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Virtual
Diplomacy Homepage >> Virtual
Diplomacy Publications >> Networking
Dissent
Networking Dissent Tiffany Danitz and Warren P. Strobel Part Two Supporters of this and other bills to impose sanctions on Burma have been particularly successful in their use of electronic mail to keep their movement going, leading one activist to describe this as the first 'cyber-campaign.'
On June 25, 1996, with a group of "cyber-activists" and Burmese exiles looking on, Massachusetts Gov. William Weld signed into law a bill that bans corporations that do business in Burma from getting new contracts with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The "selective purchasing" legislation, as it is known, is one of more than a dozen such laws and ordinances directed against the SLORC regime that have passed in cities and counties across the United States since early 1995. Forced to choose between lucrative local government contracts and the often-mediocre business opportunities in Burma, a host of American firms have chosen the former. Such major brand names as Pepsi, Disney, Eddie Bauer and Liz Claiborne have withdrawn from Burma, pressured by a combination of negative publicity, shareholder pressure and selective purchasing legislation. The Massachusetts law alone was cited by Motorola, Hewlett-Packard, Apple Corp. and other major companies as the reason they pulled up stakes in Burma.44 It has bitten hard enough that both the European Union and Japan have complained to the U.S. State Department and intend to challenge the law in the World Trade Organization (WTO).45 According to participants on all sides, the Internet -- particularly electronic mail -- played a defining role in the campaign to draft and pass the legislation. Activists had already organized on the Internet and used this ready-made network. The campaign itself was conceived through communications on the Internet. Information on conditions in Burma was fed to sympathetic legislators on the Internet. E-mail alerts were sent out at key points in the legislative process, generating letters to state legislators and Governor Weld's office.
Although different, "older" technologies such as telephones or fax machines could have carried out these functions; at least one role the Internet played here would have been virtually impossible before its existence. The Burma selective purchasing bill was consciously modeled on almost identical legislation passed in the 1980s, in Massachusetts and elsewhere, that sought to prevent American businesses from operating in South Africa under the apartheid system. However, unlike with African-Americans concerned about South Africa -- or Irish-Americans about Northern Ireland, for that matter -- there was no existing constituency in the United States, outside of a few progressive groups, in the case of Burma. The Internet, because of its ability to create geographically dispersed networked communities, created the constituency necessary for action. It drew together activists as close to the state capitol building as Harvard, and as far away as Burmese exiles living in Europe and Australia. "This was truly the first time that this legislature had gotten involved with foreign policy on the face of the issue, without any hyphenated constituency to drive it," said State Rep. Byron Rushing (D), the selective purchasing legislation's sponsor and leading proponent in the state legislature. "The first thing the 'Net did in this campaign was to connect the Burmese wherever they are."47 The Internet also provided the advantages of stealth early in the Burma campaign, as long as the activists wanted it. Much of the networking took place outside the public eye. Once the drive to pass the selective purchasing legislation emerged with full force, it was a surprise to those who might have opposed it, including corporations and the office of Governor Weld, who had a reputation as a pro-business Republican. When Weld's press secretary, Jose Juves, first heard about the legislation and checked into it -- to do so, he used the World Wide Web for the first time -- "I was kind of shocked that the whole sort of ready-made organization . . . was out there."48 Of all the companies with business in Burma, only the oil and gas concern UNOCAL Corp. took the effort to hire a local lobbyist. For many other companies, the first time they heard about the issue was after the selective purchasing bill had become law, and they were notified that they were on an official state list of affected companies. "They definitely came late to the dance," Juves said.49 As the bill slowly made its way through the state legislature in 1995 and 1996, activists used the Internet to push it along. Rushing, working with Simon Billenness of the Massachusetts Burma Roundtable and other activists, sent e-mails from home and office to keep supporters apprised of developments and urged them to make their voices heard when the bill was at a key legislative juncture or in trouble. The electronic