Our guest blogger is David Nassar, a Vice-President for Strategy with Blue State Digital. In April, Nassar was part of the U.S. State Department’s New Media Technology Delegation to Iraq

In the last days there has been an explosion of Tweets out of Iran, and a resulting boom in the number of stories covering it. There are now nearly 5000 in a Google News search ranging from the Atlantic, to the Christian Science Monitor to Wired. Everyone is touting Twitter and debating the end of the mainstream media.

Most of the focus has been on the tool, and for sure Twitter is amazing. Twitter makes it so simple to post updates about what is happening around you that anyone can do it. That has generated the volume coming in and as enough voices tell similar stories, patterns have emerged that cannot be denied, which is why everyone from CNN to FoxNews has become more engaged.

Beyond the tool though, lost in that debate is a strong analysis of the motivation behind its use. To the extent it has been covered, people have talked about where CNN failed. However, it is not only that mainstream media has shortcomings, which it does. Rather, it is that Twittter is now able to challenge mainstream media for credible reporting. This is historic. If we are going to understand the potential for what is happening with Twitter in Iran, we need to look closely at this.

First, there is the quality of the content. People watch mainstream media to get information and because that information has credibility. However, if they are more likely to get good content from alternative outlets that is better than the mainstream media, they will gravitate towards it. How do we assess quality? One way is clearly presentation, and CNN beats Twitter there hands down. However, Twitter crushes CNN on authenticity. And, as we have learned over the last few years, authentic voices rule the internet.

Second, there is the human connection. The success of mainstream media is driven by our mutual agreement as viewers that the source is credible. Note Al-Jazeeras failure in the USA as an example. What Twitter and Facebook and the others are doing by connecting people is generating credibility by connecting thousands one at a time, rather than all at once with a click. Those connections are happening at lightening speed. If thousands of people are following posts by an activist in Iran, that lends credibility to the source by our mutual agreement to listen to him/her. This is real alternative media but coming to you with a shared sense of agreement that blurs the line between it and a “mainstream” product.

When you combine good content, with ease of use and the power of human interaction, what you get is the reporting out of Iran on Twitter. It’s a world where those doing the reporting are generating their own credibility in real time and that credibility is then fueling more activism. It’s a brave new world. Like any new world there will be risks and challenges, not the least of which is the potential for this kind of reporting to develop a mob mentality. But that is for another piece. For now, I am watching this and am amazed.

Firedoglake reports that Shawna Forde, the anti-immigrant leader of the Minuteman American Defense (M.A.D.) who was recently charged with the murder of a 9-year-old Hispanic girl and her father, co-hosted the 2007 Washington State Illegal Immigration Summit that reportedly featured presidential candidates Tom Tancredo, Duncan Hunter, and Fred Thompson.

The Reagan Wing, a conservative blog dedicated to picking up Ronald Reagan’s “sword” still features a plug for the summit which it describes as “the pinnacle Conservative event of 2007“:

In addition the event is co-hosted by Minutemen American Defense, a Washington state-wide American citizen defense coalition headed by Shawna Forde, a re-born Rock promoter from the days of the music world-shaking Seattle Rock explosion. Shawna will speak.

Representatives (or the actual candidates) will appear from Presidential campaigns for TOM TANCREDO, DUNCAN HUNTER and FRED THOMPSON.

Minuteman leader Jim Gilchrist, who has tried to distance himself from Forde in recent days, also headlined the 2007 event.

The summit, which featured the slogan “The Great Gringo awakens from siesta,” was reportedly attended by “white supremacists, militia types, neo-Nazis, and skinheads.”

Right wing anti-immigration groups are frantically trying to distance themselves from Forde. The anti-immigrant group, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), issued a press release this afternoon denying any association with Forde after a video popped up of Shawna Forde speaking as a FAIR activist. The blog Long Island Wins reports that web pages from Gilchrist’s website where he supposedly defends Forde are nothing but broken links in a google cache. VDARE, “the homepage of educated racism” has reportedly also “scrubbed” all of its web pages that once supported Forde. So far, CNN’s Rick Sanchez has been one of the few mainstream journalists to question Forde’s connection to the larger movement against immigration.

SANCHEZ: The nation’s largest minuteman group has distanced itself from Forde we should say. And we’ve learned that within Minuteman circles she is considered a bit of a loose canon. But you do have to wonder: how did Shawna Forde–a supposed fringe element–turn up on PBS as a player in the anti-immigration movement?

Watch it:

Immigration advocates are outraged at the mainstream media’s lack of coverage and are asking their supporters to share the story of the 9-year-old victim’s death. Today, Crooks and Liars posted an emotional recording of the 911 call placed by her mother on the day of the attack.

Yesterday, President Obama explained his relative public silence with regard to the situation in Iran, saying, “It’s not productive, given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling, the U.S. president meddling in Iranian elections.” Later in the day, on Radio America’s Dateline Washington, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) responded to Obama’s measured statements on Iran by calling him a “cream puff” and predicting that under Obama’s leadership “things” will get “very bad, very quickly”:

DATELINE: What is the best way to approach this? … President Obama though says that we don’t want to take sides too publicly because then the ruling regime there could use us as the straw man to beat back this public uprising. How do you read this?

ROHRABACHER: Well I think that Mr. Obama, if he continues to have these types of attitudes, we’re going to see things get very bad, very quickly. Already the North Koreans have challenged him and realized that he’s a cream puff, if that is what he is indeed going to be as a President.… [N]ow if the Mullahs in Iran are permitted to just roll over opposition something like Tienanmen square, we will have missed a great opportunity.

