unpegged

The following is a comment I left on Barack Obama’s website in response to his speech at the American Israeli Affairs Political Action Committee (AIPAC) today—perfectly choreographed, it would seem, to follow on the heels of his claiming the nomination (a claim that Hillary hasn’t refuted). After listening to the NPR podcast, I was in a state of utter despondency that the candidate, as I will now call him—since it’s official: they are all the same—is the hypocrite that my good friend JV says he is:

I am an American citizen living in Beirut, Lebanon, who is active in our Democrats Abroad chapter here, the first in the Arab world. Our chapter, though it was formed just five months ago, supports Obama and has a delegate (one of 22 worldwide) going to the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

You can’t imagine my horror at Sen. Obama’s speech before AIPAC today. How can the senator call for an end to prejudice and for combatting hatred so that all the walls fall down in the same breath as he calls Israel’s formation “just and necessary”? How he can condone the racism and discrimination (among Jews as well as Arabs and Muslims) that takes place inside that country by declaring that we must preserve the Jewish identity of the only democracy in the Middle East. He has surely offended more of his supporters than just me.

I had actually begun to believe after his race speech that he would take a different approach, a JUST approach to foreign policy in this region, winning the election be damned, because it was the right thing to do. Instead, he has once again, like so many before him, thrown down the gauntlet with a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do policy.

You can count on the fact that I will no longer contribute to his campaign and I will also ask others to refrain.

So he was speaking from the heart today? I guess then the race speech was what? From the hip?

All this for two percent. Speaking of two: two soldiers are being held by Hezbollah, not three. Where’d he get his talking points? Oh, that’s right, AIPAC.

Perhaps not the most incisive of reactions, but it now feels impossible to support him. I’m wondering what Jimmy Carter, who just endorsed him yesterday, thinks? Did he know? If so, what else does he know that we don’t? What do the rest of us think? Check out nytimes.com reader reactions.

We just had t-shirts designed as a fund-raising tool for our chapter. They have a picture of Obama with a microphone and YES WE CAN translated into the six languages of the UN. From today’s show of affection, for Israel, looks like we should have just gone with English and Hebrew.

For the record, these views are mine and do not represent the views of Democrats Abroad Lebanon.

Tonight, I am sleeping at my in-laws in Chiah, across the green line (see photo) from the Christian neighborhood we usually call home. Three people from both sides of the Christian-Muslim line have warned us that something is supposed to happen in Ain er Remmeneh tonight. I have twittered it (which means it’s also on my Facebook page) and told friends. I don’t know how much safer we are here. The Cole is off-shore and though I don’t know much about Navy destroyers, I’m pretty sure it’s not here to evacuate American citizens the way General Aoun told us today at 4:55 p.m. In fact, according to the US embassy, if we want to leave—they advise we consider carefully the risk of staying—we’re pretty much on our own. We should investigate the possiblity of chartering private watercraft to Cyprus, they said.

So here we are waiting.

Meanwhile, I just read about another kind of army that reminded me of my fantasy of an Airstream equipped with audio/visual/internet gear that I could drive around the country (Lebanon, the US, wherever) and use to give mobile multimedia workshops. In Gujarat, a state in western India that I had until five minutes ago never heard of, an NGO will follow up on its success with a program called RTI on Wheels by creating an RTI army. RTI stands is short for right to information and, according to Wikipedia, refers to refers to legislation that was passed in Indian parliament three years ago.

The RTI on Wheels, promoting awareness about the Act, has so far visited eight districts. The organisation was launched in March this year. Over 50,000 people have visited the RTI on Wheels, a modified jeep equipped with audio-visual equipment, Internet, multimedia projector, viewing screen and trained volunteers.

“The vehicle opens up completely and can be converted into a moving theatre. It also has illuminated screens on the sides with punchy slogans scrolled down,” Jog said, adding, “It was designed by a group of students from Duke University, UK.

