Daily Digest: Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutley.
By Nancy Scola, 06/24/2008 - 3:54pm

This is Day Two of the 2008 Personal Democracy Forum and we’ll be (mostly) devoting the Daily Digest to a recap of what’s going down at the conference, being discussed in the halls, and heating up the back channels. We’ll return to our regular digest format tomorrow.

Visual presentation virtuoso Larry Lessig at a text-only mid-morning press conference here at PdF '08: "I'm a little lost because I don't have slides."

Google evangelist and wise guy Vint Cerf: "PowerPoint corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely."

(Yes, we know Larry uses Keynote in his presentations. But still, that's a great line.)

Bad weather kept keynoter Elizabeth Edwards away from New York City in body but she was still able to appear at PdF '08 via Skype, which preformed remarkably well. The upside of Elizabeth staying in North Carolina? Her husband, John, popped into view of Elizabeth's laptop camera [here's a photo] and stuck around to say a few words. The New York Times' Katharine Seely reports on the tech-focused discussion between Elizabeth and the PdF crowd.

NPR's Sunday Soapbox "field vlogger" Jacob Soboroff conducted video interviews with MySpace IMPACT's Lee Brenner, the Huffington Post's Arianna Huffington and Open Left's Matt Stoller. Also in NPR land, Soapbox's senior producer Davar Ardalan responds to Jay Rosen's take on notes on "semi-pro" journalism presented at a PdF panel yesterday morning and posted to TechPres last night, saying that digital integration "brings with it many philosophical questions about editorial control and the ethical rules we have all been trained to follow."

Over on the tech blog ArsTechnica, Julian Sanchez responds to yesterday's discussion over the modern media's "fake neutrality," to borrow a phrase from Arianna.

Silicon Alley responds to McCain advisor Mark Sohoo's defense yesterday of his candidate's relationship with the Internet. The Guardian UK also has coverage of the session under the in-no-way-judgmental headline "Republicans Admit Obama is Winning the Online Battle." Ooh, this just in: source material -- video of the exchange between Mark and John Edwards' online staffer Tracy Russo that has had people talking since.

CNN's iReport has a station set up here and the conference and has gone live with interviews and coverage with attendees.

Virtual reality pioneer Mark Pesce gave a keynote this morning on "hyperpolitics -- American style" that both Twitter and room tone seemed to indicate was very well-received. If the reporting on the speech strikes you as slightly fuzzy, that's because I unfortunately arrived at the talk where there was only about three minutes left; no worries, though, because Mark has generously posted the full text of his presentation.

PdF's Alison Fine has great coverage of Doug Rushkoff talk on "The New Renaissance" and Morely Winegard's presentation on the civic engagement of the millennial generation.

PC World covers the unveiling of Internet for Everyone, a new Free Press-engineered push for universal broadband launched at PdF '08 this morning. Nancy Scola (hey, that's me) has a quick guide to the the bite-sized arguments made by the project's supporters, from Vint Cerf to Writers Guild East president Michael Winship to TechPres contributor David All.

CNET's Caroline McCarthy reports on Larry Lessig's exhortation to the PdF crowd to not fall into the "four-year trap" of keeping a close watch on politics and politicians only when election time rolls around.

Nancy Scola (again, me) reflects upon a session featuring Mayhill Fowler where the OffTheBus contributor called for bloggers to agree to some "code of the road" that creates a safe, off-the-record space for press.

ThePoint.com's Alex Steed is doing some granular liveblogging of the conference.

Of course, there's more going on than we can possibly capture. So check out the Twitter stream tagged #pdf2008 on Summize.

Since the end of the last year, the 17 indicators that guide MCC in their decision to provide funding to our and other countries were worrisome for the Republic of Armenia: nine out of the 17 indicators are at certain risk levels for our country.

The violations of law during the latest RA presidential elections, the developments that followed them, mass violations of human rights and restrictions of media and freedom of expression can considerably lower some of the RA indicators, which, on their turn, will considerably increase the risk of suspension or termination of the program.

On 11 March 2008, MCC Executive Director, Ambassador John Danilovich sent a letter to RA President Robert Kocharyan, warning about probable suspension of the Compact.

With this statement, we express our deep concern about the real threat of suspension or termination of a project that promises substantial development to rural population and agriculture.

We consider that the RA authorities are required to carefully investigate the mass violations of elections, use of force against peaceful demonstrators (as a result of which 10 Armenians were killed, over a hundred people were wounded, and over a thousand citizens detained), persistent restriction of rights, media censorship, political persecutions, torture in prisons and make a report to the public. This investigation should be done with participation of international entities and as scrupulously and promptly as possible.