missives generated phone calls and letters to state senators and representatives from their constituents inside Massachusetts and activists outside the state, explaining the need for the legislation and pressing for passage. The legislation very nearly died several times. Activists using the Internet rallied to overcome each obstacle. An amendment that would have added virtually every totalitarian regime in the world to the legislation -- and thus buried it under its own weight -- was killed, and a March 1996 Senate motion to table the bill and postpone it to the next legislative session was reversed. Billenness, through the Burma Roundtable, was central in using electronic communication to keep the issue alive in the legislature, repelling obstacles to passage and maintaining an electronic community behind the bill. The Internet, he said, "is very good at getting one message sent to a lot of people, with minimal cost and minimal time."50 It was vital in keeping subscribers up-to-date on the status of the Burma bill and eliciting their support.51 The Internet, and the electronic network that stretched from Burma's borders around the world and back again, also meant that timely information was a key ally for activists in the campaign. Culling the news from BurmaNet and many other sources, the cyber-campaigners were able to get accurate information on the conditions endured by the Burmese people. Without the Internet, "it's hard to imagine that we would have had as much information," Rushing said. "The thing that makes these things work is that you can go up to a rep[resentative] and say, 'Look, this is what's happening there.'" The information flow allowed proponents to meet and counter the objections of opponents or skeptics. And, vitally, it allowed them to be confident that they were in tune with the positions of Aung San Suu Kyi herself. A campaign "can blow up" if it does not have the support of the pro-democracy groups within the affected country, Rushing said. With the Internet, "we always knew how Suu Kyi was on this issue." The Massachusetts lawmaker acknowledges the problem of misinformation on the Internet. But he believes there are enough "voices" out there that the communication network quickly self-corrects inaccurate information.52 Weld had old-fashioned political reasons for signing the Burma bill. His opponent in the 1996 race for the U.S. Senate, incumbent Democratic Senator John Kerry, had wavered on the issue of federal sanctions against Burma and had supported continued U.S. antinarcotics aid to the SLORC regime. Weld saw an opening that would embarrass Kerry and help him pick up support among the state's progressive voters.53 But the Internet campaign helped bring the otherwise-arcane issue of Burma to Weld's attention and kept the pressure on. "CONTINUE TO FAX AND CALL GOVERNOR WELD . . . CALL DAILY!" Billenness urged in an update sent to supporters on June 12, the day before the bill landed on the governor's desk. For good measure, Weld's newest fax number was included. During mid-June, Weld received a flood of letters imploring him to sign the bill. They came not just from Massachusetts, but from around the United States, as well as Japan, the United Kingdom, France and Canada. One came from within Burma's western border, sent via a supporter in India. Sam Bernstein of Braintree, Massachusetts, was not alone when he told Weld: "If you do sign, your action will go a long way in helping me make up my mind about the upcoming U.S. senate race."54 According to Juves, Weld received roughly 100 letters and 40 electronic mail messages regarding the legislation, which he described as a huge number for an issue that had nothing to do with bread-and-butter issues like street repairs, crime or taxes. Weld saw samples of the letters. "I don't think it had an impact on his decision to sign the bill. . . . [But] it made him think about it more than he otherwise would have," said Juves, who disputed the widespread feeling that Weld had signed the bill merely for political advantage.55 At first, the activists assumed that Weld would veto the legislation and that they would have to try to convince the legislature to override the veto. They approached the governor's office aggressively. But once Weld's office signaled that he might sign the legislation, the relationship changed dramatically. The governor's office wanted to stage a media event to highlight his position on the bill. The Internet activists put their network into action, using e-mail once again to encourage a large turnout and to make sure the governor's office had the background information it needed and quotes from activists such as Zar Ni of the Free Burma Coalition in Wisconsin. "For me, it was a big logistical help," said Juves, who was in charge of setting up the event.56 Finally, the Internet campaign in Massachusetts, because of its very success, had another, derivative effect. The more traditional news media, fascinated by the idea that a state could craft its own foreign policy and that the Internet