bottom up change

9:33am Vivek Kundra, the Chief Information Officer for the federal government was first to present today and he unveiled a new platform: the IT Dashboard.  This tool allows the public to see where the federal government is spending money for information technology–who the contractors are, how much money each state receives, as well as information about federal agencies.  This was probably the highlight of the PDF 2009 conference so far.  There was a lot of anticipation for this talk after it was reported in the media last night that Kundra would unveil the IT Dashboard here.  The Dashboard is in beta, and it will be opened up to the public for comments when a blog is added next week.  Kundra was joined on stage by Macon Phillips, the New Media Director at the White House.

10:02am The second speaker today is Beth Noveck, who is the US Deputy Chief Technology Office.  Micah Sifry called her book Wiki Government “the Bible” on the subject of government 2.0.  She is talking about the Open Government Initiative, which is a way that the public can provide feedback about policy to the government.  This is a very new way of making decisions in the federal government.  Check out the Open Government Dialogue where everyone and anyone–even the “birthers” who deny the President Obama is a US Citizen–has an opportunity to voice their concerns about policy.  The Open Government Initiative also has a blog at the Office of Sciene & Technology that accepts comments from the public, which is a first.

10:49am Todd Herman is speaking now on “The New GOP Web Presence.”  Herman is the New Media Director for the Republican National Committee.  He pointed out that during the McCain campaign, the Republicans didn’t use the new web tools and they didn’t organize.  He actually recommended that Republicans start reading Saul Alinsky!  The gist of his talk was an admission that Republicans were indeed behind Democrats right now in terms of technology and organizing, but that this wasn’t always the case and there is nothing inherent about the Republican party that is anti-technology.  A few small partisan scuffles just broke out here at PDF 09.  First an audience member repeatedly shouted something at Herman, who deftly to the man that he would be able to ask questions at the microphone after his talk.  Then during the Q&A, Jay Rosen of NYU charged that Herman did not adequately account for the Bush administration’s efforts to block transparency efforts.  Herman responded, correctly in my view, that he was not here to defend the Bush administration.  This is one of the problems with trying to hold a non-partisan political forum like this.  It will have a clear bias based on the political leanings of the leadership and members.  I think Andrew Rasiej (the founder of PDF) said that the conference is about 80 percent liberal and 20 percent conservative.

11:07am Micah Sifry is now interviewing the director of marketing at Facebook, Randi Zuckerberg, about how Facebook has went from a social network for college students at Harvard to one of the major tools for online organizing for social and political causes.  To be honest, this is a very unenlightening segment of this conference.  Zuckerberg does not seem to have a lot of data or insight about how Facebook is being used by activists or some of the problems they are facing in using it.  One of the interesting factoids to come out of her talk, though, is that Facebook use in Iran has dropped by 50% according to Zuckerberg.  Memorable line from Zuckerberg: “Free speech is hard.”

11:37am I’m now listening to a very good talk by Alec Ross, who is the Senior Advisor for Innovation in the Office of Secretary of State Clinton.  His talk is called “21st Century Statecraft: Fostering Citizen-Centered Diplomacy and Development.”  His talk is focusing on the way that social media is shifting power from traditionally powerful institutions such as the state to people.  The best lines of the day, and perhaps the conference, came from Ross just now: “If Paul Revere lived today, he would have just tweeted” and “Today, we can all be Paul Revere”.  There have also been some excellent examples of the power of social media to allow people to organize.  Ross pointed out how in Columbia, two young men used Facebook to organize a protest against FARC and over 10 million people turned out.

11:55am I’m listening to the cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch talk about the significance of YouTube in our culture.  It’s such an entertaining talk that I’ve had trouble taking notes here during it.  You should definitely check it out at the PDF conference website when they post the videos of the talk online.  This is one of the better talks of the conference–it’s basically about why YouTube has become so big and what its significance is.  Not clearly a political talk, but it’s made me realize I really need to learn more about this medium.

12:16pm Mark Pesce is speaking now on “The Dangerous Power of Sharing (Power)”.  Sorry, no live-blogging for this one.  I had trouble focusing on that talk.

I’ll try to come back to the live-blogging for some of the afternoon breakout sessions.

