A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or perhaps both. President James Madison

If I were a betting woman, I'd say it's pretty good odds that most bloggers aren't aware that today marks opening day of the first national Sunshine Week. What, you may ask, is Sunshine Week? The NYT sums it up as " a weeklong campaign for government openness spearheaded by the AP and more than 50 news outlets, journalism groups, universities and the American Library Association."

The whole thing got started in 2002 with Sunshine Sunday in Florida, an initiative to heighten public awareness of the importance of access to information and government accountability in the wake of 9/11, which had opened the floodgates for some "particularly egregious open government exemptions" considered by the Florida state legislature. As Barbara Patterson, who helped organize the first Sunshine Sunday, explains in American Editor (pdf p. 10), the newsletter of the American Society of Newspaper Editors:

Any opposition to the proposed bills was summarily dismissed by sponsors and lobbyists as a “press problem,” even though most of the proposals raised serious constitutional issues and would have curtailed the public’s ability to hold its government accountable. A “press” problem?

Since the first Sunshine Sunday -- selected as the Sunday before James Madison's birthday, which is National Freedom of Information Day -- several other states have joined in. The impact in Florida has been considerable, if measured by the new-found sensitivity of both state legislators and the public, which voted overwhelmingly in the 2002 general election for a measure limiting the ability of the legislature to restrict open access. Probably most important, according to Patterson:

Legislators and other key government officials have begun to realize that being tagged as a supporter of open government is a good thing.

The recognition that being seen as an open government advocate is good for your political health seems to be slowly catching on in Washington as well -- on both sides of the aisle. Here's Sen John Cornyn (R-Texas) in an op-ed he penned for Sunshine Week about the new FOIA legislation he and Sen Leahy are introducing.

Just last month, U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), a longtime champion of open government at the federal level, and I joined forces to introduce the OPEN Government Act of 2005, to strengthen and enhance our federal open government laws. It has been nearly a decade since Congress has approved major reforms to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). And the Senate Judiciary Committee has not convened an oversight hearing to monitor compliance with FOIA since 1992. So this week, I will chair a Senate hearing to examine needed improvements to our open government laws.

The legislation we introduced contains important Congressional findings to reiterate and reinforce our belief that the Freedom of Information Act establishes a presumption of openness, and that our government is based not on the need to know, but upon the fundamental right to know.
[...]
Moreover, our legislation is not just pro-openness, pro-accountability, and pro-accessibility—it is also pro-Internet. It requires government agencies to establish a hotline to enable citizens to track their FOIA requests, including Internet tracking, and grants the same privileged FOIA fee status currently enjoyed by traditional media outlets to bloggers and others who publish reports on the Internet. [ed. emph added]

There are actually two pieces of proposed legislation being sponsored by Cornyn and Leahy: the OPEN Government Act of 2005, announced Feb 16, and the Faster FOIA Act introduced March 10. The latter bill would establish a 16-member advisory Commission on Freedom of Information Act Processing Delays, which would report back within a year to Congress and the President on ways to reduce delays (including fee issues) in the processing of FOIA requests.

Now the last bit -- that bloggers may get reduced FOIA fees -- seems to have permeated the blogosphere's collective consciousness. However, the big brouhaha about blogging-press-government relations has been over the Apple litigation, covered here by Donna Wentwoth at CopyFight. Most of the other blogging-press-government flap-a-doodle has been devoted to the FEC-related firestorms (so far more smoke than fire). But a quick Googling didn't find much attention by the blogosphere to the FOIA initiatives, beyond an effort launched last week by the student activist IP-oriented site FreeCulture.org to promote a blogshine Sunday. And CopyFight is one of the few spots I've found with a blogshine.org button and blogging about the Cornyn-Leahy legislation.

The public's access to information and -- equally important -- how information intermediaries and consumers choose to use that information, ought to be a major focus of the blogosphere of "ideas," whether politics or science and technology, medicine, environment, social services, law and law enforcement, labor relations, financial services, education, you name it. For the great majority of blogs that aren't engaged directly in electoral politics or who don't see themselves competing with "journalists," the ability to access the vast amount of information that federal, state and local governments have collected, analyzed and archived is far more important than the debates over "who is a journalist" and whether/how blogs will be regulated if they support partisan activities.