could be used as a grassroots tool of political power, began to give significant coverage to the pro-democracy groups and what had happened in Massachusetts. These stories, of course, also highlighted the struggle in Burma. Juves' phone rang with inquiries from BBC Radio, Australian Broadcasting, Cable News Network, Bloomberg Business News, the Voice of America, Newsweek and many other media outlets. Juves said that the legislation might not have come to fruition without the Internet, or at least would have taken much longer to do so. Significantly, many of the people he dealt with were geographically dispersed, but they had the Internet. "People were really focused in on Massachusetts," he said. "Everybody's connected to one place."57 In the aftermath of the legislative victory, Rushing predicted that the issue of localities playing a role in foreign policy -- something once unthinkable -- will come more and more to the fore. Many cities and states are taking up the issue of human rights and whether and how to do business with nations that have a bad human rights record. Indeed, the issue of who controls foreign policy, and where economic sovereignty begins and ends, has become a more than theoretical concern.58 Activists went back to the "cyber-barricades" after Japan and the European Union argued that the Massachusetts selective purchasing law violates world trade rules and urged Washington to "get its provinces back into line." Then, on November 4, 1998, a U.S. district judge declared the selective purchasing law unconstitutional, ruling in favor of the National Foreign Trade Council, an industry group, and stating that the law "impermissibly infringes on the federal government's power to regulate foreign affairs."59 The issue is likely to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.60 Both sides continue to make their arguments, and the Internet remains a vital tool for those who gave birth to the Massachusetts selective purchasing law.
The Free Burma Coalition and the Pepsi Boycott Campaign “This is the information backbone of a larger movement that aims to mobilize public opinion against the military leaders of Burma,” Strider says. “It was the 'Net”, he explains, “that helped mobilize activists on college campuses and elsewhere in their opposition to investment in Burma by Eddie Bauer.”61 The advent of computers on university campuses linking student groups into national and international networks seems to have invigorated social activism and has transformed the character of student protests. It also has opened up the world to the students, shrinking the globe into a local community that provides a great number of issues on which to campaign. "We are beginning to see the formation of a generic human rights lobby at the grassroots level (on the Internet). People care even though they don't have a personal connection to the country," explained cyber-activist Simon Billenness.62 Computers have become so integrated into the university life that they are a virtual appendage of scholars at study. Every freshman entering Harvard University is supplied with an e-mail address and account. Students and student groups have united on-line, initially to converse, the outgrowth of which has been a heightened awareness on a number of issues, including human rights. Once on the 'Net, students meet campaigners and advocates. These people and the information they provide have taught students techniques for organizing electronically, and in return the students have joined in the action. At the press conference held to announce Governor Weld's decision to make Massachusetts the first state to slap sanctions on SLORC, many students turned up. Juves, Weld's press secretary, says that the Internet was responsible for helping students turn out, and that there were more students there than at any other bill signing.63 Plugging in has transformed the meaning of "tune in," at least on Harvard's campus, where "students cannot get by without using e-mail. Most college organizations can't conceive of how this would be done without the Internet."64 As the selective purchasing campaign to deprive Burma of American investment and ultimately all foreign investment gained strength, student groups caught on. The selective purchasing resolutions were presented to city legislatures, and with each small success, the sanctions campaign widened and bolstered the pro-democracy campaign. Students and other activists organized shareholders that had been writing resolutions for consideration regarding their corporation's business ties in Burma. Shareholder resolutions were presented at each annual shareholder conference to educate investors on their companies' dealings in Burma and to call for corporate withdrawals from the country.65 These efforts grew out of the more traditional forms of activism, roundtable discussion groups, and letter-writing campaigns. When PepsiCo became a target of the campaign, student activists were able to connect with a tangible product, process and outcome. They could