text:
San Diego County Democrats for Environmental Action
Fact vs. Fiction: How Measure A Will Preserve Our Backcountry and Prevent Sprawl
By Cody Petterson
There's been a lot of lying and betrayal regarding Measure A (the SOS ballot measure), which is par for the course when the Building Industry Association (BIA) and a dozen of the region's most notorious sprawl developers hire Tony Manolatos to smear an environmental measure.
But the other day the organization "Planning Today for San Diego's Future," a BIA front, pushed out a Facebook ad that would've made Donald Trump blush. It demands a rebuttal. Toward that end, here are the facts.
If you find genuine errors, inform me and I'll correct them. Unlike the opposition, the environmentalists volunteering our time to draft, qualify, and vote YES on Measure A actually care about the truth.
"What is Measure A?"
The fight to pass Measure A is a brawl between environmentalists and developers over the future of land use in our county. That's what it is.
It's the Sierra Club, Endangered Habitats League, San Diego 350, Climate Action Campaign, San Diego County Democrats for Environmental Action, Sunrise Movement San Diego, California Native Plant Society, San Diego Audubon, Cleveland National Forest Foundation, Volcan Mountain Foundation, Coastal Environmental Rights Foundation, California Chaparral Institute, Southwest Wetlands Interpretive Association, Fallbrook Land Conservancy, Escondido Creek Conservancy, along with the League of Women Voters of San Diego, Citizens Coordinate for Century III (C3), and our labor allies in the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Local 1931 and Unite Here! Local 30.
Those who are against the SOS initiative include the Building Industry Association, California Association of Realtors, Lincoln Club, Chamber of Commerce, Republican Party, and a murder of Southern California sprawl developers, including Newland Sierra, KB Homes, Shea Homes, Baldwin and Sons, California West, Fanita Ranch, Brookfield, Lennar, and the paid propagandists at the Manolatos Nelson Murphy public relations firm. That's the whole story. They've been successful in flipping some of our allies in office and in the affordable housing community, but that's to be expected when we're broke environmentalists and they're the region's most powerful, deepest-pocketed interest group. They have plenty of inducements. We have only our principles and our commitment to climate action and habitat protection.
The goal of YES on Measure A is to discourage the sprawl and leapfrog development that continues to destroy our native habitat, undermine the integrity of our county's General Plan, defeat our efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and stave off climate catastrophe, and prevent housing from being built where we need it — near jobs and transit.
The goal of the opposition is to preserve their ability to reap massive windfall profits by inducing compliant county supervisors to grant them General Plan Amendments (GPA) for sprawl and leapfrog development. The San Diego region has been the plaything of land speculators and developers for nearly two centuries. Our sprawling, traffic-choked suburban landscape is largely the product of their machinations and profit-seeking. Instead of focusing their investments in areas zoned for residential density in our region's smart growth plans, the building industry continues to try to build in fire-prone rural areas — precisely the wrong places.
"What would Measure A do?"
Measure A doesn't alter the General Plan in any way. Not a single word, not a single zoning designation. It wouldn't affect Board of Supervisors decisions on any parcels other than those zoned rural and semi-rural in the unincorporated portion of the county — no cities, no county towns, no rural villages.
In concrete terms, Measure A would "require voter approval of amendments to the General Plan that increase residential density in semi-rural or rural areas" of the unincorporated county, unless the increases are minor (five additional units or less), the parcels are within a village or rural village area, or the amendment is "required to implement state or federal housing law, including laws related to the provision of affordable housing." That's it.
By requiring voter approval of supervisor-approved GPAs in rural and semi-rural parts of the unincorporated county, Measure A would provide an additional check on the rent-seeking and regulatory capture that is the stock-and-trade of our region's sprawl and leapfrog developers.
Rather than buy appropriately-zoned urban parcels and building up, developers find it more profitable to buy elected officials and land whose value is depressed by rural zoning restrictions, and then have their bought officials hand them massive upzoning windfalls. This game has been played for so long that sprawl developers have come to think of it as their right, and to think of the General Plan as something that applies only to suckers without the connections, consultants, capital, projects, and contributions to corrupt elected officials and other stakeholders. Some of us disagree.
"What's so bad about sprawl development?"
Many in the environmental community are deeply committed to protecting the native habitat, wildlife, and vegetation of our county, which is still the most biodiverse in the nation.
Long before anthropogenic climate change was recognized as the greatest threat to life on Earth, conservationists were fighting against the suburban sprawl that has been steadily destroying our open spaces for decades. But with the rise of the climate emergency, stopping suburban sprawl and fostering transit-supportive urban density has become the single most important thing San Diegans can do to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, half of which come from transportation.
Sprawl development not only destroys and fragments habitat, it also increases commute times and total vehicle miles travelled (VMT), contributes to traffic and air pollution, burdens lower income households with significant transportation costs, and prevents us from hitting our greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction targets. Furthermore, in San Diego, sprawl means building in fire-prone chaparral in the canyons and ridges of the coastal foothills at the urban-wildland interface.
There are also substantial externalities of sprawl development that are ultimately borne by county residents and taxpayers. The general public is eventually forced to subsidize developer profits by paying for the costly expansion of freeways and extension of fire, police, and other public services. It is a ponzi scheme paid for by future taxpayers. And, of course, our children will have to struggle to survive in the climate catastrophe it accelerates.
"How does the county's General Plan limit sprawl?"
In 2011, the Board of Supervisors passed a comprehensive General Plan update, the first of its kind since 1978. This plan was the product of $18 million of studies, 13 years of analysis and public discussion, including 212 meetings with the full planning and sponsor groups, 109 workshops, and 216 subcommittee meetings.
The update was a compromise between a wide range of stakeholders, foremost among them environmentalists and developers. Like any compromise, no one got everything they wanted, but the update won acceptance from the environmental community by implementing a modest shift of growth from the county's rural periphery to the urban core — thus reducing habitat loss and ensuring future residential growth would be in closer proximity to existing services and amenities. It also won planning awards for its innovative implementation of smart growth principles and its limits on sprawl.
This shift involved a reduction in the zoned residential capacity of many parcels in the rural unincorporated county, and an increase in the zoned capacity of some parcels in the already developed areas. The plan therefore not only constrained sprawl, but incentivized transit-supportive urban density by eliminating the need for 780 miles of road by allocating development capacity near existing roads and infrastructure.
It's important to recognize that there is an inherent competition — for capital, home buyers, and public infrastructure and service subsidies — between urban density and rural sprawl. The region's finite supply of developers and equity capital has historically followed the sprawl path (i.e. buy officials, buy rural, obtain upzoning windfall, build out) which necessarily draws investment away from the path stipulated by our institutions and our General Plan (buy urban, build up). Sprawl and leapfrog development is not an accompaniment to climate-responsible and Plan-consistent urban transit-supportive residential development — it is a direct competitor for private capital, public subsidy, and home buyers.
The 2011 General Plan Update shifted the incentives toward smart growth and urban density, and General Plan amendments are almost universally attempts to drag us back to more profitable and environmentally-destructive rural sprawl that developers prefer. That's what SOS is trying to stop.
Now, as you can imagine, when you're taking on the sprawl development industry, there's going to be misleading, disingenuous criticism. I believe it's important to confront it head on, and I have rebutted the most common criticisms below.
"Isn't Measure A ballot box planning?"
The most frequent criticism, promulgated regularly by No on SOS and echoed by a number of candidates, elected officials, and other stakeholders is that the initiative is "ballot box planning."
Let's be clear. Measure A is NOT ballot box planning. It is not a planning document at all. It does not alter the zoning designation of a single parcel anywhere in the county. There's a lot of unflattering ironies in the claim, however. It's deeply ironic that this argument is being propounded by the BIA and sprawl developers, when the term was originally applied to attempts by developers to violate general plans and circumvent municipal officials by submitting plan-inconsistent developments to public vote.
Developers can and often do engage in actual ballot box planning when it suits them. If a local City Council or County Board of Supervisors refuses to give them the sprawl-facilitating amendments they need, they can, and often do, attempt to qualify a measure for the ballot.
Many of the same developers paying Mr. Manolatos to poison the public square with "but this is ballot box planning" have themselves happily circumvented elected councils with ballot measures that dramatically upzone their parcels. Manolatos himself is general consultant for Lilac Hills Ranch, which tried to pass Measure B in 2016, which was an actual, honest-to-God ballot box planning measure. The disingenuousness of these individuals is stunning. They're luminaries of the local disinformation industry. Give them enough money to pay their mortgages and luxury car leases and they'll kneel next to their beds and lie to God.
"Sprawl development can solve our affordable housing crisis."
No, it can't. Affordable sprawl development is a myth.
Let me say it loud for the folks in the back. There have been 17 GPAs approved or proposed since the 2011 County General Plan update and not a single one has included a single unit of deed-restricted affordable housing. That is, housing costing 30 percent or less of monthly income for a family of four making 80 percent or less of Area Median Income (AMI), which in San Diego County is $86,300.
Affordable sprawl development is a fairy tale that developers tell gullible, well-meaning progressives to help get their luxury developments past skeptical boards and councils. It's not a thing. The average price of a home in the unincorporated county is $30,000 more than in the City of San Diego. For households living on the margins, the transportation costs alone for living so far from jobs can eat up as much as a third of their income!
So let's get something clear. There is no housing in San Diego County that is naturally affordable, period. When one adds together the costs of materials, labor, engineering, architecture, land, permitting, financing, fees, and modest profits, there is no conceivable way a unit can be brought to market at a price affordable to a family of four making $85,000 (low income), $53,000 (very low income), or $32,000 (extremely low income) per year. None. Zero. Which means that affordability is entirely a function of our society's willingness to subsidize those units. And no rational society would invest in putting affordable housing in its rural periphery.
