Also, make sure to check out the other presenters and their abstracts on the website, it’s a fantastic lineup!

Braman’s main thesis unites the national backdrop and individual engagement to create an argument about how future developments in both arenas could result in stronger relationships between individuals and the nation-state, or just as possible, could weaken identification with the nation and thus a weaker national security environment. Braman explores how the increasing technical capacity of ICTs, a shift in the global network map to favor regions previously little regarded, and a general lack of knowledge about vulnerabilities and potentialities of these ICTs combine to create a new set of national security concerns for the US. Braman then narrows in further on the impact on the individual by examining new features that impact political engagement on the individual level: increased communication capacity, the ability for individuals to create and distribute content, and the emerging practice of activism across various media channels.

Braman’s argument is at its foundation based on the assumption that maintaining a strong national identity is essential to protecting national security. Similarly, her argument assumes that trust is a central component of identity or affiliation with an imagined community. She argues that in a best-case scenario, social cohesion is afforded by “trust in the authoritative knowledge of the nation-state and, therefore, decisions made by the US government” and at the other extreme, trust would be limited to small intimate groups and would result in “a growing reliance on nonrational modes of argument and decisionmaking.” One of the report’s most provocative scenarios lies in its description of alternative forms of citizenship. Cultural citizenship, global citizenship and thin citizenship are proposed as alternatives to national citizenship, which brings with it a set of political affiliations.

The report also presents software applications which facilitate forms of one-to-one and one-to-many communication. Braman makes the point that decreasing transparency in the federal government and increased surveillance of individuals has a damaging impact on trust. This is a very cogent point. The current administration (which changed after this report was written) has made a priority out of reversing this dynamic in an obvious attempt to restore trust in the federal government. See the data-driven Recovery.gov with its tagline “Track the Money.”

In describing the global context of emerging ICTs, the report focuses on threatening global examples like how China was unable to suppress the Tiananmen Square demonstrations and how Muslim extremists are able to organize online. When looking at the individual level, the report takes more positive examples of increased agency from US academics like Clay Shirky to describe the redrawn map of communication and power. While overall the arguments are extremely compelling and have already been borne out in many ways in 2010, the focus on threats to national security limit the scope of the report to reinforcing the national identity. Organizations like Avaaz and Amnesty International provide positive examples of global citizenship, while growing diasporas present cultural forms of citizenship that reshape global politics in less than threatening ways. Less positive examples of internal discord within the US among individuals are also ignored. Recent examples include challenges to the authority of the Obama administration on media services like Twitter and Facebook that have attracted attention from the Department of Homeland Security. Because of this narrow focus and selective examples, the report, while astute in its analysis, presents only a limited set of conclusions that reinforce the US’s historically isolationist attitude.

When I first heard about M.I.A., the Sri Lankan Tamil rapper from London, it was in 2004 ago amidst the buzz about her forthcoming debut album Arular. I was instantly intrigued — a Sri Lankan musician being featured in Pitchfork? What was her style? Was I going to like it? I wasn’t born in Sri Lanka, a beautiful island with a turbulent political past and present, but most of my extended family still lives there. M.I.A. spent a lot more time there than I did, but her hybrid upbringing in Sri Lanka and London combined with a musical background that included support from Justine Frischmann and Peaches assured me that I was going to connect with her sound.

I instantly took to M.I.A.’s music, which incorporates as many far-flung styles as possible from Bollywood disco to Brazilian baile to Jamaican dancehall and more. But her lyrics puzzled me — sometimes they sounded like nonsense, sometimes they sounded like they were supposed to be politically charged. But I didn’t hear a cohesive agenda or message, beyond, “this is underground, yo!” I knew she was making a lot of references to the Sri Lankan civil conflict, but I couldn’t tell whether her references told a story or not. There’s no doubt, though, that her music, imagery and media interviews have attracted mainstream attention to the country of Sri Lanka, and have publicized her experience of Sri Lanka’s civil war based on an upbringing that took her from Britain to Sri Lanka to India and back again to Britain as a refugee.

Messages of Conflict
M.I.A. has proudly positioned herself in numerous media interviews as an artist motivated by her background as a refugee of Sri Lanka’s decades-old civil conflict. In her music and associated imagery, M.I.A. drops references to her life story, political ties, and other minority stories to straddle a hybridized cultural and political identity that subverts and rejects mainstream Western narratives of gender and politics. She’s forged a complicated identity for herself as both a cross-cultural pop musician and political spokesperson for the Tamil people of Sri Lanka, and she has explicitly acknowledged her power to educate people about the conflict. By scanning music blog postings across the web, it is clear that she is an influential disseminator of information, not just music, to audiences (Bennet, Harthun, Starbury).

She’s recently gained enthusiastic acclaim in the world of music, winning album of the year from Rolling Stone and garnering nominations for both a Grammy and an Oscar in 2009. But even her early collaborations with Philadelphia-based producer Diplo from 2004 and her first album from 2005 were already inviting questions. In March of 2005, Scott Plagenhoef wrote in Pitchfork that “M.I.A.’s detractors claim her flirtations with terrorism and revolutionary politics reveal the biggest case of sufferer’s envy since Joe Strummer but little depth of thought.” Plagenhoef asked, “But if the latter is true, so what? … An argument can and has been made that her political lip service is unique enough to get those topics onto your tongue or into your brain, prodding listeners to at least examine them.”

I can’t say I agree with Plagenhoef’s sentiment that raising a topic is more important than what is said about the topic. But then, I grew up with the topic in question and have been hearing about the death tolls for over a decade. When I was five, my family spent our summer in Sri Lanka, arriving in time for a series of ethnically-charged riots that perpetrated horrific violence against Tamils in the city of Colombo. One day, I saw the shop across the street from my grandmother’s house being attacked with torches by a shouting mob. One of my older cousins, vibrating in her fury, wanted to throw rocks at the crowd around the smoldering building.

Later, my mother explained that it was not the local residents of my grandmother’s neighborhood, but a traveling gang who had destroyed the Tamil shop. We didn’t go back to Sri Lanka for another eight years. I’m ethnically Sinhalese, from the roughly 70 percent majority that dominates the country, while M.I.A. is Tamil and a member of the next largest ethnicity on the island at about 20 percent. So in the mainstream Western media’s understanding of the conflict, it’s ostensibly our peoples who are at war against each other. Religion is often casually thrown into the labeling too, as in “Sinhalese Buddhists” versus “Tamil Hindus.” Of course it’s far more complicated than a simple case of ethnic conflict, but more on that later.

