I know that the ‘internet’, Twitter, Facebook, etc are not the solution to all the world’s problems.  Really, I do.  But every once in a while, it’s wonderful to read about how they’ve solved one problem: Natalie Nakatani has a bone marrow donor match.

Nathalie is the inspiration for @SaveNatalie, an extreme bone marrow donor drive run by Adriel Hampton, a Gov2.0 expert from San Francisco.  In addition to trying to find a specific match for Natalie, the efforts focused on recruiting minority donors.  This drive, in addition to saving Natalie, the drive has likely helped dozens of others.

There’s more information available online thru the Save Natalie Facebook site.

This reminds me of freedom fries, freedom toast, and freedom vanilla ice cream: using a silly distraction as a cheap way to score political points at home. With an increasingly restive population and growing threats of sanctions, I would figure that the Iranian government has enough to keep itself busy. Appartenly, I was wrong.

Somewhat related to Barak’s post last week about how to ask a question is this cartoon by PhD Comics on how to report the answers.

I wish I could think of a more original reason for this besides blaming CNN for creating a negative feedback loop as reporters strive for ever more news to fill the 24/7 cycle, and the public becomes more and more jaded about the quality of the news, and instead flips back to the Daily Show on DVR, but right now I can’t.

Earlier in the week China Beat featured a script from a talk given by Ying Zhu, professor of Media Culture at CUNY Staten Island, at Google’s New York offices. The piece teases at themes to be covered in depth in her upcoming book on China Central Television co-authored with Bruce Robinson. Focusing on recent news stories, Zhu argues that the size of the internet community, an increased access to information and a better-educated citizenry have created what she terms a “critical mass”. This term has three parts: (1) the mass has grown to the point where the Chinese government’s ability to put down a popular rebellion is limited, (2) the mass is able to articulate preferences and force a government response, and (3) the mass forms passive online associations ready to be organized into “active participation” should they be provided a catalyst. Read the rest of this entry…

Technically speaking, a plane trip. I am off to Tanzania tomorrow to do a Democracy and Governance assessment for USAID. Basically, I’ll be spending the next three weeks in Tanzania talking to politicians. I sense some good stories coming out of this.

The State Department needs to send some of its diplomats back to diplomat school.

Bill Easterly says aid workers need to pay more attention to democracy.

There was a coup in Niger yesterday. Yet not all coups are created equal. Democratically-elected Mamadou Tandja dissolved Parliament and the Supreme Court last year when they blocked his efforts to abolish term limits. While the subsequent Parliament ended term limits, its legitimacy is highly questionable as the opposition boycotted the election and voter turnout was just 5%. So while this is clearly a coup, is it a replacing a democratic or non-democratic government? Not clear. To add to the fun, not only is Niger one of the poorest countries in the world, Al Qadea and cocaine traffickers think it’s a great place as well.

This is a little scary. According to General McChrystal, the post-capture plan for Marjah, the Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan, is government in a box. The Guardian editorial page has looked inside the box and is unimpressed:

So what is in the box? Once the fighting has ended, Isaf has dedicated “district development teams” to move into Marjah. A US team is working alongside a group of Afghan civil servants which the Karzai government is allegedly meant to deploy. To encourage them to serve in what must be a highly risky secondment, their average monthly salary is being quintupled to about $300. Once all this is done, the plan is for the US Agency for International Development to help farmers plant crops by opening up the canal network, a project started by the US half a century ago, but which it has yet to complete. As if that were not enough, Hanif Atmar, the Afghan interior minister, urged elders from Marjah’s main tribes to give him their sons so that he can recruit 1,000 local police officers, whose job will be to keep the Taliban out.

I can see why the editors at The Guardian are skeptical. I am as well. So is Joshua Foust – a real Afghanistan expert – at Registan.net:

Which brings us back to the discussion about civilian casualties above. Considering how ISAF was embarrassingly unable to figure out why or how it was going to handle the civilians in Marjeh, right up to their inability to postbelievable or consistent population estimates, I’m left with the same thought I had two weeks ago, when ISAF signaled they were really serious about Marjeh this time: what’s the end game? Simply throwing an expatriate Helmandi who lived in Germany for 15 years into the mix – which is the current plan – doesn’t actually address the serious shortcomings the military-led governance issues have had.

Meanwhile, the civilians continue to bear the brunt of this offensive: the Coalition is destroying the barely functioning Taliban “shadow” government in the area, and so far their plan for a viable replacement haven’t moved beyond the vaguest of platitudes. Please, I am begging the readers here: if you know of some plan to leave something functioning in ISAF’s wake, something Afghan-led with a realistic chance of lasting once the 10,000 (or whatever) troops have to leave this tiny area, please let me know about it. Because right now it looks like they’re fighting with no end game in mind. And that’s pretty scary.

I guess there’s always luck…