Subsidizing rural affordable housing would be wildly at odds with best practices — far from jobs, far from public and private amenities and services, and inaccessible to mass transit. The idea of choosing to house a family making 50 percent AMI in the rural periphery is preposterous. A family making 50 percent AMI is already having trouble affording transportation. Trouble affording childcare. Trouble finding work. To extended families and social networks. To jobs. It needs access to social services. The only rational place to invest in affordability, either through public subsidy or developer mandates, is in our job- and amenities-rich urban and suburban municipalities and villages.
There is already ample capacity in the region's General Plans for multi-family residential density where it is rational, sustainable, and equitable. The county has additional capacity for roughly 400,000 units, with around 230,000 of it zoned for multi-family residential of 20+ units per acre. That's enough capacity, and specifically multi-family capacity, to accommodate our Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) targets for residential construction for decades. Capacity is not our problem.
And SANDAG has actually reduced the RHNA housing target for the unincorporated county from 22,000 in the 5th Cycle to 6,700 in the 6th, because it's prioritizing residential density where there are jobs and access to transit, both of which are lacking in the backcountry.
It's true that some coastal municipalities have attempted to use initiatives to curtail multi-family density where it is appropriate, but the rural and semi-rural areas of the unincorporated county are not appropriate locations for affordable housing development. The entire argument rests on the premise that violating our General Plan, destroying habitat, and lampooning our Climate Action Plan by building on parcels zoned rural and semi-rural is a viable and valid avenue to achieve housing affordability. Which, obviously, the environmental community unanimously condemns. It is a sad statement of the ideological poverty of the affordable development community that some have allowed themselves to be co-opted by for-profit sprawl developers.
"Okay, but what if Measure A actually WAS ballot box planning?"
While I reject the characterization of Measure A as ballot box planning, it's worth asking the question, "So what if it were?"
From a progressive perspective, plebiscites often get it wrong. California has had some doozies: Prop. 13 (1978), Prop. 187 (1994), Prop 8. (2008). I spend a fair amount of my time wrestling with the baleful effects of some terrible state and local initiatives. On the other hand, it also won women's rights to vote (1911), the abolition of the poll tax (1912), the Coastal Zone Conservation Act (1972) which became the California Coastal Act, Prop. 65 (Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, 1986), Prop. 162 (Pension Protection Act, 1986), independent redistricting (2008), and Prop. 35 (Ban on Human Trafficking and Sex Slavery, 2012). So, much like representative democracy's record, the picture is mixed.
Actual ballot box planning — in which developers use the initiative process to circumvent General Plans and elected bodies — is certainly problematic. That said, elected representatives also frequently get it wrong. The idea that the Board of Supervisors somehow has a better record of fidelity to the General Plan, and is therefore to be trusted more than the general voting public, is dubious on its face.
The ferocious opposition of the BIA and sprawl developers to Measure A suggests they know perfectly well that the Board of Supervisors is the weak link in the planning process. If buying Supervisors weren't the cheapest, fastest, easiest way to guarantee carte blanche for their property speculation and sprawl projects, they would have been doing 'ballot box planning' instead of successfully putting more than a dozen GPAs through the Board of Supervisors over the last eight years.
Ultimately, the question of whether or not direct democracy is good or bad is facile. It's necessary to balance the potential harm of direct democracy in this narrowly-defined context against the harm of not employing it. Every form of power has its shortcomings. I don't like any form of power, don't like standing armies, don't like bosses, don't like supervisors even. But these forms of power are desirable to the extent that the harms they prevent exceed the harms they entail.
Imagine if Measure A were an initiative to give voters the right to reject private prisons, or refugee internment camps, or mandatory invasive ultrasounds. Would you say, "Well, I don't like internment camps any more than the next person, but I guess we'll have to tolerate them because I have a real problem with direct democracy." Of course not. Any reasonable person would agree that the harm of refugee internment camps dramatically exceeds any philosophical qualms about direct democracy. And that's precisely how actual environmentalists feel when BIA dupes complain about 'ballot box planning.'
"I don't like climate catastrophe any more than the next guy, but I have a real problem with direct democracy." Really? You have more of a problem with direct democracy than climate catastrophe? Than habitat loss? Than sprawl? Than sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic for two hours a day? Really? Direct democracy may have its weaknesses, but when narrowly constrained to ratification of supervisor-approved General Plan Amendments that increase density in the rural and semi-rural unincorporated county, the harm of sprawl self-evidently exceeds the purported harm of direct democracy.
This is precisely why you never hear actual environmentalists — people who actually center the environment in their life and work — make the preposterous argument that we should vote against a patently environmental initiative because it might result in an excess of democracy. Even if one were strongly opposed in principle to plebiscites, it defies reason to argue that the purported sins of the plebiscite are of greater seriousness than the climate and habitat impacts of sprawl-promoting GPAs.
"But we're going to have a Democratic majority on the Board in 2020."
Well, we're certainly working toward that end this year, but another objection we hear is we're going to secure a Democratic majority on the Board of Supervisors in 2020, so there's no need to worry about sprawl GPAs.
First, there is no guarantee Democrats will take the Board of Supervisors. Most of those individuals pushing this argument already understand that. We'll almost certainly add D-1, but D-3 could remain in Gaspar's hands — hands that neither you or I would ever trust with our General Plan, our Climate Action Plan, and the fate of our backcountry.
Second, even if we secure a majority, I have no faith that our majority would be immune to the inducements of the BIA, sprawl developers, and the various interest groups they suborn with paltry cuts of their windfall profits. I trust almost no one to consistently do the right thing for the environment. Certainly none of our elected officials. Not without sustained pressure from the environmental community. Not when there are powerful, deep-pocketed interest groups inducing them to do the wrong thing.
I know and respect candidates for D-1 Supervisor, and I've endorsed one of them, but I still wouldn't trust any of them to invariably hold out against sprawl-promoting GPAs, especially in Otay. I respect Supervisor Fletcher immensely, but even he could falter if the right project or proponent found its way to his strike zone. I trust one supervisorial candidate and that's only because she's been one of my best friends for 25 years. I'm eager to backstop all the rest. And I'm even happy to backstop her, because a truly environmentally committed and centered candidate would not be constrained in any way by this measure.
The only Board of Supervisors votes that SOS submits to countywide vote are approvals of residential sprawl projects on rural and semi-rural parcels, that are outside of village plans, that are in the unincorporated county, and that are inconsistent with the General Plan. If a supervisor can avoid that, they can avoid ever having to deal with an oversight vote at all. Easy as pie.
"But SOS is a Republican measure."
That is the lie that pushed me to write this piece.
The claim that Measure A, the Safeguard Our San Diego Countryside Initiative, is a Republican effort funded by Republican millionaires to preserve a Republican General Plan is so disgusting it makes me physically angry. As I wrote in the introduction, every single Measure A supporter I know is a Democrat. The entire organizing committee. Every single endorser. There's not a Republican in sight.
Measure A is currently exclusively a volunteer effort to preserve our open space, protect the integrity of our General and Climate Action Plans, and reduce our county's GHG emissions. It is supported by all of our county's environmental organizations and opposed by the BIA, the California Association of Realtors, the Lincoln Club, the Chamber of Commerce, the Republican Party, Greg Cox (R), Jim Desmond (R), Kristin Gaspar (R), Ron Roberts (R), Bill Horn (R), Kevin Faulconer (R), John Minto (R), Steve Vaus (R), Randy Voepel (R), Bill Wells (R), Mike Diaz (R), Rebecca Jones (R), and all of San Diego's sprawl developers.
We requested contributions from local businesses and individuals who are aligned with our cause, and the Golden Door Spa provided a generous initial contribution to the SOS signature-gathering effort. The business model of the Golden Door demands solitude and natural serenity, and it has been allied with the rural communities with which it co-exists for decades. Successive attempts by sprawl developers to upzone neighboring parcels on Merriam Mountain threaten that natural setting and the surrounding communities.
As it happens, the Golden Door is fighting a parallel, unaffiliated battle against the proposed Newland Sierra development, which was approved as a General Plan Amendment by our pro-sprawl County Board of Supervisors. If voters defeat it, Measure A would incidentally add an additional hurdle to future attempts to upzone the Merriam Mountain parcels.
But that welcome infusion of cash was confined to the signature gathering phase. It's just passionate environmentalists and our cash-starved committee now. All volunteers. All committed to preserving our county's open space. Preserving our climate. Preserving our planet from the greed that's destroying it. It's the same folks who show up to City Council, to the Board of Supervisors, to SANDAG. The same folks that march, and canvass, and phone bank. The same folks who set up booths at Earth Fair and come out for beach clean-ups. Who lead hikes on weekends. Or plant trees. Or fix trails. Or manage community gardens. Who volunteer as docents at the Natural History Museum or Mission Trails Interpretive Center. That's who we are. That's who Measure A is.
Measure A would implement a narrowly-limited form of direct democracy, confined to the ratification of approvals by the Board of Supervisors of density-increasing General Plan Amendments (GPAs) in Rural and Semi-Rural parcels in the unincorporated county, excluding those within Village and Rural Village plans. Whatever qualms some individuals may have with direct democracy per se, the benefits of preserving our open space, protecting the smart growth strategy enshrined in our General Plan, facilitating equity and affordability, and reducing our greenhouse gas emissions far outweigh any hypothetical harm of this narrow application of direct democracy.
Please, join San Diego's environmental community and our allies in civil society and the Labor movement in supporting Measure A — the Safeguard Our San Diego Countryside (SOS) initiative. The future of our smart growth General Plan, our Climate Action Plan, and our beautiful, dynamic, and diverse county depends on it.
Tomo the Inu endorses YES on Measure A and NO on Measure B.
Green Thoughts
The blog component of San Diego County Democrats for Environmental Action welcomes content from SDCDEA members, guests and leadership.
Tommy Hough


