posted Nov 10, 2009 6:03 PM by Joseph Robertson
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updated Nov 10, 2009 6:04 PM
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Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF/Doctors without Borders) is accusing the military of the Democratic Republic of Congo of firing on civilians at vaccination clinics it was running. MSF goes as far as to allege it was “used” as a means of luring large numbers of civilians to 7 different locations where Congolese troops allegedly fired into the crowds, in what appears to be an attempted assault on the rebel militia Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (FDLR), operating in northeastern DR Congo. The Nobel Prize-winning charity that despatches doctors and medical staff to some of the world’s most dangerous and remote places does not lightly make such allegations, so it’s worth repeating the charge: MSF alleges the Congolese government gave it permission to provide vaccination to children at 7 different locations in order to mass civilians at those locations then deploy the military to attack the crowds. The MSF report reads as follows: All parties to the conflict had given security guarantees to MSF to vaccinate at these locations at those times. However, the Congolese national army launched attacks on each of the vaccination sites. All the people who had come to get their children vaccinated were forced to flee the heavy fighting. Scattering everywhere, they are now in unknown locations and thus cannot be vaccinated. MSF had to stop their activities in these zones and evacuate the teams to Goma city. “We feel we were used as bait,” said Luis Encinas, head of MSF programmes in Central Africa. “The attacks coincided with the beginning of our vaccination and put the lives of civilians in extreme risk. Thousands of people, and the MSF teams, were trapped in the gunfire.
The clear implication —if the military refused to make any effort to distinguish between combatants and civilians, and even used large crowds specifically including large numbers of children— is that the Congolese government and military are engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing and war crimes. There have long been allegations of this kind of indiscriminate violence against civilians, including a refusal by the government to investigate or prosecute allegations its soldiers have engaged in mass rape, torture and other acts of brutality against the civilian population. MSF called the attacks “an unacceptable abuse of humanitarian action to fulfil military objectives” and speculated that the civilian population may now be too scared to seek any of the desperately needed medical services provided by the aid group. The group also demands that all sides honor the work of humanitarian organizations, warning that failure to do so will leave those in need in unspeakably desperate situations, cut off from medical and nutritional assistance. The MSF website also gives an update on the extent of its charitable activities in the Kivu region: 65,000 children aged from six months to 15 years were vaccinated against measles during this campaign in the Masisi region. In Masisi, MSF supports a hospital, a health centre, runs mobile clinics and vaccinations. MSF also brings medical care to the people in Walikale, Rutshuru, and Lubero districts, as well as in South Kivu province. MSF has worked in North Kivu since 1992.
Less than a week before MSF published the allegations, the UN revoked funding for a Congolese Army brigade accused of murdering at least 62 civilians between May and September. The killings were allegedly concentrated around the village of Lukweti, in North Kivu, and reportedly had an ethnic component. Philip Alston, special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions for the UN, said any continued support by the UN for a brigade involved in such atrocities has to be considered “complicity”. Alston said the human rights situation in eastern DR Congo is “catastrophic” and urged action to halt, investigate and punish the atrocities. In April, Congolese troops allegedly attacked the Shalio refugee camp in North Kivu, killing 50 civilians, and allegedly abducting and gang-raping at least 40 women. Women who survived the attack had been tortured and mutilated. According to the UN, there have been an additional 779,000 people internally displaced by intense fighting and atrocities in DR Congo. There are now an estimated 2.12 million people who have fled their homes and remain internally displaced, living in camps, in the wilderness, on city streets or in other towns where they might have found shelter, in DR Congo. Across Africa, more than 1 million people have been forced to flee intense fighting in the last six months alone, bringing the total of internally displaced refugees to over 10 million across the continent. In mid October, MSF reported that violence was spreading in northern DR Congo, now affecting large numbers of civilians in both the Haut Uélé and Bas Uélé regions: One year after violence erupted in Haut-Uélé district, in northern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), attacks and clashes have now expanded to new areas, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee. Humanitarian organisations have failed to meet the massive needs that have resulted and an urgent response with greater presence in the rural areas of Haut-Uélé and Bas-Uélé is imperative, says the international humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Since late 2008, the civilian population of Haut-Uélé and Bas-Uélé has been caught up in a dramatic cycle of violence linked to attacks perpetrated by the Ugandan rebel group the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), and the Ugandan and Congolese offensive against the LRA. As the situation deteriorates, civilians also find themselves facing increasing banditry. “The local population is the target of violence: murder, kidnapping and sexual abuse,” said Luis Encinas, coordinator of MSF operations in Central Africa. “We are talking about tactics of violence aimed at instilling fear in the people. Our patients have told us the most brutal stories – about children who are forced to kill their parents and people burnt alive inside their homes.”
