Joshua Gee is a public relations professional, political technologist, social media nerd, amateur public policy wonk, Eagle Scout, bleeding heart liberal and a son of the American Revolution.
Depressing, depressing video on Afghanistan about Marine trainers in Afghanistan and the state of the Afghan army. Why can’t American TV news do anything like this?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2009/mar/27/obama-afghanistan-military
Other money line?
“I give a fuck about your chai. I care about the mission.”
The Boston Globe (really the Washington Post, sigh) has a piece on the rise in political activism among India’s middle-class youth. This political awakening stems from a combination of President Obama’s election, the November terrorist attacks in Mumbai and frustration with the systemic corruption of Indian elected officials. The article glosses over one aspect that I found interesting, the rise in India’s middle class, in order to focus on how the young activists are using technology to spread their message:
But now the same high-tech tools and toys of youth culture that help teenagers engage with one another are being used to expose the misdeeds of political leaders. In the past, police harassed young people when they massed for street demonstrations, but Indian youths now gather on Facebook or organize over text messaging, a powerful medium in India, where 385 million people own cellphones, according to the Cellular Operators Association of India…
Some youth organizers, for example, have started text messaging the jail records of lawmakers in a country where nearly one-fourth of the 540 members of Parliament face criminal charges, including rape and murder, according to the Association for Democratic Reforms.
Most of the activism seems to be focused on general voter turnout rather than any particular party. However, the article does mention several new youth-oriented political parties that have started with platforms that include “fighting terrorism, stemming job losses, and improving the nation’s crumbling public schools and roads.”
Is this is a lot of sound and fury? Will this be the Indian equivalent of Howard Dean? I don’t think so. I don’t really know how India’s elections work, but if some of these small youth parties get enough votes they could form a youth/good government coalition to get their issues heard in the Parliament. Political awakenings don’t happen right away, small gains or setbacks in one election serve to embolden and train the political organizers who work for big gains in the next election.
I wish the article did a bit of a deeper dive into the information about text messaging. According to a study by Credo Mobile and Student PIRGs, President Obama’s campaign’s use of text messaging increased youth turnout by about 5% (a huge amount). India, along with most other countries, has a much higher text message penetration rate than America. On the one hand, this could mean greater turnout since people are more comfortable with text messages and more likely to sign up for political text message alerts. On the other hand, other countries have a much higher rate of text message advertising, so Indian voters could be jaded and less likely to pay as much attention to political appeals. Either way, it will be interesting to see if these youth parties are able to increase turnout significantly. I will be more interested to see if this sporadic activism can be channeled by a particular party or person into the runup to the next round of elections.
Presented, essentially without comment, the top two stories from today’s New York Times:
I don’t recommend you read them one after another, as I just did, unless you want your head explode from pure rage, as mine is currently doing. Also, guess which story got more prominant play on the front page of America’s newspaper of record.
Much to my delight, pirates are the current topic de jour. The New York Post has been front-paging the story of Richard Phillips all week, Meet the Press had several naval experts on this morning morning and The New York Times had an Op-ed from Robert Kaplan, one of my favorite security thinkers, about what weakness the rise in piracy has exposed in the United States Navy.
Much pirate news coverage has a somewhat “zany” tone to it, the kind of inflection that TV news anchors use during live remotes from a day before Thanksgiving sale or in coverage of the President’s new dog. Because of that, and the joking among many (including me) that this is just an amusing diversion, I thought I might be useful to highlight that these pirates arnt cartoon characters, they are dangerous and desperate men. From Kaplan’s Op-ed:
Somali pirates are usually unemployed young men who have grown up in an atmosphere of anarchic violence, and have been dispatched by a local warlord to bring back loot for his coffers. It is organized crime carried out by roving gangs. The million-square-miles of the Indian Ocean where pirates roam might as well be an alley in Mogadishu. These pirates are fearless because they have grown up in a culture where nobody expects to live long. Pirate cells often consist of 10 men with several ratty, roach-infested skiffs. They bring along drinking water, gasoline for their single-engine outboards, grappling hooks, ladders, knives, assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and the mild narcotic qat to chew. They live on raw fish.
