Iranian democracy

padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
josef k. said:
I don't agree. New forms of media render things visible and public which previously would have remained private. Before the birth of cinema, the close-up of a face was something which only a mother or a lover ever saw. The internet is rendering generally visible patterns of thought and feeling which previously remained isolated. Everyone has shouted at a newspaper (he says) but what a thing to learn, that so many people hate newspaper columnists, that nobody (it seems) really believes it...
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so, everyone knows more stuff, or everyone can know more stuff, or everyone with electricity & Internet access can know more stuff.

you could say - people create things & pass them thru these forms of media.

I don't think these things have no effect - that would be nuts - merely that the effects they have are ambiguous, contradictory, unclear, etc.
 
J

josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
padraig (u.s.) said:
the effects they have are ambiguous, contradictory, unclear, etc.
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Yes, I think this is right...

The Iranian security state is itself a network, connected by media - expressed in gestures, forms of associations, etc. The emergence of new media alters these forms in unpredictable ways.
 
nomadthethird

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
padraig (u.s.) said:

Sex Drugs & Islam
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Wow. What info.

In my mind, this is just more proof that sex just doesn't mean that much to women--despite every Western stereotype and stupid bullshit heteronorm to the contrary-- and that sexual labor is not an inherently scary, unconscionable thing that only battered victims of childhood abuse or the extremely destitute and poverty-stricken would ever consider doing.

It really isn't such a huge deal, in the capitalist scheme of things. The body is the essential commodity. Prostitution has existed since long before capitalism did, so we can't blame Capital for sex work. Maybe we can blame sex work for capitalism.
 
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S

scottdisco

rip this joint please
i see Britain's man in Tehran has finally been summoned to the Foreign Ministry for a bit of the ol' carpeting.

idk if the people from Paris and Berlin have too; London has been speaking more, ahem, cautiously about events compared to our Franco-German allies.

vimothy said:
Also, it seems like the regime is splitting into to the armed forces on one side and the old school Islamic revolutionaries (Larijani, Rasfanjani, etc) on the other...?
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something i have been wondering about.
 
vimothy

vimothy

yurp
padraig (u.s.) said:
on the Other Hand - secret police, torture chambers, tanks & planes, the grind of poverty, old hatreds, theocracies, bureaucracies, theocratic bureaucracies, etc.
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The forms are different. Agincourt was not the Somme. A spur is not a tank. New media has not remade the world, but it has changed it.
 
vimothy

vimothy

yurp
Has this been posted yet? Incredible stuff -- account of last night's protests from Fisk:

The fate of Iran rested last night in a grubby north Tehran highway interchange called Vanak Square where – after days of violence – supporters of the official President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at last confronted the screaming, angry Iranians who have decided that Mirhossein Mousavi should be the president of their country. Unbelievably – and I am a witness because I stood beside them – just 400 Iranian special forces police were keeping these two armies apart. There were stones and tear gas but for the first time in this epic crisis the cops promised to protect both sides.

"Please, please, keep the Basiji from us," one middle-aged lady pleaded with a special forces officer in flak jacket and helmet as the Islamic Republic's thug-like militia appeared in their camouflage trousers and purity-white shirts only a few metres away. The cop smiled at her. "With God's help," he said. Two other policemen were lifted shoulder-high. "Tashakor, tashakor," – "thank you, thank you" – the crowd roared at them.

This was phenomenal. The armed special forces of the Islamic Republic, hitherto always allies of the Basiji, were prepared for once, it seemed, to protect all Iranians, not just Ahmadinejad's henchmen. The precedent for this sudden neutrality is known to everyone – it was when the Shah's army refused to fire on the millions of demonstrators demanding his overthrow in 1979.
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padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
vimothy said:
The forms are different. Agincourt was not the Somme. A spur is not a tank. New media has not remade the world, but it has changed it.
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everything changes. we don't disagree there - you're saying the changes are good. I'm saying they're ambiguous. tho also, as things change basic facts underlie them still. revolutions are still about enough people surpassing a certain threshold of discontent.

also, from the NYT Op-Ed on coup;

the regime is prepared to detain dissidents — reportedly using Facebook and Twitter to locate them
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so it swings both ways, which is the other big counter to, or at least question about, the new Wonders of the global communication system or whatever (also Google's China troubles). I see also in all these things the potential for greater control, less intrusive & therefore perhaps even more insidious.
 
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