One of M.I.A.’s acknowledged influences is her largely absentee father, who was a member of a Tamil separatist group historically aligned with internationally proscribed terrorist group the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). M.I.A’s art school past informs her self-created album, video and live show art, which features tigers, tanks, palm trees, and other symbols of the Sri Lankan conflict. The tiger imagery is commonly interpreted as a nod to the LTTE, the only Tamil separatist group to feature a tiger in their name. When asked about these visual references in one interview, M.I.A. responded, “How come people are allowed to say M.I.A. equals a tiger print shirt equals suicide bombing? If anyone else wears a tiger print shirt, it means nothing. Converse has put out a tiger print shoe and I wore it in my video and that means terrorism” (Cosyns).

This is arguably a disingenuous way to avoid explaining the significance of the reference, as M.I.A. is clearly a politically engaged musician and performer. A tiger print or image, situated within the rest of her visual symbols, is hard to accept as signifying “nothing,” although the significance is not necessarily positive. For example, one of her videos features children dancing in front of a tiger, which could be interpreted as a reference to child soldier recruitment, known to have been practiced by the LTTE. But M.I.A. has declined to acknowledge any signification at all — and to what end? I still don’t understand.

Another Sri Lankan rapper named DeLon has revived the controversy through a YouTube video remixing her popular single Paper Planes, juxtaposing violent imagery from the LTTE bombings and other violent acts with images of MIA performing and posing. His rhymes over the melody ask why tiger imagery is so common in her works if she doesn’t support the LTTE. M.I.A. has dismissed his video as “self-promotion” and her label Interscope Records has served DeLon with a cease-and-desist, claiming the video endangers “M.I.A.’s reputation as a freedom fighter” (Starbury).

Plagenhoef’s argument back in 2005 was that as a musician, M.I.A. should not need to explain why her art contains references to not only the conflict generally but the LTTE specifically. Today, it is much harder to make the case that M.I.A.’s references to terrorism and revolutionary politics do not need to be interrogated for deeper meaning, as she’s become the most prominent Sri Lankan in mainstream media and has also identified herself as “being the only Tamil…in the Western media,” seeing it as a “great opportunity to … bring forward what’s going on in Sri Lanka” (M.I.A.). In the same interview, she states, “I’ve turned into the only voice for the Tamil people…the twenty percent minority in my country.” Understanding the importance of her role requires visiting the Sri Lankan civil conflict.

The Sri Lankan Civil Conflict
Sri Lanka is a small island country with a bloody history. A civil conflict along ethnic lines has slowly emerged and intensified since the country gained independence from British rule in 1948. During British rule, a strategy of promoting English-speaking Tamils to leadership positions within the society created state, commercial, educational and other professional sectors that were dominated by Tamils (Bowen). In the wake of independence, a Sinhalese nationalist movement combined with laws intended to rectify imbalances created by British policies resulted in widespread discrimination against Tamils, and inspired the Tamil separatist movements of the 1970s (Bowen).

Since then, most of the distinct Tamil movements were destroyed by the LTTE through assassinations of Tamil political leaders who participated in the democratic process or through consumption into the LTTE, who then turned to suicide bombing and other violent means to make their case. The Sri Lankan government attempted to create local power sharing structures to entice the LTTE to lay down arms and transition into a legitimate political organization, but with no success. Today, the war is between the Sinhalese-dominated majority government and the LTTE. By their account, the Tigers are fighting for regional autonomy for the Tamil population. By the Sri Lankan government’s account, which is now dominated by Sinhalese nationals, the LTTE has been terrorizing the country for decades and needs to be destroyed if the country is to move forward.

According to a report from the Council on Foreign Relations, the LTTE is blamed for a dozen high-level assassinations and over two hundred suicide attacks (Bhattacharji). The same report estimates that that the LTTE has murdered approximately 5,000 people just since 2006. And in recent months, the LTTE is accused by the Associated Press among others of using Tamil civilians as human shields and firing at civilians as they flee the area (Mackenize, Nessman).

While one front of Sri Lanka’s civil war is being waged on the ground between the national army and the LTTE, another front has been intensifying in a theater with a much larger scope—the media. In part due to its small size and minor role in the global economy, Sri Lanka has never been heavily or consistently covered by international media services (Gabony). But another factor has been the Sri Lankan government’s hostile attitude towards journalists, both international and domestic, which has made it impossible to report from the frontlines. Reports are instead confined to a few sparse details and casualty numbers reported by spokespeople for the LTTE and the government, whose reports almost always directly contradict each other (Buerk 2008). The BBC, the only media source with significant coverage of the conflict is reviled on both sides for its bias in favor of the opposing side (Gabony). With so many lies and half-truths it is near impossible to discern the full story.

M.I.A. and the Genocide Movement
It is into this contentious space that M.I.A. offered her assessment of the conflict. On January 28, 2009, M.I.A. appeared on the Tavis Smiley show, an LA-based PBS news magazine with a national audience and online distribution. Given the opportunity to educate the primarily US-based viewers of the show, the majority of whom know little to nothing about the conflict, M.I.A. spoke extensively about the plight of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka, repeatedly referring to the war as a “genocide.” She stated that from the time that she left the country to now, “there’s been a systematic genocide” and that “Tamils make up twenty percent of the country and they’re getting wiped out.” In another interview with The Daily Beast two days later, she calls the situation “systematic genocide, ethnic cleansing” and compares it to Nazi-Germany. In a recent assessment of that claim by the New York Times, Thomas Fuller writes that “M.I.A.’s claims that the government is carrying out a genocide against Tamils place her on the outer fringe of opinion about the conflict.” In the same article Fuller quotes Yolanda Foster of Amnesty International, who observes, “The Tamil Tigers have a long history of child recruitment, hostage taking, forcing civilians to the front lines. It’s complicated to assign blame.”