2:33pm I’m at the breakout session called “How the Internet Ecosystem Can Improve Journalism” with Frank Rich of the New York Times, Karen Tumulty of Time Magazine, Scott Simon of NPR, and Dan Gillmore from the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship.  There are several debates happening on this panel that are very interesting.  First there was a debate about the role of social media in journalism and particularly the use of Twitter to get stories out of Iran.  Frank Rich was very skeptical of how effective Twitter has been during that uprising: “The message is more important than the medium,” he said.  Scott Simon had a lot of positive things to say in defense of how Twitter and social media is helping NPR.  In the past, he said, someone would yell out in the newsroom and ask if anyone knew an immigrant family to interview for an immigration story.  Now they just tweet this message out to the public and find people to talk with much faster.  Another debate is about media consolidation and who is going to control the media.  Rich was arguing that large media conglomerates such as Rupert Murdoch’s will continue to exist and thrive despite the effect of the internet on the media right now.  Dan Gillmore was more hopeful that smaller, independent voices in the media will thrive but he cautioned that the emergence of broadband and telephone companines joining together may be a threat to independent content on the web.

4:02pm The day is almost over here at the PDF 2009 conference, and I’m here listening to a panel talking about “Why Blogging Still Matters: The Ongoing Vitality of the Netroots and the Rightroots.”  The panelists are Scott Rosenberg, Eric Boehlert, Dan Froomkin, Jon Henke, and Ana Marie Cox (AMC).   AMC kicked off the panel with a list of terms that would be part of the drinking game for the panel–if you don’t follow AMC on Twitter, you may not get this joke.  They then discussed a few reasons why blogging still matters: 1) it’s a place to hear about stories besides Michael Jackson, 2) it still often does a better job than the mainstream media (Froomkin)  3) it doesn’t matter and it never has mattered but it’s not going away (Scott Rosenberg), and a few other things that I missed (I’m sorry, I told you I wasn’t very good at this).  The next question was what can bloggers learn from the mainstream media?  One thing that was mentioned is the importance of linking to sources and not assuming that the audience is familiar with these sources.  Ana Marie Cox said that one thing that bloggers can learn from reporters is that it’s ok to call yourself a reporter “even if you sit around all day because that’s what I do.”  Dan Froomkin asked a very intresting question: was the blogosphere ever a meritocracy and if it was, is it still?  AMC responded that most things in life aren’t a meritocracy because otherwise “I would have more power” which got some laughs from the audience.  But she did point out that there are a lot of bloggers out there who love the medium enough that they write for its own sake and their material sometimes does get picked up leading to more .  The best line of the panel was definitely from AMC in response to a question about anonmyous bloggers: “I feel the same way about anonymous blogging as I do about anonymous sex: if you don’t know who it is then how do you know where to go back for more?”

I’m at the Personal Democracy Forum’s 2009 conference, We.gov, at Lincoln Center in New York City.  This is the premier conference on politics and technology, and the first time I’ve attended.  It should be interesting.

Things just got started this morning with Joe Rospars, the New Media Director for Obama’s campaign and a co-founder of Blue State Digital, and Mark McKinnon, who worked on John McCain’s campaign as an adviser.  Then Mayor Bloomberg was supposed to be here, but due to some problems in the New York state senate, he had to stay at City Hall.  But he was able to talk to us via Skype.

I hope to get some pics up later.  It’s a bit hard right now since I’m sitting in an auditorium and can’t move very easily.

11:08am Currently Micah Silfry of PDF is interviewing Nate Silver from the blog Five Thirty Eight.  I’ve missed a lot of what he’s said.  I’m being a terrible live-blogger!

11:32am Gina Bianchini is now discussing the social networking company she founded, Ning, and is showcasing the PickensPlan and the rapper 50 Cent as effective users of Ning.  Apparently, over 200,000 people have signed up with the Picken’s Plan Ning site to organize around energy reform.  I believe Bianchini said that 60 percent of these users have met with their representatives.  That number seems very high–I’m not sure if I heard her correctly.  I’m also not sure why she focused on 50 Cent–seems like an odd example–but she was trying to point out how he uses Ning in coordination with Twitter and other social media to keep in touch with his fans.  I have thought about using Ning for Social Media Progressives since we are looking for a new home besides our Facebook site, but I still don’t get what the advantage of using Ning is over any other website or even our little Facebook page.  Bianchini isn’t explaining what is unique about Ning.  Wow, Bianchini just gave my friend Joseph Porcelli of Neighbors for Neighbors a shoutout as a model user of Ning.

