Ethan Zuckerman has the story of a 24-year-old American from New Jersey being detained in Ethiopia. Our State Department is not demanding Amir Mohamed Meshal’s release from a prison system known for its brutality, even though our own investigation cleared him of any connection to Al Qaeda. In explaining the situation, Ethan provides the context regarding our involvement in Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia; no one explains this stuff better than Ethan.

Meshal could easily disappear into Ethiopia’s prison system. His government — our government — should not be letting that happen.

Ethan also links to a great story in the Christian Science Monitor by Stephanie Hanes about a radio show in the Congo that lets the Congolese ask questions — via phone and SMS — about the 1998-2003 war in which 4 million people died. The participants are kept anonymous because it’s still too dangerous to talk openly about it. [Tags: ethiopia kenya somalia amir_mohamed_meshal ethan_zuckerman congo ]

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Co-produced by Chat the Planet (NY) and Iraqi filmmakers in Baghdad, the movie series Hometown Baghdad shows Iraqis in Baghdad talking to a camera in their homes, schools and places of business. Simple films of everyday life. A scientific sampling? Nah. But in its ordinariness it’s some of what we’re not otherwise seeing.

The first three episodes are here. [Tags: iraq peace ]

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The esteemed Henry Jenkins responds to an online discussion of whether Second Life has any political effect on first life.

Henry begins:

The last several decades of observation of the digital world teaches us that the digital world is never totally disconnected from the real world. Even when we go onto the digital world to “escape” reality, we end up engaging with symbolic representations which we read in relation to reality. We learn things about our first lives by stepping into a Second or parallel life which allows us to suspend certain rules, break out of certain roles, and see the world from a fresh perspective. More often, though, there are a complex set of social ties, economic practices, political debates, etc. which almost always connects what’s taking place online to what’s going on in our lives off line.

After all, we each really only have one life and there is really only one world

Henry concludes (but do no miss what’s in between!):

Often, real world institutions and practices constrain our ability to act upon the world by impoverishing our ability to imagine viable alternatives. This is at the heart of much of the writing in cultural studies on ideology and hegemony. SL offers us a way to construct alternative models of the world and then step inside them and experience what it might feel like to live in a different social order. I think there are some very real possibilities there for political transformation.

We do this as individuals on the Web, trying on roles and characters as if they were clothing, seeing which ones fit and which ones pinch under the arms. And Henry gives good examples of ways in which SL experiences can affect the first life politics of individuals. E.g., maybe you visit the SL Dafur Village and have your eyes opened, or you’re able to hang out with other gay people even though you live in a rural and repressed part of the world.

Henry’s piece clears out objections to SL as merely “masturbatory,” to cite the strongest criticism from the mailing list. This raises to prominence – and leaves us with – two basic questions, both of which are entirely familiar to workers in the field:

(1) The Internet overall enables people to get information they otherwise would not have found and to find others with shared interests. What do the specifics of SL enable that the other services of the Internet do not?

(2) Does (or will) SL affect the way we organize socially and politically, rather than “merely” affecting individual perception? If, for example, a particular SL domain works splendidly, will we be able to transfer the organizing principles to first life or will the virtual particulars of SL make that impossible? Suppose, for example, that the SL success depends on continuous anonymous bodily presence. That’s not something we can readily do in the real world. Are there examples already of a SL experience having an organizational effect on first life? Does collaborating (or bullying) in SL make us more like to collaborate (or bully) in first life? Are SL kibbutniks more likely to be real world kibbutniks?

I don’t know. But I’m glad Henry and the folks on the mailing list (among others) are working on it.

By the way, on March 21, at 6 or 6:30 (I don’t remember which), I’m scheduled to hold a Berkman “Web of Ideas” discussion of how participatory culture encourages participatory democracy. It’s open to all. And I can tell you right now my answer to the question: I Don’t Know. But I bet the names Henry Jenkins and Yochai Benkler turn up in the conversation. [Tags: henry_jenkins second_life participatory_culture democracy politics ]

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Here’s a new footnote in the anals of petty totalitarianism.

A few minutes ago, the guy ahead of me in the airport security line got literally “Tut-tut”-ed by a jovial TSA worker because he had put a 2.5 oz bottle of Purell into a scanner bin, along with his jacket and change. “You have to have all fluids in a clear quart bag,” said the TSA guy. “You can go back through and get one at Hudson News or you can surrender the Purell.”

