Paul Krassner : My Tweets of 2012

Paul Krassner tweets @ZenBastard. Graphic by James Retherford / The Rag Blog.
Paul Krassner’s Tweets of 2012

By Paul Krassner / The Rag Blog / December 27, 2012

This is my first tweet. I have Writer's Block. I mean Twitter's Block. I'm waiting for a cure to be developed.

A minimalist summation of American culture in the Los Angeles Times on Conan O'Brien: “The Masturbating Bear will remain the intellectual property of NBC.”

Perhaps Toyota should borrow a slogan from McDonalds: "You deserve a brake today.”

Texting while having sex? Two thumbs up.

Double standard: Charles Rangel pays restitution for unpaid taxes; Wesley Snipes is sentenced to a few years behind bars for a similar response.

Excuse me, I have to take a Wiki-leak.

Join me in signing a letter to stop the inhumane detention of Private Bradley Manning.

I saw the movie The King's Speech and was disappointed that it didn't end with Porky Pig saying, "Th-th-the-that's all, folks!"

Steve Jobs' legacy is a form of alchemy -- he transformed planned obsolescence into a virtue.

Poor Rick Santorum, he's afraid that if Roe vs. Wade isn't overturned by the Supreme Court, there will an epidemic of recreational abortions.

I stopped channeling Lenny Bruce the day he reminded me, "C'mon, Paul, you know you don't believe in that shit."

Today marks the 15th anniversary of Allen Ginsberg's death; he once told me he smokes not to get high, but rather because he likes to cough.

I went to the dentist today, and the hygienist gave me a choice of X-rays or a pat-down.

Summing up the presidential campaign: It'a battle between "Keep the government out of my Medicare" and "Keep the government out of my vagina."

I covered the Dan White trial and coined "the Twinkie defense."

The world desperately needs a campaign beginning with Kickstarter to raise funds to build an Iron Dome for the Palestinians.

Plan B has been aborted.

I voted for Barack Obama again, and yet now, although he wept for the loss of 20 kids, he never wept for the 178 kids killed by U.S. drones in Yemen and Pakistan.

The digitally colored edition of the infamous Disneyland Memorial Orgy poster by Mad magazine artist Wally Wood is available only at paulkrassner.com.

Have a Merry War on Christmas and a Happy, Snappy and Fulfilling New Year.

[Paul Krassner edited The Realist, America's premier satirical rag and was an original Yippie. Krassner’s latest book is an expanded and updated edition of his autobiography, Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counterculture, available at paulkrassner.com. Read more articles by Paul Krassner on The Rag Blog.]

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Iran, Cyber Warfare and the CIA : The World is Watching

Twitter and the new Iranian revolution. Cartoon by Ian D. Marsden / truthout.
Iran: The world is watching

[The media] give wall-to-wall coverage of the protesters, whose heroism is very real. But the TV cameras and front-page headlines completely ignore how hard Washington worked to stir up the protests...

By Steve Weissman / June 30, 2009

When President Barack Obama warned Iran's ayatollahs that the world was watching their brutal crackdown on peaceful protesters, he touched a sacred chord for a whole generation of American activists. Back in 1968, as TV cameras broadcast dramatic images of Mayor Daley's police cracking heads at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, anti-war demonstrators famously chanted, "the whole world is watching."

In the eyes of the mass media, of course, not all protests or electile dysfunctions are equal. After 9/11, our free press largely ignored persuasive evidence that Al Gore had won the presidential elections in Florida, while TV cameras gave scant coverage to demonstrations against George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq. But for those in Washington planning regime change in Tehran, the media problem was not how to convince CNN and the BBC to beat the drums for the "Green Revolution."

The problem was far trickier. How would Washington's media mavens help bring a protest to the streets? And how would they guarantee a continuing flow of powerful images and poignant words between the protesters and the watching world?

