Another reason I insist that it's gotterdamerung for the Israel lobby is that the old power paradigms are going out the window. The other day I was bitching about money to a friend who's in journalism school, and she said, Look, Phil, in Mumbai, the mainstream journalism was dominated by twitter feeds. The empire is teetering. I'm always the last to know, and I asked her to elaborate. Here goes. I am keeping her anonymous because these are impressions, and it was just an email:
We're in a moment of unprecedented disruption which means both crisis and opportunity and I'm fixated on finding a way to exploit it. Five years from now it might seem obvious what we could have done differently. [beautiful point; just look back five years!]
The difficulty is monetizing it and this problem usually conflicts with our politics anyway but we can't avoid it. (Love those google ads :-) The new model of news relies heavily on RSS feeds and outside content. For instance, you're an independent content provider; and not all of our politics are so unpopular elsewhere in the world. Dubai is becoming a new media center - I heard they're building an NYU campus there.
So far the geeks have been one step ahead of the regulators but that's one potential threat to all this messy beauty. I'd love to see this kind of thing happen in Gaza, for instance - but without electricity it's hard for a huge buzz to emanate from somewhere, and the IDF even scrambled the Gaza boat's communication system for a while, but still...
There are Gaza blogs (sorry no links at this moment) desertpeace.wordpress.com has been popular in the past, and he works out of Jerusalem. …. People crying for comfort, what more can a Gaza blogger say?…. Mumbai and blogging might have crossed a threshold, for the serious investigator, singling out blogs and twitter gave so much insight, and really left the mainstream media sounding like a farce! …. And (imho) the worst is yet to come re the blogs and Mumbai. Prepare – take a deep breath, millions of people are searching for the truth, and they are using the net! And they are looking at Israel ….. I am actually afraid to write what I am reading online…
Hmmm, twitter and Dubai? Guess I've got my bases covered since my Lebanese cousins are firmly ensconced in Dubai and I stay in touch with them via Facebook. And twitter – I don't want to say how much of my life is on twitter now.
About that NYU branch being built in Dubai – my Lebanese-American cousin, born in the States but raised in Qatar, just graduated from Carnegie Mellon's Gulf branch. He did most of his coursework there but spent a summer term at the home campus in the States. The NY Times covered this American university expansion in the Gulf earlier this year.
Don't know if this is all a sign of an enormous shift of power in that direction though. Dubai is now having a financial collapse. They based their expansion on oil selling at a certain price per barrel and it has dropped way below that. My other cousin says they don't really have a plan for what to do when the price is low. Two months ago I was in South Lebanon during Ramadan, marveling at all the money washing around – never seen the place so rich. Dubai-based expatriates sending back remittances. Now Lebanese bloggers are talking about what will happen when everybody has to come home, broke, and hang around Lebanon.
We'll just have to see.