Threads in the News

Lately the weight of news reports has felt very heavy. The news of Israel's war on Gaza City especially so. I don't have any special insight on the matter, but feel a need to say that the news is very heavy.

It felt very good to darn gloves, a pair of long underwear, patch a pair of trousers, and sew on a few buttons. Very simple things really and have nothing much to do with the news of trouble all around. It's an imperfect world and of course human relations are very much more complicated than a pair of gloves or piece of clothing. Yet there are threads which connect us. Every metaphors fails in some way or another, still I wonder: Are there ways to darn the holes in the fabric of humanity?

I still read the local paper every day and most days watch PBS Newshour as I prepare supper. The American press covers Israel/Palestine conflicts in a certain well-worn "fair and balanced" way. Western journalists have not been allowed to report from Gaza.

But like many Americans I get the news online too. One big difference is how part of the experience of news online involves the commentary by readers of the posts. Sometimes it seems it's the commentary is the most disconcerting. What the Internet commentary allows is a less polite version of the poles the press attempts to straddle between and that just seems an untenable position for news reporting.

Sunday night on the NBC Nightly News there was a report of reports of injuries to civilians in Gaza caused by white phosphorus artillery shells fired by Israel. I was surprised by the report because it seemed very much "off script" for American news outlet's reportage about the conflict. I have searched MSNBC and don't see any mention of the reporting there. However The LA Times did report the story today. And MSNBC does provide links to "More views on the crisis." From there there's a link to a story about it at Aljazeera. Online the use of white phosphorus munitions have been discussed for days. Such that Wired published a piece on January 6 laying out the case against illegal use of the weapons. Today's UK Times story helpfully identifies the weapons used as American made by looking up the serial number on shell visible in a photograph they published last week.

Sam Bahour published a piece at TPMCafe, No Other Option?!. SholomA is a frequent commenter in threads there. His arguments and especially his way of argument often raises the hair on my back. At least he uses a name contrary to the multitude of comments on threads elsewhere--no anonymous comments at TPM--which parrot a certain style of pro-Israel talking points. It seems after a while surfing through comments an "ignore" filter gets established as umbrage gets rather tiresome. Still, SholomA got through my filter with this comment:

BTW, this is happening today and somehow nobody watches "at the appalling death and destruction" in Congo.

"This" in SholomA's comment refers to rape as a tactic in war. I'm not sure what part of his comment got through, but I think it was the "nobody watches" part. When it comes to the Democratic Republic of Congo--Congo-Brazzaville is a separate country--the lack of memory as well as so little attention is haunting.

I do follow news, but there are so many gaps in my knowledge about conflicts in Africa that I won't even pretend I understand what's going on. Over Christmas there were reports of massacres in northern DRC by the Lord's Resistance Army. The reports about the LRA involvement sent me searching for various sources. I do frequently read Uganda's Daily Monitor online for example. Over the fall I'd been following the troubles in the Kivus region of the DRC. And as peripheral background know that 2009 will be a pivotal year for The Sudan. It's difficult to form a regional perspective about the conflicts, but the steady focus on conflicts as discrete happenings looses all context.

There's a really good blog called Wronging Rights. The blog recently celebrated their first anniversary. I missed at least half of the year's posts, and for most of the time reading it felt put off by the tone. In something of a breakthrough for my humor-challenged self, this past week I laughed out loud over the title of a post: Congo About to Get Much Needed Shiny New Rebel Group?.

Amanda Taub and Kate Cronin-Furman don't produce satire a la The Onion. They report insightfully about most serious matters. But they know that laughter can provide a space for new perspectives. Having laughed, I now find it astounding that I've read posts at Wronging Rights while being too rigid to let their brilliant posts really work on me. Part of the explanation must be how much afraid I am of letting rage grow in me. I know that rage blinds me easily. Finally I get how they use humor in their writing to allow us to admit our rage, but in such a way that it doesn't over take us.

Early New Year's morning 22 year-old Oscar Grant was shot dead by a BART police officer. On January 7th there were public protests in Oakland. Susan Mernit is a technology blogger and Oakland resident. And I started looking into the story after reading her posts. Watching one of the videos at YouTube--you'll be asked to confirm your birth date--was very unsettling. Of course it was unsettling because I'm squeamish about watching violence. But most of all the video challenged my view of the reporting of the incident. Somehow the police commentary that witnesses will see events differently--surely a truism--becomes more like: "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?"

