Whispers, I am back in action. Now that the Beer Summit has passed without ill effects, or anyone suffering from a hangover, it is worth commenting on Bill Clinton's recent semi-summit with Kim Jong Il.

The Dear Leader looked fairly robust standing next to Mr. Clinton, despite nearly a foot difference in their respective heights. This was such a good demonstration on how diplomacy, talking to people you are otherwise at loggerheads with, can result in a good outcome. Instead of demonizing the North Koreans as George Bush did by lumping them in with the Axis of Evil, Clinton and by implication Obama are giving the North Koreans an opportunity to show their better side to the rest of the world. And they responded, not with missiles and vitriol, but with a mild rebuke to the journalists for entering the country illegally and smiles for Mr. Clinton. They even suggested that they might return to the bargaining table for a resolution of their nuclear weapons program.

This is not to justify the North Korean government. There is nothing good about it, so far as I can see. But sometimes even governments box themselves farther into corners than you would imagine possible. By presenting the North Koreans with a risk free opportunity to demonstrate benevolence we encourage them to emerge from the deep corner in which they find themselves, and in which even they may not feel comfortable.

Getting back to booze, I wonder whether Bill Clinton brought a bottle of the Dear Leader's favorite beverage, America's Johnny Walker whiskey. It would be interesting to know if the two downed a couple of shots in deference to the recent Beer Summit. Our next move might be to hold a Grape Juice Summit with the Iranians.

Maybe a Little Less Liquid Courage

Is liquor the cure to all our problems? Well Harry Potter and Barak Obama both seem to say yes.

The Beer Summit used beer (albeit non-American) as a means of getting people to the table to talk. If a beer can help solve race issues in America maybe Obama should try the same approach with health care. Perhaps that should be a Red Wine Summit. Red wine is healthier for you.

Harry Potter characters use liquid courage on quite a few occasions in the latest movie (as pointed out by the New York Times). Some of it the Felix Felicis kind and other the alcoholic. Both serve to get characters to do what they ordinarily wouldn’t have.

For both Potter and Obama the point of the liquor is to generate courage. I’m all for courage generators but I think the press has been spending an awful lot of time covering them.

The Dark Side of the Force ...

Whispers, thank you for embedding that video of William Shatner reciting in poetic fashion Sarah Palin's somewhat florid (as opposed to Floridian) torrent of resignation prose. I doubt that her speech will make anyone's list of the top moments in American oratory.


It is interesting that you chose to embed a video of William Shatner since in his earlier incarnation as Captain Kirk he roamed the galaxy battling the forces of tyranny on behalf of the Federation, a benevolent government stressing liberal democratic theories of authority - governing with the consent of the governed. This causes me to wonder, however, whether it is our human expectation that the dark force of control will always be in mortal combat with the light of liberalism - and that technology merely serves to give each side additional weapons with which to engage in the battle.


Why would someone want a regimented society? What is attractive about order?

The answer, in my mind, is sourced in fear in all its many manifestations, fear of the unknown, of loss, of pain, of poverty. Order, at a minimum, creates an expectation of certainty and certainty eliminates the terror of what might happen next. One knows who gives the commands and one knows that they will be followed. Mussolini, for example, was able to tame the Italian train system so that the trains ran on time. No one needed to worry about being late or never arriving at one's destination. The North Koreans have created a system seemingly built on the premise that the "Great Leader" must break out into cold sweats about nearly everything around him and as a consequence he surrounds himself with a powerful military and spy system to provide himself with whatever comfort he can find. The Iranian religious authorities have trepidation about many things, not least of which is the influence that conflicting ideas might have on their power base. Most tyrants are the same, needing to project excess strength as a means of quelling their anxieties. Think only of Saddam Hussein, trapped between a need to project to Iran that he had nuclear weapons and to the rest of the world that he did not. That dilemma did not end well.


Such behavior is not limited to governmental authority. In corporate America, for example, it often seems that the fearless leader is not so fearless after all. The screaming CEO angrily demanding a response from a subordinate has usually experienced a paralyzing fright a nano-second before the raging request is made. The CEO probably does not understand that dread triggers his anger. Perhaps, at most, he understands that the rage serves to center attention on himself so that he can more easily re-assert his authority. It must feel good to have everyone marching to a tune you whistle yourself.

George Bush was re-elected President largely because he and his team ably harnessed the dark power of our collective national angst. Barack Obama set out to fight fear with hope, brightly attracting the masses to emerge from their fox-holes. Even Mike Huckabee strode onto that bandwagon with his "Give Hope a second chance" slogan, a pun on the fact that both he and Bill Clinton were born in Hope, Arkansas. Sarah Palin, oddly, seems to evoke fear in those who respond to hope (me, for example). I'm not sure that I entirely understand my own emotional response to her, but part of it is my own disquietude of what she might do, if empowered, to ideals that I cherish.

A commenter asks whether or not international organizations serve to support authoritarian power structures. I would have answered her question in this post, but I got on to something else. Perhaps, Whispers, you'd care to respond to that question?

The end of Tyranny

Some good points Donissimo.

I am going to take a stronger position in favor of technology as a force of change. The transparency that technology brings will act as a catalyst for change. It does matter who controls the censorship of a nation and who decides what is most easy to talk about. It does not matter as much as one would think.