The first reason why open access is important is the "business model" issue. If blogs are to be something more than partisan voices or provide more than entertaining critiques of stories developed in the mainstream commercial media, one major type of blogging will be digging into substantive topics requiring some background knowledge, pulling disparate pieces together, and bringing stories and analysis to a broader audience of interested readers. These are the sorts of activities that few news organizations can afford these days, or at least not on the range of subjects that the blogosphere is capable of covering.

Niche blogs offer the prospect of important stories being identified, fleshed out and debated with attention to detail by people who are knowledgeable about the subject area even if their "business" isn't blogging. Bloggers, unlike most news organizations, also have the ability to stay with a story that interests them for a long time, even after it's moved off the "hot" list.

But the success of this model of blogging depends on widespread, low cost access to raw material -- information. Collecting information isn't the blogosphere's competitive advantage -- that remains and will remain, even with the advent of citizens media, the competitive advantage of commercial media in many instances (though whether they will exploit that advantage is a different matter). But the public sector is also a major source of that raw material. Open access to information in the hands of governments is a critical element of this emerging role of the blogosphere going forward.

The second reason why open access is important is the "functioning democracy" issue, where the blogosphere has an important potential role to play in the coming years. I count myself among those concerned about info-tainment increasingly dominating much of what passes for news and analysis, as well as the trend for government and corporate communication machinery to find congenial forums to pass off counterfeit "objective" information to suit their persuasion agendas.

I also believe, however, that the impulse to counter these trends with ownership or content rules is often a misguided one. Rules are easily gamed by those they are supposed to control or, when the rules are binding, turn out to have some unfortunate unintended consequences. More often than not, the benefits of new rules inure to those with vested interests, unless the changes are truly revolutionary, and then the outcomes are likely to be highly unpredictable.

Technology and the changing economics of media are, in fact, offering the beginnings of a revolution. I was intrigued by a recent analogy attributed to Joe Trippi, that blogging and e-media today are about where we were with television in 1955 when it comes to politics. That suggests lots and lots of changes ahead, not just in content and technology of communication itself, but in all sorts of social structures and patterns about how we use different forms of media and what we expect from them.

I for one would prefer to focus on enabling that revolution. Opening more space for ideas, and ensuring open access to and flow of information, seems to me preferable to trying to make the existing large commercial information gatekeepers perform "better." This is especially the case as the very gatekeeping role for large corporate media is being redefined with technology and competition, and the cost of producing and distributing ideas and information is declining so dramatically.

So with that lecture on why sunshine is important to all of us -- as both citizens and bloggers -- here's some info on what's on tap for Sunshine Week. Of course, check out the extensive website that the sponsors of Sunshine Week have assembled, including calendars of goings on all over the country. They've got lots of great background material on the First Amendment and FOIA as well as "toolkits" (articles, op-eds and even editorial cartoons) for their participating newspapers to run. AND you can order your very own bright yellow "sunshine in government" wristbands. Knew you wouldn't want to pass that one up.

The Senate Judiciary Committee hearings are on Tuesday, March 15 at 10:00AM. Editor & Publisher has a summary of some of the events scheduled for Sunshine Week in various locations. Here in DC, in addition to the hearings that are being held by Cornyn et al on Tuesday, the big events are:

The National FOI Day Conference will be held March 16 at the Freedom Forum's center in Arlington, Virginia. Speakers include Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas), Cox Washington bureau chief Andy Alexander, and First Amendment attorney Lee Levine. The event is free and open to the public.

A symposium titled "Confronting the Seduction of Secrecy: Toward Improved Government Access on the Record" will be held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on March 17. The event will begin at 8:30 a.m. with a continental breakfast and conclude at 10:45 a.m. This is the 5th Annual Curtis Hurley Symposium and is co-sponsored by the Missouri School of Journalism. The event will be moderated by Geneva Overholser and will feature as panelists Bill Kovach, Tom Curley, Mike McCurry, Jack Shafer, and others. For more information or to register, e-mail Billie Dukes at dukesb@missouri.edu.

Coming up next on chez Nadezhda for Sunshine Week -- "how to get Congress to walk the walk" -- or how to save poor Steven Aftergood from the totally unnecessary chore of being our sole online source of Congressional Research Service reports, which are controlled by our elected representatives to dole out when it makes them look good or makes a constituent happy.