text:
<?php

/**
 * Import XML issue class
 */

require_api( 'bug_api.php' );
require_api( 'user_api.php' );
require_once( 'Interface.php' );

/**
 * Import XML issue class
 */
class ImportXml_Issue implements ImportXml_Interface {
	/**
	 * old issue id
	 */
	private $old_id_;
	/**
	 * new issue id
	 */
	private $new_id_;

	/**
	 * new bug object
	 */
	private $newbug_;

	/**
	 * keep existing category
	 * @var bool
	 */
	private $keepCategory_;
	/**
	 * default category
	 * @var int
	 */
	private $defaultCategory_;

	/**
	 * Default Constructor
	 * @param boolean $p_keep_category    Whether to keep existing category.
	 * @param integer $p_default_category Identifier of default category.
	 */
	public function __construct( $p_keep_category, $p_default_category ) {
		$this->newbug_ = new BugData;
		$this->keepCategory_ = $p_keep_category;
		$this->defaultCategory_ = $p_default_category;
	}

	/**
	 * Read stream until current item finishes, processing the data found
	 * @param XMLreader $t_reader XMLReader being processed.
	 * @return void
	 */
	public function process( XMLreader $t_reader ) {
		# print "\nImportIssue process()\n";
		$t_project_id = helper_get_current_project(); # TODO: category_get_id_by_name could work by default on current project
		$t_user_id = auth_get_current_user_id( );

		$t_custom_fields = array();
		$t_bugnotes = array();
		$t_attachments = array();

		$t_depth = $t_reader->depth;
		while( $t_reader->read() &&
				($t_reader->depth > $t_depth ||
				 $t_reader->nodeType != XMLReader::END_ELEMENT)) {
			if( $t_reader->nodeType == XMLReader::ELEMENT ) {
				switch( $t_reader->localName ) {
					case 'reporter':
						$t_old_id = $t_reader->getAttribute( 'id' );
						$t_reader->read( );
						$this->newbug_->reporter_id = $this->get_user_id( $t_reader->value, $t_user_id );

						# echo "reporter: old id = $t_old_id - new id = {$this->newbug_->reporter_id}\n";
						break;

					case 'handler':
						$t_old_id = $t_reader->getAttribute( 'id' );
						$t_reader->read( );
						$this->newbug_->handler_id = $this->get_user_id( $t_reader->value, $t_user_id );

						# echo "handler: old id = $t_old_id - new id = {$this->newbug_->handler_id}\n";
						break;

					case 'category':
						$this->newbug_->category_id = $this->defaultCategory_;

						if( version_compare( MANTIS_VERSION, '1.2', '>' ) === true ) {
							$t_reader->read( );

							if( $this->keepCategory_ ) {
								# Check for the category's existence in the current project
								# well as its parents (if any)
								$t_projects_hierarchy = project_hierarchy_inheritance( $t_project_id );
								foreach( $t_projects_hierarchy as $t_project ) {
									$t_category_id = category_get_id_by_name( $t_reader->value, $t_project, false );
									if( $t_category_id !== false ) {
										$this->newbug_->category_id = $t_category_id;
										break;
									}
								}
							}

