Just posted over at Care2 on my unhappiness with the effort to create a “Coffee Party” movement:

Progressives don’t need a Coffee Party.  We just need more caffeine.

The challenge right now isn’t a lack of mobilization mechanisms — after all, other groups, including MoveOn, Organizing for America, and a little thing called the Democratic Party already exist.  The real problem is that we progressives are apathetic, scared and demoralized.  We look at the energy generated by the right and wonder what happened to our mojo.  We see the Republican Party’s steadfast opposition to all Administration initiatives and moan about how dysfunctional our political system is.

Please.  It’s time for progressives to get angry, not cute.

You can read the whole thing here.

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If you are a member of MySpace (and is anyone out there still using it in this age of Facebook?), you know that the first person to friend you is Tom Anderson, who co-founded MySpace way back in the dark ages (a.k.a. 2003).  It’s a cute little way MySpace encouraged you to seek out and friend folks from your real life — a technique that Facebook successfully copied, albeit much more successfully.

I haven’t bothered with MySpace for years, but the whole Jihad Jane thing got me thinking about it again.  And about ol’ Tom.  If you go to the Google cache of her MySpace page, you’ll see that she has 116 friends, with the “Top 4″ featured:

Whoopsie!

Something tells me that ol’ Tom is going to be getting a call from his new friends at the FBI.

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The photo is of Ahmed Maher, another prominent Egyptian blogger and activist who was arrested for helping to organize a pro-democracy group on Facebook. Via CyberDissidents

I had the honor today of moderating a panel on elections and new media co-sponsored by Google and Freedom House. What made it particularly interesting was the participation of a group of eleven bloggers from the Middle East and North Africa — individuals who every day take risks in order to promote human rights, and who often find themselves in trouble for saying and doing things we take for granted.  Like their colleague Ahmed Maher, they do not know whether they will be imprisoned for their writing and activism.

Rather than talk about the meeting, I thought I’d let you learn more about the bloggers themselves — and, when possible, offer links to their sites.  I encourage you to check them out and to support their important work.

AbdelKader Benkhaled is an active Algerian blogger and member of the political party the Peace Society Movement, or Harakat Mudjtamaa Silm. He regularly contributes to various newspapers, magazines and websites in addition to leading trainings on electronic media in many departments across Algeria. Mr. Benkhaled has attended several training sessions on effective media communication skills, and is a member of various youth associations for bloggers and students.

Bassem Samir is a founding Member of the Egyptian Democratic Academy, which seeks to promote the principles of democracy and citizenship, equality and forgiveness, as well as to renounce the culture of violence, racism, corruption and despotism in accordance with the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. Since 2007, Mr. Samir has served as the Director of the Human Rights Unit of the Egyptian Union of Liberal Youth organization, which promotes the principles of political, economic and social liberty in order to redefine the relationship between the individual and the State in Egypt.

Dalia Ziada is the current Director of the North Africa Bureau of the American Islamic Congress. Prior to working at the American Islamic Congress, she was the Egypt Regional Coordinator for the Tharwa Foundation for Diversity, Development and Democracy; researcher for the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information; and was the political reporter and translator for Al-Ahram Daily Newspaper. Most recently, Dalia organized Cairo’s first human rights film festival to high acclaim and was featured in Time Magazine. Dalia is an outspoken women rights activist who advocated against Female Genital Mutilation in Egypt.  In addition to blogging, she has translated two books into Arabic and her first book of poems will be published in early 2010.

Esraa Rashid is the Media Coordinator at the Egyptian Democratic Academy. The Academy runs Almahrousa, an online radio which is very popular among Egyptian youth. Creator of the April 6 Strike Group on Facebook in March 2008, she organized a strike in support of workers in Mahalla al-Kobra that lead to her arrest and sentencing of two-weeks in jail. It was the first arrest order of its kind issued to a woman by the Egyptian Interior Ministry. The success of the strike, the size of the Facebook group - over 70,000 members -, and the notoriety she received for her jail term made her a well-known figure throughout Egypt and among human rights activists. Her blog articles focus on human rights violations in Egypt, with a critical perspective on workers’ rights. In 2007, she attended an International Republican Institute sponsored training course in Casablanca, Morocco on the various mechanisms of running a local election.

