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Like many Iran followers, my every engagement with the people, language, and news from the country brings me back to the very same question. Would an Iranian counter-revolution go velvet?

In other words, if the democratic opposition in the country managed to shake the foundations of Iran and encourage serious reforms, could the transition happen peacefully? What if the Western nations finally lent their full support to the opposition?

In yesterday's New York Times and International Herald Tribune, some of our heroes of the Nobel Peace Prize left as well as a number of Nobel laureates in the sciences published a full page letter calling for the U.S., Russia, UK, and Germany to put the weight of their support behind democracy activists in Iran. As a huge fan of Elie Wiesel, Betty Williams, and Jody Williams, I am enthused to bring the news to you, and to encourage you to make the same calls for change.

However, in support of the call, I'm actually shocked that the letter did not directly address the reasons these governments have not yet put their full weight behind democracy advocates in Iran. Isn't that the most important detail in advocating for policy change? The U.S., for example, is not failing to support the Iranian reformers because they don't think the Iranian government hasn't done anything wrong. The U.S. is cautious for two huge, delicate reasons which must be reconciled before it is safe to put U.S. support behind the reformers.

First, Iranian security is sometimes using ties to U.S. government agencies, Western press, and political persuasion organizations like the Open Society Institute as flags to indicate which Iranian citizens to focus serious surveillance attention to, if not arrest. The Iranian government already executed two demonstration organizers. If the U.S. increased its support for reformers suddenly, Iran's security apparatus would dramatically increase arrests and threats to anyone connected to such support.

Second, although historical models are not always helpful, I think there's a case to be made that if the democrats manage to secure the beginnings of serious reforms it will create an avalanche that would not necessarily go velvet like lovely 1989 Czechoslovakia. More likely, given the circumstances, it would range somewhere from 2000s Indonesia (very painful yet somehow barely working out) to 1980s Lebanon (blood bath).

Perhaps our leaders in peace need to be more clear. Should we advocate for full U.S., Russian, UK, and German support to democracy reformers to the extent of more loudly criticizing the Iranian government alone? Funding reformers at a risk of increasing their troubles with state security? Or backing them even if the pressure turns the battle into civil war?

As for this writer, I obviously do not hold a Nobel, so admittedly I'm writing from the press box. However, I do think that calls for policy change should not simply criticize but should directly address the reasons the policy leaders are either indifferent or cautious.

We want to support reform in Iran, but we do not want to create a civil war. The forward, yet peaceful path requires passion but also finesse, detail, and nuance. We do hope to see democracy leaders working together with Islamic reformers in the current government with gradual changes, not a NATO war against the Ayatollahs with Iranian students as the cannon fodder.

Photo credits: Hamed Saber (Tehran democracy demonstration) and 27389271 (Tehran Basji offices besieged by protesters)

Rep. John Murtha, the stalwart and hawkish Democrat from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, died today after complications arising from gall bladder surgery. Murtha was the first ever Vietnam combat veteran elected to Congress, and he spent most of his Congressional career focusing on issues of defense and military affairs.

In recent years, perhaps nothing defined Rep. Murtha's career more than his opposition to the Iraq War. After originally voting to authorize the use of force in Iraq in 2002, Rep. Murtha switched gears -- and got heads turning -- when in 2005 he called for an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq, and sharply criticized the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq War.

Among certain circles, Rep. Murtha's criticism sparked a sea change in dialogue over the Iraq War. At the time Rep. Murtha was roundly praised by more conservative members of both parties as an authority on military affairs, commanding great respect from politicians and military leaders alike. His turn on the Iraq War not only was an about face in terms of his past votes, it also created space within the Democratic (and Republican, to some extent) parties for more fierce criticism of the way the Bush administration handled the Iraq War.

“The U.S. cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It is time to bring [U.S. troops] home," Murtha said in 2005.

Talk about becoming a thorn in the side of Bush administration policy. Murtha would later go on to say that the current Iraq War was his biggest regret, and that it ruined his friendship with former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Scandals and a reputation for delivering a lot of pork to his district certainly also shaped Murtha's political reputation. But his last few years in office will definitely be remembered as a time where he gave cover to opponents of war who were up until 2005 so often accused of not supporting the troops. With Murtha, you had someone who was mostly beloved by the military, conservative in his bonafides, but recognized that the Bush administration didn't have the talent or the skill set to deliver the peace in Iraq.

Photo credit: defense.gov

Funny how the lone photographer, one of journalism's quintessential observers, has for so long been muzzled, leaving their work open to interpretation by others who never stood in their shoes. I am a big fan of the way photographers are now more and more providing commentary and narrative to their work. It often brings deeper insights, new perspectives to the broader context of split-second snaps, allows for greater understanding and more powerful story telling.

