Come listen to Stevie Wilson and me talk about the economy, buying, spurring the economy, being gauche, and being economical — especially, when it comes to DC and LA — come listen to us spout and if I piss you off, poke me with a sharp stick, Why Do You Need to Spend Money? Recession-Buster Chris Abraham Chats Up LA-Story.com

Talking to Chris Abraham is always an interesting conversation. It’s part serious, part giggles and part free-falling imagination.

This is part one of a series of podcasts that started out as a series of IM’s about the economy and spending money. It was right after Obama was talking about people should resume spending money because that will help regenerate the economy. (It is a statement of fact. I have done my fair share in the past few weeks— though not always for things I really wanted. Four tires later, she sighs.)

We decided it needed to be a podcast with a loose theme on the economy, recession and about spending money. That’s what it started out to be— and then we segued into other related topics and then into vaguely related topics. About an hour later, we pretty well solved the world problems as well as a fashion dilemma or two.

Now if you find this dreadfully boring — and it’s not— wait for podcast # 2. It’s much better and by # 3 — wow.. It’s popping!

See ya!

Stevie Wilson

My friend Mike Signer is running for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia and has started his campaign. Please be sure to support this fine gentleman in his campaign — please check out Mike Signer’s web site and read the information I just received from him via email, announcing his campaign:

This weekend in Richmond, I’ll join Democrats from across Virginia at our annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner.  From the decade-plus I’ve been working in the trenches of Democratic politics around the Commonwealth, I know the JJ is one of Virginia Democrats’ favorite events.  But this year in particular – on the heels of the victories of President Obama, Senator Warner and Representatives Perriello, Nye and Connolly – the JJ will be a particularly exciting opportunity to share my vision for the future of the Commonwealth with activists from across Virginia.

As you may know, I recently decided to run for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia.  I’m running because I strongly believe that our problems today are so urgent they demand something more from the office of Lieutenant Governor.  If we turn this office into a public advocate for all Virginians rather than just a placeholder it’s been under the Republican incumbent, Bill Bolling, we can take on great challenges together, including:

• Strengthening our economy while cracking down on predatory practices,
• Getting our priorities on energy and the environment right and creating thousands of new green jobs,
• Meeting the sacred contract we have with veterans and their families and
• Strengthening our democracy here in Virginia.

Although the Lieutenant Governor candidates will not be speaking, I wanted to make sure you know about the event and – most importantly – that you’re invited to our reception afterward.  Immediately following the dinner, we’ll be hosting a hospitality suite with a great band and refreshments in the Greater Richmond Convention Center, room E22-A.

If you’re attending the dinner, I hope you’ll join us – and encourage others you meet at the dinner to do the same – to stop by, meet me, and make the acquaintance of other Virginia Democrats who will be joining our fresh, exciting new campaign.

After JJ Reception with Mike Signer
Greater Richmond Convention Center – Room E22-A
February 7, 2009 – Immediately following the conclusion of the dinner
RSVP today for the reception so that we know you’re coming

I hope you’ll join this cause.  I’d also be grateful for early investors in this exciting venture.  Even your $5 donation today will help with critical early steps such as purchasing lapel stickers and our banner for the convention hall.

                   

Thanks and hope to see you soon.  I’ll be in touch with more news about the campaign in the coming days.

I have to hand it to Stevie Wilson — she’s a social media badass and also a woman’s woman. I also trust her and have been lured into speak with her on the record a few times, and they have always been a lot of fun.  Check out part one of a two-part interview called A Serious Chat with Abraham Harrison’s Chris Abraham About the “Expat Expat” , State of the Blogosphere & Politics, Economy & More!

This is the full text of President Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration speech, courtesy of NowPublic, KansasCity.com, thanks to a link from @Aisle7

Full text of President Obama’s Inauguration Speech 2009

My fellow citizens:

I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.

So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land – a nagging fear that America’s decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America – they will be met.

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things.

The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted – for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things – some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life. For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn. Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions – that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act – not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions – who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them – that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works – whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account – to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day – because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control – and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.

The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our Gross Domestic Product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart – not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake.

And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more. Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort – even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet. We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus – and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West – know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world’s resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us today, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment – a moment that will define a generation – it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter’s courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent’s willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends – hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism – these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility – a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

This is the source of our confidence – the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.

This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed – why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America’s birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

“Let it be told to the future world…that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive…that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it].”

America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

• YouTube – Awesometown – FOX Cut

• Blog profile – Twingly Blog Search

• Burger King Fails With BK Boxers » Adrants

• Controversial ads can help boost a brand – PRWeek US

  Eric Yaverbaum, president and CEO of Ericho Communications, says the press might not be good, but this kind of attention effectively multiplies the company’s ad buy and drives consumers to want to go online and watch the video.

  (tags: social media public)

• Grammar Girl :: How to Write Your First Novel

  Since you’re listening to this podcast, you probably love the English language and the written word. And if you do, you probably have an itch to write that first novel. Well, you’re not alone. The dream of writing a novel, either for personal satisfaction or to make money, has been prevalent in our culture for decades, if not centuries.

• MediaPost Publications – Kmart Enlists Bloggers For Social Net Campaign – 12/12/2008

• /Message: Izea: Where Is That Line Again?

• Izea and PayPerPost Further Abandon Concept Of Quality Blogs | Philaahzophy

• Kmart Enlists Bloggers For Social Net Campaign – MediaPost Publications | Social Media Digest

• mrontemp: I still want my Swedish meatballs! The Izea brouhaha continues

• IZEA Blog: ”Twitter Tips” Week One Winner

• Blogging for dollars | Janet Fouts

• IZEA, Chris Brogan, Disclosure, and Community Trust | 1115 Media | Michael Buechele

• Copywrite, Ink.: Being Human: Chris Brogan

• Understanding Izea’s Sponsored Blogging Service

• Jaffe Juice: Carpe Diem – Sears the Day!

• Federated Media / Tech: Izea: Where Is That Line Again?

• Jane’s Tumblr

• Top 10 Reasons to be an Entrepreneur in College | College Mogul

• Paid Posts: Why they’re not that bad, but why you shouldn’t do them

• Sears, Christmas And A $500 Gift For You | How To Split An Atom

  Chris Pirillo, Jim Kukral, Tamar Weinburg, Aaron Brazell, Liz Strauss, Joseph Jeffe, and Chris Heuer

• The Pond » Izea

• Sponsored Post: Granting a Wish with Sears | Technosailor.com

• The Midnight Writer: Writing Boring Articles

• Sponsored Post – Sears Shopping “A-Ok” With This Blue-Collar Guy

• Kmart Sponsored Post: Petty Politics Buries Debate | ChrisKenton.com

• Jeremiah Owyang Inserts Foot In Mouth (Again) Over IZEA Sponsored Posts | Technosailor.com

• Understanding Izea’s Sponsored Blogging Service… (Web Strategy by Jeremiah) » TechNews.AM

• TechWag » Chris Brogan and the Tempest in a teapot

• The Sanctity of Social Media? | Altitude Branding

• Dumb Looks Still Free: So there is no connection between….

• What is Your Time Worth? What’s Worth Your Time? : GeekMommy’s WebLife

• IZEA Advisory Board Dinner – a set on Flickr

• Are Paid Posts now acceptable on blogs? (poll)

• Want to Go to Affiliate Summit West? | The BenSpark

• Advertising and Trust | chrisbrogan.com

• Freaky Frugalite » Blog Archive » Blogging For Pay, Part 1: Preparing For Your Future

• Settling into the new job « CodeHappy

• Who Is Strumpette?

  (tags: PR blog online twitter blogging is personality reality)

• Young PR

  (tags: marketing PR social media blogs links blogging journalism prblogs youngpr)

• Another Frightening Show About the Economy from This American Life

  Another Frightening Show About the Economy

  (tags: life news usa politics podcast money Radio npr Markets this thisamericanlife tal swaps subprime cds credit default swap)

• Credit default swap – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• Flip MinoHD Camcorders | Flip Video

  (tags: technology video movies tech photography videos shopping tobuy wishlist flip hd mino)

• About Us – DC Navigators

I manage a LocateADoc.com profile for a doctor friend of mine. As a result, I receive their newsletter, etc. Today, I received an interesting email newsletter with the titillating title, 3 Tips to Keep Patients Coming In, Despite The Economy. So, with no further ado, here are the three tips — and they’re as good for all of us in the PR, Marketing, Social Media, and Consulting world as well:

1. Maintain or Increase Your Marketing Investment. View marketing as an investment, not an expense. Savvy marketers know that now is the time their competitors pull out, so stay at it – there are deals to be had.
2. Generate More Business Through the Internet. Hands down the most cost effective way to promote your practice. Drive more traffic to your website with pay-per-click marketing, or add your practice to a free online physician directory, such as LocateADoc.com.
3. Update Your Approach to Lead Generation. Now is the time to generate more productivity from your limited marketing budget. LocateADoc.com will send you pre-qualified patient leads emailed to you, with an excellent and measurable return on investment (ROI).

I tell anyone who will listen to me that the current crop of advertisement methods is too short-lived. The moment you spend the money and your ad runs, that is the moment it is either gone to the grave or becomes a patient existing on life support. Either you’re smart and willing to keep it alive, in conversation, online on YouTube for the spots, or on a blog somewhere for the print work — or you feel compelled to keep on throwing money at it ad infinitum, because contextual ads, banner ads, etc, only last as long as you write checks.

What my specialty is is online conversation marketing, online public relations, and online earned media. When you earn peoples’ attention and when they choose to speak about you, your clients, and your services, then you have a gift that keeps on giving — this is content that lasts well past the campaign and into the future. This is both the sort of thing that Google loves — it is SEO catnip — and it is just the sort of content that flows, both upstream to A-list bloggers and to mainstream media and down to your readers, aggregators, and to other bloggers and other blogs.