Kamal Sedra is the Managing Director of the Development and Institutionalization Support Center (DISC), an Egyptian consultancy firm dealing with good governance, human rights, and community development throughout Egypt and the Middle East. Mr. Sedra has previous experience organizing DISC’s advocacy campaigns, and he is the founder and manager of a number of websites such as the Egyptian Transparency Network, Nazaha-eg.net, which won the 2009 e.Democracy Forum Award; Aswatna-eg.net, or “Our Voices,” which covers Egyptian election news; and NGO Jobs (ngo-jobs.net), a site for job and training opportunities. Prior to coming to DISC, he was the head of the Coptic Evangelical Organization for Social Services Training Center. Mr. Sedra has attended 20 professional trainings and conferences on topics including information resource management, anti-corruption and voter education, 7 of which he has facilitated both locally and internationally. He has consulted and served as a trainer for numerous organizations, including YMCA Egypt, Catholic Relief Services, and Mansoura University.

Shahinaz Abdel Salam has been a freelance journalist and blogger in the Egyptian Movement for Change, also known as the Kefaya movement, in Egypt since 2005. She is an avid blogger concerned with the lack of freedom of expression in the Middle East. As an activist, she has volunteered her time and services to NGOs and other civil society organizations in Egypt, sharing and streamlining ideas to encourage the formation of coalitions among human rights organizations. Previously, Ms. Abdel Salam has worked as an assistant journalist for reporters from the Irish Times, Reporters Without Borders, and Grec TV, as well as a consultant regarding blogging, human rights and freedom of expression in Egypt. She is currently working with the Arab Network for Human Rights to produce and write the 2009 annual report on the state of blogging and the Internet in the Arab world. She also continues to contribute news articles to a community-grown blog that expresses the view points of 20 women in 10 Arab countries.

Imad Bazzi is a prominent Lebanese blogger, journalist, and civil society activist. He is a co-founder of the Arab Bloggers Forum, an organization dedicated to improving bloggers’ professionalism, generating debate about social issues and defending internet activists from censorship in the Arab world. Mr. Bazzi, in conjunction with 13 Lebanese bloggers, recently launched the first Lebanese bloggers committee, The League of Lebanese Bloggers. Previously, he was the Communications and Outreach Officer for Greenpeace Mediterranean, and the project manager for the Center of Sustainable Democracy in Beirut. Mr. Bazzi has won several awards for his activism in the blogosphere, including the 2008 Young Arab Artists Prize in Amman and the Hamberton-Campbell award for e-initiatives. He is also in the running for the Best of the Blogs (BOB) Award for “Best Weblog in Arabic,” to be awarded by Germany’s international public broadcaster, Deutche Welle. His blog covers a wide variety of topics relating to Lebanese politics and society, monitors domestic human rights abuses, and condemns sectarianism and ideological agendas. Mr. Bazzi strives to bring about peaceful, democratic change in Lebanon, creating a more just, secure, and independent country. His writings have also appeared in numerous Arabic newspapers and magazines.

Mustapha El Bakkali is a blogger, journalist, poet, and producer, who currently works for the BBC’s Arabic Bureau in Rabat. Mr. El Bakkali has a rich background in video and type media gained through his previous responsibilities as the producer for the television production company Mediacast Maghreb. He is a co-founder and correspondent for Aljazeeratalk.net, a former freelance journalist for Aljazeera.net, the Vice Chairman of the Association of Moroccan Bloggers, and producer and director of a short film on blind Moroccan university students. In 2008, Mr. El Bakkali was awarded 3rd place for the “Best Video Blog” at the Best of the Blogs (BOB) Awards, the world’s largest international Weblog awards ceremony for weblogs, podcasts and video blogs. He is also a founding member of Bloggers Without Borders (Doha, Qatar), and is currently working on a soon to be published book, titled, New Media and its Impact on Arab Youth’s Values.

