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Moon Landing in Iran

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The riveting events in Iran could be compared to the moon landing in 1969. Perhaps because they are world changing, keeping the planet on the edge of its seat, so to speak, wondering what will be?

They are very different, yet they are also similar. The moon landing had nothing but upside, launching the imagination of mankind, exciting us with what could be.

Yet the same could be said for the circumstances in Iran. After all, the Iranian people have harnessed the power of technology, brought it to a new level, caused us to feel the world will never be the same again.

In Iran, dictators may fall at the hands of the people. And, in this case, their hands are nothing more than their voices. Perhaps never again will strongmen be able to suppress the voice of a willful people. It sets the mind and heart to reeling.

It’s 1969 all over again. Isn’t it?

Excerpt:
The riveting events in Iran compare to those of the moon landing in 1969: world changing, exhilarating, setting the mind and heart to reeling.
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Bait and Blame in Iran

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Surprise, surprise. Khamenei whitewashes, err, sanctions election of Ahmadinejad, warning opposition leaders that they will be “responsible for bloodshed and chaos,” if they don’t shut down opposition rallies. The blame baiting continues, following accusations from Iranian leaders of U.S. intervention. According to today’s HuffPost:

Iran directly accused the United States of meddling in the deepening crisis over a disputed presidential election and broadened its media clampdown Wednesday to include blogs and news Web sites. But protesters took to the streets in growing defiance of the country’s Islamic rulers.

In contrast, there may be division in the mullah ranks. The Lede blog recounts New York Times U.N. Correspondent Neil MacFarquhar’s report of an underlying power struggle among Iran’s clerics. He notes that lead cleric and former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a Moussavi supporter, may play a pivotal role:

One of the country’s most influential clerics, Mr. Rafsanjani has been notably silent since Mr. Ahmadinejad was declared the winner last week, and there has been speculation that Mr. Rafsanjani is in Qum trying to muster clerical opposition to the country’s leaders. But those reports are difficult to confirm with any authority.

Mr. Rafsanjani leads the 86-member Assembly of Experts, whose duties include endorsing the performance of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who on Saturday called the election’s outcome “a divine blessing.” In theory, the group has the power to remove him, but that has never been done and any attempt to do so would probably further inflame the situation, analysts said.

The analysts say about a third of the Assembly members are loyal to Mr. Rafsanjani. Of the other members, perhaps a quarter are considered loyal to Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, a mentor to Mr. Ahmadinejad and a staunchly conservative figure who has suggested that allowing the public a voice in elections serves only to sully God’s laws. The rest are viewed as independents who could vote either way.

Meanwhile, Middle East expert Fawaz A. Gerges discussed social underpinnings in Iran yesterday morning on CNN, with John Roberts. A Sarah Lawrence professor, Gerges explained that young women and youth in general want more reforms than even the opposition leader Moussavi offers. He is an excellent source for cultural analysis in Iran. Gerges is a frequent CNN guest. Check out this transcript page from the day of the Iranian election. In it, Gerge provides good background on the workings of Iran’s culture today.
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Twitter Nation

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What to make of this freshet of posts raining down on us on Iran? Here in America, we are naturally excited by any peoples taking to the street in the face of stolen elections, repression, state murder. Furthermore, to see technology level brutality and class the way it has flattened major incumbent industries like music and journalism is downright heady.

Now Twitter, for one, an almost so-yesterday communications channel has suddenly been pressed into the service of freedom. Just a few weeks back Ashton Kutcher was turning the mini blog into a joke. Then this week, the U.S. State Department convinced Twitter to delay a scheduled maintenance downtime, to keep the Iranian movement of packets and pixels from shutting down. The CIA is likely stepping up efforts to recruit social-media gurus with the urgency of the Yankees seeking a starting pitcher in late July. Name your price.

Maybe YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are the newest class of drones. Maybe the people of the world are the new army. And no one saw this coming. Even the relatively progressive CNN was left clueless in the rush, failing to compete with the reportage from the electronic front over the weekend. The Grey Lady, too, has had scant front-page real estate devoted to these events, handling them instead in The Lede, their news blog (which is itself well done).

As a pr guy, I read the journal Ragan.com daily. For months Twitter has dominated the headlines. Yes, because it is a useful tool, but more because it made for trendy headlines. So, where are they now? Today’s e-mail newsletter contains no Twitter coverage. I suppose they don’t do revolution.

Now for an over view of today’s coverage:

HuffPost’s Nico Pitney is leading the field, tirelessly collecting and analyzing coverage from all media and social-media quarters. Late this afternoon he posted a heated debate between American Enterprise Institute’s Danielle Pletka, the Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan and a Twitterer named khoobehi. It all started with Pletka’s op-ed piece in the New York Times that minimized the five-day-old Iranian uprising as “little more than a symbolic protest” that was “crushed by the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.” Sullivan uncovered her neocon pedigree and suspect motives, while this khoobehi character managed via tweets to get Pletka to backpedal a tad.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports on the social media phenom:

A couple of Twitter feeds have become virtual media offices for the supporters of the leading opposition candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi. One feed, mousavi1388 (1388 is the year in the Persian calendar), is filled with news of protests and exhortations to keep up the fight, in Persian and in English. It has more than 7,000 followers.