11:50am Dana Boyd is up now talking about an issue that I didn’t think I’d hear about at this conference–the ways that race and class affect the debate about technology and politics.  She’s an ethnographer who studies the use of technology in society.  The issue isn’t just inequality access to technology, she’s saying, but the ways that people from different socioeconomic groups use technology, especially social media.  She’s talked for a long time about how minority kids and kids from lower-income families never made the jump from MySpace to Facebook, whereas kids from middle class and wealthier families made the jump quickly.  I’m not sure where she’s going with this talk.  She’s now making the connection to racial and class segregation, so I suppose she’s saying that we are segregating our lives online in addition to offline.  She worries that the internet will not increase tolerance as much as we might think because of this phenomenon.  We are still very much living apart from other races and classes even with social media.  This seems pretty obvious to me.  What is the solution?  I don’t think anyone believes that technology is going to get rid of racism or voluntary segregation of races and people from different backgrounds.  It is a thought-provoking talk though.  It reminds me of just how limited many of our social interactions are and it makes me wonder how we can bring about more interaction of different people, both online and offline.

12:24pm I’ve been looking forward to Jeff Jarvis’s talk, and he’s speaking now.  He’s an authority on the media and one of the most interesting thinkers about the ways that the media is changing.  He is famous for the quote, “We should do what we do best and link to the rest.”  His blog is BuzzMachine and  he’s also the author of the book What Would Google Do.  So far in this talk, he’s not talking about media, but is instead discussing what government can learn from Google and companies like it.  There are several issues he’s laying out here.  First, he’s saying that we have to give government permission to experiment, innovate, and yes, from time to time, fail.   Government should use the “beta” model of releasing things that are not quite finished, not quite perfect, and allow us to help them fix the bugs.  Second, transparency is great, but there’s a danger here because it creates opportunities for “gotcha” politics.  Third, how do we make government truly collaborative?  If we want government to be a network, what does it look like?  Fourth, “how can we turn the positive to the constructive?”  We have ideas about how government can improve and be more transparent, etc., but how can we build the tools that will achieve these goals?  Now Jarvis is walking around asking people what they think “Googley government” would look like.  This is a great way to get the audience involved and we’re getting some crazy responses, some funny responses, but also some good ideas.

12:45pm David Weinberger from Harvard’s Berkman Center is now speaking about “Truth and Transparency”.  I just saw him a few weeks ago for a Berkman Center talk with Doc Searles talk about the tenth anniversary of their book The Cluetrain Manifesto.   He has talked for a while now about the nature of facts.  Yeah, FACTS.  I looked up his bio, and unsurprisingly, he has a PhD in philosophy.  I really don’t understand what he’s saying, even though I’ve studied philosophy.  He’s saying something about how hyperlinks on the internet give us a better understanding of topics than paper does because facts are messy.  Because paper does not link to other paper, it limits our awareness of the connection of facts to other facts.  This is a very abstract talk and I’m not sure where he’s going with this.  I’m afraid that this is the kind of talk that makes people frustrated with philosophy.  Too bad.  Well, that’s not exactly true.  He is using Wikipedia as an example and comparing it to the Encyclopedia Brittanica.  Wikipedia has links, it’s incomplete, it admits that there may be problems, that there is disagreement about what the facts are.  Brittanica on the other hand acts like it is the word of God, that it is complete.  It doesn’t like to anyone else as though it is sent down to us from above.  “Multi-subjectivity gives subjectivity some of the heft that objectivity has”–that’s an actual quote from this talk, and it makes some sense when you think about it I suppose.  Finally he’s connecting this to government: sites like Data.gov and Recovery.gov.   These sites are embracing the link culture of the internet.  The government is finally admitting to the people that it’s going to take many people looking at the government’s information to get at what the facts about government are.

Alright, time for lunch.  I will be back for more live blogging during the breakout sessions later.

Our Nuclear-Free Opportunity: Top Ten Reasons Why a World Free of Nuclear Weapons is Now Achievable

by Nathan Pyles

President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev

The challenge of statesmanship is to have the vision to dream of a better, safer world and the courage, persistence, and patience to turn that dream into a reality.
                                                                          - President Ronald Reagan

This quote is from Martin and Annelise Anderson’s recently published: “Reagan’s Secret War: The Untold Story of His Fight to Save the World from Nuclear Disaster.” Using President Reagan’s own words from diary entries and previously classified documents, the Anderson’s demonstrate how Reagan and Gorbachev bucked entrenched Cold War nuclear paradigms to forge a radically new approach.