It is also important to remember that pirates were ALWAYS dangerous and desperate men (and women). Though they have been partially disneyfied and completely romanticized, pirates as we think of them were never anything like Captain Jack Sparrow. Under the Black Flag, an excellent history of Caribbean pirates, gives some descriptions of what they were really like:
The overwhelming majority were seaman… analysis of the Anglo-American pirates operating in the western Atlantic and Caribbean at the time shows that 98 percent were formerly seamen in the merchant service or the Royal Navy or had served in privateers… Their faces and arms were burned and weathered to the nut-brown color of Robert Louis Stevenson’s sea captain Billy Bones… They were tough and ruthless men capable of savage cruelty and murder… Most pirates were by nature rebellious and lazy. They were notorious for foul language, and for prolonged bouts of drinking, which frequently led to quarrels and violence. They came together in an uneasy partnership, attracted by the lure of plunder and the desire for an easy life.
The practice of going into action armed to the teeth is confirmed by numerous accounts of pirate attacks. The carrying of several pistols was not simply to frighten the enemy but was also a wise precaution… Pirates were also in the habit of wearing their weapons when they were off duty.
Pirates were mostly young men in their twenties… most of the men in the buccaneer ships were French and British, but all crews tended to be multinational… A considerable number of the men on the pirate ships were black.
If all that doesn’t do it for you, maybe the best way to disabuse yourself of the idea that pirates were romantic figures is to think about what raping, pillaging and plundering really means.
One thing that Kaplan didn’t go into in his Op-ed is how many of the Somali pirates used to be fisherman or come from fishing villages (f0r more insight into the Somali pirates, read this GQ article on them). When you add that fact in, there really are enormous similarities between the two groups. In both cases, you are dealing with young men with few skills or jobs prospects who know a lot about boats and sailing and turn to crime at first out of desperation but later because of the lure of being rich. Because there are so many similarities, (though there are key differences, like the ships of Somali pirates being primarily short-range and having bosses who are land-based) I would imagine that there are lessons that we can draw from how classical piracy was stamped out as we try to curtail piracy in Somalia. More on that later as I continue rereading Under the Black Flag.
Editors Note: I really thought my post about Under the Black Flag would be a chance for me to blog something (relatively) original, but stupid Matt Yglesias has already read and recommended it over at his blog. Also, while I was writing this post, the AP reported that Capt. Richard Phillips was freed by a U.S. raid. Doesn’t do much to change the underlying situation but good for him and his family!
Unfortunately, my real job has kept me from blogging for the past week. Or from thinking about anything except a certain Seattle-based coffee company. Apologies for that, I am back and have a pot full of coffee, a browser window full of tabs and 3 hours of political talk shows lined up to watch. Time for some blogging.
Also, during future, inevitable lulls in blogging, I still find time to post to my tumblr and to twitter. You can check those out, or whatever.
It is impossible to go on the internet today since every other blog has a wacky April Fools post that makes me die a little inside. Please, internet, I beg you, leave the humor to the professionals.
Obama Depressed, Distant Since ‘Battlestar Galactica’ Series Finale
WASHINGTON—According to sources in the White House, President Barack Obama has been uncharacteristically distant and withdrawn ever since last month’s two-hour series finale of Battlestar Galactica…
“I haven’t seen him this upset since Admiral Adama realized that Earth was actually an uninhabitable wasteland,” the official continued. “Or at least that’s what he told me. I don’t actually watch the show. It’s not really my thing.”
Since the end of the series, Obama has reportedly brushed off key budgetary decisions, ignored his wife and children, and neglected his daily workouts, claiming that he no longer cares if he lets himself go “just like Lee did before the rescue on New Caprica.”
In addition, sources confirmed that instead of meeting with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Monday, the depressed president sat alone in the Oval Office, scouring Internet message boards for posts by other fans about the series conclusion…
“We were going over his schedule when he sighed and asked if I watched Battlestar,” said a White House secretary, whom Obama used to playfully call “Billy.” “I told him I was planning on it because my sister’s a big fan, but he just stared out the window the whole time.”