M.I.A. is not alone in assessing the conflict as a genocide; newly formed Tamil groups in the diaspora have initiated efforts to reframe the conflict as a genocide. Significantly, high profile efforts to have the conflict officially recognized in the US and in India date back to around the same time as her interview. The group Tamils Against Genocide has been in existence at least since August of 2008, when their legal representative Bruce Fein contributed a commentary to the Washington Times comparing the Sri Lankan conflict to Nazi-Germany and the Bosnian genocide of the 90s. NGOs have been formed in the United States and in India to push the genocide framing through both media and legal channels, with most of the activity taking place in January through March of 2009.

The Genocide Movement Timeline

• August 20th 2008 – Bruce Fein, legal representative for Tamils Against Genocide, publishes commentary in the Washington Times. The commentary compares the Sri Lankan conflict to Nazi-Germany and the Bosnian genocide of the 90s and introduces Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka’s Defense Secretary, as a US citizen who should be investigated for war crimes.
• January 26th 2009 – In India, Dr. Ramadoss, founder and president of the Pattali Makkal Katchi party, a Tamil political party in the Indian government, gives a press conference urging the Indian government to recognize Tamil Eelam as the only solution for the Sri Lankan Tamil population.
• February 5th 2009 – Tamils Against Genocide files charges with the US attorney general charging both Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and Sri Lanka’s Army Commander, Sarath Fonseka, for genocide, war crimes and torture against Tamils in Sri Lanka.
• February 9th 2009 – Mr. Fein publishes a second commentary in the Boston Globe.
• February 13th 2009 – Dr. Ramadoss describes the conflict as “a clear case of genocide” of the Tamil population.
• February 14th 2009 – A new NGO announced in India called Indians Against Genocide
• February 20th 2009 – Tamils Against Genocide holds a genocide rally in Washington DC.

Interrogating the Genocide Claim
Genocide is defined by the UN as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” There are significant numbers of Tamils living in Sri Lanka in state-controlled areas without danger. Colombo, the largest city in Sri Lanka, is populated by every ethnic group in the country. Daily life is peaceful and involves much mixing between the groups. In a response to M.I.A.’s interview, Dr. Palitha Kohona, Foreign Secretary for the government of Sri Lanka, notes, “In Sri Lanka, fifty-four percent or more of the Tamil population does not live in the areas controlled by the Tamil Tigers. They live in the south, in and around Colombo, [in areas] under government control.” At this time, the majority of Tamils who were initially part of the LTTE are now participating in building a political process in the East and the North with the Sri Lankan government, belying the claim of widespread discord between the two ethnic groups. The Mackenzie Institute in Toronto which studies political instability and terrorism writes, “Genocide is not happening in Sri Lanka…. Anybody who takes the charge seriously betrays a highly annoying ignorance about the state of affairs between Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).”

The Sri Lankan government is by no means blameless. It has been heavily criticized for its lack of transparency, hostility towards media, and breaches of human rights. Currently, as tens of thousands of civilians are trapped in the conflict zone, reporters, aid agencies, and humanitarian efforts are banned from entering the area (“last Tamil Tiger town”). The Sri Lankan government claims this is because they cannot guarantee anyone’s safety, but such secrecy is inexcusable. The Sri Lankan military, too, has a lot to answer for in the conflict—in the past, both the LTTE and the Sri Lankan military were accused of engaging in abductions, extortion, conscription, and the use of child soldiers (Bhattacharji).

The Final Countdown
After an aborted 2002 peace treaty during which the LTTE rearmed, the army has launched a no-holds barred attempt to destroy the LTTE once and for all. Down to the final months, atrocities are being perpetrated left and right by everyone involved. According to the BBC, the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights Navi Pillay has described the level of civilian deaths as “truly shocking,” and called on the two warring sides to suspend hostilities immediately. The Sri Lankan government refuses to pull back, fearing that as soon as they do, the LTTE will immediately re-arm, as they have repeatedly done. Neither side will let up, which leaves the trapped Tamil civilians nowhere to go but to the grave. We also have no confirmed numbers about how many people are caught up in the fighting, since all numbers come from either the government or the LTTE media machine.

So what do we call this situation? I call it a futile tragedy of epic proportions. I don’t know if M.I.A. is aligned with the LTTE’s objectives, but I do know I am with her in wanting the world to protest the deaths of innocent people, Tamil and Sinhalese both. Sri Lanka is searching for a way to end the conflict permanently, but there is no easy solution here. Suspending hostilities means the LTTE can recover and keep spreading violence through suicide bombs and other terrorist means. Continuing the assault means that civilians in the war zone keep losing their lives. But a genocide? This is not a term to be taken lightly, overused or misapplied. I want the international community to know and care about what is happening in Sri Lanka, but not by framing it as
something it is fundamentally not. Diluting the meaning of the word borders on an immoral act by diminishing the true genocides taking place, ones the world has already turned away from and populations who urgently need international intervention.

Do I think M.I.A. is a terrorist? I seriously doubt it. But I think she is irresponsible with her words through her passion for her people. I want M.I.A. to choose her words as carefully as her beats. Give up a little of that swagger in favor of a more nuanced and historically accurate representation of the Sri Lankan conflict.