{March 14 12:56AM EST -- updated to correct graphics & links; added several links & trackbacks}

In a comment over at LibsAT, I commended a recent Newsweek article within the context of the "MSM" coverage of Iraqi politics. And was brought up short by co-blogger Haggai, who noted "MSM" made him a bit uncomfortable, given its association with wingnut paranoia.

I take the objection seriously. It's somewhat like those perennial favorites, freedom, democracy, opportunity and compassion. "MSM" has been hijacked by the war-blogging and Bushite right, and it's not clear how/whether we can rehabilitate it.

If my memory serves, the expression started off fairly neutral in partisan terms. Criticism of what was passing for political news and analysis by the leading news organizations and their associated punditry certainly wasn't confined to the right hemisphere of blogdom. True, there was even then the subtext of the "liberal media bias," but there was a counterbalancing "vicious right-wing conspiracy." Critiques of the structural inadequacies of the MSM, to which in part the blogosphere was a noisy response, were shared across the political spectrum.

Even now, some of the best critiques continue to come from a diverse collection of endangered species, ranging from centrists to moderate progressives and farther points left, whether the Howler or Campaign Desk. But now the triumphantalist right -- led by the Hewitts, Powerlines and Instys -- has hijacked both "year of the blog" and its enemy, the MSM, turning the label into a self-referential meme. [BTW -- Jay Rosen's series of takes on the Eason debacle -- together with his AfterMatters and comment threads on the posts -- are very much worth reading for a broader perspective on the changing rule sets for journalism and the press in an age of instant communication].

So what's an author to do? If you want a value-neutral short-hand reference for that collection of media organizations that used to be known as MSM?

Rosen has done a good deal of thinking on the subject, but has yet to hit on a result I find compelling. For example, for a time a common alternative was the "legacy media" tag, with its embedded presumption of the inevitable outcome of a battle-to-the-death between "new" vs "old." It may be a useful (though biased) way of conducting a debate about the future of journalism, but too narrowly cast and too value-judgment-rich to be a neutral label. So that's no good.

As a public service to discourse, I think we need to devise and actively disseminate another acronym. My options so far are CNOs -- commercial news organizations; and MCM -- mass commercial media. Neither is exactly catchy and each has its limitations. So I'm wide open to suggestions.

But I need something that's max 4 letters. One must admit the newest competitor to "MSM" is equal-opportunity --note it targets those incidious "Lefto-Conservative" types. But I get lost in Ss & Ms in SCLCMMSMM. [hat tip prak]

Some major reasons for brooding

Von at Obsidian Wings has a fascinating and vigorous thread going over how/whether to debate the use of torture, all triggered by the Gonzales hearings and the new legal memo from the Justice Dept's Office of the Legal Counsel. But in Iran, bloggers are facing this dilemma personally in fact, not in theory. This extremely unsettling news from Iran via Hoder and Reporters Without Borders , has set me to more than just brooding, but to absolutely fulminating.

For the past several months, those of us who follow goings on in Iran have watched as the Iranian internal security and judiciary apparatus has been moving against individuals connected to blogging and internet services. They've been after the techies as often as anyone. The pressure has ratcheted up, with reports in December of not only arrests but also compelled "confessions" and torture. This Jan 6 2005 press release from Reporters Without Borders summarizes what's been happening. The page also has links to their previous articles on the situation.

In the past several days, the authorities now seem to have moved on to a full-fledged assault to shut down the entire infrastructure that supports the Persian social network that has built up on the internet. Since the theocrats attempt to monitor and control the most ordinary freedoms of speech, thought and association we take so for granted, the internet has been a rare open space available to Iranians. This is attested by the very high internet usage figures in Iran. For example, one commenter on a Joi Ito thread about the problem noted that Persians are the #3 demographic in Orkut. The reassertion of power by the hard-liners is extending to this space that expresses, by its very existence, a profound threat to what they stand for.

Hoder passes along the following disturbing report, as of Jan 6, which suggests that rather than trying to regulate the internet for disturbing content, the theocrats are trying to shut down the important social network spaces the internet creates.

Friends in Iran, journalists and technicians, are saying that judiciary officials have ordered all major ISP to filter all blogging services including PersianBlog, BlogSpot, Blogger, BlogSky, and even BlogRolling.