start small, on campus, by educating their friends about Pepsi's operations and their cooperation with the military junta ruling Burma. From there, they could pass student resolutions, instigate student boycotts of all of Pepsi's subsidiaries and possibly cause changes in university food service contracts. Then they could move on to the town meeting where their university sits, to the city council and eventually to the state legislature. In 1990, Pepsi entered Burma through a joint venture with Myanmar Golden Star Co., which is run by Thein Tun, once a small-time exporter of beans. Most Burmese who were working for Pepsi were connected in one way or another to the SLORC regime, said Reed Cooper, of the Burmese Action Group in Canada.66 Pepsi ran a bottling operation in Rangoon that grew "from 800,000 bottles a day to 5 million" and added a new plant in Mandalay.67 In a Seattle resolution on Burma, which urged an "international economic boycott of Burma until the human rights violations cease and control of the government has been transferred to the winners of the 1990 democratic election," Pepsi was mentioned as one of the companies that supports the military regime and its "cruel measures against the Burmese people."68 The resolution passed unanimously just after a similar boycott resolution successfully passed in Berkeley, California.69 Cyber-activist Billenness was building a campaign with a solid foundation at the local levels. His office was delivering ribbons of circular stickers proclaiming "Boycott Pepsi" across the country to various groups of activists. He had solicited and developed the support of the Nobel Peace laureates who attended the pivotal 1993 fact-finding mission to the border regions of Burma (they were not permitted into the country). The Nobel laureates joined in a call for an international boycott of products exported from Burma. The 1993 trip sparked a campaign that the grassroots organizers, like Billenness, Cooper, Larry Dohrs and others, had slowly been orchestrating. The necessary definitive moment that legitimized their efforts had arrived. "This is how South Africa started," Billenness said. The strategy: to get selective purchasing legislation passed in town councils, then cities, then the states. Congress would be sure to follow, he believed.70 Most of the roads and Internet lines connecting this network of Burma activists lead back to Billenness. So it is not surprising that he wanted to encourage a university campaign among American colleges to support the growing Burmese student movement.
The Pepsi Campaign at Harvard University There are few Burmese in the States, and relatively few people who even know where Burma is. But those who care are organized and effective, and it's because of the Internet.
Students at Harvard tapped into the Burma Internet network, and soon after, they were successful in preventing a contract between PepsiCo and Harvard's dining services. Their activism also had an influence on the Harvard student body, by raising awareness as well as passing resolutions in the student government that affected the university's investments in Burma. One of the students who became a ring leader for the Burma campaign on campus was Marco Simons.72 The summer before his junior year at Harvard, Simons, who had written a paper on the human rights situation in Burma while still in high school, tapped into the 'Net via the newsgroup soc.culture.burma. Soon after, Billenness, who worked at the Franklin Research Institute for Socially Responsible Investing, contacted Simons. Billenness was trying to initiate a Burma group at Harvard. At this same time, autumn 1995, the Free Burma Coalition (FBC) was first appearing on-line. The FBC's Web site was able to attract numerous students across the United States, and it became a hub for the network that would follow. There were no Burmese undergraduate students at Harvard. There was one native Burmese graduate student and a few students who had either visited Burma or lived there as foreigners. For this reason, the three Harvard students who initiated the Burma group felt their first order of business should be to raise awareness. They set up a table at the political action fair at the start of the fall semester. They tested students who came by on their geographical prowess by asking them where Burma was on a map and which countries bordered it. Those who stopped to play the game were asked to leave their e-mail addresses. Between 40 and 50 addresses were collected that day. Simons describes the culture on campus as one that is virtually interactive. The only "real mail" (i.e., postal mail) he gets is from the university administration, he says. "Our internal organizing was done through e-mail meetings," Simons said. The group communicated almost exclusively by e-mail. As the campaign developed to include lobbying the student government on resolutions regarding Burma, Simons said, the activists communicated with the student government via e-mail also. Thus, they combined the traditional avenues