Works Cited
Bennet, Miles. “M.I.A. Denies Claims That She Supports Terrorist Groups.” Baller Status. N.p. 8 Aug. 2008. Web. 23 Feb. 2009.
<http://www.ballerstatus.com/article/news/2008/08/5238/>.
Bhattacharji, Preeti. “Backgrounder: Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (aka Tamil Tigers) (Sri Lanka, separatists).” CFR, Council on Foreign Relations. 10 Feb. 2009. Web. 24 Feb. 2009.
Bowen, John R. “The Myth of Global Ethnic Conflict.” Journal of Democracy. National Endowment for Democracy and the Johns Hopkins University Press, 7.4 (1996) 3-14. Project Muse. Web. 23 Feb. 2009.
Buerk, Roland. “Numbers game clouds Sri Lankan war.” BBC News. BBC, 21 Mar. 2008. Web. 23 Feb. 2009.
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7307349.stm>.
Cosyns, Simon. “‘I may be a bit mouthy…but I’m no terrorist.’” The Sun. 31 Oct. 2008. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 22 Feb. 2009.
DeLon. “M.I.A. Paper Planes Diss.” Ceylon Records, 4 Aug. 2008. Web. 22 Feb 2008. <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5604080449246618908>.
du Lac, J. Freedom. “M.I.A.’s World Tour de Force.” Washington Post. The Washington Post Company, 21 Aug. 2007. LexisNexis. 23 Feb. 2009.
“English media’s coverage on Lankan issue criticised.” Press Trust of India. 14 Feb. 2009. InfoTrac OneFile. Web. 22 Feb. 2009.
Fein, Bruce. “FEIN: A Genocide Inquiry?” Washington Times. The Washington Times LLC, 20 Aug. 2008. Web. 23 Feb. 2009.
<http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/aug/20/a-genocide-inquiry/>.
Fein, Bruce. “Genocide in Sri Lanka.” Boston Globe. NY Times Co., 15 Feb. 2009. Web. 23 Feb. 2009.
<http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/02/15/genocide_in_sri_lanka/>.
Fuller, Thomas. “The Dissonant Undertones of M.I.A.” New York Times. 10 Feb 2009. Web. 23 Feb. 2009.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/world/asia/11mia.html>.
Gill, Harjant. “On the Significance of Salting and Peppering Mangoes.” Metapedia. Georgetown University, n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2009. <http://www.metapedia.com/wiki/index.php?title=Harjant>.
Harthun, Jon. “M.I.A. and the art of terrorism.” Three Imaginary Girls. N.p. 7 Aug. 2008. Web. 23 Feb. 2009.
<http://www.threeimaginarygirls.com/blogentry/2008aug/miaandtheartofterrorism>.
Kohona, Palitha. Interview by Tavis Smiley. Tavis Smiley. KCET, 28 Jan. 2009. Web. 22 Feb. 2009.
<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/generic.html?s=tavi08s1ddeq6f6>.
“LS members seek govt intervention to end strife in Lanka.” Press Trust of India. 13 Feb. 2009. InfoTrac OneFile. Web. 22 Feb. 2009.
Mackenzie, John. “Enough Already with the Genocide Talk.” The Mackenzie Institute. n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2009.
<http://www.mackenzieinstitute.com/2009/genocide-talk020609.htm>.
M.I.A.. Interview by Tavis Smiley. Tavis Smiley. KCET, 28 Jan. 2009. Web. 22 Feb. 2009.
<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/generic.html?s=tavi08s1ddeq6f6>.
Nessman, Ravi. Interview by Tavis Smiley. Tavis Smiley. KCET, 18 Feb. 2009. Web. 22 Feb. 2009.
<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/generic.html?s=tavi08s1ddeq6f6>.
Plagenhoef, Scott. “M.I.A.: Arular.” Pitchfork. Pitchfork Media, Inc. 22 Mar. 2005. Web. 23 Feb. 2009.
<http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/20218-arular>.
“Ramadoss: Tamil Nadu Parties should pressurize Indian Government to recognize Eelam.” TamilNet. 26 Jan. 2009. Web. 23 Feb. 2009. <http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=13&artid=28147>.
Starbury, Allen. “M.I.A. Accused Of Supporting Terrorists By Sri Lankan Rapper.” Baller Status. N.p. 6 Aug. 2008. Web. 23 Feb. 2009. <http://www.ballerstatus.com/article/news/2008/08/5221/>.
Tamils Against Genocide. Website. Tamils Against Genocide. N.p. n.d. Web. 22 Feb. 2009. <http://www.tamilsagainstgenocide.org/>.
“Timeline: Sri Lanka.” BBC News. BBC, 6 Jan. 2009. Web. 24 Feb. 2009. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/country_profiles/1166237.stm>.
Touré. “M.I.A. Goes to War.” The Daily Beast. RTST, Inc., 30 Jan. 2009. Web. 24 Feb. 2009. <http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-01-30/mia-goes-to-war/>.
“Troops ‘at last Tamil Tiger town.’” BBC News. BBC, 24 Feb. 2009. Web. 24 Feb. 2009. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7907282.stm>.
United Nations. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 12 Jan. 1951. Web. 23 Feb. 2009. <http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/p_genoci.htm>.

I don’t see either Slumdog or the Greenpeace-produced video highlighted in the original piece as “poverty porn,” a revolting phrase that I think the people who came up with should be more ashamed of than those who it’s applied to. I realize that pitching levels of sensitivity around contested areas is very hard to negotiate, but the “poverty porn” argument takes it to a very damaging and ultimately useless and bitter end by actually reinforcing the imperialist gaze that it seeks to undercut.

Briefly, poverty porn posits that Slumdog Millionaire, a story about three people from the slums, was exploitative in its focus on poor people in the slums as entertainment. As Alice Miles writes in the Times, “As the film revels in the violence, degradation and horror, it invites you, the Westerner, to enjoy it, too.” It really honestly saddens me that people could think that the film revels in the subjects as pure entertainment, and that it’s a film made only for Westerners. Both of these positions, I think, really dishonor the intentions of Danny Boyle, the filmmaker, who has already made a beautiful film about children in Millions, in which two English brothers who also face poverty, violence, loss, and fantasy in equal measures. No one cried out about exploitation with this film, I suppose because it takes place in England.

The implication of the poverty porn argument is that Western filmmakers are not allowed to make entertainment films about poor people in non-Western countries. Why not? Why should every film about poor people be only about their struggles and strictly in a realist vein? To say that is to say that the only audience that matters is a Western one. To say that light, escapist films can only be about rich or reasonably well-off people is to imply that poor people can’t be happy, and that their enjoyment of a film doesn’t matter–ie, that the Western well-off viewer is the only one that matters.

On to the argument that Slumdog exploited the city of Mumbai by only focusing on certain parts of the city. Expecting every visual representation of a place be completely three-dimensional and accurately representational is totalizing and damaging to art. A film can only be as representational as what the person behind the camera sees on the streets. The film was made by a primarily Indian cast and crew, so who gets the blame for not accurately capturing the city?

Finally, why should any dramatic story about India be a wholesale comprehensive depiction of the entire country? This is giving too much import to the documentary aspects of storytelling and not enough to the imaginitive or artistic aspects. As a narrative adapted from a fictional plot-driven work (and in no way a documentary), Slumdog was hardly positioning itself as an accurate depiction of the entire country of India or the city of Mumbai–which could hardly happen in a single movie anyway, since it is so diverse.