That extreme level of deliberate violence against the civilian population constitutes a war crime, no matter what the government’s reasoning, and some believe MSF’s reporting on the crimes may be motivating the military to target areas where the charity functions, in order to undermine the public’s willingness to speak to outsiders. Others allege the Uélé raids and the vaccination center attacks in North Kivu are symptomatic of a war-zone mentality in which every line of distinction between combat and combat-free zones is blurred, and where combatants on all sides use terror-inducing violence to intimidate civilian populations seen as loyal to rival factions. The Doctors without Borders (MSF) website reports that: MSF is currently working in Dingila, Doruma, Dungu, Duru, Faradje, and Niangara, providing over 9,000 medical consultations a month in hospitals and health centres. MSF has also distributed relief items to some 16,000 people displaced by violence, as well as vaccinations and mental health support. 27 international staff work alongside 140 Congolese colleagues in MSF projects in Haut-Uélé and Bas-Uélé.
In many cases, MSF aid is the only way for tens of thousands of people to access state-of-the-art medical science, in regions with little to no functioning healthcare infrastructure. The organization’s charitable medical work not only puts their brave staff in harm’s way, it helps to reduce the unthinkable strain affected populations find themselves in, when faced with chronic conflict, which may in itself help to reduce the length and intensity of those conflicts.  Read more at CafeSentido.com
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posted Nov 9, 2009 8:01 PM by Joseph Robertson
This video is in German, with English subtitles. It shows the convergence of thousands at the Bornholmer Strasse border crossing, as news of the opening of the wall began to spread. The wall is slowly opened as the border guards begin to understand the scope of what is taking place. The political order has shifted so quickly, it takes time for the information to filter through that they are not to use force to stop the tens of thousands seeking to cross into West Germany.
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posted Jun 29, 2009 7:40 AM by Joseph Robertson
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updated Jun 29, 2009 8:19 AM
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THE KNEE-JERK LOGIC OF 'LESS LETHAL WEAPONS' MAY POSE A SERIOUS THREAT TO THE PHILOSOPHICAL UNDERPINNINGS OF DEMOCRACY
It has been said in recent decades that leaders of nuclear-armed states have a "finger on the button". It is an alarming yet somewhat convenient concept, but it has not generally been all that accurate. It turns out, as we look back on the Cold War "brinksmanship" of mutually-assured destruction (MAD), that both the USSR and the USA guarded their superpotent polarity with carefully complex systems of security, multiple-key activation and other failsafes.
In terms of how younger nuclear regimes, conditioned by different political environments, are operated, it is not as clear —just as it wasn't clear when the Cold War was at its bitter coldest—, but it remains true that it seems rhetorically useful for new nuclear powers to behave as if the failsafes were not all that failsafe, as if their leaders did have a "finger on the button" and according to the strategy espoused by both Kruschev and Nixon at different times of giving the appearance of being at least a bit irrational.
The central question for nuclear diplomacy to resolve is whether or not everyone comprehends and signs up to the essential boundaries of the nuclear game. It has long been the case that having the option is a better choice thanusing it, that bargaining power is, yes, too attractive to make global bans work, but careful negotiation can tempt otherwise maverick regimes to seek resilience in diplomacy via disarmament —reference Libya, c. 2004.
It is also, thankfully, true that the esoteric and complex science behind controlled nuclear chain reactions is layered and intricate enough that a "button" does not suffice as a trigger. This, then, is the moment to alert the reader: this is not an essay about nuclear science. Instead, we address here an idea that was a metaphor and now is myth, and which has spread throughout contemporary consciousness: the Button as fast-track to problem solving.
Perhaps a logical basis for, and a logical derivation of, the idea of the "finger on the button" rhetoric is that the official in such a position will be tempted to use the darkest of all weapons as a tool to quickly solve otherwise intractable difficulties, to wipe out an enemy's will with the touch of a button. While world powers condemn rogue states that would use "nuclear blackmail" as leverage in diplomatic tussles, it is the underlying "button" assumption that makes theleast immoral use of this genocidal weapon that of artful diplomatic extortion, as evinced by the strategies of the great powers during much of the 20th century.