The Right to Information Act provides for public access to all central and state government records as well as for the digitization of those records for easier access. When a citizen makes a request, the government has to respond in thirty days. I wish this was the case for my husband’s visa to the U.S. We submitted all our paperwork six months ago. It was accepted and is now supposedly passing through a Security Advisory Opinion process. I say supposedly because really there’s no way to know. The process is classified. Every time I write the embassy to ask about the status of things, I just get back a one-line email like this:

Unfortunately, we don’t know how much time the completion of the security clearance might take.

ME: Please, is there anyone I can talk to to get a better idea about whether or not we are talking about weeks or months? It is impossible to plan around this kind of uncertainty. Can you tell me where the visa is in the security clearance process as well as what is entailed in the security clearance process itself? Can’t someone give me an estimate of how long it will take based on past experience?

THEM: You need to contact the Visa Office at the Department of State in Washington regarding this issue.

I vainly searched for a phone number at State. Then, I pushed a little harder:

ME: The lack of assistance your office is providing me with regard to my situation is disturbing. Can you please provide me with the appropriate contact information. Also, can you please tell me when, i.e., on what date, the security clearance process was initiated? And by appropriate contact information, I mean within the visa office at the state department, since it seems to be nearly impossible to determine which office handles the additional security clearances, a search for which turned up a four-year-old press release.

THEM: The clearance was sent on November 20, 2007. We do not have the contact information (for public use) for the Visa Office the Security Advisory Opinion department.

Someone in the know, who had worked at an American embassy, told me could get the visa tomorrow or it could be another year. He also explained the immense amount of pressure embassy employees are under, and how if they make bad decisions, they’re held accountable for them.

I said, but we’re married. He said, you would not believe the things couples find out about each other in those interviews. On several occasions, he said, I’ve had to tell applicants that I’m a consular officer not a marriage counselor.

I gave the inquiries a rest until April. Then:

ME: I am just checking in to make sure that the security clearance process is still ongoing. Also, we have moved (within Beirut) and I wanted to see if we needed to update our address.

THEM:

Dear Mrs Dheere.
Thank you for your message concerning your husband’s immigrant visa case. The clearance is still ongoing, but unfortunately, we have not yet received any feedback pertaining to your husband’s case.

Thank you.
We hope this is helpful.

At least this time, I got a salutation. I guess we’ll just wait for the phone to ring. Who knows where we’ll be sleeping then.

Before lunch today, we decided it was time for a drive. After four days of being either in our house or Mohamad’s parents’ house, we were a bit stir crazy. And what with yesterday’s news that the opposition was leaving what is now, tragically, again being called West Beirut, we thought it was a good time to go.

We packed the video and snapshot cameras and got in the car and drove down the Old Damascus Road—the former Green Line—past the McDonald’s, the National Museum, the General Security, French Cultural Center, St. Joseph University—until we reached Sodeco Square, where much of the fighting had been on Thursday and part of Friday. At this point, we couldn’t go straight down Monot Street or left to the Bchar el Khoury interesection. So we parked. Grabbed out cameras and walked toward the rubble, sandbags, and charred tire, wire, a car seat frame.

One of the city’s biggest intersection, a crossroads for a cross-section of the population, it has no traffic lights. Sometimes a white-gloved policeman directs traffic, but oftentimes, he’s fingering a cigarette talking to a friend. When the traffic’s bad, which is almost all the time before 8 p.m., I curse that intersection. I’ve often fantasized about setting up my video camera for a day to document the insanity of the cars jockeying for position by going to the far right lane to turn left, or by occupying a lane of oncoming traffic just to maneuver around what they must consider the competition.

When it’s really bad, I break out the sarcasm. I have an idea! They should come up with some sort of sign system that tells some people to stop while telling others to go. Colors or shapes or something. Then, everyone would know whose turn it is. Oh, right, they already have something like that. It’s called a traffic light! Idiots! And they are sometimes aggressive idiots too—usually, the degree of aggression increases with the market value of the automobile and the size of the gas tank—but what else is one supposed to do in an absence of rules, but the best they can?

