The Blog: On The Edge - toward public policy that is visionary, effective, courageous and compassionate

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Welcome to my blog on public policy, a place for exploring ideas on the policy problems that test our times. This space is for discussion, co-learning, collaboration and—I hope—organizing actions. Some of my own views come from fifteen years in the US Foreign Service, most of them spent way off the beaten track. Some come from my career since then as an activist, coach and mentor to activists, and President of the Giraffe Heroes Project, moving people to stick their necks out for the common good. —John Graham

Written by John Graham

Goodbye Tibet?

For ten days last month I saw first-hand what the Chinese are doing in Tibet. The reports you’ve heard of cultural genocide are true. China is obliterating the ideas, traditions and habits of the Tibetan people.

Do we care? We’d better. China’s confidence increases with each step onto the world stage. What the Chinese are doing in Tibet tells us a lot about what we can expect from them as their power grows.

Written by John Graham

America Divided

Watching the sandbox antics in Washington over yet another polarizing issue--the debt ceiling--I feel sad and angry at my country’s incompetence. Yet there may be a model for America’s future in Sierra Leone, a country the size of Iowa on the bulge of West Africa. It’s a potentially rich country, impoverished by a brutal ten-year civil war that ended in 2002--think child soldiers and Blood Diamonds.

As a former US Foreign Service expert on Africa, I can be as cynical as anyone about Africa and its problems. Yet on a recent trip to Sierra Leone I saw the country coming back. The most impressive resurgence is in the spirit of the Sierra Leoneans themselves. It’s as if the whole country--traumatized by the consequences of its divisions--has discovered that building a safe, fair and prosperous nation can’t succeed unless they build it together.

Why can’t we figure that out in the United States? Why are we, with far more going for us than the Sierra Leoneans, unable to build a future together even as the toxic consequences of our divisions become more apparent by the day?

Written by John Graham

What Will Qaddhafi Do?

For a short time in 1969 I probably knew more about Libyan ruler Muammar Qaddhafi than any other American. I was then a young diplomat attached to the American Embassy in Tripoli. Since I was the most junior member of the embassy's political staff, I was given the worst job -- as liaison officer to the sprawling American air base just outside the city. For a year, I settled minor customs disputes, bailed drunken American airmen out of the Tripoli jail and played a lot of beach volleyball.

That all changed on September 1, 1969 when then Lieutenant Qaddhafi and his Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) toppled the old king and took control of the country in a single night.

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