Their solution took many forms, from TV and radio broadcasting reminiscent of the cold war to the latest in Internet technology, including the widespread use of Twitter and Facebook. Since 2006, the State Department alone spent more than $200 million on the effort. The money went to its in-house Iran bashers and "democracy-promoters," the Voice of America's (VOA) Farsi language broadcasts, Radio Free Europe's round-the-clock Radio Farda and the secretive National Endowment for Democracy, which funded several other groups.

This $200 million came on top of the $400 million that Congress allocated in 2007 for regime change in Iran, some of which went for the CIA's state-supported terrorism inside Iranian borders.

Whether the overthrow of Ahmadinejad succeeds or fails, the Green Revolution will indeed have many fathers, and critics should avoid pointing the finger at only the CIA or its spin-off, the National Endowment for Democracy. Orange, Rose and Green Revolutions in other countries require coordinated US government intervention, aimed at creating what Rutgers journalism professor Jack Bratich has called "genetically modified" grassroots movements.

Nowhere has this been more obvious than in the widely reported use of Twitter, Facebook, and other of the new media's social networking tools. How did these tools come to play such a pivotal role in Iran's "Green Revolution"? In large part because Washington made a huge push to encourage their use as part of its strategy of democracy promotion, which in Iran became full-scale psychological warfare.

Meet Jared Cohen, the young State Department official who asked Twitter not to close down for maintenance during hours that Iran's protesters might need the service. He is not your everyday computer geek, who just happened to know the nice folks at Twitter.

Author of the widely acclaimed "Children of Jihad: A Young American's Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East," Cohen had served as Condoleezza Rice's adviser on youth and technology, especially in the Muslim world. In that role, he worked with Twitter, Facebook, Howcast, Google, MTV, and others in an official campaign to promote online, mobile and digital networking "as a tool for youth empowerment against violence and oppression."

And not just in Iran. Speaking last December on a web chat to publicize the State Department's Alliance of Youth Movements Summit, Cohen talked the talk of the official democracy promoters. "Wherever civil society organizations exist or individuals have causes that promote non-violent youth causes, we want them to have the knowledge and information on how to develop an online component to what they are trying to achieve," he said.

With Cohen as the Alliance's international press contact, the State Department put out an online "field manual" that provided best practices, videos and steps for building these kinds of movements.

Promoting his book in 2007 to The New Yorker, Cohen gave a different impression. The State Department still had him traveling, he said. But now he was plugged into power.

"Basically, I do a safer version of what I used to do," he explained. "Now I'm in a place where I can take what young people are saying to me and work with my colleagues in Operations and in the embassies to do something that actually happens on the ground."

Cohen could not stop talking. "I always say that the largest party in every country -- the largest opposition group in every country -- is the youth party," he said.

Frankly, I was flabbergasted. Had the spirit of Abbie Hoffman and his Yippies, the Youth International Party, gone from anti-war demonstrations in Chicago to work in the very belly of the beast, all nonviolently, of course, and armed with the newest of new media? No wonder Cohen's boss Condi Rice sounded so ecstatic when she described the Internet as "possibly one of the greatest tools for democratization and individual freedom that we've ever seen."

As Rice well knew, the new media is especially great for meddling in another country, especially when Washington and its allies have so many other psywar tools at their disposal. Take, for example, The Washington Post's recent article "Persian News Network Finds New Life in Contested Iranian Election." The ayatollahs had cracked down on free speech, wrote the Post, and Voice of America was rushing to the rescue.

"What we're seeing is a new level of cyber warfare," said producer Gareth Conway, referring to the Iranian government's blocking of text-messaging services and Internet sites and Iranians' attempts to fight back. "We're trying to give viewers updates on technology, how they can continue to communicate with each other."

"As protests have erupted over the heavily disputed reelection of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, VOA's Persian-language TV network and a similar BBC service have emerged as a critical way for Iranians to share information."

Yes, the whole world is watching, as President Obama suggests. But our supposedly free media show only half of the picture. They give wall-to-wall coverage of the protesters, whose heroism is very real. But the TV cameras and front-page headlines completely ignore how hard Washington worked to stir up the protests, and most of the supposedly progressive blogosphere wears the same political blinders. Old media or new, to a child of the cold war, the self-righteous dupery is déjà vu all over again.