Here is a sample I came across from New Yorker Evan Abramson which I thought was particularly illuminating. The people of Haiti are "within their own worlds of survival" says Evan who never felt threatened or unwelcome despite what conclusions we might otherwise have made from some of the images. Even more of a reason to hear what photographers experience at the time images are captured, what is going through their minds and how they see things panning out in the future.



/PCa mish mash of musings from the margins

’What’s your religion?’ the police officer on duty in Oysterbay Police Station asked me today.

 

’I have none. In fact I signed out of the Danish national church. I simply didn’t like the concept’ I replied.

 

Here we go again.

 

Today in Oysterbay Police Station where my religious affiliation appears to be the most important issue of them all. In fact, I cannot report theft if I don’t answer this question. Everything stops, and centres around this vital question.

 

Because, what am I then?

 

Me, being Scandinavian, find that kind of categorising rather superfluous in this situation. But I can also not say no to an option of being so ridiculously labelled as 'not suitable'.

 

Last week in Kibaya I was asked for my tribe. And I wrote ‘viking’, making the guest house caretaker ask: “What is that really?’

 

'Natoka Ulaya ya Kaskazini. You know. Kali people from the North of Europe. That’s my tribe.'

 

Labelling people is many Tanzanian civil servants’ favourite amusement.

 

Today the police officer today looked back at me in a rather judgemental way, concluding:

 

‘You have no religion, and you live alone. What person are you? You are just living?!’

 

I sort of felt it would be too complicated to explain that I don’t live alone, that my house is full of guests who are also rather hard to put in Tanzanian categories.

 

But he went on: ‘Most people are something. Either Muslims or Christians! And what about family, where is your family?'

 

I looked him in the eyes, and told him: 'It's very complicated, I know, but that's how it is!' And then I insisted, and agreed to his previous question: ‘Yes, me I am just living’.

Sarah Palin made the rounds this weekend, from the Tea Party Convention in Nashville, Tennessee to the tubes of Fox News, articulating a vision of U.S. national security less grounded in geopolitics than rooted in taunts of "We want a pitcher, not a glass of water."

Palin, who needed help from the palm of her hand in order to express her concerns with Obama's national security policy, taunted the President for being soft on national security issues. For Palin, in order to win the War on Terror, we need someone who will blow stuff up, not practice diplomacy.

"[Terrorists] know we're at war. And to win that war, we need a commander-in-chief, not a professor of law standing at the lectern!" Palin shouted on Saturday night to hoots and hollers from the Tea Party crowd. Yes, instead of a professor of law, maybe we need someone who took seven years to finish an undergraduate degree. In journalism.

Palin then went on Fox News the next morning, to talk about how President Obama could significantly boost his approval ratings if he were to call for a preemptive war with Iran.

"Say [Obama] played, and I got this from [Pat] Buchanan, reading one of his columns the other day, say he played the war card," Palin said. "Say he decided to declare war on Iran, or decided to really come out and do whatever he could to support Israel, which I would like him to do ... if he did, things would dramatically change, if he decided to toughen up and do all that he can to secure our nation and our allies."

Didn't we learn last decade that preemptive war wasn't tough, but stupid?

Yowsa. Add to that getting foreign policy advice from a column written by Pat Buchanan -- you know, the guy who encouraged Nixon to use racism as a campaign tactic -- and you have to really wonder how this woman got within striking distance of the White House. Forget Canada. If Palin becomes President at any time in my lifetime, I'm moving to the moon Pandora.

Photo credit: auburnxc

Coping with Crisis, no. IV (2009) [full-text]
- Focus is on psychosocial issues and research.

Disasters, early view (Feb. 2010) [access]
- Series of articles now online which appear to be part of an upcoming special issue
on the "social dynamics of humanitarian action."

Journal of Humanitarian Assistance (5 Feb. 2010) [full-text]
- New article entitled "Why was there still malnutrition in Ethiopia in 2008? Causes and humanitarian accountability."

Migrations Société, vol. 22, no. 127 (Jan. 2010) [contents]
- Mix of articles.

Tagged Periodicals.

A couple of days ago, a man was stoned to death about a block from where we are staying in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. I have been down here nearly two weeks covering the earthquake devastation, having arrived quickly the morning after it occurred.

So the other day I was idly browsing the tinterwebs for some info on the different tribes of Southern Sudan (yes I am that kind of geek). Tribe, ethnicity, language, and religion were all explicitly excluded from the 2006 census and the 2009 household poverty survey because they are too contentious, so I was assuming that hard data is difficult to come across. Not so.

