Damien Mulley

Jimbo Wales starts something:

One hallmark of the blog and wiki world is that we do not wait for permission before making things happen. If something needs to be done, we do it. Well, campaigns need to sit up and take notice of the Internet, take notice of bloggers, take notice of wikis, and engage with us in a constructive way.

The candidates who will win elections in the future will be the candidates who build genuinely participative campaigns by generating and expanding genuine communities of engaged citizens.

Muammar Gadafi has a blog. Yes, Muammar Gadafi of Libya. Just thinking, wouldn’t Charlie Haughey have made a great blogger?

Political wire reports that Hilary hired Peter Daou to be her “Chief blogger”. Has she a Chief floorsweeper and Chief toiletcleaner too? Titles are great aren’t they? Daou is another blogger that worked on the Kerry campaign. We already know what Zack Exley is doing these days. Who’ll be Bertie’s Chief Blogger? Who’ll be rewriting press releases for Fine Gael? Labour already seem to have someone doing that. Sinn Fein, will they go with blogs, maybe not since they think their voters don’t have computers. Great quote from David Cochrane’s blog:

Adams: And what of all these policies, where can we find them?
Quinn: All of our policies can be found on our website
Adams: The people we want to represent don’t have a computer

This might interest the politics fans. I wasted a bit of my Sunday by inputting the name of each current TD into Technorati and generated a watch list for each. Here are Technorati Watchlists (RSS feeds) for each TD going alphabetically. Maybe James can help make an OPML file out of this? I have the raw urls in a txt file if it is neeed. Comments appreciated.

** A
Bertie Ahern
Dermot Ahern
Michael Ahern
Bernard Allen
Noel Ahern
Barry Andrews
Seán Ardagh
Liam Aylward

**B
Niall Blaney
Dan Boyle
Johnny Brady
Martin Brady
James Breen
Patrick Breen
Seamus Brennan
Tommy Broughan
John Browne
John Bruton
Richard Bruton
Joan Burton

**C
Joe Callanan
Ivor Callely
Pat Carey
John Carty
Donie Cassidy
Michael Collins
Paul Connaughton
Paudge Connolly
Beverley Cooper-Flynn
Joe Costello
Mary Coughlan
Simon Coveney
Brian Cowen
Jerry Cowley
Seymour Crawford
John Cregan
Sean Crowe
Ciaran Cuffe
Martin Cullen
John Curran

**D
Noel Davern
Síle de Valera
John Deasy
Jimmy Deenihan
Noel Dempsey
Tony Dempsey
John Dennehy
Jimmy Devins
Bernard Durkan

**E
John Ellis
Damien English
Olwyn Enright

**F
Frank Fahey
Martin Ferris
Michael Finneran
Dermot Fitzpatrick
Sean Fleming
Mildred Fox

**G
Pat The Cope Gallagher
Eamon Gilmore
Jim Glennon
Paul Gogarty
John Gormley
Noel Grealish
Tony Gregory

**H
Mary Hanafin
Marian Harkin
Mary Harney
Sean Haughey
Tom Hayes
Jackie Healy-Rae
Seamus Healy
Joe Higgins
Michael D Higgins
Máire Hoctor
Phil Hogan
Brendan Howlin

**J
Joe Jacob

**K
Cecilia Keaveney
Paul Kehoe
Billy Kelleher
Peter Kelly
Enda Kenny
Tony Killeen
Séamus Kirk
Tom Kitt

**L
Brian Lenihan
Conor Lenihan
Michael Lowry
Kathleen Lynch

**M
Micheál Martin
Pádraic McCormack
Charlie McCreevy
James McDaid
Michael McDowell
Tom McEllistrim
Shane McEntee
Dinny McGinley
Paul McGrath
Finian McGrath
John McGuinness
Paddy McHugh
Liz McManus
Gay Mitchell
Olivia Mitchell
John Moloney
Arthur Morgan
Donal Moynihan
Breeda Moynihan-Cronin
Michael Mulcahy
Catherine Murphy
Gerard Murphy

**N
Denis Naughten
Dan Neville
Matthew Nolan
Michael Noonan

**O
Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin
Éamon Ó Cuív
Seán Ó Fearghail
Aengus Ó Snodaigh
Charlie O’Connor
Willie O’Dea
Liz O’Donnell
John O’Donoghue
Denis O’Donovan
Fergus O’Dowd
Noel O’Flynn
Rory O’Hanlon
Batt O’Keeffe
Jim O’Keeffe
Ned O’Keeffe
Tim O’Malley
Fiona O’Malley
Brian O’Shea
Jan O’Sullivan

**P
Tom Parlon
Séamus Pattison
William Penrose
John Perry
Peter Power
Seán Power

**Q
Ruairí Quinn

**R
Pat Rabbitte
Michael Ring
Dick Roche
Eoin Ryan
Sean Ryan
Eamon Ryan

** S
Trevor Sargent
Mae Sexton
Joe Sherlock
Róisín Shortall
Brendan Smith
Michael Smith
Emmet Stagg
David Stanton

**T
Billy Timmins
Noel Treacy
Liam Twomey

**U
Mary Upton

**W
Jack Wall
Dan Wallace
Mary Wallace
Joe Walsh
Ollie Wilkinson
Michael Woods
G V Wright

Steven Colbert kicks ass at the Whitehouse Correspondents dinner. Just watched the video and it was fantasically cutting and took no prisoners. He rounded on the anaemic Whitehouse press too. Before he came on Bush was there with an impresonator interpreting what he was saying. REally quite entertaining but a blood shame that the only way the media gets their digs in is via a yearly joke-a-thon. Boingboing has links to the video of it.

Driving down motorways the wrong way, drunk.
Knocking down pedestrians.
Breaking speed limits.
Then we have the big boss Gun Runner though we had a previous gun runner also run the country.

Oooh, and we can have a fascist Chief of Police.

*puts on his Judas Priest album and spins “Breaking the Law”*

Richard Waghorne said on his blog:

it seems that politically-motivated gay people are over-represented online

I’d disagree and think that of those in the Irish blog O’Sphere who identify as lesbian or gay, they’re not very poltical or into activism at all. Look at Homosexual Agenda which has 43 bloggers listed. 43 out of 1000+ Many of them aren’t very active bloggers either. Now look at the posts in that aggregator. Not hugely political for the main part are they? Except the usual dodgy characters 🙂

So in disagreeing with Richard I think myself and Rob need to start adding more people to the Gay Agenda. The idea is to add blogs which are, like Richard mentions, “politically-motivated” though we don’t want foaming at the mouth folks either. Sorry RabidStraightHatingBottom33, maybe try another aggregator? Ta. So, if you have a few LGBT blogs in your aggregator and you believe they are political/activist type blogs, please leave links in the comments. (The spam protection for comments kicks in for 2 or more hyperlinks in comments so your post will go into the moderation queue.) The blogs don’t have to be Irish either. We also want blogs you read. We want you to be the quality control and won’t let in any blog you haven’t read.

Note to the FeFiFoe people: This is not an invite for commentary on Richard. There’s more than one blog outlet for that already. 🙂

Via World Changing comes details of NGO in a box. NGO in a box concept paper (PDF doc). This is a cd that contains windows based applications that can be used by lobby groups, advocacy groups and NGOs who campaign for various causes. I really like this concept of ready-made applications to aid activist groups. I’m really looking forward to their advocacy cd.

These projects are also linked to the Martus Project which is free software used for recording and storing information concerning the abuse of human rights.