One of the main problems with the arguments around poverty porn are that they are the arguments of a subjective voice wanting an objective product about a contested area. There is simply no way a visual depiction of a place is going to capture every aspect of a place that every viewer will want. There is also no way a narrative-based story is going to represent a city or country in its totality. And ultimately, there is no reason why it should. But at its core, I think the real argument against giving credence to the concept of poverty porn is that it ignores and belittles the gaze and sentiments of the very people it purports to protect.

Every free moment I’ve had for the past month has been consumed by planning and dealing with the logistics of the Internet as Playground and Factory conference, a conference about digital labor. As the volunteer coordinator, I was responsible for staffing and recording the 3 day conference at the New School. The event finally happened on Thursday to Saturday, and our team accomplished so much in that time.

Together, 26 volunteers provided full coverage for 24 different events over 3 days in 7 different locations in 4 buildings. We provided a staggering 266.5 hours of work over the two-and-a-half days, with many people working 8+ hour days. The video team deserves a special mention most of whom pulled 8 hour days both Friday and Saturday, sharing 3 sets of equipment among 6 people, trading cards between sessions and successfully covering 15 sessions without losing a single cable, card or camera. And in terms of the attendees, panelists and hosting institution, the event was a huge success, as well as seeming to be an important marker in labor studies.

Was it worth it? Well, so far, I’m not really sure. My interest in volunteering in the first place was to be more intimately involved in the experience, and to be able to network with panelists and get really familiar with the arena of labor studies, particularly in the digital space. By that measure, my experience was a complete and utter failure. Since I was command post for all questions, problems, and fixes, I didn’t get to attend a single session, so I didn’t learn ANYTHING about the field academically.

I volunteered myself for this project with pretty high hopes, but ultimately it ended in the familiar experience of taking volunteer jobs as a way to push forward professionally, but without the anticipated payoff. Similarly, my internships have been less than the key to professional advancement I expected them to be. And while one volunteer experience turned into a regular consulting job, I was never paid at a competitive level, which I suspect is in part due to its free origins debasing its value for my clients.

In my experience, volunteer labor as a means of professional development is not adequately valued, an issue which has been written about in a New York Times series on internships by Douglas Martin and Anya Kamenetz among others. I know IPF included at least one session on extremely cheap labor that is essentially free in Second Life, and I hope they addressed strictly volunteer labor as well. I should add, there is a big difference between casual volunteering, like reading stories at your local library or helping with a fundraiser on the day of, versus being a part-time employee who just doesn’t get paid. And I’m definitely talking about the latter type of volunteering.

So this conference has left me a little sadder as I catch my breath before trying vainly to catch up in my three graduate classes, while teaching a 1.5 hour class to English Language Learners (also unpaid) and leading data research on an animation project at Eyebeam (also, you guessed it, unpaid). One of my few consolations is that I will be presenting a paper at the MLA conference at the end of the year, and will have a chance to immerse myself in a conference the way I want to — hearing interesting people talk about interesting subjects, and being able to engage in dialogue with them.

It would be remiss in me to not mention my other major consolation, which was recruiting, meeting, and working with the volunteers for this conference. Being part of a team is a really nice feeling, one I miss from my old days doing policy events and strategic communications full-time. And this team was one of the nicest I’ve worked with. The student life can be one of isolation, writing papers that engage in private conversations with often dead scholars and seen by a single professor, who may write only perfunctory comments back to you. Having the chance to hear everyone discuss the sessions they worked and saw was a pleasure, and I’m glad I got to be a part of that.

Will I stop doing big volunteer projects? I guess it depends on whether people stop doing really awesome things I want to be a part of. So come on people, stop being all creative and interesting! Right now. Stop it.

Moving up the stairs to the permanent collection, the space becomes radically different. This is not one of Paris’ star museums, the collection is modestly sized and displayed. Going to the website later, I discovered that it was divided into three categories: photographs, objects, and artistic representations. And this is what I found most problematic about an otherwise earnest exhibit: the collection is divided by physical nature rather than tied into a more cohesive historical context.

The historical aspects of immigration are covered, in embedded videos and some placards, but the information is often situated away from the relevant items in the collection. If we examine the collection as trying to create what Pierre Nora calls a meaningful lieu de mémoire about immigration, it is difficult to count it a resounding success, although it has its moments. Personal family histories dominate the collection, which offers a more positive representation of immigration than is often found in French discourse around the topic. But without an abundance of contextual information or experiential exhibits, I found it a muted impression of objects and photos that evoke a vague sense of some of the powerful travel histories that have shaped the contemporary world.

The Musee du Quai Branly on the other hand, offers a shock to the senses. The museum is located in the heart of Paris, very close to the Eiffel Tower, signaling a deliberate move from the outskirts of the city to give more prominence to the collection. In many ways, the design of the museum overshadows the objects housed in it. Joan Gonchar describes the organizing principle of the museum’s architect Jean Nouvel in Architectural Record: “In place of a customary museum environment, Nouvel has created a “fictional map” with the collections organized by geographic origin.”

When a building is specifically commissioned for a project, rather than repurposed, it is often as important an object of analysis as the collection itself, carrying as it does messages about both the use and nature of what it houses. In the case of Quai Branly, many surveyors have derived the same message, but interpreted positively or negatively depending on the critic. In a fairly representative piece, Tom Hennes writes in Curator that the museum environment is “unabashedly self-assertive” in its exoticization and othering of the cultures represented within.

The entrance is itself a testament to the nature of the experience. From the very white, very well-lit lobby, a long, winding passage gradually transitions to a deeper, darker, tunnel that takes viewers to the collection, which is presented in a spooky and dramatically lit space that can be confusing to navigate. As Sally Price mentions in “Art of Darkness,” the transition is reminiscent of Conrad’s allegorical novel Heart of Darkness. The transition from light to dark, from the civilization of the lobby to the “jungle” of the interior, can be seen as both regressive and patronizing.

But the artifacts presented within are displayed with the very best of intentions, in that they are beautifully lit, staged with care, and, as our guide explained, preserved with the utmost integrity for a long life. But as Sally Price points out, some exhibits are presented in “tight little cages” which evoke a sense of peep show around the figures.

