Category: Uncategorized

Memorable conversation is the foundation of civilization.

There’s a lot of tripe written and believed about blogs, but the plain truth is that they contain a huge body of thoughtful conversations, all of them memorized by the Googleplex and some memorable by any standard.

Any conversation conducted long enough leads to consensus; any consensus shared long enough, to action. (The IETF‘s early rallying cry: “We reject kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code.”)

Warlords and monarchies and the Industrial Age adopted more focused conversational modes to foment action: commands, demands, exaggerated urgency and authority. These modes are so compelling that they supplant conversation and consensus as the required stimuli for action, substituting a superficial ritual of listening and acquiescence for the miracle of minds meeting.

(One of 3M’s many experts on meetings has seen the perfect business meeting: the Sioux council in Dances With Wolves: open discussion, deep thought, no conclusions jumped to before the data’s in).

With P2P global conversations re-emerging alongside broadcast and top-down dictates, we are reclaiming rough consensus as a stimulus for action. Open source is the most obvious expression of the consensus-action dynamic, but they really are showing up in all sorts of places: communities forming around web sites that organize conversations so they are memorable and leave them in place while consensus forms out of the threads that gain the most traction.

SoA P2P

Individual and small group actions spring from these consensus epicenters, but they don’t exhibit the focus and persistence that paycheck-based activities enjoy. How might consensus-based action rise to that level? I believe we’re getting closer, and I’d like to help Spirit of America take it to the next level. The reason SoA might lead the way to more effective consensus-based action is its natural appeal to every stakeholder in the problem-shrouded Iraqi opportunity. When people touch Spirit of America, they usually find something they’d like to get involved in. Many of us feel we have to get involved.

Jim Hake, Marc Danziger and I agree that each SoA member should have the tools to engage at any level, involve their friends and social organizations and, depending on their political persuasion, reinforce or compensate for U.S. Iraqi policy.

I’d also like to involve the small-pieces-loosely-joined consensus that is the blogosphere. If our shared values overwhelm our disparate politics we might even be susceptible to a call to action – even though our style is to rag on imperfections and disappointments. What’s wrong with that? Design is simply the flip side of disregard. Michelangelo reputedly said that sculpture is a matter of removing the parts of the marble that don’t look like a horse.

The blogosphere’s values are transparency and openness; individual, authentic voices amplified by spontaneous feeds, supporting links and persistent reiteration. Imagine with me that we keep an eye on the bully Spirit of America laboratory where people overseas act as Requestors to bring to Donors’ attention the needs that seem worthy supplying. We can think of such suggestions as blog posts and our collective response to it as the means by which we support the request with links and buzz and dollars and volunteer logistics.

Like any catchy idea any blogger puts out there, a school kit or a sewing machine or an irrigation pump is a candidate meme. We blog it into reality with the sincerity of our expression and the energy of our reinforcement.

It’s all the same to me and, I hope, to you. Here’s a depiction of the SoA process to host the requests, comments, support and cash flow. Now all we have to do is implement it in web services and maybe we’ll find that what matters most in foreign aid is the web, not the spiders.

Just like blogs.

11:19:18 PM    

It’s an interesting moment in politics. On Wednesday, Fox News’ movie critic praised Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. Yesterday, Jeff Jarvis waxed enthusiastically on Bill Clinton’s talk at the premier of The Hunting of the President, and last night Micah Sifry exposed the dark underbelly of the Clintons’ rise to power, the Whitewater scandal the Republicans never exposed because it was, well, so businesslike. (Thanks, Doc, for the pointer. Sorry we’ll miss each other.)

Micah quotes Roger Morris’ Partners in Power:

More than half those who bought Whitewater lots from the future president, his wife, and their extravagant partners would lose their land and all their equity payments. Partial records showed at least sixteen different buyers paying in more than $50,000 and never receiving property deeds. Meanwhile Whitewater carried on a flourishing traffic in repossessions and resales, selling some lots over and over when aged buyers faltered….Typically, Clyde Soapes’s planned fishing retreat was resold to a couple from Nevada for $16,500, then taken back again after only a few payments, and resold to yet other buyers–all for the same middling but pitiless profit wrung from the struggling and the old….’They screwed people left and right,’ said a local businessman who watched the sales. ‘Taking advantage of a bunch of poor old folks on a land deal….The future President and First Lady. That ought to be the real Whitewater scandal.’

