[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.
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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.