							# echo "new id = {$this->newbug_->category_id}\n";
						}
						break;

					case 'eta':
					case 'priority':
					case 'projection':
					case 'reproducibility':
					case 'resolution':
					case 'severity':
					case 'status':
					case 'view_state':
						$t_field = $t_reader->localName;
						$t_id = $t_reader->getAttribute( 'id' );
						$t_reader->read( );
						$t_value = $t_reader->value;

						# Here we assume ids have the same meaning in both installations
						# TODO add a check for customized values
						$this->newbug_->$t_field = $t_id;
						break;

					case 'id':
						$t_reader->read( );
						$this->old_id_ = $t_reader->value;
						break;

					case 'project';
						# ignore original value, use current project
						$this->newbug_->project_id = $t_project_id;
						break;

					case 'custom_fields':
						# store custom fields
						$i = -1;
						$t_depth_cf = $t_reader->depth;
						while( $t_reader->read() &&
						        ( $t_reader->depth > $t_depth_cf ||
						          $t_reader->nodeType != XMLReader::END_ELEMENT ) ) {
							if( $t_reader->nodeType == XMLReader::ELEMENT ) {
								if( $t_reader->localName == 'custom_field' ) {
									$t_custom_fields[++$i] = new stdClass();
								}
								switch( $t_reader->localName ) {
									default:
										$t_field = $t_reader->localName;
										$t_reader->read( );
										$t_custom_fields[$i]->$t_field = $t_reader->value;
								}
							}
						}
						break;

					case 'bugnotes':
						# store bug notes
						$i = -1;
						$t_depth_bn = $t_reader->depth;
						while( $t_reader->read() &&
						        ( $t_reader->depth > $t_depth_bn ||
						          $t_reader->nodeType != XMLReader::END_ELEMENT ) ) {
							if( $t_reader->nodeType == XMLReader::ELEMENT ) {
								if( $t_reader->localName == 'bugnote' ) {
									$t_bugnotes[++$i] = new stdClass();
								}
								switch( $t_reader->localName ) {
									case 'reporter':
										$t_old_id = $t_reader->getAttribute( 'id' );
										$t_reader->read( );
										$t_bugnotes[$i]->reporter_id = $this->get_user_id( $t_reader->value, $t_user_id );
										break;

									case 'view_state':
										$t_old_id = $t_reader->getAttribute( 'id' );
										$t_reader->read( );
										$t_bugnotes[$i]->private = $t_reader->value == VS_PRIVATE ? true : false;
										break;

									default:
										$t_field = $t_reader->localName;
										$t_reader->read( );
										$t_bugnotes[$i]->$t_field = $t_reader->value;
								}
							}
						}
						break;

					case 'attachments':
						# store attachments
						$i = -1;
						$t_depth_att = $t_reader->depth;
						while( $t_reader->read() &&
						        ( $t_reader->depth > $t_depth_att ||
						          $t_reader->nodeType != XMLReader::END_ELEMENT ) ) {
							if( $t_reader->nodeType == XMLReader::ELEMENT ) {
								if( $t_reader->localName == 'attachment' ) {
									$t_attachments[++$i] = new stdClass();
								}
								switch( $t_reader->localName ) {
									default:
										$t_field = $t_reader->localName;
										$t_reader->read( );
										$t_attachments[$i]->$t_field = $t_reader->value;
								}
							}
						}
						break;
					default:
						$t_field = $t_reader->localName;

						# echo "using default handler for field: $field\n";
						$t_reader->read( );
						$this->newbug_->$t_field = $t_reader->value;
				}
			}
		}

		# now save the new bug
		$this->new_id_ = $this->newbug_->create();

		# add custom fields
		if( $this->new_id_ > 0 && is_array( $t_custom_fields ) && count( $t_custom_fields ) > 0 ) {
			foreach( $t_custom_fields as $t_custom_field ) {
				$t_custom_field_id = custom_field_get_id_from_name( $t_custom_field->name );
				if( custom_field_ensure_exists( $t_custom_field_id ) && custom_field_is_linked( $t_custom_field_id, $t_project_id ) ) {
					custom_field_set_value( $t_custom_field->id, $this->new_id_, $t_custom_field->value );
				} else {
					error_parameters( $t_custom_field->name, $t_custom_field_id );
					trigger_error( ERROR_CUSTOM_FIELD_NOT_LINKED_TO_PROJECT, ERROR );
				}
			}
		}

		# add bugnotes
		if( $this->new_id_ > 0 && is_array( $t_bugnotes ) && count( $t_bugnotes ) > 0 ) {
			foreach( $t_bugnotes as $t_bugnote ) {
				bugnote_add(
					$this->new_id_,
					$t_bugnote->note,
					$t_bugnote->time_tracking,
					$t_bugnote->private,
					$t_bugnote->note_type,
					$t_bugnote->note_attr,
					$t_bugnote->reporter_id,
					false,
					$t_bugnote->date_submitted,
					$t_bugnote->last_modified,
					true );
			}
		}

		# add attachments
		if( $this->new_id_ > 0 && is_array( $t_attachments ) && count( $t_attachments ) > 0 ) {
			foreach ( $t_attachments as $t_attachment ) {
				# Create a temporary file in the temporary files directory using sys_get_temp_dir()
				$t_temp_file_name = tempnam( sys_get_temp_dir(), 'MantisImport' );
				file_put_contents( $t_temp_file_name, base64_decode( $t_attachment->content ) );
				$t_file_data = array(
					'name'     => $t_attachment->filename,
					'type'     => $t_attachment->file_type,
					'tmp_name' => $t_temp_file_name,
					'size'     => filesize( $t_temp_file_name ),
					'error'    => UPLOAD_ERR_OK,
				);
				# unfortunately we have no clue who has added the attachment (this could only be fetched from history -> feel free to implement this)
				# also I have no clue where description should come from...
				file_add( $this->new_id_, $t_file_data, 'bug', $t_attachment->title, $p_desc = '', $p_user_id = null, $t_attachment->date_added, true );
				unlink( $t_temp_file_name );
			}
		}

		#echo "\nnew bug: $this->new_id_\n";
	}

	/**
	 * update mapper
	 * @param ImportXml_Mapper $p_mapper Mapper.
	 * @return void
	 */
	public function update_map( ImportXml_Mapper $p_mapper ) {
		$p_mapper->add( 'issue', $this->old_id_, $this->new_id_ );
	}

	/**
	 * Dump Diagnostic information
	 * @return void
	 */
	public function dumpbug() {
		var_dump( $this->newbug_ );
		var_dump( $this->issueMap );
	}

	/**
	* Return the user id in the destination tracker
	*
	* Current logic is: try to find the same user by username;
	 * if it fails, use $p_squash_userid
	*
	 * @param string  $p_username      Username as imported.
	 * @param integer $p_squash_userid Fallback userid.
	 * @return integer
	*/
	private function get_user_id( $p_username, $p_squash_userid = 0 ) {
		$t_user_id = user_get_id_by_name( $p_username );
		if( $t_user_id === false ) {
			# user not found by username -> check real name
			# keep in mind that the setting config_get( 'show_user_realname_threshold' ) may differ between import and export system!
			$t_user_id = user_get_id_by_realname( $p_username );
			if( $t_user_id === false ) {
				# not found
				$t_user_id = $p_squash_userid;
			}
		}
		return $t_user_id;
	}
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


From Firebase to sustained use discounts, let's count the reasons why Google Cloud might be a better choice.
Linux developers have been working on migrating to a 64-bit time_t data structure even on 32-bit systems, among other steps, but alas the Linux kernel is very large and complex and time is very important in a lot of areas from file-system to networking.
You can expect this open source Linux smartphone to cost $100+ for 2GB RAM and 16GB storage variant. What are your views on this upcoming Linux smartphone? Share your thoughts on PinePhone in the comments section and keep reading Fossbytes.