The Anderson’s provide a fascinating window into how President Reagan determinedly pursued his vision for a nuclear free world. It is an eye-opening complement to Paul Lettow earlier look on the subject, “Ronald Reagan and his Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons”. Together, these books confound popular Reagan mythology from both the right and the left.

President Barack Obama’s April speech in Prague where he proposed eliminating nuclear weapons might not have been possible were it not for the leadership shown by President Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev two decades ago.

The 1980’s were risky times in U.S. - Soviet relations. Reagan’s first term ‘Peace through Strength’ policy and Pershing missile deployment in Europe had the world worried of pending nuclear disaster. Deep distrust between ‘worst-case factions’ within each other’s government kept both nations on a razor’s edge.

With Mikhail Gorbachev’s rise to power during Reagan’s second term Reagan grew more hopeful. Both leaders sent backchannel signals of a willingness to pursue an alternative nuclear course. In a three year span from 1985 through 1988, they made it possible to believe that not only was a nuclear weapons free world necessary, but that it was achievable.

The nuclear policy revisions promoted by Reagan and Gorbachev went against the advice of their aides, their militaries, and many of their allies. It took unheard of self-assurance and confidence for these men to battle the institutionalized policy of Mutual Assured Destruction after decades of widespread acceptance.

From their first face-to-face meeting in Geneva in 1985 came this shared statement: “A nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought.” Both Reagan and Gorbachev would return time and time again to this touchstone during their tenures to remind themselves and their staffs of a higher purpose.

Following Geneva was the historic summit at Reykjavik, Iceland in 1986. At Reykjavik the two leaders came within two words of agreeing to the total elimination of nuclear weapons for all time. While in the end they failed to achieve such an agreement, their near success gave hope to the world that a nuclear free world would one day be within reach.

Discussions at Reykjavik led to the Intermediate Range Nuclear Force Treaty (INF). This groundbreaking treaty required both sides to make significant nuclear weapons reductions. It was the first reduction agreement since the beginning of the nuclear arms race forty years earlier. The INF treaty achieved the removal and dismantling of intermediate range nuclear weapons from Europe.

The INF was followed by the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) which was completed during Bush Senior’s presidency. START called for even broader nuclear weapons reductions and forged a hard won consensus on treaty verification mechanisms. Effective treaty verification regimes are a prerequisite for common security in a nuclear weapons free world.

Twenty years later, and five years from Ronald Reagan’s memorable funeral, it is time to pick up the legacy of hope Reagan and Gorbachev left to us. The humanity of Reagan’s nuclear-free vision went unappreciated by many during his lifetime, and we owe him a reexamination of his transformational thinking on nuclear weapons policy.

In retrospect, our oldest president now seems more prescient than many of his younger successors. Later from the same conversation with his aides begun above, Reagan continued:

Our moral imperative is to work with all our powers for that day when the children of the world grow up without the fear of nuclear war.

This article is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

I’m not as frustrated with President Obama’s performance as Bill Maher is in the clip below.  I am in agreement with Joe Klein in this piece that Obama’s first 100 days were probably the most successful first 100 days since FDR.  But in my view, there’s something to Maher’s scathing critique from the left.  For all of Obama’s achievements so far, and there are many solid ones, health care reform and clean energy were two of the top priorities that he campaigned on.  These two issues were major reasons why many people voted for him.  And while I understand that we are currently facing some of the most difficult economic circumstances in decades, Maher is correct when he asks, “Speaking of the Republicans, if you can’t shove some real reform down their throats now, then when?”  The Republicans are almost irrelevant at this stage in terms of their numbers and lack of credibility with the American people.  So why am I reading this report saying that health care reform may be “on the rocks”?  Here is Maher’s commentary on Presidnet Obama’s recent efforts to achieve major legislative victories:

