iron, proprietary software, client server engineer, all you see is the superior role of the center and the dependence of the thin [weak] client. If you are an Open Source, P-2-P person, you see a world of vastly different solutions and possibilities. Power at the user end point, not in the middle.

That is, if all you have is a hammer, is every problem a nail?

Thoughts? Next steps?

Divisions

Our government and our country have become so factionalized and divided that many of us have lost sight of those fundamental values that unite us. We focus on our differences so much that we forget about what connects us-–what makes us a community. Our national motto is E Pluribus Unum . Out of Many, One. Out of diversity, community.

Are the differences between Republicans and Democrats, rich and poor, black and white, gay and straight, North and South, professors and plumbers, male and female, Christian and Moslem, etc., really more important to the future welfare of this country than the universal values we share? Are we not all human beings with hopes and dreams and needs and abilities that we have combined into the collective whole that has created the greatest country in history? And why would we want to splinter that whole and endanger our own future?

In his Farewell Address of 1796 , George Washington warned us of the danger of divisions. He opposed the creation of political parties because of that danger. Whether we agree with his conclusions or not, it can’t be denied that when we focus on our differences we risk making political and policy decisions based on those differences, not based on American values. That is a dangerous path, indeed.

Washington said:

The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.

One of the great questions for our time is, I think, this: Will we in courage reach out and find larger connection, or in fear retreat behind the walls of difference.

Post Broadcast Entertainment?

We have spent a lot of time talking here about politics becoming more interactive. People have always talked politics around the water cooler, but political activity has continued to decline in our country. One of the exciting developments of the Dean campaign has been to get people talking about politics more. Instead of just watching a show on television, and maybe deciding to get out and vote, Meetups, House Parties, and mailing lists have started reshaping the political landscape. New people are getting interested and involved. The discussions around the water cooler have gotten more interesting again.

If it works for campaigns, why wouldn’t it work for other attempts to gain peoples attention?

Today, I received an email from David Salie. David was in charge of House Parties for the Dean campaign. His sister is starring in a new show on Bravo entitled ‘Significant Others’. Using his organizing skills, David has set up a house party for this evening following the premier of the show. This house party won’t be fund raising for a political campaign. Instead it will be building a community of viewers. As with Dean House Parties, there will be a conference call. People from around the country will call in to hear the actors talk about the show, and hopefully have a chance to ask a few questions.

Yet House Parties are not enough. David has also set up a Yahoo Group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/significantothersonbravo/) and a Meetup (http://sigothers.meetup.com/) Can a blog be far away? The show is a blend of sitcom and improv. Will the House Parties, Meetups, Mailing list and perhaps blog end up providing feedback to the producers? Will ideas from the fans become scenarios in the show?

The potential to reshape political campaigns appears to have similar potential to reshape entertainment. Let’s hope that it will be as exciting to be an involved fan of Significant Others as it has become to be involved volunteers in political campaigns thanks to the innovations of the Dean campaign.

Serendipity and Suffering

by Dana Blankenhorn

By chance I went to church yesterday and learned a great lesson.

My son was going to be part of a play during the service. I rushed through my workout so I could attend. When John, now 12, decided a year ago that he wanted to get serious about religion, my lovely bride was happy to accompany him on the journey, and in the fall both became members of the Oakhurst Baptist Church, around the corner from our home.

John’s play was good, and he was funny. It was put on by the church’s middle schoolers, who were a focus of the service.

But as John came to sit beside me after his play, I learned there was a second focus as well. I was surprised at first to see my neighbor, Mrs. Shanks, a few pews away. And a few moments later she was acknowledged, as part of a club that meets in the church each Thursday, and has met in the church for 36 years.

A bigger surprise was in store. In place of the sermon, a large impressive black woman, just a few years older than I, was given the pulpit. Her name was Barbara Cross. Her father, John, sat near Mrs. Shanks. He had helped found her club, and served the church through the 1970s, after coming here from Birmingham, Alabama.

Ms. Cross then testified to some real history. She was my son’s age in 1963, at a church much like the one we sat in, the 16th Street Baptist Church of Birmingham, Alabama. (http://www.broadview.mccsc.edu/mlk/bombing/tsld001.htm) She wanted to go to the bathroom with her best friend, to laugh and talk together instead of doing church work, but her teacher asked her to copy some things, and since she was the preacher’s daughter she obeyed. She gave her wallet to her friend, and said she’d see her soon.

Moments later there was a terrible explosion. Everything went black. There was screaming. It was the Birmingham Church Bombing. The friend who held her wallet was Addie Mae Collins, and along with three other girls, she died in that bathroom. The man who bragged on the bombing, Robert Chambliss, did not meet justice until 2002, his own granddaughter testifying against him. The rest are still at large. Rev. Cross and his family, shaken by the events of that time (they had opened the church to Civil Rights meetings), moved here, found peace, became friends with (among others) Mrs. Shanks. We gave him a standing ovation.