BTW, mousavi1388 doubled his followers since the Times’ citation this morning.

Update: the Twitter maintenance occurred early this evening.
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The Center Must Hold

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A mere year’s commitment by a number of Democrats to funding operations in Afghanistan would be a joke if it weren’t so sad.

Mostly House Dems are making such signals, and not only from liberal quarters, as reported by David M. Herszenhorn in the New York Times.

So why bother? Sure, Afghanistan’s going to be some tough sledding, but upping the ante on fighting only to cut and run is certainly partisan, but also both cowardly and disloyal to the President, the troops and the American people.

Yeats’ “The Second Coming,” was written to describe Europe following World War I. If “the centre cannot hold” again, it will be reprinting widely.
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Time Balm

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Time. What is it?

Einstein didn’t really know, at least not for a long, well, time. Even then, he struggled with it greatly and questioned his own conclusions about it in the end.

You’re reading this, so you hardly have any, at least not the kind that will put a smile on your face in your coffin.

I just had a birthday and allowed myself to unplug, to stop blogging, tweeting, texting. I stood in the sun-drenched yard for a long time with my dog, winding down to child time, flower time, dog time. I still figured I needed some kind of clock to beat against, so I imagined the earth turning on its axis moment by moment for a whole day. I’d feel the earth turn then. I’d watch the lilacs grow.

Truth is it’s hard to be happy when you’re in a hurry. Sure you have some rushes, even giddy expectations of a project coming to fruition. But what about the message on the billboard: “Take time to be a dad today”? A dad for your daughter, your grandson, your dog; a husband for your wife.

There’s no denying the sacrifices demanded of success. Surely, since you’re reading this, you know them well.

It’s a complicated issue for us. For the artist, for one, keeping all pistons firing in the social-media engine can rob you of something else. On my recent song release project, I was so ensconced in pr upkeep that I hadn’t written a song or a poem in many weeks, nary a verse.

It made me sad and made me stop it all for a time and start writing again and sitting for awhile on the porch with my dog, watching the short-lived lilacs lifting on the thermals.

Just on the other side of our lilacs lies a neighbor’s house. A month back an ambulance came and took my friend David for his last roll down the driveway. Same age, David. He won’t have the luxury of bouncing along on his red lawn tractor anymore. I will. And I won’t forget that I have such privledges.

Happened to notice a number of articles recently that speak to various sides of the time question. One is New York Times’ John Tierney, writing on the science of concentration. Then, there’s The Times’ Judith Warner on adjusting expectations with age.

Also heard a think piece by Jeff Greenfield on the Mother’s Day edition of CBS Sunday Morning. His subject, which is unfortunately not captured online in video or text, was “Blackberry Mania.” He cited the Laputa society of Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels,” so consumed with their own deep thoughts they required floggers to keep them from crashing into themselves. All this led into a b-roll shot of pedestrians on cell phones and iPods.

With that image in mind, I’ll lead in to the ultimately closing act of all time, Bob Dylan. His current Rolling Stone interview is not available in its entirety online, so I’ll cite his golden quote here:

It’s peculiar and unnerving in a way to see so many young people walking around with cell phones and iPods in their ears and so wrapped up in media and video games. It robs them of their self-identity. It’s a shame to see them so tuned out to real life. Of course they are free to do that, as if that’s got anything to do with freedom. The cost of liberty is high, and young people should understand that before they start spending their life with all those gadgets.

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Whirling president

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Okay, so the man who turned Hillary is now turning Turkey on its axis. No surprise. Obama overthrew Presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton only to pivot her to his side Lincoln-style as his Secretary of State. Now, after charming grumbling heads of state in the EU, he manages to steer Turks 180 degrees with his winning ways.

How does he manage this people magic? Consult columnist extraordinaire Maureen Dowd:

Like a good shrink, the president listens; it’s a way of flattering his subjects and sussing them out without having to fathom what’s in their soul. “It is easy to talk to him,” Dmitri Medvedev said after their meeting. “He can listen.” The Russian president called the American one “my new comrade.”

And, good evidence from Asli Aydintasbas, former Ankara bureau chief of the newspaper Sabah, writing today in an op-ed piece in The New York Times:

Mr. Obama’s visit to Ankara was a carefully calibrated series of messages and symbolic gestures that spoke to Turkey’s different segments. He met with the government leadership as well as opposition leaders from secular, nationalist and Kurdish parties. He pledged to support “Ataturk’s vision of Turkey as a modern and prosperous democracy,” as he wrote in the guestbook at the mausoleum of the founder of secular Turkey.

In our eternal identity crisis, we Turks have lately been thinking only in opposites — that you are either secular or religious, Kurd or Turk, European or Middle Eastern. It took a young foreign leader on his first visit here to remind us that we are all of those things, and much more.

Twitter for the indie artist

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Is Twitter useful for musicians? Since I added Twitter to my music artist strategy, with my release of “We’re America” and beyond, I decided to post a roundup of opinions on the subject.