An awful lot of the content of reporting draws the conclusion that the truth of what happened will never be known. I don't know what to make of that. Opinions tested in a wide variety of situations can become well-grounded. In a one way media model, like newspapers and television news, there's a certain confidence in the journalists themselves having tested various opinions. There are problems with this approach, what first comes to mind is a hardening of opinion towards one pole of opinion or another. Blog posts with reader commentary would seem a helpful antidote for jaded opinion making, but I see little evidence that people who leave comments are swayed by other comments much.

Perhaps we imagine a world as perfect as a brand new pair of gloves: a brand new world. Alas we live in this old and imperfect world. We speak of the fabric of humanity because the histories of people are interwoven. How then to repair where holes in the fabric have been worn and where sections of the fabric are torn apart?

I suspect there are lessons in darning to be applied. Darning consists of very simple stitches; it's not at all hard to do. It simply requires a bit of patience and a willingness to do a repetitive task for a little while until the hole is filled. Darning is not simply stitching parts together. A hole in a sock mended that way will produce an ungainly lump. To fit right the hole must be filled with woven thread. Even a tear to be mended isn't sound when the ends of the fabric are joined. If the stitching is strong, tears on either side of the repair are likely. So it's good practice to use a patch behind the tear when mending, or to extend the stitches into the fabric well beyond the tear to create a matrix. We can make the threadbare serviceable.

Making serviceable is a worthwhile objective to take from darning. Late last year Robert Patterson hosted The Boyd Conference on Prince Edward Island. John Boyd was a Colonel in the United States Air Force and an important military strategist who died in 1997. He is well known for his concept of OODA Loop which stands for Observe, Orient, Decide and Act. An important aspect of this construct is that it is a loop, that is, actions feedback to the observation position in the loop. In darning the object is to cover the hole by connecting the edges of the hole with new yarn, a sort of feedback loop. I may be stretching this fabric metaphor too far, nonetheless Patterson's reporting about the Boyd Conference provides insight into ways we can begin to repair the fabric of our human interactions.

Pankaj Mishra wrote in an essay recently in The Guardian concerning the Middle East crisis wrote:

Why should we listen to fiction writers on complex geopolitical conflicts? Certainly, the previous century furnishes plenty of cautionary tales about imaginative writers - GB Shaw, Ezra Pound - making foolish political choices. Upholding toxic ideologies while remaining mostly study-bound, they invite the derision George Orwell once directed at WH Auden's poem "Spain 1937". Commenting on the phrase "necessary murder", Orwell wrote that "Auden's brand of amoralism is only possible if you are the kind of person who is always somewhere else when the trigger is pulled."

The sort of commentary I've been reading online often does suffer from amoralism that Auden derides.

Pankaj Mishra's essay is worth reading in its entirety. He compares the Israeli author David Grossman and Indian author Arundhati Roy; how both "choose not to be somewhere else when triggers are being cocked and pulled." I believe that people everywhere can be instruments of peace. But the work of mending is a practical endeavor that requires people who will place themselves in between the tear or the hole in the fabric.

Via Amitava Kumar read an op-ed by Mukul Kesavan in India's The Telegraph In Violent Slow Motion: As an awful sort of nationalism, Zionism is not unique. If there are some rents in the fabric of humanity we're in no position to place ourselves in the middle of, there still is much we can learn from these conflicts and attempts at repair. Kesavan draws parallels from the Israel/Palestine conflict and conflicts between Hindu nationalists and Indian Muslims.

Mattias Haqberg interviews Mike Davis in Eurozine, The new ecology of war. Davis brings home the fact that the great hole in the fabric seen in Gaza today is not unique. Davis observes:

"If Southern California has any significance to the development of the world's cities, it is as model for life in the protected enclaves."

Those gated communities around the world, highlight the gaping disconnection of most urban dwellers to the global economy. David points out the great danger: "Global epidemics and global terrorism are two problems that principally emanated from the slums."