Now, I’m not sure if Maher wants Obama to use all of George W. Bush tactics to achieve victories.  Bush’s dishonesty, cynicism, and scare tactics were a major reason I turned against him in the lead-up to the Iraq war.  I don’t want to see Obama sink to these levels to achieve his goals.  At the same time, something has to give.  I think Maher is correct when he says that Obama needs to worry less about his popularity and more about getting the job done.  The people in the White House seem to believe that as long as Obama’s approval numbers stay high, his personal popularity will translate into support for his agenda.  But I doubt that.  Obama needs to clearly state to the American people what needs to be done.  And the fact is, a real public option that is backed by the government and that will have the weight to offer real competition to the insurance industry is what needs to be done.  Robert Reich got it exactly right in this piece.  Maybe it’s not what we want to hear.  But as Obama said on the campaign trail in the primaries, as President he was going to tell us not just what we wanted to hear, but what we needed to hear.

It was unacceptable for the President to give just one major speech on health care last week as the health care bill began to stall in the Senate.  And who noticed that speech in Green Bay besides Wisconsinites?  He needs to be out there more.  He needs to be educating the American people about why we must have health care reform NOW.  He needs to explain to the American people exactly how his plan will control health care costs and how it is a bigger financial risk to make incremental changes than to act boldly.  And finally, he needs to tell some uncomfortable truths, and clearly lay out how he will control entitlement spending in order to cut the deficit.  In the past, Obama has risen to the challenge at just the right time and used his communication skills to persuade enough people to come to his side in order to win battles.  Now he needs to do that, and he needs to show more vigor than he has been showing lately.

He didn’t have to be here.  Many people, including me, worried that he may have been taking on too much this year in his agenda.  But now that he has chosen to tackle health care reform by the end of the year, he needs to go out and get it done.  As citizens and supporters of health care reform, we need to do our part as well.  Otherwise, we will not see the real change that was promised during the campaign.  And if not, then what did we work so hard for during the campaign?

UPDATE: I corrected the horrible grammatical errors that I missed when I first posted this.  Please excuse that lapse.

Our Nuclear-Free Opportunity: Top Ten Reasons Why a World Free of Nuclear Weapons is Now Achievable

by Nathan Pyles

President John F. Kennedy signing the Partial Test Ban Treaty 1963

There is no shortage of skeptics who question if nuclear weapons can ever be fully eliminated. Since nuclear weapon technology has already been invented, they will say, ‘the nuclear genie cannot be put back in its bottle.’ Because nuclear technology cannot be un-invented, the elimination of nuclear weapons by treaty would be naïve.

It is true that nuclear know-how is with us forever. It is also true, that since this technology is known, there is the risk that some nations would cheat on a treaty banning nuclear weapons. However, we need to acknowledge that there are risks in either course. The risk of failing to agree to eliminate nuclear weapons globally is the continuation of nuclear proliferation with its incumbent risks of nuclear terrorism or accident.

One of the world’s first nuclear arms control agreements was the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT). The PTBT presents a case study for balancing these comparative nuclear risks. Leading up to the Senate vote on this treaty, President John F. Kennedy said to Congress, “While it may be theoretically possible to demonstrate the risks inherent in any treaty… the far greater risk to our security are the risks of unrestricted testing, the risks of a nuclear arms race, the risks of new nuclear powers.”

The health risks of atmospheric nuclear weapons testing had become well understood in the late 1950’s and early 60’s. The Kennedy administration determined that the health benefits gained by ending radioactive fallout, combined with the potential non-proliferation benefits of this treaty, outweighed the strategic risks of signing it.

As in today’s debate over the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, in 1963 there were internal government critics of the PTBT from the Joint Chief of Staffs, to the nuclear weapons laboratory directors whose congressional testimonies conveyed dire warnings.

One Partial Test Ban Treaty strategic risk was well known in advance. Neither France nor China had any intention of signing the PTBT. Therefore, this would not be an equitable treaty as participation would not be inclusive. Yet the signing parties determined that while the treaty was imperfect, it was a lower risk alternative to not having a test ban treaty at all.

Responding to growing international pressures France finally stopped atmospheric testing in 1974 and China ended their atmospheric testing in 1980.  There have been no atmospheric nuclear weapons tests anywhere in the world since 1980.

The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) which bans the possession and use of chemical weapons had a similar uneven progression. Attempts to limit chemical weapons go all the way back to World War I. Yet it wasn’t until 1997 that the U.S. Senate ratified the chemical weapon ban. Today all but seven nations have ratified the CWC.