Abdel Wahab Al Oraid is the Editorial Director of Cultural Affairs and the Director of the Eastern Regional Office for Okaz newspaper in Saudi Arabia. He is a journalist with 18 years of experience in the press industry and has worked with several institutions in the United Kingdom, United States, Bahrain, and Jordan. He was a war correspondent and has covered a number of war zones in Kuwait and Iraq. Mr. Al Oraid additionally plays an active role in Saudi Arabian’s civil society as a member of the Bahraini writers Association, and the Saudi Journalists Association, which aims to protect the rights of journalists in the Kingdom and coordinate their relations with established media. Mr. Al Oraid is a published poet.

Soufiene Chourabi is a journalist for Attariq Al Jadid newspaper, an opposition newspaper in Tunisia that has often come under direct and harsh repression efforts by the government. Mr. Chourabi is also a correspondent for the online news site Menassat.com, which focuses on news, trends, and events concerning the media in the twenty-two countries of the MENA region and his articles focus on the state of free media and press in the Middle East. He is a member of the Tunisian Syndicate of Journalists and has attended trainings for civilian leader activists as well as a Frontline organized training on electronic security.

Fathi A. Al-Dhafri currently serves as the National Coordinator for the Youth for Change program in Yemen, a venture begun in 2008 by TakingITGlobal, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina and other local groups to improve the organization of youth activism, through volunteerism, youth activities, or networking opportunities across a selection of 10 Arab countries. Since 2006, Mr. A-Dhafri has served as a consultant and trainer for the Youth Leadership Development Foundation and has attended numerous conferences about youth leadership development in the United States, Italy, Jordan, and Yemen. He is currently working on publishing his book Blogging for Change, an e-book that is composed primarily of postings and news articles that have appeared on his blog. Mr. Al-Dhafri is hoping to expand his knowledge of Web 2.0 skills as a way to sharpen his advocacy and grassroots organizing skills.

I will only add that one participant at the event noted the sad reality that this generation of cyber-dissidents, who have the ability to distribute their writings via the internet, are far less known than the Soviet-era dissidents — Havel, Sakharov, Scharansky, Walesa, etc. — who often had to resort to distributing their essays underground, using carbon paper and word-of-mouth.  If you would like to learn more about these activists fine work, I urge you to go to the Freedom House site (linked above) as well as to two other organizations working to make their efforts better known — Global Voices and CyberDissidents

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While (and I use this term quite loosely) researching my previous post on Obama, China, and the vast media conspiracy against media’s poor coverage of his recent trip, I ran across the U.S. Embassy/Beijing’s website.  Take a look at this screenshot of the English-language version of the home page:

This is sad — I know grade school kids who could produce better code than this (full disclosure:  I sure as hell couldn’t).  More importantly, reading this is likely to convince Chinese that the United States is hopelessly boring and backwards.

To be fair, I’m not sure if this is true of the Mandarin version of this site, given that I don’t read Mandarin. But given the fact that its looks to be different, I’m guessing — given the Great Firewall — it’s even more anodyne. And as far as I can tell, there’s no Cantonese version.  I guess the assumption is that everyone reads Mandarin.

Let me offer one example.  There was a lot of snarky commentary in the U.S. media about the Shanghai town hall and the fact that it wasn’t shown throughout China.  Well guess where else Chinese can’t see it?  Yep.  The Embassy Beijing site has no video.  No link to video.  Not even a photo.  Only the text.

Sometime the page is so bad that it borders on the comical (and potentially, at least to the prickly Chinese, offensive).  Here’s a shot of one small part of the English-language version of the home page — it’s part of a list of “warden messages,” which basically are travel warnings for U.S. citizens:

Whoops.