As for context, again, the museum seems to miss the mark entirely. As is discussed in “Glass, Gardens, and Aborigines,” social criticism is rarely even hinted at throughout the space. Hennes notes that the little explanation that is offered is most often derived from iconic anthropologists and other thinkers of the late colonial period of the 1920s and 30s. To quote primarily from Western thinkers like Claude Lévi-Strauss and Margaret Mead, who were still rooted in a colonial world and have been interrogated for problematic worldviews in more recent times, is to remain rooted in a tradition of exoticizing “primitive” cultures – even if the name “Museum of Premiere Arts” was dropped in favor of Quai Branly.

In fact, the choice of name itself is presented in a revealing way. Our guide explained that to call it primitive was considered insulting so the name Quai Branly was adopted because “it means nothing.” This lack of meaning, or void, is an apt metaphor for what Quai Branly ultimately offers. While the objects are undeniably beautiful and treated with care, any use value or other tradition associated with it is discarded into a void. The fact that no other name could be chosen is indicative of the problematized environment of how the Western world, particularly France, chooses to engage with the rest of the world, by removing it behind glass walls to explore as something alien.

This is further highlighted by the fact that the artifacts of Europe are noticeably missing from the collection. Had the curators decided to include cultures of Europe in the same way, brought into the same setting, the display wouldn’t feel one-sided in its relentlessly superficial and aestheticized approach. But such objects remain at the Louvre, and retain an aura of celebrity and respectability that is comfortably within the same old traditions. Instead the collection at Quai Branly feels part of a long tradition of colonial exploration and conquest. As Sally Price discusses, exhibition of cultural difference was intimately linked to “the celebration of nationalism, colonial conquest, and the civilizing mission.”

Finally, while the uncomfortable juxtaposition of a Tarzan exhibit upstairs (again, strikingly and creatively displayed) was in keeping with the overall blindness to context of the museum, there was one object in particular that stood out to me: this ad for Lavazza coffee.

Displayed as if it were just another object in the exhibit, the ad presents a seemingly European woman on all fours snarling at the camera wearing a small fur, while two cherubic infants are staged in a position to suckle—even if the babies seem more bemused by the setting than ready to feed. The ad is for coffee, and draws on the Romulus and Remus myth of Italian origin, cleverly tying into the Tarzan exhibit. The museum’s commercialization of their displays is almost less offensive than their willingness to include an ad with the same tired tropes of exoticization, hypersexualization, and objectification, again with no discussion of the appropriateness of such a juxtaposition with the collection downstairs.

I’ve only really just encountered the term “decolonization.” Wikipedia says it refers to “the undoing of colonization” or “the achievement of independence by the various Western colonies and protectorates in Asia and Africa following World War II.”

I’ve read a lot of post-colonial literature, and to me, decolonization is a fondly conceived dream which most of these territories soon realized did not and maybe could not exist. Of course today we still see colonialism continue in lesser or greater flows, still making its presence felt in how globalization is experienced in different countries and territories.

To me, decolonization can only be about how France, Britain and other colonizers had to undergo a withering away of their territories or colonies and a process of lessening of power. In one of my summer texts, Kristin Ross talks about how France in particular went through both decolonization and modernization at the same time, having to incorporate both a waning of empire and an adoption of American capitalism at the same time.

I think what France had to undergo during this time is not really comparable to what Algeria, for example, went through post-1962, in reclaiming a cultural and territorial identity and creating a new governmental infrastructure, etc.

“Post-colonialism” just does not describe the same terrain or concerns as “decolonization.”

Two years, I would never have imagined so many of the even remotely progressive things that have happened in America this year! That we can have an intelligent president, not just an intelligent comedian, is a remarkable thing. Still walking on air, politically speaking, and not all of it is hot!

Last week, for instance, the Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported that the Pakistani military had passed out leaflets to citizens equating the Taliban to Pakistan’s real enemies, namely: “Jewish forces who are against the existence and security of the country and wanted to create disturbance in the region.”

One of the early comments on the post pointed out:

Mr. Mackey’s article is mainly on point, but there is a major misrepresentation at the end.

“The only shame is that Mr. Stewart didn’t have a chance to ask Mr. Haqqani how the anti-Taliban leaflets the Pakistani military passed out last week fit into this plan. As the Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported last Friday, those leaflets informed the population that Pakistan’s real enemies are ‘Jewish forces who are against the existence and security of the country and wanted to create disturbance in the region.’”

The three words that come before “Jewish” in the article are critical- “The same as”. This isn’t about spreading hatred of Jews, although it sadly does to an extent. This is about promoting anti-Talibanism by channeling anti-Semitism. It’s hard to know if the ends justify the means, but it is well intentioned.

In a welcome feature, the blogger-author of the post responds to comments directly, so the comment was followed by this response:

LEDE BLOGGER RESPONSE: The words “The same as,” referring to the Taliban, do not change the meaning at all of who is identified in the leaflets as the enemy of the Pakistani state.

I read this comment and felt it required some back up, since the author rejected the idea entirely. After reading that there were those three words omitted, I felt that my interpretation of the quote and author had changed–specifically, I thought the omission of the words changed the emphasis of the sentiment to be directly about inciting anti-Semitic sentiment rather than drawing on it. I responded to his rejection of the quote and stated this:

I highly encourage you to reconsider your response and give higher regard to accuracy in reporting. In my opinion, you made the quote more inflammatory by removing those three words.

Because I quoted his rejection that the meaning was changed, he responded:

LEDE BLOGGER RESPONSE: Your reading is simply incorrect — will have to explain how you think the meaning is changed. The original document said that the Taliban are “The same as the Jewish forces” that are the enemy of the state. So that means that the document is in fact saying that “Jewish forces” are the enemy of the state. The quote and its meaning are correctly rendered in the blog post above.

I realized that I had focused on meaning when really the change was in importance and emphasis. To me, this is an issue because it reflects that the author of the pamphlets is not inciting anti-Semitic sentiment but rather drawing on it. The author is not actively negative but rather,  operating in a negative environment.

My second comment, clarifying my position and trying to explain that the issue was about nuance in journalism rather than “just the facts” did not get published. Not only no response, but no airing in the public forum.

