Amazing, amazing stuff at The Dish. This blog deserves a Pulitzer.

[seafan]

I have been absolutely riveted to this site since the Iranian election. Here are a couple more entries that I wanted to share.




Guardian



18 Jun 2009 01:16 pm
Why Iran Matters

Among the more moving emails I've received these past few days have been from Iranians asking why on earth I seem to care so passionately about what's happening right now. The premise - that somehow Tehran-demonstrations-Dem-012 Iranians' fight for freedom is a parochial issue that the rest of us should not be concerned with - is heart-breaking. But here's my answer: this is the central event in modern history right now. The forces of democracy have marshalled in Iran for accountability, transparency and fairness. Wherever they marshall, we should stand with them, especially in the blogosphere, where our Iranian brothers and sisters built the foundation for this moment.

Moreover, Iran is at the very heart of the global struggle between the forces of distorted and politicized religious tyranny and the power of real faith and freedom. This struggle was never ours' to impose, however good the intentions. It was always there for the people themselves to grasp. And grasp it they now have - with astounding courage, clarity and calm.

And so at the white-hot center of the global conflict, this astonishing force has emerged to resist escalation, unwind conflict, get past ideology, insist on change, and demand a better future. This is hopeful enough. But the use of technology to achieve this offers a whole new paradigm for world politics. We saw its power in the Obama campaign, which harnessed a similar spirit in utterly different circumstances. Now it's trans(fo)rming the other side of this previously unstoppable conflict. Al Giordano, another foot-soldier in the Obama movement, grapples with the meaning of the Mousavi movement for the left in particular. Money quote:

Ever since I penned The Medium Is the Middleman: For a Revolution Against Media, I’ve been waiting for this moment, which I predicted, twelve years ago, would come: a great day when the corporate media got pushed out of the way by authentic media from below. What is occurring worldwide, with the Iranian crisis as catalyst, is the emergence of the very kind of media from below that the human race - particularly the working class and the poor - so desperately needs.

Following these events – including the fast-developing advances in communications strategies and tactics and the efforts from above to censor and cut those communications – provides a gigantic global teach-in and workshop (much like during the 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela) on how it is done. As a journalist, I have always followed the stories that help me to learn something new and important to me. And every hour, I’m learning a new set of tricks from these brave communicators in Iran and around the world: methods and techniques that will serve us in this hemisphere, soon enough, too.

The study of how to break information blockades is a life’s study for some of us. What a wonderful classroom we’ve been provided this week. Perhaps, just as Woody Guthrie painted on his guitar, we will finally be able to mark our communications tools: “This machine kills fascists,” and then evolve it to his friend Pete Seeger’s rejoinder, painted on his banjo: “This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.”

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Miami Herald

18 Jun 2009 12:56 pm
America's Unserious Right


"Republican leadership calls for Obama to condemn Iran's election results and speak out for the demonstrators shows no knowledge of Iran whatsoever. If he did so, America would become the issue in Iran, not Ahmadinejad, and we would become the excuse and justification for spilling Iranian blood. These sniping remarks by Republican leaders also shows they put pandering to their right wing above American national security. Why can't they listen to their own real foreign policy expert -- Senator Richard Lugar -- and see and say that the U.S. must exercise restraint in our public statements for Iran's sake and our own," - Les Gelb.

We've known for some time that the United States cannot afford the current Republican leadership to be in charge of foreign policy. They have neither the understanding, judgement or temperament to do so. They veer from hoping Ahmadinejad to win all the way to wanting to stand up and get the president cheering for one faction in an extremely tense and difficult situation. Just thank your stars we do not have McCain or Palin grandstanding this in the White House right now. Or Cantor's AIPAC-dictated cant in the House.

Keep up the fine work, Mr. Sullivan.

[skiddlybop]

1. Oh please.

Sullivan pimped the "Bell Curve" book which said that African Americans are intellectually inferior, and cheer-led for Bush's RE-ELECTION, well after any conservative of good faith woke the fuck up.

Sullivan has no credibility on foreign or domestic affairs, or gay civil rights.

[Warpy]

2. The rest of the post is great and even Sullivan

is like a stopped clock, right twice a day. He's right this time.

The situation over there is also resonating with most of us because we know how it feels to have our votes stolen and a man installed into office against our will.

[seafan]

3. The Dish, Juan Cole, HuffPo and Twitter are bringing us history unfolding.

Attacking the messengers won't further our cause. This isn't about any one person.


Something tremendous is going on and we are witnesses to it.



Off topic: You might be interested in this mea culpa by Sullivan.

[Kaleko]

4. Couldn't agree more. n/t

[PM Martin]

6. As you said.

Sullivan is for freedom for only certain groups.

[eallen]

7. No. Sullivan endorsed Kerry in 2004. Criticize him for supporting Bush in 2000...

But he did wake up before Bush ran a second time.

:hippie:

[wildeyed]

5. His blog and The Lede have been very good. n/t