Interesting. The right wing spent $80 million looking for something tawdry about the Clintons, and wouldn’t expose the real scandal because there’s nothing wrong with stealing money as long as you do it with a corporate charter and a lawyer. The well-documented conspiracy didn’t hound Bill Clinton for doing the hurtful things that they would have done, and probably had.

Instead, they hounded him for doing the things they dreamed of doing.

1:13:05 PM    

It’s been a busy week here at the East 43rd Street Design Center. Ian Bogost was in town to teach at a conference called Serious Issues, Serious Games, and stayed to work on an evolving notion I like to call DUI[^]Dynamic User Interface. Ian is the designer of the Dean Iowa Game, which allowed people to understand the mechanics of canvassing in Iowa.

There are two ways to look at the Deaniacs’ enthusiasm for the Dean Iowa Game.

1. The simulation showed volunteers that retail politics is about carrying signs, knocking on doors and handing out flyers[^]a practical antidote to the zealots’ illusion that politics is about wonky discussions on the trade-offs between single payer health insurance vs. capped-premium HMOs.
   [^][^][^][^][^][^]alternate view[^][^][^][^][^][^][^]
2. The Dean for Iowa game demonstrated that the Dean dilettantes would rather play Dean games and iChat with their fellow believers than plug into the Iowa Democratic Party establishment and do something that might actually make a difference.

Whatever your view, the The Dean for Iowa game was a seminal event among those who know that people respond at a gut level to such games, and learn far more than they do from static information. The project received a lot of attention in the press, including these 10 mentions linked to from the Persuasive Games web site (NYTimes, Slate, Ad Age, CNN, Good Morning America, etc.).

Back Story

Last November, Joi Ito told Ian that if he wanted to build a policy-oriented simulation for the Dean Campaign, he should contact me, since I was embedded with the campaign, spending a week each month in Burlington. The timing and the zeitgeist were propitious, and it took Ian and Nicco Mele and me about a week to spec, budget and commit to the project. By then it was Thanksgiving week, and we wanted the game by late December. Ian and his company produced the finished product in 3 week, over the holidays, no less. Ian tells a little of the history today, and a terrific treatise on Visualization as the new eBusiness.

Ian created the first Presidential candidacy game, and now he’s creating the second, this time a policy game for a major political party group. He’s still in the stealth (coy) phase of development

Doin’ the DUI

Serious work needs engaging graphics

A Dynamic User Interface is Flash-driven user environment that borrows its design concepts from computer games. I learned about the importance of dynamic presentation from the cockpit of the KC-135 Aerial Tanker. When I returned from Viet Nam in 1968, I was surprised to learn how archaic was my new airplane, a Boeing 707 equipped to “pass gas” to other aircraft. The tankers still had the old “round dial” flight instruments installed when they’d been built in the 50’s, a technology little changed since the 1930’s.

+ 30 years =

These instruments showed where the aircraft was but, aside from the slow rotation of the compass, none of the displays presented the aircraft’s position dynamically as it moved toward or away from our courses or destination. It was commonly accepted that the plane was a bitch to control, especially in the traffic pattern on hot days. About a year later, the Air Force installed the Collins FD-109 Flight Director system in the fleet. Overnight, the aircraft was remarkably more tractable and could almost be flown with precision. It was striking that what had seemed to be the aircraft’s inadequacies were really a matter of presentation. The round dial system was a graphic, but static, presentation of the plane’s data and progress, and it was demanding to integrate all that information. The FD-109 became our trusted Dynamic User Interface, and its descendants present meaningful colors and moving icons to the pilots in your airliner’s cockpit. We are all the safer for it.

SoA DUI

Ian and I also worked actively on DUI concepts for Spirit of America. Spirit of America “Full Throttle” will be a membership campaign that employs strawberry roots activism, by which supporters can directly recruit other supporters and build their own activities to support requests from people we want to demonstrate the awesome power of Americans’ generosity toward previously oppressed peoples.

That’s where the DUI comes in. Ian will present a proposal to the SoA folks to depict each members’ activities dynamically, through various metaphors: a forest with trees, or a flower garden, that sprout branches and leaves and blossoms as a member’s recruits (and their activities) grow; or a bungalow that expands into a mansion as the member’s recruits and activities grow. Of course, we can still use the Solar System DUI that Ian mocked up for the mydeanpeople project, described previously:

click to view the animated depiction

This will be the first organized use of metadata about how members recruit others and empower them with the tools to act, essentially, as their own franchise of the Spirit of America enterprise. This is the “polymer” structure that I harp on until my friends’ eyes glaze over.