This, then, leads to a whole new set of references and metaphorical excursions. By that, I mean that the push-button answer becomes a kind of presumed logical premise, around which policy begins to be structured. The irony, of course, is that the nuclear-confrontation system that spawned this mythical problem-solving option, never actually permitted or embraced its implementation. The Button, however close a resemblance it may bear to one or more steps of the technical process, was always a nuclear metaphor, a tool for talk, not for direct eradication of any given problem.
But somehow, as the proverb seeped into popular consciousness —perhaps helped along by the conventient way in which telecommunications technologies place information literally at the user's fingertips—, it mobilized related streams of thought and envisioning. People came to expect that those who preside over superpowers must enjoy a kind of superhuman prowess to effect results, to shape reality. And so, the idea that a "push-button solution" is available gains momentum, and that logic is applied to a range of issues.
Free-trade-favoring politicians adopt the idea that "liberalizing" markets, which means taking down tax barriers and regulatory framework, automatically leads to prosperity, democratization and individual liberties. Labor leaders adopt the idea that mass action is inherently just, beneficial to all, and the only way to negotiate fair terms. Religiously-minded activists and preachers will say that faith triggers salvation —regardless of whether that "faith" is limited to a narrow dogma, a distortion of ancient teachings or includes any genuine self-criticism—, that virtue is born of professed belief and constructed discourse and not from personal beneficence, tolerance or charity.
The easy replaces the authentic: the complex world of natural systems, phenomena and experience, where negotiation trumps magic and harmony comes from agreement not from conquest, is replaced by a defiant belief in metaphysical simplifications in which one's will is supposed to be effectuated automatically, by pushing the mythical Button, be it nuclear, financial, legislative, emotional or dogmatic.
It could be argued, with good reason, that this is but one more fold in the fabric of human foible and complexity, but the push-button ethos is more problematic than that: it poses a radical departure from modern civilization's emphasis on dialogue, learning, tolerance and negotiation; it refutes the entire concept of the rule of law and proposes a kind of "will-for-willing's-sake" doctrine.
Author Jonathan Schell, in his book The Unconquerable World, presents a thorough and studied historical argument that war is obsolete. He does not argue that it will not occur, but rather that it is no longer necessary, that civilization now presents a wealth of other options to accomplish most of the goals warfare once served and that the rest of those goals are now recognized, quite officially, in international law as illegitimate.
Essentially, war was once a means of obtaining without compromise, obtaining the unavailable or fulfilling territorial concerns without negotiation, whereas now, the entire international system is arranged to avoid armed conflict. Yet still, push-button militarism is seen as a useful idea to some in powerful places, and governments everywhere are still amply tempted.
The advent of a new class of what were formerly called "less-than-lethal" weapons, as an alternative to firearms in police-work and riot-response, have presented governments with the idea, though not exactly the possibility, of halting turbulent incidents with the deployment of weapons made more usable by their claim not to be harmful to the health of the target.
Sadly, the use of these weapons has migrated, and many now allege they are prone to what is known as "mission creep", adding new uses for which they are not optimal or may in fact be totally out of place. Now called "less lethal", a phrase whose increasing frequency almost seems an admission by officialdom of their proven threat to human life, weapons like the "taser" and "flash-bang" are increasingly popular among governments fearful of unrest or terrorist incidents.
The taser, now nearly a generic term derived from the company that pioneered their manufacture, is a type of gun which projects two dart-like electrodes on the end of long cords into the target, and then jolts their body with 50,000 volts of electricity, creating intense physical pain and temporarily immobilizing the body. The device permits its user to control the time during which the shock will continue and typically ranges from 5 seconds down to 1 second, and there are many cases reported where the charge was repeated until the target was rendered unconscious. Some targets with heart conditions have reportedly died within days of experiencing the shocks.
The flash-bang, so named for its sensory effects, emits a deafening explosive sound and blinding light and is intended to startle and disorient its target, disabling or confusing their sensory function long-enough for agents to overpower them. In at least one case in New York where an elderly woman's apartment was accidentally raided in a drug-bust, the apparent result of the "bang" was heart attack and death.