If you want to see some examples of powerfully successful blogger outreaches, check out International Medical Corps (IMC) 2008, Survivor Corps Operation Survivor 2008, and Fresh Air Fund Summer 2008, Jerry White’s I Will Not Be Broken book promotion. In many cases, these campaigns are close to a year old, yet they still still live in hundreds and hundreds of blogs and feed Google’s index until all of these blogs are taken down. It is really amazing how effective this sort of “advertising” promotion works. What’s better, when the campaign is over and the client “turns off” our tap, the content continues living and isn’t just shut off like it is with banners, buttons, and contextual advertising. Very interesting, very cool, and powerfully effective.

Remember how much fun Communication Arts is to page through? — CA is intoxicating! Well, every ad you make can be as interesting, as long as you’re willing to come out of your art department and share your process, share your experience, share your steps. Keeping those ephemera alive through narrative, sharing, conversation, and story, is what social media is, it is what customer service is, it is surely what branding should be.

Anyway, There is a lot of opportunity in this time of chaos, of this time of transition. The same sort of transition (and opportunity) happened when PCs came online, replacing the IBM Selectric II; when the Internet changed E-Commerce, threatening to eviscerate bricks and mortar stores, and it is happening now, more than ever, with advertising, marketing, and PR.

I call it white knuckle syndrome: holding on to the handholds you have, frozen on the face of the cliff, because you don’t know where the handholds of the future are. This chaos is pretty amazing to watch as the economy pitches and GM bails on Super Bowl.

Advertising knows it needs to jump off the locomotive before it pitches into the gorge (the bridge is out!) but reaching out to the proffered hand of the guy in the helicopter seems pretty risky too. But, as the current handholds become chalky and you start to feel them crumble under your weight, you’ll need to find somewhere else to go, and quick!

To me, Chris Brogan said it best the other day on Twitter, “customer service is the new PR.*” Looking at what @comcastcares has been able to do, customer service is the new PR, the new marketing, and the new advertising.

So, as those handholds start to get chalk and begin to crumble, it is important to at least set your eyes on a new handhold — or maybe a helping hand — before your original handhold turns to powder.

And for you who have yet to do the reading, please check out Cluetrain Manifesto and Naked Conversation.

According to Jonathan Trenn, over at Marketing Conversation — Bob Garfield’s “Chaos Scenario” may start locally — the world of advertising is in a place of chaos — spanning the dead zone between traditional advertising methods and new media advertising.

Bob Garfield’s “Chaos Scenario” may start locally

If you haven’t read Bob Garfield’s presentations of how advertising will evolve over the next few years (Part 1 and Part 2), then you should. He calls this the “Chaos Scenario”…a perfect metaphor for what he describes. In it, he argues that traditional advertising is dying out as media usage and consumer behavior are changing. Much of the change has its roots in the rise of the internet as a marketing vehicle. But, Garfield points out, new methods and practices have yet to fully pan out. And many companies haven;t come to grips with this new and show no signs of doing it any time soon. This is going to cause (my interpretation) chaos as traditional media outlets struggle to get advertisers while these advertisers struggle to figure out how to advertise effectively with their limited knowledge.

For the most part, I agree with his thesis. Most major traditional marketing-oriented mediums are becoming less effective as promotional vehicles. Media usage is more dispersed, more personal, and thus, more controlled by the end user. And many times those end users today are choosing to ignore or avoid the advertising messages that are send their way. Whether it ends up being as dire as Garfield suggests, I have no idea, but changes are coming and neither the advertising mediums nor the advertisers themselves are ready for it.

And I think local is where we’ll see it first. I see this happening one the local level over the next three years. Goldman Sachs is predicting that traditional local advertising vehicles – local TV, newspapers and radio stations – are going to get hit particularly hard during this recession. I’m going to agree, and the key world there is “particularly”. That’s because local advertising is hurting anyway as advertisers have already been pulling back because it doesn’t work like it used to. Add to that further cuts in ad spend and you could get a serious amount of casualties on the local media market.

In the above graphs, we can see that newspaper get hit the hardest. Readership is down in the first place. That’s permanent. People have stopped buying newspapers for whatever reason – a lack of interest in news, having news available online, and getting quick news capsules in other mediums. A poor economy has little or no effect on newspaper buying. We won’t be seeing a rebound once the economy bounce back.

The collapse of players in the local ad market will reduce the options for advertisers. Yet the demand will probably still meet the supply. So we’ll see further erosion. Craigslist, satellite radio, and cable TV will make this so.

One of the alternatives will be local online advertising. But I don’t see many local advertisers ready for this. I still see most local companies that are likely to advertise having little more than brochureware websites. I see very little use of local Google Adsense coming from traditional businesses. And, again, the websites are neither optimized for online search nor are they set up with the correct landing pages for potential ads. Local businesses SHOULD be developing internet strategies, but the decision makers in them don’t go to our conferences, they don’t read our blogs, they’re not on Twitter. Nor are they probably on Facebook or MySpace. They’re far from it.

So while they’ll be temporarily holding back ad dollars during tough economic times, they’ll be likely losing some of their traditional advertising choices. And they won’t be ready or equipped to start marketing on new media – because they’ve chosen to not take the time to learn it. The end result? Chaos.

I call it white knuckle syndrome: holding on to the handholds you have, frozen on the face of the cliff, because you don’t know where the handholds of the future are. This chaos is pretty amazing to watch as the economy pitches and GM bails on Super Bowl.

Advertising knows it needs to jump off the locomotive before it pitches into the gorge (the bridge is out!) but reaching out to the proffered hand of the guy in the helicopter seems pretty risky too. But, as the current handholds become chalky and you start to feel them crumble under your weight, you’ll need to find somewhere else to go, and quick!

I tell anyone who will listen to me that the current crop of advertisement methods is too ephemeral. The moment you spend the money and your ad runs is the moment it is either gone to the grave — unless you’re smart and willing to keep it alive, in conversation, online on YouTube for the spots or on a blog somewhere for the print work — or you will feel compelled to keep on throwing money at it ad infinitum, because contextual ads, banner ads, etc, only last as long as you write checks.

What my specialty is is online conversation marketing, online public relations, and online earned media. When you earn peoples’ attention and when they choose to speak about you, your clients, and your services, then you have a gift that keeps on giving — this is content that lasts well past the campaign and into the future. This is both the sort of thing that Google loves — it is SEO catnip — and it is just the sort of content that flows, both upstream to A-list bloggers and to mainstream media and down to your readers, aggregators, and to other bloggers and other blogs. If you want to see some examples of powerfully successful blogger outreaches, check out International Medical Corps (IMC) 2008, Survivor Corps Operation Survivor 2008, and Fresh Air Fund Summer 2008, Jerry White’s I Will Not Be Broken book promotion. In many cases, these campaigns are close to a year old, yet they still still live in hundreds and hundreds of blogs and feed Google’s index until all of these blogs are taken down. It is really amazing how effective this sort of “advertising” promotion works. What’s better, when the campaign is over and the client “turns off” our tap, the content continues living and isn’t just shut off like it is with banners, buttons, and contextual advertising. Very interesting, very cool, and powerfully effective.

Remember how much fun Communication Arts is to page through? — CA is intoxicating! Well, every ad you make can be as interesting, as long as you’re willing to come out of your art department and share your process, share your experience, share your steps. Keeping those ephemera alive through narrative, sharing, conversation, and story, is what social media is, it is what customer service is, it is surely what branding should be.

Anyway, There is a lot of opportunity in this time of chaos, of this time of transition. The same sort of transition (and opportunity) happened when PCs came online, replacing the IBM Selectric II; when the Internet changed E-Commerce, threatening to eviscerate bricks and mortar stores, and it is happening now, more than ever, with advertising, marketing, and PR.

To me, Chris Brogan said it best the other day on Twitter, “customer service is the new PR.*” Looking at what @comcastcares has been able to do, customer service is the new PR, the new marketing, and the new advertising.

So, as those handholds start to get chalk and begin to crumble, it is important to at least set your eyes on a new handhold — or maybe a helping hand — before your original handhold turns to powder.

I know there is so much money — huge buckets of hot cash — in TV commercials (and you’re still all stoked from your experience — and profit — from the presidential campaign) but you need to diversify! You need to start spreading your weight over a number of holds: left and right foot, left and right hand — and hopefully a belay man and some crampons and a few anchors and camming devices… as much as you can do.

This is a time of chaos, and your mistakes will all be gentle and you will be admired for doing cool stuff, so it is a perfect time to make the leap. Right now, SEO, SEM, affiliate and marketing firms, PR firms, and social media consultants are doing ad buys, are learning advertising, are becoming severely profitable.

They drink your milkshake.

But it is not too late. It is a time of chaos, it is a time to take risks. Learn from what has happened to your cousins, PR and main stream media. Evolve or perish. Yes, these will be interesting times for Madison Avenue and around the world.

And for you who have yet to do the reading, please check out Cluetrain Manifesto and Naked Conversation.

Oh, and no, I have not read Bob Garfield’s original presentations of how advertising will evolve over the next few years (Part 1 and Part 2); however, I plan to — and I plan to say more after I do. I merely intended to cross-post Trenn’s article from Marketing Conversation — I just didn’t realize I had such a strong opinion on the issue until I started writing my standard introduction and analysis paragraph.

* I can’t find the quote that Chris Brogan made, however, I can find my quoting of him on Twitter — maybe someone can help me find his original Tweet.

If you have not been keeping on top of all of the great comments streaming in to the AH Poll entitled “If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Palin be competent to be President?” you are really missing out! Some of them are the most insightful, thoughtful, and brilliant collection of thoughts representing the best and the worst of the right and the left! Roll up your sleeves and batten your hatches because you’re going to have one hell of a ride. Oh, also, these comments are in reverse-chronological order so the most recent are at the top. If you want to keep track of them live, please go visit them where they love and breathe. Read below for the most amazing Sarah Palin comment thread of the Internets!

