The NYT's Joe Nocera characterizes Obama's plan as "little more than an attempt to stick some new regulatory fingers into a very leaky financial dam." Although the breadth of the plan is no doubt astonishing, the president is proposing "additional regulation on the margin, but nothing that amounts to a true overhaul."
The LAT gets its hands on a new report by the Government Accountability Office that states the United States doesn't have a strategy to stop weapons smuggling into Mexico. More than 90 percent of the firearms captured by Mexican authorities that could be traced have come from the United States. Although individual agencies have taken up disparate efforts to combat the problem, "they are not part of a comprehensive U.S. government-side strategy for addressing the problem," states the report that will be released today.
In the WP's Style section, Monica Hesse talks to crisis management professionals who say Sen. John Ensign's admission that he had an affair isn't really that big of a deal and might blow over quickly if he handles it properly. "The message is: Senator, if you want to shock us, you are going to have to do worse than that." More details could certainly come out that would make the whole thing less palatable, but compared with Larry Craig's adventures in bathroom stalls, Mark Foley's exchanges with underage pages, and Eliot Spitzer's visits to prostitutes, Ensign's affair "is really vanilla," as one expert put it.
Speaking of political scandals, John Edwards gives the WP his "first extended interview since confirming the affair" with Rielle Hunter. Of course, he declined to talk about Hunter or whether he was the father of her baby. Edwards didn't rule out returning to politics some day and refused to declare that running for president was a mistake, stating that it's a "very complex question."
FAR from the commotion and noise emanating from the current political crisis, something else is brewing in Iran. Mir Hossein Mousavi has reasons to believe he was the rightful winner of the latest presidential election. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is facing an insurmountable challenge to prove that he won the election fair and square.
Mousavi is the loser, but in the court of public opinion outside Iran, his loss is the result of ballot-rigging or worse. For now, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his 12-member Guardian Council will stick with the devil they know.
There is another dimension to the uprising in Iran: the role of the Internet and cyberspace. Iran is not a good example of a country seriously pursuing the digital path. But the Internet is there to stay and is, in fact, making its mark. It has impacted the political discourse of the country. Internet-savvy citizens are taking the protest into cyberspace and galvanising people to protest in the open.
We have watched the clampdown by the security forces in the streets, and in no time, the little rebellion will fizzle out. As much as the ruling elite is not willing to see a bloodbath, so, too, are the protesters mindful that a divided Iran will go down the path of oblivion. But the next battle will happen somewhere else.
People are saying there is no difference between Mousavi and Ahmadinejad. Both come from the same mould. Perhaps the difference between a moderate and a hardliner is not easy to see in Iran.
A reformist in Iran is defined by the West as the one whom they want to take sides with. Therefore, Ahmadinejad is the hardliner with revolutionary zeal and Mousavi a reformist with a cause. Those who voted in the elections -- 40 million of them -- may now be wondering if at all they are acquiescing to the current regime or the true voice of a new Iran. The outcome of an election in Iran has never been as severely scrutinised as the recent one.
It is interesting to note that there is a major shift in Iranian society. Social scientists are arguing that many among the voters are not carrying the baggage of the fiery revolutionary era. Among the young, history is nothing but a passage of time with encumbrances. They are the ones who gave their votes to Mousavi, who they believe would not drag them into an unnecessary warpath with other countries in the world.
The White House is a different one now. US President Barack Obama is sending conciliatory signals to the Muslim world. And Iran will not be portrayed as part of the axis of evil. No Muslim leader should be indifferent to the signs coming out of Washington.
Mousavi apparently has the support among the young. Iranians are now using YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, MySpace and Twitter. It was reported that Mousavi's fan base in Facebook alone was more than 50,000, a considerable number indeed. Imagine these tools relaying information outside the grip of the state. Virtual Iran is vibrant, alive and young while the revolutionary leaders and guards are still struggling with the digital world. The young are taking on the might of the state in cyberspace.
There is a lesson to be learned from Iran. Ahmadinejad might still be president. But Iran will never be the same again. The protesters, while noisy and agitated, will have to resign themselves to the fact that they will bring little immediate change. But something else is happening. Iranians are flocking to cyberspace as never before. YouTubing, Facebooking and Twittering are changing the way Iranians communicate, interact and look at politics.