I long for the traffic that makes me crazy with superiority at Bchar el Khoury today. For the minibuses I would take from appointments at Sodeco to lunch in Chiah, where my husbands family lives. I long for the day, last Tuesday, when even if everything didn’t run smoothly, it ran. Instead, I’m walking over broken cinderblock and watching cars careen into u-turn when they realized they’ve reached another dead end in their futile attempt to reach wherever it is they need to be: a hospital, a mother’s house, a pet.

I shoot some video. Black painted slogans on the walls that weren’t there before. A Hezbollah flag looks out of place here. There’s a young boy, about 6 or 7, in a ragged orange shirt, carrying a blue plastic bag, and a wood shard of a stick. I stop filming for a second and I hear someone shouting. The boy starts walking toward us. And so does an older, but still half my age, man. They ask about what we’re shooting? We show them the pictures on the snapshot cam. I’m standing farther away so at first I think the video cam is okay. Then another guy the lead on a moped rides up and want to see the footage on it.

We show them. They want to make sure that faces aren’t visible and tell us we shouldn’t be taking pictures. On whose authority, I want to ask. I don’t look Lebanese so I can get away with things like this. At least once or twice. But I don’t want to embarrass my husband, who told them he was Shia to calm them down a bit. The look at the video. They’re suspicious of me even though we told them I was his wife. Not a journalist, he asked in Arabic. No, we said. And he, clearly not knowing what to make of me, gave us back our cameras and we left.

Who are they to tell us we can’t take pictures. Now we’re in the United States of Iran, my husband said.

We decided to drive on but to stay in the car. We went through the Christian district of Achrafiyeh, which, much like our own neighborhood, was open. People were drinking coffee at Starbucks on Sassine Square. The Spinney’s grocery store was open. We made the left turn and headed toward the Ring Bridge. Cinema Sofil. Tiffany. The Netherlands (or is it Austrian embassy). From our vantage point, we couldn’t see all the earth that had been dumped on the other side of the bridge. It just looked empty. The way it does when things aren’t going well here. We turned right, the way you would to go to Gemmayzeh, Beirut’s answer to the West Village, East Village, Soho, and the Lower East Side, all rolled into one. Plenty of people having brunch at Paul, no matter that there was a huge tank right outside, a part of the army deployment to take back the city, I suppose. We coyly asked if the road to Doura was open, even though we had no intention of turning that way.

We kept on past the parking lot that used to be Beirut bustling town center and now plays host to concrete, the enormous and lonely-looking Hariri mosque, Hariri’s tomb, a Virgin Megastore, and new condominums on the rise. When we reached the port, we turned left and headed through the Solidere downtown, which has been all but closed since the opposition sit-in began 18 months ago.

We kept on, past the open field near Starco, where 600 toilets had stood not too long ago as part of an exhibition titled something like, “Thirty years later: Why are we still hiding in the toilet?” It was a reference to the fact that during the civil war, many family hid in the bathrooms of their apartments during the fighting, because they were the only rooms in the house that didn’t have exterior windows. Little did the artist know how soon she would get her answer.

At the top of the street, I looked down toward the Phonecian, where there had been some fighting, not unexpectedly, I suppose, since cattycorner to it is the site of Rafik Hariri’s assassination three years and about three months ago. I would normally be able to tell you exactly how many days it has been since his death, but since we haven’t been travelin gour normal routes, I haven’t seen any of the three digital signboards that keep me informed of this excruciatingly unnecessary detail.

And so we headed for Hamra, our former home. I love Hamra. I miss Hamra, even though there we shared just one room with a small garden and a totally substandard kitchen and bathroom. You could walk everywhere you needed to go. To any of the coffee shops, to the grocery store, to the American University of Beirut. It’s a social place, because everyone comes there, from the head-to-toe-black Saudi women to the scantiliest-clad Lebanese knock-out. In Hamra, everyone belongs, which is something you can’t say about anywhere else in Beirut.