Stunning remodeled home you are going to love. Upgrades everywhere you look. Tile flooring throughout the home. Real fireplace in family room. Quartz counter tops in kitchen along with upgraded cabinetry with lots of storage. Ceiling fans in all the bedrooms. Tile walled showers in the bathroom. A very spacious back yard with covered patio and all the room you need to relax, entertain, or even a future swimming pool. Priced perfect this home won't last long so you need to hurry! Thanks for looking.


I'm trying to set up wpa wireless, but I guess I'm missing some basics.
In Wisdows Vista, I simply pasted the 63 ascii char password into the wireless setting windows, and it works.
I know, unix is different.
Now, if I paste the password into hostname.if it does not work, if I try to convert it to hexadecimal with wpa-psk it does not do it, I guess because there are all sorts of characters in the password (but then, why are punctuation marks not allowed?). If I try to use a password with only letters it gives me the hexadecimal, but then it does not work either (of course I've put the new password into my router.
I did not know you have to tell the script to bring up the network card, because you don't need that with ehternet.


A new 3D printing discovery at Virginia Tech is poised to change the way we design sensors and low-power generators.
A team lead by associate professor Xiaoyu 'Rayne' Zheng has succeeded in creating piezoelectric structures that can take on any shape or form. By enabling such flexibility, the researchers are now free to create a range of objects capable of generating electricity, monitoring impact, or sensing the environment around them, without the use of multiple leads or connectors.
Piezoelectricity is the electric charge that occurs in certain ceramic and crystalline materials when stress or strain is applied. One common example application of piezoelectric materials is quartz wristwatches.
In a quartz watch a small electric charge is supplied to a quartz crystal by the battery. This causes the crystal to vibrate, and the rate of vibration translates to a movement of the hands (ticking) to keep time.
Piezoelectricity is also harnessed in some inkjet printheads, for precise droplet deposition, or "droplet on demand" technology.
The materials used to generate piezoelectricity however are inherently brittle. They require controlled, clean-room environments for manufacturing, and the materials' atoms are typically fixed, making them unsuitable for shaping into flexible structures.
Through experimentation with these inks, and the 3D printing process, the team have discovered how to precisely tune the material to achieve a desired result.
Some of the team's current work with the piezoelectric ink is demonstrated in the video below.
A full paper discussing the research detailed in this article is published in Nature Materials, titled "Three-dimensional printing of piezoelectric materials with designed anisotropy and directional response." The research is co-authored by Huachen Cui, Ryan Hensleigh, Desheng Yao, Deepam Maurya, Prashant Kumar, Min Gyu Kang, Shashank Priya and Xiaoyu (Rayne) Zheng.
Is this your Research Team of the Year? Nominate Virginia Tech, or another institute, for the 2019 3D Printing Industry Awards.
For more 3D printing research updates subscribe to the free 3D Printing Industry newsletter, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. Consider 3D Printing Jobs for your next research opportunity.