Politics is being reinvented by digital applications, thanks to Obama. He knew the formidable challenge he faced in the primaries in the form of Hillary Clinton. He knew, too, that the Republican Party had massive support among the people. But his operators knew that the young related to Obama better than John McCain. Obama engaged the young via social networking platforms.
His digital guru, Scott Goodstein, created Obama Mobile which included text messaging, downloads, even iPod applications. He used Obama MySpace network and created individual state Obama pages, 57 in all. There are as many as 262 million mobile phones in the United States. Imagine sending millions of Obama messages via SMS.
And millions more via email. Goodstein masterfully mixed online and offline organising tools with popular culture and politics. The young must be engaged before they even decide to vote. They have to believe the brand to support Obama. So when they went out to vote, they voted for Obama.
It is not an exaggeration that Obama is the first president elected to office by digital media. And he is also the most techno-savvy president to date, not to mention the first Blackberry president. He understands the power of the New Media. Those who ignore it do so at their own peril.
Iran is no United States, and one would expect an Obama-like wave pushing Ahmadinejad to the periphery. But the ground is already moving dramatically. The world of the Internet and that of mobile phones is changing more than just mindsets and attitudes. It is changing political affiliations. More than cultures are clashing in Iran. The voice of new Iran is to be heard loudly in its own cyberspace.
To win elections these days, one has to start by winning the digital space.
demonstrators could be executed under Islamic law.
Iran Tries To Arrest Its Way Out
By Daniel Politi
Posted Thursday, June 18, 2009, at 6:42 AM ET
The New York Times leads with the Iranians who continued to take to the streets yesterday even as the government stepped up its efforts to quell the unrest by detaining high-profile reformers. For the first time, the Iranian government accused the United States of "meddling" in its internal politics. Meanwhile, the government increased its efforts to prevent Iranian news from getting to the outside world by blocking Web sites, banning journalists from covering the demonstration, and threatening
The rest of the papers lead with, and the Wall Street Journal banners, President Obama's plan to reform financial regulations, which he officially unveiled yesterday. The proposals put forward by the White House "would affect nearly every aspect of banking and markets," notes the WSJ. The administration urged Congress to act before the end of the year and, among other things, give more power to the Federal Reserve and impose more oversight of the derivatives market. Most of the papers focus on the proposed creation of a new agency "that would thin the alphabet soup of agencies that keep companies from abusing borrowers, savers and debtors," explains USA Today. The Los Angeles Times calls the creation of an independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency one of the "most controversial provisions" in Obama's proposal. The Washington Post points out there is such strong opposition to this new agency that it sets up "a high-stakes contest between the industry and the White House for the loyalty of a few moderate senators who increasingly hold the balance of power."
Partly due to the continuing crackdown on reporters, no one really knows how many demonstrators took part in the mostly silent demonstration yesterday to support Mir Hossein Mousavi. Most papers go with "tens of thousands," but the WSJ goes out on a limb and says there were "hundreds of thousands" of demonstrators. Moussavi called for a day of mourning today for the people killed in the demonstration. On his Web site, Mousavi called the killing of seven protesters by a government-backed militia "an appalling murder." The NYT points out that the senior prosecutor in the central province of Isfahan has warned that demonstrators could be executed under Islamic law.
How many people have died in Iran since Friday's election? Unsurprisingly, no one seems to know. Beyond the seven deaths that have been officially confirmed, there have also been what the WP characterizes as "persistent but unconfirmed reports" that five students were killed during a raid at Tehran University's dormitories. There are also reports that two other students were killed during a similar raid in the southern city of Shiraz. Iran's Interior Ministry ordered an investigation into Sunday's attack.
The WSJ publishes a hair-raising account of one medical student's experience in the Tehran University raid. He and his roommate apparently barricaded their doors and hid in the closet when they heard the militia approaching. He then heard the militia break down doors and screams from students. "When he came out after the militia had left, friends and classmates lay unconscious in dorm rooms and hallways, many with chest wounds from being stabbed or bloody faces from blows to their heads," writes the WSJ's Farnaz Fassihi.