To be continued and updated with links tomorrow…

(Above: Detail of Ras Beirut, where much of the recent fighting is/was, captured from a Platial map created to document the events of the past few days.)

I just sent this email out to everyone I know in Lebanon. Please move it around:

Dear friends close to Lebanon,

I hope each and every one of you is safe and sound in the midst of the recent fighting in Beirut and elsewhere in Lebanon.

I am conducting an experiment with mapping this recent conflict with a social web application called Platial maps. On this map, to which I’ve added only a few markers to get started, you can set a marker, create icons (because there’s a pretty limited selection and they weren’t designed to document conflict) upload pictures, and write descriptions of what you saw or experienced or read about while you were inside waiting for it to end.

The map is here:

http://platial.com/map/Beirut-Crisis/112814/

Whether the powers that be come to an agreement today or not, I would like to try to engage in some safe, yet collective action to document the events of the past few days. Anything that you saw is worth remembering, worth documenting. If a friend told you a story that you think should be on this map, please ask him or her to add it. If they don’t have internet access, ask for the information, what happened and where, and add it for them.

Also, I know many of us work with slow internet connections, and I imagine this map is somewhat bandwidth intensive, but if you can get access to a faster connection through an internet cafe, at the office, or at a friends, I think it will be well worth all of our time to contribute. On our 256k Mobi modem, it took about 3-4 minutes to load. You may have to register with Platial to add data. Again, I hope you’ll think it’s worth it. It will not end anytime soon and you can visit as often as you like.

A note: You can also edit icons. Feel free to do so, keeping in mind that what you are editing is another person’s experience. In most cases, I imagine it is better to add a new marker or to add to (but not edit) an existing marker. This project is much more about preserving and honoring our memories than about reporting facts, though the facts that will naturally appear also help construct the fabric. If you are writing and you’re not sure of a fact, you may want to include a (?). Then, someone else may come along and help.

If you have specific questions about this project, please email me directly. I’ll do my best to answer them. But for the moment, I’ll just say that this was inspired by other maps I’ve seen of conflict, by Zeina Maasri’s maps of the 2006 war, and by the possibilities of working together, though dispersed with online media.

Thank you for your participation and for forwarding this email to others who might like to contribute.

Hopefully,

Jessica

Mohamad is in the living room watching TV. I’m in the office on the Internet. A rocket has just been fired at the Hariri mansion in Qoreitem, near where I used to work at the Lebanese American University. We’re all still a bit in a state of shock. We’re not sure what’s happening. Don’t know what to expect. And by the time it hits us, the damage will more than likely be done.

Last night, I listened to gunfire and watched bright flashes of light as I tried to go to sleep in our apartment in Ain er Remmeneh, the neighborhood we’ve moved to about a month ago for more space than we had in Hamra and to be closer to Mohamad’s parents, who live about a 10-minute walk away, across the old green line, in Chiah, which I wrote about in January, during the last eruption of violence.

It was a first for me. Trying to sleep while hearing the repeat of rifles and the rumble of what must have been some sonic detail of a weapon I’m not yet familiar with. There’s time, I guess. I thought to myself, when my friends ask what an explosion sounds like, I’ll tell them, like thunder.

Teenagers buzz by like mosquitoes on the ricketiest mopeds, all of which are moving in the direction of the green line and the Tayouneh roundabout, one of the major intersections that was blocked off on Wednesday with dirt and burning tires and the large green Sukleen trash bins. The gunfire stays at about the same distance. It hasn’t approached us yet. But still, I can’t sleep for those flashes of light.

So I get out of bed and open the blinds, peering through the wide metal slats, trying not to inhale the dust that smells like a decade ago. From the northwest, where the fighting in Ras El Nabeh is, I see a flash. But hear no sound. Flash, flash. No sound. What kind of weapon is that?

It happens again and again, but there are no explosions. Then, all of sudden without a flash, there’s a rumble. Is a building coming down? What does an RPG sounds like when it hits?