They have also ordered to filter Orkut, Yahoo Personals and some other popular dating and social networking websites.

For ISPs this means a big loss, since much of their recent sales have been because of people writing and reading blogs and surfing Orkut. So the government is effectively eliminating small and private ISPs by bankrupting them, whiteout [sic] paying a political price for it.

He goes on to list some of the actions that might be taken. In addition to technical means of circumventing the authorities, he says:

While still relevant and potentially effective, I believe they are not enough now.

The EU and the US must seriously consider demanding for an end to the Internet censorship during their negotiations with the Iranian government.

We also have to look for ways to beam Internet direcly to Iranian users in Tehran and other big cities via cheap satellite connections.

I call this "open access" and it's actually one of the projects a few friends and I are working on: to use millions of satellite dishes in Iranian houses to access the net, without interference of local ISPs.

According to BloggersWithoutBorders, it seems that Joi Ito, who asked a question about the availability of typepad and live journal and was answered by Hoder in an update to his post, has had his own site just banned, so there may be problems with following up with Hoder directly through his blog. Joi's blog has a growing thread of comments and trackbacks.

Today is just not the day for me to feel that "write your Congressman" is going to do much good -- with their attention absorbed in the current torture debate in the US, I find it difficult to imagine they'll get too wound up about what's going on in Iran. Or if they do get riled, it's going to be in a transparently hypocritical fashion that matches partisan agendas. This is, unfortunately, what happens when we allow our moral bearings to get knocked akilter, and what Lech Walesa meant a few weeks ago when he was quoted by the WSJ as saying:

[The Americans] are a military and economic superpower but not morally or politically anymore. This is a tragedy for us.

Ah well. After I've simmered down, I'll brood on whether some other useful action might be undertaken.

A minor bit of laughter

Which brings me to our favorite brooding friend who, I am pleased to see, has reappeared in a splendid new year's edition, and brings us a taste of Persian humor that's LOL and, pun intended, deliciously funny .

I find I owe him an apology for being a tad cryptic in my end-of-the-year greetings. I told him to hum a sentimental little song without telling him the tune! For shame, since it's been covered by truly all of the greats, although primarily with the English lyrics by Johnny Mercer rather than the French original.

[UPDATE 12-15-04 8:00PM EST] Only 5 more hours left in the Friends of Iraq Blogger Challenge, which ends at midnite Pacific time.

Let's make sure Team Pajamahdeen breaks $5,000!

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The Spirit of America's Friends of Iraq Blogger Challenge closes at midnite Pacific time. So only a few more hours for the Pajamahdeen Team to secure some bragging rights and, more importantly, raise funds for the Viral Freedom project.
   more »

Check it out and make your nominations. Praktike is up for best comments!

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[UPDATE] Wampum's comment thread was getting too large for bandwidth, so they're starting a new thread when one gets too big. To see the contest rules, categories and criteria, go to this link. And to find the active nomination thread to make your own nominations, go to the main link. From there you can find earlier nomination threads to read if you're interested to see other blogs that have been mentioned.

One of the fun things is to discover new blogs from the nomination threads, even if they don't become part of the final nominee lists. And hey, we got a nice mention from Meteor Blades (who's started a new blog with some other dKos expats liberalstreetfighter.com) for "blog that should be more widely known"!

[UPDATE 12-12-04} To avoid any confusion about the Friends of Iraq Blogger Challenge, described below, the name of the team headed by WindsofChange.NET has been changed from A Mighty Wind to Pajamahdeen -- see Joe Katzman's update on the Challenge.

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[UPDATE 12-11-04]


Happenings at Harvard
(Continued from yesterday's proceedings, see below) Here's Hoder at Harvard, courtesy Jeff Jarvis, and more Iraq the Model guys (including visit to the White House), scroll up and down. Armed Liberal is there too, and promises further comments.

Machine translation
Tim Oren (WindsofChange.NET & Due Diligence) is also at the Beekman Center conference this weekend. He has posted a piece on WofC that summarizes points he was making in one of the sessions about machine translation, and the prospects of it realizing its promise and becoming widely available as a high-quality service in the not too distant future. As a VC, he has a decidedly hard-nosed approach, yet also an enthusiastic one about the potential. From just the narrow view of the blogosphere, clearly of immense importance for international blogging.