The news is dreadful, but attempting to repair the fragile fabric of humanity's interwoven existence seems the dignified response.

Resentment and Forgiveness

Two by two, often there are pairs of words that share a deep relationship, opposites perhaps. Kenya is currently in a political crisis causing widespread social disruption. As an outsider I don't know the contours of the many resentments among Kenyans. As a person, I dread further violence and destruction and long for repair and reconciliation.

Recently I read a review by Roger Scruton of a book called Forgiveness: A Philosophical Inquiry by Charles Griswold. I think forgiveness an important and difficult subject, so the review was thought provoking.

One of the criticism of the Internet is that people filter information sources so that they essential get only information from the perspective of people like themselves. I'm relatively new to the World Wide Web, coming online in the late 1990's. Almost immediately I encountered views not only opposite mine, but views seeming quite offensive. Since then RSS and other methods for filtering sources have come along. In the nine years I've been online, I've developed haunts where I gather news and views, so of course I filter.

My political tendencies lean left. Scruton is unabashedly conservative. I surely do filter political commentary towards left-leaning sources, but it doesn't seem possible to filter out conservative-leaning voices, nor does it seem desirable to me.

Likewise I'm not religious; I'm not a believer. The other evening I was through the posts answering the Edge Annual Question. The question Edge asked was: "WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT?" After reading a half dozen entries or so, I thought to myself: "God, I love these atheists!" Easily amused I chuckled at my inconsistency. Allan Alda's piece is entitled So far, I've changed my mind twice about God. As a young man Alda decided that the idea of God didn't really make sense to him, so he considered himself an atheist. He was quiet about this belief, knowing how touchy people so often are. But after eleven year interviewing hundreds of scientists for Scientific American Frontiers, he's reconsidered his atheist identity and settled on letting the uncertainty about God be. He's changed his mind and is now agnostic about God. His post and all the post are worth reading.

It's fascinating to hear what really smart people have changed their minds about and why. It's nice too that they aren't trying to change other minds in these essays, simply how their minds have been changed. 2007 saw quiet a lot of discussion about Atheism a a number of Edge essays were about changing from believers to atheists, Alda's uncertainty stands apart. Perhaps because I'm not a scientist his position resonates with me, certainly that uncertainty is unlikely to convince anyone to change their beliefs about God.

Scruton points out that Griswold observes that forgiveness can't be achieved alone:

Forgiveness is not achieved unilaterally: it is the result of a dialogue, which may be tacit, but which involves reciprocal communication of an extended and delicate kind. The one who forgives goes out to the one who has injured him, and his gesture involves a changed state of mind, a reorientation towards the other, and a setting aside of resentment.

Often, with a straight arrow between resentment and hatred are coupled. But the possibility of forgiveness after resentment is hopeful, if not as straightforward.

On January 1st I started a thread on the Kenyan elections at a social network I attend. And I've been following many blog posts about the Kenyan situation. There are lots of opinions! While many bloggers have been actively moderating out hate speech, it's easy to find such and passion is everywhere.

Ethan Zuckerman is in the Netherlands speaking at an event, Fill the Gap, which focuses on IT in developing nations. Zuckerman in a recent post tells about Fairous Manji from Fahamu and Pambazuka News who reported on the situation in Kenya at the event. Manji's analysis is quite incisive and Zuckerman's post is essential reading for those wanting to learn more about the situation.

Manji couples the words justice and peace. Like the coupling of resentment and hatred there's a straight arrow of cause between them. With resentment and forgiveness there is no such arrow. What comes between must be a wrestling together in dialog. Scruton's review of Griswold mentions Archbishop Desmond Tutu "the brains behind the path-breaking Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa."

On Bill Moyers Journal recently Moyers ran an excerpt from a 1991 Interview. In the excerpt there was a brief scene of Tutu crying early in the first days of the Commissions work. Moyers asked Tutu:

How did you manage to sit there day after day and hear these stories of terrible things that people had been doing to other people?