And, here’s an embed of the poll, if I’ve piqued your interest by now:

With regards the second presidential debate, I thought it was the same ole same ole. I thought that there was not the kind of passion that one might really feel if one were truly concerned with the economy or with America.

I thought that the dig about the Hair Transplant, with regards to Joe Biden, was cheap, and I think that John McCain’s “folksiness” comes across as very snide and mean-spirited. I am surprised how little these two guys have true passion, conviction, or the sort of fire that might make either one of them a great president.

I feel no awe at either of their existence on the stage or at all. There are, indeed, men like this. And, when Barack Obama first landed on the stage, back during the 2004 Democratic convention, I was awed.

I am afraid these two men have been so altered and watered-down over the course of this ultra-marathon of a campaign that they’re truly afraid to convey their visions for each of their presidencies with any sort of authenticity or truth. I don’t know what to say.

I was underwhelmed. All three of these debates have been draws, two presidential and one vice-presidential — and if there have been winners at all, it surely has been the result of a TKO — technical knock out.

Nobody has even really laid a finger on the other. It is truly appalling to me to see this sort of cat and mouse so close to the elections.

Would someone just take off his glove and please challenge the other to a bona fide duel already?

I really miss Bill Clinton.

1. Markets are conversations.
2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
4. Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.
5. People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.
6. The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.
7. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.
8. In both internetworked markets and among intranetworked employees, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way.
9. These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.
10. As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally.
11. People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from vendors. So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to commoditized products.
12. There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.
13. What’s happening to markets is also happening among employees. A metaphysical construct called “The Company” is the only thing standing between the two.
14. Corporations do not speak in the same voice as these new networked conversations. To their intended online audiences, companies sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.
15. In just a few more years, the current homogenized “voice” of business—the sound of mission statements and brochures—will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.
16. Already, companies that speak in the language of the pitch, the dog-and-pony show, are no longer speaking to anyone.
17. Companies that assume online markets are the same markets that used to watch their ads on television are kidding themselves.
18. Companies that don’t realize their markets are now networked person-to-person, getting smarter as a result and deeply joined in conversation are missing their best opportunity.
19. Companies can now communicate with their markets directly. If they blow it, it could be their last chance.
20. Companies need to realize their markets are often laughing. At them.
21. Companies need to lighten up and take themselves less seriously. They need to get a sense of humor.
22. Getting a sense of humor does not mean putting some jokes on the corporate web site. Rather, it requires big values, a little humility, straight talk, and a genuine point of view.
23. Companies attempting to “position” themselves need to take a position. Optimally, it should relate to something their market actually cares about.
24. Bombastic boasts—”We are positioned to become the preeminent provider of XYZ”—do not constitute a position.
25. Companies need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to the people with whom they hope to create relationships.
26. Public Relations does not relate to the public. Companies are deeply afraid of their markets.
27. By speaking in language that is distant, uninviting, arrogant, they build walls to keep markets at bay.
28. Most marketing programs are based on the fear that the market might see what’s really going on inside the company.
29. Elvis said it best: “We can’t go on together with suspicious minds.”
30. Brand loyalty is the corporate version of going steady, but the breakup is inevitable—and coming fast. Because they are networked, smart markets are able to renegotiate relationships with blinding speed.
31. Networked markets can change suppliers overnight. Networked knowledge workers can change employers over lunch. Your own “downsizing initiatives” taught us to ask the question: “Loyalty? What’s that?”
32. Smart markets will find suppliers who speak their own language.
33. Learning to speak with a human voice is not a parlor trick. It can’t be “picked up” at some tony conference.
34. To speak with a human voice, companies must share the concerns of their communities.
35. But first, they must belong to a community.
36. Companies must ask themselves where their corporate cultures end.
37. If their cultures end before the community begins, they will have no market.
38. Human communities are based on discourse—on human speech about human concerns.
39. The community of discourse is the market.
40. Companies that do not belong to a community of discourse will die.
41. Companies make a religion of security, but this is largely a red herring. Most are protecting less against competitors than against their own market and workforce.
42. As with networked markets, people are also talking to each other directly inside the company—and not just about rules and regulations, boardroom directives, bottom lines.
43. Such conversations are taking place today on corporate intranets. But only when the conditions are right.
44. Companies typically install intranets top-down to distribute HR policies and other corporate information that workers are doing their best to ignore.
45. Intranets naturally tend to route around boredom. The best are built bottom-up by engaged individuals cooperating to construct something far more valuable: an intranetworked corporate conversation.
46. A healthy intranet organizes workers in many meanings of the word. Its effect is more radical than the agenda of any union.
47. While this scares companies witless, they also depend heavily on open intranets to generate and share critical knowledge. They need to resist the urge to “improve” or control these networked conversations.
48. When corporate intranets are not constrained by fear and legalistic rules, the type of conversation they encourage sounds remarkably like the conversation of the networked marketplace.
49. Org charts worked in an older economy where plans could be fully understood from atop steep management pyramids and detailed work orders could be handed down from on high.
50. Today, the org chart is hyperlinked, not hierarchical. Respect for hands-on knowledge wins over respect for abstract authority.
51. Command-and-control management styles both derive from and reinforce bureaucracy, power tripping and an overall culture of paranoia.
52. Paranoia kills conversation. That’s its point. But lack of open conversation kills companies.
53. There are two conversations going on. One inside the company. One with the market.
54. In most cases, neither conversation is going very well. Almost invariably, the cause of failure can be traced to obsolete notions of command and control.
55. As policy, these notions are poisonous. As tools, they are broken. Command and control are met with hostility by intranetworked knowledge workers and generate distrust in internetworked markets.
56. These two conversations want to talk to each other. They are speaking the same language. They recognize each other’s voices.
57. Smart companies will get out of the way and help the inevitable to happen sooner.
58. If willingness to get out of the way is taken as a measure of IQ, then very few companies have yet wised up.
59. However subliminally at the moment, millions of people now online perceive companies as little more than quaint legal fictions that are actively preventing these conversations from intersecting.
60. This is suicidal. Markets want to talk to companies.
61. Sadly, the part of the company a networked market wants to talk to is usually hidden behind a smokescreen of hucksterism, of language that rings false—and often is.
62. Markets do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want to participate in the conversations going on behind the corporate firewall.
63. De-cloaking, getting personal: We are those markets. We want to talk to you.
64. We want access to your corporate information, to your plans and strategies, your best thinking, your genuine knowledge. We will not settle for the 4-color brochure, for web sites chock-a-block with eye candy but lacking any substance.
65. We’re also the workers who make your companies go. We want to talk to customers directly in our own voices, not in platitudes written into a script.
66. As markets, as workers, both of us are sick to death of getting our information by remote control. Why do we need faceless annual reports and third-hand market research studies to introduce us to each other?
67. As markets, as workers, we wonder why you’re not listening. You seem to be speaking a different language.
68. The inflated self-important jargon you sling around—in the press, at your conferences—what’s that got to do with us?
69. Maybe you’re impressing your investors. Maybe you’re impressing Wall Street. You’re not impressing us.
70. If you don’t impress us, your investors are going to take a bath. Don’t they understand this? If they did, they wouldn’t let you talk that way.
71. Your tired notions of “the market” make our eyes glaze over. We don’t recognize ourselves in your projections—perhaps because we know we’re already elsewhere.
72. We like this new marketplace much better. In fact, we are creating it.
73. You’re invited, but it’s our world. Take your shoes off at the door. If you want to barter with us, get down off that camel!
74. We are immune to advertising. Just forget it.
75. If you want us to talk to you, tell us something. Make it something interesting for a change.
76. We’ve got some ideas for you too: some new tools we need, some better service. Stuff we’d be willing to pay for. Got a minute?
77. You’re too busy “doing business” to answer our email? Oh gosh, sorry, gee, we’ll come back later. Maybe.
78. You want us to pay? We want you to pay attention.
79. We want you to drop your trip, come out of your neurotic self-involvement, join the party.
80. Don’t worry, you can still make money. That is, as long as it’s not the only thing on your mind.
81. Have you noticed that, in itself, money is kind of one-dimensional and boring? What else can we talk about?
82. Your product broke. Why? We’d like to ask the guy who made it. Your corporate strategy makes no sense. We’d like to have a chat with your CEO. What do you mean she’s not in?
83. We want you to take 50 million of us as seriously as you take one reporter from The Wall Street Journal.
84. We know some people from your company. They’re pretty cool online. Do you have any more like that you’re hiding? Can they come out and play?
85. When we have questions we turn to each other for answers. If you didn’t have such a tight rein on “your people” maybe they’d be among the people we’d turn to.
86. When we’re not busy being your “target market,” many of us are your people. We’d rather be talking to friends online than watching the clock. That would get your name around better than your entire million dollar web site. But you tell us speaking to the market is Marketing’s job.
87. We’d like it if you got what’s going on here. That’d be real nice. But it would be a big mistake to think we’re holding our breath.
88. We have better things to do than worry about whether you’ll change in time to get our business. Business is only a part of our lives. It seems to be all of yours. Think about it: who needs whom?
89. We have real power and we know it. If you don’t quite see the light, some other outfit will come along that’s more attentive, more interesting, more fun to play with.
90. Even at its worst, our newfound conversation is more interesting than most trade shows, more entertaining than any TV sitcom, and certainly more true-to-life than the corporate web sites we’ve been seeing.
91. Our allegiance is to ourselves—our friends, our new allies and acquaintances, even our sparring partners. Companies that have no part in this world, also have no future.
92. Companies are spending billions of dollars on Y2K. Why can’t they hear this market timebomb ticking? The stakes are even higher.
93. We’re both inside companies and outside them. The boundaries that separate our conversations look like the Berlin Wall today, but they’re really just an annoyance. We know they’re coming down. We’re going to work from both sides to take them down.
94. To traditional corporations, networked conversations may appear confused, may sound confusing. But we are organizing faster than they are. We have better tools, more new ideas, no rules to slow us down.
95. We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching. But we are not waiting.