Tim has previoiusly written about his concept of "the age of citizens' diplomacy" on WofC.

The numbers involved are still small. There are plenty of trolls, nay sayers, and hate-mongers intermingled with the goodwill. There are language barriers on all sides. There are adversaries using the same medium to organize destruction. And this will not reach truly disconnected countries, from North Korea to Sudan.

Yet, every sign points in the direction of growth, from the increasing reach of the Internet, the spread of cheap mobile media devices, to the growing desire to bypass the legacy media and find out for ourselves. And people are starting to act based on their contacts, from influencing votes to mobilizing relief organizations such as Spirit of America.

Venture capitalists like myself keep an eye out for learning curves, things growing fast and out of control. The military looks for fast decision (OODA) loops, systems that adapt faster than their competitors. Citizens' diplomacy scores on both counts. That was the point of dragging in [earlier in the post] the Smith-Mundt Act and the Dept. of State : These are representative of the government's adaptation rate in the world of foreign affairs and media. There are folks in the DOD who recognize the problem (large PDF file) and are pushing for change. I wish them well, but bureaucratic history is not on their side.

So where do we go? The title gives it away - I think you're looking at the medium that will forge a large part of the outcome. We are all ambassadors now, Americans and others alike. Just as we're bypassing mainstream media, we've started to bypass mainstream diplomacy. What we do and say with one another may matter a great deal - just a small matter of war or peace (not to put on any pressure).

Donations to develop an Arabic blogging tool -- Friends of Iraq Blogger Challenge
As a small gesture toward making that sort of grassroots conversation happen, Tim's also contributing to a project (described by praktike in an earlier post) that will develop an easy-to-use arabic blogging tool, and provide free hosting services. The project is called Viral Freedom, sponsored by Spirit of America.

Winds of Change is heading a team of blogs in the Spirit of America Friends of Iraq blogger challenge. The donations made in the name of the "A Mighty Wind" team are earmarked for the Viral Freedom arabic blogging tool. Here's more of the scoop on the project from a snip of a much longer Jeff Jarvis post. He's joined forces with the Mighty Wind team.

Not long after I first discovered Hoder and the Iranian weblog revolution, I wished for blogging in Iraq and Zeyad emailed me and then started HealingIraq. He introduced blogging to others, and that led to IraqTheModel, among others. They have made a difference, helping us all see Iraq from the perspective of citizens and building bridges with us. But they blog in English.

To bring the full power of citizens' media to a people, it has to be available in their native language. Zeyad recently emailed me again and said he's getting ready to blog in Arabic. That will be even more important. The folks at SixApart have generously volunteered to help him with a bilingual blog. I just got email saying that Blogger is going to help him figure it out. The new Spirit of America tool is being built by iUpload (full disclosure: we're working with them at Advance Internet). The more the merrier.

Hoder helped people in Iran blog in Persian by giving them instruction in using the English-language Blogger. How much better it will be when he and Zeyad and the IraqTheModel brothers can spread the power of this new people's medium in their native languages.

Praktike has already given as have I, and the button in the sidebar will take you to the Mighty Wind's team donation page. You can also give in the name of other blogs or teams or navigate to another one of Spirit of America's projects. Bloggers who would like to add their blog to the Mighty Wind team can click here.

The Friends of Iraq Blogger Challenge ends Dec 15, so you don't have many more days if you want your donation to count toward the competition.

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Original post 12-10-04: Jeff Jarvis is blogging the Internet & Society event at Harvard's Berkman Center today. (Too lazy to copy all of Jeff's links -- go see the original)

Harvard: The world meets

There will come a moment today when the world meets in Cambridge as the pioneers of citizens' media come together: Hoder is in America (at long last!). Maylasian blogger Jeff Ooi is here. Oh Yeon-ho, the founder of OhMyNews, the people's news service that is changing South Korea, is talking. Omar and Mohamed from IraqTheModel are coming this afternoon. Add to that Ethan Zuckerman and his work in Africa and Joi Ito and his work around the globe and all the Americans and you have all the veggies you need for one helluva great global succotash.

Here's his blogging what Hoder had to say.

And here's his story of meeting up with the Iraq the Model guys in DC earlier this week.

