I've been watching the results of the elections in Iraq with some interest. I'm still not sure where the Kurds are at with everything. Some news suggests they're onboard with the Shia Islamic alliance that swept into near-complete control; at the least I haven't seen any news about Kurts protesting the results as Sunnis and non-theocratic Shias have been. I'm not sure how their position is looking in light of everything.

And now this:

It has long been suspected that Sunni Arabs are severely underrepresented in the new military and police.

But the new voting results, which elections officials say include most of the ballots cast by Iraqi military and police, are a sign of how complete the reversal of the fortunes has been for the Sunnis, who ran those security forces under Saddam Hussein.

Basically it would appear that the Iraqi army and police we are equipping are a completely different population of people than the Iraqi army that we disbanded after invading the country. You wanna know what that means? There there are two armies in Iraq.

UPDATE: via John Robb, the Times is now reporting that 45% Iraqi Army votes went for Kurdish candidates. 40% went Shia. Curiouser and curiouser...

Apparently the kid at UMass who claimed to have been checked up on for checking out Mao's Little Red Book was making the whole thing up. That's a relief.

Here's my morning news ramble. Turned into a long one, so see if you can stick with me. I especially liked the end, but I'll beat that drum some more on that so don't worry if you tune out right now.

Spying; Everyday People
It's looking more and more like COINTELPRO again:

The officers hoist protest signs. They hold flowers with mourners. They ride in bicycle events. At the vigil for the cyclist, an officer in biking gear wore a button that said, "I am a shameless agitator." She also carried a camera and videotaped the roughly 15 people present.

This hits close to home because this is a community to which I've a number of connections Say it with me now: Critical Mass is not a threat to national security. There's no need to secretly videotape their activities.

If we don't turn back from this, it's going to get worse. This sort of relationship between the State and its dissidents, like any fight, has a way of escalating. It starts with the State treating dissenters as threats, and usually ends with violence. I'd rather not go there.

This is why having a just, working and equitable system of law and democracy is important. Not just because it's the morally right thing to do, but because the only way to go from there is down.

The problem is that it doesn't take a rocket scientist to recognize that we're somewhere short of a "just, working and equitable system of law and democracy." The $64,000 question is whether there's enough vitality and virtue left within our systems to make reform possible, or whether that's just a big waste of time.

To some radicals and activists, the behavior of "everyday people" ranges from incomprehensible to repugnant. Among people who are non-activist but on their way up in society (e.g. a lot of my friends who made it through college), the idea that "everyday people" are too stupid to realize what's in their best interest is remarkably pervasive.

This bears directly on questions about "the health of the system." If one does not believe that "everyday people" are capable of self-governance, there's not much point in democracy.

Individuals are remarkably fallible, but when engaged in large numbers I think people tend to get it right. In almost all cases, mass participation produces better results than "expert" direction. This is what underlies the argument that market economies are better than command economies, and it's the right idea.

The American Left must find a unifying philosophy which incorporates a populist message. Many are wary of this because they see the example of the GOP and assume that populism means manipulating people through fear. They think that populism means propaganda, demagoguery, stirring up anger and resentment.

While it's true that all these negatives have been part of populism in the past, it's not as though the only way to engage mass amounts of people is by turning them into a mob. The New Deal stands as a great example of this.

Substance
As Max Swacky points out in a post about the need for research and wonkery, even when Democrats are out of power:

We need propaganda and agitation, but to give the public something substantive that it can take to heart is the basis for progressive transformation of society. That's what winning is all about. Otherwise we're looking [at] a rotating bands of miscreants, alternatively taking office, raiding the till, and getting thrown out by the next cohort of miscreants-to-be.

If you don't think the Democratic Party doesn't have the same potential for lyin, cheatin, and stealin, you are gravely misinformed. The only constraint on the abuse of power -- besides an opposition lurking in the wings -- is an engaged, informed public. Being angry and stupid isn't good enough.

This is essentially right, although I still don't think people are just "angry and stupid" at the moment.

What Max doesn't seem to acknowledge -- though I'm sure he realizes this -- is that there's a lot more to "giving the public something substantive that it can take to heart" than doing research and publishing papers, even if the papers do get read by congressional staffers. In fact, I would say this is a critical lesson to take away from the Clinton Years, which were a golden age for wonkery, true, but one in which fucking nothing substantially progressive happened and one in which the country's overall politics shifted notably to the Right.

There currently exists no channel by which the substantive fruits of research can be widely and effectively communicated to the public. You can say that the public would rather watch The Apprentice, and you'd be right in terms of pure popularity for how to spent one hour. You could also say that the press is manifestly failing in bringing the truth to the fore, and you'd also be right; just look at the "debate" over Intelligent Design if you need an example.

However, the fact remains that at the moment there's no channel for the public to engage with substantive research, even if they want to. There's no-one distilling and humanizing the voluminous data about reality. That's reality -- information about our world and what we might be able to do about it -- as opposed to politics, where the blogosphere seems to be getting traction. Since 2002, there are many many more people who are informed and astute about politics in America, that's largely due to the blogs slowly raising the discourse out of the gutter of talk-radio and providing a relatively nutritious alternative to the high-fructose corn syrup spectacle of cable-news infotainment.

However, most of reality remains a mystery to many, something that needs to change if we're to have better governance in addition to better politics. Of course, a large part of this is our education system, which manifestly fails to inform, inspire and stimulate millions of children every year. It's a long term problem, but we can't just lay it all on the kids. After all, it's not as though grown-ups are close-minded robots. Brain plasticity decreases over time, but it's not as though people can't learn, can't grow, can't evolve and change throughout their lives.