I write about this because there is a myth abroad, especially among veterans of the Howard Dean campaign, that we have suffered, that we have been done dirty. There is a myth abroad, throughout America, that we have suffered grieviously from 9/11, and that everything we do now is justified by the needs of a "War On Terror."

But have we suffered? Deanistan lost a primary race. His voters retain their vote, their voices, and their lives. Unless you were in downtown Manhattan on 9/11, or very near to it, then 9/11 for you was a TV show, as it was for me.

Real people are being killed right now, in Iraq and in Israel. Most are innocent. Israelis have the advantage of at least knowing why they die, of having a cause. What is the Iraqis’ cause? Freedom? Elections? America? Islam? I have no answer for that, but I strongly suspect it is our cause, and not their cause, they die for.

And they die in great double-handfuls. We don’t even count them. We don’t even think about them.

What does this mean? It means we haven’t really suffered, we don’t even know what suffering means. We have, instead, dealt suffering, in great double-handfuls. As a people we remain, on the whole, untouched. And when we are touched, it’s like the long arc of an electric shock. Our pain becomes the world’s pain. It is magnified, 10-fold, it’s the only pain that counts.

Barbara Cross has turned her pain into something powerful, something moving, something that can teach people like my son that we must love one another. Her pain was far more searing than anything you have felt, unless you lived through the WTC attack directly. And even then, you’re only even with her. Numbers don’t really count when death and terrorism are the issue.

What counts is what you do with the fear. Do you seek justice and mercy? Or do you seek death? That’s the yardstick by which you’ll be measured. It’s the yardstick by which we’ll all be measured.

The Opinion Makers

This morning, as I was dropping my daughter off at school, I heard a commentator on a local NPR station talking about Bush kicking off his campaign with his appearance on Meet the Press. The commentator spoke about Meet the Press as the granddaddy of the Sunday morning political talk shows. He noted that while Meet the Press is still the most widely watched such show, its viewership is only five million people. What is important, however, is that the show is widely watched by the opinion makers, and what gets said there will end up in news columns the following day.

While we could spend time arguing over the importance of the votes of five million people, I think the idea of the opinion maker in this age of blogs is more important to focus on. At the Association of Internet Researchers conference last October, one of the papers was on agent theory and the role of blogs in setting the topics of discussion for the traditional media. Phrased another way, the question could be: To what extent are blogs and bloggers emerging as opinion makers?

To the extent that blogs and bloggers are opinion makers, how do they emerge as an opinion maker, and once they have reached that status, how do they maintain it? In the Blogs and Bloggers tribe on Ryze, every few weeks someone asks how to get people to read their blogs. If a blogger blogs on the Internet, and no one reads the post, does it make a difference?

Perhaps some of the recent discussion between Zachary Roth of Columbia School of Journalism’s Campaign Desk and Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos sheds more light on this topic.

In an entry at Campaign Desk, Markos writes, Problem is, blogs aren't necessarily bound by journalistic ethics. As a blogger, I make my own rules. People don't like them, they are welcome to head elsewhere to get their information.

The problem for Markos is that statements like that are likely to encourage people to head elsewhere. He compounds this with his entry in his own blog: I'm curious as to who decides what I can or can't do. I'm curious as to who decides my choices? Because quite frankly, those aren't choices I really have to face. Whether I am taken seriously or not is outside my hands. That's not a choice I make for myself. It's a choice my readers and the political establishment will make for me. Either they approve of how I run the Daily Kos community, or they do not.

Actually, it seems as if the choices we make, particularly in what we chose to say in our blogs has a great effect on how seriously we are taken. I have always liked DailyKos, but the recent comments do cause me to take him a little less seriously. I hope he makes efforts to repair his reputation.

My choice of the word ‘reputation’ was carefully considered. Being an opinion maker, having a well respected blog, is greatly affected by ones reputation. There is a growing body of work in the field of reputation research. A good starting point is the Reputations Research Network at University of Michigan. Those of us who wish to see online communications, such as blogs used to bring about greater democracy in this country would do well to read up on these topics. As we look at our blogging tools, we need to think about what can be done technically in terms of reputation management.

