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001.23.11 “Freedom and democracy are dreams you never give up”

Golda to Citizen Journalism,Pueblo Politics  

Aung San Suu Kyi was interviewed on a contraband camera

Partial transcript – read below to find what Aung San is asking us to do (transcribed from the video):

[Question about her willingness to talk to a brutal and oppressive regime]

“You have to talk to people if you want ..peaceful change”

“We want to review the position of sanctions, we want to see what the political ..effect is…”

Are you saying sanctions are on the table?

“It depends what the outcome of the dialog is”

“Freedom and democracy are goals which you never give up”

even when her husband was dying of cancer, and the regime refused her a visa
seeing her…she only saw her son now after ten years…

“Tt was lovely to see my son, and I was grateful to see that he was alive and well…many of my colleagues are no longer alive

[mentions Obama calling her his hero]

“I do appreciate his words, but I do have to say if I were the blushing kind I would blush at being called a hero”

What do you want from America?

“We want the people of america to be aware of what is going on in Burma now. Just writing to their members of congress, and they then they must call for an inclusive political process in Burma”

Have you any doubts about nonviolence?

“No not at all, because violent methods may bring about change quicker, but they leave such wounds…”

“I have seen great changes. The people are much more open, much braver shall we say. The number of cell phones…not because of any policies, but because of the IT revolution here and all over Europe”

“I guess there are worse names than a lady…I think I’d like them to see me as a worker”

How do you want to be remembered?

“I want them to remember me as someone who has performed what she should have performed, who has done her duty. And I think there is nothing more satisfactory than the knowledge that you have done your duty.”

Originally published at bTucson.com/188553

001.16.11 Writing for AloNovo

Golda to Society & Politics  

I’m doing some work (a very little work) with the AloNovo project, which is basically a site to help consumers find socially responsible companies to shop with. Here’s my first post on taking responsibility as an accidental shareholder in these beasts: We the Corporations

012.24.10 And the moral is…

Golda to Booknotes,Society & Politics  

Just finished the old Jack Finney Invasion of the Bodysnatchers (had to read it because of the title, I have a theory about corporations being subject to real-life bodysnatching ;-). Good read, convincing characters, plot ok – and I love the moral : yeah its hopeless but that’s exactly when you need to fight hardest against the bastards. They just might give up if you hit ’em hard enough.

007.21.10 WeGiveBooks – took a look

Golda to Education,Society & Politics  

Books, language, reading are so foundational to everything that it doesn’t seem to need saying. I’ve been thinking for some time of a site that would be ‘books-please.com’ or something similar, for people to donate books to other individuals.

This site is not exactly what I was thinking of, but close. Found it from a Rafe Esquith video on Youtube. Seems worth checking out. If its good, will post the details on http://bteaching.com
—–
update: looked at the site, while the causes they support seem positive, I’m really looking for something much less scripted and controlled. For instance they have a program specifically giving African-themed stories (“Tinga Tinga tails”) to schools in East Africa. This is all right, but it feels to me a bit patronizing; and ‘Conspiracy for Good’ which is a sort of live drama but it is unclear to me from reading it what part, if any, of the story is true? I am not saying not to support http://wegivebooks.org, it is certainly doing good and is getting the job done of delivering thousands of books where they are needed! I am only thinking that at some point I would like to see a person-to-person solution that helps people give specific books that they feel are valuable, and helps others get books they specifically want (whether or not the solution involves supporting libraries or clearinghouses).

When I talked several years ago to the owner of a company involved with maquiladoras in Mexico, he was not interested in discussing living standards or wages of his employees, but expressed willingness to donate to a local library. It may be that US companies operating overseas could be tapped to donate to libraries in the areas where they operate. This particular company was a client of mine, thus I had at least one time access to speak to the owner, but I find that following the five-F policy (Fair, Fast, Friendly, Factual, Frank) it is often possible to get a short conversation even with very busy and important people.

* I read of the five-F’s many years ago in a public relations book, but I think they apply in many other contexts as well.