We call upon the RA authorities to take action. Otherwise, we seriously and irreversibly endanger the opportunity of establishing democracy and receiving diverse assistance from all over the world.

Simultaneously, we express our astonishment, with regard to Robert Kocharyan’s March 20 announcement in response to John Danilovich’s letter. It states that if MCA-Armenia project is suspended, then Armenia will explore other sources to implement all of the activities as envisaged by the program. Robert Kocharyan has also mentioned names of a number of benevolent organizations that will serve as possible funding sources. It still remains unclear: why, having all these other foundations for RA development supplementary projects, should the authorities wait for MCA-Armenia program’s suspension? In other words, what prohibits the RA authorities to engage all the mentioned funding opportunities into other rural development projects in parallel to the MCA-Armenia project?

We, the undersigned MCA-Armenia Stakeholder Committee members, express our full readiness to participate and contribute our input in resolving the issue: we will respond to any possible needs, as promptly as possible.

MCA-Armenia Program Stakeholder Committee members:

Levon Barseghyan, Seyran Martirosyan, Arthur Sakunts

The statement is open also to other interested persons for joining.

29 April 2008

One of the first such steps was the dismissal of Armen Avetisyan, the chairman of the the Armenian Customs Service (ACS) for the last 8 years and the followed by a meeting of President Serzh Sargsyan with the ACS officials. On this highly publicized event President spoke about his determination to uproot corruption in the country especially in services like the Customs and Tax Inspection. While sincerity of his words is dubious, this genuine attempt by President Sargsyan to raise the government's profile largely failed, because of rumors last week, that the import tariffs for manufactured goods have sharply risen, which was followed by a demonstration in front of the government building on Republic square. Coupled with sharp rise of natural gas prices announced two weeks ago, and then the recent reports that the gas prices will climb even higher by 2011 left no further room for optimism for middle class to poor families across the country.

Another blow to the authority of the government, internationally as well as at home, came as the resolution passed by the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) on April 17 called for the Armenian authorities to file an “independent, transparent and credible inquiry” into the March 1 deadly clashes in Yerevan between security forces and opposition supporters and “the urgent release of the persons detained on seemingly artificial and politically motivated charges.” It also said that the recently enacted legal amendments which effectively banned opposition rallies should be repealed “with immediate effect.” The Strasbourg-based assembly threatened to suspend the voting rights of its Armenian members if these measures are not taken before its next session due in June. In an attempt to turn the unfavorable international resolution into a tool to reach compromise at home, President Serzh Sarkisian established an ad hoc group, headed by President's new chief of staff Hovik Abrahamyan, which is to look for solutions and present suggestions to overcome the political crises in the country. The effectiveness of this step is yet to be seen, however, it is clear, that a Presidential decree quickly releasing all, but the most serious offenders and mauradeours of March 1, would have been the most effective means to regaining public trust and appreciation of international community, rather then superficial half-measures like creation of committees head by highly discredited politicians like Hovik Abrahamyan.

On a related note, Armen Harutyunyan, the Ombudsman of Armenia - also released his report, echoing the international calls for an independent investigation and challenging the official accounts of March 1 riots, stating, in particular, that the Armenian police have so far failed to produce any evidence of firearms being used by the protesters against the police.

With no signs of the ongoing political crises in the country ceding anytime soon, all the other positive steps undertaken by the government are lost on public. Among such positive steps were undoubtedly PM Sargsyan's announcements on Friday, that Government will start holding outgoing regular sessions in various regions of Armenia from now on, and that to enable more transparency of government actions the journalists will be allowed to follow government sessions live from the government's Press Center and that more interest will be paid to media publications from now on, starting with the case of Syunik Governor (Marzpet) Suren Khachatryan published by Aravot Daily. Hopefully this, and more positive steps undertaken by the new government, mediocre and lacking political capital as it is, will soon render some kind of positive results and raise public confidence, otherwise we will be on a sure way to a final and total devastation, which is not something that any Armenian wants.

Photos by Tsitsernak and Azatutyun.am

Construction works are in progress also on the Khanjyan - Agatangeghos streets and Tigran Mets avenue crossroad. Considering the exceptional levels of congestion in this crossroad a multifunctional underground tunnel-passage is being built here. At the moment one-sided traffic is set up on the section across the “Ayrarat” cinema theatere.