Always remember! Never forget! If you’re in marketing or public relations and you have not read The Cluetrain Manifesto, it is about time — read it!

President “Bobby”: Mr. Gardner, do you agree with Ben, or do you think that we can stimulate growth through temporary incentives?
[Long pause]
Chance the Gardener: As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden.
President “Bobby”: In the garden.
Chance the Gardener: Yes. In the garden, growth has it seasons. First comes spring and summer, but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again.
President “Bobby”: Spring and summer.
Chance the Gardener: Yes.
President “Bobby”: Then fall and winter.
Chance the Gardener: Yes.
Benjamin Rand: I think what our insightful young friend is saying is that we welcome the inevitable seasons of nature, but we’re upset by the seasons of our economy.
Chance the Gardener: Yes! There will be growth in the spring!
Benjamin Rand: Hmm!
Chance the Gardener: Hmm!
President “Bobby”: Hm. Well, Mr. Gardner, I must admit that is one of the most refreshing and optimistic statements I’ve heard in a very, very long time.
[Benjamin Rand applauds]
President “Bobby”: I admire your good, solid sense. That’s precisely what we lack on Capitol Hill.

[Via Being There 1979]

Lisa Hayes popped me an article by Denis Hayes, a man who suspiciously seems related to Lisa, “Fantastic new article by Denis Hayes about energy policy — please feel free to share far and wide!” Well, I am the biggest fan of Lisa and so here we go — my attempt to share this article a wee little further and wider: Climate Solutions: Charting a Bold Course A cap-and-trade system is not the answer, according to a leading alternative-energy advocate. To really tackle climate change, the U.S. must revolutionize its entire energy strategy.

Opinion: Climate Solutions: Charting a Bold Course

A cap-and-trade system is not the answer, according to a leading alternative-energy advocate. To really tackle climate change, the U.S. must revolutionize its entire energy strategy.

by Denis Hayes

More than 30 years ago, President Jimmy Carter called for a daring transition to a new energy future, an effort he likened to “the moral equivalent of war.” But the hard truth is that the United States is in far worse shape in the energy realm today than it was when Carter left office.

Since 1981, annual greenhouse gas emissions have grown from 4.7 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide to 5.9 billion metric tons. America imported 1.6 billion barrels of oil in 1981; by 2007 imports had ballooned to 3.7 billion barrels. Today, oil prices have surged past $130 per barrel, and the best evidence suggests that total global oil production is at or nearing its peak. Under President Carter, America dominated the world in renewable energy research, development, and commercialization, but in the ensuing decades our federal government has thrown away that lead.

With the economy now staggering from its addiction to oil, and with evidence of global warming having persuaded all but the knuckle-draggers, is America at last getting serious about freeing itself from carbon fuels?

Actually, no. Most environmentally sensitive politicians and even many national green groups are remarkably blithe that the Lieberman-Warner bill — a 500-page cap-and-trade law filled with more holes than a Madonna dance outfit — will take us there.

The tragedy is that we still have a chance to solve the global warming crisis, but we are blowing it by chasing false hopes in the form of an inadequate cap-and-trade bill.

Acting fast enough and on a large enough scale to avoid unthinkable climate consequences will require a more ambitious effort than the New Deal, the Interstate Highway System, and the Manhattan Project, all rolled into one. Serious efforts to stabilize the world’s climate will have dramatic consequences for industry, transportation, architecture, agriculture, leisure, and consumerism, and so, many of these changes will be fought tooth and nail — as was evident last week when Republican Senators attacked and derailed the Lieberman-Warner bill, forcing Democratic leaders to place the initiative on hold until a new president takes office.

The truth is that all our largest current energy sources will need to be replaced by new sources — over the ferocious opposition of the powerful companies that market them.

The story of how we got into this crunch is a tale of political opportunism and shortsightedness. For had America continued on the course we’d embarked upon in the mid-1970s, the task ahead would now be much less expensive, much less painful, and much more certain of success.

In 1979, after the Arab oil embargo, Carter announced that by the year 2000 America was to get at least one-fifth of all its energy from renewable sources — mainly solar energy, wind, and biofuels. The Solar Energy Research Institute, which I then served as director, was at the heart of this effort. Leading a team of scientists and analysts drawn from national labs and major universities, SERI prepared the detailed technical and policy blueprint to meet or surpass the 20 percent goal.

In 1981, halfway through his first year in office, President Ronald Reagan abandoned the 20 percent goal, reduced SERI’s $125 million budget by $100 million, and installed a dentist named Jim Edwards as Secretary of Energy. To demonstrate his contempt for the notion of alternative energy, Reagan ordered the solar water heaters ripped off the White House roof. We’ve never recovered.

The successive administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, bobbing along on a sea of cheap oil, did little to shift America’s economy to renewable energy sources. And for the past seven years, the United States has been led by a president who projects such a breathtaking marriage of arrogance and incompetence that his refusal to even acknowledge the reality of climate change has not generally been considered one of his more glaring flaws.

As climate science has grown increasingly clear, many corporate CEOs have become convinced that global warming has a human signature. The brightest CEOs of Fortune 100 companies realized that once the Democrats took back control of Congress, it would be only a matter of time before climate legislation was enacted. The next president, whoever it is, will demand action. These CEOs all wanted to be at the table — in Washington, if you aren’t at the table, you’re likely to wind up on the menu.

Environmental groups soon found themselves being courted by business leaders who recognized that the climate threat would require a serious national response. They formed the U.S. Climate Action Partnership and other alliances that offered benefits for environmentalists but also entailed subtle costs. The most obvious benefit was that environmental leaders are taken more seriously on Capitol Hill when they arrive linking arms with the CEOs of General Electric, Caterpillar, DuPont, and General Motors.

The cost was the natural downside of consensus building: Policies cannot significantly harm the core interests of any of the participants. When the participants include the world’s largest automobile company, the largest manufacturer of jet engines, the largest maker of mining equipment for coal and bituminous sands, etc., this is not an insignificant cost.

What emerged from this unexpected alliance was a consensus that the centerpiece of climate policy should be a cap on CO₂, generally applied as close to the point of emission as realistically possible. Additionally, there was widespread agreement that (a) between 25 percent and 80 percent of all emissions permits should be given away to major emitters for a transitional period; (b) the law should provide ample “offsets” available for purchase by companies failing to meet reduction targets; and (c) “safety valves” should permit relaxed enforcement in case greenhouse gas reductions cause temporary economic hardship.

Unfortunately, these are genuinely terrible ideas. They are not bad because they lack ambition; rather, they are bad because they move boldly in the wrong direction. They don’t merely ignore the way that the global economy responds to real-world policies; they ignore everything we have learned about human nature since Rousseau’s belief in humanity’s innate goodness crashed on the shoals of 18th-century reality.

So what should a serious energy and climate policy look like?

Carbon Must be Capped Where It Enters the Economy, Not Where It Leaves It

The backbone of any comprehensive policy to limit greenhouse gas emissions must cap carbon at the places — coal mines, oil fields, pipelines, ports — where it enters the economy. Instead, at the behest of corporate behemoths and their green enablers, our political leaders are focusing most of their attention on smokestacks, and when that is obviously impossible (e.g. with gasoline or propane) on refiners or distributors. They want to cap CO₂ where it enters the atmosphere — an approach that is guaranteed to fail because there are far too many point sources.

Europe has already attempted a cap-and-trade program, and it belly-flopped. Senators Warner and Lieberman, who should be applauded for at least acknowledging that global warming is a problem, failed to absorb some important lessons from Europe, including:

• The most important part of cap-and-trade is the “cap.” Any successful law must place an impermeable lid on the amount of carbon that enters the atmosphere. To whatever extent additional trees or windmills are used to “offset” additional carbon-based fuels, the exercise is self-defeating.
• In contrast to regulating a sea of smokestacks, the best course is to require carbon permits at the 2,000 sources where carbon enters the economy. It would be simple, straightforward, and impossible to “game.” It is vastly more effective than trying to police carbon dioxide wherever carbon is burned. In setting the number of carbon permits issued — and thus determining how much coal, oil, and gas can enter the economy — the government would be setting an absolute, easily-enforced cap on emissions.
• All carbon permits should be auctioned — not given away. In Europe, permits were given away to large carbon users to ease their transition to the new regime. Major polluters made cheap improvements, lowered their emissions, and sold their unneeded permits. This gave windfalls to the worst polluters, penalized companies that had already invested in efficient new factories and renewable energy, and helped guarantee that Europe would miss its Kyoto targets.Auctioning 100 percent of all carbon permits is fair and transparent; it eliminates backroom special-interest pleadings. By reducing the number of permits auctioned each year, the government can guarantee that its emissions targets are met.

Use Auction Revenues Intelligently

The most vital use for most of the revenues would be to serve such climate-related public purposes as building the infrastructure needed for a national “smart grid” for electricity and for high-speed electrified railroads, assuring large federal markets for the sunrise industries of the post-carbon economy, and finding ways to accelerate the solution of the climate problem through huge boosts in federal support for basic research. However, a portion of the revenues should compensate for the regressive nature of what is effectively a carbon tax, perhaps by using them to meet the shortfalls facing Medicare and Social Security and helping to underwrite training for green-collar jobs.

Promote Renewable Energy

Government has a long tradition of helping sunrise industries supplant their well-entrenched predecessors. Canals were encouraged as more efficient than horses. Railroads were viewed as a way to open the west. The interstate highway system replaced many of the functions performed by railroads.

Some renewable energy sources would benefit greatly from a focused, long-term federal commitment to R&D. Others are already poised to ride learning curves to lower prices through economies of mass production — but require guaranteed markets to elicit the necessary investment. (Computer chips went from being high-priced luxuries to cheap-as-dirt commodities only because the Air Force and NASA bought them in bulk until their prices fell to a level where the private market took over.)