Many Iranians thought they could get a break from politics by watching their national soccer team play South Korea. But, in a surprise move, six of the Iranian players, including the captain, wore green wristbands, a color that has now become synonymous with support for Mousavi. The LAT points out that while the move demonstrated how support for Mousavi has grown, the newscaster on Iran's state-controlled television tried to espouse a different lesson from the game. "During the game today between Iran and South Korea, it doesn't matter which player scores a goal, so long as Iran wins," he said. The WP reports that Iranian state television aired a program called The Green Wave that accused foreign media of fomenting unrest.
In a front-page analysis, the NYT points out that the man many now refer to as "the Gandhi of Iran" is "in some ways an accidental leader." Mousavi gained huge popularity only at the last minute, and it's not even clear "how far he will be willing to go in defending the broad democratic hopes he has come to embody." He was an insider in Iran's political machine and close to the leaders of the 1979 revolution, until he became a member of the opposition for reasons that "remain murky." His contentious relationship with Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is well-known, particularly since they clashed often when Mousavi was prime minister and Khamenei was president. But accidental or not, Mousavi has displayed "steadiness" since the election results were announced, which "has helped solidify his role as a leader and has heartened his followers," notes the paper.
In the LAT's op-ed page, Babak Rahimi writes from Tehran and argues against the government claim that while urban Iranians may support Mousavi, the countryside strongly supports Ahmadinejad. Rahimi did "preelection fieldwork" in several southern provinces and "saw far lower levels of support for the president" than he had expected. "In fact, I heard some of the most ferocious objections to the administration in the rural regions, where the dwindling economy is hitting the local populations hard."
Some of the papers try to insert some perspective by pointing out that while Twitter, and other social networking sites in general, have been playing an important part in the demonstrations, that doesn't seem to be how most Iranians hear about what's going on. "Word of mouth is the main way for Iranians to get information about the protests," notes the Post. "All the websites are shut down," a 21-year-old student tells the LAT. "The phones never work. We find out through word of mouth."
The LAT goes on to explain that there is "a loose network of organizers," mostly made up of students and women's rights activists, who guide demonstrators and urge them to remain quiet and not engage the militias. In an effort to make the resistance as inclusive as possible, these organizers also urge demonstrators to refrain from chanting against the Islamic Republic in general. So far, the government doesn't seem eager to carry out a massive crackdown. "Not only would a Tiananmen Square-style massacre sully officials' claims to popular legitimacy, it would create a whole new set of martyrs who could further galvanize a popular movement," notes the LAT. "Such killings paved the way for the 1979 Islamic Revolution."
Stateside, Obama struck "a populist tone" (LAT) when presenting his plan for changes in regulations for the financial industry. The president said the financial industry often surrounds its financial products with such hard-to-understand jargon that the average American has no option but to be left confused. "The most unfair practices will be banned," Obama said. "Those ridiculous contracts with pages of fine print that no one can figure out, those things will be a thing of the past. And enforcement will be the rule, not the exception."
While Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill vowed to get this done by the end of the year, it's clear there are already doubts about some aspects of the president's plan. First, there's the objections to the creation of the new consumer protection agency that business lobbyists are expected to fight. But some lawmakers from both parties have also said they don't feel quite comfortable giving so much power to the Federal Reserve, particularly considering the central bank failed to pick up signs that there was a recession brewing.
The WSJ says many in Wall Street breathed a sigh of relief that the White House proposal wasn't as hard-hitting as many had feared. In a front-page piece that looks into how the plan was developed, the WP says that coming under pressure from lawmakers, regulators, and lobbyists, the "chief architects held firm to a few reforms they deemed the most fundamental to averting another financial crisis while giving ground on nearly everything else." It's clear the White House wants the public to believe it was tough with industry insiders—Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner "silenced" a discussion between lobbyists "with a string of obscenities"—and wasn't influenced by their concerns. So why is the plan so much more favorable to Wall Street than what was initially envisioned? Well, because officials listened to banking regulators and congressional leaders, of course.
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