Joshua project is a research initiative seeking to highlight the ethnic people groups of the world with the least followers of Jesus Christ.

And oh the data is copious. And detailed. I am slightly creeped out and utterly amazed all at the same time.

See and download the full gallery on posterous Posted via email from Gigglingbob’s Source Feed

Two weeks ago U.S. Immigration and Customs arrested George Boley, former head of the Liberia Peace Council, on charged of lying in order to enter the U.S.   Further charges of war crimes might be in his future.  (H/T to a commenter for pointing me to this blog post by Jeffrey Goldberg on the story.)  Goldberg writes:

Boley, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Akron, received his undergraduate degree at SUNY Brockport, and he kept his family in upstate New York for the duration of the civil war. I’ve been speaking to him on and off now for a year, and his excuse-making had become increasingly ridiculous. The last time we spoke, he told me that there had been two organizations in Liberia during the civil war named the Liberian Peace Council: His, which was peaceful, and someone else’s, which was a fighting faction.

I like this video: thanks to http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scarlettlion/~3/Y2VAX-UJ1sE/lagos-town.html for sharing Posted via email from Gigglingbob’s Source Feed

With Lunar New Year (known as Tet in Vietnam) approaching this coming weekend, there's a real sense of excitement around the countryside. (So much excitement that I haven't been writing in my blog!)

On Sunday our staff traveled north of Hanoi to Bac Ninh province, where Blue Dragon supports about 400 school kids from Grades 5 to 12.

This area is sometimes targeted by child traffickers, who look for kids who have quit school and have nothing to do. Our work very simply involves keeping kids in school - ie preventing them from dropping out - by paying school fees and providing material needs such as uniforms, text books, and stationery.

At Tet, however, the focus is on celebration. We gathered the kids together - 350 in one district, and 50 in another - for an hour of games and singing... followed by giving out gifts and lucky money (li xi) to all the children.


Kids waiting patiently for their Tet gifts...



We also gave bicycles to 4 of the kids who really need their own wheels to get to school. They were so incredibly excited - none of them had ever owned anything so precious before!

This evening I head to central Vietnam to visit the 60 kids who Blue Dragon has rescued from factories and other child trafficking situations. More photos to follow in coming days.

.

This deeply unsettling experiment starts on a typical Monday morning on Manhattan's leafy Upper West Side, where commuters stroll by Starbucks and Central Park.

"January 26th, 2010 marked the 60th anniversary of India's adoption of the Constitution of India, and the 80th anniversary of its original 1930 Declaration of Independence from British rule.

I could not reach the officials of the NFL, or the major television networks.  So my Super Bowl ad did not appear during the game or during pre- and post-game programs.
 
You have the power to change this Congolese girl's future.  She needs to go to school instead of spending her days fetching water.  She needs a water source close to her village to save her hours a day.  She needs school fees to attend school.  She needs school books and supplies.  She needs access to health care.  She needs a small micro loan to start her own business.

Just one second worth of the cost of a 30-second Super Bowl ad would change the course of her village.  Or just $30 donation would paid her tuition for a year.  Visit Congo Helping Hands to learn how.

And then I will leave everyone alone. I know I already posted that one… but had to share it again. Posted via email from Gigglingbob’s Source Feed

If you havn’t seen it yet, go check out Election Jai on Youtube and support my wife. Posted via email from Mary Boyoi

Trying out Posterous.  I should be sleeping, but just can’t seem to get myself that direction just yet. Nyeredet has a bit of cold today.  Seems to be going around everything… colds are no fun. Not looking forward to mine. Mary says she likes this photo.  I think it is horrible. Posted via email from Gigglingbob’s Source [...]

Paul Collier’s last book, The Bottom Billion, proposed that there are four “traps” in which the poorest countries can become enmeshed (a conflict trap, resource trap, geography trap and governance trap).   He vividly explains why he thinks that “business as usual” will not lift these countries out of poverty, creating the prospect that 58 countries, home to the poorest billion people, will fall further and further behind the standards of living of the rest of the world.

At a conference at Wilton Park this week a number of people gathered together to review progress since the Africa Commission and Gleneagles Summit in 2005, and to discuss the prospects for a transformation in Africa over the coming years.  One participant (one of the authors of the Africa Commission report) argued that the Commission set out a comprehensive action plan which, if implemented across the range of its recommendations, could address these traps and lead to real progress.