The mission creep seen in the deployment of these weapons regards their use in "subduing" or "apprehending" ordinary citizens who are not accused of any serious or violent crime and who clearly pose no physical danger to the responding officers. The Utne Reader documents a case where a woman was repeatedly "tased" by an officer ordering her to step out of her vehicle during a routine traffic stop.In recent years, the taser device has morphed into a subdue-and-detain tactic with almost no clear reference in American law. Police departments have begun using the taser as a means of interrupting contentious situations, which they argue could have led to even more extreme force. In 2007, a student was tasered at a John Kerry speech at the University of Florida, essentially for the crime of asking hard questions and being annoying. In the video (shown above), one of the policemen can be seen smiling as they repeatedly shock the screaming student.
The student was surrounded, seized, tackled, restrained, cuffed and then, while several police officers knelt on him, was electrocuted deliberately for reasons that have never been clear. Amnesty International, USA, has identified 357 individuals it says died after receiving electrocution by taser. The company Taser International says the figures are inaccurate and that underlying ill health may have contributed to those deaths. Taser International charges police officers $295 to attend a course in which they are trained in proper use of the device.
It has often been argued that the firm's contention that the device is "less-than-lethal" contributes to an attitude of near carte blanche to use the electric shock device to end difficult exchanges with people they confront in the course of their duties. Civil liberties advocates suggest that taser-type devices should be treated as potentially "deadly weapons" and their application should come only in place of deadlier weapons, when such force would be justified by law, not as intermediate options for achieving the short-term goal of taking control of a given person.
Debate has become more heated and the weapons themselves are coming under fire, for not meeting their initial promise of being "less-than-lethal". Experts, including high-ranking police officials, have recommended that national standards be set in the US, allowing the weapons to be used only when there is a serious threat of bodily harm to officers from a recognized weapon clearly in the possession of a criminal suspect, but at present no national standard of the kind is in place.
Consequently, these "less lethal" weapons are being given new roles in a number of different scenarios, including crowd control. It has been argued that soon to be available new weapons could be widely used in dispersing demonstrators. Among such tools are two highly controversial Pentagon projects: the Active Denial System (ADS) and Pulsed Energy Projectiles (PEP).
ADS, according to the New Scientist (July 23, 2005), would pose a serious danger to anyone who might be carrying metal in their pockets. The device is a 95-gigahertz microwave beam designed to "rapidly head skin and cause an unbearable burning sensation that will send rioters fleeing from its path within seconds". [Utne]
PEP is reported to be a laser pulse, possible sent from a distance of one mile or more, which would have the effect of delivering an "invisible punch", creating intense pain but leaving no physical damage. Human rights groups and many in the scientific and legal communities have expressed concern that the new weapons would be used to stifle free expression or political assembly and/or as a means of performing abusive interrogations without leaving any physical evidence.
It is also widely speculated that serious physical trauma could result and that phychological trauma would also ensue. But simply on a philosophical level, the devices pose very serious concerns: first of all, it is a monumental departure from existing law, in the US and elsewhere, to actively promote the deliberate induction of intense physical pain or unconsciousness as a means of securing an area or quieting down an unruly crowd.
In the end, it is the problem of the automatic solution, the push-button off-switch negation of difficulty or complexity. A wrinkle in the fabric of society can be smoothed over with the flip of a switch. That logic is fundamentally flawed and based on untrue assumptions. At this stage of the development and experimental use of these tools, it is clear that overuse is a real risk and that their intended use is possibly contrary to basic civil liberties provisions of constitutional law.
Thankfully, there is no button which exists by which the human mind or body can be instantly, harmlessly, switched off. And it is for that reason that laws and law-enforcement practices must address the problem of raucous crowds, of political dissent or even of violent conflict with unruly criminal suspects, from the point of view that government does not actually have any legal authority by which to instantaneously, on the snap judgement of an agent on the street, "turn off" the minds or bodies of its citizens.
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posted Jun 22, 2009 7:56 AM by Joseph Robertson
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updated Sep 3, 2009 5:41 AM by Joseph Robertson
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 I want to write about hope, about the nature of optimism and how closely linked the quality of imagination is to our ability to conceive of, work for and see through meaningful improvements to the human condition. I want to write about it because it is such a vital commodity in our times, such a spiritual enigma and a challenge to our political systems, but then one glaring fact becomes clear that seems to limit what can be said about hope: that vital spiritual resource does not stand alone, but is linked in every case to human specifics, inseparable from what we seek to apply to it, and so hope is different to all people, even in its most essential manifestations.