The electricity goes off and with it the fan. It is silent. Flash. Three minutes later, and the backup electricity comes and the fan, which lulls me to sleep this time. For a while.

A loud boom crashes. It’s on top of us now. I’m frozen with fear. A bright white flash, not in the distance but enveloping us. I grab Mohamad’s shoulder to wake him to tell him that it’s here. But then I stop. It starts to rain. I run to snatch the clothes off the line behind the kitchen. I go to the balcony off the living room and watch the sheets of water and listen to the stones of hail hit the corrugated tin that shelters the neighborhood’s backup generator and the post of the parking lot attendant.

I praise the strange May rain. And when it stops, I go back to sleep, a coda of gunfire, but no more flashing light, in the distance.

The other day, at the British Council in Beirut, I was leafing through the Oxford Dictionary of English Quotations looking for inspiration for the name of my soon-to-be-formed enterprise. In between George Orwell,

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again, but it was impossible to say which was which.” —Animal Farm, 1946

and Tom Stoppard,

“Comment is free but facts are on expenses.” —Night and Day, 1978

I read something by Thomas Paine, the 18th-century pamphleteer in whose debt, whether or not we’re aware, we bloggers stand.

“My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.” —The Rights of Man, part 2, 1792

I couldn’t resist looking up the whole work. And then, I couldn’t stop reading it for two reasons. One, its absolutely concise articulation of the “social life” of man and the nearly absolute superfluousness of government in the face of it:

“No one man is capable, without the aid of society, of supplying his own wants, and those wants, acting upon every individual, impel the whole of them into society, as naturally as gravitation acts to a centre.” —Applying Principle to Practice, Chapter 1—Of Society and Civilisation

“Excess and inequality of taxation, however disguised in the means, never fail to appear in their effects. As a great mass of the community are thrown thereby into poverty and discontent, they are constantly on the brink of commotion; and deprived, as they unfortunately are, of the means of information, are easily heated to outrage. Whatever the apparent cause of any riots may be, the real one is always want of happiness. It shows that something is wrong in the system of government that injures the felicity by which society is to be preserved.” —Applying Principle to Practice, Chapter 1—Of Society and Civilisation

“Mankind, as it appears to me, are always ripe enough to understand their true interest, provided it be presented clearly to their understanding, and that in a manner not to create suspicion by anything like self-design, nor offend by assuming too much. Where we would wish to reform we must not reproach.” —To M. de la Fayette

“But when principle, and not place, is the energetic cause of action, a man, I find, is everywhere the same.” —To M. de la Fayette

And two, its reminder of what “America” used to signify and its painful, though unwitting allusion to what it might soon (some would say has already) become:

“When the French Revolution broke out, it certainly afforded to Mr. Burke an opportunity of doing some good, had he been disposed to it; instead of which, no sooner did he see the old prejudices wearing away, than he immediately began sowing the seeds of a new inveteracy, as if he were afraid that England and France would cease to be enemies. That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations, is as shocking as it is true; but when those who are concerned in the government of a country, make it their study to sow discord and cultivate prejudices between Nations, it becomes the more unpardonable.” —The Author’s Preface to the English Edition

“What Archimedes said of the mechanical powers, may be applied to Reason and Liberty. “Had we,” said he, “a place to stand upon, we might raise the world.

The revolution of America presented in politics what was only theory in mechanics. So deeply rooted were all the governments of the old world, and so effectually had the tyranny and the antiquity of habit established itself over the mind, that no beginning could be made in Asia, Africa, or Europe, to reform the political condition of man. Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. [emphasis mine]

But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, — and all it wants, — is the liberty of appearing. The sun needs no inscription to distinguish him from darkness; and no sooner did the American governments display themselves to the world, than despotism felt a shock and man began to contemplate redress.

The independence of America, considered merely as a separation from England, would have been a matter but of little importance, had it not been accompanied by a revolution in the principles and practice of governments. She made a stand, not for herself only, but for the world, and looked beyond the advantages herself could receive. Even the Hessian, though hired to fight against her, may live to bless his defeat; and England, condemning the viciousness of its government, rejoice in its miscarriage. —from Applying Principle to Practice Introduction

Inspiration, and then some.