for social activism with the technology that the university setting made available. Once they had the student e-mail addresses, members of the fledgling group began encouraging students to join them in letter-writing campaigns calling for university divestment from various companies. They also tried to organize an honorary degree for Aung San Suu Kyi. Harvard became the first student government to pass resolutions supporting the Burmese pro-democracy movement. Since then, many campuses have passed similar resolutions, and many used the Internet to seek advice from Simons on how to engage in this campaign.73 Some of the resolutions passed by Harvard's student government required that the university send letters to companies operating in Burma, calling for corporate withdrawal. Simons says the students believed Harvard's name carried a lot of clout in corporate circles. These resolutions passed in January and February 1996. Harvard University is itself a large investor, with a $7 billion endowment. The students decided to campaign for resolutions requiring Harvard Corp. to write to the companies it owns stock in, that deal with Burma, and register its desire for divestment. The Burma activists at Harvard also attempted to localize their campaign whenever possible. Then they stumbled onto a link with Pepsi that allowed them to expand their campaign into a story that would later become a splash with the media. "At first we didn't think we would have a Pepsi campaign at Harvard because Harvard contracted with Coke for a long time," Simons said.74 Simons had been aware of the national campaign that Burma activists were waging against PepsiCo from his involvement with Billenness.75 Billenness held a regular Burma Roundtable that was advocating for a "Boycott Pepsi" campaign, in conjunction with a national group of activists. It was then that the Harvard Crimson ran a story stating that Harvard's dining services were planning on contracting with Pepsi instead of Coca-Cola. "Pepsi was trying to get the beverage contract on campus the whole time," Simons explained. "Coke's dining contract was up for renewal, and they were so dissatisfied with Coke's service, the dining services were thinking of going with Pepsi."76 The Burma activists decided to protest this contract on two fronts: first with the student legislature and then with Harvard dining services. As part of the contract, Pepsi would be giving $25,000 to student organizations at Harvard and $15,000 directly to the student government. The activists' strategy with the student legislature would be to attack the Pepsi donations with resolutions. These resolutions called for Harvard to explore investing options for the Pepsi contributions. They could outright refuse the money or, ironically, donate it to Burma-friendly groups like the Boycott Pepsi campaign. When they began investigating these options, the students discovered that dining services had not signed the contract yet. The students met with dining services in a lobbying effort. They also stayed in contact over the Internet with Michael Berry, then director of dining services, and Purchasing Director John Allegretto. Rand Kaiser, a PepsiCo representative, met with dining services and the activists to explain Pepsi's position. Simons says that Kaiser argued for constructive engagement with the Burmese military junta.77 Kaiser was successful in casting Pepsi's investments in Burma in a positive light. After the meeting, Simons and Berry contacted one another over the e-mail system. This allowed students to voice opposing arguments to those presented by Pepsi. Simons made a deal: he told dining services that the students would feel that they had adequate information if PepsiCo released a list of their suppliers for counter-trade in Burma.78 Dining services agreed to this request. The Harvard students asked PepsiCo to fax its list of suppliers. Dining services also made a separate request for the information. Simons says neither the students nor dining services ever received a list. Meanwhile, the 1996 Pepsi shareholders meeting had commenced and a resolution was introduced to withdraw from Burma. PepsiCo's management effectively blocked the filing of the resolution on the basis that Burma did not represent a significant portion of their business. In reaction, Billenness wrote a letter to Pepsi and the shareholders explaining the impact that the Boycott Pepsi campaign had had on the company. He included the clippings from events at Harvard. This proved to be a boost to the students, who felt their efforts were extending beyond their campus. The Burma student activists requested that their student government pass another resolution that specifically asked dining services to sign a contract with Coca-Cola and not Pepsi. This passed through the student legislature, and dining services renewed their contract with Coca-Cola. Dining services then went on the record explaining that Burma was a factor in its decision. A media campaign ensued, and the Harvard students were courted by