For some, hope is a question of finding belief, finding vision, finding willpower, in the abstract, in the nested particulars of inner life; for some, it is about what comes before finding, on the way to resolution or achievement, the summoning, the calling forth of energy and possibility; for others it is about what summoning does for the one who issues the call, how that act translates into hope. And still others find it to be the distilled question of will it or will it not work out: if so, then I can believe; if not, then all is lost and the human condition is hopeless.
It is easy to discourage those actively searchng for hope, because it is most necessary and most applicable precisely when events seem least hopeful, and because we forget, with equal parts frequency and convenience, that what has happened is not and never was the only thing that could have happened. We imagine that a negative result occurs because it was 100% likely to occur, even though a small amount of effort, concentrated or otherwise, may have made almost any other outcome more likely. We forget to examine the landscape and reformulate the potential enclosed in the unrealized past-future.
It is easy to say that all good things come to an end and that entropy is the basic direction of all things, simple or complex... but that reading really depends on timescales, metabolism and intent: all biological organisms, all solar systems, eventually break down, all concentrations of energy eventually come apart, but it is worth noting how successfully energy and matter first self-organize, how star systems and life forms first come together in astonishing utilitarian precision and complexity, with purpose and efficiency, each part playing a role that benefits other segments of the system so that the whole might exist at all.
Is that a tragic thing, or a stroke of incredible, incalculable good fortune? How can we who survive to speak, as cynically or hopefully as we see fit, not see some heartbreaking beauty in the functional fragility of what we are?
So, to write about hope is to write about the fact that it is a question and not an answer, that it cannot exist if not enmeshed with the specifics of what we suffer or strive for, that it springs from our recognizing that questions, obstacles and uncertainty are not dread irreparable crises but part of what brings forth the value of the good in life, that to face questions, to sink into doubt and to recoil against loss, is not to be lost, but to be involved in the same summoning of what comes next, that plays out in hoping.
Before entropy and disintegration, there was a healthy metabolism of self-organization, interstellar atomic elements coming together to make the soft tissue and the dreaming life of a human being, made from the inheritance of so many prior generations: why do we so easily forget how valuable that has been to us? Before admittedly taking the "wrong road", there were right choices: why do we not go back and explore some of these, turn ourselves over to the fact that possibility does not cease altogether with a single mistake or an unwilled bad outcome?
Is it determinism, or a misapplication of religious spiritual traditions, that makes us believe that everything is pre-scripted, intended from a distant original urging, that we have no choice, that vision after-the-fact is somehow more divine than vision in-the-moment? The pressure to demonstrate control over events leads us to believe that it would be rational to claim control over events, and this can lead to a flawed application of the intellect to working out the problems at hand, undermining our agility and imagination instead of feeding into them.
Hope is not a mystical reality, not an elixir, not a character trait; it is a process of thinking toward, in living time, the ways in which what should be better might be. Hope is not a blind or blissed-out waiting-game for easy luck; it is a process of claiming responsibility for the energy and the material action that in often halting steps, in often turbulent surroundings, bring us closer to what we aspire to. Hope is not merely a solemn prayer for a best result when all factors of circumstance are beyond our control; it is overcoming the problem of control, robbing Fate of its false power and starting from the place where you are.
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posted Jun 21, 2009 9:45 AM by Joseph Robertson
Distrust is not a mood or emotional state, it is not a reaction to misfortune; it is a doctrine, and there is a diverse and dispersed sect of believers who propagate it with passion. This sect is comprised of people who openly proclaim their faith in distrust, as a cosmology or a lifestyle choice, a poisonous logic against which little can be done, because its power is rooted in the total decisiveness of its community of believers about living systematically in a state of distrust, trusting until the last in there being no more intelligent way to live.
Ths fallacy is used, then, to pursue two key goals: 1) to reduce the value of situations in which trust brings strength, wellbeing and a healthy resilience; 2) to justify behavior that could not be justified within any coherent ethical framework. As such, doctrinal distrust takes advantage, in its application as a weapon, of the possibility of using disappointments already experienced by others in order to avoid entering into any sort of responsibility —nor even into awareness of responsibility— for the disappointments they might occasion by way of their distrust in personal relationships.