[A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France. He is also a regular contributor to The Rag Blog.]

Source / truthout

For previous articles by Steve Weissman in this series on the aftermath of the Iranian elections, go here.

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Short Attention-Span News : Tweet-ening the Pot

A little birdie told me...
Short Attention-Span News

By Mariann G. Wizard / The Rag Blog / June 29, 2009

Help Army Nat.Guard Lt. Dan Choi, fighting discharge 4 being gay, NOW: http://www.couragecampaign.org/page/ic/rl0ze9ehwuz8th/SjZDRRMLFEAhUl4

* * *92 city cops n Hidalgo busted by Mexican federales, charged w/providing info, security 2 Zetas cartel, @$230-380/2 wks. Muy barata, ¿sí?
* * *Luis Posada Carriles, who bombed Cuban airliner in 1976, killing 73, has escaped Venezuelan prison, lives freely n Miami. See: www.nlg.org.
* * *Republicans didn't have cojones 2 nominate Colin Powell when he could have been 1st Black Pres.; now say he's left party – as n disinvited?* * *GM 2 reinvent self? Rebuild Jeep Cherokee (unGrand), "the SUV that wdn't die", w/better mileage, cupholder; don't mess w/size, reliability!* * *Chicago Cubs Mgr Lou Piniella defended Geovany Soto (C), who tested positive 4 pot during World Baseball Classic; said he'd once tried weed.* * *Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale), best known "weed" n world, was human food, medicine b4 use of writing. Bitter digestive, diuretic, detox.* * *Man n Iran said young women w/out headscarves danced n streets 4 Mousavi. "I'll vote 4 Ahmadinejad; if Mousavi wins, they'll dance naked."* * *Weirdest group-dancing-2-Michael-Jackson-music video-on-You-Tube: smiling, bearded Saudi men n full desert garb, moonwalking & getting down.* * *Last word: MJ, dancing, & Iran, you-must-see: http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/video-irans-streets-mjs-they-dont-really-care-about-us* * *From Liz, Jeff, CNN.com, Mike E & Kasama, @WEEDMASTER & WeedPlay Marijuana News, The Week, HerbClip, American-Statesman, & The Daily Show.

—Mariann Wizard, @Pollyanna46

[Note: Follow The Rag Blog on Twitter: twitter.com/TheRagBlog.]

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Short Attention-Span News (A Little Birdie Told Me)

Trippin' down the cobblestones:
Short Attention-Span News

By Mariann G. Wizard / The Rag Blog / June 25, 2009

["slow down, you move too fast; you got to make the morning last; just trippin down the cobblestones, lookin for fun and feelin groovy! la la la la la la"

It must be the heat...]

I've taken up tweeting n the last week (@Pollyanna46 + @CannabisResourc); I love it! N Austin's record heat, brevity is next 2 goddessness.

* * *Theresa Anthony, 29, black, busted 4 pot poss., DIED N HARRIS CNTY JAIL 6/20. Her Mom was told by fone. No cause of death has been released.* * *Sen Lautenberg (D-NJ; David Codrea sez D-Mordor) will intro law to keep any on terrorist "watch list" from buying guns. NJ, will Sauron win?* * *New Scientist reports nat. gas n permafrost, under seabed (methane clathrate) cd fuel world 100s of years &/r push global warming; explode.* * *Pres Obama has declared cyberspace a domain of warfare. New Pentagon command 2 oversee ops. Hacker recruits will get 2 play games for real!* * *India's largest tiger sanctuary has few tigers, prey of poachers, feared by farmers. Hindu vegetarian Dharmendra Khandal seeks to save them.* * *60+years' abuse n Irish R.C. skools revealed n new report recalls Holocaust. Big Diff: few survived Auschwitz; 100,000s Irish knew; did zip.* * *Dilute lemongrass oil repels fleas; ticks from humans; animals. N footbath, refreshes; aids excess sweating. Lemongrass tea aids digestion.
* * *TX Freedom Network (www.tfn.org) has candidate training 7/22 for ANYONE interested n a seat on State Bd of Education; 8 incumbents up n '10.* * *19th Annual Havana Intrntl Book Fair, 2/13-20.2010, legal 4 US professional librarians 2 go. Overlaps w/ Intrntl Jazz Fest; ur waiting 4???* * *"The sun has a working schedule, & the snow, & the birds, & every green leaf. Perhaps you should have one 2?" -- Mary Oliver (APSMuseletter)