text:
This Week in Review: A unique paywall plan in Boston, and ethics at TechCrunch and the Times
Every Friday, Mark Coddington sums up the week's top stories about the future of news.
Paid and free, side by side: The Boston Globe became the latest news organization to institute an online paywall this week, but it did so in an unprecedented way that should be interesting to watch: The newspaper created a separate paid site, BostonGlobe.com, to run alongside its existing free site, Boston.com. PaidContent has the pertinent details: A single price ($3.99 a week), and Boston.com gets most of the breaking news and sports, while BostonGlobe.com gets most of the newspaper content.
As the Globe told Poynter's Jeff Sonderman, the two sites were designed with two different types of readers in mind: One who has a deep appreciation for in-depth journalism and likes to read stories start-to-finish, and another who reads news casually and briefly and may be more concerned about entertainment or basic information than journalism per se.
The first thing that caught many people's attention was new site's design — simple, clean, and understated. Tech blogger John Gruber gave it a thumbs-up, and news design guru Mario Garcia called it "probably the most significant new website design in a long time." The Lab's Joshua Benton identified the biggest reasons it looks so clean: Far fewer links and ads.
Benton (in the most comprehensive post on the new site) also emphasized a less noticeable but equally important aspect of BostonGlobe.com's design: It adjusts to fit just about any browser size, which reduces the need for mobile apps, making life easier for programmers and, as j-prof Dan Kennedy noted at the Lab, a way around the cut of app fees required by Apple and others. If the Globe's people "have figured out a way not to share their hard-earned revenues with gatekeepers such as Apple and Amazon, then they will have truly performed a service for the news business — and for journalism," Kennedy said.
Of course, the Globe could launch the most brilliantly conceived news site on the web, but it won't be a success unless enough people pay for it. Poynter's Sonderman (like Kennedy) was skeptical of their ability to do that, though as the Atlantic's Rebecca Rosen pointed out, the Globe's plan may be aimed as much at retaining print subscribers as making money off the web. The Washington Post's Erik Wemple wondered if readers will find enough at BostonGlobe.com that's not at Boston.com to make the site worth their money.
The TechCrunch conflict and changing ethical standards: Last week's flap between AOL and TechCrunch over the tech site's ethical conflicts came to an official resolution on Monday, when TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington parted ways with AOL, the site's owner. But its full effects are going to be rippling for quite a while: Gawker's Ryan Tate called the fiasco a black eye for everyone involved, but especially AOL, which had approved Arrington's investments in some of the companies he covers just a few months ago. Fellow media mogul Barry Diller also ripped AOL's handling of the situation.
At the Guardian, Dan Gillmor said that while he doesn't trust TechCrunch much personally, it's the audience's job to sort out their trust with the help of transparency, rather than traditional journalism's strictures. Others placed more of the blame on TechCrunch: Former Newsweek tech editor Dan Lyons said TechCrunch's people should have expected this type of scenario when they sold to a big corporation, and media analyst Frederic Filloux said TechCrunch is a perfect example of the blogosphere's vulnerability to unchecked conflicts of interest.
There was more fuel for those kinds of ethical concerns this week, as the winning company at TechCrunch's annual Disrupt competition was one that Arrington invests in. But Arrington had an ethical accusation of his own to make at the conference, pointing out that the New York Times invests in a tech venture capital fund which has put $3.5 million into GigaOM, a TechCrunch competitor. Poynter's Steve Myers detailed the Times' run-ins between the companies it invests in and the ones it covers (and its spotty disclosure about those connections), concluding that even if the conflict is less direct than in blogging, it's still worth examining more closely.
As it plunged further into its battle with TechCrunch late last week, AOL was also reported to be talking with Yahoo, which recently fired its CEO, about a merger between the two Internet giants. All Things Digital's Kara Swisher said there's no way the deal would actually happen; Wired's Tim Carmody called it a "spectacularly crazy idea" and GigaOM's Mathew Ingram agreed, while Business Insider reminded us that they said a year ago that AOL and Yahoo should merge.
Meanwhile, the New York Times' David Carr homed in on the core problem that both companies are facing: The fact that people want information online from niche sites, not giant general-news portals. "As news surges on the Web, giant ocean liners like AOL and Yahoo are being outmaneuvered by the speedboats zipping around them, relatively small sites that have passionate audiences and sharply focused information," he wrote.
Facebook opens to subscribers: It hasn't gotten nearly as much attention as some of its other moves, but Facebook took another step in Twitter's direction this week by introducing the Subscribe Button, which allows users to see other people's (and groups') status updates without friending or becoming a fan of them.
As GeekWire's Monica Guzman and many others noted, Facebook's "subscribe" looks a heck of a lot like Twitter's "follow." When asked about similar Google+ features at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, a Facebook exec said it wasn't a response to Google+.
Guzman said Facebook is putting down deeper roots by going beyond the limits of reciprocal friendship, and GigaOM's Mathew Ingram pinpointed the reason why this could end up being a massive change for Facebook: It's beginning to move Facebook from a symmetrical network to an asymmetrical one, which could fundamentally transform its dynamics. Still, Ingram said Twitter is much better oriented toward being an information network than Facebook is, even with a "Subscribe" button.
The change could have particularly interesting implications for journalists, as Poynter's Jeff Sonderman explained in his brief outline of the feature. As he noted, it may eliminate the need for separate Facebook profiles and pages for journalists, and while Lost Remote's Cory Bergman said that should be a welcome change for journalists who were trying to manage both, he noted that shows and organizations may want to stick with pages.
News Corp.'s scandal widens: An update on the ongoing scandal enveloping News Corp.: A group of U.S. banks and investment funds that own shares in News Corp. expanded a lawsuit to include allegations of stealing, hacking, and anti-competitive behavior by two of the company's U.S. subsidiaries — an advertiser and a satellite TV hardware manufacturer. As the Washington Post's Erik Wemple noted, these are old cases, but they're getting fresh attention, and that's how scandals gain momentum.
James Murdoch, the son of News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch, was also recalled to testify again before members of Britain's Parliament later this fall, facing new questions about the breadth of News Corp.'s phone hacking scandal. The Wall Street Journal examined the scandal's impact on the elder Murdoch's succession plan for the conglomerate, especially as it involves James. The company's executives also announced this week that they've found tens of thousands of documents that could shed more light on the phone hacking cases.
Reading roundup: Here's what else went on this week:
— The biggest news story this week, of course, is actually 10 years old: Here's a look at how newspapers marked the anniversary of 9/11, how news orgs used digital technology to tell the story, and a reflection on how 9/11 changed the media landscape.
— Twitter introduced a new web analytics tool to measure Twitter's impact on websites. Here's an analysis from Mathew Ingram of GigaOM.
— At an academic conference last weekend, Illinois j-prof Robert McChesney repeated his call for public funding for journalism. Here are a couple of good summaries of his talk from fellow j-profs Axel Bruns and Alfred Hermida.
— Finally, here's a relatively short but insightful two-part interview between two digital media luminaries, Henry Jenkins and Dan Gillmor, about media literacy, citizen journalism and Gillmor's latest book. Should make for a quick, thought-provoking weekend read.
Tags: This Week in Review AOL apps asymmetrical networks Boston Globe Boston.com BostonGlobe.com conflict of interest design disclosure ethics Facebook Facebook Subscribe James Murdoch Michael Arrington New York Times News Corp. paid content paywall phone hacking scandal portals Subscribe TechCrunch Twitter Yahoo
Denise Searle: Blogging or flogging? Why NGOs face challenges in embracing the Internet's potential
[The Internet opens up new means of communications for major NGOs. But does it also make their position vulnerable to a new breed of web-native upstarts, who understand the power of technology more fully? Denise Searle, who has worked with some of the world's best known NGOs, explores that in this, the final part of our series on NGOs and the news. —Josh]
At the offices of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph in London during December 2008, the customary Christmas and New Year parties were supplemented by a round of often tearful farewell drinks as staff at the respected broadsheet newspapers reeled from the third round of redundancies in two years. The Telegraph Media Group's desire to invest in its online activities was a key reason for the cuts in print journalist jobs, with the global economic downturn adding to the pressures.
The Telegraph is far from alone. Most UK and U.S. newspapers and news broadcasters have been building up their online presence, which has usually involved spreading editorial resources more thinly to create round-the-clock multimedia online outputs from existing or even reduced staff complements. In January 2009, the Los Angeles Times announced that it was axing 300 jobs, 70 of them in the editorial department, which had already been virtually halved in size over the past five years. The timing was surprising. According to Jeff Jarvis, journalism professor at the City University of New York and writing in The Guardian newspaper, the LA Times editor, Russ Stanton, had claimed earlier that month that the paper's online advertising revenue was sufficient to cover the entire print and online editorial payroll.
There is growing concern about the combined effect on news coverage of financial pressures and the needs of the internet. In January 2008, the UK and Ireland's National Union of Journalists sent out an e-alert to members asking them to blow the whistle on where cutbacks are undermining journalism standards.1 The same month the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University published "What's Happening to Our News: An Investigation into the Likely Impact of the Digital Revolution on the Economics of News Publishing in the UK." International news is particularly vulnerable because it's costly. According to the Reuters Institute report, there has been a large-scale cull of foreign news staff in newspapers and broadcasters in the UK and abroad. Independent Television News (ITN), a major broadcast news provider in the UK, has more than halved the number of permanent overseas bureaux and staff since 2000. ITN now allocates just five per cent of its overall news budget to a network of six foreign bureaux.
"To feed the appetite of 24/7 media platforms, news publishers increasingly rely on a range of external suppliers for the raw material of journalism," says the report, "not only trusted wire agencies, but also the public relations industry and, more recently, citizen journalism." It's safe to assume that NGOs and charities could be included in the list.
While few NGOs would celebrate the loss of jobs and the squeeze on foreign news coverage, many of those involved in international humanitarian and development work are certainly eyeing up the opportunities these changes present for increasing coverage of their concerns and activities by the media, particularly on their digital/internet platforms. International NGOs have access to human interest stories, so the logic goes, so surely the content-hungry news websites can't afford to be as choosy as their parent publishers and broadcasters have been in the past and will snap up news and features to fill the gaps left by shrinking foreign reporting teams.
Be there or be square
The reach of the internet and associated digital platforms, such as mobile phones and online social networking sites, continues to grow. According to the Internet World Stats website, which aggregates data from the International Telecommunications Union and Nielsen/NetRatings among others, more than 1.5 billion people around the world use the internet, which is 23.4 per cent of the total global population. This has grown by 305.5 percent since 2000. The fastest expansion has been in the global south and east in recent years but even mature markets such as the United States and UK continue to grow. Almost 47 million or 76 percent of people in the UK use the internet, a growth of 203.1 percent since 2000. In the United States, 228 million people use the internet, representing 74.1 percent of the population and 138.8 percent growth since 2000.
NGOs need to engage these internet users for funds and general support, and because the people they need to influence for policy change and major donations are increasingly influenced by the internet. The internet is no longer simply an alternative or accompaniment to traditional print-based communications. Internet experts point out that many "digital natives" (usually defined as people aged 18-28, largely in industrialized countries) are uncomfortable with more traditional forms of communication. In other words, they probably won't read the lovingly produced mail shots. Even "digital immigrants" (those over 30-ish) expect their NGO of choice to have a substantial online presence.
Plus, the internet theoretically enables NGOs to communicate directly with existing and potential supporters, without having their messages filtered by the media or the commercial prospecting agencies that many use to recruit new members or supporters via the telephone or on the street. This must be a benefit, given that the 2009 edition of the Edelman Trust Barometer (an annual international survey commissioned by Edelman Public Relations, based on 30-minute interviews with 4,475 individuals aged 25-64) showed that trust in nearly every type of news outlet and spokesperson is down from last year — apart from NGOs. In fact, NGOs are the most trusted institutions globally: 54 percent of the older part of the age group surveyed (35 to 64 year olds) trust them to do what's right. If only NGOs could reach their publics, they're bound to be won over by their case. Simple. Or is it?
The problem is that today's fast-moving internet isn't an easy fit for all NGOs. In the early days, in what we now realize was merely "web 1.0," businesses and non-profits alike used their websites as shop windows for electronic versions of the sorts of materials they published anyway. There were probably some pictures and maybe a bit of video and audio and even a "contact us" facility, but on the whole the relationship with audiences was on a "read (or watch) only" basis. Through a gradual process of increasing interactivity, "web 1.0″ has morphed into "web 2.0," which is based on participation, and where many users expect to share their own content and ideas and be listened to. The underlying technology is largely the same, but more people are using it in many different ways. Organizations that are known and respected in the real world often face competition for attention from a range of other sources and perspectives in the virtual world.