We couldn’t get it done for the Dean campaign, but maybe the SoA experience will indicate if it would have worked as I envisioned it last October.

Why 2004 Won’t be Like 1984 [^] CLI to GUI to DUI

“Why 1984 won’t be like 1984” was the headline
for Apple’s introduction of the Mac. In 1984, it was clear to only a few people that computers needed to enrich their means of depicting data. Most of the experts were convinced that the CLI [^] Command Line Interface [^] was plenty good enough. Their confidence echoed that of IBM’s Thomas Watson 2 generations earlier, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”

Ian is suggesting another interface revolution, where dynamic graphics depict a user’s motion through her flight plan of commitments, deadlines and opportunities. Perhaps, as the FD-109 did for the KC-135, it will also make our lives more manageable and enjoyable.

5:36:15 PM    

Americans Doing Something

Spirit of America is serving a communal need we’ve felt since 9/11/01. Do you remember that dark September when you wanted to do something–anything–to make a difference? Remember the tone-deaf response? Take a trip to Orlando; live your life as if nothing has happened. If We the People had been empowered to work through our rage and grief proactively, perhaps our foreign policy would not bankrupt our grandchildren.

SoA is helping We the People do something significant to make the world a better and safer place. Except for the crazies, re-purposed cold warriors and pacifist Birkenstockers yearn similarly for pacification of the mid east–and the world.

Steven Johnson sees something important in Spirit of America:

My buddy Jeff Jarvis alerted me to the laudable Spirit of America site, which has already been widely linked to through the blogworld, but every link counts, so here’s mine. It’s a fascinating model for combining long-distance philanthropy with targeted interventions. I won’t bother going through the details since they’re nicely summarized here. But the site makes me wonder whether this isn’t the beginning of a fascinating new chapter in the web’s gift economy…

…What Spirit Of America suggests is a version of that swarming directed towards Good Causes: someone halfway across the globe (or halfway across the country, or the county) puts out a call for help setting up a wi-fi network in an under-funded school, or repairing a sewage treatment facility, and within five days they’re flooded with funds, spare parts, technical expertise, and good will. And when the network goes online, or the sewage starts getting processed again, we all get to see the results. (Maybe not so fun for sewage, but you get the idea.) And then we get to move on to the next cause.

Bingo! That’s what I’m talkin’ about! And so is Jeff when he describes SoA as open-source nation-building. Is it possible that the Internet disintermediates foreign aid as it does so many other communication-dependent economic structures? Natch!

This resonates with John Robb’s link to Phillip Bobbit’s important work describing the ascendancy of the market-state:

Philip Bobbitt, author of The Shield of Achilles, on the rise of the market-state:

The “market-state” is the latest constitutional order, one that is just emerging in a struggle for primacy with the dominant constitutional order of the 20th century, the nation-state. Whereas the nation-state based its legitimacy on a promise to better the material well-being of the nation, the market-state promises to maximize the opportunity of each individual citizen.

The current conflict is one of several possible wars of the market-states as they seek to open up societies to trade in commerce, ideas, and immigration which excite hostility in those groups that want to use law to enforce religious or ethnic orthodoxy.

States make war, not brigands; and the Al Qaeda network is a sort of virtual state, with a consistent source of finance, a recognized hierarchy of officials, foreign alliances, an army, published laws, even a rudimentary welfare system. It has declared war on the U.S. for much the same reason that Japan did in 1941: because we appear to frustrate its ambitions to regional hegemony.

“…the market-state promises to maximize the opportunity of each individual citizen.” How’s that for a consumer-oriented manifesto?

It’s a classic market opportunity, and the virtual Al-Qaeda market-state is responding to it with innovation and energy. The entrepreneurs at Spirit of America see the success enjoyed by this new class of entrepreneur, and realizes that an American response, fueled by real abundance, can overwhelm the competition with a better product, one that actually improves lives rather than one that promises to improve the afterlife. It’s a functioning product vs. vaporware, and it’s really no contest.

The Spirit of America proposes to deliver real results to the customers to whom Al Qaeda is shipping empty cartons. In that sense, SoA is as much a market-state as Al Quaeda, but still a baby one. How big does SoA have to grow to match Al Qaeda in GDP? In about a week and a half, last month, SoA raised $1,500,000, giving SoA an imputed annual GDP of $52 million. That’s about 25% as big as the US economy in 1789, according to these experts.