I am not so sure. I think there is a fifth trap facing Africa which is more chronic and pervasive than any of the four traps identified by Paul Collier. It is the “unfair rules” trap, and I think it makes it very hard for Africa to make much progress on the other four.

Development and an improved standard of living for people in developing countries will come not from aid but from industrialisation and economic growth.  We do not know exactly how to ensure that these economic transformations occur, though there is much we can do to create the conditions in which it is more likely.  (Aid can help create the conditions for growth, and can help people to live better lives while the process is under way).  But as the world economy becomes more integrated and more globalised, many (though by no means all) of the determinants of a country’s opportunities for economic development are determined by international institutions, systems, rules and agreements.

The “unfair rules” trap is that the rules of the game are determined by the rich for the rich.  And the consequence for the poorest countries is that they are having to fight uphill to create conditions for their development; so they continue to fall behind the rest of the world economically.  Their relative lack of economic power reinforces their lack of political influence internationally and so makes it harder for them to influence the institutions and rules which contribute to their continued economic marginalisation.

This “unfair rules” trap takes many forms.  There is a myriad of complicated rules and institutions that affect a huge swathe of economic and political life.  These international agreements range from highly political – such as the global allocation of the right to emit greenhouse gases under the post Kyoto framework for climate change – to the deeply technical such as phyto-sanitary standards which unnecessarily limit exports of groundnuts from Africa to Europe.

On BBC World this weekend there is a debate among a group of African leaders in which Linah Mohohlo, the Central Bank Governor of Botswana, points out that new global rules are currently being devised to promote financial stability – an issue that affects every country in the world – without any participation by Africans.

Consider our attitude to property rights.  Rich countries have attached considerable importance to the establishment and global enforcement of intellectual property rights, which enable their firms to secure revenues from the use of their intellectual property. They have, for example, pursued this through the WTO.  Whatever you think about intellectual property rights, there is no doubt that they can be expensive for developing countries, both because of the huge revenues that flow from Soweto to Seattle and because of the restrictions imposed on access to vital knowledge rich products such as pharmaceuticals, software and business practices.    But consider a parallel property right: the right to emit greenhouse gases.  Like intellectual property rights, emission rights are an institutional construct designed to bring about an improvement in economic efficiency (by rewarding innovation in the case of IPRs, and by taxing polluters in the case of emissions rights).   Emissions rights, if properly designed, fairly allocated and enforced around the world, would entail a reallocation of wealth from rich countries to poor countries.  But while the rich world is happy to insist on the importance of intellectual property rights (of which it is a seller) it is unwilling to consider the establishment of property rights over assets for which it would be a buyer.  In the run-up to the summit in Copenhagen, there was no serious discussion of the idea that every citizen should be entitled to an equal share of the atmosphere, and that anyone wanting to occupy more than their fair share should pay compensation to those who are using less. The discourse is limited to the realpolitik of what rich countries are likely to accept.

Of course, it was ever thus.  Nobody should be surprised to hear that the rich and powerful set the rules, and that these are not always to the benefit of the poor.  But within nation states this dilemma is partly addressed through the political process.  Universal suffrage has made it impossible for national institutions, laws and regulations completely to ignore the interests of the poor; though of course there is still a long way to go before the interests of the poor are given the attention they deserve.

But the international system does not benefit from the equal representation implied by universal suffrage within nations.  In some international institutions, power is formally one-dollar-one-vote.  In many others  this is not the formal position, but it is true in practice.  The global political system does not rebalance economic power between nations in the way that political processes can within nations.

To address Paul Collier’s four traps will require concerted international action – for example, to take steps to prevent the corruption and patronage that is associated with extraction of natural resources, to limit the sale of arms which fuel conflict, or change trade rules in ways that improve Africa’s prospects of trading with the rest of the world.  That is why the trap of “unfair rules” is so profound: for as long as Africa remains politically weak in the international system, it is hard to envisage how the international cooperation is required will be brought about.

I find it hard to see how a transformation can be brought about unless we find a way to address the problem “unfair rules”.  For as long as Africa remains economically disadvantaged, it is marginalised in the setting of rules and governance of global institutions.   This in turn profoundly affects its ability to escape Collier’s four traps, and so limits its prospects for development, and thus locks in the growing divergence from the rest of the world.   Africa seems to be likely to be caught in the jaws of this trap for as long as there is no political process that allows African countries to obtain more power and influence within these international institutions than their relative economic weaknesses entails.

A DIPLOMATIC deal over the 10 American missionaries jailed in Haiti on child abduction charges may lead to the release this week of all except the group's leader, Laura Silsby, according to legal sources in Port-au-Prince.