I should get on that soon.

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My blogging has been scant to say the least these past few weeks, and it will stay that way for at least the next month, as planning for the fourth annual Jazz for Justice concert and the extractive industries conference ramps up. I hope to get back to semi-regular posting after things slow down.

Today, she posted suggestions given to Secretary Clinton on her visit to the DRC by local Congolese leaders. That's a breath of fresh air in and of itself. But aside from the wealth of good advice by those that do know best -- advice with tangible goals -- maybe the most powerful "suggestion" came from Christine Schuler-DeSchryver: Take Real Action.

We have received many, many visitors, each more important than the one before. We have received many, many celebrities, too. At the end, we have the impression that people only came to consume human poverty, human misery. And, in the end, all that we got was a pile of business cards.

"A pile of business cards" and Western sympathy don't really amount to much when they aren't backed by real action. I know that, sometimes, I might just be too critical of the actions of the U.S. or Europe or civil society or whom or whatever, but I see no way that anyone could truly believe that celebrity gawking, sensationalized media, pats on the head and the entire "save the African" idea serves anyone but those attempting to do the "saving".

Though I'm constantly aware, it still devastates me to see the idea of poverty and suffering being just another notch in the belt and autograph in the book.

You see, it appears that the weapons that the United States have been providing to the transitional government in Somalia -- you know to fight the terrorists -- are being sold in Mogadishu markets. And lions and tigers and bears oh my am I surprised. 

I mean really, did we expect anything differently? When you give weapons to a government that can't even control its own capital city, how do you expect that to turn out.

Forget the fact that the U.S. has a policy of non-intervention in Somalia. I guess that only applies to when people need help. But let the former president say that Somalia could be a hotbed for terrorist activity (a self-fulfilling prophecy) and take actions that effect non-militant Islamic communities that succeed only in pissing them and the diaspora off and making the madrassas and jihad seem like a far superior option to secular schooling and peace (more self-fulfillment) and it's time for non-interventionist intervention in the Horn.

The part of it all that gets me the most, and I'll stop after this, is that we used Ugandan peacekeepers to distribute the weapons. Peace. Keepers. Keepers of the peace dealing arms.

But yeah, we expected it to end well.

It's purpose? Giving you an easy way to show President Obama that it's time to get on with appointing a permanent leader for USAID -- otherwise, the United States foreign assistance is going to suffer greatly.

From Change.org

USAID needs a permanent leader. The agency cannot function forever with acting administrator. The current acting administrator, Alonzo Fulgham, is doing three jobs. No one can do that forever.

To maintain the impact of US foreign assistance, we need a permanent USAID leader. Send a letter to President Obama asking him to appoint an administrator. 

So go ahead, click "Take Action" over on the home page and add your name, but just in case, I'll give you a link right about.... here.

I'm not sure how long I'll leave the widget, but this post should be here forever.

Be sure to urge your friends to urge their friends to urge Obama to urge USAID to be led. It's urgent.

From the Google blog:

Today is a big day for the Google Africa team for several reasons. We're announcing an exciting partnership between MTN Uganda, the Grameen Foundation and Google, along with the launch of Google SMS in Uganda. This launch makes available the first suite of applications resulting from an endeavor initiated by Grameen Foundation called "AppLab" (Application Laboratory) which began over a year ago. AppLab is designed to develop mobile applications that serve the needs of poor and other vulnerable individuals and communities, most of whom have limited access to information and communications technology.

Even though this news is now over a month old, it's still great news for the future incarnations of the Jazz for Justice Project or whatever it will be called. I won't get into details about what those future plans are at this juncture, but I'll definitely be writing a lot about it in the coming months.

So, there you have it. Old news, but still worthy of the inaugural post on the new dswinder.com.

I really encourage you to read the entire article if you haven't already.

So far, I can't find much of a downside to the platform... Other than inability to import from Tumblr, but that's not much of surprise. It's not too big of deal, though, because the old site is going nowhere. If Squarespace continues being rad, I'll switch over my domain (dswinder.com) to here.

Keep in mind, this is a work in progress, and there will probably be quite a few hiccups and road blocks in the coming weeks as I get the hang of the new platform and tweak my design this and that way.

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So, for a quick map of what's going on here:

I switched to Squarespace for a number of reasons, the least of which not being my desire to have a home page with a blog instead of a blog as my home page. So that being said, you can navigate around the different areas of the site using the top nav menu (there's some stuff that will be added in the coming weeks). From now on, the blog will be reserved for what I've previously been doing on Tumblr, while the home page will contain site news and other various announcements.

Anyway, please explore. Give me feedback. And keep coming back. It's dswinder.squarespace.com for now, but I'll switch over to the main domain in the next couple of weeks.

Thanks!

Dustyn

P.S. I'm still wanting an awesome banner and maybe some cool buttons for the various sections. If anyone is particularly Wiz-kid-esque with Photoshop and likes random acts of kindness, hit me up. I could use you. :)