[Note: Follow The Rag Blog on Twitter: twitter.com/TheRagBlog.]

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Iran : How I Helped Tweet the Revolution from San Francisco

Students turn to Twitter. This photo from June 15, 2009 shows a picture of defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, left bottom, next to a broken computer monitor in a room in a Tehran University dormitory after it was attacked by militia forces during riots in Tehran, Iran, in the early hours Monday. Photo from AP.

The State Department asked social-networking site Twitter to delay scheduled maintenance earlier this week to avoid disrupting communications among tech-savvy Iranian citizens as they took to the streets to protest Friday's reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The move illustrates the growing influence of online social-networking services as a communications media. Foreign news coverage of the unfolding drama, meanwhile, was limited by Iranian government restrictions barring journalists from "unauthorized" demonstrations. -- Washington Post

The Revolution will be Tweeted

Twitter hashtags created an instantaneous collectivity that could never be created by mainstream media.

By Austin Heap / June 16, 2009

Also see 'Cyberwar guide for Iran,' by Cory Doctorow, Below.

SAN FRANCISCO -- It all started at 10:40 p.m. on an otherwise quiet Sunday night. After talking about the Iranian election on and off for several hours, I saw a tweet (a message on Twitter) that pointed out CNN’s failure to cover the story. As an obviously rigged election in one of the world’s most important countries was being perpetrated, America’s oldest 24-hour news network was reporting primarily about how confusing the new fangled digital TVs were.

“Dear CNN: please report about Iran, not Twitter. #cnnfail #iranelection,” a user by the name of nympholepsy wrote. The dual hashtags (the pound symbol before a subject, which allows users to search for all tweets on the topic) opened the door for me, a 25-year old who had never even traveled to the Middle East, to become an activist in Iran.

It was probably the tag #cnnfail that appealed to me at first. In 2000, the first presidential election for which I was truly cognizant, I watched as legitimate claims of voter suppression in my native state of Ohio and across the country were ignored by the mainstream media as conspiracy theories.

If the media failed, the populace was complicit. There were no protests that rocked the stability of our government, no mass movements against the subversion of our democracy.

But the other tag, #iranelection, did not have the luxury of our delusion. Even before the ridiculously lopsided results were released, opposition headquarters were sacked, dissidents arrested. The government of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wanted to minimize the threat of any opposition leaders organizing a revolution against it. Unfortunately for them, this revolution did not need figureheads to lead it. The Ayatollah had not read the lessons of Moldova, where protestors used sites like Twitter to organize mass protests in April against the Communist government.

Through the power of social networking, individual Iranians were also able to mobilize each other. Twitter hashtags created an instantaneous collectivity that could never be created by mainstream media. When the government realized what was happening, they tried to shut it down. Members of the tech community across the globe did what they could to support it. We started posting functioning relays (or proxies) through which Iranians could subvert government firewalls.

The spontaneity of the tech movement was also one of its weaknesses. With so many updates at #iranelection, it became hard to tell which relays were working and which were not. I started monitoring all of the proxies and created a webpage that listed which proxies were functioning. I asked people I had never met to send messages to me on Twitter to let me know the status of each proxy. And they did.

But that information was public. Anyone on Twitter could find it. Anyone could access the page I had created. When Iran’s Guardian Council began monitoring tweets, other members of the community reported it to me. We had to adapt instantly in order to maintain the ability of the Iranian opposition to mobilize. I quickly set up a secure page. Instead of asking people to send me relays publicly, I now asked for them to be sent via Direct Message or e-mail. They came in a flood.