It’s a start.

9:25:31 PM    

Isn’t that what we want from each other?

The surest sign of prosperity is the ease with which one is delighted by their surroundings and those they are with.

9:11:53 PM    

Oh Kaye!

Doug Kaye has posted his interviews with Marc Danziger, COO of Spirit of America, and force of nature; and Kerry Dupont, SoA’s Director of Procurement/Logistics. They give a good insight into how SoA evolved and, importantly, how the project is embraced by all sides of the political spectrum. (Kerry gives a great example: her husband is very conservative and his mother’s a committed liberal. “At dinners, I think we’ll end up throwing wine.” But both of them embrace the SoA vision–and specifics–enthusiastically. Kerry tells more here.)

Spirited Counterpointer

Dave Winer, bless his heart, is a reliable curmudgeon. When no one can find something wrong with Spirit of America, Dave is the loyal opposition, cautioning the rest of us clueless enthusiasts from joining hands in our shared ignorance:

Jeff Jarvis is promoting a site called Spirit of America. I don’t know much about it, and I don’t sign up for political causes I don’t know much about. I see other bloggers singing glowing praises for it, but sheez, how the heck could they know? I don’t think bloggerdom should be used the way people use talk shows on TV. I said I don’t stand up for causes I don’t understand. I guess that’s a polite way of saying that I don’t even like what they’re doing. I think we need to get over ourselves in America, because our time is just about over, unless we stop guzzling so much gas and start electing leaders with brains, morals and courage. I feel I have to say I like Jeff, I really do, he’s come through for me twice at BloggerCon, and I appreciate that. But his politics are 180 degrees opposite mine, even on tactics. I think the best thing the US can do for the world is get our own house in order and stop trying to fix the world, something we’re exceedingly bad at.

I agree that we Americans have to get over ourselves, but that’s mostly because we’re a subset of that egotistical species, homo sapiens, that needs, collectively, to get over itself. Fat chance! About as likely as the absurd hope that we’ll stop guzzling gas and start electing leaders with brains, morals and courage. As the military says, a hope is not a plan, and hoping for the impossible is a waste of time and bandwidth.

Alan Kay famously said that “The easiest way to predict the future is to invent it.” It’s a clever way to suggest that the only way to prove something is worth doing is to make it worthy.

Let’s be clear: Dave Winer has invented more future than anyone in the blogosphere. A couple of months ago, Mitch Kapor told me that the computer industry has spent the last ten years implementing the ideas Dave Winer had originated. That’s heady praise, indeed, and true. So when Dave pushes back, it’s good to listen.

But I’m missing the dark, ugly American aspects of SoA. Even Dan Gillmor is more optimistic than Dave, and Dan is our most trusted and insightful doubter of All-American cure-alls. The only problem he sees is that gear might not reach its intended recipients:

There are all kinds of things that can go wrong. Violence could make the relief work impossible. Someone might misuse or steal what gets sent overseas. The organization might not be able to handle the requests effectively. But Hake is building in what safeguards he can, and the finances of the non-profit will be made available for anyone to view on the Web site.

Tomorrow is Memorial Day in America. We remember and honor those who have fallen in service of their nation.

Maybe we can’t put aside our politics when we contemplate this war. I have my own strongly negative feelings about what President Bush and his advisers have done in Iraq, and wish we had not stopped halfway in Afghanistan.

We owe something to the people of those nations. Jim Hake and his crew can’t solve the world’s, or a nation’s, problems by themselves. They can help. So can the rest of us.

How Do I Question Thee? Let Me Count the Ways

Is it a problem that Americans choose to share their abundance with Iraqis? Is that a bad example? Should we not take advantage of the communications power of the Internet and the logistical miracles of space-available air freight? Which of SoA’s self-absorbed, questionable initiatives shall we stifle?