How in the world, before this, could I ever have become friends with two men on the other side of the world in a war zone where our soldiers are fighting? How could I have learned about their lives in the midst of that battlefield? How could we have made mutual friends -- Zeyad, Kerry Dupont, Jim Hake? How could such a group have ended up working together, though thousands of miles apart, on a project to bring this new medium to the rest of the world? (Omar translated the Arabic blogging tool, by the way.)

I stand in awe of all that. But I also stand in awe of these two men. They have tremendous courage doing what they are doing: They grab onto free speech like men dying of thirst who finally come upon the oasis. They use their free speech with a gusto we should all admire and aspire to. They use it improve their nation and their future.

And it does take courage to do what they do. There are terrorists lurking around the corner of every word today. But these brothers keep doing what they are doing. And they come here to share their story with us. They are meeting with reporters and with others.

BTW, I'm sure I'm not the only one who's been worrying about the lengthening silence of Zeyad (Healing Iraq). Last we heard from him (Nov 20), his neighborhood had been turned into a full-blown combat zone. He's just reappeared, with apologies for those concerned about his well-being. He'd been in Basra and has just returned.

News: Le Sabot Postmoderne does a round-up of today's developments, which involved a lot of to-and-fro of different quasi-offers, rejected out of hand by Yushchenko:

Yushchenko has broken off negotiations with Kuchma and Yanukovych. Their position was, "Make a deal based on an unenforceable promise that we'll make you a strong Prime Minister under President Yanukovych, and then disperse the protesters." Thankfully, Yushchenko was born in the morning, but not THIS morning.

Kuchma/Yanukovych's other bargaining position is to call for entirely new elections. They've made noises that both Yanukovych and Yushchenko wouldn't be allowed to run, but instead new candidates would be fielded. This would conveniently let them dump their currently radioactive Donetsk thug, while robbing the Opposition of their wildly popular candidate. You can start to see why Yushchenko stopped negotiating.

Other news of the day:

• The Supreme Court continued to hear the voting fraud cases for a second day.
  
• Javier Solana and Polish President Aleksandr Kwasniewski will be meeting with the rival candidates on Wednesday, together with OSCE Secy Gen Jan Kubis.
  
• Fears of a geographic splintering of Ukraine eased with some backing down by local officials who had spoken of autonomy moves in some eastern regions.
  
• Some analysts see the new elections/delay scenarios fitting Kuchma's agenda -- put off relinquishing power as long as possible but get rid of Yanukovych as prime minister in the meantime.

New source to check out if you want to follow development closely, in addition to previous links: HotLine news service, frequent updates that seem to track closely with eventual international wire service reports (Russian, Ukrainian, English)

Views: Two very interesting pieces, giving a broader set of perspectives and agendas than can be found in most coverage. It's not just about democracy, fair elections and rule of law, it's not just about people power, it's not just about east-west history of the Ukraine, or oligarchs and economic interests, or Russia vs the West. It's all of the above and then some.

First, from the blog The Russian Dilettante, on how an ordinary voter in Donetsk might view the goings on. Shorter: There's a compelling logic to "Sure they're thugs and thieves, but they're our thugs and thieves."

It's amazing that the border between Yuschenko- and Yanukovich-supporting regions can be traced to the politics and demographics of the 17th and 18th century and the first half of the 19th. I've tried to reconstruct -- speculatively -- a Donesk voter's point of view:

1. Our region and its neighbors produce most of this nation's GDP -- let's just say wealth. Granted, our oligarchs syphon off most of this wealth but some trickles down to us, too.
2. The good people in the streets of Kiev want to break the oligarchs' monopoly on power. We wouldn't mind that, too. But we don't trust their leaders.
3. Their leaders are oligarchs from other parts of Ukraine who aren't satisfied with what they've got. When they grab assets from our local oligarchs, we'll be even worse off.
4. Also, when those new oligarchs from the West come to power, they'll spend the tax money -- and most of that comes from us -- on their cronies.
5. They'll try to Halycize Ukraine; we Easterners will become second-class citizens. Our kids will have a problem getting into Kyiv universities.
6. So you see, it's not about democracy, it's just us against them.
7. We'd rather become autonomous and deal with our oligarchs ourselves.

From this angle, there's no argument over values; it's Us vs Them. (Alas, I'm not quite impartial to this simple dichotomy, either.) The best I can say now is that I am hoping Ukraine becomes a federation, which would reflect its geographically-distributed cultural diversity. Let the people of the East take on their oligarchs without fear that outsiders will step in to grab the spoils.