You may agree or disagree with my position about whether this is an important issue, it is a sidenote to some of the other issues more prominently featured in the post. But I noticed this comment after mine (line breaks edited for brevity):

curious, you refuse to publish any three of my comments. why? nothing offensive there, just hard questions.

while in all the other posts, you simply restate your claim that the removal of those three words makes no difference in the understanding and possible interpretations of the sentence. you won’t post my comment because i point blank ask you why you removed these three words, done in a fully conscious manner, as is by now obvious.

why won’t you answer? is this blog/section of the nyt so really biased? what’s your editor’s name?

The author responded with:

Your previous comment was exactly the same as others by people who misread the blog post. We do not always publish comments that echo other comments, and there is a limit to how many times we can point out that the part of the quote not cited did not in any way change the meaning of the part that was cited. It is simply a fact that leaflets distributed by the Pakistani military in recent days have warned against “Jewish forces who are against the existence and security of the country and wanted to create disturbance in the region.” Saying that the leaflet said that the Taliban are “The same as Jewish forces who are against the existence and security of the country and wanted to create disturbance in the region,” does not change the meaning of the rest of the statement one iota. People are free to disagree with what we report but we cannot give unlimited space to people who misunderstand what we report or make false assertions.

To me, there are several issues here that relate to democracy and transparency in journalism.

First, the New York Times chooses whose comments to publish. To a certain degree, this is as I would expect, in terms of foul language, hate speech, and irrelevance. But repetition? Repetition can be an important reflection of validity, and more than validity, reflect a larger group dynamic that at least deserves to be noted in the public sphere. By picking and choosing comments, NYT doesn’t allow for this group dynamic to be accurately represented, but casual readers who don’t know this policy, will likely not realize it. I certainly didn’t realize they sifted and selected to such a granular level.

Second, the author deflects critical questioning of his tactics by focusing purely on accuracy and ignoring questions of nuance and interpretation. I believe this is a traditional cop-out of journalists. In pure reporting, journalists often take cover by citing accuracy, even though there is a constant editing and filtering process in terms of which facts make it in and which don’t. But this blog post is all about adding context and making for a richer big picture about Pakistan and its relations with the world. To make them seem like Pakistan is an actor in inciting anti-Semitism rather than a more passive enabler is, to me, significant. It is inflammatory, if subtle. I believe these issues deserve as much judgment-withholding and noncommital positions as possible to keep bias (which is an unavoidable part of reporting) to a minimum.

I think this is one reason why people have grown to appreciate personalities who aren’t afraid to inject their opinions and bias into their delivery, a la Olbermann, Madow, the Fox news stable, etc. At least it’s a more honest approach in admitting that all reporting is biased and subjective. There is absolutely no way to present all the facts without a systematic editing process to turn facts into a narrative.

The New York Times holds on to the idea that facts and accuracy are all there is to make for an objective, unquestionable report that is above challenge. This idea of the authoritative voice is perhaps attractive, but it is also outdated and can be dangerous. And this is their weakness in a postmodern world, where we just know that there is no such thing as a report that cannot be questioned or interpreted according to subjective viewpoints.

In the 2008 presidential campaign, green energy investment took center stage on everyone’s agenda. The purported green energy source “clean coal” took center stage as a major talking point for Republicans and Democrats alike. The trajectory of the idea of clean coal in the US public imagination can be tracked by proxy by examining frequency of media mentions. For the year 1992, a search for “clean coal” in Google’s news archive turns up 126 mentions. Similar numbers persist for nearly a decade. In 2001, the frequency of the term escalates to 1100 mentions for the year, up over 400% from the previous year. And by 2008, the phrase “clean coal” yields a staggering 6790 mentions annually, nearly a quarter of all mentions found. But this only describes the timeline, it does not show how the idea was disseminated. A closer look at the content and sources of the media mentions helps shed light on who brought the idea to the larger public and why.

Sometime in mid-2006, I was checking my Yahoo email inbox, when I noticed a large banner ad to the right inviting me to support clean coal at learnaboutcoal.org. I couldn’t help but give a chuckle of disbelief. How on earth could coal be clean? I clicked on the link to find out who was behind this piece of linguistic sleight of hand. The name at the bottom of the webpage was Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC). At the time, there was very little information about who belonged to ABEC, but today, ABEC has its own entry in SourceWatch, a wiki that tracks and provides details on PR firms, activist groups and government agencies who shape the public agenda. ABEC is described as an astroturf (2) advocacy group promoting the interests of mining companies, coal transporters, and electricity producers.

Today, neither the Learn About Coal website nor ABEC exist, but the clean coal movement continues under a new name and format. According to The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine (3), learnaboutcoal.org was active from at least Mar 10, 2006 to Jan 12, 2008. Since the beginning of this year, the URL has redirected to americaspower.org, the main source of pro-clean coal information and ads. ABEC merged with the Center for Energy and Economic Development to form a new coal industry front group, American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), on April 17, 2008 (SourceWatch). ACCCE sponsors the americaspower.org website and spends an estimated $48 million a year on outreach and lobbying activities in support of their mission to promote clean coal (Davenport). ACCCE describes itself as “a partnership of the industries involved in producing electricity from coal” and now lists its members on the America’s Power website – 47 different coal companies (ACCCE). This was not the case, however, when the America’s Power website was first launched, as the sponsor description was still for ABEC, which described itself as “a voice to community leaders in the development of energy and environmental policies” and didn’t clarify its intimate ties to the coal industry (ABEC).

The movement to promote clean coal has elicited a coordinated campaign to combat the information being disseminated by the ACCCE. The League of Conservation Voters, Natural Resources Defense Council, National Wildlife Federation, and Sierra Club came together to form the Reality Coalition, which funds and runs the thisisreality.org website. The Reality Coalition organizes its defense around the idea that “In reality, there is no such thing as ‘clean’ coal” (Reality Coalition). This message is a direct response to the America’s Power website, which bases its argument on promoting coal as an essential and vital engine for the US economy rather than proving the statement that coal is an eco-friendly source of power.