mainstream news organizations. Students downloaded press releases, conferred over the Internet with other student leaders in the FBC and then sent their statements to the press. Stories appeared in the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, on the Associated Press wire and in local newspapers.79 In addition, Simons said he received overseas calls from the BBC and from a Belgian news outlet. Other students who subscribed to the FBC Web site and e-mail list were able to follow what was happening at Harvard and use information generated there for campaigns on their own campuses. They also e-mailed and conversed with other students to discuss techniques and strategy, while learning from past mistakes. Even with the help of the Internet, not every student campaign on Burma was a success. An effort at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, did not go very far.80 Another Boston university, Tufts, also saw a spark of student activism on the Burma issue. The Tufts activists were hooked up to the 'Net, which they used to communicate with the Harvard group. But the Tufts students were unable to convince their student government to pass a resolution that would end their dining services' contract with Pepsi. Kaiser had been to the student government to lobby in favor of PepsiCo in the wake of the Harvard campaign. Tufts students also admit that they did not have as good a relationship with dining services as the Harvard students did. The director of dining services deferred the Pepsi decision to the university president, who renewed Pepsi's contract.
The Harvard group worked closely with several activists who have come to define a core for the Burma pro-democracy campaign. They are Billenness, Father Joe Lamar, Zar Ni of the FBC and Larry Dohrs. As noted, the bulk of the Harvard campaign was conducted over the Internet. Simons would post condensed versions of the Free Burma daily digest (a news-like account of events in Burma and developments in the Free Burma campaign, similar to BurmaNet) for the Harvard students. Previously written press releases, with quotes chosen through collaboration, were used throughout the campaign. Furthermore, most of the Harvard group's meetings were held over the Internet via e-mail. "This would not have happened without the Internet," Simons said of the Pepsi campaign. "The Free Burma Coalition and possibly the whole movement would not have been nearly as successful this far and would look completely different," he added.81 The FBC, which is a network of student organizations, organized three international days of coordinated protest, one in October 1995, another in March 1996 and a fast in October 1996. These were coordinated almost exclusively on the Internet. The Harvard students joined in these events. The Boston student network grew from contact with FBC and through outreach between local groups. Harvard University, Tufts University, Boston College, Brandeis, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston University are all in contact with the Burma Roundtable set up by Billenness. Now the Boston network is reaching into the high schools. The Madison, Wisconsin-area groups are the only others reaching into the high school level. Boston and Madison are using the Internet to coordinate an organized effort to bring activism on Burma to the public schools. The FBC provides information, advice and an organized framework for these students to plug in and perform very simple tasks that help push the campaign along. The Internet is appealing to the students because (1) they have easy access through their university; (2) information is available quickly; (3) it is affordable; (4) things that make a difference can be done quickly and with few individuals; (5) the network has the ability to coordinate internationally; and (6) it is social. The three students who initiated the Burma campaign at Harvard remained the core group, producing most of the work on Burma. Because of the group's small size, they say there is no way they could have been so successful and effective without the larger outside network. "Phone trees and snail mail are suboptimal because they are labor intensive and expensive," explained Simons, who spends an average of a couple of hours a day on the Internet. He thinks another advantage to the web of "spiders," as the activists call themselves, is the up-to-the-minute information that comes from people in Rangoon or the surrounding areas. Zar Ni's updates hit the Web immediately.82 There was a preexisting network of activists that the FBC has drawn on. For instance, Simons was in his high school Amnesty International group. The actions were planned to raise awareness and strengthen the growing network of people. Very few activists are working on Burma exclusively. They may begin with the Southeast Asian nation but then expand to work on East Timor, Sri Lanka, environmental issues and the like. Many of these smaller networks are relying on the FBC and the Burma campaign as a model for their own actions.