For daily analysis that's both indepth and big-picture, covering things both Russian and Ukrainian, Untimely Thoughts by Peter Lavalle is a must-read. He writes on Russia for a variety of news organizations, especially UPI and papers like Moscow Times. His website his articles as well as analytical pieces, interviews, and occasional items from other analysts. With the intense coverage of Ukraine recently, his UPI stuff has been daily. Today's article outlines the possible gamble Kuchma may be taking with a call for further elections, and how it could play out on a number of levels:

[...]
Depending on the Supreme Court's findings, a third round of voting appears likely. But how the third round is characterized will be key. Will the court find the runoff vote invalid, or the will it go further and deem both rounds invalid? Kuchma and his supporters are angling for the latter.

The voiding of both rounds opens the door for Kuchma to finally rid of himself of Yanukovych as prime minister. Kuchma might have intended to fire Yanukovych this week, but Timoshenko's demand that he do so might have interrupted his plans. Kuchma has been given an ultimatum before by political foes while president and did not back down.

With a third vote on the horizon, Kuchma is looking for a suitable candidate to replace Yanukovych. That person appears to be Serhiy Tyhypko. Resigning from his position as head of the National Bank and Yanukovych's campaign manager, Tyhipko is a perfectly placed regime insider who would very much like to take on Yushchenko. Yushchenko dearly would like to run against Yanukovych again, but will have no choice if Yanukovych backs out - something Kuchma can easily arrange.

A Tyhypko candidacy could be very interesting. He is an insider, but can easily spin himself as a centrist, opposed to Yanukovych's separatist leanings and Yushchenko-Timoshenko's "right-wing, nationalist, and street-extremism." Tyhypko could spin himself as a unifier - politically and as an advocate if an indivisible Ukraine.

Additionally, if the Supreme Court suggests another election and legislation is passed toward this end, Kuchma could declare a state of emergency in the name of allowing a "cooling off" period before the extraordinary third round is set. "Cooling off" in this case would mean the end of street demonstrations.

Should this scenario worry Yushchenko? Yes. Yushchenko's coalition of political forces are not as cohesive as most media report. As the last few days have demonstrated, the much more nationalistic Timoshenko often acts an independent political actor beyond Yushchenko's control. Timoshenko and her supporters have polarized Ukraine's political atmosphere just as much as Yanukovych unofficial support of regional separatism.

The international angle of a third election round would also be important. Vladimir Putin would have the opportunity to disentangle himself from the Kremlin's over-zealous support of Yanukovych's candidacy. The West would be forced to distance itself from outward support of Yushchenko.
[...]

As discoshaman of Le Sabot Postmoderne puts it so aptly:

We all agree that the strategic picture here is almost impossible to grasp in its entirety. There are so many unknowable variables, and so many individual agendas coalescing and falling apart simultaneously. It's somewhere in a gray area between complex and chaotic.

[UPDATE 12:30PM EST 11-29-04] Potentially, some very good news. Kuchma has proposed new elections. From Reuters:

Outgoing Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, facing mass protests over a disputed presidential election, Monday called for a new poll to help end the crisis tearing the nation apart.

If we really want to preserve peace and consensus and build this just democratic society, of which we speak so much but have failed to carry out in a legal way, let us have new elections," Kuchma said in a statement.

Kuchma, in power for 10 scandal-tainted years and widely accused of mismanaging the economy, said he had no intention of running in a new poll.

He spoke as the Supreme Court sat to try to resolve the election stalemate, though a decision could take days.
[...]

Another positive sign is reports that some of the Ukrainian "oligarchs" may be switching sides, or at least backing off their support of Yanukovych. The English language Kyiv Post is generally viewed as reliable. The internet activist site, Maidan, has a mix of rumor and reliable reports. Volunteer translators are apparently working non-stop to provide English-language versions of as much as they can. Worth visiting simply as a remarkable example of "citizen internet."

Dan Drezner has a good analytical roundup from early this morning, when he was not feeling very upbeat.

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Want a feel for "as it happens" -- check out Le Sabot Post-Moderne, a passionate Western partisan for Yuschenko's "people power" movement. Lots of photos connected with blow-by-blow what's going on with negotiations, rallies, etc. Although he admits he's so close to the on-the-ground action that it's hard to keep sight of the broader strategic goings-on.