• Baseball equipment for Afghani kids
• Frisbees and medical supplies for Iraqis
• Soccer jerseys for kids in Wassit Province
• Dental kits for families in Al Hillah
• Pianos & violins to Kurdish villages
  (symbolizing the end of bans on secular music)
• School Partners program linking American & Iraqi schools
• Equip nine Iraqi television stations to broadcast again
  (under Iraqi ownership and control)
• Hand and power tools for the Seabees’ training programs
  (loaded tool belts presented at graduation)
• 1,000 sewing machines for Iraqi women

I understand the threat of irresponsible giving that Dave is cautioning us against. Oh, it started harmlessly enough when Dianna Smith humored her husband, Special Forces Sgt. First Class Jay Smith. Jay had asked Dianna to send baseball equipment so he and his buddies could organize a Little League program for Afghani kids in the town of Orgun-e, 20 miles from Pakistan. See, this is how these imperial initiatives start: innocent-appearing, but with a Pax Americana motivation. The hapless volunteers should have recognized the xenophobic threat in the next slide down the slippery slope when they helped load 2 tons – 4,000 pounds! – of Frisbees for delivery to Iraq.

There is surely a diabolical back story behind the nine Arab TV stations that the Marines are about to equip, thanks to about $1,500,000 donated in a week when the idea was raised at SoA. The Marines had found the buildings and, I guess, antennas for the nine stations, but the equipment had been destroyed. Now the equipment is in Iraq, ready to be delivered and lighted up. The stations will be turned over to Iraqi ownership and management, but the Marines have stipulated that the stations must accept the Marines’ paid commercials, urging Iraqis to not kill . . . wait for it . . . Marines! You do see the propaganda machine they’re setting up, don’t you? Soon the Marines will be broadcasting where the kids can pick up their frisbees.

I have a soft spot in my heart for American GI’s. I hauled a ton of ’em around Vietnam in ’67 and ’68. Couldn’t find a bad one in the bunch. As an airlift pilot (trash hauler), I’m aware of the good deeds that airlift crews have done. Did you know that, during the Berlin Airlift, the crews would airdrop candy with little parachutes they’d stay up half the night preparing? You DO know that candy causes cavities don’t you? There you have it: another plot against the world’s disadvantaged.

OK. I’ve gone over the top with this Fox News commentator persona. But we moderates don’t often have the luxury of teasing those who question straightforward humanitarianism. But there’s a deeper opportunity here, and if it’s not progressive, what is?

Strike Force Echo: Fulfillment Specialists
Coming Soon to a Global Theater near Someone

Echo is what follows Delta in the phonetic alphabet. Every Tom Clancy fan knows about Strike Force Delta, the Rambo-ish commandos prepared to project deadly force anywhere in the world that our wise leaders send them. But perhaps SoA can help us develop a new model? What if US military specialists were deployed all over the globe on random acts of kindness and senseless generosity? What if they were the fulfillment arm of the largesse of American citizens? The last mile for FedEx deliveries, as it were?

This seems to be Micah Sifry’s inkling today:

“Out of solidarity with my friends Britt Blaser and Jeff Jarvis, here’s a plug for Spirit of America, a people-to-people effort to bring vitally needed aid to the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan.

I suppose this falls into the category of “if you’re stuck with lemons, make lemonade.”

Next time, let’s do this before the fools in Washington invade another country, OK?

Micah, who has earned his cynicism from a lifetime in politics, is clearly restrained and is acting out of personal loyalty as enthusiasm for SoA. The thing to remember about Micah is that he does more good stuff while skeptical than most of us do out of childish enthusiasm (my M.O.).

Micah’s parting shot is the part that stirs my juices, as well as Jeff’s, who calls SoA “open-source nation-building“. OSNB also energizes Jim Moore, with whom I’ve been exchanging voicemails, conjecturing together how this model might extend to ending genocide in the Sudan, which Jim has been championing ever since he discovered what happens when you remove the ID from President: The Passion of the Present.

The designer in me imagines a set of protocols for peer-to-peer sharing forced upon the U.S. government by the spontaneous generosity of the American people. When we want to project our generosity onto the world, Strike Force Echo swings into action, airlifted into action by the white C-130s (natch) with the teddy bear logos on the tail.

So maybe Strike Force Echo could be the promotion path for Delta Force guys.

The battle-hardened Teddy Bears in the white helmets;
We deliver the goods that make you feel good!