Communication Strategy
What I want to know is why no one learned anything from Ross Perot. That crazy (and arguably fascist) motherfucker went on TV and explained shit to people, and it worked like gangbusters. Had he not gone loopy in the midst of things -- dropping out of the race because he was convinced that government agents were going to somehow ruin his daughters wedding, if I recall -- he may in fact have won.

It's worth noting that Perot and his Reform Party began by tapping into a latent base of isolationist conservatism -- the Lou Dobbs/Pat Buchannan faction -- that wasn't being addressed by either Bush Sr. However, at points in 1992, Perot led the field, indicating his support had broadened significantly. I've seen analysis that he took as many votes from Clinton in the end and I believe it. My mother was a Perot fan, along with 12-year-old me. I think this was a result of his strategy of communicating large amounts of information in a relatively complex manner to as many people as possible, and trusting that people would understand and agree with him.

In 1992, only a self-financed billionaire or major campaign could possibly afford the massive amounts of TV time required to implement such a strategy. By now things have changed significantly.

If someone gave me little seed capital I would get several good videographers, pull together some of the better research, create a series of 20-minute infomercials, put them online, and run a high-quality ad campaign to drive people to that site. We would gather donations from visitors to run the infomercials nationally or in certain markets. We could even provide instructions and materials for individuals or groups with resources to run the ads in their own markets.

This would work. Here's how you do it:

1. Create a message, grounded in solid research
2. Translate that message into a persuasive media package
3. Initiate a strong broadcast campaign for the media package
4. Direct receivers of that broadcast message back to a community with both online and offline presence
5. Allow the community to improve the research, message and media packaging
6. Allow the community to disseminate the above both on a grassroots level and through fundraising for more broadcasts
7. Lather, rinse, repeat

There's your 21st Century message strategy for a 2008 presidential campaign. You can send me my six-figures via paypal.

Now, you'll still need rapid response, an attack strategy and all that jazz. You'll also need to make sure that original message is good (which will cost you another six-figures), but this is how you can effectively get your word out, maybe at a net profit for your campaign if it's good enough. This is essentially a focused and media-savvy version of what the Dean campaign did that allowed it to grow so rapidly and drive such high rates of online donations. It wasn't online magic. It was online magic plus outstanding message plus participation-oriented organization.

This would probably work on the national level for the 2006 midterms. The combination of real information, participatory discussion, and the promise of power to put the fruits of those to into practice is the secret sauce, so in '06 this would require some entity with national authority (or the perception of national authority) to back the play. A 2006 equivalent to the congress-in-waiting that Gingrich et al put together in 1994; an entity with power.

I don't know if such an entity will emerge; frankly, I think the odds are against it. It would almost have to be a joint Pelosi/Reid effort, and although both are doing very well all things considered, I don't see them as being this ambitious.

It looks to me like 2006 is going to be a DIY year for the revolution. Nothing new there. Who's down?

New York Transit Union to Vote on Ending Strike - New York Times

Glad to hear that the state mediators have taken a big step forward for bringing the MTA and TWU into consensus. With any luck, tomorrow will be a semi-normal subway day.

I found this graph to be interesting:

[The settlement] would allow Gov. George E. Pataki to save face because the final negotiations would not take place until the strikers return to work, the people said, and it would apparently allow the union's president, Roger Toussaint, to save face because, they believe, the authority's pension demands - which are at the crux of the deadlock - have been significantly scaled back.

It's disengenuous for the Times to paint this as being all about pride. For Toussaint, isn't about saving face, it's about securing the wages and benefits of his union's members.

Pataki (and Bloomberg), on the other hand, really are just saving face. With this deal they'll be able to say they didn't "back down" in the face of the strike.

Also, while I don't think the Taylor law is a good law (any law that takes away the right of a worker to withold their work is too restrictive) I also thought this was interesting:

Mr. Toussaint, at his news conference, reiterated the union's argument that the authority had forced the union to strike by illegally insisting on pension changes. Under the state's Taylor Law, one side cannot make pensions a condition of a settlement. But in 1994 and in 1999, both sides agreed on pension changes.

That's the first time I've heard that bit of information. It's been clear that the TWU is politically outclassed in terms of waging the media war over this strike. They were late out of the gate in terms of their message -- letting the MTA, Pataki and Bloomberg frame the stike nearly completely -- and they have a pretty uneven job of informing the public over the past few days.

Bloomberg and Pataki are info-war veterans, and they have had both the city tabloids solidly at their backs in this. They've both used their bully pulpits to wage the public relations battle. In light of all that, I'm sorta surprised that in spite of this, public support remained very high for the TWU:

In a WWRL poll, 71% of respondents blamed the MTA and only 14% blamed the transit workers.

More on public opinion here.

Though, really, once I think about it, it shouldn't be surprising. Most NYers use the mass transit system every day, which is why when it's taken away they suffer. But it also means they have a lot of contact with the people who make that system operate. I don't think that most people really want to run over striking workers with their carpool cars (as a couple lawyers were quoted as considering yesterday in an AP story). I think most people understand that transit workers work very hard in rather unpleasant conditions to make this city hum, and they want the workers to be paid well. They want them to be dedicated professionals. They want them to be able to support their families and communities with steady middle-class jobs. Most folks like the shiny new cars, but find the robotic station announcements to be kind of a downer. Most folks like that the transit system is human.

Now, there are a lot of people in NY who are a little more upper-crust who don't necessarily feel that way. You know these people; they're the ones who get upset when anything isn't just exactly right; the ones who really are used to dealing with certain people as "the help"; the ones who will literally throw their credit card at you across the counter when you couldn't find all three books they wanted to buy.

But those people are a minority. An influential and powerful one, to be sure, but a rather clear minority of the overall population. The city is not the upper east side. Thank god.