My website has been attacked by Iran. My servers are melting. But individuals in the opposition are still able to use technology to mobilize each other. And the tech community around the world is still able to support them.

Now, less than 24 hours later, I am receiving more than 2,000 simultaneous connections per second from Iran. When I wake up, I will have received more than 300 e-mails from volunteers trying to contribute and lighting the path forward for a movement that is both new and old.

Americans ignored the subversion of their democracy. When a people better than us stood up to secure theirs, I could not let them down. The revolution may not be televised, but it will be tweeted.

Source / New American Media

Cyberwar guide for Iran

By Cory Doctorow / June 16, 2009

Yishay sez, "The road to hell is paved with the best intentions (including mine). Learn how to actually help the protesters and not the gov't in Iran."

The purpose of this guide is to help you participate constructively in the Iranian election protests through Twitter.

1. Do NOT publicise proxy IP's over twitter, and especially not using the #iranelection hashtag. Security forces are monitoring this hashtag, and the moment they identify a proxy IP they will block it in Iran. If you are creating new proxies for the Iranian bloggers, DM them to @stopAhmadi or @iran09 and they will distribute them discretely to bloggers in Iran.

2. Hashtags -- the only two legitimate hashtags being used by bloggers in Iran are #iranelection and #gr88. Other hashtag ideas run the risk of diluting the conversation.

3. Keep your bull$hit filter up! Security forces are now setting up twitter accounts to spread disinformation by posing as Iranian protesters. Please don't retweet impetuously, try to confirm information with reliable sources before retweeting. The legitimate sources are not hard to find and follow.

4. Help cover the bloggers: change your twitter settings so that your location is TEHRAN and your time zone is GMT +3.30. Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location and timezone searches. If we all become "Iranians" it becomes much harder to find us.

5. Don't blow their cover! If you discover a genuine source, please don't publicise their name or location on a website. These bloggers are in REAL danger. Spread the word discretely through your own networks but don't signpost them to the security forces. People are dying there, for real, please keep that in mind...

Source / boingboing

Thanks to Roger Baker and Harry Edwards / The Rag Blog

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Live-Blogging the Uprising in Iran

From Huffington Post: 8:28 PM ET -- Not just in Tehran. Via email, reader Farbod writes: "This is from Ardabil in the northwest. Mousavi's home province. I think it is very important that people see demonstrations from all over Iran, not just Tehran."

The revolution will not be televised. But it may be Tweeted.

By Harry Edwards / The Rag Blog / June 14, 2009

An awesome demonstration of the coming together of new technology is going on right now on Huffington Post. Nico Pitney is live-blogging the action in Iran in an up-to-the-minute fashion. All relevant Twitter sites have been compiled and are available for perusal. And a huge compendium of news sites as well. Literally hundreds of sources. I may turn into a believer in Twitter after this.

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Twitter: Diabolical Terrorist Tool?

Army surveillance photo of Twitter terrorist conspiring with comrades.
Army report: 'Twitter was recently used as a countersurveillance, command and control, and movement tool by activists at the Republican National Convention.'
By William Michael Hanks / The Rag Blog / October 26, 2008

A report by the Army's 304th Military Intelligence Battalion has identified a potential threat to National security in the seemingly innocuous and ubiquitous Twitter application. It's seems this social networking (socnet) site has more disturbing uses than mere microblogging of current personal activities and favorite websites. One of the examples given of the nefarious possibilities that such applications provide is quoted here.

"Twitter was recently used as a countersurveillance, command and control, and movement tool by activists at the Republican National Convention," the report notes."The activists would Tweet each other and their Twitter pages to add information on what was happening with Law Enforcement near real time."

Disturbing as that news may be, there are apparently more frightening uses of Twitter that could even now be posing threats to our homeland security. According to the report, Twitter in combination with cell phone cameras and GPS features could be used for anything from infiltrating our borders (evidently so well-protected that advanced technologies are required) to the planting of a wide range terrorists devices.