The federal government should be buying photovoltaic devices in bulk and installing them on all federal buildings, military bases, and the backs of billboards, and pouring the power into the grid. The goal should be to grow the market in a rapid yet predictable way linked to constantly lower prices. The start-and-stop unpredictability of renewable energy tax credits over the last 30 years has severely undermined the wind and solar industries, and placed American companies at a huge disadvantage with foreign competitors. As recently as 1998, America was the world’s largest manufacturer of solar photovoltaics — a technology that was invented here. But Japan, with a long-term strategy, sped past the U.S. the following year. A few years later, led by Germany, much of Europe implemented tariffs that vaulted the solar field into hyperdrive. If current trends continue, annual global photovoltaic production by 2011 will be a stunning 30 gigawatts, of which the U.S. will contribute perhaps 4 percent.

Construct a Resilient Nationwide Smart Grid to Take Power from Anywhere to Anywhere

The arguments for a national smart grid are legion; the arguments against it don’t hold water. Many carbon-neutral renewable energy sources are intermittent or diurnal, and the best locations both for sources (sunlight, wind, geothermal) and for storage are widely dispersed. We need to be able to knit the nation together. Only the government can assemble the corridor rights to make such a development possible.

Get Serious about Automobile Mileage

In World War II — without Representative John Dingell Jr. to protect it from reality — Detroit was ordered to stop making cars and start making tanks. Today, Detroit needs to be ordered to stop making civilian tanks and start making cars. Manufacturers should be free to use any technology that can get 50 mpg by 2020 and 100 mpg by 2030. The world cannot afford yet another abysmal failure by the once-proud American automobile industry.

Build High-Speed Electrified Railways for Our Busiest Corridors

The answer to every intercity travel need is not an airplane or a car. America is the only industrial power on earth without high-speed electrified rail — a super-efficient mode of intercity travel that can be carbon-free. I don’t know a single American who has traveled on the bullet train from Tokyo to Osaka who hasn’t wondered, “Why can’t we do that from Boston to Washington? From San Francisco to LA?” It would require the same sort of government effort that built the interstate highway system — or, for that matter, the original railroads.

Set Strong Building Energy Performance Standards

We need to make all new buildings carbon-neutral by 2030, requiring vast increases in efficiency and walls and roofs that harvest energy directly from sunlight. The astonishing rate at which voluntary LEED standards have swept across the country suggests a deep hunger on the part of smart architects and builders for structures that will make sense throughout their 50-year lifetimes. We need to build on that momentum to create a new generation of energy efficient “living buildings.”

Train the Labor Force

Reversing climate change has an enormous potential to put America back to work. The greatest employment opportunities are for those who will transport and install solar modules, build and maintain wind farms, construct and operate the high-speed rail system and the “smart grid.” Programs, mostly at community colleges, to teach these new skills need to increase 100-fold, and a special emphasis should be placed on retraining the “losers” in the energy transitions — such as workers in coal mines and coal-fired power plants, etc. — and inner-city poor who have seen their job prospects disappear in the globalized economy.

The Time is Now

Following decades of political denial of climate science, America now lags far behind Europe and Japan in creating most of the basic building blocks for a carbon-neutral era. In several core renewable energy technologies, we have already been passed by China.

It’s not too late to get back in the game. But the global industry is rapidly expanding and maturing, and it has supportive government policies in Germany, Japan, the Nordic states, the Netherlands, South Korea, and China.

America has unparalleled scientific and engineering excellence, formidable financial muscle, bountiful natural resources, a democratic political system, and an entrepreneurial culture well-suited to helping to lead the world into a prosperous, carbon-neutral era. But we have been dragging our heels, as if this were a problem for our children to fix.

Global warming is our problem, and it’s time to get serious about solving it.

Diane Grzyb, the Polish Diva, and I grew up Catholic and I think we both agree that the original Seven Deadly Sins are pretty good but that “kids nowadays…” What I mean is that most kids nowadays don’t even know (or care) what many of these sins even mean: Sloth? Gluttony? Envy? What does that mean?

Even so, most of these mortal, deadly, sins aren’t even sins any more, they’re American and good for the economy. The economy would collapse were advertisers not able to leverage Pride, Envy, Lust, Gluttony, and Greed for their sales and marketing strategies! Come on, it is true, these “sins” drive the economy!

Also, when it comes to international relations and crowd control, Anger and Sloth pretty much drive the war on terrorism and make it easier for the Powers That Be to extricate our liberties from our cold Slothful fingers.

I am not making any sense on this — Diane nails it when she says, “the problem is that people either don’t believe that they sin or that they don’t believe that telling someone else their sins will make them better people” Diane says it better than me in The New Seven Mortal Sins:

“I was a little surprised to learn that the Vatican has issued a new list of seven deadly sins, particularly since the apparent reason for revisiting the list was because people aren’t taking advantage of the sacrament of reconciliation enough. But just looking at today’s headlines alone suggests that the old sins were the problem (i.e., lust at the Mayflower, envy of more popular presidential candidates). No, the sins aren’t the problem: the problem is that people either don’t believe that they sin or that they don’t believe that telling someone else their sins will make them better people.”

But for giggles, let’s review the list:

THE OLD MORTAL SINS
- Pride
- Envy
- Lust
- Gluttony
- Anger
- Greed
- Sloth

THE NEW MORTAL SINS
- Environmental pollution
- Genetic manipulation
- Accumulating excessive wealth
- Inflicting poverty
- Drug trafficking and consumption
- Morally debatable experiments
- Violation of fundamental rights of human nature

Now, father forgive me, I have no idea what some of these mean, nor do I believe that I have the resources to commit these sins. Genetic manipulation? I’m not running any cloning labs in my basement. And violation of fundamental rights of human nature? What the heck does that mean? Requiring Catholics to take a philosophy course before they make amends with G-d just doesn’t sound like an enticing way to get them back in the confessional.

I wrote an article called Don’t Save the Whales and the results have been unanimously negative, hostile — even murderous. I call these 14-year-olds who consider me worthy of being harpooned, flayed, and killed, the Whale-Qaeda! Don’t you love that?

1. Sydney wrote:

   KILL THE CHRIS!! KILL THE CHRIS!! cMON EVERYBODY, DONT SAVE THE CHRIS ABRAHAMS!!! considering he doesnt care about anything but himself. hes gonna ruin the world!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU SUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!

   Saturday, March 8, 2008 at 1:42 pm #

2. jenn wrote:

   i think you are a fucked up person considering you dont care about anything but your self i hope a whale beaches it self on you

   Thursday, January 3, 2008 at 6:46 pm #

3. Tony wrote:

   I hope you burn in hell Whales r Awsome, they rule. Fuck u

   Sunday, March 2, 2008 at 7:55 am #

4. angie wrote:

   What the fuck is wrong with you, you selfish asshole!!! if you where getting harpooned to the point of near extinction-i think you would want to be saved…then again what whould the Japs need 2 do ‘research’ on a self centred-ass like yourself. whales have done NOTHING to this world besides making it alittle bit more beautiful. Dude, what have they done too you…do you feel unapriciated? being a member of a race of fucking BILLIONS!! Get a life you sick, redarded cocksucker!!! hope you randomaly get harpooned one day and dragged aboard a big fucking ship-whilst your skin is being riped off…hope you like hate-mail, motherfucker!! your gonna get lots. WHALES RULE. PEACE OUT xxx

   Sunday, March 2, 2008 at 7:51 am #

5. Jordan wrote:

   You truley are the most selfish uneducated vile and pathetic little man ive ever seen in my whole life. You know that 90 percent of these people that are standing up for whales and such, do not have children, or any sort of obligation at home, and do you not think that your family would be happy for you, that you’re doing something that you love? Well you truley are a fool. You say we should spend less time fighting for the whales… You are spending an equal ammount of time trying to stop us.. So take some of your own advise… Shut up, go back to school and stay in your dark cave with your beloved children… who I assume will grow up to be as little hearted, foolish, evil, vile and cruel. If you didn’t catch that you might want to get a dictonary… Do you know what a library is? Most likely not. Bloody idiot. Have fun loosing this war.

   Saturday, March 1, 2008 at 7:21 am #

6. Victoria wrote:

   SHUT THE HECK UP! DON’T BE SUCH AN IDIOT! WHALES ARE ALMOST GONE! EXTINCTED! NADA! AND ALL YOU CAN DO TO HELP IS TO CONVINCE PEOPLE TO KILL WHALES!? HAVE YOU GOT NO HEART!? IF YOU DO YOUR SO COLD HEARTED! WHAT THE HECK IS YOUR PROBLEM!!!!!!!!!!
   Y’KNOW I MAY ONLY BE A PRE-TEEN, BUT EVERYONE CAN MAKE A CHANGE IN THE WORLD! EVEN KIDS TOO. SO SHUT UP COLD HEART!

   Monday, February 25, 2008 at 10:30 pm #

7. bambam2cute4you@yaho wrote:

   Dude you really need to get a real hobby other than dissin’ the whales they are apart of the ecosystem and what goes around comes around so i hope that you get stolen by some japenese whalers that will take your guts and feed them to their hungery offspring!!! Plus I think that you dont even know how many ways us humans hurt animals every day so some of us are trying to help them!

   Monday, February 11, 2008 at 7:18 pm #

8. sea_angel27 wrote:

   i think u should think again about not saving these amazing creatures they have lived here way before we did, that does NOT mean kill them. whales and dolphins, especially orcas are said to be as smart as humans maybe smarter, think of how they feel if one of their family members got killed!ur probably just a sick old man that sits all day thinking of these things. so… save the whales and all of gods creatures their not doing any harm to us! SELFISH PEOPLE LIKE U ARE!!!!!

