Bernard-Hen­ri Lévy, one of France’s lead­ing intel­lec­tu­als (you can tell by the way he but­tons his shirt) pays dra­mat­ic homage to the upris­ing in Iran. The rhythm of the speech is vague­ly MLK’esque. But the con­tent is dis­tinct­ly French intel­lo. (Some­how Michel Fou­cault gets worked into an analy­sis of what’s hap­pen­ing on the streets of Tehran.)

via TELOS

If you’re look­ing to get more con­text for what’s hap­pen­ing right now in Iran, let me direct you to two pieces of media. First, you’ll find above a talk by Abbas Milani, the direc­tor of the Iran­ian Stud­ies Pro­gram at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. It was giv­en last August at Google’s HQ in Moun­tain View, CA, and it overviews how pow­er is struc­tured in Iran and what dri­ves Pres­i­dent Ahmadine­jad and the rul­ing cler­ics. Then, about 15 min­utes into the talk, Milani address­es the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and under­scores Ahmadine­jad’s declin­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty and poor elec­toral chances. Milani also reflects on the emerg­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic move­ment and its abil­i­ty to get trac­tion. As you’ll see, many of his com­ments (democ­ra­cy will come on its own — if we don’t start a war over nukes) are start­ing to look rather prophet­ic. But let’s not get too far ahead of our­selves.

Next, you can lis­ten to a talk record­ed this morn­ing, which brings togeth­er Milani, Juan Cole (the his­to­ri­an of the Mid­dle East who writes the Informed Com­ment blog) and Scott Peter­son (Istan­bul bureau chief for The Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor). This hour long con­ver­sa­tion (MP3 — iTunes) delves into the elec­tion and its after­math and exam­ines what’s at stake for Iran, the Mid­dle East and the US.

Andrew Sul­li­van has been embar­rass­ing Amer­i­ca’s tra­di­tion­al mass media. With his one man blog, he has pro­vid­ed rich­er and more imme­di­ate insight into what’s hap­pen­ing on the ground in Iran than even The New York Times. (I ask, some­what face­tious­ly, would we real­ly miss the belea­guered news­pa­per indus­try if it went away? Not this week, we would­n’t.) Now Sul­li­van has pulled togeth­er an impres­sive list of tweets com­ing straight from the front lines. A short 140 char­ac­ters can say more than you’d think, and, read­ing them, it seems fair­ly clear that the injuries, even fatal­i­ties, in Tehran may be high­er than the MSM has report­ed so far. Right now, we’re clear­ly see­ing two new forms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion — blog­ging and Twit­ter — hit­ting their stride.

Check out Andrew Sul­li­van’s Dai­ly Dish. He’s doing a great job of watch­ing things unfold in Tehran. More good blog­ging com­ing from the NYTimes Lede blog. Mean­while CNN has dropped the ball big time, and is tak­ing a beat­ing on Twit­ter. Check out the new web­site, CNNfail.com.

Michael Eric Dyson, the George­town soci­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor and pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al, talks here about how civ­il rights move­ments have his­tor­i­cal­ly built upon one oth­er. MLK took pieces from Gand­hi, and the gay rights move­ment is now draw­ing on the black civ­il rights move­ment of the 60s. The clip runs about 7 min­utes, and you can watch the full video here. You can also watch anoth­er Dyson speech, “No Dreams Deferred?: Black Aspi­ra­tions from Mar­tin Luther King Jr. to Jay‑Z.”

via The Huff­in­g­ton Post