Observations on an Insurrectionary Saturday

1. It was not an embarrassment to see the low level of Iran support activity in the United States July 25, compared to huge demonstrations throughout Europe, Canada, and the Middle East. In fact, it was a wise political strategy. The government and people of the United States are both the Great Satan, so anything we say is discredited. Instead, people closer to Iran are uniting to say down with the clerical leadership.

2. The broad internationalization of the struggle creates an interesting, but potentially dangerous dynamic in Iran. When nations surround a nation telling it its government is not acceptable, the people have a greater chance to rise up - but the nation can adopt the 1990s Serb game of saying "Us against the world." The balance can tip either way right now.

3. It is time to stop making posters equating Ahmadinejad with Hitler. The Populist Podunk was always a simple tool of the clerico-military junta. And Khamenei's action July 24 to force Ahmadinejad to fire Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei indicates that the Iranian president is almost as much a victim of the Council of Guardians as the people of Iran. Our demands should not involve a particular political leader, we should demand the ouster from the nation of the Shia religious leadership of Iran. (Personal wish list - could someone please assassinate Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami - quickly, por favor?)

4. The obvious difficulty of the next steps cannot be underestimated. Urban reformers represent large numbers, but the rural and suburban devout of Iran probably constitute a majority. How much will they listen to either an outsider or insider telling them their most sacred leaders represent the biggest threat to their survival? Think of what would happen if far-right evangelicals attained a huge majority in the United States, and they took over a vetting role to oversee government functions. What if the other nations of the UN told the people of the U.S. they had to arrest or kill all their preachers before things would get better? The authors of the Left Behind series would no doubt charge the entire UN with being a creature of Satan, and would probably get millions to believe it. What the hell? Maybe we should wear buttons proclaiming "We are all the Great Satan."

I know one thing. I had no problem wearing a button in 1979 saying "Hang the Ayatollah," and I would have no problem wearing one in 2009 saying "Hang All Ayatollahs." Maybe no one in Iran would listen. But the Iranian revolutionary road has been a long, long one since 1979, and the road ahead is probably longer still. Buckle your seat belts.

Twitters and Echelon and Iran and Planetary Management, Oh My!

Yes, I've avoided commenting on the Iranian elections for a week now, even after the State Department credited the always-annoying Twitter with enabling street protests. And I've ducked a lot of comments on the National Security Agency's growing problems with Congress until the NSA made the front page in The New York Times today. Then, with members of Congress expressing faux-shock at NSA, even as Jeff Pulver's 140 Character conference told us this week that Twitter will make us smart and strong and free forever, I simply melted down. AUUUGGGGHHH! Here, some related observations on all topics.

First, Iran: Obama is right that Moussavi's record as PM during the Iran-Iraq War doesn't raise a lot of hope that he'd be that much of an improvement over the lewd and rude Ahmadinejad. But the shout-mouth tendencies of the latter is precisely why he probably won the election fair and square, albeit not with the percentages claimed. One dependable tendency that applies globally is that people like dumb loud-mouthed populists more than they like democratic reformers. When the populist claims that the world is picking on Nation X, the people of Nation X will roar their approval. Funny how Kim Jong Il isn't trying this in North Korea, though his people are too cowed and starving to respond to the "us against the world" rhetoric.

I love seeing young Iranian demonstrators sacrifice all for the sake of a pseudo-reform. And it is indeed great to see them use tools like Twitter to bypass state censorship. But they can often forget that rural, unconnected and highly traditionalist people in Iran (and in Thailand and in Venezuela and even in the good ol' US of A) are often the ones that determine elections, and they like to hear strong messages from their jingoist daddy. And unfortunately, they often cheer when some group like the Basij starts cracking the heads of the demonstrators. The plain fact of the matter is that Iran will never have democracy until the Council of Guardians, the Basij, and the Revolutionary Guards are destroyed, and the clerics are hanging from lampposts. I don't see that happening very soon.

Now, to the role of Twitter with democratic forces in Iran and Gaza, and with repressionist forces within the Israeli Defense Forces and the US Defense Department: Yes, Twitter can be a tool of liberation. But, as always, the Twitter network is now dominated by messages from corporate PR headquarters, Wall Street monetizers, and the power brokers who control the large armies of the world. Just as the al-Qaeda terrorists realized quickly that they had to stop using satellite phones, those who say they are in opposition to the planetary powers will quickly learn that they cannot tweet without providing information to those that would keep them down. Meanwhile, Jeff Pulver tells attendees at the 140 Characters conference that Twitter is a tool for transforming our lives. Puh-leeze. Twitter is a temporarily-interesting social network that will be replaced by another social network soon. And its underlying technology, like that of SMS or simple e-mail, can be monitored by the good old National Security Agency.

Which brings us to the front-page NYT article on NSA. Its one relevant point is saying that few in Congress are intelligent enough to understand NSA's underlying technology. Hell, few in Congress are intelligent enough to write a freaking bill on any topic. The NSA relies on a worldwide monitoring network called Echelon, that is managed by the five members of the UKUSA Treaty, who truly are a "white boys' club": US, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand. No NATO, no anyone else. Echelon operates largely from space on a 24/7 basis, and its default state is "on." Satellites do not recognize national boundaries. The NSA is always intercepting analog voice traffic and digital TCP/IP traffic (including email, Twitter, packet voice, etc.) on a global basis, and has to figure out ways to filter out the US citizen traffic. And it claims to "mistakenly" collect this traffic? Really? Seriously? Please don't insult our intelligence.

If there is any advantage to decentralized, short-message systems like Twitter, it's that widespread use will flood the NSA's capabilities, making it harder to implement planetary management. Unfortunately, the NSA will use that as an excuse to build gargantuan new storage facilities like "Storage Station Freedom" near Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. And Congress will be dumb enough to give NSA the funding. And US agencies will cheer the brave decentralized use of Twitter even as NSA scrambles to intercept the messages. And pundits will cheer the use of Twitter even as it is twisted around for nefarious purposes, while encouraging more ADHD-style thinking in the populace. And we will watch faux battles for democracy played out between populists and faux reformists. And little will change. And since Echelon has been around for nearly 60 years now, we can truly say we've seen this movie before. And we will see it again and again and again. And sorry, Jeff, we will not be transformed by Twitter or anything else, though we will certainly be monitored.

Populism=Jackboots

I hate to diss the Democratic urban activists who tend to think that "populism" is a cute word to toss around, but the posts below on Lou Dobbs et. al. should make clear that I equate populism with Juan Peron, if not with the German Nazi Party. It's nice to see that Middle East Report, a fairly lefty quarterly covering the Middle East, thinks so too. Their new Winter issue is a special on Iran that is worth reading cover to cover, particularly Kaveh Ehsani's piece on the inside nature of the Iranian regime. Some U.S. activists think Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a pretty cool guy because he hates the U.S. and Israel, and many Iranians treat him as a rock star. He's a populist, dictatorial snake. I still am reserving a small portion of hope for Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, since many of his domestic policies are cool, but his international grandstanding is getting tiresome, and has "populist" written all over it. Populism is not cool. It leads to "Sieg Heils" when you least expect it.