Two things, (1) posting slow down; and (2) Citizen journalists prove the pen/pixel/cameraphone is mightier than the sword.
(1). The dog ate my blog posts.
Seriously. I’ve been swamped. I have some very huge document work to do and that sort of burns me out from blogging, so it will probably be mid-July before I’m back on any kind of schedule here.
Not that there’s not a lot to say.
(2). Iran, YouTube, citizen journalism.
Backing up, one ongoing theme of this blog is that the hallmark of abuse is secrecy, and that the only way to stop abusive behavior, whether at home, in the executive suite or in a country, is to shine a light on it.
I’ve posted on whistleblowers who sent blast e mails, or just on bypassing regulators totally. I try not to be politically partisan (except for some ridiculously stupidly hideously wrongheaded California propositions) and point out, thanklessly I might add, flaws in others, left or right.
This Iran thing is the “shine a light on it” theory in action, as I understand it.
I don’t know the Iranian politics well enough to know if it is a theocracy or a dictatorship or what. Apparently the Iranian citizens want to move on with their lives, and feel there was massive fraud at the ballots. (Something the U.S. would never do).
Let’s say you want to be a totalitarian dictator. Step 1 is to have no first amendment rights, at all. Hey, there was no Pravda in Ivestia and no Ivestia in Pravda, and that worked out OK-ish.
So you, as a Dictator wannabe, take total control over the media. This was pretty easy when you’re Mao, and your marching through Chinese equivalent of South Dakota and you can just sort of take over any country bumpkin newspapers along the way. No problemo.
It’s tougher these days. What’s a dictator to do? There’s the internet. All bets off there.
So the sensible dictator will take to terrorizing their populations to make up for lack of control over the media. Free journalism? The consequences are too terrible to contemplate. (Exhibit A.) Same result, you control the information flow.
The time and energy devoted to terrorizing your population can leave a rogue state dictator simply exhausted. The whole budget goes into maintaining power. That, of course, results in a failed prison-state. No fun. It’s better to be adored and admired. You sort of have to have some little teensiest bit of delusion. But at least you’re in power, and can die of natural causes.
But, what about when journalists are anonymous? How can you terrorize anonymous citizen journalists?
So that is why I think the Iranian YouTubes, social network organized protests, live bloggs or tweets, and cell phone calls are significant. Apparently Iranian government has done the “foreign journalist censorship” drill, but what are they going to do about the guy who hangs out his apartment window and films this?
Just like Holla-Back, where you can post cell phone photos of subway exhibitionists, led to increased prosecution for exhibitionism, Iranian post-election videos from Tehran are shining a light on what’s happening. I think this took the oldsters by surprise. They weren’t prepared and are now scrambling for a PR blitz. (You can quibble about the journalistic value or even if Twitter is pertinent, but this is the first time we’ve seen serious mainstream coverage of citizen journalism.)
I mean, here you have the most popular guy on the planet (Pres. Obama and his photogenic family who hangs out with Oprah, can you get more popular than that?) vs. Mullahs. Oprah vs. the Ottoman Empire. No contest.
I think this one might be the biggee. Brutal crackdown or give it up? I don’t know. But if you’re a dictator wannabe, maybe you’ll think twice before looking like a loser on Youtube.
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