What's more, this dynamic online environment continues to change. In July 2008, the U.S. business website Forbes.com tapped the internet analysts Nielsen Online to get a sense of where and how U.S. residents are migrating on the web. They drew up a list of the 20 most trafficked websites, compared with three years earlier, and found that the top slot went to Google, with 123 million unique visitors a month, seven million more than Yahoo, the second most popular site, and 62 per cent more than the 76 million unique visitors Google attracted three years previously, when it ranked fourth.
The survey indicates that the Internet is still about searching for information. Out of the top five sites most visited in the United States — Google, Yahoo, MSN, Microsoft's home page, and AOL Media Network — four are portals to other websites. This means that: "web surfers are 'leaning forward,' looking for something in particular, versus 'leaning back' as browsers of traditional print publications do," concludes Forbes.com. "In theory, that dynamic should spell opportunity for online enterprises peddling products and information that truly meet specific needs, be it t-shirts or health advice (if only it weren't for the myriad competitors, now on similar footing, trying to do the same thing)."
The United States's sixth most popular web destination is YouTube, the user-generated-video site, with 75 million unique visitors a month, each of whom spent an average of one hour per visit. In fact user-generated content of all sorts has redrawn the digital map. Wikipedia, the user-generated encyclopedia, jumped to 9 on the list from 57 three years ago. Online social networks are also popular, with Facebook ranking 16 on Nielsen's list with more than 34 million unique visitors, compared with 4 million in July 2005, when it ranked 236, according to the Forbes.com article. The picture is similar in the UK, which has the highest level of online social networking in Europe.
I'm speaking but are you listening?
"We've only just begun the journey of involving readers," said Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief of Guardian News Media, in an interview in the February 2009 edition of UK Press Gazette, in which he described the group's move to new premises accompanied by a switch to 24/7 multimedia publishing across The Guardian, The Observer and guardian.co.uk (with no compulsory redundancies).2 The Guardian has the UK's most popular newspaper website, with 26 million unique users a month.
"I think journalists are going to get much more at ease with the idea that we don't know it all, and that we've got incredibly intelligent readers who live and breathe The Guardian and who love the opportunity to get involved with it," Rusbridger said. "What that means in terms of the systems and how you edit and aggregate all that, I don't know — but that's what makes it so interesting."
All this indicates that if humanitarian and development NGOs want to attract and retain visitors in the increasingly crowded and competitive online world, and turn them into supporters, they need to provide timely, easy-to-find information, genuinely involve their audiences, and keep up with the latest trends. This is a tall order, particularly when many of the web destinations competing for their audiences' attention have commercial muscle behind them.
Feeding the voracious internet beast takes extensive human and technical resources. While most NGOs have established substantial web teams, they are not geared up for 24/7 content provision and updating — and probably should not be, given that their core business is in a different field, such as tackling poverty or defending human rights. Plus, the fast turnaround and response demanded by the internet (which is putting a strain on the quality of output from traditional print and broadcast newsrooms) conflicts with the longer-term, planned activities of most humanitarian and development NGOs, and simply could not be met by the lengthy approval processes most NGOs operate for any kind of external communication. The contradictions are illustrated in "Virtual Promise," a survey published in 2008 by the UK think tank and research consultancy nfpSynergy into charities' use of the internet. Of 376 organizations surveyed, 80 percent said they used their website for "news and regular updates" yet only 25 percent said they updated their website on a daily basis.
There's also a difference in perspective and culture, particularly when it comes to involving supporters and giving them a voice. The big humanitarian and development NGOs work on the basis that supporters give them money and trust them to spend it wisely in working to achieve their mission. It's genuinely difficult to decide how much information and transparency to provide around an NGO's work and objectives, and the strategic decisions that have shaped the particular activities and approach being undertaken. How should these processes be translated for the digital sphere to make them accessible in a sound-bite culture while not being misleading over the challenges of building rural livelihoods, protecting biodiversity, ending the arms trade and so on? How much detail can internet visitors be expected to absorb?
It's all very well having snappy, web-friendly outreach or media and commercial advertising activities that drive audiences to the website. But when people get there, very often they find that the optimistic, passionate promotional materials have dissolved into stark content about suffering, hardship, injustice, and the other myriad issues NGOs are dealing with. Or conversely, they are presented with slight web features that imply that the problems are all being dealt with.
NGOs have made real efforts over recent years to engage with the internet beyond simply building an attractive website. A visit to Facebook brings up more than 500 results for Oxfam, including pages from various Oxfam national chapters, pages on specific campaigns and links from supporters. Some are current, while others are old and/or out of date. There are similar Facebook presences for Greenpeace, Amnesty International, Save the Children, Medecins sans Frontieres and other major international NGOs. On Youtube there are 3,860 videos about Amnesty International, both official videos and those posted by supporters. [Please note that the number of videos cited was current as of the time this essay was written in 2009; the numbers today may be substantially different.] The situation is similar for Oxfam (2,460 videos), Greenpeace (12,700 videos), Save the Children (13,900 videos), and Medecins sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders (286 videos). NGO content on MySpace includes videos, weblinks and dedicated pages by the organizations themselves and supporters, and again the big players are there, including Greenpeace (101,000 entries); Oxfam (30,000 entries); Amnesty International (38,100 entries); Save the Children (207,000 entries); and Medecins sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders (around 15,000 entries).
But go to most large NGOs' websites and it's near impossible to find information about the volume of visitors to the website or numbers of supporters. For example, Amnesty International USA quotes 2.2 million global supporters for the total Amnesty movement but doesn't give its own national membership (although Amnesty International UK does give its 230,000 "financial supporters"). Others don't even do that, including Medecins sans Frontieres UK and Liberty. Oxfam GB, Save the Children UK, and Amnesty International USA give financial figures (Amnesty International USA and Save the Children UK publish their audited report and accounts). Greenpeace US provides Greenpeace International accounts. But all take some finding.
This is not very web 2.0. Digital natives and frequent internet users tend to expect more information about what an organization is doing and who else is involved to decide whether they are in good company. Peer feedback and activities are key drivers of web activity, hence the popularity of blogging and the "swarm of bees" effect that can drive huge numbers of users to view a video on YouTube or to sign up to a particular petition.
Promoting impact
The Kiva website, which enables users to give loans to businesses in the developing world via local microfinance partners, has an "Impact This Week" box on its home page that tells you how many people have made a loan in any one week, and how many new lenders there are. There's also easy-to-find information on different lending teams, now many are in them and how much they've loaned. Kiva enables lenders to see the actual project they will be supporting and to monitor progress. Avaaz.org, the international civic organization that promotes activism on issues such as climate change, human rights, and religious conflicts, states at the top of its homepage how many actions have been taken since it was set up in January 2007 (15,277,937 as of January 2010). Prominently, on its "about us" page, it says: "In less than three years, we've grown to over 3.5 million members, and have begun to make a real impact on global politics." The front page of the U.S. liberal public policy advocacy and political action group Moveon.org says: "Join more than 5,000,000 members online, get instant action updates and make a difference." It also gives clear facts about actions and money in the website's "" section.
It is obviously easier for small, single (or limited) issue groups to provide this kind of apparently transparent data than larger, more complex, long-established NGOs whose claims are likely to be more closely scrutinized by their own members as well as outside audiences and regulatory bodies. Who is going to count whether Avaaz actually has more than 3.5 million members in every nation of the world? Whereas Amnesty International spent a couple of years painstakingly compiling the returns from its 80 offices round the world before releasing the figure of 2.2 million members, supporters, and subscribers. Even so, big NGOs do have a way to go before they are truly embracing the spirit of the internet.
nfpSynergy's 2007 fundraising benchmark survey of 109 charities showed that online fundraising raises on average just 2 percent of total voluntary income. This compares with supporter development and retention raising 27 percent of voluntary income and major donors raising 7 percent. Ironically, online fundraising is highly cost-effective, raising an average of around £10 for every £1 spent on direct costs, including salaries. "Most charities have not started to implement best practice and maximize their income. Most are missing the opportunities from both web and email communications and from the various ways of collecting online income," wrote independent charity ICT and internet consultant, Sue Fidler, in Third Sector Magazine.
She reckoned the reasons are often simple: charities do not have the time, the resources or the knowledge to get the various tools and mechanisms in place, or the management buy-in to get more resources. But for many there is a more frustrating reason: they have the tools but are not using them to sell the charity's proposition. If the route to donate and the ask are wrong, the tools won't help.
"We have learnt that having a donate button isn't enough. The concept of 'build it and they will come' hasn't worked," Fidler wrote. "Until we learn to sell ourselves online, using our stories to engage our supporters while offering them every opportunity to help, we will not see an increase in online income."
Nick Aldridge, Chief Executive Officer of MissionFish, is slightly more optimistic. In the forward to MissionFish's June 2008 report, "Passion, Persistence, and Partnership: the Secrets of Earning More Online," he states that "Charities of all sizes are becoming more confident and sophisticated in using the web to attract, engage, and develop potential supporters. They are learning that success depends on the passion and persistence they show, and the strength of the partnerships they're able to form." User-generated content, online auctions, affinity schemes, and e-commerce are all growing in popularity.
"Those representing and speaking for charities online are finding that they need to engage the public in less formal and more personal dialogue. They must be prepared to take part in lively real-time discussions about the value of their work, rather than posting out their annual reports," he emphasized. "It's clear that an online strategy now involves far more than 'click here to donate.' Charities must recognize the difference that online interaction can make in helping them to achieve their goals, and incorporate online work in all their major initiatives."
However, Aldridge concluded that there's still a long way to go. "Staff who specialize in internet communications or fundraising often feel sidelined, and have a hard time explaining the potential of their work to managers. Meanwhile, many small charities still struggle to develop the tools and content they need for a basic online presence."
Only a few years ago a senior member of the governance board of a major international NGO demanded to know who had approved the NGO's entry in Wikipedia and why they hadn't had it changed because the tone wasn't as flattering as she would have liked. At that time it was pretty remarkable that she was actually aware of Wikipedia. It's hard to envision such a conversation happening now. Yet awareness of the internet doesn't equate to understanding or benefit. Most NGOs accept that they must exploit the potential of the digital sphere if they are to stand a chance of achieving their mission but many still believe that their core business can function as usual, which is where media organizations used to be. Websites were seen as an add-on to the main activities of publishing or broadcasting, which is now not the case, as illustrated by the current job cuts and concerns about quality of journalism.
How long will it be before international development and humanitarian NGOs see their supporter base eroded by digital native organizations such as Kiva and Avaaz, plus numerous national and local advocacy and development groups that can apparently provide digital native audiences with direct, tangible ways of making a difference? And will it stop there if governments and major institutional donors start fully embracing the internet as a way of doing business? They are already listening to online constituencies. Will these digital-savvy communities start mobilizing online to ask hard questions about why, despite years of effort, international development and humanitarian NGOs have not made poverty history or achieved social justice? And how will they be answered?
Denise Searle is an independent communications consultant. Her current projects include helping to develop a digital strategy for Oxfam and serving as part of the coordinating group for the communications strand of aids2031. She previously served as senior director of communications with Amnesty International and chief of UNICEF's Internet, Broadcast and Image Section.
Interview with Miles Barter, campaigns officer, National Union of Journalists, January 2009.
UK Press Gazette. "Inside the Guardian's New Home." February 2009, p. 34.
Tags: NGOs and the News Alan Rusbridger Amnesty International Avaaz Daily Telegraph Greenpeace Guardian international reporting ITN Jeff Jarvis Kiva Los Angeles Times Medecins Sans Frontieres MissionFish NGOs Oxfam portals Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism Russ Stanton Save the Children What's Happening to Our News