In today’s war and peace report, Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman mentioned a story on Wired.com about a 2006 report that suggested ways in which the military could manipulate bloggers and blogging to “use the sites to their advantage.” Among other ideas, the author of the report suggests that if plain old censorship doesn’t work, then perhaps “hacking the site and subtly changing the messages and data” is in order. What a way to model that “precious gift of freedom“—as Senator Clinton put it—that the U.S. armed forces have bestowed upon Iraqis over the past five harrowing years.

And all the U.S. media can talk about right now are the polls, polls about whether Hillary will drop out, polls about who will win in Pennsylvania, and even polls about the polls. I honestly don’t remember hearing so much shouting about nothing. Today one of the MSNBC political hosts, David Gregory actually asked the guests (the same panelists I see on every MSNBC show) to rate how damaging Hillary’s Bosnia blunder (image snapped from MSNBC website) would be to her campaign on a scale of 1 to 10. As my mom is quick to point out, ain’t nobody even considering what kind of a man McCain really might be.

This is the first of two accounts of conversations with U.S. soldiers who have served in Iraq and will soon be doing so again. Reflecting on the conversations, I thought that the airport might be the best place to interview soldiers about their experiences, whether they are on their way there or on their way back. Airports are by definition transitional spaces in which, it seems to me, censorship is hard to exercise, contemplative thought flourishes, and brief connection with strangers is the rule rather than the exception.

I’m in the States for about three weeks, where I’m seeing friends and family and buying a new camera and computer so that I can begin preparing a series of workshops on social media for NGOs in Lebanon that will be conducted with the support of the innovators at RootSpace, an incubator for social entrepreneurship that emphasizes leveraging technology for social change. (More on the workshops later. Once the grant is finalized, I plan to document the process here.)

I spent the first 10 days in New York and on Saturday flew to Austin, Texas, where my dad lives. It was a two-leg flight from JFK to Atlanta to Austin, and serendipitously I sat next to soldiers on both of them.

The first soldier was in the infantry and heading back to Iraq that day, back to a town called Yousufiyah in the so-called traingle of Death. A strapping six-and-a-half foot tall black man in military fatigues, he quietly took his aisle seat next to me in row 32. A few minutes later, before we took off, a diminutive white woman wandered back to offer him her seat in first class. He kindly refused.

Middle-aged white men sitting around us struck up conversation in serious tones. Asked if he was “going or coming.” “Going,” he said. “Godspeed and good luck” came back. The man sitting on the other side of me, a middle-aged black man originally from Tobago and on his way there for a visit, piggy-backed on the questions to get more details. I did the same.

The soldier, whose name was Whitney, answered all our questions quietly, seriously, directly. The only time he cracked a smile was when I asked about the ages of his three kids. Nine, three, and one month. “And I’m going to miss it all again,” he added, about the birth of the youngest, the third girl.

I wasn’t sure what he meant but in the course of our conversation, he told me that he had been in Iraq once already, which likely explained what felt to me like his fear. He was there for seven months, back home for three or four, and now was on his way back for nine more. We talked a bit about this schedule; he told me of a friend who had been in Iraq for four years. Not by choice.

He told me that they have a house now and that he set up the Internet. Do you blog, I asked? No, he said. Do they censor what you write? Yes. They didn’t used to but then some guy ruined it. They read everything, and if you have the word “bomb” in a post or an email, they’ll make a copy of it and if you so much as say the word bomb on the phone, they’ll cut the line.

I changed the subject. Who you going to vote for? Vote for? he asked. Yeah, I said, Obama? Hillary? Aw, he said, I can’t vote. What? I’m not a citizen.

He was going through the process, which is expedited he says, but still consists of a book “this thick” of paperwork. I wanted to talk more. I could have quizzed him for the rest of the flight, and maybe I should have, but as soon as there was a lull, he closed his eyes. I wanted him to rest.