A Stitch in Time

I have a dream, and it’s about how to engage every citizen on the planet in a global village economy. When I heard about the 1,000 sewing machines that SoA is preparing to deliver, it dredged up a three-year-old vision I had to disrupt the Taliban’s patriarchy with some good old Yankee P2P trade:

1. Get Muslim women to produce shawls, burkas, etc.
2. Advertise the goods to American women who want to support the effort
   (purchasing the goods as crafts in an expression of solidarity;
     a $100 burka on your wall is a Muslim family free to be)
3. Somehow exchange the goods by putting money in the hands of Muslim women

That “somehow” detail put the idea on the back burner until Micah Sifry and I had coffee with Rodger Desai, who has experience with middle eastern cellular systems and is also excited about SoA. Rodger’s interested in many intiatiatives, and assisted with the Grameen Bank microcredit project when he was with Accenture. I asked him how to monetize an Afghani or Iraqi woman’s labor, and he has what sounds like a practical solution: Phone cards.

Heh. It turns out that you can add value to another person’s unique phone card via PayPal. Then the other party can redeem the credits, if the issuer is willing. Rodger suggested that USAID might be the agency to redeem phone card credits for real cash.

Adopt the High Way

Spirit of America will be operating on the Adopt-a-Highway model, where clubs and organizations take responsibility for specific civic projects. Marc Danziger suggests that, when the Marines document the need for an irrigation pump for an Iraqi village, the need is publicized like an auctiuon item, until a person or group takes responsibility for it.

It’s a small stretch to see that our best collective urges and actions can force the government to take the bureaucracy out of nation-building and put the human heart into diplomacy. It might be called the POW! doctrine of defeating warfare with the use of the overwhelming force of kindness.

As Dan Gillmor says, “Jim Hake and his crew can’t solve the world’s, or a nation’s, problems by themselves. They can help. So can the rest of us.“

And a start is the most fun of all.

3:48:54 PM    

Dan Gillmor wrote yesterday about Spirit of America (SoA), which is providing peer-to-peer support to Afghanis and Iraqi’s coordinated by American GI’s. Dan is struck by the fact that Marc Danziger and I are both over-the-top gung-ho about SoA, although we represent ends of the spectrum of opinion for and against the war in Iraq.

“Marc Danziger, a.k.a. the “Armed Liberal” Web logger, supported the war in Iraq. Britt Blaser, a Howard Dean campaign adviser, did not.
Yet they agree on at least one thing about that Middle Eastern nation’s struggle: However right or wrong America’s official policy may be, Americans should do what we can to help Iraqis.

As Dan said when we spoke last week, there’s no part of the SoA project that any of us can find fault with. If you’re a bleeding heart liberal, you want to demonstrate that people who hate the war can reach out to the people hurt by our government’s illegitimate war. Rabid war supporters see a chance to demonstrate that the war can be won because the greatest American force is the innate goodness of the American GI, and that it’s worth going to war to connect our terrific GI’s with Arab kids.

I can walk both sides of that street.

Marc Danziger got started by coordinating volunteers to fulfill the requests, and now he’s involved full time, directing all aspects of SoA as Chief Operating Officer. Jeff Jarvis hooked me up with Marc last week, in the hope that I can help them copy the parts of the Dean campaign that worked right – specifically the mechanics of a grassroots campaign using the strawberry roots hierarchical model I discussed recently.

Like all of us, Jeff feels strongly about this, moving mountains behind the scenes. He is a buzz machine. Read Jeff’s take here.

America Actually Coming Together

America Coming Together is doing important work to offset the advantages that corporate America has built to ensure that their corporate form of person dominates our carbon-based form of person. In practice, ACT brings together those who feel abandoned or embarrassed by this administration. ACT’s purpose is to bury the corporate-based government it despises under a landslide of aroused progressives and outraged conservatives. But it’s largely a negative form of energy.

SoA is wielding the positive kind of energy that seems non-existent in the political arena. Are we surprised to discover that the positive energy is rising spontaneously from a grass roots, self-organizing movement? SoA started with Dianna Smith, who sent baseball equipment to her husband Jay, a sergeant with the Special Forces in Orgun-e, Afghanistan. Her shipment started a movement. Perhaps the catalytic moment was when an Afghani kid named Nazim said, “I like to be a player, not a fighter.“

	“The things we did to help people in Orgun-e literally saved lives. Theirs and ours.” Jay Smith, Sgt. 1st Class U.S. Army Special Forces		“I like to be a player, not a fighter.” Nazim
	“I am very happy to come here and play. This is my favourite game.” Abdul Hameed Afghan teenager

It works both ways. GI’s surely see their younger selves when they watch a 9-year-old belt one out of the infield; any 9-year-old, growing up in any family, regardless of the religious image on the wall over his bed, and regardless of the hatred his uncles were taught.