001.14.10 Tucson Developers’ Co-op

Golda to Society & Politics,TechStuff,Uncategorized  

Check out http://tucson.devcoop.org, where me and a few friends are kicking off a new group of indie developers who get together to check out each other’s stuff. I like having collaborators but can’t stand meetings, so this is an ‘unmeeting’ – bring your laptop and plan to get a bit of stuff done while there. We’ll have a short presentation too: Dave Parizek will talk about Google App Engine. I don’t know anything about it myself but it sounds cool.

Oh – and the (un)meeting? Wed Jan 27 at Himmel Library @ 6:30 PM.

012.11.09 Trust and Journalism

Golda to Citizen Journalism,TechStuff,Thoughts,Writing  

Much has been written about the impending demise of journalism. No doubt, papers and magazines are in trouble, and with them the usual revenue stream of the professional journalist.

Ellen Goodman wrote a recent column in which she made a great call that crowdsourcing leads to the basing of facts on opinions, instead of opinions on facts. There is truth to this. The famed ‘many eyes’ approach of open source software works best when all the eyes are dispassionately looking for truth, and not spin.

I believe though that journalism has a fascinating future. The key is trust, and for readers to be able to make informed judgements. Goodman pointed out that there seems to be no consequence for bloggers who make things up. Some consequence exists, in that other bloggers may write about their lack of veracity, and individual readers reduce their trust level, but it doesn’t reduce the number of links to the lying blogger’s page and thus does not reduce their PageRank, which is essentially Google’s level of trust that they have something useful or interesting to say.

The web may need an explicit TrustWeb, where users and webmasters/bloggers can state their level of trust in a website or even a website author (the latter requiring some of the semantic web technology that allows more explicit markup of relationships between things). Initial work has been done on Trustwebs (search on Guha + trust web) in a controlled setting. To have a distributed trustweb may come out of semantic technology, or it may get done as some kind of a hack: <a href=”somesite” trustlevel=-8 rel=nofollow &rt;this guy is ridiculous </a&rt;

If TrustRanks become public (and perhaps disjoint – there may be different named trustwebs that propagate separately) you can bet having a high trust level will get a dollar value attached – either from associated advertising or from micropayments from readers. Then abusing the reader’s trust will once again have an immediate consequence to the writer – maybe even more so than an irate boss.

311.21.09 Who’s in the Hot Seat?

Golda to Prison Reform,Thoughts  

On a related note to the last post, I have been wondering what became of the “Hot Seat” group therapy developed by Bill Sands and the inmate Ezra Kingsley. From what I read it sounds pretty effective – its sort of honesty therapy. In The Seventh Step, Sands describes it as the invention of lifer inmate Ezra Kingsley: each member of the group takes a turn in the ‘hot seat’, and talks about their efforts. The other members ‘rip the sheet off’ the speaker, pointing out ways in which he isn’t being honest with himself. This strikes me as pretty strong stuff, and I could see how it would be effective therapy.

The only links I’ve found online that reference the program are this one in Canada:
http://www.7thstep.ca/aboutus.html
and a publication from around 1966:
http://tpj.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/46/2/21

It seems to me like effective help for convicts is just an extremely important area – not only for the convicts themselves, but for communities and even state budgets.

211.02.09 Which Books behind Bars?

Golda to Booknotes,Prison Reform,Thoughts  

I’ve seen a flyer at Antigone Books in Tucson about a Books behind Bars project or something like that that sends books into prisons. I think its a great idea but another incident made me start thinking, which books?

One day I took a walk in the Santa Cruz wash, happened to be after a city sweep of the homeless camps. They had pretty much bulldozed them, so leftover things and trash were scattered around. I found a book, that one of the homeless folks had owned. It was some kind of psychic text that sort of blamed problems on society in a kind of ranting way. I can’t remember the name of it now but it struck me that this book probably wasn’t going to be the one to help someone get their life back together.

On the other hand, some books are truly powerful and inspirational. I posted somewhere else about the prisoner with a quote from Anne Frank’s diary tattooed on his back. And that is not even one I would have chosen. Maybe Victor Frankl? My Shadow Ran Fast by Bill Sands?

I am curious, what books people have found to be really helpful in changing their lives. Especially that would be relevent to prisoners today.

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