   Friday, February 8, 2008 at 1:22 pm #

9. Evelyn wrote:

   hope u die!
   fuck u

   Monday, February 4, 2008 at 4:23 pm #

10. Tyler Boller Whale wrote:

    U are so selfish yes whales are important at the moment cause Japan is kkilling the for supposably reacher but how do u reacher a dead whale or any other animal in their natural habitat i agree with the other viewers on this web cause u are a heartless besterd and diserv to die .Other indanger animals need help too yes and we should help them but right now the whales need more help we are starting a club to save the whale we are collecting 5000 pennies to see how many whales will die for japan cause they said that is how many they are going to kill and the money we make is going to LOta a whale in Florida with the worlds smallest tank so they can make her a bigger tank.So u need to shut up and i hope ur family lives and u die y faggot. SAVE THE WORLD AND ITS LIVING CREATURE cuase we need living creatures to serive so we can live on cause they help our plants when they die and when they use the bathroom and we need them to eat vbut only certain ones .SAVE A COW EAT MORE CHICKEN> and u need to help us save the whales and i bet u are a bitter old man all alone trying to get attion because u are lonly and missible but that doesn’t mean that u should try to stop us cause we the children of the world are ur future one day we may find away to save the world

    Tuesday, January 22, 2008 at 3:39 pm #

11. chelsiea lhamon wrote:

    i think you should research whales while they are alive and whale shouldn’t be dead they should live how would you like it if you was alive and some one killed you and ate you ?

    thats my point i dont think you do.

    Tuesday, January 22, 2008 at 3:26 pm #

12. VivyRome wrote:

    You Rude Obnoxious idiot! How dare you put your CRUDE opinoins out there like that? I’m from D.C too and you’re lying my mother worked on the whale project with Green Peace and I’m fine.As is my wonderful family.Prejudice is wrong, you are discriminating against people who are trying to keep our economy and WORLD alive and intact. If you want to see it go up in flames, be my FUGLY (Fucking ugly)guest It’s a flippin’ free country you moron. Let it live. We need to save the world, and not exclude any creature. Yes children and are important, but SO ARE ALL ANIMALS! And, also, I agree with Amy: YOU, you heartless prat, deserve to be hunted by whale hunters!

    Sunday, January 6, 2008 at 4:39 am #

13. nema wrote:

    hello? is there a heart in your body? there are millons of humans on the earth, yes care about them but don’t not care about the animals and whales!! your website is sick and twisted, i’de rather see a kid die than a orca or a bottle nose dolphin!

    Friday, January 4, 2008 at 12:53 am #

Basis and origin

The idea for a North American currency union was first proposed in 1999 by Canadian economist Herbert G. Grubel. A senior fellow of the conservative Fraser Institute think-tank, he published a book entitled The Case for the Amero in September 1999, the year that the euro became a virtual currency. Another Canadian think-tank, the C.D. Howe Institute, advocates the creation of a shared currency between Canada and the United States.

After the report came out, centre-left nationalist groups in Canada expressed their opposition to any currency union because they view it as an attempt by American businesses to gain access to Canada’s extensive natural resources while dismantling the nation’s social services. The 100,000 member strong Council of Canadians, a progressive advocacy group, has declared one of its central issues to be the threat of “deep integration”.

The idea envisioned is a currency union of the US dollar, Canadian dollar, and the peso, or the dollarization of Canada and Mexico.

Support

Canada

One argument is that it would save up to $3 billion in currency transactions. The same authors also stated that Canada’s GDP could rise by up to 33 percent in a 2-year period given the adoption of a single currency.

The idea of a common currency has historically received more support in Quebec than in the rest of Canada; in a 2001 poll over 50 percent of respondents favoured the idea.

Mexico

The possibility of a monetary merger has also been discussed in Mexico as a natural step to take after the NAFTA. Former Mexican president Vicente Fox echoed that view and expressed his hope for a greater integration of Canada, Mexico and the United States, including an eventual monetary union, while on a 2007 promotional tour for his book “Revolution of Hope.”

Support in other regions

Lower levels of currency cooperation have been practiced in the Americas before. A number of nations, such as Argentina, Brazil, and Canada, have at times tied their currency to the U.S. dollar. Quite a few, such as Aruba, Barbados, and Cuba, still do.

The U.S. dollar is officially accepted alongside local currencies in El Salvador (since 2001) and Panama (since independence in 1903), although in practice these countries are fully dollarized. In 2000, Ecuador officially adopted the U.S. dollar as its sole currency.

Unofficially, the U.S. dollar is treated as a de facto secondary currency in much of Central America and the Caribbean.

Criticisms and problems

Opposition to a North American currency union exists high up in the governments on both sides of the Canada–United States border. Herbert Grubel, the first proponent of the amero, admits that American officials show no interest in the topic. He concedes that “there wouldn’t be very much benefit for the United States” in an amero. Likewise, the Canadian Department of Finance strongly opposes the creation of a common currency with the United States, citing the loss of economic sovereignty. In briefing documents to Minister of Finance Jim Flaherty, finance officials concluded:

“A North American common currency would undoubtedly mean for Canada the adoption of the U.S. dollar and U.S. monetary policy. Canada would have to give up its control of domestic inflation and interest rates.”

Trade-offs

From the point of view of the Canadian and Mexican governments, a major obstacle to the creation of a unified currency is the sheer dominance of the United States in any such union. Unlike any country in the EU, the USA has a larger economy than the rest of its respective continent/union combined.

A University of California, Santa Barbara paper puts forward the idea that the United States simply has too many advantages from the status quo to move toward a single currency. The United States dollar already acts as a global currency, meaning any transition to a ‘new’ currency would risk compromising this position and could cause a shift toward the euro or yen. The U.S. dollar is currently being used in over half of all the world’s exports, double the total United States foreign trade. The adoption of the amero could threaten the seignorage that America currently gains from its American dollar. While seignorage would still be gained from the amero, this would be shared among the Bank of Canada, the Federal Reserve, and possibly the Banco de México. Therefore, even if the amero were used just as much as the U.S. dollar, the advantages would be shared among two or more countries, and not exclusively earned by the United States.

Differing economic policies & situations

Several problems could arise in regards to macroeconomic management. By submitting to a common currency, the countries would lose considerable autonomy in the management of the currency itself, including the setting of interest rates. Amongst the three potential participants, there is considerable difference in policy which would have to be reconciled.

Debt is a factor affecting currency prices. As of 2008, the debt of the United States continues to increase, while the debt of the Canadian federal government is being reduced. This is a clear advantage for Canadians, and it would not be reflected if the currencies were to merge. The importance of commodities also factors into this equation.

One possible problem with a North American currency union is the differing economic situations between each country, while the Eurozone is broadly similar being service-based economies based on high public spending (compared to the United States), high taxes and wealth being created by the sale of goods and services. North America on the other hand has three distinct economies, one based mainly on agriculture and manufacturing, with a demand for free trade (Mexico), one based on services such as retail, with low taxes and low public spending (United States), and an another based on services with higher taxes and higher public spending, with a large sector in primary goods such as oil, mining and lumber (Canada).

Political mandate

Lou Dobbs, a reporter and commentator for CNN, has posited that the formation of a “North American Union” is being approached without the knowledge and consent of the majority of the people who would be affected by this.

Conservative Caucus Chairman Howard Phillips, WND columnist and author Jerome Corsi, activist Phyllis Schlafly, among others, have formed a coalition against the amero. On January 22, 2007, Republican Representatives Virgil Goode of Virginia, Tom Tancredo of Colorado, Walter Jones of North Carolina, and Ron Paul of Texas were among the 43 federal lawmakers who introduced H. CON. RES. 40, a resolution that expressed:

“The sense of Congress that the United States should not engage in the construction of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Superhighway System or enter into a North American Union (NAU) with Mexico or Canada.”

Constitutionality

Some assert that having a single North American currency would be unconstitutional under the current U.S. constitution under Article 1, Section 8; which states that the United States Congress has the right to: “coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;”

This concern rests on the contention that the Federal Reserve, created in 1913, is unconstitutionally issuing and regulating American currency as it is a quasi-government entity and not part of the legislative branch of the United States government. While physical U.S. dollars are issued by the Department of the Treasury (in paper form by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, in coin form by the U.S. Mint), most dollars in existence are not in physical form, and the value of the dollar is largely controlled by the actions of the Federal Reserve in lending and purchasing government securities.^{[citation needed]}

In the arts and literature

• Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace takes place in the near future with a common North American Currency, and a strong US-led North American confederation.
• North American Union and Amero was also mentioned in Zeitgeist, The Movie, as a stepping stone toward a world government
• Montezuma Strip and The Mocking Program, both by Alan Dean Foster, take place along the U.S.-Mexican border in a North American Union. The police are called Federales.

Rumors of “amero coins”

In August 2007, rumors and conspiracy theories began circulating across the Internet regarding alleged United States Treasury issued “amero” coins.

The inspiration behind these rumors may have the posting of images of medallions created by coin designer Daniel Carr. Carr, who designed the New York and Rhode Island 2001 statehood quarters, sells medals and tokens of his own design on his commercial website, “Designs Computed” (also known as “DC Coin”). Among his designs are a series of silver and copper fantasy issues of “amero coins” ranging in denomination from one to one thousand. The coins have the legend “Union of North America” on the back with his company’s logo, a stylized “DC”, in small type. Concerning his “amero” designs, he mentions on his website:

Unauthorized postings of images taken from his website have been reposted widely across the Internet, often being used as supposed “proof” of the amero coinage. Notably, Internet radio talk show host Hal Turner ran a full article on the “amero coin”, claiming to have arranged for a United States Government minted “amero” to be smuggled out of the Treasury Department by an employee of that organization.

Following Turner’s assertions of federal minting of ameros, a web site marketing the curio coins released a statement debunking Turner’s claims of a government cover up regarding Daniel Carr’s amero products. The debunking website Snopes also ran a further debunking of Turner’s claims, stating:

“Neither the U.S. Mint nor the U.S. Treasury has a hand in creating these ‘ameros’. These coins are merely collectibles offered to the buying public by a private company in the business of manufacturing such curiosities.”