Book Networks and Political Division

Social network analyst Valdis Krebs has created an updated network map based on purchase patterns from major book retailers, similar to a map he created last year. Books are linked if they were bought together. Valdis makes assumptions about which political valence for each book, but the assumptions seem valid at a glance. [Link]

Kerry Tech Team's MT Plugin

O'Reilly's Emergent Democracy Forum

About a year ago Joi Ito started a discussion of "Emergent Democracy," about how a mix of our existing tools plus new social software and social network technologies relate to democracy. Joi et al were seeing the potential for blogs to become politically relevant tools, and noting how themes, issues, and positions seem to emerge from blog activity - hence emergent democracy. O'Reilly Books, understanding that this discussion is extremely relevant as Internet tools become essential to political campaigns, movements, and adhocracies, is holding an Emergent Democracy Forum at the beginning of its Emerging Technology conference in February. With Mitch Ratcliffe, I'm writing a book on the subject; Mitch and I will both be at the conference; hope to see you there, too. [Link]

Inner-city peace building lessons

By Larry Seaquist

Copyright © 2003 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved. Reprinted with the author's permission.

GIG HARBOR, WASH. - As we see in Iraq, building a peaceful community requires more than killing enemies. Iraq dominates the headlines, but citizens in many other countries also struggle to replace violence with civility.

Right here in America, many kids skirt the turf of local toughs on their way from a ramshackle home to a failing school before returning home to play among drug dealers, eat dinner (maybe) with an unemployed parent, and finish the day playing a violent computer game to the sound of gunfire on the next block.

What do you do if you don't have the US Army to patrol your town? If Uncle Sam is not paying contractors to rebuild your schools?

Citizens in Ohio couldn't borrow the Army, but they could borrow a military technique: war-gaming. Worried about the impact of violence on their children, community leaders in Weinland Park, an inner-city neighborhood in Columbus, recently set out to better their children's chances for success in school and in life.

Staging a day-long simulation, they gamed out the "enemy" - the cluster of problems standing between their kids and success - evaluated different battle plans, organized a three-front attack, and committed themselves personally to the community-building fray.

People of all stripes showed up. The Orthodox bishop came "because I'm sick of giving last rites to kids dying in the alley behind my church." Two high school students - who could be forgiven had their ambition been merely to escape - came because they want to start families of their own "right here at home" when they return from college.

Communities are much more complicated places than battlefields. Generals need only crush the foe. Citizens building peace have to manufacture durable teamwork among people with strong convictions. Emily (all names changed) was sure that her recipe for "old-fashioned teaching and discipline" would restore order; Mike from the city parks department wanted to turn the schools into safe, after-hours community centers; businessman Omar urged a massive dragnet to sweep all the petty drug dealers off the streets.

How to find common ground? In the Weinland Park game, teams acted out the divergent interests of residents, educators, the youth, and so on in a community laboratory called CoLab. A "red team" played the opponents, those who profit from violence and stagnation.

The outcome? Make that plural, outcomes. All reported a new, deeper understanding of each other's views. Long-term resident Kathy, living barricaded in her house, took the role of a city official dealing with the realities of taxes and budgets. Police officer Jerry played a youth as wary of cops as of the gangs.

With fresh eyes, the participants quickly converged on a short list of "must do now" actions. More, they all signed up on the spot to make those things happen. Emily and Mike, now partners, lead a task force to help educators tailor the school experience to local realities and to make the schools safe havens after hours. The high schoolers chaired a team to give youth a voice in the community and spotlight the achievements of young people who are succeeding despite obstacles. A third task force created a new organization to keep the campaigns running and signal to the city where its limited resources will get the best payoff.

The CoLab uncovered an important intangible: pride. The Columbus mayor's office and the school superintendent encouraged the project but worried that there was no "there" there. The area, they feared, had succumbed to unemployment, gangs, and owner neglect.

Not so. Invitations from local sponsors tapped an impressive reservoir of neighborhood pride. Participants showed up hungry to act. Needed was a way to hook those energies together.

This is more than a human-interest story. The Weinland Park CoLab, supported by skilled facilitators from nearby Ohio State University, operated at the heart of what makes peace building different from warmaking: human connections of community.

Violence, poverty, and failure separate people. Demagogues and warlords seize on those ingredients. Pushed to fear, neighbors retreat from the normal traffic of daily life among peoples of different stripes. When hate replaces familiarity, it takes only a few guns to ignite the killing.

The antidote is reconnection.

By providing a safe place not just to air one's own views but genuinely to understand each other's motivations, CoLabs enable the fresh thinking and practical collaboration that can turn a war zone into a community. Omar, the get-tough guy, made a brief speech at the end of the session. "Now I see," he said, "that just arresting drug dealers can't solve the problem. We'd never have enough cops. We have to create a neighborhood where young parents can provide for their families if we are ever going to live here safely."

Our generals have announced new, get-even-tougher campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan to crush the opponents of peace in those two troubled countries.

The citizens and officials of Columbus may have something to teach the US Army. When the goal is a better life for the next generation, the ultimate mission is community, not killing.

• Larry Seaquist is a former US Navy warship captain and Pentagon strategist. With Joe Bell, a former Washington State official, he advised the Weinland Park project.