After that, it was like pulling a string out of a sweater. Are we surprised that other GI’s–U.S. Marines–followed up with something like, “How’re ya fixed for Frisbees?” Heh.Here’s what 2 tons of Frisbees looks like.

Could a web-based movement be far behind? And a visionary leader who grabs the bull by the horns? The leader is Jim Hake, Silican Valley entrepreneur and visionary. The sound you hear around Hake is that of the ball rolling, Big Time. As I understand the rough sequence, more shipments followed rapidly, especially after FedEx agreed to haul stuff for free.

This week FedEx is flying a free charter loaded with 10-20 pallets of hand and power tools for Iraqi tradesmen. So it goes when you get mixed up with the grass roots.

Tipping Point

I love grass roots movements (You know, like the American Revolution). Movements that resonate so deeply with the right thing to do that support comes out of the woodwork, from people all over the ideological spectrum. From people so tired of resenting their neighbors’ opinions that they find a way to join with those neighbors and do something positive for a change. There’s no shortage of authentic needs at the people level in Iraq and Afghanistan. And there’s no shortage of grass roots energy here in this land of abundance. Money, of course, is just a form of energy.

Other needs arose and were immediately met. Baseball games-in-a-box – a pallet loaded with everything it takes to equip two teams to learn the game from GI’s – GI’s who surely see their younger selves when they watch a 9-year-old belt one out of the infield; any 9-year-old, growing up in any family, regardless of the religious image on the wall over his bed, and regardless of the hatred his uncles were taught.

Baseball-in-a-box and school kits sound straightforward, especially with free shipping. But the logistics aren’t trivial. If you want to send hundreds of school kits, the Marines discovered, you need to buy the parts in bulk and customize the kits. A tote bag loaded with a pencil box, notebook, lunch box, crayons, etc., sounds simple, but it needs a gang of volunteers to unpack the shipments of tote bags, pencil boxes, etc., and re-assemble them as individual kits. The assembly lines formed at Camp Pendleton in southern California.

That takes a lot of volunteers and that’s where Marc Danziger comes in.

Marc is a tech consultant and soccer dad in the L.A area, who took to this project like he was born for it. He stepped up and became active coordinatng volunteers. He was so active that he and Jim Hake had a little heart-to-heart and now Marc Danziger is coordinating SoA’s day-to-day operations.

Kerry Dupont (the Maine b
logger who had made a reputation by sending laptops to Iraqis to help them start blogging) has been recruited to work full time on project logistics.

I hope I can help Jim and Marc and Kerry line up a million people and several million bucks in pledges for continuing support. As you know, I have some views on how that might be done.

So, as Jeff Jarvis writes, here’s your opportunity. Get involved. If you have a war-peace preference, express it by helping our troops show their true colors. Doing so, you can demonstrate that the real power of our country is our people.

Spirit of America Links

SoA Background
SoA Blog
Current Requests
   Marines and SeaBees Seek Tools for Iraqi Tradesmen
   U.S. Marines Seek to Help Iraqi Children
   Air Force Chaplains Seek Help for Schools and Orphanages in Kirkuk, Iraq
   Special Forces Request Help for Afghanistan
   Support America – Iraq School Partners
Success Stories
Get Involved
GIVE! (All gifts go to the mission, not overhead)
About SoA

4:46:09 PM    

From an IM session yesterday with Doc, in response to my Terror as PR post in response to his post declaring that Nick Berg’s beheading was PR:

Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism said the means for control by the totalitarian state was terror. Also that totalitarian states were grounded in belief systems. Hitler’s was one about nature (Aryans rule!). Stalin’s was one about history (The People will rule!). Both involved moral inversions based on collapsed distinctions. Hitler was merely helping nature by killing Jews. Stalin was merely helping history by killing off “decadent classes.”

Terror*ism* puts the techniques of totalitarian government in service to religion. As with the other cases, there are collapsed moral distinctions.

I could go on, but wanted to dump my brain. no time to blog it.

Sheesh. The guy can’t help himself…

Doc even gives bonuses in his IMs:

President Bush gets off the helicopter in front of the White House carrying a baby pig under each arm.

The Marine guard snaps to attention, salutes, and says: “Nice pigs, sir.”

The President replies: “These are not pigs, these are authentic Texas Razorback Hogs.
I got one for Vice-President Cheney, and I got one for Defense Secretary Rumsfeld.”

The Marine again salutes, and says, “Nice trade, sir.”

10:53:17 AM