I spent most of the flight thinking of the next question to ask? How to connect with him. When he woke up, I asked what he did with his free time. I study, he said. What do you study? Banking.

As we landed, I asked if they got everything they needed. No, he said. I pushed a bit further, Is the Army taking care of you? I asked. Yeah, yeah, he said, giving it good thought but no indication as to the mental catalog he was flipping through. Well, can I get your email address? I’ll send you a note and remind you who I am, and if there’s something—magazines, I don’t know—let me know.

I wasn’t being entirely altruistic. He was the first soldier I had met. He made me feel more connected to the war, and I wanted a way to preserve that. I haven’t emailed him yet but I will.

We disembarked, and he turned right. Me, left.

In what seems like sort of a risky move, Jason Haber, who blogs for open-source journalism pioneer Newassignment.net has promised a site called iConflict by March 2008 (or in some places February 2008 and others just 2008). But just because deadlines to launch new initiatives can be oh-so-hard to meet doesn’t detract from the substance of what he’s trying to achieve. Which serendipitously seems to try to answer the question that ended my last post, is it possible that our watchdogs and truthtellers culd be everywhere at once?

iConflict, says the About page on the companion blog Blogflict, “is dedicated to empowering people to share information, and discuss conflicts and crises, wherever they arise.” Simple enough, but what’s more inspired, and what, inexplicably doesn’t yet exist (though we’re also working on something here) is the site’s mission to aggregate the experiences of not only people who cover conflict but also those who are affected by it, including activists, first responders, relief workers, volunteers, and even citizens living with it, by providing them space to keep blogs and document the so-called situation on the ground with images and video.

Witness.org’s The Hub started something similar last year, providing a space on its website for user-provided video documenting human rights abuses. Global Voices is another go-to platform for international (though not necessarily in conflict) voices via blogs. iConflict appears to want to expand on these models by including originally produced—and then YouTube and iTunes syndicated—newscasts from offices in New York and Washington, DC, as well as interactive, mashed-up content that until now is more often found among the multimedia content of sites like the New York Times and partnering with other networked platforms.

I’ve emailed Haber, one of the site’s creators, to ask about how the site will be funded and moderated as well as what technology will be incorporated in the initial stages. If the creators are able to convert their vision into a workable model, it could help change the way we see the world. In the meantime, they’ve invited anyone interested to join their Facebook group. Pay a visit and maybe you can help them get their lofty goals off the ground.

Because journalists are already situated at society’s hubs for information exchange, their needs and habits are natural openings for exploring all the creases and corners of the potential for participatory media. About three weeks ago, Wired Journalists, a social networking site with the strange tagline “Get wired to win” was launched.

Designed with the DIY social networking tool Ning, Wired Journalists has attracted so far people who “seem real eager to learn or to help others,” as Howard Owens, one of the site’s three cofounders, said. The other cofounders are Ryan Sholin and Zac Echola. I joined yesterday as member #1250 and started the group Working Independently and Collectively. I still have to get it up and running. Today, I got my first friend request, from kamalkumar a 23-year-old TV broadcaster in Kathmandu, Nepal. He’s member #1266.

Here’s a writeup on Poynter by Amy Gahran.

Wired Journalists represents another imaginative (and increasingly common, it seems) means to help famously non-joiner journalists exercise their collective, connected intelligence, whether they’re exchanging lessons learned or posting multimedia content for peer review or just a larger audience. Think Assignment Zero, Publish2, Beatblogging, ReportingOn, and developer Dan Schultz’s desire “to find a way to give journalists a special place in the content judging process without losing a sense of democracy” for other takes on how to bring journalists together to leverage their curiosity and news judgment.

If journalists adapt these new methods and tools (and whatever their next-generation counterparts will be) and make them their own, then it seems what we may soon be talking about is a globally distributed swarm of journalists. Is it possible that this would mean—in the best of scenarios—that our watchdogs and truth tellers could be everywhere at once?