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


A paradise in Arugam Bay that is perfect positioned on the beach with sweeping views of the bay and the world famous arugam bay surf point. Everything is easily reached with a beach stroll yet Watermusic provides a relaxing escape for those wanting a secluded and tranquil environment.
Watermusic is crafted in the local style and charm but with comfort and conveniences to accomodate the western traveller.
The proberty boasts 5 free standing cabanas, rooms all with ensuite as well as 1 bedroom within the main building.
The main building is open to all guests and features a shared bathroom and extensive lounge and dining areas. Enjoy!
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The journey time is around 8 hours.
The CTB Pottuvil / Panama Bus departs daily at 5 am from Pettah Bus Stand. It arrives in Pottuvil at 4 pm. You can take a three-wheeler from Pottuvil to Arugam Bay.


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January 21, 2021 last updated 8:45 ET
South Sudan's president, Salva Kiir, is welcomed by Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, second from left, at Chigi Palace in Rome, Italy, April 10, 2019 (AP photo by Alessandra Tarantino).
One Year On, South Sudan's Stalled Peace Deal Is Proving Its Skeptics Right
Julian Hattem Friday, Aug. 30, 2019
Last September, South Sudan's president, Salva Kiir, signed a power-sharing deal with rebel leader Riek Machar, promising to bring an end to the five-year civil war that has crippled the world's newest country, which declared its independence from Sudan in 2011. It wasn't the first time. A similar agreement signed in 2015 broke down the following year, leading to fighting that prompted Machar to flee the country.
Observers predicted the new agreement would share the fate of its predecessor. What was billed as a "revitalized" peace plan was still silent on many of the underlying drivers of violence and seemed in many ways to be a stale retread of a deal that had already failed to deliver on its promise. ...


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