There will be at least a little less laughing about "social media" now, likely

Twitter?

Facebook?

First they were new, then people laughed about them, thinking everyone was taking them--either or both--too seriously. 

Now?

Now that a regime has been changed in Egypt by using them?

If we laughed about them up to now, people--and governments, more specifically--won't be laughing about them much any more.

To wit, an article today:

Social media plays role in Egypt some expected in Iran
By Michael Calderone
 
As Egyptians celebrated in the streets of Cairo Friday, CNN's Wolf Blitzer posed a question to activist Wael Ghonim: "First Tunisia, now Egypt, what's next? "
 
Ghonim, a 30-year-old Google executive who became a symbol of the country's democratic uprising against Hosni Mubarak's authoritarian regime, replied with two words: "Ask Facebook."

"I want to meet [Facebook founder] Mark Zuckerberg one day and thank him, actually," Ghonim said.

Dictators are toppled by people, not by media platforms. But Egyptian activists, especially the young, clearly harnessed the power and potential of social media, leading to the mass mobilizations in Tahrir Square and throughout Egypt. The Mubarak regime recognized early on that social media could loosen its grip on power. The government began disrupting Facebook and Twitter as protesters hit the streets on Jan. 25 before shutting down the Internet two days later.

In addition to organizing, Egyptian activists used Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter to share information and videos. Many of these digital offerings made the rounds online but were later amplified by Al Jazeera and news outlets around the world. "This revolution started online," Ghonim told Blitzer. "This revolution started on Facebook."

Egypt's uprising followed on the heels of Tunisia's. In each case, protestors employed social media to help oust an authoritarian government--a role some Western commentators expected Twitter to play in Iran during the election protests of 2009.

But there was no revolution in Iran, as President Ahmadinejad cracked down brutally on protesters. While "Twitter Revolution" might have made for snappy headlines, social media alone wasn't enought to topple a strongman. For a social media to work, it still needed a deliberate mobilization of activists on the ground.

So the "Twitter Revolution" talk proved premature and led to some backlash.

Evgeny Morozov writes in his new book, "The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom," that only a small minority of Iranians were actually Twitter users. Presumably, many tweeting about revolution were doing so far from the streets of Tehran.

"Iran's Twitter Revolution revealed the intense Western longing for a world where information technology is the liberator rather than the oppressor," Morozov wrote, according to a recent Slate review. In his book, Morozov writes how authoritarian regimes can use the Internet and social media to oppress people rather than such platforms only working the other way around

The New Yorker's Malcolm Gladwell, in a much-talked-about piece in October, wrote how the "revolution will not be tweeted."

It's true that tweeting alone--especially from safe environs in the West--will not cause a revolution in the Middle East. But as Egypt and Tunisia have proven, social media tools can play a significant role as as activists battle authoritarian regimes, particularly given the tight control dictators typically wield over the official media. Tomorrow's revolution, as Ghonim would likely attest, may be taking shape on Facebook today.


It's a whole new world, people, and this social media can be a big part of it, for better and worse.

Link to original article:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thecutline/20110211/ts_yblog_thecutline/social-media-plays-role-in-egypt-some-expected-in-iran

Worst. President. Ever.

If Donald Trump, of all people, thinks you're the worst President ever, in the history of the United States, you have screwed up on a pretty large scale. The bar is pretty low on that one.

What the heck, we can still enjoy it for a little while here

Big news that I hope is wrong

This is why we need to be contacting our Congressperson/representative RIGHT NOW:


Report: U.S. 'preparing the battlefield' in Iran

New Yorker article says Congress authorized up to $400 million for covert ops in Iran

Journalist Seymour Hersh says program is being staged from Afghanistan

U.S. officials decline comment, deny the U.S. is launching raids from Iraq

Iranian general says troops are building graves for invaders in the event of war

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Bush administration has launched a "significant escalation" of covert operations in Iran, sending U.S. commandos to spy on the country's nuclear facilities and undermine the Islamic republic's government, journalist Seymour Hersh said Sunday.

White House, CIA and State Department officials declined comment on Hersh's report, which appears in this week's issue of The New Yorker.

Hersh told CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer" that Congress has authorized up to $400 million to fund the secret campaign, which involves U.S. special operations troops and Iranian dissidents.

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have rejected findings from U.S. intelligence agencies that Iran has halted a clandestine effort to build a nuclear bomb and "do not want to leave Iran in place with a nuclear program," Hersh said.

"They believe that their mission is to make sure that before they get out of office next year, either Iran is attacked or it stops its weapons program," Hersh said.

The new article, "Preparing the Battlefield," is the latest in a series of articles accusing the Bush administration of preparing for war with Iran.

He based the report on accounts from current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. Watch Hersh discuss what he says are the administration's plans for Iran

"As usual with his quarterly pieces, we'll decline to comment," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe told CNN.

"The CIA, as a rule, does not comment on allegations regarding covert operations," CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said.

Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, denied U.S. raids were being launched from Iraq, where American commanders believe Iran is stoking sectarian warfare and fomenting attacks on U.S. troops.

"I can tell you flatly that U.S. forces are not operating across the Iraqi border into Iran, in the south or anywhere else," Crocker said.

Hersh said U.S. efforts were staged from Afghanistan, which also shares a border with Iran.

He said the program resulted in "a dramatic increase in kinetic events and chaos" inside Iran, including attacks by Kurdish separatists in the country's north and a May attack on a mosque in Shiraz that killed 13 people.

The United States has said it is trying to isolate Iran diplomatically in order to get it to come clean about its nuclear ambitions. But Bush has said "all options" are open in dealing with the issue.

Iran insists its nuclear program is aimed at providing civilian electric power, and refuses to comply with U.N. Security Council demands that it halt uranium enrichment work.

U.N. nuclear inspectors say Tehran held back critical information that could determine whether it is trying to make nuclear weapons.

Israel, which is believed to have its own nuclear arsenal, conducted a military exercise in the eastern Mediterranean in early June involving dozens of warplanes and aerial tankers.

The distance involved in the exercise was roughly the same as would be involved in a possible strike on the Iranian nuclear fuel plant at Natanz, Iran, a U.S. military official said.

In 1981, Israeli warplanes destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor.

Iran's parliament speaker, Ali Larijani, warned other countries against moves that would "cost them heavily." In comments that appeared in the semi-official Mehr news agency Sunday, an Iranian general said his troops were digging more than 320,000 graves to bury troops from any invading force with "the respect they deserve."

"Under the law of war and armed conflict, necessary preparations must be made for the burial of soldiers of aggressor nations," said Maj. Gen. Mirfaisal Baqerzadeh, an Iranian officer in charge of identifying soldiers missing in action.

Journalist Shirzad Bozorghmehr in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.

The original article at this link:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/06/29/us.iran/index.html?eref=rss_topstories