Later in the interview, Rohrabacher said that he had distributed a video to the people of Iran that declared “we’re with them, be courageous, don’t let this moment go by” and that Ronald Reagan “always knew that — at the very least — we should be vocally supportive of all those people who are oppressed.” Listen here:

Rohrabacher’s view of Obama’s actions on Iran is not shared by some of his Republican colleagues in Congress or even some conservative commentators. Indeed, as Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) said on CBS’s Early Show yesterday, “I think for the moment our position is to allow the Iranians to work out their situation.” Likewise, Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL) told Politico that Obama should “absolutely not” be more forceful on Iran. Pat Buchanan wrote on the conservative TownHall.com that “[t]he Obama policy of extending an open hand to Iran is working and ought not be abandoned because of the grim events in Tehran.”

But perhaps the most compelling endorsement of the Obama administration’s reaction to the election crisis in Iran came from Morehead Kennedy, who was held hostage for 444 days by Iranian revolutions while serving as acting head of the U.S. Embassy’s economic section in Tehran in 1979. In an interview with the Daily Beast, Kennedy “praised Joe Biden’s reaction to the protesters Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, in which the vice president cast doubt on the election results but shied away from a more pronounced condemnation.” “It’s very counterproductive to interfere in someone else’s election. I think the best thing the U.S. can do is shut up,” he said.

Marco Rubio, who recently announced that he will run for Mel Martinez’s Senate seat in Florida, came out yesterday in favor of making English the official language of the United States, randomly pointing out that his name is spelled the same way in both Spanish and English.

Rubio’s new position echoes a recent MSNBC report which discussed the recent “revival” of the controversial pro-English movement which some say is motivated by anti-immigrant sentiment and reeks of “self defeating” “simple racism.” Rubio’s hard-line immigration position has helped win him the support of right-wing Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) who called Rubio “a real diamond in our own back yard.” Meanwhile, Miami blogger Kyle Munzenrieder pointed out that Rubio must be hoping to “appeal to Florida’s Hispanic voters simply because he is Hispanic,” as his positions are not in line with the interests of the Hispanic and immigrant communities.

Yet while Marco Rubio supports English-only legislation, he’s still willing to talk about his campaign in both languages. Watch it:

Munzenrieder reminds readers that Rubio has also been accused of sending English- and Spanish-speaking voters conflicting messages:

“Great Marco, just about everyone names is spelled the same in English in Spanish. Good for you. We just wish your politics were the same in both languages. Unfortunately, what you say to your English-speaking supporters isn’t always what you say to your Spanish-speaking supporters.”

Munzenrieder is referring to critics who have accused Rubio of resorting to “hateful fear-mongering” when discussing the Obama administration in Spanish and taking a more “neutral” tone in English. Chances are Rubio probably hasn’t mentioned his pro-English position nor Demint’s endorsement to the Spanish-language media.

Dear Mr. Kagan,
First, let me just express sympathy for your situation. These last years have been extraordinarily unkind to your grand theories about the transformative potential of American explosives. President Bush’s “global war on terror,” the invasion of Iraq, his so-called “freedom agenda,” turned out to be a real carnival of bad ideas, for which you were a key intellectual barker. It’s hard out here for a neocon.

But I have to say, Mr. Kagan, your op-ed this morning is really beneath you. You can’t actually believe that President Obama is “siding with the Iranian regime” against the Iranian people, or that Obama’s outreach to Iran depends upon keeping hardliners in power, can you? You’re far too intelligent to buy the brutishly simplistic “realism” that you attempt to hang upon President Obama’s approach. These sorts of claims are better left to your friend and occasional co-author Bill Kristol, who uses his series of valuable journalistic perches (with which he inexplicably continues to be gifted) to launch an endless stream of comically transparent bad faith arguments. You’re better than that. You’re the smart neocon.

Aren’t you? While it’s nice that you recognize that “it’s not that Obama preferred a victory by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad” — though that was the stated preference of a number of your fellow neoconservatives — your claim that President Obama’s “strategy toward Iran places him objectively on the side of” Ahmadinejad is the kind of thing I thought we had left back in 2003, when opponents of the Iraq invasion (that is, the people who turned out to be right) were tarred as being “objectively pro-Saddam.” It doesn’t smell any better six years later.

You state that President Obama’s “goal must be to deflate the opposition, not to encourage it. And that, by and large, is what he has been doing.” How then to explain his State Department reaching out to Twitter and asking them to delay their scheduled maintenance, in order to allow the continued use of this technology that has proven so important to enabling communication within and out of Iran? That one gesture neatly encapsulates, I think, the difference between Bush and Obama on “democracy promotion.” Bush believed in America bringing the gift of freedom to the people of the world. Obama believes in practical steps to put the tools of freedom in the hands of the people themselves, and then creating the space for people to use those tools.

Just to be clear, most of us who “railed against the Bush administration’s ‘freedom agenda’” did so not out of any hostility toward freedom or democracy, but out of the belief, now completely vindicated, that strong, stirring words in favor of democracy mattered little if the policies behind them were counterproductive to the actual cause of democracy, as Bush’s policies were. By backing pro-democracy rhetoric with American war and occupation, President Bush and his conservative supporters cast the cause of freedom and democracy into disrepute, from which it must now be rescued and reclaimed by more responsible hands.

Very best,
Matt