by Richard Gowan | Aug 4, 2009 | Influence and networks, North America
New York magazine offers some hope for people who like a sensible discussion, in a new profile of Barack Obama:
Despite his agility in skipping from topic to topic, the president is clearly most comfortable when he can drill deep into one. During the presidential campaign, when Reverend Wright’s antics threatened to steer Obama clear off the rails, his advisers had varying ideas about how to handle the situation. Ultimately, though, it was Obama who decided on the solution: He’d give a 37-minute speech about race.
In the days when just a handful of media outlets drove the news, such a move would have been politically contraindicated, if not outright suicidal. The speech contained no pithy or rhyming sound bites (“Mend it, don’t end it,” “Read my lips”). It practically defied quoting. It demanded, rather, to be heard or read in its entirety. Yet within 48 hours, more than 1.6 million viewers tuned in, making it the single-most-watched video on YouTube for that period.
There’s a reason for this. Sound bites, says Clay Shirky, the NYU new-media philosopher and recent author of Here Comes Everybody, were a product of media scarcity, when public figures had a finite amount of time and space to make their points. Now we live in a world of “Publish, then filter,” he points out, rather than “Filter, then publish,” a time when the question is “Why not film this?” rather than “Why film this?” This makes Obama our first post-sound-bite president. If he wants to give a 37-minute speech about race, he can give a 37-minute speech about race, knowing that millions of Americans (now more than 6 million) will eventually hear it, even if they fail to catch it in real time. Not only is ubiquity strategy in a world of unlimited content, volume is too.
Reviving the long-form address may seem strange in an era when the 140-character tweet and two-sentence blog post form a major part of our communications repertoire. But Nate Silver, the founder of fivethirtyeight.com, points out that the long form may, in fact, be a natural part of it. “If you speak and leave out details,” he notes, “bloggers will fill them in.” And for those who despair at the telegraphic nature of Twitter and blog posts, Obama’s long speeches—like long books and long movies—are a canny form of counterprogramming.
During his presidency, Obama has repeatedly chosen a long speech over staccato remarks or scattered statements by surrogates. When the Senate refused to include funding in an appropriations bill to shut down Guantánamo Bay, he spoke for over 50 minutes at the National Archives about civil liberties. When he made overtures to the Arab world in Cairo, he spoke for 55 minutes. When congressional Republicans first began to mount their resistance to his health-care bill, he flew to Green Bay, Wisconsin, and conducted a 62-minute town hall. Laurence Tribe, Obama’s onetime mentor at Harvard Law School, says that the president’s speeches remind him of “carefully worded judicial opinions—he avoids overreaching, he carefully states opposing arguments and considerations. He gently leads the viewers or readers or listeners to their own conclusions rather than ramming one down their throats.” Lincoln used to do this in his debates with Douglas, which raises a tantalizing possibility about the future: Perhaps the post-sound-bite age will seem more like the pre-sound-bite age, when most politicians could hold their own in a debate.
by Alex Evans | Aug 4, 2009 | What we're watching
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueRTZNVwQBM[/youtube]
by Michael Harvey | Aug 4, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity, Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Europe and Central Asia, Global system, North America, UK
– In the week leading up to the first anniversary of the Russia-Georgia conflict, the FT reports on the lingering regional tensions still apparent, while openDemocracy assesses some of the war’s wider implications for the US, EU, China and Turkey. Georgia aside, James F. Collins, former US ambassador to Russia, highlights the current fragility of US-Russia relations and the importance of “sustained dialogue within a solid institutional framework” if measured progress is to continue.
– Elsewhere, in a taster of the forthcoming Quadrennial Defence Review (QDR), two senior Pentagon officials survey the global landscape and assess what this means for the US’s strategic outlook. The main challenge (alongside adapting to the realities of hybrid warfare and a growing number of failing states), Michele Flournoy and Shawn Brimley suggest, will likely revolve around competition for the global commons (sea, space, air and cyberspace). A successful approach, they argue, should see the US refocus its efforts on building strong global governance structures and taking the “lead in the creation of international norms”. Andrew Bast at WPR comments that this could once again herald a US foreign policy with Wilsonianism firmly at its core.
– Der Spiegel, meanwhile, takes an in-depth look at the growing global market for farmland. In what it labels the “new colonialism”, the article notes the implications of such investment flows for states in Africa and Asia, as well as gauging the impact on local farmers.
– Climatico assesses Nicolas Sarkozy’s climate change credentials, highlighting his “erratic behaviour” on the issue and suggesting that the French stance is one to watch in the run up to Copenhagen.
– Finally, an interesting PoliticsHome poll on attitudes of the British public to the country’s foreign policy. 65% of voters, it indicates, agree that foreign policy has weakened Britain’s “moral authority” abroad – a view held across the political spectrum. Perhaps more strikingly, however, a majority (54%) felt the country should scale down its overseas military commitments, even if this meant ceding global influence. Interestingly, 57% were in favour of humanitarian intervention. Writing in Newsweek, meanwhile, Stryker McGuire adds to the narrative of declinism. The current economic crisis, he argues, has finally put paid to Britain’s attempts to maintain its world role and place at the international top table.
by Richard Gowan | Aug 3, 2009 | Africa, Climate and resource scarcity, Conflict and security
Bad news from South Sudan:
At least 185 people – mostly women and children – have been killed in ethnic violence in South Sudan, officials say.
Members of the Lou Nuer community had gone fishing south of Akobo town amid a severe food shortage when ethnic Murle fighters reportedly attacked them.
Eleven soldiers from the South Sudan army, the SPLA, who were protecting the Lou Nuer, were among those killed.
Several hundred people have died in such clashes this year – more than in Sudan’s Darfur conflict, the UN says.
How can this be stopped?
The state’s governor, Kuol Manyang, told the BBC that a few survivors had made it back to Akobo town, though many of them were wounded.
Those killed, he said, were on the fishing expedition because food supplies were running out following an attack in June on river barges carrying aid.
He appealed to the UN World Food Programme to find a way of getting food to them.
But there’s a bit of problem with that, highlighted by the BBC last week:
The UN food agency says it is facing critical funding shortages that have forced it to cut aid deliveries to millions of people facing starvation.
The World Food Programme (WFP) said it could have to close parts of its airway, used to fly aid workers to humanitarian trouble-spots.
Deliveries have already been suspended to north Uganda, Ivory Coast and Niger.
The organisation has issued similar warnings in the past when facing funding shortages.
The UN Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS), operated by WFP, has a budget for 2009 of $160m (£96m) but has received less than $90m in fees and contributions this year.
WFP spokesman Greg Barrow said UNHAS was “a vital component of humanitarian operations across the world”.
“But because of a funding shortfall there is now a grave risk that the air service … could literally be grounded in the next few weeks due to a lack of funds,” he said.
It’s less than a month since the G8 leaders promised billions of dollars to food aid – with a focus on increasing agricultural capacity rather than crisis response. That’s the right approach. But we need crisis response too, or this sort of violence is going to get worse.