The pro-democracy activists are engaging in an information confrontation against SLORC. Both sides are producing information about events inside the country. Both are trying to paint a portrait of the other for the international community. But the pro-democracy advocates have used the Internet effectively in the Massachusetts campaign, U.S. citywide selective purchasing campaigns and the Boycott Pepsi campaign. They also have used the Internet to contact journalists and inform them about their actions and about other issues in Burma, such as slave labor, student protests and government crackdowns. For its part, SLORC has produced a Web page and has relied heavily on UNOCAL, the California-based oil company and ASEAN, a trade association of Asian nations, to promote a good image of their rule abroad. But the regime has not to date taken full advantage of the technology available to it. The audience for both sides is the world, particularly possible investors in Burma; their means are attempting to gain information superiority over the other side. SLORC recently has retaliated on the Internet. In late June 1997, SLORC waged a misinformation campaign using both traditional and modern techniques. First representatives of the regime held a press conference exposing several American nongovernmental organization workers as conspirators working on behalf of the U.S. government to bring down the SLORC regime. They named several names and published biographies with pictures of those individuals on the Internet. The individuals involved dispute the claims made by SLORC, and the U.S. State Department refuted the charge that it was engaging in the support of terrorism on Burmese soil.83 The advantage of the Internet is diplomatic. It promotes dialogue between those in closed societies and the outside world. It can be argued that those in the Burma campaign are presenting their version of events to the world and SLORC via their Internet campaigns. It is a classic attempt at unraveling misinformation. If SLORC responds by matching the activists with its version of events, diplomatic resolution may be achievable. The opposing sides can utilize the forum provided by the Internet to develop their resolution within a global context. Currently, the Burma campaign has been trying to generate a cyber-debate with SLORC. "We keep asking the council to engage in a debate. This might not be much of a debate, but it's a start," a Burmese exile in Bangkok said in reaction to SLORC's posting of a Web page and assigning Okkar to the Internet.84 Using the Internet as a forum for this purpose places the debate in the context of the global community. The activists may be able to use international sympathy to sever SLORC's connection with the global community. On a limited scale, they already have been successful in doing so with sanctions legislation. Although the Burmese activists on the Internet are not physically opposing armed force, their "soft power" use of information may have some of the same effects. The information is being fed into the country through vehicles such as the previously mentioned Democratic Voice of Burma and New Era Journal, a newspaper written in Bangkok and distributed via refugees who make trips from the border regions into the country (this program receives partial funding from U.S. grants). The newly established Radio Free Asia is broadcasting into Burma in native languages. Information also is traveling into the country via computer diskettes that often are marked with a Disney logo or some other video game logo to deceive censors and customs officials. In Burma, the Internet may just be a forum for the voice of the dissident, a place for the Burmese and the world to go to hear alternative information from what SLORC would put out in-country or internationally. If Burma's activists are successful in overcoming the SLORC regime and are able to institute democratic institutions, they may become an example of how the dissident voice in closed societies is capable of providing a rallying point for opponents to the government. However, it would only be one of many factors that created an atmosphere for success. In theory, when a voice of opposition exists in a conflict where misinformation is used and the propagating party is in control of the state media and the opposition in an alternative media vehicle and if its point of view is disseminated on a grassroots level, the opposition voice may eventually win over the constituency. A constant presence that provides alternative information, especially more credible information, can have the effect of reversing the success of the misinformation campaign. Furthermore, outside of the closed society or nation, the voice of dissent -- which can flow more freely -- will have the effect of countering the misinformation to the international community. If the international community chooses to believe the dissenters, it erodes the legitimacy of those propagating untruths. The information-rich cyber-highway has inspired a number of people to engage in campaigns they may not have otherwise, because it is cheap, and takes little time and also little effort. Why else should an American Jane or Joe in Idaho take action on behalf of natives of Burma? It has educated a Burmese citizenship-in-exile in consensus building and in grassroots cyber-strategy. 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