This is all very good, but for the fact, that the anti-congestion efforts of the municipality have resulted in even more congestion. So now we know what’s going on, but will we be able to survive it all? Considering the state Komitas is in after two years of ongoing construction works I’m a bit skeptical. I guess we will have to wait about 2 years and see…

Having all this background in mind, I decided to stop by and check out what's going on yesterday. It seems that I was right - the construction site was abandoned. This sign at the entry to the barrage hiding the construction site says the construction is due to complete in 7 months. Remembering that it started back in June I could easily calculate, that at least 3 months have passed leaving a big hole in the ground and nobody to even guard it. Does this mean that we all will have to endure the hell around this site much longer then originally planned? Does this mean that it will become another Komitas avenue? I called the City Hall (using the number on their website) and found no response. So today I wrote a letter to them with the following content and expect and answer, which will be published here:

I have noticed, that over the past 1 month the construction works of the underground passage accross the "Ayrarat" cinema theater have been halted. I would like to know, what is the reason for this, when can we expect the construction works to resume, and how this pause of works will affect the initial schedules of finishing construction.

I must note, that my question and your response to it will be published on the Armenian Blog Review electronic publication at http://ditord.wordpress.com and I expect your kind response as soon as possible.

Via the gossip channel on the same issue (!) a friend told me, that the road construction at the mentioned site has been stopped, because the digging has gone too deep without careful planning (aren't you surprised(!) ?) and they have hit the wall of the tube (the tunnel through which the metro trains run). I guess all we can do now is wait and complain.

- to pursue greater energy independence through a diversification of energy supplies and production, the creation of new sources of energy, including nuclear energy, and to develop a stable and reliable export-oriented energy system;

National Security Strategy
of the Republic of Armenia

Fear of the return of dark years in 90's, when there was no electricity in the country in many ways defines the domestic and foreign politics in Armenia today.

The dark days, conditioned by war, economic collapse and severe blockade of Armenia by Azerbaijan and Turkey as well as lack of infrastructures to compensate the negative consequences of the blockage via energy import routes through Iran and Russia (through Georgia), followed the closure of the Soviet-build Metsamor nuclear reactor, located about 30 kilometers west of capital Yerevan and taken out of operation after the devastating earthquake of 1988. The Nuclear Power Plant returned to service in 1995, and although it currently supplies only 40 percent of the country's power, for many people its possible closure is directly associated with the darkest days in Modern Armenian history. It won't be an exaggeration to state, that there is no single politician who would risk bringing up the issue of shutting down the Metsamor NPP without being thrown out of politics altogether.

Having this background it is not much of a surprise to hear, that Armenia has refused 200 million Euro EU loan for shutting atomic plant (Yahoo! Finance, AP| Sep 25, 2007). PanARMENIAN.Net reports: "The European Union’s stand on the Metsamor Nuclear Power Plant is clear: it should be closed, European Commission’s Acting Director for Eastern Europe, South Caucasus and Central Asia, Mr Gunnar Wiegand told a news conference in Yerevan." Even if the amount were twice as big, it would be hard to explain to Mr Gunnar Wiegand and the EU just how much the NPP means to Armenia, and why no alternative energy sources can compensate the political significance of the Metsamor reactor at this point.

And it is not just the dark years and energy security behind the reluctance to give up the NPP - it is a major strategic resource. A simple look at what Iran is suffering to establish its right for possessing nuclear technology would have been enough for Armenians to stand up and say - no way, we are not giving up our Nuclear Power Station!

Photo by PanARMENIAN.Net

It is a fact that most motorists on the road today obtain their driver’s licenses by paying a bribe, without passing any tests to prove they are capable of being able to drive. As a result you have insane numbers of drivers operating their vehicles nearly out of control. I for one am going to start taking a taxi to where I work in Arabkir every morning because it is not worth wasting my nerves or my safety driving on these roads. I’ve had it.

Not everyone can afford taxi though, and Zara from Life around me, is more for the shuttle buses (minivans, often referred to as Marshrutkas), which cost 100 drams (about 30 cents) 5-10 times less then taxi, are usually fully packed, drive unsafely, and have an wide range of disadvantages, 5 of which are analyzed at legth in Zara's post:

Well, actually I like traveling to any place by marshutkas and I take a taxi on rare occasions and also I don’t want to drive, especially in this manic city...

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Yeah, I know, marshutkas are not that safe, some people call them “100-dram-killers”. However, I don’t mind other people around me, I rather prefer it, especially when so funny incidents and conversations happen in them. And but for several things, marshutkas would be my adorable means of transportation.

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Sure, there are many other disadvantages, but I’ll leave them up to you. And anyways, I still prefer marshutkas!

One thing I know for sure - I will walk on every possible occasion, only to avoid getting into traffic hell. I can't afford a car yet, but its definitely much better then the public transport. Taxis are a good solution, but they are not for everyone, as an average trip costs $3 US so travelling to work and back in taxi every day will take about $140 US, which is more then half of reported average salary in Armenia. And best of all is - working and sleeping in one location and not going anywhere if you can. It really is traffic hell in Yerevan these days, and I don't see any tendencies for improvement for the nearest 3-4 months.