The Reality Coalition campaign has a clear mission, to directly respond to the America’s Power campaign. The facts presented on the campaign’s website relate directly to its argument. America’s Power supports investment in the coal industry, which can only happen with the possibility of coal becoming a cleaner energy source. Therefore, it must create the idea of clean coal, but it without a central truth of coal actually being clean. The campaign’s marketing strategy is based on creating warm feelings for coal as a major element of the American economy, and the facts on its website support this indirect argument.

The America’s Power website is designed in an eco-friendly palette of white, blue and green, and includes a striking logo of a plug being inserted into a piece of coal to symbolize its main message that coal is the engine powering the United States economy. The audience for the site appears to be mainstream middle Americans, with a focus on those from coal-producing states like Wyoming and Texas. The main sections of the website are labeled The Facts, Ask the Experts, Issues & Policy, News, Who We Are and their blog, titled Behind the Plug. These are the typical sections found on any political or grassroots campaign, but a closer look at the section called The Facts reveals problems with its title.

The landing page for the section doesn’t actually list any facts, but instead focuses on directing readers to their state’s electricity profile to see the prominent role coal plays in powering the electricity grid. A link to the actual facts page is included on the page and is accurately called “factoids;” the bulk of the 17 bullet pointed statements do nothing to support the idea that coal is clean and safe for the environment. Most of the statements prove that coal is cheap, plentiful, and popular, but only one directly relates to proving that coal is safe for the environment. Unfortunately, the statement is not clear: “Today, America’s coal-based generating fleet is 70% cleaner (based upon regulated emissions per unit of energy produced) thanks, in part, to $50 billion invested in new technologies.” The statement does not explain the timeframe or to which specific new technologies the investment was directed. And while “70% cleaner” sounds good, if the base emissions were bad to begin with, 70% better may not mean much. As it is not given a source, the statement cannot be clarified or proven, leaving it a meaningless statistic. None of the statements on the factoids page are sourced, in direct contract to the Reality Coalition’s website.

The Reality Coalition’s website is designed in a cutting-edge combination of black and yellow, with clever flash elements that invite a very different audience from America’s Power. Their audience could be expected to be more media savvy and appreciative of a creative approach to the issues, probably younger than the America’s Power audience. The main sections are Reality Blog, The Facts, Watch the TV Spot, About Us, Get Involved, and Share Reality. The Reality Coalition website’s fact section is strikingly different from that of America’s Power, without an intermediary landing page to distract readers. Each of the 14 statements is clearly sourced, and each one relates in some way to its main argument that coal is not clean and is not a good energy alternative now or in the future. There is a link to an additional page of Details, which lays out their argument in full.

So who is winning the battle to rebrand coal? As of December of 2008, there is data available to show that the ACCCE campaign has made significant advances. The Hawthorn Group of Virginia, who designed and implemented the ACCCE’s campaign, touts its successes in its newsletter, noting that “In September 2007, on the key measurement question—Do you support/oppose the use of coal to generate electricity?—we found 46 percent support and 50 percent oppose. In a 2008 year-end survey that result had shifted to 72 percent support and 22 percent oppose. Not only did we see significantly increased support, opposition was cut by more than half” (Hammelman). Much of The Hawthorn Group’s successes came from timing and targeting; the height of its activities came during the presidential campaign when it was at virtually every rally possible. Another observation from the newsletter: “devising and implementing a strategy that focused on going where the news was happening and the crowds were gathering gave us greater results than trying to make people and news come to us” (Hammelman). There is no doubt that the Reality Coalition faces an uphill battle to turn the tide of public opinion. The Reality Coalition’s website is aimed at a somewhat different demographic from the ACCCE’s target, so it also remains to be seen how successful their targeting is.

The outcome of the battle for investment in coal is similarly murky. The key decisionmakers are largely government-based and the transition to the new administration is still underway. While the Obama campaign consistently discussed clean coal as a major component of his green energy platform in the run-up to the election, it is debatable whether investment will be as heavy on coal in the future. The Department of Energy still defines clean coal as “a new generation of energy processes that sharply reduce air emissions and other pollutants from coal-burning power plants.” The Reality Coalition website, however, notes a significant turning point for stricter standards for carbon emissions: the Environmental Protection Agency has decided to reconsider carbon dioxide regulation, which the campaign views as “a serious wake up call to the coal industry.” We can only hope that the new administration takes its cues from facts about environmental impacts and not factoids.

Notes
1 A cursory review of media articles that mention clean coal from 2001 onwards detail the heavy investments made by the federal government during this period.
2 According to SourceWatch, astroturf or “democracy for hire” groups present themselves as grassroots-based citizen groups or coalitions but are primarily conceived, created and/or funded by corporations, industry trade associations, political interests or public relations firms.
3 The Internet Archives’ Wayback Machine has archived 85 billion web pages from 1996 to now, providing outdated and nonexistent archived copies of old websites for public review.

Works Cited
American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. America’s Power. 2009. American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. 6 Apr 2009. Web. 6 Apr 2009. <http://www.americaspower.org>
Americans for Balanced Energy Choices. America’s Power. 2007. Americans for Balanced Energy Choices. 27 Oct 2007. Web. 6 Apr 2009. <http://web.archive.org/web/20071102051000/www.americaspower.org/Who-We-Are/>
Davenport, Coral. “Coal Industry Digs in With Lobbying Campaign.” CQ Weekly. Congressional Quarterly Inc., 21 Mar 2009. Web. 7 Apr 2009. <http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docid=weeklyreport-000003081123>
Hammelman, Suzanne. December 2008 Newsletter. “Hawthorn.” Vol. 1 Issue 1. The Hawthorn Group, 1 Dec 2008. Web. 7 Apr 2009. <http://www.hawthorngroup.com/newsletter/index.BAK.html>
Reality Coalition. This is Reality. 2009. Reality Coalition. 6 Apr. 2009. Web. 6 Apr 2009. <http://thisisreality.org>
SourceWatch. “Americans for Balanced Energy Sources.” SourceWatch. 27 March 2009. Web. 5 Apr 2009. <http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_for_Balanced_Energy_Choices>
Schweiger, Larry C. “Coal Reality: A Dirty Little Secret.” National Wildlife. April/May 2009, vol. 47 no. 3. National Wildlife Federation, n.d. Web. 5 Apr 2009. <http://www.nwf.org/NationalWildlife/article.cfm?issueID=128&articleID=1722>