There are supposed to be two separate travel warnings — one on security measures in the lead-up to the 60th anniversary of the founding of the PRC and one on concerns about reports of pneumonic plague.  But somehow somebody conflated them.  So now October 1 is the National Day Holiday Plague.

Please explain this to me.  Shouldn’t we want to make the United States look interesting and exciting?  And make the presentation of that information eye-catching?  It’s great that the State Department website is all glam and web 2.0 and everything, but if this is what our embassy in Beijing is doing, then the main targets of our public diplomacy  — the Chinese people  — aren’t really getting the message.

For what it’s worth, Embassy Beijing site appears to be the exception, not the rule.  Home pages for the U.S. embassies in Italy, India, and even Papua New Guinea have better content, are better designed, and incorporate social media. In fact, even the Shanghai consulate has a better site (including photos and links to the video of the Shanghai town hall meeting).

The new U.S. Ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman seems to understand the importance of the intertubes — it was he, after all, who posed the Great Firewall question to Obama during the Shanghai town hall.  here’s hoping that he takes a minute to tell his staff to fix this mess.

(By the way, I also checked out the English-language home page for the Chinese Embassy in D.C., and it’s just as bad.  But that’s certainly no excuse for the USG’s terrible presentation and content.)

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So today is “Blog Action Day,” where thousands of bloggers all post passionately about an important issue.  This year’s topic is climate change.

Okay.  Here it goes.

Climate change is bad.

Really bad.

And scary.

Really scary.

We should stop it from happening or something.

Maybe by regulating carbon emissions.

Hey — I know!  The world’s governments should all get together and talk about it!

And do something!

There ya go.

I don’t mean to mock a very serious issue — climate change is bad.  And the world does need to do something about it.

But convening an online blogging Woodstock isn’t really going to do a damn thing.

Come on, sing it with me!

We are the blogs
We are Al Gore’s children
We are the ones who make a brighter day
So let’s start blogging
There’s a choice we’re making
We’re we’re wasting all your time
It’s true we’ll make a better day
Just you and me and seven thousand other bloggers

Regular readers of this site know that I’m a huge fan of social media (if I wasn’t, why would I be blogging?). But I find things like this project — what I would call premeditated spontaneity — pretty silly.  How does getting 7,000 blogs (by the site’s latest count) to write about climate change on a single day somehow make a difference?

Blogging isn’t action.  It’s a bunch of people writing about stuff.  I mean, they’re not even suggesting you link to an online petition, for crying out loud.

That’s not “action.”  It’s cyber-narcissism.

Even if I were to believe that Blog Action Day is a good idea, I’d still have serious doubts about the event’s understanding of strategy.

Just for a moment, let’s assume that world leaders will wake the hell up after they read that Perez HIlton and Wonkette are unhappy about global warming.  Don’t you think it would have made more sense to schedule the event a little closer to the UN Climate Change Conference, which doesn’t start until December 7?

I guess Hu Jintao will have to bookmark us so he can remember all this, um, passion when he shows up in Copenhagen six freaking weeks from now.

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Call it cyber-solipsism:

Why are people twittering about twitter being frozen? It’s not like anyone can see you tweeting that no one can see your tweets.

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I’m a subscriber to The Atlantic as well as an avid reader of its blogs.  But today, it managed to make me want to retch.  Repeatedly.

An offensive story?  Nope.

A ridiculous blog post?  Uh-uh.

A marketing survey.

Earlier today, I got an email from “The Atlantic Exchange” asking me to take a brief survey online.  Okay, I thought — only a few minutes, no problem.  They probably want to ask about whether I’d buy stuff advertised in their magazine.  I can live with that.  I don’t really care, but I like the magazine.  And if it is a waste of my time, I’ll stop doing the survey.

But nope, that’s not it.  They want my “advice” about what I think they should put on their cover.  And what titles they should give their stories.