Nonetheless, he has very interesting explanations about how the election was stolen and the Orange movement, not only in Kiev (or Kyiv if you spend more time with Ukrainians than Russians). Especially helpful is the correction, echoed by other bloggers, of the distorting East vs West narrative being imposed by outside commentators. [Map: The Economist, Nov 25 2004 "Europe's New Divisions"] This post from Le Sabot Moderne Saturday rips apart the Guardian. It starts:

Jonathan Steele's hit piece in the Guardian is a sad example of the condescension that so many hold for Ukraine. He insists on spinning this as a West-Russia dispute, as if the Ukrainians themselves have nothing to do with it. If he'd troubled himself to talk to some actual Ukrainians, he'd know that they're viewing this as a fight against a Mafia-esque ruling class which is using its powers to repress dissent, monopolize political power and cannibalize the nation's infrastructure through corrupt "privatization" schemes.

These oligarchs sound like just the sort of people a nice Lefty like Steele would be against. But I guess it's just more fun to poke a stick at the United States.

In an incredibly Orwellian moment, he dings the US for "provocatively" financing exit polls. Let's get this straight, the oligarch government was financing rigged polls to help justify their theft of the election. Yet it's the WEST who is trying to use exit polls to perform a coup? What a jackal.
[...]

Another blogger from Kyiv, Tulipgirl has a rich collection of Ukrainian activist details as well as a good variety of other links to blogs, sites and photo collections. Especially recommended is a just-created "blog of the revolution," Orange Ukraine, by a former Peace Corps volunteer who lives in Kyiv with his Ukrainian-born wife.

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[UPDATE 8:30PM EST 11-28-04] For those of you who just can't get enough Ukraine. A lengthy background piece -- giving a good deal more on who's who and the various events leading up to the current situation -- can be found on John Quiggin's personal blog, via Dan Hardie, by Tarik Amar, "who, Dan says, is doing a PhD on Soviet history and speaks Ukranian, German and Russian, among other languages, and knows the place very well."

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Other bloggers following developments closely are Fist Full of Euros and Daniel Drezner, who has a running news roundup. Drezner catches this interesting bit from the Kyiv Post:

Roman Olearchyk's analysis in the Kyiv Post suggests that elites in the eastern parts of the country would take steps beyond autonomy to protect their interests:

The business tycoons in eastern Ukraine that supported Yanukovych appear to be taking extreme measures to protect their interests, which include lucrative assets in Donetsk, Lugansk, Kharkiv and Luhansk. Government officials and legislators in these oblasts have in the past two days demanded the formation of an autonomous eastern-southern Ukrainian republic and are threatening to split their oblasts away from Ukraine altogether.
[...]

Similar story in MosNews.com [Map: MosNews.com, Nov 26 2004 "Pro-Russian Eastern Ukraine Threatens to Secede if Yushchenko Wins"].

And in further apparent confirmation, this just in from AFP: Yuschenko calls for prosecuting "separatist governors," while Yanukovych is off with Moscow's Mayor, Yury Luzhkov, visiting the Russian-speaking regions. "After a short meeting [in Lugansk] they were due to head to Severodonetsk to attend a meeting of 3,500 local officials from 17 regions that was expected to discuss holding a referendum on autonomy."   more »

[UPDATE 10-29-04] by nadezhda

Things are getting a tad nastier in Bahrain's tug-of-war over free speech, and Mahmood in his den doesn't appear terribly optimistic about either the commitment to Freedom of Speech or the political IQ of certain MPs (Concentration Camps: A Natural Progression). Even with the apparent leadership of a modernizing crown prince, the forces of conservatism act as a dead weight. Mahmood's cri de coeur is, unfortunately, one heard all to frequently across the region when attempts at reform are taken.
   more »

Via Jeff Jarvis, a new venture bringing politics-technology-blogging together in Personal Democracy Forum.

I'll say this for them, their "top 25 technology and political blogs" are a far sight more respectable than the WaPo's feeble effort.

cross-posted to Tacitus diary

[UPDATE] Though if Mary Meeker's hot tip is any indicaton, it may be time to sell short (also courtesy Jarvis).