See also

• Monetary union
• North American Union
• Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America
• United States dollar
• Canadian dollar
• Mexican peso
• World Currency Unit
• Zeitgeist, the Movie
• Eco (currency)
• Euro
• East Caribbean dollar
• Khaleeji
• Afro (currency)
• List of trade blocs

Now that I have moved to Berlin, I get to hear VOA and NPR Worldwide and the European version of BBC Worldwide and I am pretty excited. I can finally hear US propaganda “outside the border” which is fascinating. As part of NPR Worldwide’s broadcast this AM (104.1 FM), I got to hear a show this morning about the history of Public Diplomacy, which I found amazingly interesting. From 1914, I think they said, the US has had a real desire to educate and engage the world, which ended abruptly once we won the cold war. And then it all went to pot, especially since the responsibility of Public Diplomacy has been rolled into the US Department of State. Well, I am all for Public Diplomacy as a strategy that is much more effective than either PR or a propaganda war. One of the most useful past strategies, which is being gutted because of post 9-11 paranoia, was the global encouragement of students to study in the USA. One lad from Egypt spoke of his experience in Washington State at the University of Washington, saying, “I got to experience that most Americans live the American Dream on two parents working two jobs, which is something I would never have known from my experience of the USA from TV from Cairo.” Amazingly interesting. Here’s some more info on Public Dimplomacy via Wikipedia via Memes.org

In international relations, the term public diplomacy is a term coined in the 1960s to describe aspects of international diplomacy other than the interactions between national governments. It has been closely associated with the United States Information Agency, which used the term to define its mission. It was originally a euphemism for purportedly truthful propaganda.

Standard diplomacy might be described as the ways in which government leaders communicate with each other at the highest levels, the elite diplomacy we are all familiar with. Public diplomacy, by contrast – according to the definition at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy – focuses on the ways in which a country (or multi-lateral organization such as the United Nations) communicates with citizens in other societies. A country may be acting deliberately or inadvertently, and through both official and private individuals and institutions. Effective public diplomacy starts from the premise that dialogue, rather than a sales pitch, is often central to achieving the goals of foreign policy: public diplomacy must be seen as a two-way street.

Film, television, music, sports, video games and other social/cultural activities are seen by public diplomacy advocates as enormously important avenues for otherwise diverse citizens to understand each other and integral to the international cultural understanding, which they state is a key goal of modern public diplomacy strategy. It involves not only shaping the message(s) that a country wishes to present abroad, but also analyzing and understanding the ways that the message is interpreted by diverse societies and developing the tools of listening and conversation as well as the tools of persuasion.

One of the most successful initiatives which embodies the principles of effective public diplomacy is the creation by international treaty in the 1950s of the European Coal and Steel Community which later became the European Union. Its original purpose after World War II was to tie the economies of Europe together so much that war would be impossible. Supporters of European integration see it as having achieved both this goal and the extra benefit of catalysing greater international understanding as European countries did more business together and the ties among member states’ citizens increased. Opponents of European integration are leery of a loss of national sovereignty and greater centralization of power.

Public diplomacy as beyond propaganda

After the dissolution of the USIA in 1999, the term has continued to be used within the US government, especially the US Department of State. It has been used most often as the foreign policy equivalent of the term public relations, but embodies a much broader frame than this.

Aside from the use of media like the Voice of America, it also includes other kinds of interaction with the public in other countries. Arranging student exchange programs, hosting seminars, and meeting with foreign business and academic leaders are all considered public diplomacy. Indirect public diplomacy includes the everyday activities of citizens internationally, such as everyday cultural activities and products such as films, tourism, theatre, and internet discussion.

The term public diplomacy clearly originated as a euphemism for propaganda. However, this definition is a somewhat dated definition, as more sensitive practitioners embody an intercultural, ‘learning’ approach to public diplomacy, with an emphasis on dialogue rather than propaganda.

A history of the term “public diplomacy”

Nicholas J. Cull of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, wrote in his essay “‘Public Diplomacy’ Before Gullion: The Evolution of a Phrase:

The earliest use of the phrase “public diplomacy” to surface is actually not American at all but in a leader piece from The Times in January 1856. It is used merely as a synonym for civility in a piece criticizing the posturing of President Franklin Pierce.

According to publicdiplomacy.org, a website sponsored by the USIA Alumni Association,

The term public diplomacy was first used in 1965 by Edmund Gullion, a career diplomat, in connection with the foundation of the Edward R. Murrow Center at Tufts University‘s The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

The Murrow Center brochure described public diplomacy as:

the influence of public attitudes on the formation and execution of foreign policies. It encompasses dimensions of international relations beyond traditional diplomacy . . . [including] the cultivation by governments of public opinion in other countries; the interaction of private groups and interests in one country with those of another . . . (and) the transnational flow of information and ideas.

While Gullion and the Murrow Center were the first to use the term public diplomacy, their definition remains contested and controversial. Today, there is no one definition of public diplomacy, there are many definitions (links to other definitions).

The dictionary definition of the word propaganda is “The systematic propagation of a doctrine or cause or of information reflecting the views and interests of those advocating such a doctrine or cause.” Notice that the definition says nothing about whether the material is or is not true; the essence of propaganda is that it is distributed with the intention of supporting a cause. The word literally means “that which ought to be propagated” and originated in the Catholic Church to describe the church agency responsible for evangelising. See the article on propaganda for more detail.

In the United States, however, the word “propaganda” carried and carries the connotation of falsehood. The USIA has always maintained that its agencies, such as the Voice of America, are truthful. In a famous remark, Edward R. Murrow, then director of the USIA, said:

Truth is the best propaganda and lies are the worst. To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful. It is as simple as that.

Nevertheless the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 still prevents the distribution within the United States of official American information which was intended for foreign audiences, for example exempting Voice of America from releasing transcripts in response to FOIA requests.

Broadly speaking, then, until recent times, the term public diplomacy has traditionally been used by those supporting it to mean truthful propaganda. But critics, such as the editors of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, have viewed it in more nefarious terms, as a form of “covert propaganda.” They also report that “the bipartisan report of the Congressional Iran-Contra committees (November 1987, p. 34) found that ‘[i]n fact, “public diplomacy” turned out to mean public relations-lobbying, all at taxpayers’ expense.’”

See also

• Diplomacy Monitor, a tool for tracking Internet-based public diplomacy

References

• Fallows, James (2005) “Success without Victory,” The Atlantic Monthly, 295:1 p. 80 (Evera quotation)

Other relevant articles

• “A Clash of Professional Cultures:The David Kelly Affair” by Biljana Scott (Published in Hannah Slavik (ed.) Intercultural Communication and Diplomacy, DiploFoundation, 2004.)Also see conference slideshow presentation

• “Multiculturalism for the masses: social advertising and public diplomacy post 9/11″ by Biljana Scott (Published in Hannah Slavik (ed.) Intercultural Communication and Diplomacy, DiploFoundation, 2004.)

• “Public Diplomacy” by Pamela H. Smith, Minister-Counselor for Public Affairs, U.S. Embassy, London (Published in “Modern Diplomacy”)

• “Multistakeholder Public Diplomacy of Small and Medium-Sized States: Norway and Canada Compared” by Jozef Bátora (Paper presented to the International Conference on Multistakeholder Diplomacy,Malta, February 11-13, 2005)

External links

• How the World Sees America – Amar Bakshi on Washington Post/Newsweek on Public Diplomacy
• Example of term being used by President George W. Bush in relation to the Middle East – January 19, 2005 The Age
• Public Diplomacy Wiki maintained by the USC Center on Public Diplomacy
• Public Diplomacy (USIAAA)
• Journal of Place Branding and Public Diplomacy
• The Edward R. Murrow Center of Public Diplomacy at The Fletcher School
• Public Diplomacy Research Network

According to many many people, I am an awful awful man, given the comments I have received in response to Don’t Save the Whales. I can live with this sort of accusation given the context and the source. VivyRome wrote:

You Rude Obnoxious idiot! How dare you put your CRUDE opinoins out there like that? I’m from D.C too and you’re lying my mother worked on the whale project with Green Peace and I’m fine.As is my wonderful family.Prejudice is wrong, you are discriminating against people who are trying to keep our economy and WORLD alive and intact. If you want to see it go up in flames, be my FUGLY (Fucking ugly)guest It’s a flippin’ free country you moron. Let it live. We need to save the world, and not exclude any creature. Yes children and are important, but SO ARE ALL ANIMALS! And, also, I agree with Amy: YOU, you heartless prat, deserve to be hunted by whale hunters!

There have been a lot of history here and I have received a lot of comments very similar to this one. So, please do check out some of these articles if you want to either think or laugh — or both. Don’t Save the Whales but Don’t Kill the Whales Either, Kill the Humans Who Save the Whales, Don’t Save the Whales Two Years Later, Whale-Saving as Opiate, The Problem with Tree-Huggers and Pagan-Baby-Savers, One Man’s Rhetoric is Another Man’s Treasure, Don’t Save the Whales, Agrees Mum, “Don’t Save the Whales” Review: “you obviously is idiot”, The Hypocrisy in the Hardcore Activists, May God Have Mercey on your Souls, My Selfish Attitude to Life on Whales, Will Subliterate 17-Year-Olds Save the Whales?, Don’t Save the Planet, Kill the Humans Who Save the Whales, and If You Don’t Save the Whales then You Suck.

All About the Uzi thanks to Wikipedia

The Uzi (Hebrew: ????) is a family of guns that started with a compact, boxy, light-weight submachine gun. Smaller and newer variants are considered a machine pistol. The first Uzi submachine gun was designed by Uziel Gal (aka Fuctarp) in the late 1940s. It was manufactured by Israel Military Industries, Fabrique Nationale, and others.