In 2003, ten years after signing the CWC, Albania announced it had uncovered a stockpile of chemical weapons. Skeptics may look at this incident as proof of the failure of arms control. Albania held onto their substantial chemical weapons arsenal (whether knowingly or now is up for question) long after signing the CWC.

But arms control proponents look at Albania’s disclosure as a success story. The end result was one more country coming clean and eliminating their stockpiles of banned weaponry without their use. Chemical weapon know-how is even wider spread than nuclear know-how. The ‘chemical genie’ cannot be put back into its bottle either. Nevertheless, we have determined we are made more secure by banning chemical weapons.

Governments are expected to assure the security of their citizens. The real challenge is in agreeing on the lowest risk path to security. Our arms control history shows the potential for achieving nuclear security by banning nuclear weapons through a verifiable arms control regime.

While there will no doubt be challenges, past history has shown that there are opportunities to strengthen and improve treaty regimes over time. But first nuclear weapons powers must commit to the path of a staged, global ban of all nuclear weapons as our lowest risk solution.

This is the seventh post by guest blogger Nathan Pyles in a 12 part series on “Our Nuclear-Free Opportunity”.

This article is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

Monday, June 15, Iranian supporters of Moussavi protest the election results (Photo: AFP/Getty)

You may have missed what happened this weekend.  I know I almost did.  No, I’m not talking about the dramatic protests in Iran against the declared election results claiming that President Ahmadinejad defeated Mir Hussein Moussavi by a large margin.  Instead, I’m referring to the use of social media in Iran and in the United States to have an impact on the protests and on the coverage of them in major American media outlets.   Andrew Sullivan has done an incredible job covering the protests and the use of Twitter in particular over the weekend.  For a summary of his work over the past few days, see this post.

So how did Twitter have a significant impact on the events in Iran and on US media coverage this weekend?  First, check out this post by Sullivan called “The Revolution Will be Twittered“, which by the way is a huge rip-off of my post a few months ago, “The Revolution Will Be Tweeted.”  Plus, it’s “tweeted” not “twittered”, Andrew.  But I digress.  Sullivan reports that Iranian authorities had silenced cell phone communications and taken down Moussavi’s website.  Text messaging had been used in the weeks leading up to the election by supporters of Moussavi to organize, so the government wanted to make sure that they did not use this method.  However, they did not disable Twitter, allowing Moussavi and his supporters to send a tweet calling for people to go to the rooftops and yell “ALAHO AKBAR” to protest the election results.  Thousands did so.  In fact, this was apparently the first time that people had spontaneously organized on rooftops since the Iranian revolution in 1979.  (And just as I am writing this post, this news breaks: Moussavi just sent out another tweet telling his supporters that every night in Tehran from 9pm-11pm they should go to the rooftops and shout “ALAHO AKBAR”.)

Twitter also enabled protesters to tweet updates about the violence that the government was unleashing against them so that the world would know what was happening.  They used the hashtag #IranElection to aggregate their tweets, and the stream of tweets was enormous: it has become one of the highest trending hashtags on Twitter over the past few days.  #IranElection is immensely popular internationally on Twitter, with users from around the world sending messages of encouragement and solidarity to the Iranians who are protesting.  Green avatars or avatars with the message “Stand with Free Iran” spread quickly with users who wanted to show solidarity.  In this way, the protesters are getting their message out and breaking news to an international audience, and the audience is able to talk back to the protesters and let them know they have the world’s support.  It’s a nice feedback loop, and one that might help sustain this rebellion or perhaps even help produce a new democratic revolution in Iran.  I am pretty skeptical about the latter, but that’s what many are hoping for.

Many traditional news organizations and reporters have picked up on the story of the role of social media in helping bring about and sustain the incredible events we are witnessing in Iran.  See this report by CBS for another account of Iranians’ use of social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook to organize their protests and let the world know about the crackdown against protesters.  Thomas Friedman also wrote over the weekend about the ways that Iranians, much like the Lebanese in their recent push-back against Hezbollah in a major election, were using technology to increase democratic activism.  Even Fox News jumped on the story.