I thought of that question when reading testimony of Alex Tamba Tieh given at Charles Taylor's trial for charges of crimes against humanity at Howard French's blog. I'm not sure I could take hearing a trial such as that. So Tutu's answer to Moyers came to mind:

It was terrible, and I cry easily. I broke down on the very first day. But I then said it wasn't fair, 'God, you couldn't allow this to happen,' because the media then concentrated on me instead of on the people who were the rightful subjects, the victims. And if I wanted to cry, then I would cry at home or in church. But I was sustained by prayer, yes

He had such wisdom of where the attention needed to be.

I'm gravely concerned about further violence in Kenya. But I'm also hopeful because of the narratives I'm hearing told by Kenyans. On the thread at the social network I started, a Kenyan chided me for mentioning and linking to blogs, calling my links "opinionists." But that same person has been engaged by others in the thread. Minds may not be changed, but the ways people are talking is changing, at least from the perspective of an outsider.

Resentments are being made known. The remarkable site Ushahidi.com is up and running so people can not only report acts of violence, but also efforts for peace. Kenyan writers are writing at places like Kwani. The situation in Kenya is very grave and dangerous, but already people from many walks of life are beginning dialogs to wrestle together resentment with forgiveness.

Beliefs about God have been fought over endlessly. Clearly the Kenyan crisis in not a religious war! Griswold book on forgiveness is an entirely secular approach, but Scruton points out how central forgiveness is to Christianity. While my politics certainly aren't like Scruton's I liked his review. It's surely putting unlike things together to bring up religion and politics and my views of them. I suppose I have to try to make the point that narratives can be shaped by talking, even across strongly and passionately held beliefs. Resentment does not always have to be coupled with hatred, there is always the possibility of forgiveness. Forgiveness can only be made in dialog.

Social Networks

I've been online for less than ten years, but it's a big part of my life now. When I first got online I was impressed by how the id, ego, and superego were all well represented. That's still the case, I guess it just goes to show that the Internet is a human phenomenon and not machine.

I notice that I haven't posted here since August 11 of this year. I wonder if it matters? And to answer my own question it does to me, I think. Part of what's kept me from posting is I've been engaging recently in some social networks which are new to me.

Early in September Omidyar.net shuttered its doors. I had been an active participant there for just under a year, but found it a very empowering network. Over the three years or so Omidyar.net was open to the general public something like 20,000 people had signed up and by the time of its closing about 500 were active and regular users.

These numbers seem incredibly small in comparison to sites like MySpace and Facebook. I'm no social software intellectual, but it seems to me that the site is something worth some academic study--maybe my thinking so is good evidence of why I'm not an academic. But the site offered such a rich platform for collaboration, and while there was something of a learning curve involved, Omidyar.net was a highly collaborative space. It's the quality of the participation there that I found so significant.

Since it closed all the active users have gone on to populate other platforms. So it's rather interesting to me to see where some of my fellow collaborators have gone and also to see how they interact on different platforms.

It's gotten me to look around and join new sites as well. I'm not entirely a stranger to social networking sites, although I don't really use them too effectively. I had joined MySpace a while back, primarily because I thought it would be a place to get band information, and to keep track of social organizations important to me. But I've found it of limited usefulness. I was really interested to watch over their shoulders a couple of years ago when a niece and nephew came to visit. They were really into it.

Zbigniew Lukasiak made a observation about Facebook today:

I am a bit disapointed about Facebook - it notifies me about all kinds of events involving my friends - but somehow I can't find a way to monitor for new posts in groups I have joined. For me having meaningful conversations is the absolute number one feature of social web sites and I don't see much point in using Facebook when it does not make it easy for me.

The point about meaningful conversations is very much something I expect in social networks, but making a site responsive to that is easier said than done.

As soon as Facebook was open to the general public positive remarks about the place were common among the people I know online. As it turned out something that made it popular; i.e., discovering all sorts of people they know face to face, just wasn't the case for me. Most of my friends avoid the Internet, and certainly avoid social networking sites.

One slightly crass way of describing Omidyar.net is to say it was a social network for do-gooders. Don't laugh, there are several really rich platforms in this niche. One of those platforms I joined around the time Omidyar.net was closing is Razoo. I like Razoo. Something that Razoo does that I like very much is offer Web feeds for many of the pages. But but among the list of things about the site I'm not so happy about is that navigation is time consuming.