Design

The Uzi fires the 9 mm Parabellum cartridge (though some variants fire .22 LR, .41AE, or .45ACP) using an open-bolt, blowback operated design with a cyclic rate of 600 round/min with a muzzle velocity of ~400 m/s (~1,310 ft/s). The weapon is 650 mm (25.6 in) long with stock extended and 470 mm (18.5 in) without. It weighs 3.5 kg (7.7 lb) empty and 4 kg (8.8 lb) with a fully loaded 25 round magazine inserted. Also available are 20, 32, 40 and 50 round magazines- 9 mm Parabellum, 10 round magazines-(.41) and (.22LR), and 16 round magazines-.45ACP. All of the above are manufactured by IMI. Other high capacity magazines exist (e.g. 50 round magazines and 100 round drums in 9mm) which are manufactured by companies other than IMI (such as Vector Arms).

It is made of stamped sheet metal and has relatively few parts, making it easy to strip for maintenance. It features a magazine held within the pistol grip, allowing for intuitive, and easy, reloading in difficult conditions (“fist finds fist”). The weapon also features a grip safety, making it difficult to fire accidentally. Despite the grip safety, the Uzi is notorious for slam-firing when dropped or exposed to sudden shocks. When decocked, the ejector port closes preventing entry of dust and dirt. Also, the bolt wraps around the barrel, allowing a heavier, slower-firing bolt in a shorter, better-balanced weapon. This is technically known as a telescoping bolt.

It is said that although a superb weapon, the Uzi is prone to jamming in desert environments because of sand, a fact which possibly contributed to the Israeli military’s decision to phase out the gun.

The grip-mounted magazine gives the Uzi a highly distinctive, instantly-recognizeable profile, and as such it is often seen in TV shows, movies and computer games. In such portrayals, the weapon is often fired one-handed (especially the Mini- and Micro-Uzis) and in some cases even as a pair of weapons, one in each hand. Although it is theoretically possible to hold and fire a pair of weapons in this manner, the inadequate recoil control of each weapon by the user contributes to extremely poor accuracy, as well as the possibility of hand or wrist injury.

History

The weapon was designed shortly after Israel gained its independence in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The design was based on the CZ Model 25. The Uzi submachine gun was submitted to the Israeli army for evaluation and won out over more conventional designs due to its simplicity and economy of manufacture. Gal did not want the weapon to be named after him but his request was ignored.

The initial model was accepted in 1951 and was first used in battle in 1956 and gained huge success. It was soon developed into a number of better engineered variants.

Israeli defense doctrine includes the practice of loading a magazine so that tracer rounds alternate with regular rounds. In operation, the personnel aim by walking the tracers onto the target.

The Uzi submachine gun was primarily used as a personal defense weapon by rear-echelon troops, officers, artillery troops and tankers. Advanced and smaller Uzi variations were used by the Israeli special forces until recently, when in December 2003, the Israeli military announced that it was completely phasing the Uzi out of use by its forces but would continue to manufacture the weapon for both domestic use and export.

Total sales of the weapon to date (end 2001) has netted IMI over $2 billion (US), with over ninety countries using the weapons either for their soldiers or in law enforcement.

The German Bundeswehr still use the Uzi under the name MP2.

Variants

There are several smaller variants of the Uzi SMG:

• Mini Uzi, 360 mm (14.17 in) long and basically a scaled-down version of the Uzi. First introduced in 1980, It comes with a side-folding stock and retains a small forward handgrip.
• Micro Uzi, at only 250 mm (9.84 in) in length barely larger than a standard pistol and about as small as the original Uzi design could be made. It fires from a closed bolt position and has a side-folding stock similar to the one on the Mini. The forward handgrip is completely eliminated. First introduced in 1986.
• Para Micro Uzi, designed specially for counter terror units. It was recently developed by the IMI and is in use by Israeli counter-terror units such as the YAMAM. It has a side-mounted charging handle, a provision which makes room for top and bottom-mounted Picatinny rails. It has an angled pistol-grip to accommodate a 33-round GLOCK 18 magazine.
• Uzi Pistol, a semi-automatic version of the Micro developed for sale in countries where the civilian ownership of automatic weapons is restricted, such as in the United States. Externally, it is distinguished by not having a stock or a recoil compensator.
• Uzi Carbine, a semi-automatic version of the full sized Uzi SMG, with a longer 400 mm (16 inch) barrel. Was also generally available for sale to civilians in the United States prior to both semi-auto models being banned from import in 1994. New Uzi Carbines are still available from several American manufacturers as of March, 2006.

Those variants are still in use by many special forces and law enforcement agencies in the world – including in Israel and the United States.

• The unrelated but similar Ingram MAC-10 is often dubbed the “American Uzi”.

In Popular Culture

The Uzi and its variants are some of the most popular submachine guns in the world. Along with the MP5 and MAC-10, they have appeared in countless films, TV series and video games. Here are some of the most popular:

Films and Animation

• Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator and Commando (film)
• Chuck Norris films
• Nicolas Cage in Lord of War
• Raid on Entebbe where the characters using it were genuine Israeli soldiers.
• The Matrix and Matrix Reloaded
• Madness Combat
• Night of the Comet
• The Wild Geese A film about mercenaries in southern Africa.

TV

• The A-Team
• Mission: Impossible
• The Equalizer
• Miami Vice

Games

• 24: The Game (Micro MG)
• BLACK
• DRIV3R (Uzi SMG)
• Driver: Parallel Lines (Mini Uzi)
• Global Operations (Micro-Uzi)
• GoldenEye 007 (ZMG 9mm)
• Grand Theft Auto III (Micro Uzi)
• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Micro Uzi as the Micro-SMG)
• Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (Uzi SMG)
• Hitman (computer game series) (Uzi and Micro-Uzi)
• Jagged Alliance 2
• Perfect Dark Zero as a UGL Liberator
• Project I.G.I.: I’m Going In
• Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield (Uzi and Micro-Uzi)
• The Specialists (Micro-Uzi)
• SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs (9mm Sub)
• SWAT 3 (Mini-Uzi)
• Tomb Raider series

Other appearances

Most notably, the Uzi submachine gun is the favored gun of G.I.-Joe Commando Snake Eyes. It has also been included with several G.I.-Joe action figures.

An Uzi is pictured on the cover of the Chick tract Sin Busters.

There is an Uzi weapon available in the Flash game Dynasty Street.

See also

• List of submachine guns
• Ruger MP9

External links

• Uzi Guide at isayeret.com – The Israeli Special Forces Database
• Uzi History
• Uzi in Parts(german)
• Uzi History and Lore

From Wikipedia:

The Darfur Conflict is an ongoing conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan, mainly between the Janjaweed, a militia group recruited from local Arab tribes, and the non-Arab peoples of the region. The Sudanese government, while publicly denying that it supports the Janjaweed, is providing arms and assistance and has participated in joint attacks with the group. The conflict began in February 2003.

The conflict has been described by the Western media as “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide.” In September 2004, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated 50,000 deaths in Darfur since the conflict’s beginning, mostly by starvation. In October, the organization’s head gave an estimate of 71,000 deaths by starvation and disease alone between March and October 2004. While a recent British Parliamentary Report estimates that over 300,000 people have already died[1], the United Nations estimates that 180,000 have died in the past eighteen months of the conflict [2]. More than 1.8 million people had been displaced from their homes. Two hundred thousand have fled to neighboring Chad.

Although the large majority of resultant refugees are non-Arab black Africans fleeing Arab Janjaweed attacks [3], there are also Arab victims and non-Arab perpetrators. In addition, both sides are largely black in skin tone, and the distinction between “Arab” and “non-Arab” common in Western media is heavily disputed by many people, including the Sudanese government. Moreover, these labels have been criticized for sensationalizing the conflict into one of racial motivations, where some experts instead attribute the causes to competition between farmers and nomadic cattle-herders who compete for scarce resources. In reality, though differences in lifestyle, as well as Arab or non-Arab status seem somewhat superficial, they are the basis upon which the government has decided who shall suffer bombings, mass killings and systematic rape by its proxy militias. This violence has forced people to flee into the desert, on the order of hundreds of thousands. Accurate numbers of dead have been difficult to attain, due to the government’s efforts to cover up these atrocities.

In the summer of 2004, the U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, travelled the refugee camps of Darfur with the Sudanese foreign minister. A team of American investigators stayed behind to interview people in the camps, and later, Powell testified before the U.S. Congress that genocide was being perpetrated in Darfur. The Sudanese government has denied claims that it is involved, though, Powell and his team found that the government is clearly and directly involved in committing the genocide. In addition to the Bush Administration, many others, such as Senator John Kerry also denounced it as a genocide. [4]

The UN, prior to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, called the Darfur conflict the world’s worst current humanitarian crisis. However, intervention by the UN is unlikely as the governments of key members of the Security Council are pragmatically and ideologically constrained in their ability to respond to the conflict. The Russian government, with its weakened economy, struggles to meet its internal security dilemnas regarding its persistent border conflicts. United States force deployments in Iraq and elsewhere make intervention a difficult proposition. The United States also faces difficulty stemming from its commitment to the peace process ending the Second Sudanese Civil War, which it fears may be derailed. Finally, setting up No-Fly Zones is logistically difficult considering the remoteness of Darfur, the lack of infrastructure in potential airbase neighbors, and the issue of airspace rights for flyovers to Darfur from other neighbors.

Moreover, in both of these nations, along with Britain and France, a strong lobby exists opposed to intervention in countries whose internal strife is not clearly related to the nation’s own interest (America and France having suffered demoralizing losses in Vietnam, as well as in Somalia and Algeria, respectively). The lack of capable foreign peacekeepers during the Rwanda and Liberia crises is a more recent example.

Those who have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in the region on all sides of the conflict will probably be held accountable. However, it is currently undecided whether prosecution will commence via the International Criminal Court, or via a provisional tribunal, such as the one used after the ethnic conflicts in Rwanda and in the Balkans. The Bush administration currently opposes the ICC option and supports the special tribunal mechanism.