The most delicate part of any contact with the feverish and zealous followers of doctrinal distrust tends to be having to avoid, at all costs, revealing the distrust of the other, and its meaning and effects. This basic rule stems from the fact that although it may only be on a subconscious level, we all recognize that a certain desirable quality of life can only be achieved by way of trusting relationships. So the devoutly distrusting tends to fall into a habitual paranoia, and is startled whenever the faith they truly profess comes to light in too evident a way.
Revealing the distrust of the devoutly distrusting is often times the spark that sets fire to any sort of sensible or committed dealing one may have with that person, eventually reducing the relationship to ashes, because the distrusting individual is put on the defensive, and launches into a struggle for the eternal truth of their beliefs, with blind and even bloody zeal.
Distrust is also intimately linked to radical and sudden mood swings. Anyone can go through this process, for a number of reasons, but the self-assured and faithful doubter gives in to these mutations almost as a vice, because their doctrine requires they live in the extreme pressure of constant and universal suspicion.
The mask most often donned by the devoutly distrusting is the idea that radical things (moving toward or away from their extreme) are rare: in fact, the doctrine of distrust requires a fundamentalism so extreme that it disqualifies as absurd nearly all other points of view.
Now, the distrusting quickly learn to conceal their totalitarianism —not wanting to awaken in others those same “defense mechanisms” they themselves so aggressively deploy—, hiding their meditations in a downy cover of logic and “realism”. Everything is evident, and the same mystic devotee of distrust will say there is proof, however imprecise or subtle they may be. Sometimes you will hear of messengers, individuals or events that have signaled definitively that there remains no other option but to dedicate oneself for life to a mysanthropic and even missionary distrust.
But the tremendous mythology informing the arguments of one who speaks passionately of his own self-convinced distrust is that this way of life has something to do with accepting that there is disappointment and suffering in life. Not so. It is, in fact, quite the contrary. The religion of distrust is really based on the fear of disappointment and the prejudiced rejection of anything —any hope, any idea, any situation— that might invite it.
It is a heavy armor which is costly to wear, which blunts the senses, smothers perception and auctions the imagination to the most puerile and fleeting obsessions. And that’s part of its charm, the way it distracts devotees from their hardships, helping them to remain convinced that the most trivial examples or incidents carry a near universal importance, allowing them to build a world according to the diseased vision of obsessive distrust. And that perversely “constructive” energy is what is most to be feared in contact with a true devotee of distrust, because an underlying fundamentalism obliges the devotee to attempt to make you part of their great self-deception.
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posted Jun 21, 2009 7:41 AM by Joseph Robertson
As concerned people inside and outside Iran try to get a grip on what is taking place in the anti-government demonstrations, pro-democracy rallies and security crackdown, following the presidential vote of 12 June 2009, social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook have been useful to those trying to get word out about abuses and harsh security measures; the use of proxy servers has allowed journalists, activists and concerned citizens, to circumvent controls on media freedom.
This video, from the TED initiative, discusses ways in which the advent of robust worldwide messaging tools like these social networks has allowed individuals to play a greater role in the political sphere and effectively ended top-down control of the media. According to the TED site:
While news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics.
Shirky, a prescient voice on the Internet’s effects, argues that emerging technologies enabling loose collaboration will change the way our society works.
Such initiatives have been expanding the reach of human rights investigators and citizen journalists alike. The HUB, by Witness.org, is a video-sharing site that aims to uncover human rights abuses around the world. Amateur video merges with experienced, trained investigation to deliver proof of crimes and atrocities.
Social networking also played a significant role in the US presidential election of 2008. Building on campaign innovations of the 2004 Dean For America campaign, the Obama campaign website pioneered the use of social networking tools, community blogging, event-organizing networks, calendars and even scoring for members' level of participation, centralizing a grassroots effort that eventually grew to be larger than the established Democratic party. That online community has now transitioned into the largest political organizing hub in US politics.
The meaning of these innovations in political communication is the dispersal of authorship and of information relay. Power is decentralized, because information is decentralized. Just as Pres. George H.W. Bush watched developments from Baghdad live on CNN, today's global information feed is beyond the reach of those in power, enabling a more democratic, less homogenous public sphere for debate of key issues of political freedom or policy-planning.
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