Even though the real threat posed by this use of this popular microblogging media is minimal (judging by the ease of identifying all Twitter posts that refer to the 2008 election and displaying them on the Twitter "Election 08" site), I hope we will all take this warning seriously and report any suspicious characters or activity to our local Homeland Security authorities.

I guess the real message we can take from this is that any tool that enhances unfiltered communication among citizens can be viewed with suspicion. This report reminds us how surreal our world has become.

Spy Fears: Twitter Terrorists, Cell Phone Jihadists
By Noah Shachtman / October 24, 2008

Could Twitter become terrorists' newest killer app? A draft Army intelligence report, making its way through spy circles, thinks the miniature messaging software could be used as an effective tool for coordinating militant attacks.

For years, American analysts have been concerned that militants would take advantage of commercial hardware and software to help plan and carry out their strikes. Everything from online games to remote-controlled toys to social network sites to garage door openers has been fingered as possible tools for mayhem.

This recent presentation -- put together on the Army's 304th Military Intelligence Battalion and found on the Federation of the American Scientists website -- focuses on some of the newer applications for mobile phones: digital maps, GPS locators, photo swappers, and Twitter mash-ups of it all.

The report is roughly divided into two halves. The first is based mostly on chatter from Al-Qaeda-affiliated online forums. One Islamic extremist site discusses, for example, the benefits of "using a mobile phone camera to monitor the enemy and its mechanisms." Another focuses on the benefits of the Nokia 6210 Navigator, and how its GPS utilities could be used for "marksmanship, border crossings, and in concealment of supplies." Such software could allow jihadists to pick their way across multiple routes, identifying terrain features as they go. A third extremist forum recommends the installation of voice-modification software to conceal one's identity when making calls. Excerpts from a fourth site show cell phone wallpapers that wannabe jihadists can use to express their affinity for radicalism:

Click on image to enlarge.
Then the presentation launches into an even-more theoretical discussion of how militants might pair some of these mobile applications with Twitter, to magnify their impact. After all, "Twitter was recently used as a countersurveillance, command and control, and movement tool by activists at the Republican National Convention," the report notes."The activists would Tweet each other and their Twitter pages to add information on what was happening with Law Enforcement near real time."

Terrorists haven't done anything similar, the Army report concedes - although it does note that there are "multiple pro and anti Hezbollah Tweets." Instead, the presentation lays out three possible scenarios in which Twitter could become a militant's friend:

Scenario 1: Terrorist operative “A” uses Twitter with… a cell phone camera/video function to send back messages, and to receive messages, from the rest of his [group]... Other members of his [group] receive near real time updates (similar to the movement updates that were sent by activists at the RNC) on how, where, and the number of troops that are moving in order to conduct an ambush.

Scenario 2: Terrorist operative “A” has a mobile phone for Tweet messaging and for taking images. Operative “A” also has a separate mobile phone that is actually an explosive device and/or a suicide vest for remote detonation. Terrorist operative “B” has the detonator and a mobile to view “A’s” Tweets and images. This may allow ”B” to select the precise moment of remote detonation based on near real time movement and imagery that is being sent by “A.”

Scenario 3: Cyber Terrorist operative “A” finds U.S. [soldier] Smith’s Twitter account. Operative “A” joins Smith’s Tweets and begins to elicit information from Smith. This information is then used for… identity theft, hacking, and/or physical [attacks]. This scenario… has already been discussed for other social networking sites, such as My Space and/or Face Book.
Steven Aftergood, a veteran intelligence analyst at the Federation of the American Scientists, doesn't dismiss the Army presentation out of hand. But nor does he think it's tackling a terribly seriously threat. "Red-teaming exercises to anticipate adversary operations are fundamental. But they need to be informed by a sense of what's realistic and important and what's not," he tells Danger Room. "If we have time to worry about 'Twitter threats' then we're in good shape. I mean, it's important to keep some sense of proportion."
Source / Wired

Go here for the presentation produced by the Army's 304th Military Intelligence Battalion and found on the Federation of the American Scientists website.

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