{update Feb 7 2005} by nadezhda

This article generated an interesting discusson when I posted it a week ago. It identifies a common -- and to my mind highly objectionable -- strain in the policies of the Bush Adminstiration both in foreign policy and in domestic politics.

For those of you interested in the topic, I've taken up the same theme, the inseparability of basic princples of democratic governance both at home and abroad -- in a new post at Liberals Against Terrorism. It's a response to David Adesnik of OxBlog regarding the promotion of Elliott Abrams to a deputy National Security Adviser position on the National Security Council, with the government's portfolio for democracy promotion and Middle East policy, including Iran.

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originally posted Jan 27 2005 by nadezhda

I had not expected to be writing anything lengthy tonight, but praktike has produced two excellent pieces at LaT (No on Gonzales and Clarification) that I view as being part of a single piece, and I felt compelled to spell out how I see them fitting together.
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Some major reasons for brooding

Von at Obsidian Wings has a fascinating and vigorous thread going over how/whether to debate the use of torture, all triggered by the Gonzales hearings and the new legal memo from the Justice Dept's Office of the Legal Counsel. But in Iran, bloggers are facing this dilemma personally in fact, not in theory. This extremely unsettling news from Iran via Hoder and Reporters Without Borders , has set me to more than just brooding, but to absolutely fulminating.

For the past several months, those of us who follow goings on in Iran have watched as the Iranian internal security and judiciary apparatus has been moving against individuals connected to blogging and internet services. They've been after the techies as often as anyone. The pressure has ratcheted up, with reports in December of not only arrests but also compelled "confessions" and torture. This Jan 6 2005 press release from Reporters Without Borders summarizes what's been happening. The page also has links to their previous articles on the situation.

In the past several days, the authorities now seem to have moved on to a full-fledged assault to shut down the entire infrastructure that supports the Persian social network that has built up on the internet. Since the theocrats attempt to monitor and control the most ordinary freedoms of speech, thought and association we take so for granted, the internet has been a rare open space available to Iranians. This is attested by the very high internet usage figures in Iran. For example, one commenter on a Joi Ito thread about the problem noted that Persians are the #3 demographic in Orkut. The reassertion of power by the hard-liners is extending to this space that expresses, by its very existence, a profound threat to what they stand for.

Hoder passes along the following disturbing report, as of Jan 6, which suggests that rather than trying to regulate the internet for disturbing content, the theocrats are trying to shut down the important social network spaces the internet creates.

Friends in Iran, journalists and technicians, are saying that judiciary officials have ordered all major ISP to filter all blogging services including PersianBlog, BlogSpot, Blogger, BlogSky, and even BlogRolling.

They have also ordered to filter Orkut, Yahoo Personals and some other popular dating and social networking websites.

For ISPs this means a big loss, since much of their recent sales have been because of people writing and reading blogs and surfing Orkut. So the government is effectively eliminating small and private ISPs by bankrupting them, whiteout [sic] paying a political price for it.

He goes on to list some of the actions that might be taken. In addition to technical means of circumventing the authorities, he says:

While still relevant and potentially effective, I believe they are not enough now.

The EU and the US must seriously consider demanding for an end to the Internet censorship during their negotiations with the Iranian government.

We also have to look for ways to beam Internet direcly to Iranian users in Tehran and other big cities via cheap satellite connections.

I call this "open access" and it's actually one of the projects a few friends and I are working on: to use millions of satellite dishes in Iranian houses to access the net, without interference of local ISPs.

According to BloggersWithoutBorders, it seems that Joi Ito, who asked a question about the availability of typepad and live journal and was answered by Hoder in an update to his post, has had his own site just banned, so there may be problems with following up with Hoder directly through his blog. Joi's blog has a growing thread of comments and trackbacks.

Today is just not the day for me to feel that "write your Congressman" is going to do much good -- with their attention absorbed in the current torture debate in the US, I find it difficult to imagine they'll get too wound up about what's going on in Iran. Or if they do get riled, it's going to be in a transparently hypocritical fashion that matches partisan agendas. This is, unfortunately, what happens when we allow our moral bearings to get knocked akilter, and what Lech Walesa meant a few weeks ago when he was quoted by the WSJ as saying:

[The Americans] are a military and economic superpower but not morally or politically anymore. This is a tragedy for us.

Ah well. After I've simmered down, I'll brood on whether some other useful action might be undertaken.

A minor bit of laughter

Which brings me to our favorite brooding friend who, I am pleased to see, has reappeared in a splendid new year's edition, and brings us a taste of Persian humor that's LOL and, pun intended, deliciously funny .

I find I owe him an apology for being a tad cryptic in my end-of-the-year greetings. I told him to hum a sentimental little song without telling him the tune! For shame, since it's been covered by truly all of the greats, although primarily with the English lyrics by Johnny Mercer rather than the French original.

With the positioning of Hill committees and party caucuses and mobilizing of interest groups, all circling over the still breathing Chief Justice Rehnquist on Sunday talk shows and op-ed pages, one theme has started to emerge. Maybe the next Chief Justice should come not from among the current members of SCOTUS . The discussion seems to be increasingly couched in high-minded terms of commitment to constitutional principles rather than the "litmus tests" of Roe v Wade or other hot button cases. But the dearth of credible candidates has been noteworthy.

Now comes before us a candidate of deep conviction and commitment to principles upon which our Constitution was based:

There are no adequate grounds for abolishing or suspending the right not to be imprisoned without trial, which all inhabitants of this country have enjoyed for more than three centuries.

Even more to the point in this age of sound bites and posturing, someone with a bit of attitude, who says "bring 'em on,"(pdf) though in rather more Churchillian strains.

This is a nation which has been tested in adversity, which has survived physical destruction and catastrophic loss of life. I do not underestimate the ability of fanatical groups of terrorists to kill and destroy, but they do not threaten the life of the nation. Whether we would survive Hitler hung in the balance, but there is no doubt that we shall survive Al-Qaeda. The Spanish people have not said that what happened in Madrid, hideous crime as it was, threatened the life of their nation. Their legendary pride would not allow it. Terrorist violence, serious as it is, does not threaten our institutions of government or our existence as a civil community….

[S]uch a power in any form is not compatible with our constitution. The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these. That is the true measure of what terrorism may achieve. It is for Parliament to decide whether to give the terrorists such a victory.

Thanks to Crooked Timber for the link to the opinion.

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[UPDATE] Speaking of Crooked Timber, there's an interesting and sometimes heated discussion going on there about the discovery that CT, like much of the academic and policy-related blogosphere, displays a marked gender imbalance in numbers, if not in quality. This is in rather stark contrast to the finding in a survey earlier this year that females account for a bit more than half of authors of all blogs -- at least using "blog" in its widest sense as including the large number of strictly "family and friends" blogs.

Since I've spent my entire professional life being in situations where I was the one woman out of groups of anywhere between five and twenty, I have to admit I hadn't really noticed the pattern, just found it "normal." In fact, I probably would have been more likely to have noticed the gender breakdown only if there had been a substantially higher percentage of women authors on CT. Probably worth a bit more thought.

In the meantime, Ann Bartow at Sivacracy.net (home of Siva Vaidhyanathan, BTW author of The Anarchist in the Library re IP and copyright issues) wonders "could 'Crooked Timber' be one of those double entendres?" Ouch.

I have nothing left to say.