Here’s a screenshot just to give you an idea of what I’m talking about:

Here’s another screen shot:

Okay, here’s the thing.  I have bought magazines based on the cover — everyone has.  But once I buy the magazine, I choose to read stories according to whether the topic is interesting or the author is someone whose previous work I’ve enjoyed — but not because of a catchy headline.  Maybe that’s not the case for most people — but something tells me that it is true of the typical Atlantic reader.

I know that times are hard, and that dead-tree publishers can’t afford not to market themselves.  I’m sure that the Atlantic is not the only magazine to do these kinds of surveys.  But this one struck me as utterly craven market-driven bullshit.  The Atlantic shouldn’t be spending its time or money on determining a best cover; it should be doing everything they can to improve the quality of their journalism — which, quite frankly, has slipped over the past year or so (not coincidentally, about the time they redesigned the magazine).

I will continue to read The Atlantic, and to follow its bloggers (particularly Fallows and Coates).  But if you want me to continue to regard you as the one of the best magazines out there — and one of the few I subscribe to — please please please don’t waste my time asking me what pretty picture I think you should put on your cover.  If I wanted that kind of nonsense, I’d go read about Brad Pitt saving New Orleans in National Review People.

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I’m not sure where this is from — I got it via @rtsadvocate on twitter and the link doesn’t really make it clear where it’s from — but it’s fascinating nonetheless.  Facebook is no longer merely a U.S. phenomenon.

Facebook played a minor role in the so-called “Twitter Revolution” in Iran, and activists in Egypt and elsewhere have used it to organize pro-democracy demonstrations.  Over the long run, I think that it will prove to be a more effective tool for democracy and human rights activists than Twitter, if only because you can control who your “friends” are better than you can in Twitter (unless, of course, you friend people you don’t know).

Right now, FB remains largely a Western phenomenon.  I’d be interested in seeing some of the numbers beyond the west, but it is worthwhile to note that Turkey has more users than any other European country except the U.K.

Right now, I have FB friends in about two dozen countries (I think), and Undip readers include folks from all over the world.  I’d be interested in hearing from you in the comments as to whether you use FB, especially if you’re using it to comment on foreign policy/promote democracy/promote human rights.

If you’re a regular reader of Undip and don’t follow me on FB, feel free to do so here, but please indicate that you’re an Undip reader in the message box — otherwise I will wont know who you are and probably will ignore you.

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Sheesh.

You leave the blogging world behind for a few weeks and awful things happen.

When I first thought about blogging, I started reading around, so to speak, looking for other bloggers whose work reflected what I hoped to achieve with Undip.

No one grabbed my attention faster and more consistently than Hilzoy, one of the stalwarts over at Obsidian Wings.  Her consistent, hard-headed, yet idealistic vision of what our country is (and what it should be), combined with a fine writing style and dry wit, represented everything I hoped to become (and frankly, have yet to match).

Perhaps the most exciting day of my blogging career was when I discovered not only that Hilzoy read Undip, she actually was linking to it.  For me, it was the blogging equivalent of Michael Jordan praising your jump shot.

Over the past year, I managed to strike up an irregular correspondence with her, benefiting from her blogging advice and sharing thoughts and ideas about the issues of the day.  And she’s continued reading — and linking to — Undip, much to my surprise and pleasure.

When I started catching up on my RSS backlog, I noticed that ObWi was not featuring any posts from Hilzoy.  When I went to the site today, I discovered that over a month ago — while I was preoccupied with my health issues (and those of my family) — Hilzoy announced her retirement.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO……….

In one of her (as always marvelous) final posts, she writes

Thank you Hillary for everything you wrote over the years — and for your early and consistent encouragement of my own efforts.  I already miss both your fine literary voice and your hard-headed wisdom.

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D.B. Grady over at Atlantic Politics notes that the Twittersphere has forgotten about Iran’s Greens just when they need it the most:

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