Facing the prospect of going to the rear of the line, the traveler told the TSA guy to keep the Purell.

“I thought the purpose of the quart bag was to make sure you’re not bringing too many three-ounce bottles,” I said. The TSA guy nodded with a minimum of commitment. “It’s pretty clear that this three ounce bottle is going to fit into a bag,” I continued, syllogistically.

“I don’t write the rules,” the TSA guy said, throwing the little bottle into a bin full of little bottles, presumably the most dangerous bin in the world.

I know the TSA guy doesn’t write the rules, and he was friendly when he could have instead become a martinet. Nevertheless, he confiscated a bottle that he would have let through if it had been in a clear bag, as if the quart bag defuses explosives.

“They ought to trust your judgment more,” I said, feeling lucky that our little interchange hadn’t resulted in me being taken into a small room and being asked to bend over.

On the other hand, I am feeling more secure, knowing that an evil-doer couldn’t get on board and sanitize us to death… [Tags: security airports tsa kafka politics]

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Dan Bricklin blogs about a talk given by Admiral Mike Mullen, the US Navy’s Chief of Operations about pooling resources in a trans-national community of trust (The 1,000 Ship Navy). And Dan has a really interesting podcast interview with Vice Admiral John Morgan. Man, there’s a lot going on! (Not to mention Dan notes Paul Carroll’s joke about “pier-to-pier” communications.)

[Tags: dan_bricklin 1000_ship_navy social_software everything_is_miscellaneous mike_mullen john_morgan]

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From the header of Blog to America:

Content for Blog to America is completely generated by the readers. Blog to America is a site where individuals from around the world post their opinions on the United States in the form of letters and comments. This can be done by clicking on the “submit a letter” tab and filling out the form or by simply sending us an email. Our site aims to encourage global communication and create an international dialogue between America and the world.

As an American, this is some painful reading so far. The posts range from tough love to just tough. It’ll be especially interesting to see if the comments develop an ethos of dialogue; there’s some hope there so far.

It’s one of those experiments that depends on getting unpredictable small things right. Otherwise, the site might turn into AmericaSucks.com.

(BTW, BlogToAmerica.com claims the copyright for anything posted there. Also btw, the domain AmericaSucks.com is registered to Register.com.) [Tags: america blogs gv global_voices]

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Global Voices has hired Tunisian activist Sami Ben Gharbia to be a hub connecting anti-censorship efforts around the world. Sami’s been living in exile in the Netherlands for the past seven years, where, among many other things, he created the Google Maps mashup that plots secret Tunisian prisons. GV was able to fund the position thanks to Hivos, a Dutch foundation focused on human rights and development. Thanks, Hivos! (Disclosure: I’m proud to be on GV’s advisory board.) [Tags: gv globalVoices berkman hivos same_ben_gharbia]

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I did the “wrapup” at BeyondBroadcast, and tried to talk about the thought I keep coming back to but am never able to articulate. At least it was brief – under 10 minutes, I think. Here’s the outline of what I said:

1. What’s the thread between participatory culture and participatory democracy? Why think one has to do with the other? How can participatory culture be “transformative,” as Henry Jenkins suggested in his terrific opening talk. (Digression: The mainstream media are focused on including “user-generated content” on their sites as their response to participatory culture, but that’s not transformative.)

2. Well, what is democracy. There are bunches of definitions: Majority vote, society of equals, government that gets its authority from the people. But most important, it’s ours. The government isn’t theirs, the way it was the king’s.

3. So, what does “ours” mean? Again, there are bunches of definitions: What the law gives you control over, on our side, of our nature or essence. But, when it comes to culture, look at the difference between your study of a foreign culture and your participation in yours. Culture is ours because it makes us who we are; we are indistinguishable from it.

4. But, participatory culture is changing the nature and topology of ours. It’s ours in a different way. We can create works with strangers, with anonymous crowds, and in all the other ways we’re inventing. This is a very different sense of ours. And it’s not just that we can build Wikipedia or Flickr streams. We also get to make these works matter to one another: That we can surface and pass around the video or the prose so that it becomes a shared cultural object also changes the nature of the ours.