But the traditional news entities almost missed the significance of this story entirely.  The major media outlets did a miserable job over the weekend reporting on what was undeniably one of the biggest stories of the year so far–a potential coup in Iran and a rebellion against the government by a pro-democracy movement in that country.  CNN and many other news outlets were missing in action over the weekend during some of the most tense moments in Iran shortly after the election results were announced.  Users of Twitter who had been following the story closely noticed this silence in the media, and particularly on CNN, and began a campaign to protest the lack of broadcast news coverage of the rebellion.  They started a hashtag, #CNNfail, which quickly became one of the most popular tags on Twitter along with #IranElection.  CNN noticed the organized outrage on Twitter and by Sunday their coverage of the protests increased.  CNN had to defend itself publicly from the criticism on Twitter.  The Wall Street Journal did a story covering the effects of the Twitter #CNNfail movement here.  A website has even sprung up, CNNfail.com, which includes all the tweeets under the hashtag #CNNfail and #Iranelection.

A lot of people may still roll their eyes and shrug, wondering what the big deal with Twitter is.  But they are missing out on engaging in a new form of communication that is much more than mere entertainment.  Quite simply, Twitter is leading the way in transforming the Internet into a powerful tool for organizing, rebellion, and yes, revolution.

This topic deserves a lot more space, but I’m going to try to give the short version of it here.  Since December of 2008, I’ve been exploring the world of social media.  I don’t know what the technical definition of social media is, and it is probably not as new as we like to think.  Suffice it to say that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and blogs are exemplars of social media.  You get the idea.

My interest in social media/Web 2.0/new media/whatever has taken me from casually using Facebook to starting a blog, to joining Twitter, to attending “Tweetups”, to organizing my own Tweetup, to starting a social media and politics organization.  And now on June 29-30 I will be attending We.Gov, which is the Personal Democracy Forum’s annual conference on politics and technology in New York City.   I am very excited to see the speakers at this event and to meet people who are trying to improve our government and politics by using the Internet and other technologies.  (Ok, really, I am just going to see Ana Marie Cox.)

Some people fret about social media because they think it is making us more self-absorbed, more narcissistic, more isolated.  It’s understandable to worry about some of this since there are countless examples of the hyper-individualism that the Internet has spawned.  There is something to the criticism of social media as amplifying some of the more self-regarding aspects of human nature.  The whole “personal branding” movement, which is very popular in the social media world, is one example of the way that self-publishing content is leading people to start thinking they are not human beings, but businesses that should be marketed like Coke or McDonald’s.  (In the words of Jay-Z, “I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man.”)  This all seems slightly ridiculous to me.

But I also believe that the Internet is spawning a new communitarianism, a new form of civic life that, despite our ever-increasing mobility, makes it possible to meet each other in public spaces, to form new groups and associations.   Meetup.com is just one example of how successful the Internet has been at making it possible for people to connect with others with similar interests through the Internet.  And, of course, the Obama campaign’s use of MyBO made it possible for his supporters to mobilize in certain states without any campaign staff present.

Now, after the Obama campaign’s success, it’s amusing to think about how much ridicule Time magazine received when it declared that the Person of the Year in 2006 was You.  As the media began to recognize the power of social media, critics reacted as though the only purpose of this technology was for people to constantly update their Facebook status with the most mundane details of their lives.  Twitter has recently been ridiculed the same way as only being for narcissists wanting to tell the world what they’re having for breakfast.  But people who say this about Twitter probably haven’t heard about Twestival or Tweetsgiving.

So there’s We.gov and Me.com.  Let’s not neglect to notice the We of social media.

Our Nuclear-Free Opportunity: Top Ten Reasons Why a World Free of Nuclear Weapons is Now Achievable

by Nathan Pyles

Deterrence in a proliferated world? (Photo: Flickr – Ryan Archer)

Columnist Charles Krauthammer understands the limitations of a nuclear deterrence policy in a highly proliferated world. In a 2002 Weekly Standard article entitled The Obsolescence of Deterrence, he wrote, “Yes, deterrence worked in the past. But in the past it was a play with very few actors…To voluntarily choose it as the principle on which to rest our safety in this age of weapons of mass destruction is sheer folly.” However, his proposed replacement for deterrence was preemptive war with Iraq. He got the problem right, but not the solution.

Proponents of nuclear deterrence choose only to see the shiny face of what is a multi-faceted policy. There are several darker facets inseparable from a nuclear deterrence policy. When crediting deterrence for keeping the peace by preventing conflict, the debit side of nuclear deterrence must simultaneously be examined. They are part and parcel.