Musician Steve Lawson, for one, gives tweeting a thumbs up, claiming successes in an interview on Andrew Dubber’s vimeo.com, saying that musicians must immerse themselves in Twitter. He does a good job of explaining the contextual nature of the technology. If a musician creates a story about his process of making music – the songwriting, recording, performing – he says, users will find him interesting. “Make it part of a narrative,” he says. In a post on his own blog, Lawson debunks misconceptions, saying Twitter has “substantially improved (his) life over the last year.”

A Bob Brown post on networkworld supports Lawson’s philosophy. Brown lists artists of all stripes who tweet, saying the majors tend to do a poor job, while indies who are more serious are also more interesting. Also check out Brown’s list of productive tools for twitterers.

The New York Times tech writer David Pogue covers the waterfront on the subject. His posts cover everything from photo criticism to tips for beginners.

If there is a bellwether on Twitter as a proven tool, it’s Ragan.com. Over the past year, hardly a day goes by without a headline on the topic. Ragan writer and social media guru Shel Holtz says the brevity issue is “a load of crap.” Rightfully, he explains:

Yes, the messages are short. But many tweets are just part of some greater content. Tweets direct you to blog posts, breaking news, videos, photos, just about anything you can find on the Net.

I, for one, am ready to discover the greater good of Twitter for the indie artist and will report further on the subject.

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Damn dumb blondes

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Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva yesterday blamed blue-eyed blondes for the world economic crisis. Said da Silva:

This crisis was caused by the irrational behavior of white people with blue eyes, who thought they knew everything and now show they know nothing.

Just what we need on the heels of Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, head of the European Union, calling the U.S. stimulus measures the “way to hell.” See “U.S. to EU: we don’t do ‘hell'” post below.

Likely international opportunism all, but disconcerting as much of the world now looks to the U.S. for the way out of this mess. Tom Friedman’s “Paging Uncle Sam” column states it perfectly. Not sure what color eyes Tom has.

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U.S. to EU: we don’t do ‘hell’

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Okay, so this is how it works in the dysfunctional world we lead. The spoiled son embarrasses dad on the eve of the patriarch’s visit, knowing that pops’ll spring for the Wii he so wants just to shut him up.

So it is with Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, head of the European Union, who just blasted the U.S. stimulus measures as the “way to hell.”

President Obama, as it happens, is scheduled to arrive in Prague in less than two weeks. And this Topolanek, who, by the way just received a vote of no confidence from his government, will be looking for more than a Wii, perhaps enough to fund a whole high-tech industry. You think?

Thank you EU leaders. Once again, just as we’re all trying to get along so like the world doesn’t crumble around us, you shoot off your hypocritical mouths again. Recall the French arrogance (did I leave off an accent grave somewhere?) post 9/11. We can still take the freedom fries out of the freezer, you know.

Now, here’s the height of irony on two counts:

  1. On March 1, The New York Times reported that top EU governments trashed the idea of ponying up to bailout newer, Eastern members. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is facing elections this fall, rejected it soundly.
  2. In the midst of the AIG bonus scandal — on the Ides of March no less — AIG reported a much larger and equally-controversial giveaway: some $49.5 billion to 22 banks, 16 of which are foreign, many European, including UBS, Deutsche Bank and Société Générale. (Oddly, this story went virtually unnoticed in the fog of the bonus scandal, but for limited coverage in such reliables as The Gray Lady.)

So let’s sum up: a Czech leader, who also happens to head the EU, is gaming Obama and America because his own neighbors, like Germany, whose banks received mucho American cash via the AIG bailout, won’t ante up.

And what’s worse is this plays the hell card as the world’s house of cards teeters on the brink. Nice! (and like Elaine’s boyfriend Jake on Seinfeld, I eschew exclamation points).

P.S. Reactions to this news can also be found on the Fayetteville Observer blog.

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SXSW Live

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It’s SWSW time, and if you want to keep up with the action, there’s excellent coverage from some leading music journalists. New York Times writers Jon Pareles, Ben Sisario and David Carr report through the weekend from Austin in the Time’s Topics page devoted to the festival. Pareles, who is the Gray Lady’s chief pop critic, is a veteran whose coverage goes back to the glory days of Rolling Stone. He has a keen, well-rounded ear. In his coverage today, Pareles also adds a keen observation on the state of today’s music artist:

…musicians draw their audiences from people who chase down music in the news media, in blogs and on noncommercial radio stations — or maybe from a friend’s recommendation or a giveaway on a music downloading site.

Yes, the biz has been leveled via the Internet. That, of course, is the good news for the music artist. The bad, or at least difficult, news lies in making money. I’ll cite a few cases, both good and bad, in future posts that exemplify the money issue.

Back to SXSW coverage, try WIRE’s Underwire blog, with jottings from Eliot Van Buskirk and others. Today, he discusses band Choo Choo’s take on Twitter as a tool to connect with fans.

For an authentic view from the ground, try popwreckoning’s blog. Their writers will transport you, with reviews, band details and photos.

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