5. So, how does this new ours affect democracy? (And it’s more likely to affect democracy before it affects politics since those folks have a death grip on power.) How does this ours get turned into an us that operates politically? I dunno. I.e., this talks makes no progress on the question it raises :( [Tags: beyondbroadcast07 culture politics democracy media everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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MIT’s Henry Jenkins (Convergence Culture ) opens the Beyond Broadcast conference. Henry asks what the line is that connects participatory culture and participatory democracy.

Henry begins with the always-delightful chain that led a parody site’s photos of “Ernie is Evil ” (the Muppet) to be included in genuine, pro-Bin Laden posters. Henry points out that our current images of democracy recycle previous images, such as Mr. Smith in Washington, Rockwell paintings, etc. He shows captures of an avatars’ protest march in a game space in China, an anti-Bush music video, Flickr images of the London bombing, American Idol voting (and “Vote for the Worst” as an anti-corporate Idol site), and the Moonite lite-brite (which he says is becoming a symbol for the young for a regime that’s “frightened of its own shadow,” is unaware of pop culture, and unable to respond to threats). Are these the new images of politics, Henry asks. The left, he says, uses the same images as the media does when talking about media reform. We talk about conformity, being narcotized, being turned into idiots and fools…as if we are victims of media. “The media reform movement is self-defeating the moment it holds mass media in contempt.” He is going to propose a way of conceiving media reform.

He cites Stephen Duncombe’ s vision [but my computer stopped working so I have no notes :( ]

What should politics look like? Henry points to a purple map of the US that shows states as a mix of red and blue depending on the proportion of Reps and Dems. This is not a partisan issue, he says. First, he says, we need free speech. We need to fight how copyright is being used by government and business as a “pincer move” squeezing participatory clture. We also have to “guarantee that everyone has access to participate,” he says. We need to look at non-political sites where we come together, e.g., we could have used Survivor as an opportunity to talk about race, or 24 to have a dialogue about torture. We should mobilize fans without condeming the fantasies they embrace. We need to look critically at astroturf but also see it as a sign that participatory clture matters. He ends by looking at AskANinja’s rant on the Net neutrality movement.

Q: My high school blocks all social networking.
A: Our schools are turning off sutdents’ best access to information. It’s a mass deskilling…

[Great talk. I’m left wondering more particularly about how the democratizing of media affects democracy, i.e., the very point of the conference.]

[Tags: beyondbroadcast07 henry_jenkins media democracy politics ]

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Last night I was just going to watch a few minutes of the documentary about the boycotting of the Dixie Chicks, Shut Up and Sing , but I ended up watching the whole thing, going to bed too late. It’s an imperfect documentary about imperfect people, which is why I loved it.

I didn’t used to be in the DC’s demographic. I’m a totally stereotypical northeastern liberal Jew, predictable down to my preference for iceberg lettuce and whining about sunburn. And that means I don’t much like country music (although I was brought up on folk music). I only started paying attention to the DC’s once their fans turned against them because Natalie Maines, the lead singer, uttered a single line critical of our president. Now, some celebrities have been brought down by using a single word, but generally those words have indicated an intolerance that we (thankfully) no longer tolerate. But Maines only said she’s ashamed of our president. That’s well within the range of political discourse. Economically punishing people you disagree with makes democracy worse, not better, imo — although I know many of you disagree. (As for Maines criticizing the president while outside of the US, the notion that we need to put on a fake, unified face for our allies strikes me as being ashamed of what’s best about democracy.)

The documentary makes it clear that Maines is a big mouth. Nothing wrong with that. Heck, some of my best friends and bloggers are big mouths. She said that one sentence from the heart, in the heat of the moment — London had just seen its largest-ever anti-war demonstration — and, as she acknowledges, to get a rise from the audience. Life is complex, and the documentary’s willingness to acknowledge this is a real plus.

Seeing the DC’s embrace the consequences of Maines’ single sentence, growing as people, citizens and musicians, is moving precisely because the growth is contingent and painful. This isn’t a matter of riding some bromide. They feel their way. They’re pushed and they react, sometimes with anger, sometimes with sadness, sometimes with their instruments. They may be insanely talented millionaire musicians, but it’s easy to connect with them as bullies shove them off their accustomed path.

The DC’s are great musicians and singers. I would never have found them if their politics hadn’t snagged me. I am, I believe, part of their new demographic.

(Disclosure: I got sent a free copy of the DVD as part of a blogging marketing campaign. I was planning on renting it anyway.)

[Tags: dixie_chicks movies free_speech music country_music politics ]

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