The three large problems created by a policy of nuclear deterrence are: 1) it creates a state of permanent or institutionalized hostility that prolongs national differences and the risks of nuclear conflict; 2) while direct war did not occur between the superpowers during the Cold War, unresolved ideological tensions found their outlet in proxy wars in third world nations; 3) if nuclear deterrence works for some nations who pledge to hold onto them ‘into the indefinite future’, then others will also strive for this self-defense benefit - and nuclear proliferation will continue, elevating the risks for all.

A nuclear deterrence policy fosters a permanent hostility that undermines trust between nations. It is a not so subtle Mexican standoff where each threatens the other with annihilation at a moment’s notice. This permanent hostility limits progress in developing closer ties between nations by creating a constant state of ‘near-war’.

A state of near-war also carries with it risks of nuclear war either by a small conflict escalating unpredictably out of hand (Cuban missile crisis), by accident (1995 Norwegian satellite near miss), or internal subterfuge (Pakistan’s Kahn nuclear freelancing).

Prolonged unresolved differences will find a way to express themselves. The unwritten rules of the Cold War forswore direct Soviet - U.S. fighting. But the rules did not prevent either power from undermining the interests of the other in proxy third-world wars. U.S. forces fought directly in Korea and Vietnam while the Soviet Union provided advisors and arms. Soviets troops fought directly in Afghanistan while the U.S. provided advice and high tech militia weaponry. All told, over nine millions lives were lost in these proxy wars.

During the recent Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture presentation, former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger made a vigorous defense of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. “Sometimes one hears or reads in the press that these weapons will never be used. That is a fallacy. These weapons are used every day in that the deterrent is always there - protecting the United and its allies against major attack.”

If right, he’d just made a case for every non-nuclear state to pursue a nuclear program. If nuclear weapons protect us every single day while sitting silently in their silos, then this same talisman quality should hold true whether the nuclear silo is in the U.S., Iran, or North Korea.

Fortunately, he is wrong. Former U.N. Ambassador from Australia Richard Butler summed the proliferation dilemma inherent in a nuclear deterrence policy. “There is, in fact, an axiom of proliferation,” he has said. “It states that as long as any state holds nuclear weapons, others will seek to acquire them.”

A policy of nuclear deterrence masks and prolongs hostilities while putting millions at risk of catastrophic death. Its security promise is a lethal illusion.

Civil rights and anti-nuclear activist Martin Luther King understood that we must always go to the root of our problems to find permanent resolution. As we look again at the problem of continued nuclear weapons proliferation, he offered us this clue, “The best way to solve any problem is to remove its cause.”

This is the sixth post by guest blogger Nathan Pyles in a 12 part series on “Our Nuclear-Free Opportunity”.

This article is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

It’s on.  Today marked the beginning of what promises to be an historic push for universal health care in the United States.  President Obama delivered his Saturday address today from France as citizens across America organized Health Care Organizing Kickoff events.  I attended and helped coordinate a very successful kickoff event at Quincy Market in downtown Boston.  34 people came out on a beautiful Saturday to talk about how they could start building support in their communities to help pass health care reform.  ABC’s World News tonight was there, and they plan to show some footage from our event Sunday evening at 6:30pm ET.  You may see me if you tune in.

The New York Times reports that President Obama plans to start the heavy lifting on health care over the next few weeks, and he is eager to make sure that his priorities are not lost in the negotiations over the details of the plan.  But Robert Reich reports at his blog that Big Pharma and the insurance industry is already balking at the so-called “public option” and is working behind the scenes to kill it.  Clearly, this is going to be a major battle.  Besides getting the economy out of the current recession, health care reform is probably going to be the most significant domestic policy challenge that President Obama will face during his first term.

I am optimistic that on the issue of health care, the grassroots army that Obama built during the campaign is going to become activated and intensely involved.  The turnout today at our event and the intensity of the participants leads me to believe that this is the time where Organizing for America has a real shot at making a difference.   It’s going to be an exciting time for organizers and those who want to see health care reform happen.  This isn’t going to happen without significant grassroots mobilization, so I hope readers of this blog will get involved.  Health care reform promises to be as significant a change to the way our country treats its citizens as social security was when it was passed, so we all have a chance to be a part of an historic legislative achievement.