Back to Facebook, I didn't arrive there with a bunch of friends. So at the beginning there really wasn't much reason to check in on the site for. Previously I had signed up for Netvibes, but hadn't used it. Then I saw that I could install a Facebook module, or widget at Netvibes.

Netvibes allows users to make a sort of homepage where you can aggregate all sorts of content from the Web and add a bunch of cool widgets. So for example, I have a widget for Facebook, Gmail, my Flickr Feed, my delicious bookmarks, The New York Times and some other stuff on one page. It's great I can check in and at a glance see any new activity. Netvibes also allows tabs where you can draw in content on new pages which can be named an organized as you like. So that feature seemed a very good way of handling some of the content at Razoo, for example I've subscribed to all the blogs at Razoo I want to follow.

There are some small glitches, not so much with Netvibes, but the way feeds are updated at Razoo. Also at Razoo, the really important information I want is when discussion threads have been updated. Unfortunately, discussion threads are not syndicated, and Razoo doesn't alert members when discussion threads are updated. The only way I can follow the discussions is to actually go to the pages where they originated to see if there's been any activity.

A couple of days ago I was astounded to read at Scoblizer that Orkut is the Google service with the most page views a day.

I was curious so I signed up and started looking around Orkut. I also opened up Bebo which I had joined because I thought it might be a place to publish some stuff I wrote a while ago, and just to top off the list I finally joined hi5 which I'd avoided in the past because the recruitment seemed Spamy. Spending some time rummaging around these sites was fun, but I don't think I'll use them much. Orkut amazed me because there are a lot of Indian users and also a lot of Brazilian users and that struck me as such an interesting mashup. I don't really have the stats, but when I say "a lot" I really mean it, some of the fan sites there have over 300,000 members!

I'm a friendly guy, and like making friends, but I'm 51, soon to be 52. The discussions are what I value the most. With these three sites there are many boundaries to cross, and I think perhaps the boundary of age is the largest obstacle for making these social networks important to me.

Back before the 2004 elections Black Planet used to have some lively discussion boards and I used to participate on a few. BP changed the discussion format around and so I found myself never going there. And in fact BP sent me notice that without activity my profile would be deleted. I assumed it had been because I never saw any notice in my email, but then rather suddenly activity reappeared there. Much of it was Spam, but not all of the Spam seemed without value. Some of it offered a window into issues and events important to African Americans.

Very occasionally I get friendship notes. I responded to one recently in what I thought was an honest way and gave my Yahoo email. So I got a Yahoo chat message. After a little chatting the woman really reamed me out for being at BP if I wasn't interested in dating. Maybe she's right, I just didn't think I was putting myself out there that way.

In my usual rambling way I've managed to use too many words to say two little. So just a couple more quick observations. First of all looking at pictures at Orkut, Bebo and hi5, I saw so many beautiful young people, so many pictures of best friends together, and pictures of favorite nieces and nephews, mothers and dads. At Orkut it was so interesting to see groups with Indians and Pakistanis, Syrians and Iranians. The joy of living, the loving families and friends, the birthday cakes, all of what makes us happy as people is on display.

Looking at all the pictures of real people all over the globe the last few days as I've explored a few social networks new to me, one thought rings clear: There are no smart bombs.

John F. Kennedy spoke:

Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.

Among the political bogs I read is Col. Patrick Lang's Sic Semper Tyrannis 2007. I admire Col. Lang and appreciate very much his realistic military appraisals and the lively and enlightened conversation at his blog. But if on balance I appreciate his blog, there's always a sticking point when he calls people like me imbeciles.

I know that modern warfare is conducted against populations not armies. So for example perhaps there are as many as five million Iraqis displaced by the American war on Iraq. Population estimates are over 26 million, so that's almost one in five Iraqis.

Col. Lang has been outspoken against a wider war in the Middle East. I hope smarter people than I are paying attention to what he says. But there is a gulf between Col. Lang and me. I understand that securing peace requires a well-ordered military. I value his service and the service of all those in serving and have served. I also believe those who work to make peace are engaged in a noble enterprise and are hardly imbeciles. Making peace is something all of us should be engaged in.

Second, October 15th is Blog Action Day. Bloggers around the world will write to draw attention to the environment. I plan to participate and hope you will too.