Technology moves too fast for those in power to accurately control it. They can do a pretty good job but as we see in the case of Iran it is not enough. If there is a minority who want freedom they can send a video or message to a relative on the free side of a firewall. Wikipedia’s entry on the Great Firewall of China lists several tools which may be used to browse blocked sites. It is a game of speed between the government and the masses. The government sets of barriers and the public finds ways to break them. In this case I am going to put money on the larger group. The Chinese government is not just fighting against their own citizens who want freedom they are also battling with the outside world who wants in.

That brings up the point. Why are controlling governments unable to maintain a perfect wall? One that keeps the in what they want in and out what they want out. There are just too many people out there. By increasing the risk of circumventing firewalls or violating technology rules the government can make it less likely that dissent will spread. Yet it is impossible to watch everything. They cannot completely prevent conversations with the outside world and thus cannot fully hide knowledge of freedom. In the Federalist Papers Madison talked about avoiding a “tyranny of the minority.” His solution was to have so many opposing factions that they balanced each other. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc. are tools that reveal and empower factions. This recent technology will prevent tyranny by encouraging factions.

A worse case scenario (and one that has been used for millennia) is to smuggle out a letter. I believe tyranny will end through the use of technology.

In unrelated blog news, I chose a profile picture. Donissimo, I think you would look good as a cat. Perhaps a large tuxedo cat. Thus today’s challenge is to update your profile.

Father have you seen this?

Father Techno-Blogger

Whispers, thanks for setting up the blog for us. It is interesting that you ask whether a boomer such as myself can manage to navigate the complexity of figuring out how to embed a video into a blog while in the same entry you ask me to consider the influence of technology on the possible democratization of the world. Let me start by acknowledging that I am a blogging novice. I have followed a few blogs when the spirit moved me, but I have never either posted or commented. Consider me virgin territory, therefore. Nevertheless, I am confident that I will be able to figure out how to embed a video when it seems appropriate. All I need to do is "google" "how to embed a video in a blog entry" and some genie will teach me the ropes. See, not bad for a Dad!

Your question about the role of technology in democratizing the world leads me to the nature versus nurture debate, albeit in a round-about way. The real issue is whether the nature of humanity is such that technology will be used more to repress than to free the human spirit. Take the example of Iran. Clearly, technology is being used by both the authorities and those challenging their hegemony to advance their respective positions. The govrnment uses its control over the airwaves to clamp down on dissent. Although not reported, it is likely that the authorities are not shutting down their own modes of electronic commuincation, only those used by the opposition. So the current civil unrest in Iran may represent as much an example of the role of technology in repression as it reflects the use of technology by those seeking freedom.

Remember "1984", a book written before I was born about a year that occurred before you were born. It would have been the last year of Spiro Agnew's second term as President had Watergate and income tax evasion charges not intervened. In that dystopian novel, technology produced Big Brother's constant surveillance, thought police and the dreaded Ministry of Truth.

So the question I ask is not whether technology itself will result in freedom or repression, in Iran or elsewhere. Its influence will be prepressive or liberating based largely on the fortune, skill and motivation of those employing it. If, however, technology results in a rising tide of ideas that subtly influences the underpinnings of experience in a way that shifts the power dynamic from those who naturally prefer control over others to those whose experience (and nature) is attracted by the flowering of each individual's personal quest for "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" - ah, that would be a change wrought by technology indeed.

By the way, Thomas Jefferson was a man way ahead of his time. The "pursuit of happiness" ... how did he manage to get that phrase past the editors?

Why Blog?

Riding home in the car yesterday my father and I decided to start a blog. An unemployed college student and her underemployed father from the corporate world, it is a perfect example of how the current economy has the potential to encourage new ideas and new growth (exactly how this is growth is somewhat debatable). This seems like an excellent project to help with our current boredom. As we both want to protect any chance at a future status of full employment we needed to remain anonymous. First we decided on nick names. They needed to be cool and sound like good spy code names. Thus Donissimo and Whispers were born.

Part of the process of setting up this blog has been explaining to my father how blogs and other online tools work. He knows some stuff but has never really had the opportunity to use many online tools (he still doesn't use tabbed browsing!). We had the “what is Twitter conversation” but I’m holding out on getting him an account. 69% of Americans “don’t know enough about Twitter to have an opinion about it”. My father is ahead of most Americans so I’m holding out on actually getting him an account. It seems like an interesting combination, a baby boomer and a Gen Yer. Given that we’re a father and daughter we share a lot of beliefs but we express them in different ways. I’m hoping this blog forces my father how to learn how to embed a video (that is a challenge daddy!). The blog is about the conversation and also about the method of conversation.

We decided together that we should write mostly about public affairs. It’s an interesting subject and we both read the news compulsively. Though I suspect, given our demographics, that we get our news from different sources.

I’ll start off with some questions for my father. The U.N.'s World Intellectual Property Organization released a ruling on Tuesday saying that the man who owned facebook.ir would be required to turn the domain name over to facebook. What do you think this means for Iran (they continue to block facebook anyway)? What role do you think technology will plan in democratizing the world?